A Queen and Her Kings

For the Love of the Moon

After Shorter's experimentation, she retrieved his body from the flames herself, narrowly avoiding Ash and a boy from Chinatown she later found out was named Sing. After she carried him back to the penthouse, she waited with baited breath for him to wake up from a extraordinarily long transition of 9 days. Her anxiety at the whole situation was worse than it was with Griffin or Skip, which was odd. Why was she more worried for him than those two?

Once he woke up, she told informed him of the benefits and downsides of being a vampire; you had to be invited into human owned private property, you need a piece of daylight jewelry to out in the sun (something she provided him with), he was vulnerable to vervain, could compel humans save for those with vervain on their person or in their system, could be killed via stake in the heart, removal of heart, decapitation, being set on fire and an extremely high level magic attack, had enhanced physical capabilities and the humanity switch, something she made him promise never to touch.

All in all, he took vampirism in stride and seemed to be genuinely happy with his choice. He also spent a lot of time with Skip, who he was pleasantly surprised to find alive as well, and Griffin, whose presence he was shocked by and who was still figuring out vampirism himself.

The two helped each other figure things out, becoming good friends in the process. It was during this time that Skip told Shorter about the Court of Miracles and that Griffin was a member. Shorter asked her about it and when she told him what it was, he asked if he could join as well. He knew he would most likely never go back to the New York gang scene if he wanted to keep his sister safe and keep the promise he made to Cassandra after he completed transition that he would never reveal the existence of the supernatural to the general public. With this in mind he asked if he could go back to New Orleans with her when this was all over and work for her, something she agreed to. Shorter and the now almost completely adjusted Griffin then began combat training and supernatural history lessons with her uncles Kol and Elijah respectively.

After she got Shorter settled in, she moved on to Yut-lung. She was originally going to do Eiji first, but decided Yut-lung was in a worse position and needed the help more. She started by killing his brothers (with her father's blessing, of course), decapitating them and compelling their families into believing they were normal Chinese American fatherless families and scattering them across the country, getting paperwork forged to prove this and also faking their deaths back in China. She did this herself in an attempt to show her sincerity in trying to help him. She then had the heads placed on his kitchen table in a perfect circle, with a note taped to the counter that said:

You don't know me, but I know you. I know how you hurt and suffered due to these men you were forced to share blood with, so I destroyed them. I know this will not make what happened go away, and this may anger you due to the fact it was not by your order or hand. I want to help you, to show you what life could be. I want you to be happy.

We will meet in person very soon.

Eternally yours, C.M.

Yut-lung was understandably very confused and distressed. Who was C.M? Why did they kill his brothers, and more importantly how? How did they get into his abode undetected, let alone with six severed heads? No one would help him just to help him, this person had to be lying. They must want something from him in exchange for this service. But if this was the case, how did this C.M know he wanted his brothers dead? He kept his plan in a death grip and told next to no one, and those he did tell would never dare say a word. Maybe they were hired by someone who knew? But why go through the trouble of writing that letter? The whole thing made no sense and was starting to make him want to pull his hair out.

When he was injured when Ash took him hostage, that was the first time things went off course in a way she had not intended. Yut-lung was supposed to leave the incident with minor injuries at worst, not two gunshot wounds to the chest via an unnamed Golzine lackey who was trying to shoot Ash and couldn't aim for shit.