cleanup call.

[Lukas] It's quite late at night when Lukas gets the text, but he's always been something of a night owl. A minute later Danicka gets a return text:

Will take care of it.

Maybe twenty, thirty minutes later, Danicka receives a call. Her iPhone announces it's Lukáš Kvasnička. When she picks up, she can hear a steady rush in the background. He's driving.

"I cleaned it up." He sounds ... surprisingly calm. "What happened?"

[Danicka] She's at home by then. She's been at home for awhile. It was late enough when she issued the first text to her 'boyfriend', a little later still when she heard back. It's now late enough that her roommate has gone to bed, because he works in the morning. He's freaking out. Oprah's quitting. He can't quite get over it. Since he works for her show, especially.

"Dog ran at us. Lonna Larson, Alexander Vaughn, and Genevre were all there. After we killed it, a couple of leeches showed up. We killed them, too."

[Lukas] There's a silence; she can't see his face, so she has little enough clue as to what he's thinking. Then, "Did anyone die?"

[Danicka] It's a fair question. But there's a tense pause anyway. "That would have been the first thing I told you, if someone had." Another beat: "Genevre took Lonna to the Brotherhood for more healing. But no one died."

[Lukas] "Okay." Another pause. "You're all right? Just ... tired?"

[Danicka] She takes a deep breath. "I am. I didn't get injured." There's a long pause. "I only had one bullet left at the end. And it was one of those that... just turns to shadow?" He hears a rustle, too, the brush of her hair across the mic. "I was scared."

She says this quietly. Like a secret.

[Lukas] More than any other Tribe except perhaps the Silent Striders, Shadow Lords have a long and bloody history with the thirsty undead. Several of Lukas's ancestors were renowned not for their honor or wisdom amongst the nation, not for their savagery and cunning against the Wyrm, but for their battles against the ancient bloodsuckers of the Carpathians. More than a few died at the hands of ghouls armed with silver; were hunted down shrieking human mobs roused by vampire puppetmasters.

In the oldest strongholds of his extended family, there are rooms deep underground and carefully protected from sun and heat; vaults containing the bleached and pitted bones of destroyed vampires.

Lukas doesn't tell Danicka she should bring more than one clip. She knows that already. He doesn't tell her not to be scared; that would be a lie.

What he says, instead:

"When I was sixteen, the Stark Falls Sept received word that a bloodsucker was going to be passing through our protectorate under cover of night. Promised Rain's pack was recruited to kill it. He brought me along. It was my first battle against a leech.

"There was only one vampire. He was quite old, very powerful; a shadowtwister. He had many human servants armed with guns, but Promised Rain is cunning and swift. We took them out without trouble. But when we went to destroy the leech, he rose out of his vehicle in a form that was ... shadow and terror. I looked at it and my courage broke. I ran. When I woke up I was in a ditch miles away.

"When I slunk back to the Sept, Promised Rain's packmate was dead. Kristianna Merciful-Strike was her name."

A pause; then:

"I'm glad you're all right."

[Danicka] She could tell him now about her own history with vampires, not stories she knows of from the Musil or Dvorak lines -- she doesn't, and no one has ever tried to tell her what she does not know about her family's lineage, the heroes and Betas she comes from. Truth be told, Danicka knows very little about her family, about her mother's and her brother's packs.

When Lukas was sixteen, she was nearing the end of her high school tenure. They're close in age, but Anezka and Danicka are closer. It's not enough to make any difference, that Danicka's a bit older. It might not matter if the difference were ten years.

She listens. She could tell him things now, unload secrets of her history that would terrify and maybe even anger him, impotent rage against damage done to her in the past that he knows he can't go back and protect her from. She could tell him about Cristobal, too, but she hasn't yet. Danicka exhales slowly when Lukas finishes.

"I don't like vampires," she says, quiet as a confession, though it's a thin one. "I'm tired. And one of the other kin used knives I bought for the den against the dog and now they're blunted and bloodstained and I'm inordinately upset about it."

On her end, Danicka scratches at a spot on her knee. "Thank you. For taking care of it."

[Lukas] They say things to each other, somehow, without quite saying them. Words are easily twisted, misused; lead to misunderstandings. Perhaps it's easier in a way to communicate without them. To speak without speaking. To convey meaning in the subtext, in the implication.

He doesn't tell her, it's all right to be scared. He doesn't tell her, I'm scared for you too.

He tells her a story. He gives her a piece of his past that she did not have before.

"We'll get more knives," Lukas replies, quiet himself. "Or we can tear at our meat with our teeth. It doesn't matter to me."

Pause.

"I love you. I'm glad you're ... " he realizes he said this already; trails off.

Then: "I'll see you soon?"

[Danicka] "I need knives there for things other than cutting meat," she says, with a faint hint of gentle exasperation in her breath. Silly mate. Silly Lukasek. "I'll get more. I'm just upset that they got used for that."

She pauses, too. "Miluji tě taky. Zavolám ti zítra, jo?"

[Lukas] "Jo," he replies, quiet. And, "Dobrou noc, Danička."