Cage Match...

She woke up in the center of a cage. She looked around as much as she could without moving. Trying to figure out how she got there.

"I know you're awake. I've been waiting."

She turned her head toward the voice, "Kyle? What the hell, dude?"

He wrote something down in his notebook.

"Kyle? Hello, what are you doing?"

"I'm taking notes. While I have you I want to make sure I find out as much as I can."

"Don't you think you could have just asked me questions after class? Or maybe in the cafeteria? This seems a little drastic."

"You're very calm. That's interesting."

"You aren't planning on hurting me are you? It seems like if you were planning on hurting me you would have already started. And aside from being locked in a cage I seem to be okay."

"It's still interesting. Most people would be slamming themselves against the bars in anger or reaching out through them begging me to let them go. Yet you haven't moved from the middle there. As far away from the iron as you can get."

If she hadn't already been quietly freaking out, that would have done it. But she was a master at maintaining a calm exterior during a private freak out.

"Again, I don't think you are going to hurt me. You've never struck me as that type. So I'm calmly waiting for you to tell me what the hell is going on."

"You're right. I don't plan on hurting you. I can't say what will happen to you after I sell you. But I won't hurt you at all."

"Sell me? What the fuck? You in to human trafficking, Kyle?"

"Human trafficking? No, not human trafficking."

She narrowed her eyes at him, "What are you insinuating there, Kyle? Are women not humans?"

He shook his head, "Look, you and I both know you aren't human. It took me awhile to figure you out but I eventually did. You really needed to be more careful with your tells. First off some contacts probably would have helped. Nobody has eyes that color. Nobody human at least."

Her eyes were dark brown. So dark that they looked black. And they had flecks of gold in them like the spokes of a wheel. She really considered them her best feature and would have never wanted to hide them with contacts. "Because you're from Wisconsin or Minnesota right? Where most people have light colored eyes? I'm not. My whole family has brown eyes. Pretty much everyone I grew up with has brown eyes. You come home with me and people will think you are wearing fake contacts."

"They aren't brown. They are black. And the gold. Don't forget the gold."

"Go look at your own eyes, Kyle. They are blue with a darker blue ring. Eyes are like that. Colors vary."

He shook his head, "And your ambrosia."

"Ambrosia?"

"Or wait, nectar. I think it's probably more nectar. Whatever it is in your vial you carry. You add it to your drinks. I've seen you. It's so you can handle human food. I've read the stories."

"My meds? I'm diabetic, Kyle. I have specialty meds I put in my drinks to help me process sugar. I also have insulin shots when that isn't enough. In fact, you might want to let me check my blood sugar here soon or you won't have anyone to traffic."

"They aren't meds. No diabetic ever has a silver vial of mystery medication they add to their drinks."

"Just because you haven't seen it before doesn't mean it isn't so. That medication keeps me alive."

"Oh, I believe that. That's why I switched out your drink after you treated it yesterday. To see what would happen."

She nodded then. Well that explained it. "So you fucked with my medication as an experiment? And when I passed out from the spike and drop in my blood sugar you kidnapped me and put me in here?"

"Pretty much. Except we both know it wasn't a blood sugar thing. And as soon as I put a few drops of your 'medicine' on your tongue you started to wake back up. You ate human food and it didn't agree with your fae system."

"My fae system?"

"Yes. Fae system. See? I told you that I figured it out. You are a faerie."

"Okay, sure, Kyle. I'm a faerie. Where are my wings?"

"Oh don't do that. Just admit that I have you figured out. You are a faerie. Or a sprite maybe. I don't think sprite because of the size thing, I've never read about a sprite being able to pass as human even with glamour. But a faerie? Easily done."

She nodded, "Okay, Kyle, I'm a faerie. Who drinks nectar. But not a sprite because that would be ridiculous. Anything else you want to tell me about myself? Like what would a faerie be doing in college studying business management? Lot of banks in faerieland?"

"I think you are in school to study humans. I'm not sure why. Probably the same reason why I will get a good price for you when I sell. Everything is curious about what it isn't."

"So my dark eyes and my meds are what tipped you off to all this? Pretty amazing filling in of the blanks there."

"Not just those things. Your hands too."

She looked down at her hands. "What about my hands?"

"You have very graceful hands. Your fingers are very long and thin. More so than most. And the nails on your little fingers are very sharp. Just those. You don't file the others like that. I think in your natural form they must be like a spur on a rooster or something. And you can make yourself look human enough, but you can't get rid of everything."

"Because I file those two nails to a point that makes me faerie? It's not that I use them in my origami? To make sharper creases in my folds? I mean, doesn't that make more sense?"

"Your origami is another thing that gave you away. You are too good at it. Nobody who hadn't studied it for many lifetimes would be that good."

"I have been doing it almost my whole life, Kyle. This would have been one of the things you could have asked me about. I'm a fidgeter, I needed something to keep my hands busy. Some people knit, I fold paper.  I've been doing it since I was 6 or 7 and I first saw someone make a dove. You do something for more than a decade you get pretty good at it."

"How about when you argued with the professor about hemophilia?"

"Excuse me? What argument with a professor?"

"Jacqueline said that you told Professor Randal that the rumors of rampant hemophilia in the royal families were not actually true. And that he didn't believe you until you showed him an article online that said it was used as a sort of shield to protect the young children. Nobody wanted to be the one to cause an injury that would make them bleed out so they gave them distance. But there wasn't really any disease. He still didn't believe you but was impressed that you had ever seen an article on the subject considering it was published in such an obscure journal."

"That's not really much of an argument. And why would my reading an obscure journal make me a faerie? Wouldn't it be more likely that I was just someone who spent way too much time online?"

"Funny you mention online. That's how I discovered that the journal is written by and mostly read by Fae creatures. So you see, you tipped your hat by knowing about it."

"You found a list of what faeries read online? Seriously?"

"You would be surprised what you can find online."

"I'm sure I would be. Tell me, have you ever gone to vanhelsing.com?"

Kyle rolled his eyes, "Now you're making fun of me."

"Kyle, you have me locked in a fucking cage talking about selling me because you think I'm a faerie. I'm pretty sure you can handle a little mocking."

He wrote a few more things down in his notebook.

"Subject is mocking me. Do not understand the hostile tone. You would think I kidnapped her. Is that what you are writing, Kyle?"

"No. If you must know I'm noting the time. I imagine with limited access to your nectar and being surrounded by iron as you are that you won't be able to hold your human form forever. I'm waiting to see what happens when you turn."

"What do you think will happen, Kyle?"

"I'm not sure. All of the images online are just guesses. Nobody seems to know what a faerie looks like in their natural form."

"So you really aren't going to give me back my meds?"

"Nope."

"And you are really planning on selling me off once you force me into my natural faerie form?"

"Yep."

"Okay, then I guess I have no choice but to level with you."

Kyle wrote some more notes very quickly and leaned forward anxiously.

"You're right. I'm not entirely human, Kyle. You got me. You should be really proud. I've been passing my whole life. Only three people ever have picked up that something wasn't quite the same about me, but you are the first to go to this," she motioned at the cage, "sort of lengths to prove it."

"What happened to the other two?"

"Nervous, Kyle? I don't see why. You clearly have the upper hand here and have this all figured out."

"What happened to the other two?"

"They asked me what I was and I told them. Then they went their way and I went mine. I told you that you could have just asked me instead of going to such drastic lengths. But then, of course, they weren't looking to make a profit off of me. They were just curious. The myths and the truth weren't lining up for them."

"What do you mean the myths and the truth?"

"Oh, like you said you thought I might be a sprite? Well, Kyle, you better hope you never run across a sprite in real life. They are vicious creatures. You ever try to trap one of them and you will end up with a swarm on your doorstep. They will pick your bones clean like a school of piranha. They might be the meanest things in the whole supernatural world."

"Sprites? The little sprites?"

"Judge them by their size do you?" She laughed at her own joke. He wasn't so someone had to.

"And, Kyle, Jacqueline got the story wrong. She overheard Professor Randal and I talking about the hemophilia myth and put the pieces together in the wrong way. That happens sometimes when people are eavesdropping on creatures they shouldn't be. See, Professor Randal isn't strictly human either. I'll let you try and figure out exactly what he is on your own. But anyway, the truth is much more interesting than the myth. See the German Royals did have a particular blood disease, but it wasn't hemophilia. They didn't bleed out so much as they didn't keep their blood. I know it seems like the same thing, but it isn't, not really. They were reliant on blood donations to be able to maintain their lives. And there had to be an official reason why they kept on donors in the castle at all times so, hemophilia. And that also kept people from the outside from wanting to marry in to the family. Who wants to risk passing a deadly disease on to their children?

So the family tree got a little loopy there for awhile, but they finally figured out how to survive with their blood issues and ventured out into the world. Intermarrying with other Royals and then eventually the rest of the world. The gene gets passed down in families still, but if you teach the children young how to deal with the iron deficiencies they do just fine."

"Iron deficiencies?"

"Well, yes, that's what most blood diseases boil down to. How you process iron. How much blood can you keep in your system? How much iron can you process?"

"So the Royal families couldn't process the iron in their blood. Are you saying that's because they were fae and the fae can't tolerate iron?" Kyle was getting excited by this information. He was scribbling notes down as fast as he could.

"The Royal Family were no more fae than I am, Kyle."

Kyle jumped, her voice was much closer than it should have been. He looked up and directly in to her eyes. She wasn't in the cage anymore. He started to scramble out of the chair and she reached out and pushed him back in with one finger. He slammed into the seat. "What..."

"What the hell, Kyle? That's how I started! Now you know how it feels right?"

"See, Kyle, you messed up. I tried to give you a hint. You really should have checked out vanhelsing.com before you came for me. I'm not fae, I'm human. Ish. Vampire sounds so old fashioned, but that's really what I am. Vampire."

"That can't be because..."

"Because I go out during the day? Because I'm not phased by crosses? Because I can sit next to Crystal when she eats her garlic mashed potatoes in the cafeteria? Kyle, dude, don't you think a line of creatures that has existed forever would put out a little false information? How do you think we've survived this long?" She moved the items on his desk around then patted down his pockets until she found her silver vial. "I'll take this, thank you."

"What is it?"

"Oh come, now, I think you can guess."

"B.b.b.lood?"

"Smart boy. Okay, not really smart. I mean you kidnapped a vampire, starved her, locked her in an iron cage where she could sit quietly and absorb the iron energy until she was strong enough to escape and then...well. So yeah, not really smart, Kyle. I'm a vampire, Kyle, not a faerie. I don't weaken from iron, I get stronger. It's not as good as my condensed blood, but as you stole my vial it worked just fine. That's why I'm here, by the way, my family runs a distillery. Best condensed product out there. A few drops a day is all it takes. I needed a business degree to help us expand. Going in to the family business. Just need to figure out where we are going to get more donors." She gave him a cold smile.

Kyle tried to scoot away from her one more time but she reached out and grabbed his wrist holding him in place.

"You wanted to know what the nails are for? I think it's only fair to show you." She traced a line down his wrist with her right pinky. A line of crimson formed quickly. She leaned down and licked the blood away making a face, "Some people really like the extra kick from the adrenaline but I never did care for it." Kyle stared at his wrist as the cut healed and disappeared. "Neat trick right? It's in the saliva. We are healers. You'll find a lot of us in the medical profession. Great plastic surgeons especially. Very little scaring. It just didn't appeal to me as much. I like numbers. I really do." She ran her finger over her lower lip wiping up a little bit of blood that had smeared there.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"Kill you? No, Kyle, I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to work with you to destroy all of your notes and cover up all of your tracks. I'm going to help you destroy your little dungeon here. I'm going to make sure everyone on all of the chat boards you've visited knows that you are crazy. Then we are going to part ways and you are going to change schools."

"Why would you trust me?"

"Oh, I don't trust you, Kyle. I don't trust you at all. But the one thing that is true," she looked him in the eye and he watched the golden spokes start to pulse, "Is the hypnotism. You'll be a good boy, Kyle, and that's the truth."

"The truth..." Kyle repeated.