Servant of the White Sun - Chapter 2 - Shelter of the Sun

C'hnyel "Ciel" Sarven, attacked by a vampire on her way home from work, breaks into an opulent house thinking to seek shelter inside. The vampire gives her chase inside, however, and, when an inhabitant of the house shows herself, Ciel is very unhappily surprised to find herself faced with another vampire, this time a lady.

To know more, read Chapter 1.

The devil shuffled from one foot to the other. “Uh, my lady, I’ll take her away now. Gytrash will offer you compensation for anything she broke or…” He glared at the puddle under Ciel. “…stained.”

“Is that so?” the lady asked, her voice so level it was scary. “You are one of Gytrash’s.”

The lady glided forward in her piece of the night, a movement so fluid that it didn’t look like she had joints. She picked up the phone and dialed a number with graceful, unhurried fingers.

The lady glided forward in her piece of the night, a movement so fluid that it didn’t look like she had joints. She picked up the phone. It was such a normal gesture. She dialed a number with graceful, unhurried fingers.

“Uh? Milady? I will be going now, no need to call…”

The beast stopped short. Whoever the lady was calling had picked up and the intruder’s eyes betrayed shock at whatever he was hearing. Ciel, who didn’t have a demon’s sharp hearing, shuddered from the cold in her bones.

“Annabel Whidecker,” said the melodious voice of the lady.

Ciel’s eyes flew wide too. Whidecker was almost more impressive than a saÿrim. Every street-rat in the city knew her name. She came from the same streets, had joined the Runners and become their most fearsome caster. Fifteen years in, she had left the Service to open her own firm. She was now a fixer for everybody who was anybody in town.

If the lady was calling Whidecker, she didn’t intend to simply let Ciel go and accept compensation from Gytrash. If Whidecker picked up her calls in the middle of the night, she had the pull to do way more than let her go.

“I am about to kill one of Gytrash’s boys. What kind of compensation will I have to pay?”

Whatever Whidecker replied, it must have been pretty bad because the beast didn’t move an inch.

“He broke into my house, Annabel Whidecker.”

“…”

“Very well. I thank you, Magister.”

The lady hung up. The beast crouched, ready to attack, to launch itself at her. The lady appeared unconcerned. She glanced to her right, into the hall, at someone Ciel couldn’t see. “We will have to call the Runners for body removal, of course.” She sighed. “How annoying…”

But Ciel didn’t think the lady was that annoyed because she was smiling. It was a dreamy smile, almost childish. It faded as quickly as it had appeared on her lips. It didn’t fit there, with the pain and the violence that were sure to erupt. The beast hissed and jumped. Something boomed – once, twice – and the creature went down.

The lady took two steps forward and nudged its limp body with her slippered foot, flipped it around. Its face was half blown-up and still smoking.

“Bullhead,” she said calmly. “I commend your shooting skills, Trish.”

“Too kind of you, mistress.” The second voice sounded female also, but younger, sharper. It held a good deal of sarcasm, as if the second woman – female – couldn't take any subservience seriously. “What would you have done if I had missed?”

“Hm…We will never know now. The human is hurt. See to her.”

Someone stepped into the room – and finally lit a candle! A human face appeared in the flickering light, a face that was beautiful and terrible. Ash blond hair, huge blue eyes, full lips and sharp cheekbones painted a portrait of human beauty to the left of the straight nose. The woman’s right side was riddled with scars, grotesque lumps of melted skin ringing her long neck. She walked with a flowing grace, her serving gray robes fluttering, hinting at a remarkable figure.

She knelt by Ciel’s side, smiling a gentle smile. “Hello, there. It’s okay, you’re safe now. I’m Patricia.”

Ciel, weak as she was, recoiled. The other human wasn’t a servant. A white silver band circled her wrist and bore the sun symbol. Patricia was a slave, a graent, an energy slut, a drone. She belonged to the lady, same as the rug, the house, the backyard, same as a pet.

“Hush, little one,” she said. “Don’t be scared. Everything is fine. I promise.”

She seemed earnest in her reassurance. But she was a slave. Her promises hardly mattered. Ciel looked over her shoulder, seeking her mistress’ eyes. The lady was studying her blood-splattered rug, blank-faced.

“Please,” Ciel keened. “Please, don’t kill me.”

A distracted smile pulled at the saÿrim's lips again. “I do not intend to. I am about to call the Runners. A second dead-body would be an annoyance.”

Ciel relaxed, even as she saw the flaw in the lady's logic. Her dead-body could easily be explained as the beast’s work. If the lady bothered lying at all. Saÿrimen didn’t need to lie, they were above the law. “I hurt everywhere,” she moaned.

Trish smiled. “Just scratches and bruises. You’ll be alright.”

But, as she spoke, she sneaked a glance at her mistress, as if seeking confirmation. The lady tilted her head to the side, staring raptly at Ciel. “A bite or two maybe. She bears his mark.”

“A mark,” Ciel repeated. The beast had left part of it on her, in her. She started sobbing again, appalled. “Get it off! Get it off me! Get it off!”

The lady watched her scream and seemed unaffected, but she did float closer.

“Hush,” she crooned and took Patricia’s place. Ciel didn’t even dare flinch away. She just really wanted to. The lady’s hand drifted over Ciel’s face, her body. It drifted down, down, then up. It paused over her heart. “Tell me your name, little one.”

“C’hnyel Sarven.”

“How old are you, C’hnyel?”

“Seventeen.”

“Do you have family?”

Ciel was shaking like a leaf. “My brother,” she replied, teeth shattering. “Frances.”

“Where can we reach Frances?”

“You can call the Blue Rabbit. It’s a bar in the Bowels. It’s on the ground floor of our building. Rabbit will know how…to…”

“Hush, now, enough. The Blue Rabbit. The Bowels. Frances. His sister, C’hnyel.” The lady bowed her head, having clearly reached a decision. “Patricia.”

“I will make the call.”

“Good. Then, you can call your own brother.”

“Mistress?”

Trish sounded shocked but Ciel couldn't see her behind her mistress. She was surprised herself, having never fully realized that graenten had families.

“Patricia?” the lady parroted.

“Maybe I should call headquarters.”

“You can. But you know he will be the one coming anyway.”

Trish grumbled something, but Ciel’s pain drowned the words. Her brain couldn’t process the friendly tone of the conversation between mistress and slave.

“Make the calls from the other room. C’hnyel needs a little quiet and a little healing.” The lady brought a hand close to Ciel's face. “I am going to touch you, little one.” Ciel whimpered. “Do not be afraid. My touch holds no pain. It is nothing like his.”

Maybe the lady believed that worrying was suffering twice. She didn’t give Ciel time to worry. She touched her. She was right. It wasn’t painful at all. Her skin felt human – human soft, human warm, human dry. It didn’t pull on Ciel. It didn’t rip her soul.

The lady only took her hand away to lift Ciel off the floor. Felt like floating, Ciel thought dreamily. It had been a long, long while since anyone had carried her: she looked like a skeleton, all bones, flat here, sharp there, but she was deceptively heavy. The saÿrim, clearly deceptively strong herself, carried her into a library next door and laid her down on a plump sofa.

Trish wasn’t around anymore to dispense light. Dimly, Ciel wished someone would turn on the light but, then, she was feeling ever so slightly disjointed. Rich people – saÿrimen, especially – didn't trouble themselves with mundane things like light-bulbs. Their houses were connected to the grid for domestic necessities like the phone and sometimes even the internet. But they relied on fossil energies for light. Maybe electricity messed with their magic or maybe the subdued lighting reminded them of the mysterious land they had come from.

It seemed like an abysmal waste of money.

Ciel couldn’t see what the lady was doing but she felt the warmth of her magic caressing her body. She wasn’t scared. Perhaps she was too exhausted or perhaps it was these very human hands.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a pathetically low voice.

“The scum took pieces of you. And you took one back.”

“No, I didn’t.” Then, Ciel remembered hitting the beast and how long it had delayed it. Something had happened then. “Yes, I did.”

“Brave girl.”

“Why did you help me?”

“Patricia enjoys shooting intruders.” Ciel could imagine the smile on the lady’s lips. “I do not suffer arrogance easily. Also, I admire bravery.”

Ciel was quiet for a long moment. Her scratches and bruises didn't hurt so much anymore. She imagined that maybe her skin, her flesh were knotting themselves back together. The saÿrim was healing her – she hadn’t known they could do that.

“Pieces of me are still missing, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“Will I ever get them back?”

“Perhaps.”

Ciel feared asking questions but the lady stroked a gentle finger down her face and she took that as encouragement. “How?”

The lady breathed in and out in the darkness, deeply enough that it was audible. “Patricia is my graent,” she said. Ciel had never heard the foreign word uttered without a sneer. It made it sound strange, almost like a title. “I feed off her, off the sao, the living energy she radiates. I can feed off humans, off animals, off plants, sometimes off the night itself. It does not hurt. It does not scar.”

“But I…”

“He wasn’t feeding off your sao. He was ripping through your soul. Patricia’s soul was ripped to shreds once upon a time. But now, it has begun healing.” The lady brushed her hands down her kafi. It was a strangely brisk gesture – one Ciel could only hear but imagined well enough. “Souls have their own magic, are their own form of life, can heal to a new wholeness, given time.”

“What about his mark?”

“I covered his mark with my own. Nobody will know.”

Ciel deflated in relief and yawned. She was so tired. Still, she wanted to know whose mark she bore. “Who are you?” she asked.

Shocked at her own rudeness, she grabbed the lady’s hand in the dark and squeezed it in hers. Maybe it was even ruder, but the lady returned it with a squeeze of her own. “My name is nothing you could pronounce.” Ciel blushed. Of course. Who was she? A street-rat? A shop girl? She didn't even have the right to question a saÿrim so. “I go by Jaan.”

Jaan. Exotic and intimate, same as the unbound hair shimmering down the lady’s shoulders.

But who was Jaan? Demons cluttered in families, tied together by ties of kinship Ciel couldn’t begin to comprehend. The girl’s eyes flickered back to the crest of glowing silver.

The lady noticed. “You are curious of my family crest.” She pulled Ciel’s hand to the silver sun on her chest. “Whitestar. I am Lady Jaan Whitestar. Sleep now, little one.”

Ciel’s lashes fluttered up and down. She was afraid of the dark – more afraid than she was of the one saÿrim she could see. She didn’t know what else could be hiding in the dark. “Will you stay with me? Please. I'm afraid of being alone.”

“I will stay right here. You are under my protection. Sleep, now.”