The Midnight Watch

On the night of the midwinter Gathering, Nadia took her time getting dressed. It wasn't out of vanity. She was delaying the inevitable.

Costi looked up with a smile when she entered the kitchen. "You need me to put up your hair?"

"Not tonight." Alexandru's descriptions in his letters had painted vivid pictures of glamour, lavish excess and a never-ending competition for status. She wanted to be different.

"Select your jewellery?"

Nadia shook her head. The strapless black gown would enhance her testimony to the council: simplicity without embellishment.

Costi held out his hand. A white lily appeared. "Let me pin a flower in your hair, at least. A small thing."

"All right." Lilies symbolised purity and majesty. She was far from virginal, but perhaps the flower would help her speak with directness and authority. "Thank you, my friend."

"You is most welcome."

She said good night and Apparated, not to Bucharest, but to the research centre. Charlie stood at his window, waiting. A thrill went through Nadia at the look on his face and the haste with which he opened the sash to climb out to speak with her.

"You're beautiful," he said. "I've never seen ribbon used like that before. It's--" Charlie trailed his fingers over satin bands that crisscrossed her upper arm down to her wrist. "It's pretty."

His fingertips had barely grazed her skin, yet she shivered. "Thank you for the compliment, and for taking my patrol."

"No problem. We'll--uh--trade reports when you get back. Just knock on the window."

"If you leave it unwarded I can slip inside," she said. "Wake you gently."

Charlie's pulse spiked. She could hear it.

Nadia was torn. Part of her wanted to pretend she hadn't meant to be suggestive, to say something to diffuse the tension. The rest of her was too busy staring at his parted lips. She licked hers. The heat pouring off Charlie's body was incredible. That must be why her mouth was so dry. It wasn't the idea of kissing him awake. She gathered scattered thoughts and said, "If that is what you desire."

"I--yeah."

She was unable to resist teasing a little more. "If you do not wake when I call your name, may I touch you?"

"Like this?" His palm cupped her shoulder.

The contrast of his tanned skin against her fairness mesmerised Nadia. How many hours had he spent in the sun to earn those freckles? Did he realise how attractive they were?

"I didn't know vampires could blush," Charlie said.

She lifted a hand to her flushed cheek. She gazed at him in wonder. "You did this to me."

Something flared in his eyes that sparked an answering hunger. Nadia moved away. Right now, Charlie Weasley was a temptation she could not afford. "I must go."

"Stay safe," he said.

The genuine concern in his voice burned away her resolve. She closed the distance between them and brushed his mouth with hers. "For luck," she said, and Apparated.

She travelled only as far as the ridge where Charlie had seen the Longhorn scale. If Nadia had tried to Apparate any further, she would have splinched. It was too hard to concentrate. His lips had been firm and supple, parting hers for a tantalising instant before she drew back. She closed her eyes to relive the kiss.

Charlie...

Her sigh broke the reverie. This was not the time for self-indulgence. She had important matters to attend. Nadia bent to scoop up a handful of snow. My thoughts must be cold and clear. I am a dragon keeper, charged to protect, a strigoi, demanding justice.

She looked toward the forest and the cottage on the other side. Later, I will be a woman.

The snow trickled from her fingers as she concentrated on visualising the home she hadn't entered of her own free will in half a century. How ironic that she must yearn to be there with every fibre of her being in order to Apparate. Nadia's lips twisted as magic flared.

There was nothingness, and then she was standing on pavement in front of a mansion with wrought iron balconies and tall, arched windows.

Behind her, a man said, "I considered making it Unplottable like the House of Elders, but in the end could not deprive the world of such beauty."

The voice was facetious--and instantly recognisable. Nadia "heard" it every time she read one of his letters. She replied, "You could not deprive yourself of what you live for--the admiration of others."

"True." In a blur of motion, Alexandru stood before her, deceptively youthful and handsome. "And I wanted you to always be able to find your way home."

Nadia bit back the retort that this wasn't her home, and he was no true father. "Have you been waiting in the cold for me? How flattering."

Bright blue eyes danced with amusement. "I went for a stroll. It would be ill-mannered not to feed before a Gathering."

"What? You have no human companion? It's so unlike you not to follow fashion."

Alexandru opened the front doors with a wave of his hand. "Human women have a tendency to expect monogamy--not my idea of eternal bliss. Unless Jakab finds a partner willing to donate a pint from time to time, and I acquire another human servant, this will remain a bachelor household." His eyes flickered over her. "If you require sustenance..."

"No,"she said harshly. Nadia marched into the entrance hall lined with gold-veined marble and mirrors. I will not think of the past, I will not think of the past...

"Still dragon blood only, is it? How often do you--"

"None of your concern!" She regained poise and asked, "Is that what you are wearing tonight?" His hand-tailored suit was stylish, yet far from proper attire. He would never wear it to a Gathering. She enquired only to repay Alexandru for the intrusive questions.

He arched a blond brow. "I was about to ask the same of you."

"My gown is appropriate."

"For a funeral, perhaps, although the ribbons give the impression of a very merry widow--no offence to your house-elf."

Costi had added the ribbons to "soften" her design. Nadia ended the conversation by walking into the drawing room located off a short corridor to the left of the double stairs. "You should dress," she said over her shoulder. "I wish to be punctual."

"We will be. I gave you the wrong time in order to talk."

She went to stand beside the fireplace fashioned to complement the home's Art Nouveau style, with ceramic tiles of lotus leaves decorating a cast-iron surround. "About my audience with the Council?"

"About my letters. You read them all?"

"Yes."

"Did you consider throwing them away unopened?"

"Every time."

"And after reading, did you ever feel an urge to return my correspondence, this last month in particular?"

She shrugged.

"I must know," he said.

Realisation dawned. "You used Compulsion Charms!"

"Twice, to be exact, which you resisted." Alexandru grinned boyishly, although it had been a hundred years since his eighteenth birthday. "Words cannot express my delight."

"They were a source of information, like newspapers, nothing more," she said. "I did not read them because I harbour any trace of affection for you."

"But you did read them."

Nadia looked at him warily. "That pleases you. Why?"

He took her hands, his wistful expression belied by the impish twinkle in his eye. "No father wants his child to hate him."

"You are not my father."

"Semantics." Alexandru's hands tightened around hers. "My blood is in your veins, I am the reason you live."

"Live? I do not breathe! I exist!" If she did not need his aid in dealing with the Council, Nadia would have transformed her nails into claws and made him bleed.

"You think and feel. That is the truest measure of life. Embrace it."

She shook her head. Alexandru would never understand how much he had taken from her: family, friends, sunshine, growing old. He was enthralled with being strigoi. "Why did you mention me to Luchian?" she asked. "It had to have been deliberate. What do you want from me?"

He released her hands. "I could say I missed you, but time is short so I will be frank: I need what you have, the ability to resist the compulsive charms of Catrinca Dinu." Alexandru saw her surprise and asked, "Did you think I cast the spells on those letters? No, I begged sweetly, until the one who made me what I am graciously conceded the favour." He smiled a little. "Why do you think I spoke so highly of her?"

"Catrinca is an elder, your--patroness--" Nadia refused to say mother, the term would be incestuous. "She is a member of the Council..."

"She read the letters before performing the charms." He smirked. "Not the last one. I told her the spells worked their magic, so there was no further need for her assistance."

"What if she had asked to see my letter?"

"That would never have happened. You are beyond her realm of control and therefore of no interest."

"Unlike you."

"Yes. Fair Catrinca is determined to keep me off the Council and under her thumb. So far, she has been successful." Alexandru's expression hardened. "That will change when I share the resistance to spells you gained from dragons' blood."

It was true that, like giants, dragons had a natural resistance to magic. It took the strongest spells, or a battery of them to be effective. To think blood transferred that resistance... "No."

"Yes." Alexandru's face was as finely sculpted and as pitiless as a statue's. "A blood debt is owed. You must repay."

She stood transfixed, unable to deny the truth. When faced with death, she chose to be strigoi. Afterwards, however, she had violently refused to drink the blood of humans. It was shaming to remember her lack of self-control, how she wept over her lost mortality, cursed and pleaded for Alexandru to share his blood. He had kept her alive, and helped her through the first traumatic weeks following the change.

"Take it," she said.

Nadia tried to clear her thoughts. It was no use. The scrape of Alexandru's teeth filled her mind with images she'd repressed since a fateful night in December, fifty years ago.

A body lying at the edge of the cave...the Horntail fallen on its side, stunned... Nadia dropped to her knees to assess the man's injuries. He was bleeding from a gaping shoulder wound. She immediately cast a direct pressure spell. The man was either a poacher or a thrill-seeker who wanted to see a Horntail and got spiked. She checked for consciousness and realised the victim was not breathing. Nadia bent over him to resuscitate. With unnatural swiftness, he grabbed her and bit her neck...

"Shhh... It is done. Shhh..."

Nadia stared blankly, and then regained her sense of place and time. She had put a hand up to her cheek and felt the wetness. She turned away. "You should change."

"There is such a thing as fashionable lateness," Alexandru said. "You will find an appropriate gown upstairs, in the first bedroom to the right."

"No."

"Yes, unless you wish to be a matching pair like Catrinca and her latest consort. My dress robes are black."

She personally did not care. Since he obviously did, and had approached the Council on her behalf after she explained the situation with Marko, Nadia said, "Very well."

The long, flowing white gown set out for her had a heart-shaped bodice with a medieval point and black lace inset. Black ribbon edged the layers of skirt and the ruffled cuffs of the shoulder-baring, trumpet sleeves. A white rose cameo set in silver on a black lace choker lay beside the gown. Nadia undid the bow at her wrist and let the ribbon unwind.

She returned downstairs to find Jakab waiting in the entrance hall. Dressed like a butler, he still reminded her of a circus strongman, bald, with a bushy moustache. A human servant, he was bound to his master and shared his agelessness. He looked no older than the last time she had seen him.

Jakab bowed. "It is good to see you again, Miss Nadia."

"And you as well. Do you still cultivate orchids?"

He appeared pleased that she remembered. "Yes, Miss Nadia."

Alexandru strolled into the hall, elegant in robes with a mandarin collar and black, cloth-covered buttons. "You transfigured the lily into a rose. Excellent. It completes the vision of loveliness."

"You wear no rings," she said. Alexandru always wore at least two rings. He enjoyed showing off his inherited wealth.

"Tonight my peahen shall shine," he said lightly. He accepted a pair of gloves from Jakab and tugged them on.

If he was toning down his peacock ways to impress upon the Council his seriousness, it was an excellent strategy--the exact same one she had intended to use. Nadia said, "Others will glitter more brightly."

"Exactly. We will turn heads with the beauty of our simplicity."

She dismissed his words as conceit until they entered the ballroom of the palatial estate hidden within the city's mansion district. Heads did turn. Strigoi dressed in finery that rivalled the opulence of the mirrored walls and frescoed ceiling, wearing jewels that out-sparkled the crystal in the candle-lit chandeliers, all hushed their conversations. The lively sound of a string quartet rang out clearly until overshadowed once more by the rumble of voices.

"They are shocked you are dressed so plainly?" Nadia said as Alexandru led her toward a group clustered at the centre.

"Surprised to see a woman on my arm. I usually select a companion for the evening after I arrive, not before."

"What do you do? Hold an audition?"

"Of sorts."

When they drew near to the elder Nadia had only read about in letters, she saw Alexandru begin to bow and held her skirts in order to perform a curtsey. Luchian left his group of courtiers.

"Charming." Tall and imposing, the highest-ranking elder's faint smile did not reach the dark eyes boring into hers. "Why have you never graced us with your presence before this Gathering?" There was power in his deep voice that compelled the truth.

She said, "No strigoi ever threatened the safety of dragons."

"Ah, yes, the matter of dragons. The Council will not reverse its decision at this time, but I assure you, we regard dragons highly." He kissed her hand and resumed his place in the centre of the parquet floor, holding court.

Nadia's eyes flew to Alexandru.

He said, "Not here."

She glanced around. On all sides, the curious were watching, listening. She nodded tightly.

Alexandru escorted her to an antechamber off the ballroom and shut the door. "I did not lie," he said. "I approached the Council on your behalf. They denied your audience on the basis of a councilmember's claim that the threats were hearsay, and warranted no action."

"Which councilmember?"

"Catrinca Dinu. Marko Vasile is her consort."

Nadia shook with anger. "You used me."

"I am also giving you the opportunity to make the best out of it."

"How?"

"Warn Vasile--in front of witnesses--that if he trespasses again with intent to harm, he will face the consequences. That way, if he returns, you will have the right to drag him before the Council and demand trial." Alexandru smiled in a way that showed his canines had elongated. "I will be on the Council, and I will ensure justice is meted out in full measure."

All she wanted was the opportunity to warn Marko away from the dragons. "All right," she said, "Take me to him."

Alexandru led her to a corner of the ballroom, where a dainty blonde woman in a crimson satin gown lounged on a settee with a swarthy man dressed in matching velvet robes. The couple, surrounded by admirers, "fed" each other from a crystal goblet and made a show of licking the blood from each other's lips.

"Disgusting, are they not?" Alexandru said softly. "At least you have the consolation that you were ignorant of your lover's true nature. I knew Catrinca was a horror."

"Who is that I hear whispering? Come forward!" Catrinca Dinu's voice was shrill and arrogant.

Nadia squared her shoulders.

-

An hour later, she stood beside Charlie's bed, drinking in the scent of shampoo and soap and warm, masculine skin. He smelled so clean. The scene with Catrinca and Marko left her feeling polluted; she'd stood outside the cottage for long minutes, wishing the blowing snow could numb her raw emotions.

Nadia sat on the edge of the mattress and called Charlie's name. He didn't hear: her voice was only a breath of sound. She placed a hand on his shoulder.

Slowly, his eyes opened. He smiled. "Is this a dream?"

Alexandru's words echoed in her mind.

You think and feel. That is the truest measure of life. Embrace it.

Nadia bent to kiss Charlie.

-

A/N: Although she's a vampire and not a fairy, :D, I've used the work of Nene Thomas as inspiration for Nadia: two paintings in particular this chapter, Dark Skies and Queen of Owls. Anyone interested can to nenethomas(dot com) and see the dresses for themselves. In writing Alexandru, I was reminded of a character named Wesley (patterned after a certain Dread Pirate Roberts), and a character named Evan (son of a Death Eater, Tonks' ex-fiancé, ruthless, but with redeeming qualities.) Marko's the vampire jerk who thinks he's all that and a goblet of blood.

Vampire lore varies widely, but if magic animates and produces the body fluids necessary for the seduction of prey or lovers, it can bring a blush to a cheek and tears to the eyes, too. On a random note, while at the same time "hearing" a string quartet at the Gathering, I had the chorus of Rob Zombie's Living Dead Girl playing in my head. Classic, yet alternative, that's vampires for you.