The Heat of the Moment

Chapter VIII: Vampire

Once Gale had left her to fend for herself in her own fitful dreams, Diana soon fell into a state of soundless fog through the witching hour. She had no concept of what time it was, or even if the dream about Gale had any merit to it beyond the strangest and most vivid hallucination she had ever endured. Her eyes fluttered behind shuttered lids, lips barely parted as a deep sleep wrapped its night-kissed arms around her, her body was sound as she floated on the precipice of dreamless limbo - the calmest she had felt in a long time. It was the faintest brush, hardly anything indicating that something was terribly wrong.

Or so she thought.

As it turns out, Gale is evidently not the only one in their party harboring a dark secret.

There, in the muffled quiet that accompanies long winter nights besides the gentle sound of snow pattering against the canvas of her little patchwork tent; the barest caress of a breath across her cheeks. Alarm bells sounded in her mind, barely registering what sounded like a man shouting as if willing her to break from her silent rest.

Diana swung wide even before her eyes flew open, taking her attacker by surprise as she clocked them right in the temporal process: the arched bone that connects the cheek and occipital bones. The intruder had hovered over her body for Gods knows how long, caging her in between their arms and thighs. As her fist struck true, she heard a loud grunt as the assailant crumpled beside her, carried by the momentum of her swing. In the complete darkness of her tent, she knew that she could not trust that she had the upper hand even with her increased night vision which prompted her to continue on the offensive. Evidently her welcome present pissed off whoever it was that decided to sneak into her tent as she heard a low growl that rattled her very bones. Throwing her blankets off of herself, she quickly jumped into a crouch and snatched the dagger she kept under her pillow: Lae'zel wasn't the only one in camp that slept with sharpened steel nearby. Her eyes adjusted quickly as she swung out with the blade, going for the throat and gritting her teeth, growling in aggravation as the intruder quickly ducked and the dagger sliced cleanly through the back of the tent. They grabbed her wrist that held the dagger in what felt like a freezing vice, slender white fingers with sharpened nails digging into the soft skin of her forearm. Diana was about to bring her elbow down on the soft spot between their neck and shoulder when she registered the snow white hair in the darkness, her eyes blowing wide in shock at the wild and wrathful look in Astarion's eyes as she followed through, knocking him cleanly prone. To her complete annoyance, the pale elf was equally fast as she was, if not faster, as he was able to yank her down on top of him with her straddling his hips.

"WHAT THE FUCK, ASTARION?" Diana shouted, anger rolling off her in waves as she fought the iron grip that he held on her wrist, dagger poised dangerously to bring right down on his piercing eye, shining nearly black in the darkness. She could feel his other hand forcing her down closer to him, his grip on her hip so tight that there would likely be bruises tomorrow where the pads of his fingers held her. Her eyes caught the glint of something shining in the moonlight through the large hole in her tent and she risked a flick of her gaze towards the origin, instantly feeling the blood chill in her very veins. Two whole heartbeats passed as time seemed to slow around her and she blinked, shaking her head and looking again as if the adrenaline was making her see things. Unfortunately, she was not near lucky enough for that to be true; for what she had spied was a pair of glistening white fangs, shining like sharpened pearls in the night.

At this point, several sets of footfalls thundered towards her tent as she tried to free herself from where he held her, and she cried out as he shook her to get her attention.

"Darling," he hissed, the sound raising the hairs on the back of her neck as he yanked her down to where their faces were just inches apart by holding her arm out to the side "This would have been so much easier if  you would have just stayed asleep. I wasn't going to hurt you...or at least I was going to try my best not to." His voice raised slightly at the end of the sentence as if he was fighting the panic rising in his throat. Diana caught the flicker of pure unadulterated fear flash across his features just as Lae'zel ripped the entrance flap to her tent open, short sword raised to strike Astarion as if he were just another one of the enemies they had come across in their travels. Apparently, Diana was not the only one that had seen Astarion for what he really was now, which seems nearly impossible despite the answer literally laid out right under her: He is a Vampire.