Allianna (technically a rough draft btw)

Chapter Two

Chapter Two:
Allianna watched as the little girl was tied down and raped while her mistress watched, eyes cold and amused. The child never shed a tear as the tall, dark haired man took her repeatedly. Her mistress eventually moved from where she stood and discarded her own cloths, climbing on to the bed to play with the little girl, fondling her and biting her pale skin.
“Amnira!” Allianna screamed. “Leave her alone!”
Suddenly Allianna was wide-awake. Mithel held her in her arms, rocking her soothingly. She murmured assurances that it had just been a dream, that Allianna was right there with her.
“But it was real Mithel. It was happening and I was seeing it. God, my baby,” Alianna sobbed heartbrokenly. It was not long before she cried herself back to sleep.

“Allianna? Wake up sweetling,” Alex crooned in her ear. Allianna turned over and ended up in his lap. Alex grinned and tapped her shoulder. She groaned and opened her eyes to herself looking right up at him. “Good evening sweetling. It’s time to get up and get ready to go rescue your daughter.”
Alianna groaned as she sat up. “God I’m hungry.” She winced as she realized what she’d really just said. Alex pretended not to have heard as he moved with catlike grace to Mithel’s side. He shook her lightly and she too woke.
“Come, we’ve a long way to go before we get to the morning’s tavern and I do not wish dawn to beat me their. Do you?”
Mithel sighed and folded her blanket then Allianna’s, murmuring something as she did. She handed the once again small square to her sister blood and then drew a comb from her pack to brush her hair out as they walked. Alianna cursed, she’d left her own comb back in the hallowed tree of the night before.
“Why can’t we-” Allianna started.
“Because where your child is in the other world and Alex can’t shift there as he does in Ven. In Ven he moves along the lines of magic, he cannot do that in the other world, their magic does not run in strands there,” Mithel explained.
“Thank you, Mithel,” Alex murmured, moving off through the trees.
“So then where are we going?”
“Enough questions,” Alex called back.
Allianna frowned and remained silent, staring at her shoes then shaking her head and staring at them with real interest. “Holy shit!”
“There is nothing holy about shit,” Alex muttered. “Nor is there anything to be fascinated about with your new vision. Vampiric vision is far more then advanced and you are capable of night vision, nothing special, get used to it.”
Dispirited, Allianna kept walking. She said nothing for the next three miles not even when she got cold. Mithel glanced at her then walked up ahead to Alex and murmured in his ear. Alex frowned and looked back at Allianna as she shivered in her cloak. He waited for her to catch up to him then drew her beneath his cloak. “Next time if you are cold say so. For greatness sake you may be immortal now but you can still get sick.”
Allianna ignored him and tried to pull away.
“Stop trying to fight me, sweetling. You aren’t leaving me until after we have your daughter anyway, you may as well at least try to be agreeable. You’re sister may never have put forth the effort but I’m helping you rescue Amnira, it is the least you can do in return.”
“Whatever, Monter, as soon as I have my daughter it won’t matter anymore anyway,” Allianna hissed.
“Don’t call me by my family name.”
“What else am I to call you? Oh, let me guess, “master”?”
Alex glared at her but did not shove her away from him. “Alex will do.”
Mithel shook her head slowly. She wondered what Allianna would think if she knew that anyone else acting the way she was would find themselves being severely beaten. She also wondered if Alex realized how hostile he was being. “Alex there is a slayer following us, they joined up back at the river we passed.”
“Thank you, Mithel.” Alex turned and looked back behind them, peering through the trees. “He is too weak to harm you or I.”
Mithel frowned and said nothing. Alex glanced at her, eyebrow raised. “Do you wish to go back and discourage him from following us?”
“He could harm Allianna, she is weak still,” Mithel murmured.
“That does not answer my question.”
“I would not see Allianna killed,” the vampiress answered, chin lifted in challenge.
“I wouldn’t be-” Allianna started.
“Hush,” Alex ordered. “Go if you wish, Mithel.”
Mithel nodded and fell back, slipping into the shadows. Alex resumed walking, causing Allianna to do the same. “She will take care of it. The man has a black heart anyway.”
Allianna frowned and kept pace, remaining where she was beneath Alex’s arm.
When Mithel returned her color was far better, leaving her with the light flush of one who had just fed. She said nothing as she fell back in behind Alex. Ten more minutes passed and they came to a tavern.
“We’ll stop here. I think there is someone waiting for us,” Alex muttered. He removed his arm from Allianna’s shoulder and entered the tavern. Allianna followed and found herself drowning in a light presence. The scent of cherry blossoms tickled her nose as she followed Alex to the bar counter. “Can you sense it, sweetling? There is a guardian here. From the smell of it, the presence belongs to Liannor. On that score she is not even trying to mask her signature scent. She’s waiting for us.”
“You are very perceptive, De Monter,” a soft voice called from a shadowed corner. “I came to aid you on your journey, to give you more distance then you would attain on your own.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “Pray tell, why?”
“The child you seek is in dire need of the caring that she will find with her mother. It is in the interest of that which I protect.”
“If you are looking to discourage me then you are certainly doing a fine job,” Alex snarled.
“You made a promise and, if there is nothing else good about you it is that you have never broken your promise, not even when another broke there’s,” the angel countered.
Alex scowled and turned on her, finally. “If you wish to speed our journey then who am I to stop you. The sooner I am finished the sooner I can return to my own affairs.”
The angel laughed, her voice a soft caress. She stood and took Allianna’s hand,
Mithel took her other hand and Alex merely caught Allianna by the arm. Then they were all shimmering and Allianna watched the bright light shine then fade to reveal them to be in yet another tavern, this time sunlight shown through the cracked windows.
“Sorry, I must have made a mistake on the timing,” Liannor murmured, then vanished.
“Shit! Allianna come here,” Alex hissed, lifting his cloak to shield her from the light as she obeyed.
“Here,” a soothing voice called. “Come this way.”
Alex must have trusted whoever the voice belonged to because he allowed whoever it was to lead him and his sirelings up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to a
set of four rooms, each marked with a black number whereas all the other rooms were marked with gold ones.
“She’ll be safe in this room, it has no windows. You can stay in rooms 8 and 11 since it would appear you are capable of withstanding sunlight.”
Alex frowned at the woman who was holding the door of the room-the one marked 13- for Allianna to go in. He could smell the scent of vampiric blood on her but that still did not account for her helping them.
Lennari closed the door to block any sunlight from the hallway and brushed her hand across the doors surface. “No one will bother her.” She snapped her fingers and three keys appeared in her hand. She handed a gold one to Mithel and the other gold one as well as the black one to Alex. “You may stay as long as what you’re here to accomplish requires. No charge. If she needs blood to drink at any given time while you are out I’ll take care of it.”
“One question,” Alex muttered. “Who the Hell are you?”
“Although my name holds no importance, it’s Lennari. I’m a friend of Allianna’s for as long as she may live but also I own this tavern and, as long as they obey my rules, anyone may come here and be at peace on these grounds.”
Mithel stared at her. “You are the one who made a widower of a God when you starved to death in order for his children to survive. He brought you back when your daughter pleaded for you but you did not feel a part of his life and you were being chased by your own brother so you left him and eventually left your children with the sister you had only recently learned existed. He was freed from his vows the moment you had died and so he went and remarried.”
“And I took back my children and now run my tavern with my sisters help rather than leaving her to run it,” Lennari finished. “Do the people of Ven really know so much about their exiled princess?”
Mithel smiled lightly. “I know a great deal about the Dawn tales just as you do, though I do forget faces.”
Suddenly Lennari burst into laughter. “I see, you are one of us as well. Well that makes sense now and I’ll tell you later what doesn’t make sense. For now why don’t you both go enjoy the village, if you find interest nowhere else, De Monter, you can wander around in the Markets.”
Alex glared at her in disgust. “Why should I bother with slaves when I have sirelings?”
Lennari quite suddenly turned and hissed at him, her eyes flashing. “And I ask you with experience in the matter, what is the difference?”
“Do not sound so scornful, you chose to be turned by your sire and you loved him then. It is no fault of mine that you were deceived. My sirelings have a choice. They can feed off of others and leave me if they wish.”
Mithel made no comment on their argument. “Alex, may I go into the village, I should like to see what wares they have.”
Alex nodded curtly then made his own way down to the tavern part of the establishment. He paused, though, waiting for Lennari to make her way down the stairs to where he stood.
Lennari did not wait for him to ask his question. “There’s a man who comes in every afternoon that can sell you one that can be enchanted for that purpose,” she murmured then went right on to the rooms that she dwelled in behind the counter, through the back rooms and somehow out of the second world. Her sister stood at the bar serving those few other customers of the morning.
Time passed quickly and finally the man that Lennari had spoken of entered the place. Alex could sense the pieces that he’d have to choose from and quickly chose one that would serve his purpose.

Mithel browsed among the wares of the shop she’d found and finally located a comb. The thing was made of silver and even came with a mirror. She had just enough coin left of what she managed to scrounge to buy the set as well as a small doll that had probably been made by the cooperative efforts of many types of elves and fairies.
The dolls eyes were a deep green and made of glass so bright it could only have been made by sand elves and the silk of the dolls gown and hair could only have been harvested and spun by silk pixies. The hair was a soft blond color and Mithel was painfully reminded of her daughter. She did not want her to be found, she knew that she was free and that was enough.
Mithel gave the shopkeeper the gold pieces and placed the carefully wrapped doll in her bag then the comb. She left the shop and made her way back to the Tavern of the Wanderer, stopping only to feed from a man that tried to harm a young girl. She made it back to the tavern long before dark and still had time to consume a bloodwine that Lennari told her was “on the house.”
By that time Alex was up in his room placing an enchantment on something, Mithel could feel his magic at work even from where she waited in the shadows of the tavern.
“So,” Lennari began, taking a seat in front of her. “You are one of the Dawn linked as well.”
Mithel nodded, sipping her wine thoughtfully. “There are many of us but few that ever remember it. I remember names, histories and actions but can only place the faces of the parallels and Dawn herself. I know too that Allianna and Alex were there but my memory of them is oddly vague. I can remember only that they were there, not what they did.”
“It feels strange sometimes, slipping in and out of our reality as if only seconds had passed when usually it is much longer.”
Mithel nodded. “Lets speak of it no more. It’s too confusing.”
Lennari nodded and then stood. “Kyle is crying, Amastacia says he fell. I must go tend to him.”
“Before you go, has there been news of Damien?”
Lennari shook her head then left Mithel to her own thoughts as the sun set.