I too want to know what happens to a severed arm...
And I guess that for him to do such long studies, Alaric's family isn't so badly off.

Anyway, there is more to it than I showed in this chapter. Unless it's what I want you to think?


Adjusting to our reality, part 8: Something sour in his laughter

Alaric stared blankly at the paper he should have been trying to grade.

The world had been mean to him lately.

First of all, his wife was as undead as one could be. Then, some of his students happened to be or to have become supernatural beings. He also had become friends with a vampire. After that, a hundreds-of-years-old hag with the same face as his kind-of-illegitimate-daughter-in-law-if-that-even-existed had come to town. To end with flourish, some werewolf had come back to Mystic Falls and now Vampires & Co were searching for a dog leash because no one in this freaking town was able to live peacefully with their fellows supernatural neighbours.

Peace and love, man. But no, peace is too simple, there's nothing funny about peace, so let's kill each other first, then we'll think of a way to coexist. It was always much easier to coexist when there was only one of the protagonists left.

And the worst of all, was that all of this was threateningly digging up his past.

Because Alaric Saltzman had a past. Isobel wasn't the only part of his life he was willing to erase.

Saltzman.

Damn name.

Damn family.

He had never done anything wrong. The accident was not something wrong. Even if you considered it the other way around, it was still the only thing that could have been done. Hell, he even was kind of a hero, in a way. But if the accident came to light, the teacher wasn't sure this town wouldn't do everything so that he would never even get a place anywhere.

Graduate of Duke University.

Laughable human high school history teacher in a little town in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, it was something of a miracle that he was even that much of a respectable person. If he had stuck with his family, he would have been much more. By running away as he had, not only had he denied the Saltzmans' wealth, their name and their connections, but he had also accepted to deal with the Saltzmans' legacy all by himself.

Which shoudn't have been a problem, if not for Isobel, her obsession and her treason.

Ric had been keeping himself in control for years. No sport, no fight. Every once in a while, he had snapped, and succumbing to provocation, had beaten the crap out of some idiot. But he was in no condition when it had happened, so the guy was still alive, and Alaric was really glad for that, even that one time he had gotten a black eye in the process.

The ones who had thought he would be an easy target usually ended up in the hospital, but at least they were still alive.

Don't ever piss off a Saltzman, it's bad for your health. Even an out of shape Saltzman. Should have had some T-shirts printed.

The teacher was working on his self-control. As long as he stayed calm, nothing bad could happen even if he had to defend himself. But if he lost it...

Rabid people were prompt to do things they would later regret – ask Damon. But not every rabid person had the physical capacities and skills to make almost any human powerless to harm them.

That was exactly why Alaric had made sure not to drink after the accident. That was exactly why Alaric had stopped doing sports after the accident. That was exactly why Alaric had sworn he would get out of this cursed family, and never set foot in Boston again.

He had kept his word for the third part of his oath.

Isobel had taken him out of the right path. He had begun to drink so much he was never sure of what had happened the night before during an entire month. He had gone back to sports.

For now, there had been no – unwanted – casualties. Let us pray things would remain the same.

A window opened.

The teacher didn't look up.

He already knew who it was.

Because, seriously, who else could have guessed that Ric was at school in the midst of the night, squinting at essays that did never get any better even if he focused in a last attempt to believe miracles really existed?

The hunter heard the vampire come near him.

Damon sat down on a desk. Alaric wouldn't be the one to scold him for not sitting on a chair.

He watched Ric doing his teacher stuff without saying a world until the hunter collapsed on his desk. Some papers flew off, and Damon caught one.

"I can't get anything done this evening."

"Well, considering one of your students thinks that World War Two happened during the eighteenth century, I can't really say you're missing something crucial."

"That one is Peter's, I am wrong?"

Damon took a look at the name written on the test paper, and was surprised to see Ric was right.

"You're not seriously telling me you can guess who did what from just an error?"

Alaric, the nose still glued to the desk, handed him a bunch of tests. Damon made three new attemps, and each time the teacher guessed right. The vampire got a bit upset, and switched to simply reading a line from a paper. Ric got it right five times out of six.

"I can't believe it..."

Ric gestured toward his bag, which was laying on the floor.

"Bourbon and glasses, if you want some."

The vampire didn't need to be told twice.

The two of them drank a little, then the teacher put the bottle back in the bag. He had to be operational for the next day, and neither of them was really in the mood to cloud their minds too much. Still, a little alcohol was appreciated.

"I don't get it, Ric."

"What?"

"With what money do you buy that stuff? Aren't high school teachers supposed to be eternally bankrupt? And yet you have some expensive stuff and your loft is nothing if not expensive."

"I'm not paid much for my job, but I have some personal money."

"Family?"

"Yes and no. They're sending me cash every month, but I don't want anything to do with them, so I keep it and don't use it. But before I left, my aunt had me open a bank account for later, on which she put some dollars as a part of her husband's inheritance. He liked me a lot, and he was only part of the family through marriage, so I use it for extras."

"Your family must have quite a lot of money..."

Damon would never have thought he wasn't the only one to be stinking rich. Yet he had to admit that when Alaric deigned to wear something else than the basic shirt-pants-jacket, his suits were pretty well cut, even if they were not as showy as the Salvatores'.

"You have no idea."

Alaric gazed into space.

"Well, my parents aren't exactly rich, but those who live in the main house are loaded. And as my aunt is the head of the family... The thing is, you stay in the family, you make a lot of money. You don't, you're provided with enough money to live a decent life even without working very much, but you're not associated to the benefits. My father went away as soon as he could, and I did the same. It's not highly regarded by the others."

"I'm getting the feeling you're telling me about some organized crime family..."

Alaric laughed, but there was something sour in his laughter that made Damon uncomfortable.

"I swear to you it's not the case. But we're somewhat... strange. Some of us just want to run away, while the others argue that the best way is to stick together. Our name is not well known to the public, which make us very interesting partners for transactions that are not to be leaked too soon, and we proved our reliability on many occasions."

"That definitely sounded suspicious."

"Being famous is not always the most efficient path to wealth."

"And you sound as suspicious as your family right now. They don't play the stock market, at least?"

The teacher made an outraged face, barely concealing his hilarity.

"Not to my knowing, but I haven't gone back to Boston since 1993. I'm not sure of anything anymore. The only people I met these last years are my parents, and some of my cousins, most of them being in the same situation as I am."

Damon said nothing for a while.

Maybe it was only that.

He knew how much growing up in a dysfonctional family, let alone a wealthy family, could ruin a man. Alaric seemed to have had a rather normal childhood, since his immediate relatives weren't exactly part of the problem, but if some aunt or uncle came to visit with cruel words and expensive suits, the happiness bubble could pretty easily be blown up.

Yet that didn't explain the heavy impression that emanated from Alaric when the teacher was seriously pissed or scarily neutral.

Never mind. He had gained enough informations for now. He'd better not push his luck.

Now was the time to confess his sins. Or, at least, one, because if he had to do so for everything he shouldn't have done in his long life, they'd still be at it for the teacher's next birthday.

"I stole your book."

Ric looked at him, eyebrows raised.

"You felt that your personal library wasn't enough anymore?"

The vampire had expected something more... well, he didn't know, but something more anyway.

"Family Curses and Cursed Families, I guess that's the one you're talking about? I saw you do it and chose not to say anything."

"Why?"

"You'd have taken it anyway."

That wasn't completely wrong, but still.

Alaric was playing with a grey pencil that went back and forth between his fingers. At this time, it looked really like a small sized stake and Damon really didn't know what to think of it.

"Found anything interesting?"

"Not that you overlooked, if that's what you mean."

The vampire then noticed that his friend was wearing his poker face. There was something more to this question. Unless Ric wanted him to believe there was something more to this question? The vampire refrained from showing how much he was pissed by all this game of dissimulation. Instead, he tried to recall the things he had first cast aside as not relevant.

The thing was, they were irrevelant. So why would Alaric bother with them?

There were things about werewolves, and how their story was so old that only the families which had been exterminated could be almost surely identified.

There were things about Elena and Katherine, how they were not the first ones in the family to be doppelgangers, even though the author had lost track of the Petrovas after the slaughter in 1492.

There were things about the Folegatti, another family of doppelgangers, however males, that had disappeared in the early seventeenth century.

There were things about strange curses, which affected the people of one family without the need to be triggered, such as making them unable to swim or immune to any form of supernatural occurences. The Kangs, the Sakias, the Falkenbachs, the Ioannis. All of them were supposedly humans, but most of them could be turned or mixed with others species, if a witch married into the family for example. The Singhs would inexplicably die as soon as their blood was altered, preventing them from becoming vampires, or having children with another species.

Or at least that was what the author of the book had found out.

"I'm not sure that half of this is true, anyway. That's the thing, with the supernatural: you can't know unless you saw."

Alaric stretched. He really needed to get some sleep.

"I checked the facts. If some can't be properly investigated, there are others that seems to be oddly true. Anyway, I've always wondered: if I cut a vampire's arm, does it grow back or just cicatrize?"

"I won't sever my arm for you to see if it regenerates."

"Such a pity."