Ashley

Before I could elaborate further of this vision, Xiao Ru’s fluffy ears, which had been drooped in sympathy, suddenly pricked up. Her head turned briskly over her shoulder, her gaze fixed upon something down the riverbank. She raised a hand and pointed.

Following her gesture, my own eyes widened in disbelief. There, not twenty paces from us, stood a figure I knew with a certainty that defied all reason. A young woman with hair the colour of white silver knelt by the water's edge, cupping the black liquid in her hands and rinsing her mouth with a frantic, desperate energy, as if to scour away some foul taste. It was the very girl from my vision.

Xiao Ru turned back to me, her expression innocent. "Is it her?"

My mouth fell open. The phantasm of my delirium, the tormenting vision from that other, indigo world, was now made flesh and blood before me. Truly, what were the odds?

In that same instant, the white-haired girl seemed to become aware of our presence. Her head snapped up, the dark water dripping from her chin, and her eyes, wide with a wild, cornered look, fixed upon us. A look of bewilderment, of pure, animal panic, contorted her features. She fumbled to rinse her mouth one last time before lurching to her feet with a shocking lack of grace.

She turned to flee into the oppressive twilight of the forest, but in her blind haste, her flight was immediately and ignominiously arrested. She did not so much run as lurch directly into the trunk of a colossal, dark-barked tree. There was a dull, sickening impact, and she collapsed in a heap at its roots, as a line of ink washed away by a sudden spill of water. A silence fell once more, broken only by the gentle flow of the nearby river.

Xiao Ru and I exchanged a look of shared bewilderment before we began a slow and cautious approach, coming to stand over the fallen creature. After a moment of stillness, her eyes fluttered open. They fixed upon us, and in an instant, a violent, convulsive start seized her. She scrambled backward with a crab-like shuffle until her back was pressed hard against the rough bark of the tree, a tremor shaking her whole frame.

Her eyes, broad with a wild terror, darted between us before she raised a trembling finger and pointed toward the river. Xiao Ru, with her artless curiosity, immediately turned her head to follow the trick.

I, however, remained unmoved. The ploy was so childish, so transparent in its desperation, that it inspired in me a weary sense of the absurd. It struck me then that this creature, this supposed oupire of terrible power, was likely no older than myself, yet she behaved with the panicked foolishness of a cornered child…

Seeing her ruse had failed to sway me, the girl gave a small, defeated whimper and covered her face with her arms, as if to hide from our sight. A long sigh escaped my lips, a breath carrying upon it the weight of my own recent terror and a newfound, unwelcome pity. And against all reason, I extended my hand toward her as a simple token of peace.

For a long and silent moment, the girl did not move. Then, as if summoned against her will, a pale hand, as cold as marble on a n early winter morning, emerged from behind the shield of her arms. It met my own with a touch so cautious and reluctant it was barely a touch at all.

I applied a gentle but firm pressure, and with great hesitation, she allowed me to guide her forward, away from the superficial security of the tree, as one might lead a frightened fawn from a thicket.

By this time, Xiao Ru had turned back from her fruitless survey of the river, and upon seeing us thus, a smile of brilliant and uncomplicated delight broke across her face. The white-haired girl, however, only flinched at the sight of such cheer, her frame still rigid.

It was I who broke the silence that had settled between the three of us. I summoned what little strength I had left to my features and produced a faint, weary approximation of a smile. "I am Mei-Ling," I said, my voice soft. "What are you called?"

The little vampire—for I could think of her as nothing else despite our similar statures—paused, her wild gaze shifting between myself and Xiao Ru. I saw her take a great, shuddering breath, as if to summon some reservoir of courage from deep within her frail-looking form. A flicker of resolve, however fleeting, passed across her features.

She drew herself up to her full, though unimposing, height. "I am," she declared, the words coming out in a sudden, breathless rush, "the great and powerful... Ashley!"

Having delivered this pronouncement, she immediately squeezed her eyes shut and turned her head away, as if unable to bear witness to our reception of this rather startling claim. The name, so common and so mundane in the Western world, seemed absurd when attached to such a title and such a creature. I am certain a look of profound incredulity must have been plain upon my face, for the contrast between her grandiose pronouncement and her pitiable, terrified state was a thing so tragically discordant it bordered upon the insane.

I gave a slow shake of my head, as if to clear the fog of unreality that had so thoroughly enveloped me, and let out a long, weary sigh. For a moment, I was burdened beyond my capacity. My own incredulity gave way to a grim and singular purpose. If this strange, frightened creature held the key to my damnation—and perhaps my salvation—then I must pursue it, regardless of the madness of the circumstance.

My voice, when I spoke, was low and devoid of accusation, though the question I posed was of the gravest possible import.

"Ashley," I said, the name still feeling strange upon my lips. "Was it you? Were you the one who bit me?"

At my words, the girl flinched as if I had struck her. Slowly, hesitantly, she lowered her arms, her pale, snow-haired head rising to meet my gaze. Her face was a mask of fresh apprehension, her wild eyes now filled with a dawning and terrible understanding of my meaning.

She gave a painful swallow, her throat working, and then offered a small, miserable nod of assent. Instantly, she seemed to shrink into herself, her arms rising once more to shield her head as if anticipating a blow.

A hot, furious energy surged through me, a desire to rage at this pathetic creature who had so casually destroyed my life. My mouth opened, prepared to unleash a torrent of accusation and despair.

And yet, no sound came forth. For in that instant, my anger was utterly extinguished by the cute expression on her face. The sheer ridiculousness of my predicament—a vampire detective, interrogating her own fumbling, terrified sire—overwhelmed all other emotion.

My gaze, as if acting of its own accord, drifted from her frightened face to her attire. I perceived for the first time a blouse of some fine, white silk, with a profusion of frills at the collar and cuffs, worn beneath a short cape of black velvet. The cape was fastened at her throat with a simple, almost childish, ribbon of cherry satin.

And in that moment of unreality, the most bizarre and inconsequential thought took root in my mind: that my own attire—the simple shirt and practical trousers of my former life—was terribly and hopelessly out of place. I was conscious, with a sudden and mortifying clarity, of being utterly out of style. If I had blushed, neither knew.

The strange and foolish thought about my attire dissolved as quickly as it had formed, like a ripple upon dark water. I lowered my hands, the fire of my anger now a distant and useless ember. All that remained was a hollow exhaustion, a weariness that seemed to settle in my very bones’ marrow.

I looked at the cowering creature before me, this architect of my ruin, and felt not rage, but a vast and empty sorrow. My voice, when I finally spoke, was not that of an officer of the law, but of one lost girl to another.

"Why did you bite me, Ashley?"

The question seemed to hang in the air between us, quiet and terrible. The snow-haired girl, who had been cowering in anticipation of my wrath, slowly, cautiously, lowered her arms. Her wild eyes, now brimming with unshed tears, were filled with a look of such pitiable melancholy guilt that I almost wished I had not asked.

A great sob shuddered through her. "I was... so hungry," she stammered, the words choked with self-pity. "I had not fed for a week, perhaps longer. I was weak, and you were simply... there."

Her expression then shifted, her sorrow twisting into a look of intense indignation. "But your blood..." she said, her voice rising with a strange, petulant energy. "It was foul! In all my years, I have never tasted its like. A bitter, acrid taste, with an undercurrent of something else… something sour and wrong! What manner of creature are you?" she demanded, her fear momentarily forgotten in her bizarre, culinary grievance. "Your vitae… it is not the blood of a demon!"

I could only stare, my own vast tragedy momentarily eclipsed by the sheer, stunning effrontery of her complaint. She had made me a monster, and now she was lodging a grievance as to the quality of the vintage.

It was Xiao Ru who broke the ensuing silence, her voice soft and contemplative. "Perhaps," she said, her eyes shifting from Ashley to myself, "that is the very reason the change took hold."

Both Ashley and I looked to her.

"She did not drink enough to either satiate or kill you," the fox-girl continued, her reasoning as simple and terrible as a child's nursery rhyme. "And your blood... being of such a strange nature then... perhaps that allowed the reproduction, where a lesser mortal might have simply perished."

I let out a long, weary sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose, my eyes squeezed shut against the impossible scene. "Where I’m from," I found myself murmuring, more to myself than to them, "our vampires do not glide so elegantly. They hop."

When I opened my eyes after a moment's rubbing, it was to find both of them staring at me with a silent, synchronized look of uncomprehending curiosity. I cleared my throat, a fresh wave of foolishness washing over me. Putting aside this fresh feeling of unease, I fixed my gaze on the fox-girl. "Where am I? What is this place?"

Xiao Ru blinked slowly, her expression nearly vacant with the simplicity of the answer. "You are in the Makai," she said, her tone so matter-of-fact as to be utterly chilling.

The name was a porcelain rose blooming in my stomach, its petals edged with frost. "The Makai?" I repeated, my voice a strained whisper. As in... the Demon World, from the old esoteric texts? I could hardly believe it real.

"And that city..." I pressed on, my mind reeling. "That place of indigo bricks where I was bitten?"

It was Ashley who responded, her voice flat and laced with a faint, weary irritation. "That," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, "was the sewer system."

Sewer? My mind recoiled from the word, struggling to reconcile it with the memory of colossal statuary and polished mosaic floors. Xiao Ru looked utterly baffled, her brow furrowed in confusion as she turned to me and then back to Ashley. "The sewer?" she asked. "But why would you ever be in the sewer?"

A dark flush crept up Ashley’s pale neck. "I... have no other place to go," she confessed, her voice barely audible. "The sewers are my only shelter."

At this, Xiao Ru let out a gasp of horrified sympathy and rushed to her side. She took the vampire’s hands in her own, her head nodding with a sudden, passionate resolve. "That will not do!" she declared. "I shall find you a proper home! I swear it!"

Tears welled in Ashley’s eyes. "R-really?" she whispered. The two of them were then overcome by a sudden, overwrought display of shared sentiment, their hands clasped, their eyes brimming with unshed tears. I turned away from the sight and leaned my head back against the rough bark of the tree. The words ‘a place to stay’ echoed in the lonely chambers of my own heart, and a hopeless longing for my own home, a world away, washed over me.

A dreadful speculation took hold of my mind, and I began to wonder what length of time would pass before I was to be cast out from my modest lodgings, my debts having gone unanswered. I pictured my meager possessions, those few articles that constituted the whole of my worldly effects, consigned to the indifferent street. And what of my family? Would any notice be taken of my absence, or would my disappearance pass as a matter of no consequence, unmourned and unremarked? Was there any path, I wondered in my despair, that might yet lead me back to the life I had known, or was I to be forever an exile from my own history?

After some moments, they seemed to notice my crestfallen silence. "What is it, Mei-Ling?" Xiao Ru asked, her voice soft with concern.

I sighed and attempted a smile, but I knew the effort was a hollow one. "I am not from the Makai," I said quietly. "Indeed, where I come from, I do not believe such a place was ever thought to exist."

Xiao Ru gasped, her eyes radiating with pure, uncomprehending shock. "A place... beyond the Makai?" she breathed, as if I had uttered the most ridiculous of blasphemies.

I tilted my head, confused by the strength of her reaction. "Why do you look at me so?"

It was Ashley who answered, her voice having regained a measure of its earlier, fragile authority. "Do you not understand?" she asked, a look of commiseration now directed at me. "The Makai is all. It is the infinite. There can be no ‘outside’ of infinity." She paused, considering me as one might a poor, delirious madwoman. "Perhaps," she hypothesized, "your home is simply a land so very far removed from the capital that its people have long ago forgotten they live within the great and endless world."

It was a strange and childlike cosmology, this notion of an infinite world. The world I knew, for all its vastness, was a bounded and measurable thing, a small globe in a vast and empty cosmos. I had not the strength, nor indeed the will, to begin to explain.

"You may be right," I conceded, my voice heavy with a resignation that went deeper than mere weariness. "But even so, the hope of my returning is a near impossibility, most especially..." I hesitated, the word still a poisoned thing on my tongue, "...as a vampire."

At this, Ashley’s head lowered in a fresh wave of shame, and she cast a sorrowful look toward Xiao Ru. "But how did you come to be so far from your home?" the fox-girl asked softly.

"I fell," I said, the summary a terse retelling. "Through a circle of magic, made by wicked people."

A heavy silence fell between us. It was Xiao Ru who broke it, her expression one of so much gentle sympathy it was almost painful to behold. "Then we shall find you a home here," she said, her voice a soft and fervent vow. "Wherever you should wish it to be. No matter what." She took my hands in hers then, just as she had done with Ashley, her warm, firm grasp a sudden and startling comfort.

My gaze fell to our joined hands, and I was struck by the impossible softness of her skin, the delicacy of her touch. A great and unfamiliar heat rose to my face, and my heart, which I had thought a dead and frozen thing, began to pulse enough to feel… strange at were for a vampire… "Th-thank you," I stuttered, the words a fractured whisper, and quickly looked away, my face steaming in the cool air.

Xiao Ru let out a bright, pleased hum. "Mmm! Mmm! Then it is settled!" she declared, her cheerful energy returning in full force. "First, we find Ashley a warm place to sleep, and then I shall lead you on a grand tour of the capital! You must see it, since you are so unfamiliar with the world!"

It was Ashley who spoke next, her voice a hesitant murmur as she gave a timid pluck at Xiao Ru’s wide, white sleeve. "Forgive me," she ventured, "but would it not be more practical to conduct the tour of the capital first? In so doing, we might discover a suitable lodging along the way."

Xiao Ru’s bushy ears flattened for a moment in surprise, before she let out a bright, unbothered laugh. "You are quite right!" she declared, nodding with her usual vigor. "That is a much better plan! How clever of you, Ashley!"

My own voice cut through their cheerful planning, a note of weary pragmatism. "And this capital," I asked, "how far is it from here?"

Xiao Ru turned to me, her smile unwavering. "It is not far at all," she answered, with a vague and twinkly wave of her hand. "It lies just beyond the borders of this forest."

Her answer, meant to be reassuring, offered little comfort, for the forest itself seemed a place of considerable and unknown dimension.

A faint, involuntary smile touched my lips, a brief and fragile respite from the storm of my own despair. There was an innocence to her optimism that was refreshing at the very least. "And where is it that you live, Xiao Ru?" I asked, my voice softer than I intended.

"I have an apartment nearby, within the capital city," she answered with a simple shrug, "but I also keep a den at the village for when my duties require it."

At the mention of the capital, Ashley, who had been watching us with a shy sort of wonder, was overcome with a sudden, almost manic burst of glee. She sauntered forward, swinging her arms with a newfound freedom. "Off to the Demon City we go!" she declared with a gleeful, theatrical flourish.

The word—Demon—struck me, and I staggered as if my own skeleton had been instantly and improperly reassembled within my flesh. The small smile vanished from my lips as if it had never been. An icy sweat broke out upon my brow, and my mouth was suddenly as dry as dust, for the word dispelled all childish fantasy and reminded me with brutal clarity exactly where I was. What then, was a demon…? A city of demons…

Xiao Ru, seemingly oblivious to my renewed terror, took the lead, her foxy tail held high. Ashley fell into step beside her, her earlier fear now replaced by a hopeful energy. I, having no other choice, began to follow, a silent a pilgrim on the road to a city of devils.