Shimmer |✓|

//Burn// Part 2

"Then what is?"

Chandler's pretty blue eyes raked me over the coals as he debated how much he trusted me. "Dracula."

"Dracula?" I climbed to my feet, moved by the mere mention of someone so close, so important to Catherine. "Dracula's dead."

"Says who?" Chandler rose as well, pretty blue eyes aflame, more passionate for Drake than Leda by far. "No body, no evidence, no proof. I'm gonna need his ashes, toots. Cuz' even if he really did bite the dust, he can be raised, and I've been eavesdropping long enough to know he can be raised by you."

"So you've been spying on me--no surprise there. But why go through all this trouble? Who are you, Chandler? Really?" I folded my arms over my chest, not just angry, unprepared--and that felt a whole lot worse.

"It's probably easier if I show you." He stepped back, an otherworldly sunset, light springing from him in all directions. I stared Chandler's outline flared in shining blue as tendrils of magic latched themselves to his jeans and t-shirt, hardening into something like onyx, a body armor the likes of which I had never seen. He bore a mask with a hood, dark eyes blazing through the slits, and in his hand was a blade made of Chi.

Chandler fell to one knee, bowing his his head as he crossed his chest with his right arm in solemn oath.

"Whoa. You really are a superhero."

"Not even close." Chandler's hood evaporated into Chi, fading like smoke. "I am the Taker of Souls, Dark Knight of the Unseelie Court. I come to this realm in service of her royal Majesty, the Ice Queen. I am here for Dracula."

I took a heavy seat on the couch. "Please stop kneeling."

He rose to his feet with a sigh, that divine light fading from his eyes as the body armor dissipated.

"You're a knight?"

"Does that surprise you?"

"Not as much as the fact that you're hunting Dracula. Is this how you know so much about witchcraft?"

He nodded. "When you work for one of the most powerful beings in the Otherworld, you learn a thing or two about magic. I can teach you whatever you need to know, Naomi, as long as it doesn't stop me from finding Dracula. It's been centuries on Earth since he betrayed the Queen, but time flows differently in the Otherworld. I get it--this is a suicide mission. I'm tracking someone I may never find--but the Queen will always be waiting. She wants vengeance, and if it's already been dealt, I need to deliver proof."

I cleared my throat, but it did no good, the truth was here to stay. "So... my friends were right?" I shook my head, tongue in cheek. "This whole time, you've been... using me. You want Dracula, and you knew I'd fall for your Leda sob story enough to help you."

"Naomi--"

I brushed him away; his candles went out in a silent, angry wind. "You work for the Ice Queen--she ruined Tidus' family!"