Heirot

Vlad frowned. "Show me. But we stay together." He wasn't about to leave Atul and their newborn alone when something might be targeting them.

Tenele frowned. "Atul can't walk Vlad," Tenele whispered, glancing apologetically to Atul. "Its just outside the door. We can leave the door open and Atul can call for us." Tenele didn't like the idea any more than Vlad, but Atul couldn't walk, and if they happened upon more, she didn't want her injured lover and child in the middle of a battle.

Tenele lifted Tenara out of her cradle and placed her gently on Atul's lap. The child cooed softly, melting the King's heart.

Vlad bit back the instinct to retort. If it were up to him, he would arrange them all on the bed and guard them like a trained wolf. "Stalker," he summoned the hellhound. Within seconds, the beast appeared in the doorway and trotted toward them, tail held up warily. "Watch them," he ordered the beast, not caring that the doctors had insisted he stay out of the infirmary.

Stalker surveyed Atul for a moment, not with nearly the same affection as he felt toward Tenele. But he trotted to the man's side and stood his post obediently.

"My lady," Vlad murmured to his wife casually, though a midnight growl was there in the back of his tone. He turned and led the way to the door, then waited for her lead.

Tenele bent and kissed her child's cheek, and then Atul's. "We'll be right back," she whispered to them before heading off with her husband. Tenele took the lead ones outside, and turned the corner down an opposite hall. She froze, her back stiffened.

"What?" she breathed, jogging towards the sconce that she'd used to get through the secret passage, and to the space where the body should have been pinned. The head was no where to be found, and the body was gone. The space was closed. Even the blood had been wiped up, though there were faint traces in the deeper crevices of the stone.

"Vlad, I'm not crazy. He was here. I left him only a little while ago. I couldn't have been sleeping that long." She pressed a hand to the bump on her head. How deeply had she slept?

She twisted the sconce back in the direction that would open the door. But, the stone door didn't budge. "I'm not crazy..." she whispered, trying it again. "It opened. Someone must have cleaned up the body and broke the door..."

Vlad studied the solid wall, unable to see how it would make a door. He looked closely, but the deep cracks looked no different from the rest of the wall. "What would give you the idea to find a door here?" he asked, looking at her now. Have you used it in the past?"

Tenele blinked at him. "No," she whispered. "I saw a shadow. I heard a noise. I followed it out here. I was heading back in when I noticed this was twisted differently than the rest, so I straightened it and when I did it opened. It was here. He was pinned here and his head was over there..." She pointed to the spot near the wall where the head rolled.

Vlad knelt down beside the spot she'd indicated and inspected the floor carefully. He couldn't smell blood, though some of its components were faintly there. Was it possible for it to have already decayed?

He could have assumed his wife was imagining things, but the blood on her sword was real. "Here, right?" he asked solemnly as he touched the wall with both his hands. "If you're sure it's here, I'll teleport to the other side."

He glanced at her. "I know you already get this part, but if this is solid rock, and I teleport into it, it will take a crew of men and a lot of generous blood donors to get me back out."

Tenele swallowed harder, glancing at the wall, and then to her husband. It was there. It had to be there. She couldn't be imagining things or dreaming them. But, if she was wrong, her husband would be trapped in the stone.

"I..." she pursed her lips together. "Its there, but its a dead end once you go up the stairs."

How pissed would he be if it turned out she was wrong? How frightened would she be if it turned out she was wrong. "I didn't dream it." The mere fact that he seemed sceptical of her words hurt her feelings.

Vlad studied her reaction. "I believe you," he said quietly. "Be careful here. I'll be right back."

He placed his hands on the stone and tried to gauge a safe distance that would not stick him in a wall on the opposite side. In a blink, he was gone and inside the wall.

The teleport placed him in a narrow stairway. Another foot, and he'd have had some messy healing to do. He crouched down and sniffed at the stone around him. There was something there, though he couldn't place the scent. It certainly wasn't like normal blood. He pushed against the wall he'd passed through, but it didn't budge. Whatever had opened it was no longer working. He turned the other way instead and began making his way up the narrow staircase, until he reached a crawlspace. The vampire dropped to a crouch and proceeded through the low-clearance area curiously. A tiny ray of light was sifting into the otherwise pitch-dark corridor. Vlad crept up to it and looked down.

It looked upon Atul's bed. With something like this, it would be easy enough to track the king's movements.

Vlad turned. Sure enough, another small ray of daylight made it up through the dusty floor. The vampire leaned over the hole and caught a solid view, not of his bed, but of his desk. The business of the court sat in half-tidied piles all over Vlad's workspace. Someone was watching the king sleep and him work? Vlad narrowed his eyes in confusion.

Why? Moreover, why would someone performing such a calculated task randomly risk discovery by getting seen and attacking Tenele? From her account, it sounded more like some kind of monster than an intelligent spy.

The vampire took another look around him, but there were no possessions or tools lying around to explain more. He turned and backtracked toward the front of the tunnel.

Tenele paced outside the wall impatiently. Not many minutes had passed, but it occurred to her she didn't know whether he was trapped or not. She pressed her hands against the wall and her ear to the stone, listening. "Are you stuck?" she asked softly, wondering if he could even answer encased in stone.

Who would clean everything up and make it so it never happened? She didn't understand what was going on and was fairly certain Vlad probably didn't either.

Vlad emerged a minute or so later, materializing next to the wall like he'd just gone to grab his wallet. "Someone's watching us," he muttered. "Not just Atul, but me as well. It seems they weren't happy about you discovering their little hideout. If we're lucky, they'll have no idea you were able to prove it was there."

Tenele frowned. "So, we are going to pretend you think I'm crazy?" she folded her arms. "Does this mean we have to pretend to fight too, because I would be really angry with you if you really thought I was imagining things." She poked his chest before flattening her palm over it. Then, she moved in and wrapped her arms around him tightly.

Well, you're sexy when you're angry," Vlad smirked as he put his arms around her shoulders.

Tenele smiled at him, pressing in closer. "If I'm angry at you..." she paused, thinking it over. "Would it make sense if I took Tenara and Stalker back to our room and left you and Atul down here? Stalker should be enough protection for us. I doubt they'll try again, especially if they think we're fighting because you don't believe me. I really think the only reason it attacked was because I found this."

Vlad went stiff, his joking demeanor lost. "That will leave you unprotected." Even if it was the best way to lay the issue aside and get them off Tenele's back for the moment, what if they chose to finish her off instead, just to be safe?