Family

A/N- Pronunciations: (most important bold) Saorla (Sayr-la, noble queen), Sorcha (Sur-ka, radiant light), Niamh (Neev, bright), Naoise (Nee-sha, meaning lost, sometimes given as 'connection'), Niall (Neil or Nye-all, means champion but is also associated with cloud, or passionate), Einín (Ay-neen, small bird), Noírín (Noreen, honor), Fiona (fee-o-na, white), Fionnula (Fin-o-la, fair or white shouldered), Mairéad (Mahr-ade, pearl), Eoín (Owen, God is gracious), Saoirse (Seer-sha, freedom), Eithne (Ayt-na, kernel or heart of the nut).

III.

The gardens were lit, though I guess Victor wouldn't need much light to enjoy them.

"So what did Eric say to you?" I asked Victor as we walked.

"Oh, he was just a big ball of Viking fun. Mentioned a sword, a broadsword I think? Colorful language. The usual. I'm not taking it too seriously."

I rolled my eyes. Victor was always a little on edge around Eric, so that was pretty hard to believe. The last time they'd really argued Eric looked only slightly ruffled and a bleeding Victor looked as if he'd seen his vampire life flash before his eyes. I guess having a six foot four inch thousand year old Viking standing over you snarling should give anyone pause for thought. The few times it had happened to me, I had certainly felt that way. But Eric never did stuff like that with me anymore. Stuff like that just made me more stubborn so he had gotten much stealthier since we were together.

As we had walked through the house, and now outside, I'd looked around and realized that other than the housekeeper and possibly Polly, there was really no one around.

"So if no one is here, how am I supposed to listen to all these people you're concerned about Victor?"

"Well, I thought you could do the human staff during the day. Maybe some of the Weres. And I'm giving a party at midnight Sunday. Later tonight I thought we could go to a few of my side businesses I 'inherited' from Russell." He said that last part very tongue in cheek.

I was still hung up on the party part. Victor was a King now. What kind of party? "A party? Not a formal party? But I didn't bring anything to wear for a formal party! I didn't really bring anything for a party, period. Why didn't you tell me, Victor?"

"It's kind of a change of plans. It's safer to wait until Eric is here. He's bringing something for you to wear. I told him about the plan when he was done telling me off. He's bringing something blue that you like I think he said? Definitely bringing you clothes. You'll probably have it on your voicemail. He said he was going to leave you a message about it. I just figured it was easier to have a party and have them in one place. That way you can also listen to how they are with each other."

"Okay… If that's how you want it. I can give it a try. Sure. But what is it that you're worried about Victor? You're being so evasive."

"I can't put it into words exactly. It's just a feeling. Like I can't trust them."

"Who?"

"Any of them, really. I can't put my finger on it. It's not any one thing. I just want you to tell me what you think."

The knot gardens were beautiful and the terracing made everything look much more impressive when you were at the bottom of the garden looking back up at the house.

We walked on in silence and I sensed that Victor was struggling with something else. It was like he was working up the energy to do something. Victor sometimes still did things around me that just made me shake my head. But this was different. It felt like he was very apprehensive about something.

"What about you? What about what you wanted to talk about?" he said quietly, at last.

I turned to look at him. I hadn't told him that I wanted to talk about anything. Had Eric?

He looked at me and nodded. "You wanted to know about family, Eric said? He mentioned it the other day." He looked diffident, as if pressing himself forward onto dangerous ground.

Suddenly, I knew that I had read the situation incorrectly. Victor had sent everybody away and had been there watching me because… because there was he was thinking about telling me something but it was hard for him. Maybe the whole being near me business had to do with finding the courage to talk about it. Victor was not a very trusting person, but he was thinking about trusting me. He was still pretty ambivalent about it.

"I do want to know about our family Victor. I've asked Niall so many times and he won't tell me. It was amazing to me that he even told me that you were my cousin. Claudine won't tell me anything either. She says only Niall can tell me. I haven't even bothered trying to ask Claude. I figured that if you've been around several hundred years that you must know something that you can share about our family."

He looked at me and gave me a sad smile. We came to a bench and he gestured that I should sit. He paced slowly and then looked out over the garden and sighed. He sat down next to me.

"Niall's made all kinds of threats about what he'll do if I tell you anything. Probably along the same lines with Claudine and Claude. But why do you want to know, Sookie? You're the nice one in the family. Why do you want to dredge up ancient history? It will just make you feel bad about the rest of us. It's kind of a sordid family history, you know?"

"It's my family, too, Victor. And I'm tired of being treated as if I'm the poor sheltered child who mustn't know anything. So many people have made remarks about the Brigant family but I don't really know what any of it is about. I don't even know about my real grandfather, Fintan, other than that he was Niall's son and kept Niall from seeing me. It's like being adopted and wanting to know where you really came from or something. I want to understand, that's all."

He sighed and turned away to look out over the gardens. Finally, after leaning his head slightly to one side and making hmmm sounds, he turned to me.

"I can tell you some things. Actually, a lot of things. But I don't know everything. I know a lot, but it's from my own perspective. I can tell you about how I became a vampire and that part of the history. It ties a lot together and it's my story, mine to share, not Niall's. Niall's told you that Dermot was my grandfather, right?"

"Yes. Did you know your grandfather?"

"Yes. I knew Dermot. He died after I did, so to speak. And I knew Fintan, too. So I can tell you my story because that's bound up in their story. Dermot and Fintan… They were close, but very different. Dermot, my grandfather, was kind of reckless and risk-taking. Sometimes playful, but sometimes quite a violent man. My father, Conor, was a quarter fae and a lot like his father. He was born and raised in Ireland too, as was I."

"Wait- why isn't your last name Brigant, if Dermot's son is your father?"

He smiled. "You're getting ahead of the story, Sookie. For the record, Madden is my mother's surname. She was from Cill Dara, County Kildare." Victor was actually lapsing back into a brogue. I was amazed.

"County Kildare is immediately south of Meath, right?"

"Yeah… Yes. The Brigant family originally lived in Meath and Kildare. It's like a nexus of the human and fae worlds. Living in our enclaves we kept out of the way of the English, who held Ireland at that time. By the time I was born, Niall was already a fierce prince of the Fae. His Fae children were all daughters- Sorcha and Saorla, Niamh. The sons he had were half-fae. By the time I was born, Dermot and Fintan were several hundred years old and they struggled with their positions among the Fae. They were the 'poor' relations. They had only a little magic of their own, and they had built rather bad reputations for being troublemakers, after their mother, Einín, died. Dermot and Conor, my father, were always very frustrated by their lack of… magic isn't exactly the right word. It was more than that. I think they really wanted power. They didn't have real power, like Niall. Of course it was easy in those days to get power by just abusing people, making them afraid, especially if you came from a powerful family. They used that angle to get away with a lot of things. Especially when they were drunk. And they were impressive drunkards. I spent most of my time with my mother Fíona's family. The Maddens were part fae too, but just an easier going crowd. The Brigants were a rowdier lot. But anyway, Dermot was always looking to create an impression. His misguided desire was to make himself useful, to prove himself powerful in other, non-magical ways. Since there were a lot of the Fae in Ireland, and they obviously feared vampires, Dermot got the idea of going down to Wicklow, Carlow and Wexford, where there were vampires enclaves and just killing as many as he could get. I guess he thought it would impress his fae relations and friends. Mind you, these vampires were really pretty much just feeding on humans and largely not even draining them out or anything. They avoided the Fae, because they were trying to just co-exist with everyone. Ireland in those days was still like a magical wilderness. The supernatural community was largely veiled from the English and unknown to the government. We lived in our own world. There was more tolerance for different races than existed in most of the rest of Europe. But that tolerance didn't last. Thanks to the Brigants. "

He paused and looked as if the very name was distasteful.

"So Dermot and Conor would go on raids during the day to Wicklow, Carlow and Wexford and even sometimes in Kildare, and find vampire nests and burn down the structures, or just go around staking people if they could find their resting places. They were careful to avoid northern Kildare and Meath because of all the Brigid descendants there. The Tuatha Dé Danann didn't approve much of such fighting. But Dermot and Conor still killed many vampires. Vampires started leaving the east of Ireland, but some, not surprisingly, were angered and decided to fight back. This was in the early 1700's, around 1710. It started when I was 15. Some of the vampires started to go after the Fae in retaliation. Well after several rounds of attacks on both sides, my father Conor, was killed in 1713. They left him on the doorstep. Really subtle… He was only 55, which was pretty young in our family. Dermot and Niall were really angry, and in retaliation, Niall, with Dermot's help, destroyed a large nest, of 24 vampires, in Meath, near Navan. They said they wanted to get rid of all the vampires in our counties. All but one of the vampires in Meath was killed. That one, Devin Lomán, escaped and hid down in Wicklow. He was very angry. By this time, Niall and his family were really hated by the vampires in eastern Ireland. Their attacks seemed arbitrary and not tied to any sense of justifiable retribution. Devin wanted revenge, but just killing a bunch of Fae didn't seem as if it would change the course of anything. It would just be more of the same. He decided that maybe Dermot and Niall would have a different approach to things if one of their own was made vampire. He wanted to send a message that the Fae weren't safe from the vamps in more ways than one. So one night he caught me, and he turned me. Three days later he delivered me, newly awake and starving, into a Fae enclave of friends and family in Meath, near Tara."

I gasped. Victor paused then, just staring out into the garden in front of us.

I shivered at the thought. Victor had been turned for revenge? He was used, just to send a message to Niall and Dermot? He had been dropped off back in his fae family's home turf as a hungry, newly made vampire?

Victor's face was impassive as stone, just expressionless. But sitting next to him I could feel he was reliving something really horrible.

"How old were you? Eighteen?"

"I'd just turned nineteen. I was in madly in love with a girl, a fae girl, named Mairéad. She was a second cousin. She was young and beautiful. So to just get it over with, I showed up on her doorstep hungry, horny, and I'm sure you can imagine the rest."

I shuddered. He had killed the woman he loved in some intoxicated blood lust? My eyes just filled with tears for him. I could see that for him it was still fresh in his mind, the sheer horror of what he had done, almost three hundred years before.

He was quiet for a time but then resumed. "Naoise, Mairéad's father figured out it was me, though I don't know how. He figured out what had happened and he was horribly angry. But not just at me. He blamed Niall and Dermot for the whole business. For inciting the violence with the vampires. Brigid's descendants in Meath and Kildare put a ban on any further actions by Niall in their area. They tried to comfort Naoise and reason with Niall to put a stop to it all."

He paused again. It was as if he was trying to decide how to move forward from there.

"But Niall didn't listen. Devin was hiding down in Wicklow, further south. It didn't take long for Niall and Dermot to find him. So Niall killed my sire, Devin. He and Dermot wanted their revenge but Niall also didn't want me beholden to a sire. I could have been used against them, and they would have had to kill me. Clearly though, I couldn't live in Ireland anymore, couldn't be around family and friends. They didn't want Naoise to kill me either, so they hid me and kept me under control by magic and with silver. I had no sire to help me learn to live as a vampire, so Niall sent me to live in England, with a very old vampire he knew. Edward Ashe was more my sire in the sense that really matters. He lived on an estate in Devon. He was an unusual person, a real teacher. He understood what had been done to me, what had been taken from me. He was old, about the age Eric is now, and in a way he was an interesting character. He was not afraid to break rules and as vampires go, he was kind to me. He was never all that harsh with me for breaking rules and taking chances, even though I was young. He tried to teach me justly but firmly. I was very unruly, especially with my own kind. I was never afraid to take from other vampires because of what had been taken from me. I even had to use my mother's surname because clearly it would be unseemly to be a vampire and go by the name Brigant. Niall forced me to take my mother's family name. I lost my family, my lover, my home, and couldn't even keep my own name… all because of Devin Lóman. So I became determined to get my revenge on my kind. To wrest power however I could. If I'd been turned, I'd make the best of it. I could always coast by on charm and luck, true to my roots, when I needed to. And then I'd just take whatever I wanted, whenever I could."

I reached over and picked up his hand. It was really horrible. He'd lost everything. It was another of the many really horrible 'made vampire' stories, but this was my family. The impact was much harder to absorb.

"So you left Ireland and all your family? Did you ever get to go back? Did Niall and Dermot visit you in England?"

"No, I've never been back. There would be nothing to go back for, because I can't be there without… remembering. I never saw my grandfather again. My only family left is Fae but Niall has visited me only four times in almost three hundred years. There are so many Fae there, probably even more now, in Kildare and Meath, since all the vampires are gone. How could I ever go there? And where you go, in Meath with Eithne, Saoirse and Declan and that bunch, it is the way it is because of the Brigants. Dermot and Conor started it, then Devin reacted to it, then Niall reacted to him. It was like this chain of retribution, of hatred. But it gets worse. Naoise believed that Mairéad was dead because of Niall and Dermot's reckless killing, because they had changed a balance of co-existence. Devin was already dead, so the only outlet for his anger was really Niall and Niall's family."

"But he would have been going after the family of a prince right? How could he risk that?"

Victor smiled an ironic smile and nodded.

"Sookie, Naoise is Niall's brother. His younger brother. They truly hate each other. You really can't imagine how much. It's barely worth calling them family because it's in name only. It's gone on for centuries that way between them. Niall had all the power of his position, but he reacts impulsively and just based on emotion at times. Like when he sought vengeance for my father's death. The vampires in Meath had nothing to do with my dad Conor's death. The Meath vampires were just an easy target because it was a large nest. Niall is very reckless and can be very bad tempered when he's crossed. Naoise had always been a quieter, more thoughtful type. But when I killed Mairéad, I guess something just snapped in him. It was like he went crazy or something. It really split the family in half and created warring factions among the Irish Fae. Niall, Dermot's and Conor's actions had actually made things, in the end, much less safe between the Fae and the vampires. The vampires hated the Fae. The Fae hated the vampires, and they hated the other side of their own family. It was a very dark time…"

"You don't mention Fintan at all, Victor. Was he involved in all of this too? You said that he and Dermot were close."

"They were close, yes. But, no, Fintan did not go around killing vampires. He had no interest in Dermot's power trip. Fintan was a ladies man. He was easy going. He didn't exactly agree with Niall and Dermot. The vampires who had been killed, other than Devin, hadn't really done anything to anyone other than some unlucky humans. I guess you could say that Fintan disagreed with Dermot and Conor, but he was too busy fooling around to be very vocal about it. Your brother Jason seems a lot like Fintan. But Fintan finally allied himself with Naoise, because he said the killing should stop. That infuriated Niall. That was their first falling out. Naoise still wanted his revenge for Mairéad, but I was gone, so eventually, Naoise killed my grandfather Dermot to get back at Niall. Fintan felt betrayed. Even if he had disagreed with Dermot, they were brothers. The fighting between Naoise and Niall was like a war from that time forward. Fintan was really caught in the middle. I don't know about it directly because my father's family had pretty much distanced themselves from me because I was a vampire. For a while my sister Fionnula, some of her children and grandchildren would keep me abreast of things. There were frequent violent exchanges that went on for decades and in one of these, around 1830, Fintan killed Naoise's son, Eoín with an iron rod, supposedly in self-defense, as I understand it. Fintan ended up leaving Ireland, for his own safety, and moving to America. I guess that's how he eventually met your grandmother."

"You said that Niall visited you, right? He tried to make sure you were okay?"

Victor chuckled at that. "Not for centuries. After I was dropped off with Edward, he didn't visit me. Until very recently. Four times in the past two and a half years. First to warn me not to hurt you. Then to toss me around like a sack of potatoes and scorch me a bit because I hurt your wrist that time in the shifter's bar. Then he visited me before Memphis and told me that I had better help him take care of you because you were my cousin. Then he visited me after you and Eric had that argument and you went to Ireland, I guess because he said you liked me and he would take you news of my situation in Mississippi."

"He only visited you because of me?" I was shocked. And he had threatened Victor about his treatment of me... It made me feel terribly guilty.

"Yeah. Although he's called me more frequently since I got involved with you. I have contact numbers and addresses, even for Claudine and Claude. I hear from him every once in a while now. It's not like I've been missing him or anything, you know?"

I struggled to take it all in. It was worse than I had thought it would be. All the fighting, the hatred. And the murders. I had thought the Fae were beautiful and noble. It turned out they were beautiful, violent, and bellicose (I couldn't remember the day in October for that word, I was too upset. But it certainly seemed to describe the Brigants.). They certainly weren't sounding much better than the vampires to me. It was really hard to believe that the Niall I knew as my great-grandfather had been involved in, or even led some of these things. They all seemed so fueled by blind hatred and intolerance. And he had basically disowned Victor until he had a use for him.

Victor seemed to sense my struggling with it. He rose and offered me his hand.

"You should eat. Eric really will be mad if I don't make sure you eat well. He told me you skip meals all the time, especially if you get upset. And I wasn't supposed to get you upset. I'm supposed to take good care of you."

I took his outstretched hand. Without intending to, I sort of read him as I touched him. There was more. And it was much worse. What could possibly be worse? He didn't think I was ready for it.

I wasn't.