A/N: Things are moving along but I'm curious, do you all want a monster posting now even if it means waiting later, or is this pace okay? I ask because I think if you're really giving a story a chance you'll know in about 10 chapters whether or not it's for you. I would hate to waste anyone's time.
Tanseynz, thanks for reading. (Sorry to put you on the spot; I didn't have the PM option) I think the basis of this Fic is hard to follow because you may have missed the first story 'Twisted and Turned' This is part two. Sorry, if that wasn't clear. On the upside if you decide to go back and read that, chapters from this would have time to pile up :D
Chapter 4
I took time off work. It has been a long time coming. Working at Merlottes was part of me wanting to pretend to be nothing but human. I put it on the shelf. It wasn't making me feel normal. I needed to find balance. I couldn't continue to drive myself crazy about money. With the time off, I took to the woods that surrounded the house in Bon Temps. There, I unleashed the skill and power that had been simmering and slowly dying in my veins.
The first day, I raced myself and lost. When I pushed I tore more tendons than I cared to name. That put me on my ass for a full day even with Eric giving me blood but it didn't stop me. Thankfully my husband didn't try to either. We both knew what my limits were and this was pitiful. I didn't stop. I began taking in my necessary amount of blood; four bottles a week. It made all the difference.
Today I had a clear goal. More and more the thought of joining the monthly football match was appealing to me. The prospect of going toe to toe with Eric instead of just playing "catch and pillage the telepath" was incredibly sexy. Just entertaining the thought of letting myself cut loose was making my gums tingle. I had to stop trying to be just human or Fae. I could never be just one. I needed a way to embrace all parts of my lineage. My niche had always been speed, not power, but today I was going to push both.
I already knew if I joined the game I would be the fastest person on the field. That posed a plethora of other concerns. The vampires might react poorly. Then again, they might not. Living forever tended to make them numb to things they deemed impossible. Hell, if you'd asked them five years none of them would have seen themselves living and thriving in a vampire republic.
What worried me was being linked to the political upheaval of the past few years. That could get ugly. I was also worried about the human spectators. Coming out to the vampires meant coming out to the humans as well and there was no controlling the shockwave that would cause. I could tamper with their memories but that would be a never ending project, one I didn't want. The best thing to do would be to weather the storm I couldn't escape.
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn't know I had an audience until I saw him. That was just beyond clumsy. I had ears that worked beyond perfectly. My sense of smell wasn't that bad either. How had I missed a faery? It wasn't just a faery but The Prince of the Sky Fae. Damn, it was worst case scenario! If I had to guess why he was here, I would only need one shot.
Fifty or so feet separated us but I knew both of us could cover it in a blink. I stood still and watched him. In return, he watched me. He was dressed humanly enough, but any human with an ounce of sense would be able to see that he was different. The day was overcast but the space around him was effervescent, shimmering with sparks just from his presence.
Niall Brigant was in a pinstriped suit, his ash blonde hair fell just a few inches beyond shoulder length, and it hung about his face much as a curtain did a stage. His finely wrinkled face, his aristocratic nose, and the point of his ears were in full view. His eyes captivated me, eerily similar. Almost like mine but not quite.
"I have been watching you," He said in hello.
The thing about faeries I'd learned while growing up was that the more direct they were, the more stock you could hold in their words, conversely the more dangerous they were. What was doubly concerning? He was all by his lonesome. Then again I'd expect nothing less from a Prince of their kind.
I said nothing. I watched and waited. Every breath I took was fuel for my readied muscles. Not a single lungful carried his scent. He was masking it, that too was a not a big surprise. That was how he had snuck up on me. That and he had popped in away from the wind.
"I am peaceable," He said. "I have come to have words with you. Violence will occur if and only when you draw first blood in this encounter."
"Do you think I can't or I won't?" I asked calmly.
I don't why I issued that verbal challenge. Then again, I just couldn't help talking shit. In a fight, I couldn't beat him. There was a reason why he was the Prince of an entire race. He could and would wipe the floor with me. It wouldn't be easy, but he would do it, and be done in time for his afternoon nap. It left me suspecting that the only thing that kept him from doing just that was the backlash from the vampires who cared about me.
"I do not believe that you will, no," he replied, walking to close the distance between us. "Even if you had the will, I do not believe that you can."
He was now in front of me. I hadn't moved since I saw him. I didn't so much twitch a muscle. The rock that I had sat on to tie my shoes was still behind me. Just as my roundhouse kick could be devastating, my manners could be impeccable, so I waved my hand for him to sit beside me. The woods around my house were a far cry from a throne room but we were two people of royal blood.
What I offered in that single gesture was a silent agreement. It didn't matter where we were. We had to conduct ourselves in a certain manner. It isn't really something I can explain. It's a reflex imbedded after years and years of training. Niall sat beside me at a respectable distance; just a little further apart than two normal people having a conversation would sit.
"You are not what I was expecting," He said. It wasn't a question. By the way his eyes glanced over the side of my face; it was a statement of fact that shocked him. He didn't ask a question so I should have remained quiet but I went fishing.
"What were you expecting?" I asked.
With the fluidity that only one such as him could possess, he ignored the question. "There is a call for your blood."
Well, at least we were getting to the point. Faeries called for blood like ten times a day, spiteful and unforgiving as they were.
"Whatever for? And correct me if I am mistaken, Niall, but surely you have better things to do than chase down bounties."
I used his name for two reasons. The first was because someone my age shouldn't know his given name. The second was to let him know that we were equals. The pause that followed was pregnant and I didn't break it. Waiting was my game. It was to the point that the longer someone kept me waiting, the more they told me with every passing beat of silence. At least that was the case with most. Niall wasn't giving me anything to work with.
"No," he finally answered. "I came to see for myself the person who defeated my fiercest shield maiden."
Claudine had gotten the drop on me once before which made her pretty damned good. The second time I had been pissed and had the element of surprise on my side. According to her, she had cursed me at the behest of my biological father who was her uncle.
I supposed that made us cousins, but she was no kin to me. She was born Fae and I was vampire-raised. I wanted to say that I wished I'd never met her, but then that would mean I wouldn't have Eric. Every now and then when my thoughts roamed I'd look back to that day when I confronted her.
"I gave you a chance," Claudine had told me.
It had been a chance at life. I had taken it, grasped it with both hands, and refused to let it go. In hindsight, it made the injury I inflicted on her, her twin, and several other faeries needless. There were many things I regretted during that time in my life and that was one of them. I pushed all of that out of my mind. It was the past. I focused on the consequence of that beside me.
While he didn't ask me a question I spoke anyway. "If she is your fiercest, I am not surprised that the Sky Fae cannot hold its own against the Water," I turned to him with a false, inquisitive look on my face.
The air around me shifted. It wasn't the wind. It was the fury of the Sky Prince. I didn't flinch. I looked at him waiting for him to make his move. I'd already assessed his weak points. He was emotional about the conflict that plagued his people. Emotional people tended to make mistakes. Physically, the most obvious weak point was the intricately carved walking stick he used. It was obvious so it had to be nothing but a trap.
Wrinkled as he was, there was nothing rusty in the way he moved. I had to go with the worst case scenario. He was stronger and faster. Even without checking I knew his mind was locked up tighter than Fort Knox. Getting in to do him harm was hard but not impossible. It wasn't as if he would just sit there twiddling his thumbs as I ripped his shields apart.
Just as suddenly as the static in the air rose, it dissipated. Niall didn't take the bait which left us at a bit of a stalemate. He wanted me to show my hand and I wanted him to show his, but both of us refused to be pushed.
"Would you care to walk with me?" he asked, getting to his feet.
He held his hand out to me in a very old-worldly fashion. "Of course."
I placed my fingers in his expectant grasp. I let him lead. I had iron on me so he couldn't teleport me anywhere, and there were only so many places that he could be headed. There was my house, and then there was the old Compton house to the far left. Niall chose option number three, the cemetery.
"I want to tell you a story," he began. "Your father, Fin,"
"Fintan impregnated my mother for his own reasons, but he was no father to me," I interrupted. "For this conversation to stay its course you will not confuse his role in my life."
I didn't pull away or raise my voice but the warning was clear. I knew he had gotten the better of me in that moment but I had Daddy issues. I made the distinction clear for him this once and I wasn't going to repeat myself.
The Sky Prince nodded absently. "Fintan is my son, so biologically you are a princess of the Sky. He was half-human, but that wasn't what made him weak. He was a selfish, indolent, and vain child. That did not change when he became a man. Women of all walks had always loved him and so long as they amused him, he loved them in return."
I didn't spare the time to sort through any emotions I felt rising to the surface regarding the fact that I was a granddaughter of the Sky Prince. It didn't matter; just as with Claudine and my biological father, Niall was no kin to me.
"Did you know you have a half-brother?" he asked.
With that he had won the silent power struggle in which we'd been engaged. I knew he wasn't talking about his son but my mother. The slip was obvious and I didn't try to hide it. My eyes betrayed me and I glanced down at the row of Stackhouses who were buried to our left. Some of the headstones were covered in moss.
I acknowledged it with a nod and put my mask back on. Niall knew more about the origins than my father. My curiosity burned even as my head blared out warnings. Going into the past was a dangerous thing because it couldn't be altered. Knowing the dangers, I continued the conversation.
"No," I told him.
He nodded. Whether he was pleased with himself for shocking me, I can't say. After my slip both of us were on higher alert as he continued the story.
"Yes, he is your elder and was still nursing at her breast when your mother met my son." He continued. "From what Fintan told me, she married because she had conceived but longed for so much more than what she had become. She discarded her infant son, her husband, and her whole life for his sweet words."
Niall pointed his cane at the headstone. It was that of Adele Stackhouse's son, Corbett. "He was her husband and, in his grief over her abandonment, he killed himself. He gave his son to his sister."
He gestured to a headstone a few rows over. Compared to those around it this one was new. It certainly wasn't a Stackhouse. From where I stood I could read that she had been. I'd seen the name before, Linda Stackhouse Delahoussaye.
"She had a daughter close in age to her newly orphaned nephew. She took both children and left this place so full of pain." Niall continued.
Leaving poor old Adele all alone, he didn't say it but he didn't have to. I knew it well. I had exploited it. Bill had been slowly altering the memories of Adele Stackhouse prior to my arrival in Bon Temps a few years ago. She would accept and welcome me as the child of Michelle and her son. It had been the easiest way to dislodge any suspicion of a telepath suddenly moving to town and stirring up shit. Her life was broken and it had been my mother's doing. That was why it had been so easy to implant me into her memories.
My father used to tell me 'People will show you who they truly are when you show them what they want most in the world.' I knew my mother had been a whore. I'd found that out when I inquired about her from my eldest vampire brother, Sai. Her reasons were something I'd wondered about.
It would be easy to say that she had been doing it to support me, but she had me as her end of a bargain she never intended to keep. Her word and loyalty had always been for sale it seemed. She had left her baby for what? A beautiful stranger, and then she shunned the child she had birthed for him. I knew I should consider him a half-brother but I couldn't. In my head and in my heart it was of the utmost importance to make the distinction.
"A few years passed until Fintan came to me."
I knew this part of the story at least. "My mother had reneged."
Going off what I already knew and the information he had offered, I couldn't have been more than three, four at the most. How much time separated me and Michelle's first child? Niall had said he was still nursing. The curiosity killed me but I wouldn't stop this careful match by sating it.
The Sky Prince nodded. "He came expecting me to amass an army to vanquish legions of the undead, help him reclaim his child, and to punish the woman who had dared to defy him."
Even without my life to prove it, I knew that that didn't happened. As a princess I was thought to assess risks, as the Patriarch of an entire race, I knew that Niall would never do something like that.
"Instead I cursed him."
Interesting.
"Your cursed your son over a human," I wondered.
My tone was minutely scathing as if he had committed a faux pas, which from a supernatural standpoint, he kind of had. Fintan might have acted like a douche but it often took extremes for the Fae to begin hurling curses at one another.
"No!" The Sky Prince snapped.
His aggression had been an inadvertent thing. Good, as far as slips went we were even thus far.
"It was not the first time he had destroyed lives. I punished him because he brought a child into it."
I nodded in understanding. "Ah, I see. He was perpetuating the propaganda the Water Fae use as platform for their purity wars," I said. "They still believe that anyone who carries Fae blood is damning the entire race, don't they?"
Niall's jaw clenched just the smallest amount but he said nothing. It didn't matter. I didn't need him to admit the truth. Faeries were an endangered species. Over time pure faeries began to die out as the sacred places that gave them power were mowed down for malls and office buildings. Now they were relegated to their home world. Yet, with every war they fought they polluted that place.
The disease that was rooted in their homeland wasn't relegated to just the Sky or the Water. Instead it was in the middle eating away at both, at least that was what Sai had told me. If they continued to fight it would eventually devour them all. Both sides had different ideas on what would save them and they were fighting over them still.
"I expected it would take him ages to break the curse but it didn't. I suspect he might have cared for you. He broke his curse and enlisted the aid of his elder brother's daughter," He gestured in my direction. "The rest you know."
I did but I didn't let that influence me as I asked, "What does your presence here mean?" I asked the Sky Prince.
It was obvious that he thought the journey through storyland would have clouded my mind. Yet, he didn't seem disappointed. His face creased hinting toward a smile.
"It means that Fintan is my son," He replied. "And I love him despite his many...very many flaws."
He turned to me and the expression on his face was all business. "Accounts of your attack suggest that you are a grave threat to my people. I must agree," He told me. "However, I believe you can be an asset, especially now that we are in need."
I paused for a respectable amount of time. It would lead him to believe that I was considering the offer, which of course I wasn't.
"My allegiance is not to the Fae," I told him.
"Yes, you ally yourself to those who are dead."
He attempted to keep the disgust from his voice but couldn't entirely manage it. I didn't take it personally. If the blood in my veins was like crack to an entire species I would be a little prejudiced too. "I find it curious that you were reared with such care while living in their midst."
I smiled austerely because he was on a fishing expedition. I didn't take the bait. "Vampires are complicated creatures," was my reply.
He smiled. Then he suddenly turned as if someone had called his name. I didn't see or hear anything, but for all I knew that had been the case. No one knew Niall's abilities.
"I will find you at a later time. We will settle our score."
Then he vanished, leaving behind a shimmer in the air. That sounded all kinds of ominous.
