Mature: Desert Moon

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad waited until his meal truly hit his system, slouched against a wall in the rougher part of the city. Thoughts of his family whizzed through his head while his body caught up with him. It was then that the relief could finally set in. They were safe. He could be with them. Their enemies dealt with, their fears conquered.

He wore a broad grin as he reappeared inside the hospital ward, nearly scaring Melinda to death. "I'll take her. Get some rest," he offered the woman as he accepted his Vladling into his arms.

He took his place like he'd had his whole life to plan this moment and put it exactly the way he want. With the wonderful weight of his baby girl in his arms, He sat at the juncture of Tenele and Atul's bed. A snap of his fingers, and Stalker was finally allowed to approach the ward rather than continue waiting upstairs. The beast circled at the foot of the bed and curled gracefully to the ground. Vlad passed the night staring without reserve, alternating from Atul with his faintly scared eye, to Tenara's occasional babbling or squirming, to Tenele's soft breathing.

[Emora Deen]

Tenele woke the next morning, rolling over in bed to find her husband holding their daughter. She smiled as she snuggled into the pillow, a lazy half-asleep look on her face. She liked to watch him hold her, and loved the look in his eyes when he did. "You are going to spoil her," she warned the vampire. "Did she make much fuss last night? The nurses say she's very good."

[Soran Nightblade]

"None," Vlad murmured, coming out of his trancelike focus on the child to look at his wife. He leaned over and kissed her lightly. "Would you like her?"

[Emora Deen]

Tenele smiled. She pushed to sit up in bed with her back against the pillows and drew her child into her arms. She smoothed her hand over the soft wisps of hair. "Hungry?" she asked. She reached up and untied the string that held her gown, and loosened it to allow Tenara to feed.

Tenele whispered softly to her, and hummed a little song. Outside the sun was rising and the light was falling through the window into the small closed off area. "Do you know why they took him?" Tenele asked softly, glancing up to him. "What did they want? Ransom?"

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad looked down at Atul's unconscious form protectively. "They were given information by someone within the palace that Atul and I together had the power to summon a god. They wanted an audience with that god." He let the words sink in. "They did not seem to know of your importance to the equation. That much is relief, as it means the mole does not know either. They thought the god could be controlled by obtaining both of our blood. They had nearly emptied Atul when I got there."

He studied the man's sleeping features, looking for any signs of pain, as he had been all night. Atul's expression was tight, as if uncomfortable, but he hadn't escaped the pull of the drugs all night. Vlad was a little grateful for that. The less the king had to witness his own slow recovery, the easier it would be for him.

[Emora Deen]

Tenele frowned at her feet. "Did you kill them? They're dead? All of them? How do we find out who is spying on us? It could be anyone... Not very many people know about Knight..." Tenele rocked Tenara when she was finished feeding, patting her lightly on the back. "This is frightening. We don't know who to trust. She could be Melinda for all we know... Or Doctor..."

Tenele froze. "We told Doctor Borat about Knight..." Tenele pursed her lips together, trying to remember if they had told him everything. If they had, then it ruled him out. If he knew she was the only one that could summon Knight, he would have told their enemies.

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad frowned at the idea. "I did not explain how Knight works. I only acknowledged that he was Tenara's sire, and that he was Atul and I both." He thought hard about what he knew about the doctor. After all, he had abandoned Tenele to a difficult childbirth over a dog bite. It didn't speak well to his discipline, but then again, Stalker wasn't a normal dog.

"We should prepare for the possibility that it is him. Ideally, we should trust only our inner circle unless necessary. As for the sect that took Atul, they are dead. I crushed their outpost from the inside out, and burned it all to an inferno. There is nothing left of them but a plate of glass in a barren desert.

[Emora Deen]

Knowing that they were dead brought Tenele relief. She hugged her child a bit tighter, and then laid her gentle on the bed next to her, close to Vlad. Tenara waved her hands, grasping at Tenele's silver hair.

"Well, with there contacts dead they should start to panic, and if they panic it will be easy to figure them out," Tenele told him. It was such a strange thing to hold a serious conversation like this and be distracted by the adorable being playing next to her.

"She has your face... And your smile," Tenele told him. "But, I think she's going to have Atul's eyes. She might have black hair, its hard to tell."

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad looked down at the child, and a sense of jubilation crept up in him. It had been like this all night. He wondered if it ever wore off. "I adore her," he grinned. "She is nearly as lovely as you."

"Are you hungry? Tired?"

[Emora Deen]

Tenele smiled. "Breakfast would be nice," she told him, tickling at Tenara's chest. She placed a hand on her stomach as if his question remind her she was hungry. "Nearly as beautiful, you my dear are mistaken. She's more beautiful by far!" Tenele kissed Tenara's chest and grinned.

Tenele pressed her lips together. "If Doctor Borat is the spy then it worries me... What if he would try and use Tenara against you and Atul?"

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad frowned, his gaze going protectively to Atul's unconscious form. "If the doctor is to blame, there may be ways to smoke him out." Just thinking that might be the case put the vampire more than halfway toward punching a wall. Fortunately, he was surrounded by wounded loved ones and curtains that were unsporting to punch. "If buyers creep up when our weaknesses are exposed, we'll just need to expose the right ones."

[Emora Deen]

Tenele nodded slowly, brushing a hand gently across Tenara's soft hair. She wasn't sure what those right weaknesses were, but she was confident in Vlad's theory. Tenara wrapped her fist tight around Tenele's silver hair and tugged. "Ow," she laughed.

* * *

Several days later...

Atul's brow dripped perspiration. He'd walked back and forth across the infirmary with the help of crutches. Pushing himself on the third round. His energy was slipping, but he had to keep working. His legs weren't fully healed, but no one could tell the King what to do. If he insisted on pushing himself to the point of exhaustion, then who could argue with him.

"Sit down," Tenele barked, walking into the room with Tenara resting in her arms.

The nurses gasped at her direct order.

Atul glanced over his shoulder, his weary expression melting into joy. "Oh!" he exclaimed before hobbling towards her.

"Sit down!" Tenele ordered, putting a hand up.

"Oh come on, I'm working on building my muscles. I can't very well spend more than week in this place. I have duties, you know. I'm a king," Atul growled. "You're insufferable."

"You'll just have to manage suffering me a little longer," Tenele argued. "And we can manage your kingdom for you for a little while. Vlad's doing very well, I might add. No one's died."

Atul scowled. "I've got work to do." He turned and began planting his path, one foot after the other, the clonk of wood from the crutches echoed off the walls.

[Soran Nightblade]

Vlad sat draped across Atul's throne like someone had dropped him there from the ceiling, his head dangling over the arm in exaggerated indifference. The vampire was bored out of his mind, and made no pretense of concealing it. He finally put a hand up, silencing the shivering, heavy-set man who was reading a prepared plea to him from a scroll.

The man stopped abruptly, staring at Vlad and sweating all over.

The vampire took a deep breath and managed not to make it a sigh. "We'll see that the road is repaired, provided your village's taxes are in good standing.

"Th....thank you, thank you si-"

"NEXT!" Vlad howled at the line at the back of the room. If it was possible to languish more dramatically across the king's throne, he'd have found a way to do it.

[Emora Deen]

Atul sat smouldering on a wooden chair, bandaged arms folded across his bare chest. His black hair, which he normally kept drawn back with a leather cord when doing his kingly duties, hung free around his shoulders.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered, turning his eyes up to the ceiling.

Tenele smiled at Atul. "This is compromise."

"You're blackmailing me," he muttered.

The Queen's Maiden's pretty smile transformed into a grin. "Oh, come now. You want to hold her, right?"

"Of course," he admitted.

"And the only way you'll get to hold her is if you rest for the next thirty minutes," Tenele told him, looking at Tenara as she rested just out of Atul's reach. "Then, you can hold her."

"You are a cruel and devious woman," Atul muttered. "I don't know how I never realized it until now. That silver hair and pretty smile, very good cover up to that black soul of yours."

Tenele shrugged her shoulders with a smile. "I am what I have to be for the situation. Your kingly brain won't listen to reason, therefore I am adjusting to your motivations. You won't get better if you push yourself to the point of reopening closed wounds. So you're going to sit there until your heart rate lowers to what the doctor considers reasonable."

[Soran Nightblade]

"Thank you for your work today, Lord Dracul," the royal clerk bowed in ritual as Vlad descended from the raised throne area and passed his desk.

"I leave the rest in your hands," Vlad gave the customary response and much more shallow bow to the clerk. The huge chamber was mercifully quiet after the days activities, but there were some already lined up outside the palace walls, who had been turned away from today's hearings and hoped to be first tomorrow. "Does he ever get through the line?" the vampire asked seriously, looking out at the men and women desperate for the king's ear.

"No one ever gets through the line," the clerk said.

Vlad watched them for a moment longer. They were setting up lanterns and small bucket fires for heat in the cold desert evening.

"The people have many needs. It is a difficult time. Much is changing, and there are challenges to accompany that," the clerk offered to the somber-looking vampire.

"See you bright and early tomorrow," Vlad switched modes like someone had stuck him with a dart. "Try to come down off those ink fumes."

In the long hall leading back to the hospital ward, Vlad felt more dead than alive. It was taxing work, even if it took little physical effort. Atul had been talking about returning to his duties soon, but having done the work himself these past days, Vlad knew it was still too much for him. And the vampire had the unpleasant responsibility of telling him so. He stopped just outside the curtain in the hospital ward, and caught the nurse by the elbow as she passed. "How is he?" he whispered.