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.She had taken her reverie early, with the sun still high, thinking to travel through the night.Now, seeing Percival here, hopping about and chattering frantically, Shayleigh regretted that choice to continue.She should have gone straight to the library, straight to Danica, her friend, who might have needed her help… and still might.Shayleigh swung under the branch, her feet torching lightly on the next lowest.She bent her legs and fell backward, hooking the branch with her knees, and swung down so that she caught the lowest branch in one hand.She kept with the flow of her momentum to spin lightly down to the ground.Percival, following, was hard-pressed to keep up.Shayleigh held her arm out and made a ticking noise, and Percival leaped from the lowest branch to her, accepting the ride as the elf maiden ran full speed back to the east, back to her friend.Twilight“I feared I had killed you.” It was Rufo’s voice, from far away, but rushing closer.Danica opened her eyes.She was on the bed, in the same room as before, but her wrists and ankles now were securely bound to the bed’s four strong posts.A throbbing, burning pain in her wounded left leg did not relent, and the monk feared the binding would cut through her skin and sever the already tattered ankle.Worse still, there was Rufo, leaning over her, his white face softened with concern.“My dear Danica,” he whispered.He came closer, trying to soften his angular features, trying to be gentle.Danica did not spit in his face; she was beyond any more symbolic, if ineffective, protests.Rufo, though, recognized her disgust “Do you not believe I can love?” he asked quietly, and a twitch on one cheek told Danica he was fighting hard to hold his calm.Again Danica offered no response.“I have loved you since you first came to the library,” Rufo went on dramatically.“I have watched you from afar, delighting in the simple grace of your every movement.”Danica steeled her cold gaze and did not blink.“But I am not a pretty man,” Rufo went on.“Never have I been, and so it was Cadderly”-a bit of venom bubbled over at the mention of that name-“and not I who caught your fairest eye.”The self-deprecation was pitiful, but Danica held little sympathy for Rufo, “A pretty man?” she questioned.“You still cannot comprehend how small a thing that is.”Rufo backed off, perplexed.Danica just shook her head.“You would love Histra still if she was a pretty thing,” she said.“But you have never been able to see beyond the skin.You have never cared for what was in someone’s heart and soul because your own are empty.”“Take care with your words,” Rufo said.“They hurt because they are true.”“No!”“Yes!” Danica lifted her head as high as the bindings would allow, her glower forcing Rufo to retreat further.“It is not Cadderly’s smile I love, but the source of that smile, the warmth of his heart and the truth of his soul.Wretched Rufo, I pity you,” she decided then.“I pity that you never fathomed the difference between love and ego.”“You are wrong!” the vampire retorted.Danica didn’t blink, but she did slip back to the mattress as Rufo closed over her.She scrunched her head down on her shoulders and even whimpered a bit as he continued his advance, thinking he meant to take her against her will.For all her training and all her strength, Danica was unable to accept that possibility.The monk, though, had touched a weakness in the vampire’s heart.“You are wrong,” Rufo said again, quietly.“I do love.” As if to accentuate his point, Rufo brushed his hand softly down Danica’s cheek, under her chin, and along her neck.Danica recoiled as much as possible, but the bindings were strong and she was weak from loss of blood.“I do love,” he said again.“Rest, my sweet.I will return when you are stronger, and I will show you pleasure, love.”Danica breathed a sincere sigh of relief as Rufo backed away, gave a final look, and swept from the room.That sigh was temporary, she knew.She tested her bindings again and, finding no luck, lifted her head to consider her wounds.She couldn’t even feel the cord holding her injured leg, only the general pain.She saw that the ankle and calf were bloated, and the exposed skin, where it was not caked with dried blood, was badly discolored.Danica felt the infection within her, adding to the weakness from the loss of blood, and she knew she could not get free of her bindings this time.Even if she could, her broken body would not give her the strength to get out of the library.Danica rested, fell back into a sense of hopelessness greater than anything she had ever known.She saw between the boards over the room’s one small, west-facing window that the sun had already crested on the new day, to begin its journey to the horizon.Danica knew Rufo would return with the night.And she would have no defense.The Edificant Library came into sight late in the afternoon, a square, squat structure peeping through the more rounded and natural lines of the surrounding terrain.That first, distant glimpse told Cadderly something was very wrong with the place.His instincts, or maybe the subtle warnings from Chaunticleer’s song, screamed at him, but he didn’t understand the connotations.He thought now that it was his own feelings for the library that had given him such a start.The building was soon out of sight, blocked by high rocks as the group rounded another bend.Ivan and Pikel, after whispering together, rushed past Cadderly and set a tremendous pace, explaining that they planned to prepare a delicious supper this very night.The sun had not yet dipped below the skyline when they came back in sight of the library, the companions cutting in at the side of the grove that lined the structure’s long front walkway.All three skidded to an abrupt stop, Pikel’s ensuing “Oooo” pretty much summing things up for them all.Wisps of gray smoke still filtered from several windows on the southern wing; the smell of burned wood hung thick in the air.“Oooo,” Pikel said again.Those inner pleas, Chaunticleer’s continuing call to Deneir, erupted in Cadderly’s mind, shouting for him to flee, but he ran to the doors of the place that had been his home.He should have paused there, should have taken note of the hole in the wood, the hole Danica had kicked when Rufo had cornered her
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