Eternal Night

(III) Chapter 26: Know Thy Enemy

Vesper had perched herself on the edge of the conference room table, feet tucked in as she watched two very different worlds starting to come together and blend – the alliance and the Dracul Sânge. Lyra, Jack, and Louise were pouring over a map of the city at one end of the table, with Niklaus, Carmen, and Rémy discussing potential access points of the palace at the other. Zeke lingered by the door that lead out into the hall, attention repeatedly diverting to his phone as he waited anxiously for the arrival of the lycans.

Vlad and Frankie still weren't back, and while the rest of the persons in this increasingly crowded room didn't seem to notice, Vesper could strangely sense the pair as if they were standing right behind her. Truth be told, she'd been able to sense both of them after she had awoken from her coma – a strange feeling of awareness that she hadn't possessed before. That awareness had only deepened since the couple had been reunited in France, and now that they were back in Budapest, it had grown all the more pronounced.

It was a mercy, she presumed, that she couldn't sense what they were feeling or experiencing personally – given the state they had been in when they departed from the room just a few minutes ago.

Yet still, she could feel them in her blood somehow, a quiet and gentle hum.

Her idle scrutiny of the scene before her had her eyes soon turning to Jacob and Tempest in the corner near the closet where the private servers were set up. Her attention lingered on the youngest Dracul for a moment or two before she found herself sliding off the table and making her way over without even realizing she had made the decision to do so in the first place.

"And so everything is stored here?" Tempest was asking Jake, the blue and green LED lights of the servers casting magical looking shadows on her face as she examined the system with a degree of wonder.

"Most of it," Jake explained. "I have everything routinely routed to another server outside of the city as a safety precaution – that way we don't lose anything."

"Do you reroute it to your Uncle's estate in France?"

"Yes, actually. When he and Cece had the new house built, they had vaults set up for each one of us..."

Vesper leaned against the frame of the door as she watched the pair interact, an amused grin tugging the corner of her lips.

There was something about Tempest she liked immensely.

She wasn't sure what it was exactly, but from the first moment she had walked into Carmen's flanked behind Dracula, Vesper had noticed something in the woman's face that was absent from the others. She had a light behind her eyes, a kindness that was genuine; wholehearted, even. Like the rest of her siblings, she was staggeringly beautiful – but where Louise's beauty in particular was intimidating and even a little terrifying to behold, Tempest's the opposite.

All warmth and goodness.

If Vesper didn't already know the woman was indeed undead, she'd have a hard time believing it on mere looks alone.

"You okay there, V?" Jacob suddenly asked her, pulling the dhampir from her private musings. She blinked twice, realizing that she had been staring and her cheeks heated.

"Yeah, just zoned out there for a second," she managed, attention diverting to the floor the moment her eyes met Tempest's, embarrassment deepening.

"Do you know if Bernardini has arrived yet?" the youngest Dracul inquired and Vesper dared to look back up, relieved to find not a trace of judgment in the vampire's face.

The teenager shrugged.

"Well, Jacob here seems to have the technical side of things under control. Why don't you keep me company up front while we wait for him?" And she motioned toward the hall. "Besides, it looks like Zeke's attention is rather fixed on the wrong entry."