Her Mysterious Benefactor - Chapter 12
For the first time in a while, Baron didn’t seem distressed by the surprise appearance of a mysterious gift at Samantha’s door. He examined it for a moment before looking up at her. “It’s quite lovely,” he remarked, and Samantha nodded slightly.
“It is,” she said softly, glancing up at him. “Do you think they painted it themself?”
“I would hope so, given that they signed it,” he replied, pausing to glance around the room. “It would look lovely hanging right there,” he said, gesturing to an empty spot on the wall.
They worked together to get the painting hung up, and then Baron wished her well before heading out. Samantha sat down to write to her brother, enclosing Baron’s letter in her envelope before heading out to send it on its way. She was relieved when she came home and there was no present waiting for her.
It was early the next morning when she was awoken by a knock at her door. She got up quite groggily, noting that the sun had yet to come up, and wondered who it could be. Her hazel eyes widened as she made out the familiar shape of her brother through the window. She hurried to open the door, throwing herself at Corey in a big hug.
“Well, it’s good to see you, too,” he said with a laugh, hugging her back.
“You’re here! That - that was fast,” Samantha said, blinking as she pulled back. “How did you get here?”
“Uhh...I walked?” said Corey with a chuckle. “Are you going to invite me in?”
“Oh! Yes, it’s a new home - come on in,” she said, stepping aside so her brother could enter. She shut the door behind him and they sat down on the couch together. “So...how did you get here so fast?” she asked.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Corey said.
“I just sent a letter yesterday afternoon asking you to come, and now you’re here,” she said. Corey’s eyes widened.
“Really?” he asked. “I didn’t get a letter. That’d be way too fast. I must have already been on my way. I wanted to come and see if you and Baron needed any help with your vampire problem - I’ve been keeping an eye on them and they’re still there,” he explained.
“Oh, Baron’s going to be so relieved,” Samantha breathed, grinning. “He specifically asked me to ask you for help - is it just you?”
“Yeah, the others have their own things to do,” Corey replied. “Still, if the people here don’t mind, I figured a vampire’s point of view could be helpful.”
“Of course it will,” Samantha agreed. “I can have Baron come over in a bit, or we can go see him tonight after sunset.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Corey said with a smile. He grabbed the golden pendant around his neck, taking it off and handing it to her to look at. “This lets me walk in the sunlight.”
“Does it really?” Samantha asked, her eyes widening.
“Yes,” he replied. “So we can visit Baron any time in the morning. You look sleepy, though. You should get back to bed,” he said with a laugh, and Samantha smiled.
“I am sleepy, it’s early,” she replied with a nod.
She stood up and started to head for her bedroom, until she heard her brother’s voice behind her. “Hey, that’s a nice painting,” he said. She glanced over, following Corey’s gaze to the wolf painting left for her by her benefactor.
“It is,” she murmured in agreement, nodding slightly.
“I’ve seen a similar one before - not with wolves, though,” he murmured, and Samantha whirled around to look at him.
“Similar how?” she asked as he stood up to go look at it.
“The style,” he replied. “The brush strokes, the colours - things like that. I believe it was on display down in the Demon Kingdom somewhere. It was a snowy scene that portrayed a woman in a turquoise cloak walking away into the background.”
Samantha raised an eyebrow, heading to her bedroom briefly. She grabbed her turquoise cloak - the one given to her by King John and Queen Nikki - and brought it back out, holding it up. “Was it this cloak?” she asked, and Corey’s eyes went wide.
“Yes!” he said. “Did you pose for the painting? Is that why you got one that matches?” he asked.
“No,” Samantha said softly, frowning. “It was from my mysterious benefactor.”
After explaining the entire story to Corey, suffice it to say he was not impressed. “Whoever it is had best not come near you while I’m here or I’ll make sure they don’t live to regret it,” he muttered, and Samantha sighed.
“That’s what Baron keeps saying,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “But whoever it is...they keep helping us. I don’t know if we can trust them, but I also don’t think they’ll let anything happen to me.”
“That’s not to say they won’t throw me or Baron or Damien to the wolves to save you,” Corey replied, and then paused. “Sorry. It’s been a while since I was a werewolf, I-”
“No, it’s fine,” Samantha said quickly. “I heard it a lot in Empire Minora. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, right,” Corey said with a nod. “Anyways...maybe you should get dressed so we can go see Baron. I’d like to get this Ellering business dealt with sooner than later.”
“Right, sure,” Samantha said with a nod. She hurried to get dressed while Corey examined the painting a little further, and then the two of them headed off to Baron’s castle to meet with him.
“Corey!” Baron exclaimed when he saw them coming in, getting up from his throne with a wide grin. Corey laughed a bit and the two men embraced. “It’s been too long.”
“It has,” Corey agreed. “The hell happened to your leg?”
“Vampires happened. I can’t believe you made it here so fast,” Baron said, pulling back from the hug.
“I was already on my way,” Corey replied with a grin. “I had no idea that you and Samantha wrote to me. I wanted to help deal with the Ellering problem myself, since I’ve noticed that they’re still around.”
“Any ideas, then?” Baron asked. He glanced past the siblings as Damien came in, looking a little sheepish when he saw Samantha.
“Corey,” Damien said politely with a nod.
“Damien, good to see you,” said Corey. He reached out to shake Damien’s hand, though Damien appeared uncomfortable with the interaction. Samantha frowned a bit before Baron drew them all back in.
“Now,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “we have a vampire problem. What do we do about it?”
They talked for a while about the matter of Paul Ellering and his men being so close to the border, and the fact that they had already attacked the city on more than one occasion. Corey’s being present offered some much-needed insight as to how they’d been able to attack in broad daylight: the pendants. Apparently, they had them as well. When asked where one obtained such a pendant, Corey merely responded that it was a trinket item and there were a handful of them floating about.
Having Corey here with a pendant would have been helpful had Paul Ellering and his men not had pendants of their own, but their pendants meant that they could protect themselves both day and night. Then, Damien snapped his fingers.
“They don’t know that we know about the pendants,” he said, looking between the others. “That means they’ll be expecting us to attack during the daytime when we expect them to be vulnerable. It’s what we’ve done before, so they have no reason to expect us to change this pattern - as far as they’re concerned, attacking them during the daylight so they’ll be weak is the only thing we can really count on.”
“So what you’re saying,” said Baron, raising an eyebrow, “is that if we attack them during the night when they’re at their strongest, they won’t see it coming?”
“He’s right,” Corey said, looking thoroughly impressed with Damien’s deduction. “They probably use that time to sleep, now that I think about it - the pendant comes with a side effect that you get a bit more tired than usual. I’ve definitely been feeling that since I started wearing mine,” he said with a chuckle.
“So we attack them after nightfall?” asked Samantha. “I could get on board with that.”
“No way,” Corey said. “You’re staying home.”
“I am not!” Samantha protested, vehemently shaking her head. “I was instrumental in rescuing Baron and Damien last time, and I’ve already been screwed over by these vampires enough that I wanna be there to make sure they pay!”
“She’s right,” Baron said, moving over and wrapping an arm around Samantha’s shoulders. “I don’t know if either of us would be alive if not for Samantha. We need her.”
Corey looked between the two for a moment and then, with a reluctant sigh, he nodded. “Very well,” he replied. “She can come along.”
They spent the next little while discussing their plan. The only thing that concerned them was the question of when to set out - it would take a good day or so of walking to reach them, and if they left during the daylight as they had the first time, they’d likely get caught. If they left after dark, though, they’d get there after the sun came up and the whole plan of attacking the vampires at their strongest when they were asleep would be moot.
“We’ll figure this out,” Baron said. “For now, though, let’s take a break for lunch and we’ll get back to it in a bit.”
Corey and Samantha headed out together while Damien lingered behind for a bit. Once they were out of the castle and heading for Samantha’s house, her brother nudged her gently.
“So...what happened between you and Damien?” he asked, and Samantha sighed.
“He likes me,” she said. “Baron thought so, and then Damien told me so himself.”
“And you...don’t feel the same way, do you?” he asked.
“No,” Samantha said. “He’s more like a brother to me. I mean, we grew up together. We played together as children,” she explained.
“I see what you mean,” Corey replied. He put a gentle hand on her upper back as they walked along. “You’re not obliged to feel the same way about him that he feels about you, and he can’t expect anything more from you than your friendship.”
“I’m worried that not feeling the same way is going to affect our friendship,” she told him as they reached her house. She unlocked the door and blinked in surprise as they headed inside and a delicious smell immediately filled her nose.
“Is that what I think it is?” Corey asked. Samantha pulled him into the kitchen and sighed. There was a large pot of a delicious-looking stew sitting on the stove, freshly prepared and still simmering.
“Where’s the note?” she asked, looking around for a moment. Corey was the one who found it, on the counter beside a bottle of wine. He held it up for her to see.
Characters included: @thedeboniardevistation
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