I woke to the backseat of Ann’s car. She was in the front driving. My jaw ached. Being in the car must have caused me to grind my teeth. One shoulder tingled from sleeping on it wrong. There was a bright red cooler sitting on top of my chest. I shoved the container off of me and managed to sit up.

"Welcome back, sir." Shaggy’s words were less pleasant than normal.

"Where?" I managed to get one word out and stumbled over the rest.

"On the road towards another safe house. We're skipping to four." Her eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and gave me a once over. I was being sized up for something.

"How did I?" Sleep drug at my words.

"Lennon loaded you in and sent us off. What the hell happened back there?" She cut me off with a rapid fire explination.

"What?" I tried to catch up. My brain was still trying to decipher the dream. What had that been about? Darkness, shadows, pillars. Shade people fighting. Kahina.

"Where is Kahina?" I asked a better question.

With a sudden jerk of anger, she pulled us off the road and parked. She hadn't even bothered getting over to the right side curb, no, we were trapped in the middle of an eight-lane highway.

"Answer me or I swear I'll shoot you." Her gun was out and in my face in a blink. "What the hell happened back there!?" Her words were forceful.

Having a gun in your face brings two responses. Fear, or anger. My body had no energy for anger, and fear wasn't too far away. I knew how good a shot she was, and point blank was hard to miss. I tried to crane my neck back and focus on the gun.

"Talk!" She demanded.

"I don't know."

"What did you do to Lennon?" Her teeth ground. Now was a terrible time to try and remember if Kahina's staff got dental as a part of their medical plan.

"I don't know." I gave the same answer.

"Why did you pass out?" She shook the gun. All this aggression pointed in my direction and the best I could work up was exhausted irritation at Shaggy. At least the tingling in my shoulder was almost gone. The clicking of hazard lights was starting to get annoying, though.

"I don't know." I tried again.

"What about those wolves?!" Shaggy didn't let up on the questions. My response couldn’t come soon enough. "Well?!"

"Thomas' sister was killed by one of Kahina's bodyguards. He blames both of us for it." Shaggy stared at me for a moment then turned back around, placing her gun against the steering wheel and placing her head against its flat side. Then she hung there for a moment muttering to herself.

"Where is Kahina?" I should be angrier. It was difficult to be mad at women for long.

"In the trunk. We couldn't let any staff see her on the way out. They think I'm taking you to an elven healer on retainer." Shaggy's words came out cold. Not quite the level of detachment that Kahina conducted her business in.

Lennon and Ann had shoved Kahina into the trunk? I fumbled with the seat. These cars always had some fold away method to get to the trunk from the back seat. A moment later I tipped it down long enough to see Kahina's face. Serene, not breathing.

A glimpse of other sight showed that there was no life in her. It took a moment to calm myself and remember that she never had any signs of life during the daytime. The only proof that she hadn't passed was the heat shimmering off her body. Faint but visible.

"Why did we leave?" I asked. The compound was the safest place for Kahina. That was the whole point of setting it up, of training her employees, of having all the land around the house.

"After you recover-" she did air quotes with a gun in one hand "we're going on the offensive. It's not an unknown practice for some of the household elites to try and hunt down their enemies. Though the playbook's a bit antiquated."

"That seems odd." Everything seemed odd. Waking up at all, the dream, the business-like attitude that Ann had somehow reverted to after her moment of frustration.

"It's only done when a house is confident they can hold. Or in desperation. Other times it's to remove rivals." Ann sounded like she was reciting from a manual somewhere. "There's another angle as well."

Shaggy didn't say what it was right away. The gun was tucked into her holster. There were other bags piled in with me filled with first aid items and spare clips. Our cooler should contain blood packs.

"Which is?" I prompted after closing the cooler.

"They might think we've defected. We can use that to our favor." If I had been less drained that statement would have set me off. They thought I would abandon Kahina? Not again, not after I gave my word to her.

Shaggy gave me a flat stare through the rear view mirror. Her look made me think on the comment. My track record was against me. How long would my original flight from Kahina taint everyone's view?

"Face it, sir, you don't show up for practices, you don't patrol or sign up for any tutoring sessions. You don't look like the fathering type, and you haven't taken a vampire adaptability test." Ann pulled back into traffic without signaling. "You don't even drink with the rest of us."

"I drink." With Crummy.

"There was a betting pool on how long you'd stay. I guess it's still there. It'll be something to come back to." Her eyes were looking across the dashboard at the traffic. She flipped across lanes and got onto the freeway heading south.

That information was difficult to respond to. I should be affronted. Or counter her argument by cracking my knuckles and growling. Any sort of response felt beyond me. Things felt unreal as I tried to clear the cobwebs. It should be considered miraculous that we were speaking at all.

"No one thinks you'll stick around, even afterward." Shaggy said.

"That's between Kahina and me." I responded.

"Not when the livelihoods of each member of the house are at stake, not when their children's children may still serve Lady Rhodes as long as she survives. If you dodge out halfway through then everyone's screwed."

I didn't have a good way to respond to that. It hadn't really occurred to me that what I did for Kahina would matter to anyone beyond us. Then again the last few months were muted since Julianne's murder. Since before that really. My entire life existed in a weird fog most of the time.

"I'll stay." I tried to sound firm. Kahina and I had a good time together, but relationships required a magical combination of saying and doing the right thing. Unfortunately, I seemed to have foot in mouth disease.

Shaggy stayed quiet while looking in the rearview mirror. She would stare at me in quick flashes with both eyebrows creased together. Eventually, she stopped looking back altogether and kept both eyes on the road.

I reached through the car seat's cushions and found Kahina's skin. Each part of my body still reported exhaustion. Weariness threatened my consciousness. Each time I woke in a panic. Partly I wondered if sleeping would return me to the strange dream landscape. Another part wondered if I would wake up only to find Kahina died because of my negligence. My failure to guard her.

"What's next?" I asked an hour later. My head was still drifting in and out as feedback from my abilities took it’s toll.

"We'll bunker down until nightfall, contact Lennon, get a status report from the main house. See what kind of numbers we're working with." Shaggy kept changing lanes while talking. Each switch resulting in being stuck behind someone new. "After that it’s kill anyone who comes after Lady Rhodes. Hopefully, she'll complete the change in the next day or two."

"Can we trust Lennon?" I asked sluggishly while trying not to yawn.

"I guess you did something about that. He was terrified for Lady Rhodes' safety. Practically shoved us out the door, refused to know where we were going." Shaggy said.

We sat in silence for a few more minutes before Shaggy spoke up again.

"You really don't know what happened?" She asked sounding more worried than ever. Ann threatened, placated, made snide remarks, but never sounded like this.

"I remember." My head turned to stare out the window. "I just don't know what it means." Or what that other voice that had possessed me meant, and how the burning feeling in my arm tied in.

Even trying to pick apart my dream for some sort of existential meaning was failing. The fiery sky could be the sun. Each pillar was, what, something that lived in darkness? Something similar to Kahina? Or other vampires?

That made no sense at all. Vampires didn't burn up in sunlight, they only fell asleep. They did turn to ash when dying so that portion was similar. Maybe my mind was pulling in random elements. The heat of my arm, what Keeper had said about trying to protect her. Or what Kahina had said herself, that her thoughts weren't her own during the day.

I must have been imagining that other place. My first dream ever was a little too real. My mind's way of trying to work through the stress of Kahina’s looming failure to survive. That's all.