“We would have faced a dozen of these things…” Cedarwood whispered. It wasn’t an answer to my question. It did not tell me why he was here, why he had followed me. It was whispered so quietly that I wasn’t even sure if he was making a statement or asking a question.

“Yes,” I sighed again and shook my head. “And I weakened these three beforehand,” I answered as if he’d asked a question anyway. I hoped he had intended it as a question. Despite my wish to be left alone, questions were part of a conversation. Enough conversation and I might have one more person in this town that didn’t want me dead despite knowing what I was.

Then I noticed the orange glow behind him, past the bend in the river. It was well and truly past sundown now. There was light in the village when there hadn’t been any yesterday. That changed things. I didn’t like this one bit. It meant my little walking-around-in-the-sun act hadn’t been effective at all. Ostea really had shattered far too many assumptions people held about vampires.

Not good.

Really not good.

Soooo screwed now.

“You really should head back.” I tilted my head in the direction of the village. “Half of them think I killed you by now, the other half probably assume I have turned you. None of them will get a second of sleep as long as you are here with me.”

He glanced where I had gestured, a tiny thrill of fresh terror coursing through him. My words were harsh, but they probably weren’t far off from the truth. A suspected vampire crosses a river, a man rushes after it for some reason, and nearly an hour later he still had not returned.

I started digging. Despite his fears, he stubbornly remained where he was.

“Please go back?” I begged him. “This situation is bad enough for me as it is.” I didn’t want to cut off the conversation like this, just when it had started. But every moment we spent talking would only make things worse for me. Maybe it would also be worse for him if they suspected him of being a thrall.

Please, please, please, just go back.

Just go back and tell them you’re okay.

“So… um… you said you were going to leave as soon as you were done?” he wondered, instead of heeding my request.

I wanted to stamp my feet and scream in frustration, but that would be childish and cost me my hard-won trust. Of course, now that he really had to leave, now that I was begging him to, that was when he got the courage to do what he really came here for. Glancing up at him, I tilted my head to the side, trying to catch his eyes. Instead of meeting my gaze, he looked down and slightly to the side as his breath hitched in his throat.

Not quite that courageous just yet.

The worst part was, I could already tell where this was going, and I did not like it. He wanted another favor, wanted me to risk my life even more than I already had. For some absurd reason, he’d deemed coming after me alone for that an acceptable risk.

Why?

Makes no sense?

“Hmm.” I hid my doubts behind an impassive mask and gave a non-committal hum.

“One of those things, it got one of us, a couple of days back.” His voice remained barely more than a whisper, but as he spoke his gaze at least inched closer to my face.

“Shae’s uncle?” I asked him, having already expected this to be his request. I gestured for him to come closer. Keeping up the conversation over this kind of distance was becoming absurd. The only reason I could make out his mumbling and whispering was my superior hearing.

“Uh?” His confused eyes met mine, but he did not step forward.

Wait… am I wrong?

“Uncle Tare, Shae’s uncle, right?” I kept prodding him.

“Ah …” He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. “No… he’s not… I mean… we all call him Uncle Tare.”

What?

For real!

“No. Not helping him.” I cut him off with a solid refusal. I was not doing this. If this Uncle Tare wasn’t even related to Shae, then I had no reason to help. Onar wanted me dead. I was not walking back into that town literally hours after telling them I wouldn’t.

“No…” he repeated my answer. “why?”

You know why!

I glared at him. It was the same why that made him stand nearly forty feet away from me to have a conversation, the same why that made him look at his feet when he talked to me. I shook my head. He could figure this one out himself.

“Please… you saved my wife,” he begged me. “You saved her… back then. You healed her. You remember, right? My Meg?”

Ah.

That explained his courage to cross the river then, and his fear and hesitation now. He’d thought I was a saint, yet what he found was a demon in disguise.

“I know you can help, please. So please … you’ve already helped us so much … will you help us once more? We can pay!”

Does he really still think of me as a saint?

“No.” I gave another flat refusal. I had done everything for their little settlement, and all I’d gotten in return so far was hatred and fear. And pay? Money was worthless to me when I was dead.

I refused him several more times after that. I really hoped that he’d finally leave. He did not.

“You can not seriously think you can convince me merely by lingering here, do you?” I did not look up at him, convinced that if I ignored him long enough and kept digging he would have to leave.

“I can try.” Instead of giving up he actually came closer. “He’s going to die without proper care. I don’t think you’re the kind of person that would let people die.”

“Right.” I stopped digging, sighed, and looked him over once more. “If you have to insist on hanging around, then at least start collecting wood and build me a pyre. We will need to burn these things.”

The muddy stretch between the river and the forest was large enough that we didn’t risk setting the trees alight. It was going to save me a lot of work if I could burn the ahuizotl instead of needing to cut them to pieces. Normally I’d even contemplate burying them in their own nest. But this bank would probably flood come winter and the village was downriver.

In his defense, he did actually build a pyre as I asked him to. So by the time I had dismantled the nest and smashed all the eggs, it was just a matter of dragging the carcasses onto the wood. That task fell entirely to me. He still refused to come that close to me, or the ahuizotl corpses.

Once all of that was taken care of I waded into the river to wash off the worst of the mud and gore still caking my body. And while I’d been doing all of this I hadn’t for a second been able to stop thinking about his insistence that he’d be able to convince me.

That was the problem with me. I was too much of a saint. Six months ago I’d jumped into a raging river to save these people without asking questions. I’d even treated this Meg’s hypothermia without being asked. Just now I’d killed these ahuizotl, even after explicitly being chased off by Onar only a day prior. This fool was completely right. He wouldn’t just be able to convince me, he pretty much already had.

Freshened up, and with all the important work done, I joined Cedarwood at the pyre. I took a couple of moments to study him. The silence that hung between us was only being accentuated by the gentle roar of the flames and the occasional hiss of burning flesh.

He sat down across from me, all the way on the other side of the fire. Still too scared to come closer, but at least composed enough to sit down now, I presumed. He was indeed as broad-shouldered as I had suspected, with the kind of toned upper body and tanned skin one could only get from a lifetime of hard work. His hawkish face and close-cropped gray hair did not match the rest of him.

He soon became uncomfortable under my scrutiny. Awkwardly glancing around he mumbled a quiet “Ah…”

“What’s your name?” I prompted him.

“Gery,” he muttered after a short hesitation.

I got up and strolled over to him even as he scuttled back from my approach. I held out my hand for him to shake. He half-raised his hand, then hesitated.

“This is your why not,” I responded to his hesitation, took my hand back, and fixed him with a pointed stare.

He did not meet my glare, instead choosing to glance down to the uncomfortable three feet of space between us.

“But it could become a yes,” I held my hand out again.

He stared incredulously from my gloved hand to my face. “You’ll… you’ll do it?”

I nodded. “I will take a look. No promises beyond that. Just a look.”

After a slight hesitation, he grasped my hand and shook it. “Oh thank you. Thank you! Thank you!”

After I had extricated myself from his grip I draped my cloak on the ground next to him and laid myself on top of it. It’d be at least another hour or two before the fire would be out. I wasn’t going to spend all of that time standing.