His words made her feel odd. Knowing more than she should? How could that have been the case? His smile did nothing to ease her growing weariness of him and, when she heard the mob, she was grateful for their distraction. When his gaze left hers, she exhaled a soft sigh of relief and then felt the tension from her shoulders melt a bit more as the wolves he’d called upon seemed to dissipate like vapor before her.<br/><br/>When he spoke again he did so casually but he needed threaten her life to get what he wanted. “I will do so,” she said and moved ahead of him and with a flick of her wrist she tossed on the visual allusion that she was wearing more than her shear dress. Now it looked like she wore something more appropriate for the cooler night, a long-sleeved shirt with a corset, trousers, thigh-high boots, and a thick cowl made of pelts. Gloves made of fine leather graced her hands and a sword hung at her side though it was no more lethal than the air around her, it was all just for show.<br/><br/>Ivy came upon the crowd with her hands raised, “My good men,” she said and held up her hands to them, to calm their chattering. “Please!” she called again when their voices remained at an elevated level. They quieted and looked to her, it was a small gathering, no more that twenty men, but they were all mounted and their horses danced anxiously where they were forced to stand. A hunting party, she thought and smiled at them. Philip, the Head of the Guard, a man who was portly and grew more hair on his face than the top of his head, spoke up.<br/><br/>“Ms. Dossett,” he said and held up his torch to look at him better. She smiled and showed him her empty hands. “We heard wolves, feared they might be those werewolves again,” he said and his eyes darted from her to the forest, frightened and nervous. Though it had happened long ago not a single townsmen didn’t know about the massacre that had torn through their town not two decades ago.<br/><br/>“I have taken care of them, it was only a straggler or two. Bachelors looking for some trouble and nothing more. I dispatched them rather easily,” she said and tapped the sword at her hip. Ivy was the Mentor of the area. Not a single soul had bested her in a fight for nearly one hundred years and the people of the area knew it. Phillip visibly relaxed.<br/><br/>“Are you sure, m’lady?” he asked her and then looked to the other men.<br/><br/>“If it makes you feel better, you may patrol the area, maybe set up a few more guards around the area. You shouldn’t find anything,” she said reassuringly and most of the men took her word for it. They knew her to be a vampire, as part of the Manor that sat as a looking guardian on the out skirts of the city. They trusted her but only because she’d given her no reason not to. Reluctantly Phillip nodded.<br/><br/>“I’ll send some of the men to make a lap of the perimeter and I’ll add more men to the midnight watch,” he said and looked back to the small cavalry that had gathered. He pointed to a handful of riders and sent them south east and another group back to the north. Then the rest of them headed back into the city and Ivy was left alone again. She dropped the glamour she held around her and, once more, she was nearly naked in the cool night air. With a quirk of her lips she turned and went back into the woods, back to the man that held her attention so acutely, and stood before him again in the moonlight.<br/><br/>“They’re gone,” she and motioned in the direction she’d come. “Though they’ve now set a troop to patrol the outer perimeter of the city and doubled their watch,” she said and cast her cool green gaze to the city. “They fear the werewolves…” she said thoughtfully and recalled, with a sour taste in her mouth, the events of the massacre and all the death that had come with it.<br/>