Maximilian Kainz, regent Ravenscroft's second-in-command, would land at the city airport and be heading to the royal residence in less than an hour. Northman knew the vampire liked the new orleanian atmosphere and surely counted to spend some time visiting clubs with live-music and vampire dens. His assignment, as outlined by his child, was not demanding and consisted of representing the regent at the three nights quarterly meeting with the king and all his sheriffs, and testing two recruits for the regent's personal crew.
Kainz had worked almost twenty years with Northman, at the beginning of his reign, as interface between the crown and the former regent's employees, then as advisor and favourite sparring partner of the Hammer. Northman remembered him with pleasure. He had learned to appreciate the vampire and his style, especially the relative flexibility and leeway he left to his underlings. Northman had seen how the Austrian vampire had adopted his same techniques to forge loyal and trusty soldiers, changing his behaviour to better reach the required outcome. When Northman's child had offered him a position as her second, Kainz had accepted just to follow his personal rule not to stay too long in a comfortable position. He liked changes and challenges, and the king's vivacious child had granted both. Northman had liked it too.
However, he was glad to meet him from time to time, and always reserved some time for the two of them. Training with different fighters was beneficial to keep quick and sharp reflexes and satisfy his martial appetites. Kainz shared this view, too.
Northman's welcoming, therefore, was on his private training ground and involved a traditional combat with blades and sticks, then a free engagement in his special gravity-free chamber.
Kainz took the expected sound beating and learned a few more tricks. Northman was a superb fighter and a generous teacher, tapping into his long years of practise to dry his style to fewer and fewer moves. Only those needed. Lethal. Usually, an average match lasted a matter of minutes but the explanation, essential as his style, involved at least a couple of hours of more not so amiable thrashing. A fine treat for Kainz's palate.
After they had a shower, they sat in a private sitting room and discussed some annoying events happening on the Tennessee border in the last few months. It was the reason the regent had chosen to stay at her place and meet some Mississippi's sheriffs who were experiencing the same problems.
"Are you seeing a scheme, or do you still consider those random episodes?" asked Eric sipping some water.
"Still not clear," replied Kainz thoughtful. "Sometimes it seems to appear a direction, then it happens something that doesn't fit. At the moment it's just a pain in the ass, no more."
"What direction, exactly?"
"Two, to be precise. First, one of our neighbours, namely Missouri or Tennessee, is pocking to cause a strife of low/medium intensity with our neighbouring allies," Kainz offered. "Second, another agent -and I'd say no vampire- is trying the same, trying to push one against the other blindly, without knowing our real ties to each other."
"Mmm… Tennessee is surely moving uncharacteristically. Missouri seems little interested in these dangerous games. Strangely so, I'd say. Do we have spies in his territory?"
"Pam is trying to reactivate a few contacts. She asked me to inquire with you about Thalia's availability in the nearest future," the vampire frowned. "Your child has a wild side…"
Eric lifted a brow.
"I'd never seek Thalia's… services. Too unpredictable and undisciplined to my taste."
Eric smiled. "Plausible deniability, Max. And a fine tracker, too."
"A wild card," he countered. "At any rate, let her know if—"
Heavy footsteps halted at the door and a light knocking followed.
"Come in, Roxanne," Eric said.
The vampiress came in and bowed briefly. "It's lady Alia, sir."
Eric signalled to continue.
"Diantha just called. She found the fairy unconscious in her kitchen."
Walking around the living room, Eric watched as dr Ludwig licked again Alia's wrist. Next the doctor pricked a finger tip and drew a droplet of blood, licked it readily and savoured its taste.
"Dr Ludwig!" Eric's voice swept the room as an icy gust of wind. "Haven't you finished yet?"
"Cool down, Northman," the diminutive doctor seemed perplexed. "Don't you smell anything?"
Eric and Kainz automatically inhaled deeply and held the air for a few minutes, then exhaled.
Eric narrowed his eyes and said, "Very faint but unmistakably fairies, but not Soo— Alia."
Kainz confirmed. "Fairies. Two, maybe three."
Alia began to wake up, inhaling the vapour coming out from a vial Ludwig was swinging under her nose. She opened her eyes and let them wander through the room and the faces around her. "What the hell…?"
"Aren't you happy to see me, fae?" quipped dr Ludwig. "You're fine, though."
Alia stared at Eric. "What happened?"
"I hoped you told me," Eric replied. "Diantha found you unconscious in the kitchen."
Alia stood up and Eric helped her to a chair. "I was in the garden, sunbathing. Then, I came inside to have some tea and… and…" She wore an unbuttoned shirt over a bikini, and now felt exposed and cold.
"What are you watching?" Eric snapped to Kainz who was openly inspecting Alia's body.
"Just to see if there were damages…" Kainz' voice trailed off and he backed a few steps.
Eric growled and stepped between Alia and the vampire, keeping his gaze on the fae. "How are you?" His voice was nervous while his eyes scanned her body. Then he nuzzled her hair and inhaled. "Who were your fairy guests?"
Alia shook her head and swallowed hard. "I was alone."
"Why did you faint? What happened?" Eric continued buttoning up her shirt. "Are you injured?"
"Northman, are you deaf and blind?" dr Ludwig's harsh voice cut in. "Your fairy fainted but no apparent wound mars her body, and she is fine."
"You may go, then," Eric said, "you too Kainz, and tell Karin to organise night and day security for Alia. Ford's pupil can replace Xeres as my guard and she can come here. Also a vampiress."
"Yes, sir. I'll send back a guard for tonight."
Kainz left without other words, noticing the small creature had just disappeared.
"I'll be here till your guard come," said Eric once they were alone.
"I don't nee—" Alia stopped as the vampire frowned, then added, "Eric, I don't remember nothing, I came inside and… everything is blurred, I woke up and you were here. What time is it?"
"Midnight."
"Then, I've been unconscious for over six hours," she reckoned. "Fuck!"
"Alia," Eric started, "this is the second attempt in less than two weeks, and the target is clearly you. Is there something you're not telling?"
"What do you mean?"
"Do you have enemies, in Faery?" asked Eric.
"No, I don't think so. House Briga—" Alia was silent for a while. "Mmm, let's say that the power in Faery is… more democratic now, sort of. And we don't have… declared enemies. Not that I can think of, at least."
"For the time being, then, you'll have guards night and day and—"
"Eric, I—"
"That's another side of your past behaviour that always made it difficult to protect you: you refused to accept help even if it was evident you needed it," Eric interjected with a resigned voice.
Alia closed her eyes and sighed. "Yes, it's true. I like to be independent and not to lean on others for my… needs. Yet, I'm not irresponsible. I'll see to my protection and pay for the help I need. Besides, why are you doing it?"
Eric's voice carried an old tiredness. "I don't want… I wouldn't like to tell your family that you've being killed under my watch."
"But I'm not under your watch!"
"You are the scion of a powerful fairy family who lives in my kingdom. Don't you think that your relatives would ask me to justify my negligent conduct if I fail to protect you?" Eric was openly annoyed now. "And I don't want to see you in pain, injured or dead. Is that so hard to understand?"
"Why?" asked Alia after a while.
Eric watched her squarely. "Because I care for you. You may like it or not but that's the reason. You never accepted this protective behaviour of mine, but that's what I feel like to do for the people I care about."
"Eric," Alia stood up. Her demeanour seemed uncertain or just tired. "I need a closure between us to move on and live my life. Would you help me?"
Eric nodded. It was now then. He did not know if he was ready but his children were right. He had to face it. "Yes. But I need to clear the air about a few things before."
"That's exactly what it has to be done," Alia prepared two glasses of water and went back to the sofa, sat and patted the place at her side. "Come and sit down, if you can spare a few minutes now."
"Sure," Eric said thinking that Karin would have understood and chaired the meeting in his absence.
Eric did not really think that talking was a way to make less bitter his past or more palatable her reasons. The true path to follow was accept what had happened and face its consequences without illusions. He had accepted it, given that the past was exactly that, past, and most of all it did not exist any more. Though, he had some problem facing its consequences, especially when those consequences were alive, scented, shapely, witty and faced him with sad blue eyes. And he was also tired, very tired. Thus they talked.
Alia offered her point of view on many circumstances they had gone through, and it appeared that she had lived entire weeks without knowing what was happening to him, where was her place in his world. Relying on her instinct had not been enough and lending an ear to her friends did not prove the best choice. The whole cluviel d'or story emerged as a more faceted episode than he could have ever imagined, and the fact that, after Merlotte's resurrection, when she went to Fangtasia, to tell him that Sam was only a friend and not her love interest, Eric refused to see her, that had been a hard blow for her. Then she went through the divorce as a nightmare she could not wake up from, finding herself alone and miserable. Alone and in the cold.
"I begin to truly understand that having lived for so long as you did changes your general perspectives and attitudes toward a lot of average human tenets. Though, as one of your children said beautifully, what we really have is only the present: not the past, already gone, nor the future, yet to come. And I don't want to waste my present remembering a past that still makes me suffer: I prefer to know what it had been like for you and then shelve it as the experience that shaped what I am now." Alia sat in a corner of the sofa with her legs folded at her side, trying to conceal the sadness in her voice with a faltering smile.
Eric felt the impact of her words as a slow-motion avalanche against his chest. Heavy. Relentless. It left him numb. He had a lot of questions but did not want to start a questioning nor to recriminate about their past. Besides, a part of him had expected this and now did not want to stir up muddy waters with more words.
"Just tell me one thing now," he started after long minutes of silence. "Sometimes I felt like you never accepted fully what I am, vampire. With a nature that dictates my needs and appetites. Sometimes I felt your hypocrisy when you asked something of me and then despised me for what I did. Where do you stand now?"
Alia bit her bottom lip, nervous. Tired, battered, confused but there. Eric could feel her heaviness through his blood in her. But they were trying to move on, the only way to survive an inedible past.
"I fell in love with you when you were naked and exposed at my place. Do you remember? Vampire but without the conditioning coming from your past, no burden of a hard life to hinder your feelings. We truly lived our present without a past to haunt us or a future to lure and divert our actions. So, you see, your vampire nature has never been a problem."
He let her reorganise her thoughts, feeling her turmoil and hesitation.
When she resumed, her talking was stilted and painful. Eric did not understand her need to go through all that past again. But she needed that and he listened.
"When you recovered your memory and lost that other memory, that of the little life we had shared, I felt it was not right to simply tell you what had transpired. I… I… didn't want… to add the burden of a memory you didn't… really owned. I wanted to be in your life, sure, but from inside of you… I wanted it to come from you, that part of you that I already knew and… loved.
"I waited. But you hid from me. Yes, yes," Alia lifted a hand to silence him, "I know it was the curse… but you stayed clear from me for… months. Yet it was a sobering time. I… I… longed for you. But I wanted you whole, the core and the shell. And I grew to like the shell, too.
"But it was frightening… for I discovered that some… aspects of your nature, the most violent and cold, were not so… far from my self. I fought and killed, do you remember? And I despised myself for what I did. Though I did it again, and again. It was me, and I feared that part of me, of… you. The… the… Victor's death marked a moment of… hard understanding. I couldn't accept what I'd done… what you'd done… the joy that accompanied those deaths was… unbearable."
Alia swallowed and stopped. "I never really despised you… I was discovering truths about myself… no one helped me, not even you. And Claudine was gone."
Then Alia waved a hand, as to swipe away all those memories. "Vampire. Being vampire without choosing it it's terrifying, I think. When you first mentioned turning me I was terrified and horrified. Do you blame me for that? Would you have chosen it, if asked? Maybe you would have wanted some time to ponder it, understand it, accept or refuse it. Choose means also to know what are your possibilities. I had no time. And I don't know what I would have really chosen if given the choice. A real choice."
She stared at Eric and said, "Hunter thought it over for ten years, maybe more, then accepted it. Not only that, he chooses it, wants it now. We… we had no time, Eric. But I never despised you. I… I just needed more time to know you… to know us."
Alia closed her eyes and muttered, "But there was no time, and that was not our choice. That's all. And all this doesn't really matter now. I don't know. Just… don't think I didn't want you whole, man and vampire. Because that is what you are: man and vampire. Do not ignore that."
Then she added coyly, "Like I am woman and fae… and something else too." She smiled. "And I like it… finally."
Then and only then she felt a burden dissipating in her stomach, as if she had ingested a venom, fought it and then expelled it from her body. She was tired of an exhaustion beyond her body and mind's possibility to endure more. She just wanted to collapse and wake up in another world. And finding her ground again. Alone.
She woke up late that morning. Alone in a deserted house.
And she felt rested and energetic. She knew it was the after-effect of the previous night chat, and that it would have vanished shortly as the life's unchanged challenges would have knocked again at her door. But it was a perfect moment and she refused to let it go.
She had ushered Eric soon after the end of her monologue as she had felt that he could have marred the occasion with a very male interpretation of her words. And she did not need that. She wanted to savour the moment as long as possible. As it could be done only alone.
She left the bed and took care of herself in a deliberate unhurried way. Lovingly. She needed to find and love herself as only she could do. It was the same old non-secret of all cultures, human, fairy, vampire, daemon and whatever laid out there that she did not know yet. First love yourself, then see to the rest. And given that there was no rest to attend to, Alia loved her longer.
She was still upstairs when she felt another presence.
She descended to the living room. Her cousin sat on the sofa filling the place with his usual proprietary attitude. He was also handsome, irritatingly so. But it was his trademark and she had gone past it long ago.
All her men had been very good looking, indeed. She was very average girl in this: she was attracted by beautiful men as every decent woman, and basked in it effortlessly. What was astonishing to her was that those same gorgeous men were attracted by her. It was not that she was ugly, but her beauty was a domesticated version of the thing: she did not feature any exotic or pleasantly peculiar characteristic. Her regular face sported normally shaped blue eyes, small nose and full pink lips with a childish look that age had not erased. Nice and fresh, not impressive. Moreover, she did not master any makeup art and therefore could not add any particular touch to her ordinary look.
Her body, now toned and tanned, was equipped with all the curvy things nature had envisaged for women, breasts featuring among the most visible items. But her bottom -albeit round and firm- was not up to the task of competing with that of the models in her times; and she suspected those bottoms were still fashionable these days. Her legs, finally, were long but strong, surely not the thin sticks mannequins showed in magazines or catwalks. She walked, ran, jumped, squatted with those legs, did not limit her exertions to cross them on a sofa: muscles twitched at every step. In other terms, she was not a delicate flower who threatened to break without a man to hold her. She had never been so, and now less than ever.
Maybe, she mused approaching Aengus, it was exactly that that challenged men. As for her cousin in particular, Alia did not know what to think of him. The last time they had met it had not ended pleasantly and she was nervous.
"Aengus," she greeted him with a nod, "what do I owe your visit to?"
"Alia," he spoke looking at her, "you look very well."
"Indeed, I feel very well, thank you," she walked past the sofa heading to the kitchen. "Would you like something to eat? I'm having my breakfast now."
"Yes," he stood up and followed her. "I heard about some life attempts and wanted to make sure you were fine."
Alia fussed with coffee maker and toaster. "Who… told you?"
His silence was as disturbing as the meaning implied.
"Are you keeping tabs on me?"
"Obviously," he replied easily, "you're mine."
Alia turned lifting a brow. "And since when did you decide I was yours?"
"You're a Brigant, fae," he said approaching her, "and Brigant is my house, mine."
"Ah, a family thing," Alia marked her mocking tone harder. "I'm touched."
"Maybe I should touch you to make your memory fresher." He was behind her pushing his body on her back.
"I remember we agreed to stop with that," Alia moved sideways to avoid his embrace.
"I don't recall any such deal, Alia." He was again at her back pushing her body against the fridge. "What happened?"
She disentangled from his grip and lifted her head to face his. "What do you think? Appearing at your leisure and fucking me as you like?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing till I agreed," Alia countered. "But maybe I had my fill of it."
Surprise and rage flickered through his face, then a placid expression set in. "It's the vampire, isn't it?"
"There's no vampire, Aengus."
"I smell him on you. You had your ways with him?"
"He gave me his blood, Aengus. I was severely wounded," she said angrily. "But this is not the point, really."
"His blood?" Aengus' face trembled letting out his fairy fighting features. "His fucking blood?"
"Did you hear me, Aengus? I was badly wounded and he saved me, and he was here yesterday night when something happened and I fainted in my kitchen. And there was fairy scent everywhere, not mine."
Alia's rage had fully surfaced and she yelled, "And where were you? It's a fairy attempt, it seems, and I'm family, no? What's happening in Faery?"
"Fairies do not take vampire blood." Aengus stated marking the word blood with a disgusted grimace, then added, "I will see to it if it's a fairy thing."
"Good." Alia's reply was dry.
"And we have no deal whatsoever, fae," Aengus' hands went to her sides and pulled her over him, crashing his mouth on her lips and forcing his tongue inside.
"Aengus," she said pushing him back gently. "What does it mean this?"
"I'll show you," he whispered in her lips pushing his erection in her lower belly, then lowered his hands on her bottom and lifted her on the countertop. Now his erection pushed her sex and she felt his hot breath on the neck. "I want you, now."
"What is it, Aengus?" Alia repeated unfazed. "What is the meaning of these recurrent… hard-ons?"
His mouth was on her ear and he whispered, "I want you, Alia."
She realised that a few months earlier the mere breathing of those words would have had her melted in his arms, wet and hot. Now, though, she was in love with herself and wanted more.
"Not enough, Aengus. I've explored sex with you fully and very satisfyingly. Terminally satiating, though. I need no more."
Aengus stepped back and watched her with confusion and something else she could not identify. It lasted some long seconds, then he disappeared with a puff while the smell of his sexual arousal lingered in her nose for a long time.
Alia was sitting on the sofa in her living room. A large extension at the back of the house, facing the clearing and, behind it, the lake. Wall mounted sliding glass doors let the unkempt garden coming inside, with its fading greens and the swamp's sharp smells. The fae lost many an afternoon in there. Diantha's sitting room was at the entrance side. The daemon had called to let her know she was staying at Latsis' place and the werecougar Eric had sent, a female called Xeres, was patrolling the house surroundings since that morning.
She had a simple, sharp mind. Focused and determined as a machine running a programme. And she was Eric's personal day-guard whom he had assigned to her till she could organise her own team of guards. Alia had the instinct to rebel against his imposition, but dying for her own stubbornness was definitely a stupid choice she did not want to adopt.
She had spent the afternoon and the evening still carrying on her morning plan of taking care of herself. After her cousin had left, she had laid in the garden under the pale sun. Sunbathing was a means of recharging her energy and a way to relax her mind. It was roughly the fae version of a trip to the spa and a session with a psychoanalyst.
It was half an hour beyond sunset and Xeres was coming closer to the house with a vampire. Alia relaxed. She was a reserved Indian vampiress she had met some decades ago in Fangtasia, Indira. Alia smiled as she read that Indira was excited to meet her and wondered if all the rumours about the fae were true. The vampiress had arrived directly from Shreveport at Eric's order and she…
Alia stood up and froze. She was perfectly reading her mind as if she were a human or a were. Not random thoughts and unrelated feelings. The reading was perfectly clean.
"Fuck!" she said aloud.