Haven (8) “How do you know Martin?” Toby’s voice was no longer shy and child-like. He sounded very suspicious of her suddenly. “I came to Haven with him.” She hoped that this answer was suitable to his question. The inquiry had undertones that had implied much more than he had actually asked. “You’ve been marked with evil,” he said. Amanda said nothing in response. “Tell me,” Toby started up again in his innocent tone. “Is Martin still in the city?” “Yes,” Amanda answered blankly. She had not even thought to lie to him. She was beginning to see more than a ruse in Toby’s voice. “In Methos’ name,” he whispered. “Listen to me,” he spoke in a slightly harsher tone. “I spoke with you tonight because it was obvious to me that you were different than the rest of your kind.” Toby took a few crunching steps toward her through the snow. His face, then became deathly serious. “I tell you this now for that same reason. The mark of death is on Martin, and if you are with him it will be on you as well. Leave this city, Amanda. Go away and never come back. Strange things are coming. You have no place in this city, nor should you want to. If you knew the truth as the Fae do, you would never have come here in the first place.” He grew quiet, and it seemed that every noise around them had died away. “But, Martin and I came to—“ “I know you came here with a purpose, and a good one. However, it matters not in the light of new knowledge that has come to us. Go.” Toby pointed into the night. “I can’t leave without Martin,” she said. “You have been warned,” he responded. “Stay with Martin and his undoing will be your own, and that is only the least of the dangers that are about. If you stay here you will die. It will not be long before Angelique’s blood learns the secret to power. If the wrong choices are made, disaster will follow.” With that, Toby disappeared into the night. Amanda slumped back down into the snow to lean once again on a tree. Her mind struggled to absorb what Toby had said to her. She had not expected her encounter with the Fae to be anything like this. In fact, she had imagined that they might indeed look like the fabled fairies of storybooks. The last thing that she had expected was a ten-year-old boy spouting dire warnings of danger and death. She was not entirely sure how she would act, but she knew that she had to tell Martin. * * * * * * * Angelique stood again in the cemetery, weeping. Her auburn locks spiraled down at either side of her ashen face almost in mockery of the crimson streams on her cheeks. Her body convulsed at random intervals with sobs. Tonight she felt that nothing in the world could calm her. The graveyard around her was covered in over a foot of snow, white but for the red splashes at her feet. Something was very wrong with her life, and anyone that would have seen her this night would have known this. Her problems had consumed her life, and the results were frightening in more ways than one. One of those results prowled the streets, even now, while she wept. She heard the crunching footsteps behind her from almost five hundred yards away, but she did not turn around. She really did not care who it was behind her, and any late-night mourners would have only ran in terror at her bloodied face. Surprisingly, though, the person came very near her. “Why so sad?” She gasped. It seemed a thousand thoughts fought for control in her mind. She wanted nothing more than to turn around but she knew she could not. “Is it really you, Martin?” “Of course it is.” He paused for a long moment. “Why don’t you turn around? Don’t wanna see me?” “I can’t.” She could not bear the thought of Martin seeing her like this. “I can smell the blood, Angelique. I know what it means. Please, turn around.” Martin’s voice pleaded, and Angelique could barely stand to hear it. After a moment spent overcoming her shame, she did turn her bloodstained face to look at him. “No, you don’t know what it means,” she said, fresh sobs wracking her body. He took a step toward her, stretching out his arms, offering his hands. “Don’t,” she said. “Talk to me first, then come to me if you still can.” Martin saw the seriousness through the blood in her eyes. “What is going on?” he said with a hint of fear in his voice. “The bloodlust has taken me, I think.” Martin was surprised at her tone. His fear only increased when he realized that this was not the worst of what she had to say. “That can be taken care of,” he said to her. “What else is it that troubles you?” “This is not at all how I pictured this reunion,” she said through another barrage of sobs, a few strange accents sounding in her voice. Martin realized then how little he knew of this creature. He had always assumed from the Angelique D’Amour that she was French, but he heard none of that in her voice. “Then tell me what’s going on, and perhaps we can make things as they should be.” He admitted to himself that he was terrified of what she might tell him next. Blood addiction was truly a serious problem, and if that were not the worst of it, things could have gone terribly awry in his absence. “Sit down,” she said gently, gesturing to a concrete bench that had been cleared of snow at some point before his arrival. He sat down and looked at her inquisitively. Looking down at him with fresh blood spilling down her cheeks, Angelique began her story. “I know I have never told you why I stopped taking blood, or how I became what I am.” Martin had always been told that Angelique’s distaste for blood was a moral decision. However, her tone now foretold that it was something very different. “When I was a young girl in Spain I always dreamt of going to Paris to become an actress,” she began. Immediately she had Martin’s attention. “I waited until I was sixteen, and I ran away from my parents in Salamanca. It took months, but eventually, I made it to France. I was young and stupid and broke. I had no idea where to go from there. I had gone to another country where I barely knew the language, and I assumed a new life would simply fall into my lap. I did try to join an acting troupe, but my command of the language kept me from making any headway. Somehow I did get a job dancing in a burlesque house. I was not proud of it, but it was better than starving to death.” She paused and shivered for a long moment. Her memories welled up within her. “That job did not last long, though. The money was not even enough to keep me fed.” Again, she paused as if deep in thought. “It was a different time, Martin. Common women had few choices when it came to living alone. I reached my lowest point then, and was a common whore, selling myself for a few francs to strange men in dark alleys. It was then that I met Jack.” Angelique looked up from her feet and gave Martin an intense stare. “A figure made almost mythical these days, he was an Englishman who said he was visiting France on business. He paid well, and found me every night for a week. That last night that he came to me was the last night of my human life. I remember how he whispered to me of my beauty and how it should last forever. This was common talk from men that I was with, and I had no clue as to his ungodly intentions. He was the vampire yet to carve out his immortal name as Jack the Ripper, but that was indeed who he was.” She closed her stained eyes and lowered her head. “I will not recount the events of that night for you now, but suffice it to say that he made me what I am now, then left me to fend for myself. I had killed only six people when I realized how truly cursed I was.” Again, she was overtaken with a fit of shuddering. “I saw that my thirst for blood was not feeding only me. I had become pregnant at some point and that unborn child had joined me in my unlife. As I fed on blood, so did my child, and it grew with every drop I swallowed. This, or course, was not a problem until recently.” Angelique stopped, and it did not appear that she intended to continue. “Are you telling me that you are carrying a six-hundred-year-old baby?” Martin was shocked. He had never even imagined that such a thing was possible. “No,” she said coldly. “That is not at all what I am telling you. I am telling you that I have given birth to a six-hundred-year-old boy.” For a long time neither of the two said a word. Angelique refused to look at Martin, and he could not bring himself to look up from the ground. He did not know how to respond to such a story. The consequences of her actions spilled out a horrifying conclusion. To have been so out of control in her hunger for blood that she would have allowed this to happen meant that she was much worse off than even Jenny had been. “Where is he now?” Martin finally asked. “Who?” Angelique seemed lost. “Your son.” “Oh,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “I kept him for days, but I could not support his needs. His craving for blood was far worse than mine, and he was still growing with terrifying rapidity. By now he is approaching manhood, I suppose.” “So, it is possible that he may eventually die if he is aging with blood?” Martin cringed at the hopefulness in his own voice. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of this happening before, but maybe that’s why.” Angelique seemed to still be in that faraway state of mind. “Should I tell the High Ones?” “Wouldn’t matter anyway.” Martin suddenly became very uncomfortable. “Why?” “Because they are dead,” said a voice from the darkness. Both of them turned quickly on the eavesdropper. Sarah strode from the darkness with fire in her eyes. She stared at Martin intensely waiting for his reaction. Martin had seen that look in her eyes before. He knew that if she did not approve of his response she would attack in an instant. “Dead,” Angelique was stunned. “How?” “Martin did it. He’s responsible.” Sarah was still marching toward him. “Martin?” Angelique stared at him now, waiting for an explanation. He would have loved to explain everything to her, but as Sarah was still advancing upon him with deadly intent, he decided that he would take the opportunity to escape. Sarah and Angelique only stood silently watching as Martin bolted into the night. No matter what he would have said after this, Sarah was going to kill him. She took this as proof of his guilt. Angelique turned to her and said, “What’s going on?” * * * * * * * Abby let out a hot breath of steam into the cold night air. She had been wandering around Haven since dusk searching for some sign of that secret life that Seamus led. It was not unknown to her how dangerous this late-night venture was. Abby was well aware of the fact that worse things than muggers roamed Haven’s streets. She had to know what was going on with Seamus, though. He had actually told her next to nothing about his experience at the old hall except that it left him terribly unnerved. Abby found that after Seamus had left her abode, she had an overwhelming desire to know more. So, she had started off into the night, heading into the industrial quarter. She thought this the most likely place to find the abandoned warehouse that served as a vampire meeting place. Unfortunately, Haven’s industrial district was full of abandoned buildings that were almost indistinguishable from one another. Abby did not know this part of the city very well, and for all she knew, she could have been walking in circles. She did not think that this was the case, however. Her surroundings had been growing steadily more foreboding. Eventually, Abby came to a building that could likely be the one that Seamus had described to her on several different occasions. It stood alone at the end of an alley, as abandoned as everything else in this part of the city. No windows were visible to Abby but for the two small panes embedded in the huge oak doors. Moving cautiously toward the building, Abby fancied that she could hear whispers coming from somewhere in the shadows ahead of her. For a moment, she stopped in mid-step and decided that she had been mistaken about hearing anything. The air around her was filled only with the deafening silence of the night. She took two more steps towards the building and was greeted with a searing pain in her left hip. With a shriek she fell to the asphalt trying to see what it was that had struck her. After a moment of writhing in pain on the ground, she got a look at the small steel shaft protruding from her thigh. Abby grasped hold of the bolt that had pierced her thigh and gave it a violent tug that pulled it free of her flesh. She let the bloody piece of steel fall to the street and tried not to faint at the sight of blood spurting from her leg. The bolt had penetrated deeply, and she was sure that she could not bring herself to stand. Again the whispering started from the shadows. Most of what was being said sounded harsh and worried. Abby could not work out what being said. Her thigh was slowly numbing but the bleeding felt as though it were getting worse. “Damn it!” a clear voice exclaimed from the darkness. “She’s human.” Abby heard people shuffling around at either side of her. She tried to look through the night’s veil at the hidden strangers, but she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. Soon, Abby’s head fell gently to the asphalt. Just as she was falling into unconsciousness, she heard someone approaching. Abby opened her eyes weakly to another face staring back at her through strands of stringy black hair. “Hi,” the woman said. “I’m Amanda.” The stranger smiled uncaringly at Abby. “Let’s see if we can’t get you taken care of,” she said as Abby fell away. * * * * * * * The sun rose over the horizon giving light to the city and driving back some of its shadows…creating others. The snowy streets began to bustle with citizens unaware that many of Haven’s nightmares did not dwell solely within the night. Everyone went about their business until nightfall, and the streets emptied out once more. Safe inside their homes, people remarked freely and casually of the uneasiness that the city emanated. No one seemed to notice the specifics of their distress but few people overlooked the strange feeling that they had felt while in the city. People could not relate the feeling that shadows in alleys were more alive than any other day, or the constant feeling that the entire city was under surveillance. Neither of these feelings was entirely inaccurate, though. Through the later part of the previous night rumors had passed throughout the city’s supernatural populace. Many vampires had braved the daylight, and several other creatures risked being spotted by the crowds of people through the sunlit hours. An unprecedented movement in Haven’s preternatural order had taken place all in an attempt to find one vampire barely past fledgling age. As night fell, though, things began to move closer to their natural order. Vampires went back to hunting for food rather than the betrayer that they sought; Lycanthropes fell back into the moon’s lure; The Fae simply lost interest. An hour after sunset the search for Martin had unofficially been called, and somewhere in a dark alley mounds of trash in a rusty green dumpster began to shift. Martin crawled out of the garbage bin that had served as his place of rest for fifteen years. Judging from the stench that surrounded him, Martin fancied that it may well be have been the same refuse as well. He took a moment to brush away some of the more unpleasant bits that had stuck to him whilst he slept. After clawing himself off, Martin stepped out of the dumpster and took a look around. The alley was too dark to see much of anything, so he could not tell if anyone might be waiting there for him. He decided to brave it, and stepped closer toward the alley mouth. “A very clever hiding place,” said a man’s voice from the darkness. “Who’s there,” Martin said shakily. A man stepped into a feeble beam of light showing himself to Martin. He was tall and shaven bald, and not much more about him was visible. It appeared that he was dressed in casual street clothes, and carried himself like a human. “My name is Seamus,” the man said calmly. “A pleasure to meet you, Seamus, but I’ve got things to do.” Martin started to move around the man when Seamus put a hand on his chest and stopped him. Martin raised his hand to strike the man out of his way. “Don’t.” Seamus gave him a stern look that said he was well prepared to stop Martin by any means necessary. Martin lowered his hand. “If you go out there now you will be killed.” “Are you threatening me?” Martin was beginning to dislike this person. “No,” Seamus answered flatly. “Every unnatural in Haven is helping Sarah try to find you.” Martin should have guessed as much. Sarah had been involved in the politics of every monstrous race in the city. It only made sense that she would have made a few friends. “So, what am I supposed to do?” “Wait here until I come to collect you. I will try to smooth things over with Sarah.” Martin stood there for a moment, pondering the situation. “Why is it if everyone wants to kill me that you are trying to help me?” “Because,” said Seamus as he turned to leave the alley, “You deserve a chance to explain yourself.” Seamus disappeared into the city leaving Martin to ponder this new development. * * * * * * * Amanda raced through the streets, a blur to anyone that saw her. Martin had not returned the night before to the motel room that the two of them had rented. She had heard the rumors of the day-hunt that had occurred to find and kill him. She was desperate to find him after what Toby had told her.
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