Sorry it's been a while since I posted, hopefully someone is still reading this story. I have more to say, so this chapter is going to set up some upcoming personal exploration and intimacy. Enjoy

D.

I have felt pain before, the pain of my mortal death, the pain of blood hunger, even the pains of combat, but never such as I felt that night. I snapped back and forth from consciousness to oblivion as I felt myself hurried away from the scene of my attack. I had thought that it was Alcide who had born my weight, but as I opened my eyes with fleeting glances, I saw only Jankin in my sight, and heard the ferocity of four paws at my side. Alcide had shifted, or remained shifted, I could not put the flow of time together just then. I felt myself lowered to the ground, and felt the shirt torn from my torso; not that there could have been much left of it. I did know it was covered in my blood; it is a thing with us, something primal, the scent of our own immortality, or mortality.

"Take it, run in the opposite direction and meet us back at the cavern." I heard Jankin's voice giving the order, and I understood. We were being tracked by something, something we could outrun, and outsmart. Alcide was going to take the scent of my wounded body far from where Jankin was taking me. I would have congratulated him for the wisdom of his action, had I not passed from consciousness again.

When I woke the next time, because of the pain that seemed to be threading through all the nerves in my spine, I was back in the cave we had used for shelter the day prior. I was lying on the earth, normally a place that would have given me comfort, but not then. I could hear Jankin's heavy breathing, he had managed with my limp body for quite a way. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the part that was not torturing me with pain, and fatigue, I thought to myself that I would have to thank him when things were better. It was funny, as I think back on it, how I assumed that things were going to get better.

"Eric?" I heard his voice after some period of time, through the pain; I didn't know how long I had been lying there on the earth. "Eric if you can hear me, I am so sorry."

"Why?" I managed to breathe out between the tensing of the muscles across my back.

"Because this is going to hurt, and I never wanted to hurt you." I felt his familiar warm hands on my back, and then, for the first time, I smelled the burnt flesh that was obviously my skin. "Please," he begged me, I could hear the panic in his voice, "you must try not to scream."

Something was pressed against my lips, I didn't know what it was just then; my mind was more occupied with sorting out what it was that was going to make me scream. I say my mind was occupied with this, which makes it sound as though I had control, and calm imposed on my thoughts, when it was truly quite the opposite. Whatever the horror was, the question was quickly answered as I felt fingers claw into my back, and rip forth the silver slag that my body had tried to heal around. My fangs dropped and my jaw clenched around the thing between my teeth, and I bit. When I tasted the blood I understood what it was. Jankin had forced his own arm into my mouth, and as he tore away the second hardened silver rivulet I savaged it, blood and flesh swirling, dulling the pain. I could not stop myself. Blood tears ran from the corners of my eyes, I could feel their maddening trails.

I pulled on the wound hard as he seized the final two rods in turn, I did not scream, but I know he wanted to, I could feel it in the body that was wrapped over mine. The muscles tensed, the arm wanted to pull away but could not or did not, the heartbeat raced, the breath was held, and then finally it was over. I heard the metal clang against the stone walls where he had thrown it. The pain began to lessen, and I let him go, losing myself to the oblivion once again.

The taste of his blood remained in my mouth, and the power of it coursed through me. I could almost trace its path from my throat to my chest, out to the gashes in my back. I concentrated on nothing else but feeling my body heal and my mind clear. As I pulled back to consciousness once again, I felt warmth, and calm, and smelled both his blood and his scent around me. My tactile senses searched out what my eyes could not make out just then and I found him, on the ground beside me, his arms thrown over my chest, his chest to my back, his ragged breath brushing my neck.

"Jankin?" I whispered, hearing my own voice as weak and hoarse. The silver had gotten into my blood I could feel it robbing me of my power.

"I am here Eric." His voice was nearly as exhausted as mine.

"I am so sorry."

"Rest and heal my friend." The effort it took him to speak concerned me. I felt him drag my cloak over top of our bodies, it shut out any vision I might have had in the darkness of the cavern.

"Are we safe here?" I needed to know, so I could be prepared if my doom was to meet us.

"The silver is gone, and Alcide patrols outside. No harm will come to us this day." He spoke slowly.

"Will you heal?" My own voice was just as slow.

"I must, as you must Eric. Rest. Tomorrow we will end this." I felt a brush of soft skin against the back of my neck just then, but it swirled away in the poison and the cure.

ooOOoo

The next memory I had was of a newly fallen night. I heard the sound of a fire crackling before I opened my eyes to see it. I was still wrapped in my familiar cloak; so many scents assaulted me as I shifted it. I carefully tested first my fingers, then my hands, and finally my arms to lift my body, to see if weakness and pain remained anywhere. I was pleased to find, that beyond a vague feeling of fatigue, that I was whole again. It took more effort than I wished to push myself to sitting, and then to lift myself to standing, but I accomplished it, the motion drawing the eyes of my two friends, previously sitting around the fire.

"Eric?" Jankin spoke first. As he came over to me I could see the wraps on his left forearm, the one I had savaged.

"I am so sorry Jankin. I would never have harmed you if I had been in my right mind." I offered as my apology.

He tugged down the sleeve of his shirt to hide the bandage and nodded at me, ignoring his obvious discomfort.

"Are you well?" He asked me.

"I am." I responded. He helped me to the fireside and left me there for a moment as he rummaged in his bag to produce a new shirt for me. Holding it out he joined me at the fire, but I simply held it in my lap as I enjoyed the warmth of the flame on my bare chest.

"I simply wish to know how you have recovered from this." Alcide was staring at the both of us in a very odd manner, and I supposed that he had the right to ask the questions, since it seemed that a great many secrets had suddenly been brought into the light. "He poured silver into your wounds, should that not have poisoned your blood?"

"It should have, yes, but for Jankin." Alcide turned his head to face Jankin next, not unkind eyes sought answers that I did not feel were mine to give. But Jankin remained silent, only dropping his eyes back to the embers.

"It is Jankin's nature." I said, acting as his voice.

"You know the truth of that then Eric?" He whispered to the flame, not looking at me.

"Since the first mouthful of your blood."

"And yet you did not kill me?"

"Why would he kill you?" Alcide was beginning to look quite concerned with the direction the conversation was taking.

"Because Jankin is half Fairy. And my kind have hunted theirs for centuries."

"Half Fairy? In a Vampire queendom? You are quite mad, you know that don't you?" Alcide's face was bobbing back and forth between mine, and Jankin's still hunched over back.

"I had a spell to help conceal me, but it was not strong enough it seems to mask the blood."

"So giving Eric your blood just now healed him?"

"Blood that I ripped from you." I was uncomfortable with the way it had come about, but I appreciated the sacrifice he had made for me, and so I leaned into him somewhat and put an arm over his shoulder. I felt him rest against me and the calm of his presence washed over me like a shudder.

"Being close to a Fairy can clear the blood poison of silver." Jankin spoke, finally raising his head. "To lay the warmth of your skin on the wounds accelerates the healing, as you saw me doing with Eric. I don't know why exactly, I never had the time to ask these things of my father."

"He is gone?" Alcide asked, astutely, ignoring something I felt he wanted to ask instead.

"Killed, many years ago. Along with my mother."

"By whom?"

"By the very man who has sent the zombies on your Queendom, and the elves to attack us."

Alcide stopped his line of questioning for a moment, seeming as though he had something to say, but being unsure of the way to phrase it. I was not so unsure as he.

"What is he called?" I asked.

"Breandan. He is a Fairy; a very powerful one indeed. And he commands armies of the Fae folk who are loyal to his cause."

"And that cause is?"

"Reclaiming the lands of the earth for his people. Wresting them away from Vampires, Weres and Mortals alike."

"And he killed your parents for what reason?"

Jankin addressed us both.

"My father, for daring to couple with a mortal, and my mother for daring to couple with a Fairy. He would have killed me as well, for being a half-breed, but my mother was not only mortal, but also a witch, and she was able to cast a spell so that he could not find me. It was that very spell which kept my true nature hidden from the Vampires of your Queendom. All but Eric it seems." He smiled grimly, and finally straightened himself, finding conviction in the story he told out loud.

"His walkers bring a pestilence upon the land. If the mortals are slain, then the Vampires will go. If the Vampires go, the Weres will go as well, for what purpose will there be in staying in a dead land? And when they are gone he will bring his folk and they will then make war from a position of strength upon his neighbors. The lands will fall and the portals will open. He will be Prince of this realm, and others will come to him. There will be no safe place for any of us."

"And so we stop him now."

Jankin nodded. "Yes Eric, and so we must stop him now."

"His first salvo with the Elves was fierce." Alcide noted.

"But he has shown his hand. He will not have many Elves in this realm yet, perhaps not even many Fae. Niall, the prince of the Fae lands forbids travel to this realm without his knowledge. Anyone who is here has come without his leave. They have declared themselves to be Niall's enemy. Breandan has support, but it is not all with him yet. For this night there are three of us, and it only needs be one of us get close to him. And now we know where he is."

"Then we should do this, tonight."