Glad you enjoyed.

"I really ought to have more of an edge," the knife argued. "You should put me in the fire again, hone me, make sure I'll do well for the King's table."

"The last time I tried doing that, you screamed. Said you didn't want to lose yourself, that you couldn't wait to be back and whole again," Biflindi argued, wiping the sweat off his brow. The knife muttered a cure in Dwarvish. Apparently it had been listening to its maker very well. The thick black beard concealed Biflindi's grin, as bright as the heart of his forge. Like all of his creations, he was proud of the knife. It was well weighted, the serrations evenly spaced, the curve just enough to make the glide through meat seamless. That this one spoke aloud rather than hummed (as all his creations did) in his mind was of no importance too the dwarf.

"Maker, please," the knife began. The dwarf crossed his arms over his chest, arcing a single brow, waiting to hear something the knife had argued numerous times since the knife's creation. "I know you are happy with me. I only wish to be the best knife I can be."

"You already are," Biflindi half-sighed. "None of your sisters or brothers have a voice as you do."

"They are sharper. They are keener. They are more likely to be used at feasts," the knife protested.

"That they may be," the Dwarf agreed, picking up the knife, calloused palm cradling it with a master's care and concern. "None of them though will be able to tell stories of my forge, of my work. None of them will remember what it is to be held by my hand, and none of them will be shown by king after king as an example of our family."

"Maker," the knife started, swallowed (as only something without lungs could), exhaled, steel cool air against the dwarf's still smoldering skin, "Father, are we really your children?"

"Aye, any smith who says otherwise is a liar. All things we make are dear to us, part of us, a family of the heart."

"Then I will trust you, Father."

"I understand the trail of bodies, but did you have to wear pink?"

"You motherfuckers!" Dracula screamed, pushing the table with enough force that it flew across the space, shattering against the wall. "It doesn't make any sense, I don't even appear on film!"

"Wonders of the digital age Draccy," Peyton said, adjusting their grip on the iPhone. The vampire was out of the chair and was a blur of darkness as he fled the room and entered the bathroom. Soon the sound of an immortal, retching, swearing between heaves in what might have been Old Turkish, echoed down the narrow hallway.

"It was bad enough," Dracula gasped, collecting himself as best he could, "when you ground up pieces of the Host. I was stuck in the bathroom for a week."

"Honestly, we thought garlic would be the lesser of two evils," Bill said, brushing an auburn strand away from his right eye (the green one). He mirrored the gesture less than a second later with the left eye (the blue one).

"You were wrong," the vampire moaned. Peyton winced, but kept their phone aimed at the door of the bathroom. Another stream of Old Turkish profanities came followed by the distinct sounds of a vampire curling into a small ball on cool tile flooring. "I'll have heartburn for a month."

The best of friends...

"I thought you didn't have to wait for permission with public spaces?" I asked as I turned off the last of the small computers in the small upstairs area. Gustav waited as only an immortal can, arms crossed behind his back, head bowed slightly, black hair swept back.

"A common misconception," he clarified. Even after centuries in America, there was the faintest hint of his original Swedish still in his voice. "Before we were publicly known, it was Hell trying to visit any library."

"I can only imagine," I said, heading back to the desk, tapping my pockets to make sure I had everything.

"It was a matter of timing," he clarified, looking up, carnelian flashing in his eyes for a moment before vanishing, returning to their normal rich brown. "If I timed it right, someone would be willing to hold the door open for me."

"Small courtesies go a long way," I agreed, nodding, heading towards the vampire. No matter how many times I did this, the moment of thrill as I turned off the light would live with me. Beyond the windows, the lights of the city glittered, distant sparkling topaz, diamond, and emerald. However, I was still alone, in the dark, with an immortal, one who had subsisted on heaven only knew how many lives before artificial blood had been perfected. "Bad timing tonight?" I asked, knowing he could still see me, still knew where I was in the darkness, likely heard the elevation of my pulse.

"Is it so hard to believe Will that I wanted to wait for you? That I enjoy your company?" he asked, cold breath stirring against my right ear. His hand was the cold of a tombstone in winter, but as it wrapped around mine, the chill wasn't the reason I shivered.

"Please, let's get going," I said, knowing I was blushing and wondering what that smelled like to him.

"Thank the Gods we found you, we thought something terrible had happened!" The knight, the one with the long mahogany hair tied back into a severe braid was not quite hysterical, but it was certainly relieved. I could taste it in the air between us, my tongue still forked for the moment. I sipped the ale, the one almost the same color as the knight's skin, focusing on the structure of my tongue, merging the muscle back together. Raising a gloved hand to the salt and pepper goatee the king favored, I wiped my mouth, trying to buy some time.

"Why would you think that?" I went a little deeper than the king's normal speaking voice and winced internally, hoping the knights were too focused on having found the King to notice my slip.

"Majesty, you do remember what happened the last time we lost track of you?" the second knight, the one whose skin was the color of freshly tilled earth with storm-cloud eyes asked, leaning forward. Her scent was inquisitive, a cat inspecting a mouse's hole. Her hand rested on the pommel of her sword, fingers ready to curl if I as much as breathed wrong.

"The incident with the Pleasure Gardens?" I asked, looking down, inspecting the nails of my left hand, seeing the flecks of dirt and blood trapped beneath them. "We did pay the Madam quite generously, and besides..."

"Sire, even if you can do what you want, you can't afford to lose even more of the public's good will. With the new elections for the High Council coming, you have to be on your best behavior," the first knight chided me. I let out a put upon sigh, one I had heard too many times to count. Both of the knights relaxed slightly.

I raised my left shoulder in a half-shrug. "Alright, alright, I will come back to the palace with you, just let me finish one more tankard of ale?" I pleaded. My idiot half-brother would have to be finished with the stable boy by then. Being able to take any form I liked had gotten him out of many troubles since my talent had manifested, but one of these days I was going to have to ask him to respect my time and my limits.

"Fine sire, but make it a quick one," the second knight all but commanded.

"You have my word," I promised, raising my hand, silently praying my half-brother would finish soon and that we wouldn't have yet another groom or squire in the palace, dogging his footsteps.

"Now," I began, looking over the notes I had scribbled down, "you have been practicing your exercises on your own?" I looked up in time to see the shifting umbral mass, more a suggestion than an actual form nod one of its many nodes. That particular node retreated into the quivering mass of its body before a slash opened on a different node, one some 110 degrees from the first.

"Yessssss," The Abomination (arch rival to Captain Vigilant) hissed, tongues lolling out.

"Good," I said, my lips pulling back, exposing my teeth, nowhere near as impressive as the fangs stained carnelian. A tuft of dark gray fur was stuck to one serrated edge. Squirrel, I thought to myself. Not long or fine enough for any of the larger pets it (it had been very clear about its preferred pronouns in our first session) sometimes feasted on. "Which one do you think helped you the most?"

"Thiss one," another of its mouths said, "the one I held the 'S' and 'Z' sounds for thirty sseconds."

I jotted that down quickly. "Any exercise you feel was the most challenging to you?"

"Presssing my tonguess to the back of my teeth," it enunciated. I nodded. Considering those teeth routinely ripped through steel, concrete, and yappy Chihuahuas, I couldn't say I was particularly surprised.

"And what about the mirror exercises?" I asked. The Abomination sprouted a new tentacle, which gave a quick sinusoidal wave before it went to investigate the pile of magazines on the refurbished IKEA table between the two of us.

"Not too ussseful, but not too bad. With the way my mouth keepssss sssshifting..." it trailed off. This time, the mouth was somewhere in the center mass, flashes of white blinking briefly in the abyssal body. The stain was turning the distinct shade of rust known only to ancient cars and puddles of dried blood.

"Well," I said, laying my notebook to the side, swatting at one of the tendrils wrapping itself casually around the heel of my Condora Sling heel, "when you're ready, we're going to start with some tongue twisters and some basic oral aerobics."

I was used to the sighs of the chemically altered, spliced humans, mad scientists, and parasitic aliens (like the one before me), but I had lost no fewer than five assistants to that particular sound. Still the Abomination began trying to shape its mouth(s) and tongue(s). It had a 5:00 battle with Captain Vigilant at the bank and I had to help a sentient Venus flytrap with its stutter at 5:15.

We both had other things to do and knew our time was limited with each other.