#vampire elves

It was as if time simply stopped existing in the pervasive shadow of the tall trees that stood motionless around her, like malevolent sentinels.

As she narrowed her eyes in distrust and confusion, her gaze was inexorably drawn to a narrow path winding through the impenetrable obscurity ahead; it was akin to a faint ray of light cutting through a menacing labyrinth and her body moved towards it before her mind could even clear completely.

Weary and more than just a little scared, she pressed on tirelessly, her eyes glued to the forest floor – littered with dead leaves and tiny twigs – until she suddenly could feel the silver moonlight pour over her head like a shower of light.

She had no idea where she was and how she had managed to stray so far from the route she had mapped out in her head prior to her departure; ever vigilant, Aggie had of course heard tales of the man-eating forest she’d have to pass by and had resolved not to set foot into it if she could help it.

“Don’t even look at it,” the elderly aunt she had visited had warned her, “strange things happen within that wood!”

Starting early and making good time, Aggie had been confident that she’d reach the small village on the edge of the vast woodlands before nightfall, but somehow, she must have gotten turned around.

It was only then, after musing pointlessly about her uneventful and tiring day, that she realised that she had been walking for many an hour and that she had reached a clearing, bathing in a pearlescent shimmer that told her that it was the dead of night and she was no closer to finding her way back than before.

At the far end of the slightly oblong space, the boughs of the old trees seemed to tangle into a sort of natural awning that plunged the ground beneath them into inky blackness.

For a moment, she thought she heard the echoes of a song and the hint of woodsmoke caress her tired senses and – once again – she was set in motion by forces beyond her own reckoning.

Not long after, she reached a stair braided out of old, creaking roots that led ever downward.

Every fibre of her being objected to being drawn under the earth never to surface again, but a leaden fatigue descended upon her now and the idea of finding shelter for the night became so overwhelmingly appealing that she ventured on.

As soon as her nimble right foot touched solid earth again, lights flared up as if her mere presence had ignited the torches lining a high corridor that seemed to stretch on endlessly.

“No,” she mumbled, but – even to her own ears – her voice sounded feeble and muffled by the ambient silence that had a positively physical weight to it as it settled on her shivering frame.

Aggie knew not if it was her weariness or a trick of the light, but the corridor seemed to contract and shorten before her very eyes; she now could make out an intricately carved and richly decorated double door and – despite her better knowledge – she hastened towards it.

As if they had sensed her approach, the doors swung open noiselessly.

Stumbling once more, Aggie found herself in a dimly lit room – cavernous and huge – that was as devoid of life or movement as the rest of this accursed forest.

“Hello?” she called tentatively and shrank back as she caught a movement ahead.

Stepping into a pale ray of light falling through an opening in the dark ceiling that seemed comprised of roots and packed earth, the most marvellous creature she had ever beheld extended his arms as if in welcome.

“Good evening,” the being said in a voice that reminded her of the terrible wrath of an unleashed river, “little one. I am Thranduil, Lord of these Halls.”

Thranduil, Aggie thought with a shiver of apprehension, was as white as if someone had poured pure starlight into the approximate shape of a man; his long, gleaming hair flowed like water down broad shoulders and his piercing eyes shone with a cold light. 

From this distance, everything about him seemed unnaturally pale; he looked colourless as if someone had drained him of all the usual signs and tokens of life and there was something distinctly frightening about the stiff elegance of his movements that gave the impression that he was holding his breath to avoid moving so swiftly that he’d blur like lightning cutting through the darkness.

“You look tired,” he went on when she didn’t reply, “allow me to offer a humble repast to a very welcome traveller.”

Aggie felt herself nod – amazed and entranced – and step forward at his discreet beckoning motion. 

Servants materialised out of the shadows, laying out a marvellous feast on a low table that she had not seen upon entering the ever-shifting room. Candles were brought in and lit by eager hands, but Aggie’s mind was cloaked in an obscuring fog.

“Come now,” Thranduil urged, “and tell me of the world outside.” The way his eyes – grey as an overcast sky and yet iridescent with reds and violets – flitted over the bare skin of her wrists and throat made her flinch, but she was overcome with a ravenous hunger such as she had never known before all of a sudden.

Everything about this place terrified her and yet, she could not muster either the courage or the will to stand and leave.

Moreover, Thranduil was compelling in his motionless, rapt attentiveness so she told him more about herself, her movements, her family, and her village than was rationally advisable.

An orphan, an unmarried woman, lost and alone in a strange forest, she all but screamed her own vulnerability at him.

“Indeed,” he purred, leaning forward eagerly. “You will make a great addition to my coven. If you would be so good as to follow me to my rooms; I have some truly excellent wine set aside for situations like this one.”

“Will I die?” Aggie asked brazenly, struggling against the supernatural sense of calm and comfort radiating from the sharply smiling creature. If these were her last moments of motion, sound, and colour, she would embrace the frantic beating of her heart and savour every second of blood-curdling fear if that was all that was left to her.

“Die?” Thranduil laughed, revealing sharp teeth that glittered like blades in the flickering candlelight, “oh no! Everything but that. I will make you mine. I will steal you.”

“Steal me?” Aggie echoed in a hollow voice; she was nobody’s property and she had made that quite clear, or at least she thought that she had.

“You’re one of theirs,” Thranduil smirked, “and I will poach you, if only to see which one of those terribly distasteful monsters they’ll send to retrieve such a treasure.”

Curiosity now drove Aggie to follow him; not only was she almost certain that he was some unholy demon – frozen in time forevermore – but she had apparently been rubbing elbows with his kind before. 

She had a good idea who, in her immediate vicinity, could be meant by his cryptic words and she was desperate to find out if she was right.

So, that was the first chapter...Stay tuned to see how this goes on!

-> Chapter 2

Fingon did not believe in such things; if one was to ask him, people were merely bored and that was why they came up with that kind of ridiculous story. These were only dark trees having grown wild for too long so that their boughs were hopelessly entangled; there was nothing inherently sinister or threatening about them.

Brave as he was, he was not daunted by the night and its wavering shadows either even though he had to concede that it might have been imprudent to traverse an unknown and wild forest without the bright, merciful light of day to guide him along the paths that now all seemed hidden and shifting under the bleak gleam of the moon.

A flash of flame shot past him and just as he turned his head to catch a better glimpse at the fiery ball that had passed his peripheral field of vision, his exhausted horse reared up and threw him. Usually, he was an excellent rider, but he had been so distracted by the potential fire that he had not been bracing for the eventual fall and consequently, he tumbled off the back of his trusty steed in a tangle of flailing limbs.

His head smashed into an unfortunately placed rock and his vision went white for a few moments; when he blinked frantically to regain control over his mind though, an angel was bent over him in visible worry.

Long, fiery red hair – falling in soft waves around the most gorgeous face Fingon had ever beheld – bracketed an otherworldly glow such as he had never seen before.

He was also incredibly tall, Fingon realised in a daze, and his bright grey eyes kept returning to the spot where the sharp edges of the rock had torn the skin as if inexorably attracted by the warm blood seeping into the fertile earth beneath him.

Fingon made to speak but the pained neighing of his horse made the strange apparition whip around at such a speed that he seemed to blur before Fingon’s burning eyes; before the injured man could so much as sit up to lift a hand, the angel had vanished and the noble steed had relapsed into silence.

It took a few moments, but – at long last – Fingon scrambled back to his feet and groaned as the world started spinning madly around him. He had hit his head harder than he had surmised and the probing fingers he brushed along the pulsating ache at his temple came away blood-stained.

He knew not how long he had stood there, desperately embracing a young tree to avoid falling back to the ground but – when a young woman collided with his immobile form – the moon had already passed its zenith in the sky.

“Ey!” he called out, transferring his iron grip from the trunk to her shivering body. “Where do you come from?” “Don’t ask, you don’t want to know,” she replied breathlessly and threw a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Come away from here, it’s not safe.”

“I was thrown by my horse and now I can’t find it,” he babbled, looking down into her frantic eyes and frowning in confusion. “I am Fingon by the way.”

“Agnes, Aggie if you want,” she panted and started to tug him along, but his staggering feet kept getting entangled in the undergrowth and stray roots. “Your horse is dead and gone, believe me! You’re bleeding!”

Her voice was so shrill and panicked that he touched the wound again; the sickly trickle had already slowed and lessened and he offered her a warm, encouraging  smile.

“Are you afraid of blood? I am so sorry; it’s nothing though, don’t worry.”

For a second, Aggie just stared at him before barking out a short salvo of derisive laughter. “Afraid…me…no,” she wheezed and kept pulling. “Come now; the night is waning fast and we have to find shelter until the sun comes up.” “Did you see the angel?” he asked as he tried to keep up with the scrabbling frenzy of her tiny feet. “I saw an angel, just after I was thrown off the horse.”

Again, she gave a bitter laugh that was hacked off at the end as if she had simply bitten down on it and choked it.

“You saw no such thing, you bloody fool,” she hissed, looking back over his shoulder as she turned to face him and lead him away walking backwards. “If you don’t want to share your horse’s fate, I’d urge you to save your breath and start running. There are no angels in this wood tonight. Only death.”

She shivered, evidently overcome with a traumatic memory, and drove Fingon on even more insistently.

“You’re not from here, are you? Otherwise, you’d know that one does not bring dumb beasts into this forest,” she ground out between gritted teeth as she steered him towards a cave in a small rocky formation at the end of a steep incline.

“No, I was just passing through,” Fingon admitted. “I am expected at home by my father and my future bride.”

“Oh wonderful,” she sneered, “if you want to see your beloved ever again, you’d better hasten!”

“She’s not my beloved and I’ve never seen her before,” Fingon, still somewhat foggy-brained, mumbled. “I was to meet her tonight but…”

“Yes, yes,” Aggie groaned, “your horse was startled, you fell, and then you just stood there hugging a tree.”

“Also, I’ve seen the most incredibly beautiful creature. Are you sure that he was not an angel? How can you know?”

They had almost made it to the mouth of the cave now; Aggie had switched their positions again and was now shoving Fingon up the hill as if he was but a cart stuck in the mud.

“He was bent over me when I came to,” Fingon went on dreamily, “but then my horse neighed in the distance and – in a flash – he was gone.”

This gave Agnes pause.

“You were bleeding then? And he just…Never mind. You’ve been extremely lucky!” she muttered and sighed deeply as they entered the cold, clammy hole in the rock wall. “We’ll stay here until the sun comes up.”

“What are we hiding from?” Fingon asked drowsily; the trek to their sanctuary had jolted him and he was bleeding profusely once more.

Agnes just shook her head and motioned at a heap of dead leaves and moss in one corner. “Lay down and rest. We might get you to your bride yet.”

Somehow, Fingon instinctively knew that she did not truly believe in her own words, but his head was pounding painfully now and all he wanted was to close his eyes and visualise that worried, stern face he had glimpsed earlier once more.

He was dimly aware that the strange woman by his side was afraid of something, but he had the instinctive, unshakeable impression that she was not worried about herself. Maybe, he thought languorously, it was she who was the danger and he’d die where he lay.

At least he wouldn’t have to face his father’s disappointment; Fingon was not afraid of death, he was merely scared of not having lived as well, as earnestly, and as fully as he might have.

When he awoke once more, it was to a low, slurping sound.

His eyes felt as if they were filled with sand, but he forced them open only to see Agnes – pale and weeping – sitting propped up against the cave wall. A tall, silver-haired creature was cradled in her arms and its blood-smeared mouth was sucking eagerly at a spot just beneath her collarbone.

“Aggie,” he cried out in alarm. Immediately, the being spun around, eyes ablaze with a strange, cold light, and bared its teeth at him.

“It’s fine, Fingon,” she slurred weakly. “I’d explain, but my mind is swimming and my tongue is heavy. Everything is all right though, worry not!”

Pushing himself up on his wobbly arms, Fingon discovered that the mysterious, flame-haired angel he had seen earlier was crouching only a stone’s throw away from him; the ethereal being looked badly beaten up though and its lids kept fluttering as if it was struggling to keep its eyes open.

“There,” Fingon cried, “that is the angel I have told you about.”

The creature having latched on to Aggie’s skin again gave a wry chuckle at his enthusiastic cry.

“I know,” Aggie whispered, “but that is no angel.” “What is wrong with him?” Fingon asked, feeling his pulse beat against his injured temple like a hammer; already, he felt weak and disoriented once more.

“No time to explain,” Aggie replied softly and then, tilting her head down to the entity in her lap, she hissed: “I invoke your debt to me, Thranduil. When you carry me out of here, we shall take them with us. The man is injured and needs rest and I won’t see my Master’s son burned to a heap of ashes come morning. I buy your strength with my blood. You owe me this much.”

Fingon didn’t hear the reply as blessed oblivion fell over his mind once more.

They are my blorbos and I will smuggle them into everything...I am sorry...

So...small intermezzo from the other side lol

Lots of love

-> Chapter 7

Generally, the townspeople were rather forgiving when it came to their young daughters and sons being called into the mansion, never to return to the familial fold. Not all of them were dead, of course, but those who had survived their arrival in the household had long outlived their own parents and siblings and were changed beyond recognition.

It was practical and efficient to wait until Agnes – the maiden he had chosen after seeing her strolling along the forest edge one evening – would not leave behind any witnesses who could get it into their heads to come looking for her.

“I’ll go get her then,” he grumbled, pushing aside his annoying older brother. No doubt, Celegorm had informed the others before telling him and the pressure to dutifully reel in the young woman was on.

Impatience and a gnawing sense of foreboding plagued him the whole day as he glared at the walls, waiting for the merciless sun to go down so he could sneak down into the village and remind Agnes of the promise her mother had made.

When he arrived at the deserted cottage though, the whole extent of his own foolishness hit him like a slap in the face. She was gone.

“Looking for the girl?” an old, toothless crone asked without meeting his cold eye. “She’s gone to visit an aunt after her mother died. Dear Aggie was expected back yesterday, but she’s never arrived.”

“How do you know?” Caranthir hissed sharply; the dull grey of dusk was quickly darkening into shades of blue and black and he should have been able to breathe better.

“She’s sent a message with one of the travelling merchants,” the woman informed him in a clipped tone, evidently ill at ease to be addressing one of the fine folks who were seldom seen in their simple, rustic village. “I hope she’s not been turned around in that accursed forest. Nobody will go in there to go look for her and it is said that horses and other beasts lose their nerve under those evil trees.”

Spinning around too fast for her dim eyes to follow – a dangerously careless action – Caranthir pulled back his clawed hands at the last moment before he could strangle the crone where she stood. “Worry not,” he purred in a frighteningly smooth voice, “if she’s in the forest, we shall search and find her.”

Without acknowledging her trembling words of gratitude, he turned on his heels and headed back home.

“Why the long face?” Curufin sat on the wide stairs, fiddling with something at a dizzying speed. “Where is the girl?”

“She’s missing,” Caranthir growled. “One of the townswomen thinks she might have lost her way in the forest.”

At that, his brother looked up sharply and – setting down whatever it had been he had been deconstructing and putting back together – he inserted his fingers into the corners of his mouth and gave a sharp whistle.

“I doubt that you’d send Celegorm after her,” Curufin explained with a knowing smile before turning to their youngest brothers – infamous twins and apt hunters – to task them with finding any traces of the misplaced quarry.

“What is the matter?” Maedhros strolled into the foyer, the very picture of self-possessed calm which made Caranthir loathe him intensely.

“Moryo has lost that girl from the village he had his eye on,” Curufin tattled carelessly. “The twins will see what they can find out. In the meantime, what’s for dinner?”

“Not good,” Amrod whispered as they stepped out onto a bright clearing; the night was fading fast now, and they needed to get back to the safety of their mansion if they didn’t want to risk spending the whole day in some nearby caves without ascertaining first that there would be no sunlight filtering through crevices in the rock in the most uncomfortable patterns.

“If he has her,” Amras agreed, “then we have a serious problem on our hands.”

They exchanged a long look as they crept a bit closer to the hidden entrance to the halls of the Woodland King; something in the air told them that their quarry was alive yet and the fact that she was just beyond their reach filled them with frustration and maddening impatience.

Nonetheless, time was running out and so were their options at the given moment.

“That’s beyond our competencies.” They shrugged in perfect synchronicity; conflicts with other covens were for their older brothers to deal with and they would not even try to convince the master of this enchanted realm to hand over the prey of another vampire just because his brothers said so.

“Moryo will be so terribly cross though, no matter what he actually wants her for. He can be stubborn like that!” It didn’t matter who had voiced their shared thought or if it had been spoken aloud at all, they both knew that they’d be the bearers of dark and distressing news.

Flitting homewards, they didn’t spare a single glance backwards; the girl was not theirs to chase nor secure and thus, they had no qualms about leaving her to her fate deep within the bowels of an underground kingdom in which they’d find no sanctuary from the burning day.

They arrived just in the nick of time to find their brothers assembled, sated and yet tense, in the gloomy salon of their mansion, evidently awaiting their return and their assessment of the situation.

“Thranduil,” Maglor mused quietly as soon as they had finished their report, “interesting! I wonder what he wants with that insipid, little creature.”

“Defying us,” Celegorm spat; he had been locked in for too long and was spoiling for a fight. “He is disrespecting our family and our claims.”

Immediately, loud and belligerent discussions broke out that were cut off abruptly by Maedhros lifting his hands – tense palms outwards – and clearing his throat a few times.

“Brother,” he then asked Caranthir, “do you insist upon your claim? If so, I shall go and try to reason with Thranduil. No doubt, he has been aware or was made aware of our claim on this woman’s blood and life. It would be callous and outright treasonous to deny our rights.”

Gratitude flooded Caranthir’s face in a hot flush as he nodded gravely; he could not explain to the others what he had seen and still saw in young Agnes but he wanted her for his own. Maybe, it had been her melodious chuckle – surprised but exempt from terror – upon seeing him lurking in the shadows.

There was a fearlessness in her calm, acquiescent demeanour that had intrigued him and – if he was completely honest – her headlong flight only made her more interesting to him. What had she thought she’d achieve?

“So be it then,” Maedhros sighed. “I shall go and see if I can get her back. You stay here and keep out of trouble while I am away!”

Another long day of pacing and waiting was upon them during which Maedhros locked himself in the library to discuss his battle plan with Maglor; while his oldest brother was the most diplomatic, Caranthir could not deny that Maglor was probably the most charming and had a vast array of rhetorical skills that made people believe that they were acting in their own best interest when it was really he who was leading the dance.

Despite being truly thankful, Caranthir also resented the fact that he was not consulted on the matter; Agnes was his prey after all, but he was sent away like an unruly child who had made a mess of things. He hated the quiet suspicion that this was actually the case; it hurt his pride to know that his older brothers would have to intervene on his behalf, but he also had to admit that he would not have been able to approach this matter with the delicate tact that undoubtedly would be needed if they didn’t want to cause another nocturnal war to break out.

“Nelyo will get her back,” Celegorm grinned; it was a sharp, cruel smile that didn’t even try to dissimulate the unspoken threat of what he’d do if their elders were to fail in their quest.

Caranthir found himself hoping fervently, childishly, desperately that, indeed, Maedhros would succeed for Curufin had been right when insinuating that Caranthir didn’t deem his chosen prey safe within the merciless clutches of Celegorm the hunter.

“I am almost hurt I was not asked to retrieve her,” Celegorm quipped as if reading the thoughts behind Caranthir’s stern brow. “I am the one with the hound after all.”

“We know where she is,” Caranthir shot back acidly. “There is no need for tracking anymore. We just need to get her back. I just need to get her back.”

So, that was a tiny insight into the motivations and sorrows of the other side.

Lots of love from me <3

-> Chapter 5