Grim Haven: Coffee And Blood, #8

By Aya DeAniege

Save Sanctuary, save the world.

If Drest thought pouting would help, he would brood like the vampires from fiction. His first full night with Cae begins exactly as he expects, cozy, awkward, and a little bloody. But alarm bells go off and they find themselves in a fight to save Sanctuary.

The Lamia want to gain entrance, the boundary is failing, and the Council are sitting on their hands, hoping Drest fails.

Their enemy has knowledge about Sanctuary which no mortal had the right to share, but important details were left out. The Lamia don't expect the citizens of Sanctuary to fight back, let alone for them to work their magics together.

Vampires underestimate the power of alliance. It's a mistake they will pay for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aya DeAniege
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9798230814375

Aya DeAniege

Aya DeAniege is a Canadian author who wrote for years, first to please herself then writing stories for free--believing no one would ever pay to read her stuff--before pursuing indie publishing. She still writes mainly for personal pleasure, with topics ranging from romance, fantasy, science fiction, on to whatever takes her fancy in the future. World creation fascinates her, and when she finds one she likes, she dabbles endlessly.

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My name is Drest MacMorgana . The only child of Morgana LeFey, as far as I know, and the only surviving member of her household. I am an Elder by all rights and demand the respect due one. Morgana taught me all she knew before she died and upon her death, I inherited her land, status, and wealth.

Scotland is mine.

Vampires, they come and go occasionally, but none of them put down roots, none stick around. They wander for a few days and feel a difference in the land; the ownership stretching out across the hills, and they get the message right quick.

The Council has reached out more than a dozen times over the eons. They sent their damned Christians to take over my land, and I threw the bastards out.

Eventually, the Christians returned, but without the Council backing them. My people turned from me and accepted a new god, but I stayed just the same, biding my time, keeping things safe.

I am the guardian of Sanctuary, a warrior, Elspeth says. Suppose I shouldn’t be using the term guardian, don’t want to get mixed up with the guardians who live in Loch Linnhe.

Between us, Elspeth and I protect over two dozen types of creatures humans believe to be dead. These are not counting the sub-creatures within those groups. Dragons, for example, are split into those types which range in size and body style. If we include all of them, the number would exceed a hundred or more.

Elspeth created Sanctuary, she holds its borders up and created a boundary, she calls it, between us and the world of the living, the mortals. While we accept mortals into our ranks, they live and die just the same as those on the outside. Sometimes, yes, they live a little longer, find life in Sanctuary more suitable than that on the outside.

Sanctuary contains creatures and citizens of the races which have never known the outside. The only life they’ve ever known is Sanctuary, and few of them show interest in leaving.

We are a small hamlet, a hundred bodies, perhaps, who work and function together as a community. While we lack human information technology, we installed things such as plumbing and running water. The rest we have little need for, but you need to visit to really see and feel it.

Few immortals have visited Sanctuary. They came by my word alone and left just the same, never attempting to question my decision to ask them to leave. Of those, one walked into Sanctuary, looked around and said, So, this is why the land feels so wild and untouched.

That which contains Sanctuary is a boundary and yet is borderless. There have been tendrils of Sanctuary as far east as Calgary—the one on the island, not in Canada—as far west as Pitlochry, south to Connel, and north Ullapool. That’s not to say Sanctuary encompasses all the land in between these points, but the anchoring points of Sanctuary are spread around. Within another thousand years, Elspeth’s spell will cover all of Scotland and creep into Britain.

As that happens, we will take over Council claimed lands, revoking their right to visit or come around, but the creatures whose protection we are in charge of need space and humans be damned, we will do everything in our power to protect those creatures. Some are the last of their kind; some are our friends.

For centuries, we lived in Sanctuary and did as we did, bothered rarely and when we were, I quickly removed the bother because nothing deserved to set foot in Sanctuary.

However, we listened to the outside world.

The pup, Mungo, he would bring us information whenever he could, and he brought news often. We learned many things other vampires might have ignored. When word reached us of the Lamia’s intent to invade our land, Elspeth tasked me with ridding the country of them.

I was happy enough to do so.

I’d rather nip a problem in the bud than to risk one of those creatures making their way into Sanctuary.

I went to Glasgow, meaning to locate the Lamia and cut them off at the knees before they got themselves situated or organized enough to find us. Instead, I found myself a human who I could no more leave mortal than I could stop myself from breathing, for I craved the taste of her flesh despite the scent of chemical.

Her name is Cailean Campbell, means pup, I guess, meant to be a boy’s name, but it sounds pretty. She goes by Cae, and we met at the Bloody Dam, a vampire-slash-tourist bar in Glasgow likely closed now because of the bodies I behind.

When I found her, she was hiding in a stall, standing on a toilet. In the loo, I think polite company call it. She’d call it the washroom or restroom.

I knew right away the jewelry she wore was important. I could have removed them of her, ended her, I mean, since that’d be the only way to get the jewels, but Elspeth thought otherwise.

And I didn’t want to end her. After a few moments, I knew, you know? I pressed her up against the stall, pinned her there, and she still hissed like a cornered cat. If she could have gotten a leg free, I’m confident she would have pegged me with her knee and run away.

The first night, ah, who expected what happened?

Not I.

Save Sanctuary, save the world, they told me.

My response is still the same.

Let the world burn.

But anyone who comes for my Sanctuary will feel the taste of cold steel slipping between their ribs, my teeth at their throat, and their grave swallowing them while they still breathe.

This is my land, my family.

No one will ever take them from me.

Dusk

Iwoke beside Cae, her eyes still closed and unmoving. She slept the deathly slumber of a fledgling newly made. My usual rising time was shortly before sundown, which meant I had time before she stirred.

Her flesh felt cold to my touch, a little firmer than one expected a living body to be. If I tried to move her, I wouldn’t be able to. She would be stiff until just before she woke.

As the centuries moved on, her body would relax during daylight slumber. Fledglings, more than any other vampire, were exposed during their slumber. Humans had staked more than one fledgling sleeping their day away in a darkened spot or taken their head off.

Besides being a nuisance, such an act did little to stop a fledgling. Once they healed, the fledgling would return to those who caused the damage and eat them.

Her hair still looked dull.

I tried to recall how long mine had taken to look healthier, though mine hadn’t been so dull upon my turning. When we met, her eyes had a sunken appearance. There was still a hollowness to her.

Looking back, I wondered how humans around her didn’t know she was ill.

A handful of hours as a vampire and she already filled out. She had fed the night before, right before passing out for the day. She slept so soundly, and while most of her functions were dead to the world, literally, the muscle and skin healed.

I would still need to cremate her in a few months time, to fix all the problems the fae magic caused in her body.

Though, I suspected the act would result in a frying pan meeting my head when she woke, no matter how gentle I tried to be.

A woman did not enjoy having her neck snapped, and her body dumped on a fiery pyre, even if the outcome was a healthier body more able to move.

I sat up and stretched, cracking my back as I glanced about.

In my house. In my bed.

I looked down and took in an eyeful of the naked woman lying beside me.

Yes, I undressed her.

She had been wearing a bloodied bathrobe, in my defence. I didn’t want blood in my bed, and I didn’t feel comfortable having her wake on the floor. Waking on the floor would start everything off on the wrong foot. So, I had stripped off the bathrobe and put her to bed before finding Elspeth to fill her in and be filled in on Mungo’s outing.

I slipped out of bed and walked around it. Gently, I tucked Cae back in, pushing the blankets against her still form. She would be cold when she woke.

I had been so very, very cold.

Though, I woke without a fire my first night as an immortal.

I tried not to overthink that as I turned and walked away from the bed, determined to get other things done that night. My first stop was the bathroom, where I washed even though I wanted to wash with Cae, to feel her skin against mine.

To claim her body differently.

I readied myself as if it were any other night, aware my habits would change. That night, however, they would remain as close to everything else as possible. I trimmed my beard, brushed my hair and pulled it back into a bun at the back and top of my head.

As I left my home, I wondered where the little scribe boy had gotten off to.

Centuries in the ground.

I let out a muttered curse and looked around, wondering how I could replace my scribe boy and just how much training that would require.

You get a mortal trained to do things your way and they up and died on you.

I believe humans would place a hashtag and say ‘vampire problems’ while taking some pathetic self-portrait with their mobile phones in response to such an instance, but it was a real problem.

Every time I turned around someone else died on me, and I was shifting between people, trying to get them trained the right way.

Unable to decide, I headed toward the front.

All the indecision meant was that two minds called me at once and just as strongly.

Elspeth would call from the inner sanctum, her little haven in Sanctuary where few ever ventured, and none without permission. She would want to know all the details of the night before. While I had given her the rock from the fae, she refused to take the earring, telling me to hold on to it for the moment.

I didn’t understand why I still needed to wear it.

She only asked me to take the bloody thing to record the events to send to the Council.

Just in case a building blew up, lit on fire, or if a tree appeared in the middle of the city.

You know, that kind of thing.

The kind of thing that happened more and more. The type of thing the Council forbid, saying vampires couldn’t do that because it might give us away to mortals.

The other one begging for attention, whining just outside of my perception, was Mungo as he headed toward the homestead.

Of the two, he was the more immediate concern.

He had travelled out in the world, which always gave him a mean streak, but we might have also discovered an unseen power of his. One which would explain his sometimes mad ramblings as not those of a broken mind, but of a voice which didn’t know how to be heard.

A few little buildings made up the homestead. One for him, one for me, a couple of sheds, and a little path which went off to the inner sanctum. Our houses had always been separate. Sometimes the pup needed the independence but most days our doors stood open, and we came and went however we pleased, no matter the hour of the day.

Mungo kept a garden at the part people called the front where the homestead’s path connected with the little dirt road that led to the rest of the hamlet. He’d plant vegetables there and reserved little bits around the houses for flower beds and shrubbery.

I could always tell when Mungo felt the itch, the need to retreat from the rest of us when the shrubbery upkeep went to the wayside.

Along the edge of the homestead stood a grey stone wall we had built together after first arriving. The wall had been meant to build a great home for ourselves, but we got about hip level and realized it was a lot more work than we thought. So, we tossed the idea out with the rest of the garbage and started again, but the wall remained as the marker of our land.

The original Sanctuary had been just a little larger than the homestead. As time went on it spread.

The first to come were the pixies because Elspeth needed company, then a dragon, then a wolf, and eventually a wild wolf pack, not the kind which could change at all.

I think some five hundred years previous the first guardian showed up, and Elspeth extended Sanctuary across Loch Linnhe to give them the space they needed to be at peace in the world.

Lost in thought? Mungo asked.

I gave myself a shake as the pup came to a stop on the other side of the wall. Behind him a step stood a banshee, that’s what they called themselves, I suppose, and I shouldn’t have judged, but surely, they could have been a little more creative. The banshee existed in her primal form, which was to say she looked like something I vomited up after drinking too much and then eating a rock on a dare.

Why’d I eat a rock?

Well, I wouldn’t have done it if I drank less, now would I?

Trying to think of all the things I need to tell Cae when she wakes, I said.

Wow, you are still dialled back, Mungo said. I think even Mary could understand you there.

Mary would be the name of the banshee and was Mungo’s way of introducing the pair of us without giving my name. Newcomers weren’t told exactly who I was, not right away.

Mary, I said.

Drest, a voice whispered in response.

Mind reader.

I didn’t much like mind readers, but I put up with and accepted them. They knew from the start they couldn’t share what they plucked from my mind.

You have a human form, Mary? I asked. Because we have children in the hamlet of the human and easily frightened variety.

I sensed a moment of hesitation, and then a human woman stood before me. In her eyes burned a cautious wariness, an anger I had never seen in the eyes of her kind before.

They could be right buggers, but I never met a creature so stupid as to give a banshee a reason to have that look in their eyes.

And Mary, do you know who made you? I asked.

I do. He’s dead.

Did you kill him?

No.

Pity, the other fool should have given you a go at him, I think, I said. Who could kill a hybrid? They’re notoriously difficult to pin down.

Oh, there’s a whole story, Mungo said with an edge to his voice.

Aye, is there? I asked. Did buildings explode?

No, a tree appeared, Mungo said. I’ve got the information, actually, on a drive, we can pop it in down at the hamlet and read up on it. The woman, the other woman, Lucrecia, she provided it.

We already knew some of what happened. Rumour, human whisperings, and vampire denials all painted a bloody picture of what happened.

What Mungo had brought back with him was likely a first-hand account of the events.

And how did you get Mary past Lucrecia?

Mungo shrugged.

Lucrecia wants to travel and explore, and Mary didn’t really want to wake up in a new place every night, so, we compromised, Mungo said.

You didn’t feed her, did you?

Feed Mary? Mungo asked.

Feed Lucrecia, you bloody fool.

No, I didn’t feed her, he said with a shake of his head. She asked, I told her to fuck off. She looked a little surprised. Like, oh, look, there’s someone who doesn’t react to vampire powers, oh my, I wonder what he is?

Did she ask?

Yes, and I told her I was half-wolf and the other half my mother. Anything in between is no one’s business but mine. If they couldn’t smell the wolf on me, I wouldn’t have to brought that up either.

True, I said.

Anyhow, Anne’s coming up to collect Mary, Mungo said. She’ll get Marry settled into a nice room for the night, and we’ll see to everything else in the morning because Mary prefers a day life.

Now, Sanctuary can do a lot, Mary, I said. But your kind prefer dusk and dawn rather than full daylight. I want you to be careful. You tend not to bite humans, which is good for them, but you tend to bite vampires, which is bad for me. I’d rather not wake up with your primal form latched onto my neck. Understand?

Yes, she said with a frown.

I explained we’re a collection of odds and ends, but that’s about as far as we got, Mungo said. Anne will start, and we’ll go from there.

We don’t tell newcomers everything all at once, I said. That would overwhelm them. You’re here now, and your kind can live a very long time. We picked one up, what, fourteen hundred years ago?

Think so, yes, Mungo said.

Fourteen hundred years ago, and he only recently passed of old age. And ageing itself might be optional for your kind. Something else for you to keep in mind, but my meaning is that you have a long time in this world. Don’t go rushing to know and do everything tonight. Understood?

Yes, Mary said.

Uh, we have one now, Mungo said.

Do we? I asked.

Mungo scowled at me but did not provide a name or any information about the resident banshee. He would leave that for Mary to feel out on her own.

You were saying? Mary asked.

Right. Now, I’m going to head in to see your mother, pup, before Anne spots me. I might owe the woman for a round of cards I lost, and she’s insisting it’s a night out or the ability to go out there to do schooling. I’ve not yet decided how I’m paying. So, I was never here.

I turned and walked away, headed for the inner sanctum.

Mary wouldn’t be allowed in the homestead for a few years. We wanted the newcomers to know their place before they got close to us, close to Elspeth.

Elspeth could be sensitive to that sort of thing.

The inner sanctum was made from white stone, sourced from I don’t know where. Maybe made of pure magic for all I knew. During the original creation, Elspeth made the inner sanctum. She remained inside for almost eighty years before the boundary became stable enough to expand outward.

Outside, the inner sanctum was a little dome with ivy growing up the sides and trees encroaching in on all sides.

Inside, the building was massive and ornate with different coloured rocks and metals winding their way through the walls. The floor was the only thing which remained the same for all the time I visited the inner sanctum. Grey stone laid out smooth and swept daily by pixies and whatever other helpers Elspeth allowed into her home.

There were no lights because Elspeth needed no lights. Not actual lights, no light fixtures, no brackets, not even glowing orbs.

There was simply light.

Once there had been things such as torches, but Elspeth packed them away when she brought about the light without a source.

But when there was a creature of Elspeth’s sort, she did whatever she wanted, and the world accepted this was now how the rules worked.

I found Elspeth in one of the garden rooms, perched on the edge of a fountain, one hand lowered, trailing over the water as the fountain babbled at her. Her eyes sat closed, head cocked to the side, and her adorable little ears perked upward and around, uncovered by her long, silver hair.

I would put no more words to describe her besides to say she was beautiful and always had been.

As I always did, I waited.

When her eyes opened, she took in a sudden breath, as if waking from a dream. She smiled at me, but distantly.

Perhaps she had been dreaming.

Tell me about her, she said.

I’m only saying this once, woman, Mungo should be— as I spoke the pup all but collided with my back, having apparently run after Anne arrived to pick up Mary.

I steadied myself on the wall as Mungo bounced off me and went immediately to his mother’s side, sitting on the lip of the fountain beside her.

The two were such a contrast.

Mungo was dark where his mother was light. He possessed mainly human features, though there was something fur-ish about his hair, thick and wiry like the coat of a wolf. Specks of grey flecked throughout, but not from age, instead his hair shared traits with the colour of his coat when he shifted to wolf form. His teeth were a little longer in the canine, eyes a little too cold, a little too calculating.

The predator had awakened, and I needed to find out why.

His face and nose were angular and narrow. Unlike his mother, his ears were almost human. They came up into curved little points which he normally hid under his hair or a hat. A time or two he had cut off the points, but he was young and vain then.

And he always dressed in darker colours, though that too, I think was the wolf in him. Easier to hide with darker shades, easier to slip among the shadows and go unnoticed by the human population.

Now, Elspeth said. Tell us about her.

Her name is Cae—

Not that, Mungo wined. All the other stuff. Does she scratch good?

Vampires don’t like scratches, dear, Elspeth whispered.

They don’t? Mungo asked, turning to his mother. Then how do they express love? Affection? Caring?

As a wolf, Mungo was old, very old. As any mortal, he would have been old. But for his mother’s people he was still young, too young to be out of the nursery, she often said. And sometimes, like then when excited, his youth was noticeable.

Well, they. Hmm, what do vampires do to show affection, Drest? Elspeth asked.

We are not some animal-based creature, I said. We are much like humans. We touch, we love, we kiss, we have sex.

I like sex, Mungo said. Does she have sex good?

Inappropriate question to ask her, I said.

I’m not asking her. I’m asking you. Does she sex good?

We didn’t get to that part, I said. The fae jewelry made her sick. Frankly, if I hadn’t turned her, I strongly suspect she wouldn’t have made it through the night after the fall she took. Her body was in far too much pain to try anything.

What about kisses? Mungo asked. Every race kisses, right? Do vampires kiss, Mother?

He kisses me, she said with a frown. Maybe he learned from me, though.

I didn’t learn to kiss from you, Elspeth. You really need to get out more.

Or you need to bring vampires home more, Mungo said.

She is not a chew toy, I said. So, how about you dial back on your excitement a little?

But she’s like a baby sister, Mungo protested.

Who will look at you and expect you to act like a man, I said as gently as I could. Humans... can’t distinguish between mental and physical age, Mungo. You can pull it off, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes you act more like a pup than a man.

I think he means you can’t hump her leg, Elspeth said.

At her words, Mungo wilted. The pup thought it a good idea to hump a human’s leg after we talked about it the night before. He may have thought so because if Cae was no longer human, the same rules didn’t apply.

She smells pretty, Mungo said. Isn’t it a compliment?

Just because you like when a wolf humps your leg, doesn’t mean everyone else does, I said.

Oh, I never thought of that before, he said to his feet.

I struggled to make it make sense to him before Cae woke up and drew the attention of my family. The last new member I added to our family had been a witch I was besotted with. She lived out her days with us, but the transition had been difficult. She grew up in a world where we and everything around her already existed.

Cae knew none of that.

Is that why human women don’t enjoy getting their ass grabbed any more? he asked. They used to giggle and started this new sign thing that’s about men touching them. I thought it was celebratory.

The one you told me about? I asked. See, I thought that sounded strange. You’re the one who told me when you’re reading things on the internet, read them as if they’re mean or sarcastic.

Well, I mean, they were talking about stuff I enjoy having done to me.

Wolves like some strange things, I said. Human women aren’t wolves.

Human women are taught they aren’t allowed to bite the male who approaches them and whose attention is unwanted, Elspeth said. "Treat her like one of those wolves."

Oh, okay, Mungo nodded. I can do that. I mean, she’d probably bite me anyhow. She is a vampire. And a new one. How do you plan to feed her?

He sounded a little more stable, not so small, or young.

And I saw them with fresh eyes, which made the vision all the worse as I tried to figure out what Cae would see, how she would react to them, and how to make the transition as smooth as possible.

We’ll pay a visit to the MacNabs, and they will provide or die, I said. I will start with a few new ones and breed them back up again as I did before.

Annoying, but you need a stock to prevent from needing to kill regularly, so, I suppose I will teach myself how to change a modern diaper, Elspeth said. All cloth, however. I’m not doing that disposable nonsense. If you’re too special to wash shitty diapers, you’re too special to have a child and get shit on your hands.

I would never suggest disposable, I said. I washed them before. I’ll wash them again if I must. I hope they see the way of things and give something over freely, then keep to their ways. If not, I’ve got a pretty good idea of where to start.

Does she have power? Elspeth asked.

See, you wandered were more focused on you and Mungo when I came to report last night, I said with a wince.

Oh? Elspeth asked.

You know Bau? I asked.

Who was Ulia, Maker of Lu who was also Death, who was then Maker of Quin, who is also Wraith and sits the Council, Elspeth said. Yes, the Witchblood line who have worked as executioners since their inception, and still do.

Named because she was a witch, right? Mungo asked. She carried magic into immortality with her, and after her, your mother dictated it could never happen again. If Cae were too close to being a witch, possessed magic, she wouldn’t have turned.

Not if she visited the Afterworld and Ulia bequeathed her magic to her after she turned.

Try that again without pronouns, Mungo said.

Ulia gave Cae Ulia’s magic, I said. Cae was enough of a witch to register as witch and became an immortal, which counteracted Ulia being much of the same. It seems by doing so Ulia sealed up a hole in the boundary between the lands of the living and dead.

But... Elspeth trailed off, a frown crinkling her brow. Nothing can cross the boundary except souls. Even then, most of the time, down to all but a fraction of a percent, make the move permanently.

Yes, I said. Unless you’re a boundary walker, I think is the current theory.

Elspeth’s head shook.

Nothing crosses, Drest, she insisted.

Tell that to the wolf Bitch Rosalyn is hosting as the founding treaty member, I said. Apparently she was Ulia’s lover all those years ago. Raised from the dead, a new body knit for her, by Ulia’s spell. Or Bau’s, do you have to separate what the two of them do?

Yes, Mungo and Elspeth said at the same time.

Elspeth glanced at Mungo, who kept his eyes on me. His jaw clenched, eyes lowering as he looked away.

You think it possible, Elspeth said.

A six percent chance of a boundary walker, under the right circumstances, making their way across a boundary and back again, Mungo said. From what he said last night her circumstances are pretty unique. She touches on all the races, even the ones humans don’t know about. Before the fae magic in the keystones touched her, she was just a body, the fae magic would have triggered everything else.

Boundary walkers need to be awakened, Elspeth said. Otherwise, they wander through life, feeling out of place and not belonging anywhere because they are meant to be everywhere.

Besides which, she has magic now, I said. "And