Heirot

"yeah" Celeste said "Oh, Yoru do you have any bandage?"

"yes" Yoruhana replied, she dug into her pack and blanched when she remember that she had given it to that young Raith.

"I'll go look for one," Caleb ventured, a little relieved to have an excuse to get out of the room. He glanced one last time at Yoruhana, briefly wondering if it was really safe to leave Celeste with a demon. No....they obviously knew each other. It was he who was the outsider, he reminded himself.

As Caleb left Yoruhana plopped on the floor, she held her head in her hands.

Celeste stayed on the bed, snuggling down to hide her face.

'Those two are very, very strange,' Caleb thought to himself as he made his way down the stairs. 'Says the man who's a marsupial,', he allowed grudgingly. When he got to the ground floor, there seemed to be quite a stir over something. A number of men were holding pitchforks and some even had swords, and they were all standing gathered in a circle around the innkeeper, who was standing on a chair. "Listen all of you, enough!" the innkeep shouted over the cacophonous babble of the men, drawing the room to attention. "Now we all need to keep our heads on straight. There's a demon in our midst, we all need to focus and work as a group."

"What's there to focus on?" one man shouted, "The beast has made it clear she's here for trouble. We go up there, we find her, we kill her. End of story."

Others in the room cheered their approval for this plan.

"It won't be enough just to charge in," the innkeep pressed over the din of testosterone. "She has a hostage... my patron may still be alive."

"Look, Jake, there's nothing more you could have done about it. You were being threatened. The best thing we can do for that girl now is kill the beast that's here after her," one of the men consoled the guilt-stricken innkeeper.

"What's going on?" Caleb asked the room firmly, breaking apart their conflicted debate.

"Shore? Caleb Shore?" the innkeeper murmured, taking a minute to recognize him. "What are you doing here?" He blinked in confusion. "Wait, that young lady claimed she knew you! She mentioned I owed you a --"

"You do," Caleb asserted, hooking his hands into his pockets. "So tell me what's happening."

"A demon just burst in here, threatening to kill us all unless we gave her the room number of your friend. I'm sorry...but her intent seemed violent. Your friend may already be..."

"Let's just go kill her, before she escapes," one of the men shouted impatiently, raising his pitchfork. Others joined in approvingly.

"Don't go in yet," Caleb said firmly, cupping his chin in thought. "I have an idea."

"What idea?" the innkeep asked seriously.

"THis is no time for ideas-" one of the men snarled.

"Shut up. I know this guy,, he's a genius," muttered the innkeep almost resentfully. "What's your idea, Shore."

Caleb just frowned. "Give me two minutes, then come up with your weapons. I'll make sure the demon isn't a problem."

"You're going up there unarmed?" the innkeep gaped, though he didn't seem really concerned about Caleb, more just baffled by his thinking.

"Of course not," Caleb scoffed. "I'll need a knife and some bandages."

Celeste yawned and started to doze.

Yoruhana on the other hand was antsy, looking around, being twitchy.

One of the men moved forward to offer Caleb his knife, while someone else found him a bag full of bandages. "Will this really be enough?" the man asked as Caleb accepted them grimly.

"Yeah," the blacksmith murmured unhappily as he turned to go up the stairs. The others all watched in confused silence as Caleb made his way up and out of sight.

Caleb walked to Celeste's room and paused outside of it for a moment. After this, there would be no undoing things. He set his jaw and gave the door a firm knock

Celeste dozing didn't stir.

Yoruhana got up and opened the door "yes?" she droned.

Caleb looked at Yoruhana seriously and made no move to enter the room. He held out the roll of bandages to her. "Men are coming for you," he spoke quietly. His eyes floated to her wings. "You can fly with those, right? Take your sister and leave," he said firmly. He gave a meaningful nod toward the window.

"what of you?" Yoruhana said softly "Celly is attached to you". she looked to her sister, who was fully asleep, her nose hidden in her feathers.

"She's looking for her family. You're her family," Caleb said quietly. "I have my own things to deal with." He kept his face carefully neutral, knowing it would make no sense to get attached to these people.

Yoruhana nodded slowly. She walked over to Celeste and gently bandaged her torso and slipped her shirt back on. "good bye, sir" Yoruhana said softly. She lifted Celeste into her arms and slid the window open. she launched outside and took off.

Caleb watched numbly while Yoruhana fixed up Celeste and finally made her way out the window with her sister to safety. He swallowed back an inexplicable sense of loss and told himself he'd hardly even known her. One day together was not long enough to justify the way he felt at the moment. He stared at the empty window and threw his attention into calculating his next move. The men would come up any minute, and no doubt start a witch hunt for the escaped girls.

He stepped into the empty room and closed the door behind him, locking it. Taking a deep breath, he turned and threw a chair across the room. It cracked apart against the wall and fell to the floor. Caleb proceeded to make a wreck of the place, throwing over sconces and heaving heavy objects against the wall. Then he took the dagger he'd been given and made a solid cut across the palm of his hand. It was a rather gruesome and unpleasant task, but when the men finally ran up the stairs and broke into the room, they found a breathless and disheveled blacksmith in a room spattered with blood.

"What happened to them?" the innkeeper shouted, running in and staring at the trashed room. "Did they escape?"

"The angel was already dead," Caleb informed them breathlessly. He held up his bloodied knife. "But the demon won't last long." His confident stare seemed to convince them this was the truth.

Yoruhana couldn't go far, but it got her away, She kicked the snow away from an area so she could lay Celeste down without waking her. Yoruhana sat next to her twin and tucked her chin to her chest, she watched Celeste sleep.

"Sleep well, Child of Stars. Sleep well within the clouds. Sleep all night, till morning comes" Yoruhana sung softly. Celeste smiled softly in her sleep. Yoruhana couldn't help but smile too.

"You're sure you got her," one of the men asked uneasily as others flocked to the window to look for some sign of the demon.

"She won't survive that wound. There's no chance," Caleb said. He took the bloodied knife and passed it to the squeamish-looking inkeeper unceremoniously. "You can rest easy. Send your dogs after the blood trail in the morning," he said.

"I don't get it....what did you want the bandages for?" asked one of the men as Caleb began walking out past them.

The blacksmith held up his wounded hand. "For me," he said simply. "In case you didn't come up."

"You think us cowards?" the innkeeper demanded.

"It wouldn't be the first time," Caleb said flatly, giving the man a hard look.

The innkeeper flushed, but didn't retort. The other men looked on in confusion. "That was a long time ago."

"Yeah," Caleb said, turning to leave.

"You're not staying here?" the innkeeper muttered, more a formality than a real gesture of hospitality.

"Places to be," the blacksmith said, rolling his eyes as he left the unpleasant crowd behind and made his way downstairs. The innkeeper's wife stared at him uncomfortably as he passed on his way through the lobby. He looked the worse for wear after his "scuffle" upstairs. Caleb gave her a requisite nod before swinging the door open and letting himself out. The heavy wooden door shut firmly behind him.

On the snow-dusted street, the blacksmith glanced around at his surroundings and fought back the temptation to return to the warm lobby and the promise of a free bed. He'd rather sleep on the street than in that place tonight. He picked up a handful of snow and rubbed it into his palm as he made his way down the street.

Yoruhana sat looking around she wasn't too far from the Inn. Her strength was nonexistent, she was tired, and under fed, but she still was more than a match for a human. Her keen sense of smell, caught the scent of blood, her insists told her to attack and feed.

Celeste slept well.