Monday, May 24,2010
We were up and at ‘em at noon at Barrister’s house and we were trying to piece together what we were going to do in Ireland. There was a part of me that was glad I made the trip to be with my friends during our hiatus and yet there was a part of me that wished we hadn’t. I got the same sinking feeling Sookie sometimes got when she felt herself being pulled into dangerous and scary things in the supernatural world. This was not Eric’s fault, precisely. As a Truebie and a junkie and walking encyclopedia of the weird and unusual and the mythic I knew what I was getting into, I knew that just as there were dangers in the mundane world there were dangers also in the supernatural world. Dying by the supernatural world and dying by the mundane world was no great difference. And then there were the things that were going to happen in the new adventures. How would my sister wives and I get through the time when Bill was gone? Would I be able to look at Eric and not think about the disturbing dream? I brooded over these things as I did mine and Barrister’s laundry and packed to get ready for the trip.
I was also worried about a couple of special members of our group. Both were Eric wives and both were important to Eric for very different reasons. I was tempted to ask them both to stay here in England where they would be safe. I thought of all the books I had sent to Bill’s house and wondered what else I was going to see in the carefully hand written books bound in leather and stamped in gold. I packed the suitcases and checked the notebook I kept. Eric and I had a quick meeting before he went to his daytime rest. We were to fly from Heathrow to Armagh in Northern Ireland.
I went into what I thought of as my personal database, a blog I had been working on for some time, and found the entry I wanted. Amergin the bard had waged war with the fae and in the end was invited to treat with the Tuatha in the faerie rade where the king of the fae lived and made the deal that pulled the veil between the world of man and the world of the fae. I knew that there was something of a temple on top of the hill now, but I wondered who we were to meet and what we were supposed to learn there.
Our accommodations were at a Vampire hotel. I could not imagine a Vampire hotel in Northern Ireland considering the troubled history. Humans could scarcely rest easily much less a Vampire who would be restricted to night time hours and trapped in the care of humans. I disliked the thought of us in a hotel rather than a private home. At least at Barrister’s there was a bit more security with the old retainers who are on staff and a familiar floor plan. This was unscoped territory and it made me nervous.
After the last of the laundry was packed, I settled down to read more of the three books I had gotten from the Markingham Lair, now in ashes. There was talk of the crown taking the land and rebuilding the abbey for historical purposes. They assumed of course that the owner perished in the flames, but I would never forget the way his thick blood fanned out from Eric’s fingers when Eric pulled his arms out of his body.
Just before sundown, I went and heated a bottle of Tru:Blood and went down into the light tight guest rooms of Barrister’s estate. Barrister had told me that these were once wine and food cellars but he talked his parents into letting him make it a crash pad when he was in secondary school for he and his mates to go and play loud music, drink that all important mostly warm lager. When he grew up and went to university, they turned it into guest rooms.
The main room was a sitting room. I noted a couple of bottles of T:B in the coffee table. I went and grabbed them and walked on down the hall to the room where Bill was. I opened the door and walked in and stepped into the bathroom and rinsed the bottles and put them in the trash and came back in. Bill was “asleep” on his belly, the covers pulled up to his waist. I went and sat on the empty side of the bed and leaned back on the head board. I gently brushed away some of his hair and took a deep breath and let it out slowly and continued to pet him. It was odd to think he was sleeping deeper than another person, that he was clinically dead until the sun was down. I held the warm bottle of blood and stroked his dark hair until I felt him stir. He raised up on his elbows and blinked his eyes a few times and looked at me. He smiled that brief closed lipped smile and reached out and cupped my face.
“How are you sweetheart?” he said.
“I am well,” I said. “I brought you some Tru:Blood.” He sat up and took the bottle and drank some of it. “Bill, I have to say that I am a little afraid of what we are doing here.”
“I know. Aslinn, when we began counseling you and the others, we thought it was just to find out what humans thought of us. We never thought it would pull us so close together,” he said.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“We were going to create an atmosphere where we were able to gage how people would react to us, how we would be able to move around in certain groups of people. We never expected that we would learn to care about you the way we do and need you the way we do,” explained Bill. “And we, that is Eric, never imagined that he would feel the way he has been feeling because of his interaction with you, that is the group. You make him remember things he thought he had forgotten and this is both a wonderful and dangerous thing for him. He wants to know what it might be like to be free of this ancient thing that has ruled him.”
“The Vampire Hierarchy,” I said.
“Yes, the hierarchy, but also the loss of his humanity. It was very painful for me to find my humanity, and it was a difficult journey, but imagine what it must be like for Eric,” he said. I looked at him with an astonished look on my face. “What darling?”
“You feel empathy for him,” I said. He smiled that sweet sad smile.
“I feel it because you feel it,” he said. “The blood bond works both ways.”
“How does Eric feel about his wives?” I asked.
“I think Eric loves them. You have to understand Vampire love is very intense, very devoted and Eric has done his level best not to feel it for humans. Vampires are very possessive and jealous of one another and we don’t appreciate anyone else in your company,” he took a drink of the blood and looked at me.
“So you don’t like it that I am with Barrister?” I asked.
“I cannot say that I have evolved any more than Eric but I try to understand that you need more than I can give you. Not just in the way of a lover, but as a man, because as much as I would like to say I am no different from any other man, I know that I am not human and cannot give you the companionship you deserve,” he said. “Humans need their daytime lives to be as rich as their nighttime lives. Eric, however, would not be upset if his human wed wives were to leave their husbands and devote themselves only to him.” He looked at me. “Does Fairy know what you have found out?”
“No,” I said. Eric had asked me not to tell her until we had treated with the fae. For some reason, I suspected that if did not precisely know about Fairy, or Markingham for that matter, that he had some strong suspicions. “Does he say anything about Butter?”
“He worries for her safety and the safety of her child. He loves the very idea of the child inside her. You should see the way he is when he speaks of the child. You would think he was the father her baby,” said Bill. “He should send her home; it was foolish to bring her.”
“Have you said as much to him?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Bill. “He doesn’t say anything beyond she is fine.”
“How do you feel about us killing Vampires?” I asked.
“It places you in danger,” said Bill. “All of you.”
“Thanks Eric,” I said.
“I heard my name being mentioned,” said Eric, leaning against the door frame. He was dressed for travel.
“I would not be down here speaking so freely of you Viking if I were going to something about you that I would not say to your face,” I said to Eric.
“Come, we have a plane to catch,” he said, giving me a look. He turned and walked away and I looked at Bill.
I got up and left Bill to get dressed and I went up and helped get my things together. The chartered bus was idling outside and we brought our bags out and watched them being loaded. I marked them in my notebook again, and got on the bus and checked and made sure everyone had their passports and tickets, marking each again. I sat down by Barrister and felt a sense of trouble coming.
The plane trip was quick and we landed in Belfast and was shuttled to the Red Moon Hotel in Belfast. It had been a human hotel in the past couple of decades and had been bought by Vampires and retrofitted for Vampires, which essentially meant there were no windows in the hotel. The windows had been bricked in and the entire building given a coat of red paint. The roof of the building was a glassed in affair with a small pool and electric lights but during the day it would be sunny. I had not lied to Eric, I loved the sun, and I missed her.
We checked in and made ourselves comfortable. Pam stopped by our open door. “Eric wanted me to tell you that you are dress formally for where we are going this evening,” she said. I looked at her. Pam was wearing a plaid A-lined skirt, black leather pumps and a green Aryan sweater.
“You look very Celtic Pam,” I said to the Vampire. “Great shoes.”
“Thank you,” she said. She headed on down the hall to speak to the others. I went to the closet and pulled out my clothes for this evening. I was wearing a skirt as well, one of my favorite broomstick skirts made of Indian linen. It was black and printed in gold in heavy Celtic knots around the edges. I was wearing a gold sweater of the same color, a light weight thing that would not be too warm. But in Northern Ireland, it is not too warm ever. I put on a little makeup and lipstick and wore my Celtic jewelry. One of my favorite pieces was a heavy beaded Celtic cross necklace. I put on a thick pewter wrist band and hooked my belt around my hips. It was gold toned aluminum. I slid on my lace up boots and strapped a knife to my calf. It was a regular hunting knife but it was full of iron. I also put a small vial of fairy dust in my purse. Aolani and I made a quick job of dividing and bottling the fairy dust into small vials and giving them to each member and even the vampires. We explained to them that they could draw a magikal door with the dust and get out of fairy and into the human world with ease by simply drawing a circle on the ground.
Before we left the estate, Aolani had cut us some hawthorn. Hawthorne is the bane of the fae and can be used like a stake. Then there is the salt water. Lemons in the world of Charlaine Harris might work, but in the old world, the thing that gets the fae is salt water. Considered the true holy water because it is a part of the earth’s womb, salt water, to be more specific, sea water is as corrosive as acid. Human tears too can be used to an extent, but because there is not enough to do real damage, Aolani made sure we had sea water from the pacific. I put all these things in my medium sized big bag of crazy made of black leather and ran the strap across my chest to hang on my hip.
Barrister was wearing a black sweater and jeans and his black lace up boots. I took his hand and walked out of our suite and went down to the lobby. They dry smell of Vampire was everywhere and the lobby was busy with both humans and Vampires. Some of them looked us over until they saw our Vampires join us. They adhere very strictly to the Mine rule here in Ireland.
We went out and got into a chartered bus and headed into the night. Eric stood up. “Aolani and Aslinn have prepared a few words for fairy regarding fairy customs and etiquette,” said Eric. “So pay close attention.” He sat back down and I nodded at Aolani to start her talk.
“I have given you all some things to use as weapons in case you need it,” she said. “But here are the basic rules of thumb. Fairies are tricksters, they love to gamble, so make sure you do not make any wagers, not even what you consider to be trifling. Also, do not eat or drink anything a fairy offers you, they will not be offended by your refusal. Their food is enchanted. Do not go anywhere with a fairy alone, they are dangerous.”
“Be careful of touching fairies, particularly fairy children, they don’t like for us to treat them personally,” I said. “And you Vampires will simply have to do something about your fairy fixation, we can’t have you jumping on them and eating them.” They all gave me what I considered an embarrassed smile.
“They will not be hungry for fairy,” said Aolani. “I made them something like narcan, an anti fairy drug.”
“How did you do that?” I asked. “They can’t drink anything but blood.”
“I made a rub, and gave it to them to use when they woke up this evening. We would use something very similar to it to protect us from dark magik and hexes,” said Aolani. “I mixed it with fairy dust and hawthorn and essence of silver and some of our Fairy’s blood. It made a little irritation but it will go away when they shower. It will make the smell of them unattractive and the taste of them will make them a little ill.”
“Sorry guys,” I looked at them a little ruefully. Eric put his hand up like it was nothing.
“We will be going into what appears to be a monument, but is actually a gate way into the rade. The rade is underground. We will be surrounded by the fae. Butter, wear this iron chain around your belly to protect the baby,” she said, giving Butter what appeared to be a steel chain to hook around her belly. Eric twisted around in his seat to help her and he rubbed her belly. “Fairies are womb raiders, so stay next to a Vampire, preferably Eric but any Vampire will do.”
“Okay,” she said. She grabbed Eric’s hand and held on to it. He leaned over and kissed her on the temple. I did not like this situation at all.
“Will they recognize Fairy as being of their blood?” asked God Speed.
“Yes, they will sense her blood,” said Aolani. “Contrary to the Connection, they will be very interested in her.”
“Will they recognize the both of you as witches?” asked Scarlett.
“They will, and they will recognize Body Guard as were,” said Aolani. “They may be very careful with Vampires, but they will be very very careful with weres.”
“They should be,” said Body Guard. “The Fae and the rest of the supernatural world has been at odds for as long as the world has turned.”
“I need everyone to be still for a moment, I am going to enchant you against the weapons of fairy.”
Fairies all had different talents. Just as Vampires had different skills, so did they. Some could give you elf stroke, you could be pixy led, they could pelt you with a stray sod, a sort of brownie who would stun you. There were aslinn’s a Vampire like fairy that liked to dance with their human victims til they are exhausted, singing siren like to enchant you and then devour you. There were gnomes who would steal from you and sprites that would lead you astray and spriggan who would do magikal bindings against you. Aolani worked an intricate charm against all of them. Would the charm protect the Vampires too?
We finally made it to the rade and climbed out of the bus. We made it a point to group ourselves with a Vampire. We climbed the stone steps up the hill, Eric picked up Butter and carried her and we came to the top. The building at the top looked like an astronomical observation building with a domed roof and roman style pillars around it with highly decorative cornices and plinths with statues of the Irish heroes. The walls were intricately carved with Celtic knots and intanglioed horses and salmon and hounds and men. Above the archway there were the words Anseo Sioa Talamh A : Here be Fairy Land.
“How do we enter?” asked Eric, looking at the large Irish oak doors that did not seem to have a door knob.
“You have to knock three times,” I said. He raised his hand and knocked on the doors. There was an echoey click and the door popped open. Eric opened it a little further and looked inside.
“Down here Vampire,” said a voice with an Irish brogue so thick you could cut it with a knife. I looked down. “Welcome to the Fairy Rade of the Tuatha Vampire.” The fairy who answered Eric’s knock was very short, brownish of skin and purple of eye. He smiled and showed his jagged shark like teeth to Eric. “Well, come in, you are letting all the magik out,” he said, standing away from the door. Eric took Butter’s hand and pulled her close to him. “Ummmm a baby. Is it yours Vampire? I will give you a very good price for it.”
“The woman and her child are under my protection,” said Eric softly, and as I have told you before, when Eric’s voice gets very soft it means he is very irritated. I looked at Bill, who was holding hands with Renee and Vi. Bella was behind him, her arm around his waist a little. He rolled his eyes a bit and walked forward. The fairy, I had not figured out his race yet, sniffed Body Guard. The fairy backed up a little more and tried to make himself smaller than he was.
“Are you an elf?” I asked the little man.
“I am indeed witch, and my name is Fergal and I am the door keeper of the Rade,” he said. His eyes drifted over Fairy. “And you are my kissing cousin,” he said and made to embrace Fairy but she stepped back from the dark little creature. Eric put his arm in front of her.
“No harm Vampire, I wanted only to greet my cousin with a fairy kiss,” he said.
“Fairy kisses are a type of enchantment,” I whispered to my feet, but I knew the Vampires heard me. Heightened senses are a common side effect to their condition. We stood there and we waited then I looked up to see the domed roof was quite far away. I tightened my hold on Barrister’s arm and he looked up. We had been moving down for some time and not noticed it. “I don’t like this,” I whispered. Eric reached out and squeezed my fingers gently and let them go.
The ground finally stopped and a door appeared and the elf knocked upon it six times and it opened to Faery.
Faery is everything you thought it would be had it been painted by Hieronymus Bosch. The walls glimmered with Faery glamour and there were hundreds of tiny things that seemed to be one thing but then they moved and revealed themselves as living creatures. Giants lumbered along, making the Viking look like a man in miniature. I looked at the Vampires. Their eyes ran over everything at once, taking in all the magik and the wonder of the place. Something brushed against my skirts and I looked down at something that may have been a pixie. The little male was looking under my skirts.
“She’s wearing panflooties!” he giggled and ran and whispered it loudly. “She is with a Vampire and she wears panflooties!!!”
“I may run with Vampires but I am not a slut,” I said in a low voice and Fairy laughed out loud. Her laughter caused a wave of talk, the most prevalent words were “kissing cousin”.
The words Kissing Cousin were words to describe distant relatives that might be suitable to courtship. Anything after second cousin was acceptable though I have known second cousins to fall in love. Evidently, they were recognizing Fairy as some long lost kin because of her fae blood.
We were led into a great room. It was riot of colors, green and gold and scarlet and royal blues and purples. The ceiling was a masterpiece of moving objects. There were wheels of time, wheels depicting the Celtic calendar, wheels with the signs of astrology of numerous cultures. There were depictions of strange beasts swimming and flying and running across the ceiling. Everything seemed to be crusted in jewels and precious metals. I grabbed Pam and pointed to the floor where two empty thrones sat. The dais was covered in silver. She nodded and seemed to transmit the information to the others and they looked and nodded to her.
We were asked to sit down at a large table heavily laden with an embroidered table cloth. The embroidery was enchanted because I watched a stitched butterfly flutter from one sewn flower to another. The food was intoxicating and the wine was sweet smelling. It would take all my energy to ignore the food. The fairies tried to separate us from our Vampires but we refused to sit where we could not be close to them and they let the matter drop and allowed us to seat ourselves.
“All hail the king and queen of Tuatha. Rise and be accounted,” announced a creature I would call a troll. He was huge and heavily armored and had a booming voice. Behind the thrones where I imagined there were doors, came two of the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. Despite their fairy narcan, you could see the Vampires were equally entranced. Raki pulled on my sleeve.
“They are beautiful,” she whispered. I nodded. Linzy and Lina were looking around at the fae and the king and queen. Bella was wide eyed and Bill was too, his blue eyes seeming paler in the golden light. We stood up along with the fae and though we did not bow, we nodded at their presence.
“Please, sit down,” said the king of fairy. “I am Jarrod, the king of the fae and kin to the people of Tir Nan Og,” he said. Eric leaned back a little. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“The land of Eternal Youth and Beauty,” I said very quietly. He nodded and leaded forward again.
“What can the people of the Tuatha do for you Vampire?” he asked Eric.
“I have many questions,” he said.
“Yes, you do. You want to know where you came from, the origins of your people, and the trade between your people and the fae,” said the king. I looked at Bill. “He is a telepath,” I mouthed.
“Yes, witch, I am a telepath, but I can read not only human minds but the minds of the dead,” he said, looking at our Vampires. “Curse yourself all you like my dear, but there was no way you could have known.”
“She has taken the name of the aslinn,” said the fairy queen. “I am Sive, and I am the queen of the fae.”
“There is no Fae blood in you,” said the king, looking at me. “It is a magikal name.”
“What can you tell me?” asked Eric.
“I can smell the blood of a Vampire on you,” said the fairy. “His name was not unknown to us, Markingham. We had no love for him. Please accept this gift as a reward.” He snapped his fingers and a cup was brought out to present to him.
“No, thank you for your gift majesty, “said Eric. We had explained that fairy gifts were often enchantments and became something ordinary in a day or could turn into something dangerous. “A better gift of information would be better.”
“Eric, are you sure you want to know where you come from, your race?” asked the king, not unkindly. “Your maker, the Vampire Godric was mistaken when he said the Vampire was wrong, that you did not belong here.”
“How do you mean?” asked the Viking.
“I mean this because your race was once fae too,” said the king. I looked around at our group. Aolani was too. They were being glamoured. Aolani was muttering a spell under her breath to try and break the glamour. They seemed to wake up. She stood up.
“Pardon me,” she said. “But we need to have your glamour lifted. We are here as friends and it is unsporting of you to glamour us. It is also dangerous to you as well you know, Vampires cannot resist fairy blood.”
“Quite true, witch,” said the king. He uttered a chant and the glamour was lifted. The room seemed the same but not as bright. The Vampires blinked hard, trying to understand what had happened. Pam looked nervous but I tipped her a wink. She smiled at me. “And the reason they long for fairy blood is because they were once a tribe of fae.”
To Be Continued
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
“There are many races among the fae but there are two tribes. There are the Fae of the light, known as the Seelie Court and the Fae of the Dark and they are called the Unseelie. Both courts are a part of what made you,” said the king.
“Then Vampires are Fae?” asked the Viking.
“No, not for many aeons. But the first Vampire was Fae. There was a queen of the Unseelie who fell in love with the King of Seelie. She wanted him with a lust that would have driven mortals mad and it did make her mad. So she treated with a daemon, a creature that lives beyond the world of Faerie and the world of man and he made her promise that the first child she had would be given over to the daemon to be raised as his child. The queen agreed and the daemon cast a powerful enchantment over the Seelie king and he fell in love with her and went to live her in her kingdom,” said the Fairy. “So, after a time, Viking, a time that may have spanned hundreds of years in human time, a child was born and it was a male child. When the child was born, there was a great storm and the fae knew this was a child of omen and prophecy and when the daemon learned of the child’s birth, he went to get his reward. But the queen refused. She did not want to give the child up. So he cursed the child. ‘Live in darkness and be damned to ye, And may the gods put their curse on ya that the sun would never know your face, And your food will be the flesh of your own and blood the only wine you’ll drink, Lost in the world know nothing but night, and let all love disappear from your sight’
“So the child grew up and he was a sad and lonely creature who could not be nourished by anything but flesh and blood of his own kind. And this secret the Queen kept from her husband. Everything that made the child wrong she explained away except for the fact the child had to eat and brink flesh and blood. That she kept hidden. For even among the fae such a thing was thought queer. Then, one night, the king found his son feeding on one of his servants and he sent him out of Unseelie and he walked the world alone and finally came to a lovely woman, standing by a moonlit pool, singing to the water. And for the first time he loved another person. But he was also ravenous with the hunger that he fell upon her and drained her nearly dry though he desperately did not want to kill her. She looked at him as she lay dying and she told him that the water sprites had told her he was to be her own true lover and he cried and he tore his wrist and fed her his blood to try and keep her alive and so he made her as he was a night creature.
“The two lived together for many years and they were content except for one thing, they had no children and they cried out for a child and no god of fairy or of man heard them. They began to hate one another and they wandered away from each other and they killed to eat. And they never saw each other again. One night, he came upon a young woman, this one a human woman, and he took her and fed on her and out of remorse he repeated the same thing and fed her his blood. This time however, this Vampire was different, because it was a human child, and she was bitter and dangerous and she hated her fae Vampire maker and she went into the world and became the first Vampire, the first human Vampire,” finished the fae.
I leaned forward. “Eric, ask for her name.”
“What was her name?” asked Eric.
“Some call her Lamia, some call her Belspeth, we called her Leanan Sidhe, though she was not a fae, but your friend’s Christian mythology called her Lilith and she was the mother of human Vampires,” said Jarrod.
“Why are we like we are?” asked Jessica.
“Are you asking why you are dead?” asked the fairy. Jessica nodded. “Humans call it being dead, but we don’t believe you are dead.”
“Why are we immortal?” asked Pam.
“Immortal? Your fairy father was immortal because legend among my people said his mother bathed him the salty waters of Tir Nan Og because she thought the curse could be cured with a bath in the waters. When your fairy father made his human Vampire, she was not immortal, for she could be killed, but she was preserved as she was the moment she was made Vampire,” said Jarrod.
“So,” Jessica panted impatiently. “I am not dead.”
“To humans, your body is dead, though you do not decay, but to the fae you are very much alive. The Vampire Fae have a heart beat so slow it may beat only once in a millennia. And perhaps only because of deep emotional pain. You do not suffer emotional attachments the way humans do, so you may cause your heart to beat so seldomly that people who try to detect the spark of life in you, cannot hear your heart beat and say you are dead,” explained the fae. “Tell me Vampire, have you ever felt your heart beat?”
“No,” said Eric. Suddenly Jarrod bounded off the dais and put his hand on Eric’s chest and closed his eyes. Eric tried to remove his hand as though the fairy’s palm burned him. Jarrod kept his eyes closed and seemed to feel something that was inarticulate. Eric finally broke the fairy’s hold on him and flung his arm away.
“You have Eric, you have felt it beat only twice in a thousand years. The first time when you saw something terrible happen and last when you lost your maker,” said the fairy. “Why lie brother? Are these humans not your friends? Can you not show your emotions to your friends?”
“I have another question, and then we will go,” said Eric.
“Of course,” said Jarrod.
“Did you know about Markingham?” asked Eric.
“Niall Brigant,” said Jarrod. We all sat up to listen to what he had to say to us about Niall Brigant, the Great Grandfather of Sookie Stackhouse. Instead he addressed someone coming into the room. “So good of you to join us. Perhaps you can explain things to Eric about Edward Markingham.”
The tall and beautiful fairy came in and sat down at the head of the table and looked at Eric. “Eric, so wonderful of you to come. Now, what is it you want to know?”
So this was how Eric gained access to the world of faery. He may not be able to give Eric access in the new world (and perhaps it was good the Vampire could not travel into faery in America) but Niall made arrangements for Eric to talk to the source without risking the delicate hold he had on the faery realm in the states, where there were fewer fae and the lingering tensions of civil war among them.
“You want to know about the world of faery in your own territory and how much influence this Markingham had and whether or not he and his friends will pose further danger to your friends here, and to my great granddaughter and your area,” said Niall.
“Yes,” said Eric. I watched Niall looking at both Eric and Bill and I wondered who it was he meant when he told Sookie the Vampire is not a bad man. I personally did not think either Vampire was bad, they were simply Vampires and it was something Sookie often ignored about them. Which was wrong in my estimation. It was like them ignoring the fact she was human, which they never did.
“We fae in the old world dealt with Markingham and many like him to replenish our stock and strengthen our bloodlines. Like your friend here with her bit fae blood, even she could have had children with a full blooded fae and give birth to children who were more fae than human and so on until her grand children were full blooded fae. And we in the new world were excited as to the prospects that there would be many more like her but we never counted on the possibility the Vampires would turn it to their advantage and use the careful records as a way to track fae babies in the human world,” explained Niall.
“So why didn’t you do something about it?” I asked. “You knew this is what they were doing, why didn’t you go to the Vampires?”
“Easier said than done my dear,” said Niall. “We colonists from Faery to the new world found your world a dangerous place to be. It took us many generations to create the veil between your world in America and the new Faery. And many of us were killed.”
“Killed? By whom? The Americas were not so inhabited as it is now,” asked Minnie.
“True,” said Niall. “But you out bred us and it was far more important for us to create the world of Faerie in the new world than to fight with Vampires over a few half breeds.”
“So you just let this happen,” said God Speed. “You let the Vampires buy and sell human and half human babies for some sort of weird cache of exotic Vampire chow.”
“Regrettably,” said Niall. “So now I have a favor to ask of you Eric, and you can decide to help us or not.”
“What is the favor and what is in it for me?” asked Eric. I rolled my eyes. Eric even at the moment he was to be made Vampire by Godric wanted to know what was in it for him.
“Faery is becoming too crowded in Europe, especially here in Faery Land,” said Niall. “We need someone who can help us bring more fae into America.”
“Why would I want to help you?” asked Eric.
“Because with greater numbers of fae, we can help you when the time comes,” said Niall. “Dangerous times are ahead for you and your friends, things so terrible, even I cannot understand them. Many are against you Eric, and will be against the weres and shifters as they come out of the shadows to humans. Am I not speaking the truth werewolf?” He looked at Body Guard. He did not answer. Body Guard had many secrets and he was not open to chatting out in the open.
“If you cannot see the future, Niall, how are we to know what is the right thing to do?” asked Bill.
“You must go South, to the dolmen stones and see the fairy oracle,” said Niall. “See the fairy oracle and she will tell you what you want to know, and she will tell you Eric, what you want in your heart.”
Eric looked uncomfortable. He shifted a little in his chair, something uncharacteristic of him. Bill and Pam looked at each other, it must be something very intense for Eric. Perhaps something to do with his family. Niall reached in his pocket and took out a pocket watch.
“You have two hours til dawn, Viking, you must go to your daytime rest,” said Niall. He reached again into his pocket and extracted a gold coin. He laid it on the table in front of Eric. “Take this coin to County Offaly in Southern Ireland. There a lake, called Lough Derg. There in the center of the lake are several small islands. The centermost island has a circle of Dolmen Stones. To get to the island, you must take a ferry. The goblin will not allow you to board the ferry without this coin. When your business is over, he will take you back.” Niall stood up to go. “Do not waste too much time deciding Eric, or you may wait too late.” And as suddenly as he had appeared, Niall Brigant was gone.
It was no time that we were topside again. After being in the world of faery, the human world seemed less bright, less attractive. I found myself wishing that I could back and I could sense the same emotions coming from my friends, well, my human friends. To be honest, the Vampires looked relieved to be away from them. I sat there in the bus we had boarded and thought about the world we’d just left. Eric turned in his seat to me.
“Aslinn, what do you know about this place?” asked Eric.
“I will have something for you by sundown Eric, I honestly know very little of the fae oracle and the place we are going,” I said. “How are you feeling Eric? You okay? Did you get the answers you were wondering about?”
“No, I did not,” he said.
“The queen of fairy was quite beautiful,” I said. “The name Sive is a very ancient name, the name from a legend.”
“Could it be important for us to know about?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” I said. “I will tell you more about it tomorrow.”
Eric turned around and said no more.
To Be Continued
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
I did not have access to my extensive library in my attic room. But I did have my computer and what I thought of as my personal data base about the word of the occult. I sat down at the desk and switched out the small lamp and looked over at Barrister who was asleep. I turned on my computer and waited for it to wake up and rubbed my eyes. I was tempted to make the tea waiting for us, but I decided not to. Fortunately, the hotel had soda machines and I slipped down the hall and went to get a cold one. I came back and sat down.
I wished Bill were awake. I would sit in his room and we would look at the things I had and I could talk about all my suspicions and he would not judge the value of my words, he would simply listen to me and ask questions and let me work the puzzle. And this is what all of this was. There was a part of me that loved the adventure, but there was a part of me that resented it because I suspected that at least part of this was personally motivated by Eric and would really effect us very little. Part of me loved him for thinking of us and wanting us to join him on this trip where he might be revealed as something else, something more human. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when Toto pulled the curtain back to expose the Wizard: Ignore the man behind the curtain.
But I suppose I still kept Eric in the shadows in my mind like I did in real life. Part of it was because of his beauty and undeniable sexual energy, but there was a part of me that wanted to keep him in the shadows because that is where he belonged in my mind. A Night Walker, and Shadow Creature, fearsome and deadly.
Bill on the other hand was sometimes too human for his own good. He should never forget he is Vampire. I mean it was wonderful to be with him, to go places with him and sit with him and chat and to feel him hold me and…other things .I looked over at Barrister. I never really felt guilty precisely over my affections for Bill. Well, for the most part.
I went into my database and I began to search the information. Lough Derg, that was a name I thought I knew, but I did not remember precisely where I had read it. I clicked slowly through the index, looking at one thing then another.
I found two fae who were Vampiric: The Glastig and the Leanan Sidhe. They were beautiful and treacherous and most often female though there were some stories of male counterparts. I typed in the name Sive.
Sive was a shifter, a shape shifter who was the wife of Fionn MacCumhail, also known as Finn McCool. There were tales that he fell in love with her and she gave him a son named Ossian, and when the boy was very young, the two of them disappeared. He came to believe his wife had turned into an Irish roe, a small deer and his son a fawn. He searched for them for many years and one day found a wild boy with bright blond hair like himself who was running with the deer. He asked the boy his name and he did not or could not tell him but he pointed at the deer and said they were his people. As far as Fionn was concerned, the boy was Ossian.
Fionn came to believe Sive had been not just a shape shifter, but an elemental, a creature so powerful with magik that it cannot be understood. She was a spirit of creation. Fionn did try to find happiness, but he never did. He was later betrothed to a young woman called Grainne but she ran away with a man named Darimuid and shamed Fionn.
But why did this seem to be a piece of the puzzle. I queried the database about the etymology of the Fionn MacCumhail stories. All legends have their parallel stories in other cultures. This one had its sister tale in Sweden. I carefully scanned the page. It seemed to have a common genesis of the Vampires and the story of a Norse fighter, but was there something I was missing.
I tried to see other details. One of the features of Celtic tales were the emergence of a sword. While in Christian Europe, the crown was the symbol of power, the Celts saw the sword as a symbol of power. Everyone knew of Excalibur, but there was the Answerer in Nordic tales. I clicked through the page and looked at paintings depicting the great Norse cycle tales. Some of them were red headed and bushy beards that hid their face. I tried to see Eric with a big bushy blond beard. He probably had one in the winter but in the spring cut it off because it was cooler and cleaner. So Eric would have died in the spring or summer…well…not died but become Vampire. It would have to be early enough for him not to be gone raiding but too late for him to still have his beard. Perhaps he had shaved special for his trip to meet the woman he wanted to marry when Aude died.
I looked at other pictures and came to one by Frank Frazetta. I loved Frazetta and I loved the painting of the Valkyrie in Eric’s living room. There was a picture of a blond, with long blond hair and grey green eyes. It looked like Eric but I imagined that when we got to Sweden there would be many men who would be handsome like Eric and even pass for a brother. I was about to give up when I found a caption under a story referencing a picture to a legend. I typed in the name of the legend and began to read and that is when it dawned on me. That was when it began to make sense. Well, sorta.
I cut and pasted the information and saved it on my USB and turned off the computer and went to bed.
I was walking alone in a forest. All around me were the trees and the brush. I could smell and hear the forest and there were other, distant sounds. I kept walking. I knew there were others walking in the forest with me but I could not see them. I got the sense they were not my friends but strangers and I kept walking. The sounds were clearer and though at first they sounded like revelry, I realized they were quite something else. They were fearsome sounds. I…..
I raised up and pressed my hand to my chest, trying to catch my breath. I looked around the windowless room. I felt claustrophobic. I had to get out of this box and get some air. I jumped out of bed and went out of the room and down the hall to the stairs that would take me up on the roof. It was a good two hours before sundown. I sat down at a small table and looked out over the once troubled city, where two communities once warred with each other in the streets.
“I always like to see the sunset,” said a voice. I turned. Eric was standing in a darkened doorway, well out of the sunlight. I could just make him out in the shadows. I turned back to look at the reddish sun.
“What are you doing up?” I asked. “You should be asleep.”
“Dreams, I had a dream,” said Eric. “You know, I never used to dream, until now.”
“What was your dream Eric?” I said.
“Are you going to interpret it for me?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “What do Vampires dream about, when they dream?”
“I don’t know what Vampires dream of, all I know is what I have dreamed,” he said. “I don’t like it, Aslinn. I don’t like having feelings, I don’t like loving people, I don’t like being confused.”
“Welcome to your humanity,” I said, laughing under my breath a little.
“I don’t want it,” he said.
“Too damned bad Viking,” I said. “You got it now, you will just have to live with it.”
“Live, right,” said Eric. “I should have had my maker kill me instead of being like this.” I turned around to look at Eric.
“Be quiet Eric, you don’t know what you are talking about,” I said.
“There is enough sunlight to do me in,” said Eric. “I could just step out into the day and be gone.”
“Selfish to the end aren’t you Eric,” I said, turning away from him once more. “Suicide solution….is no solution at all. Godric was a coward.”
“Don’t speak of Godric that way,” he said, his voice full of menace.
“Why do you care,” I said. “You are going to greet the sun. I will say what I like about him, and about you.”
“I see,” said Eric.
“Do you?” I asked. “You look down your nose at Bill and judge him for his sentimentality and his emotions and his love and now you are becoming the same as him, loving and being loved by mere humans.”
“Are you speaking of Sookie?” he asked.
“Sookie, your sister wives, the friendships you have made with GS and Barrister and Body Guard. I have watched you Eric, standing there with them, a warm bottle of blood in your hand, shooting the shit like a couple of blokes just in for a bit of carousing and chat. You don’t look any different from them. You are such an arrogant shit, you think just because you are Vampire you are above us. But we are just like you and you are just like us. Vampires should have stayed in the coffin, you would have been happier there,” I said. The sun was nearly down.
“Did you find anything useful Aslinn?” he asked.
“Eric, what is the Answerer?” I asked.
“It was a sword,” said Eric.
“Did you ever see it?” I asked.
“I was told that the sword was carried by a great chieftain called The Pale, because he was so fair. It was said he came from across the sea on great stones he raised by magik to wage a great war. He was a giant, I was told, who could sing all the stories of the people. It was said he fell in love with a doe in a far away land and he never returned from there, but when he died, the sword was returned to the gods in Valhalla. It was said that when a great man was to rise up and be the king, the sword would appear in his scabbard,” said Eric.
“So you never saw the sword?” I asked.
“My father had a great sword, and he said when he was made king, it appeared in his scabbard, but honestly Aslinn, every chieftain swore they had the sword,” said Eric.
“Did they ever say what land The Pale went to?” I asked.
“A land we had never known,” said Eric.
“When the sun goes down, I will take you somewhere,” I said. “I don’t know what it means yet, but maybe you will know what it is.”
“You don’t like being here do you?” asked Eric.
“I don’t like not knowing why I am here,” I said.
“That makes two of us,” said the Viking.
“Eric, when you were fighting, the battle you were fighting when you were taken by Godric, what were you and your people fighting about?” I asked.
“You will learn that soon,” said Eric.
“Is that why we are all here?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he said.
The sun finally disappeared and so had Eric, inside for a meal I reckoned. I got up and stretched and went inside myself.
Everyone was up and chattering away. Food had been brought in, fish and chips and I settled down by Barrister and Westexan and Vi and Renee and ate my supper. Aolani and Scarlett and Minnie and Linzy and Lina were chatting with Pam. Fairy and Raki and Bella and Chris were chatting with Eric. Jessica and God Speed and Jen and Body Guard were chatting. I think Body Guard was teaching Jessica some basic self defense. Of course Jessica would be stronger than any human but she would not be much of a challenge to an older Vampire. Bill was chatting with Butter and she grabbed the Vampire’s hand and put it on her belly, holding his palm down on her to feel the baby move. Bill seemed a bit abashed, his old fashioned ways dictated that he not be over familiar with women, but his Vampire fascination was over whelming.
“Did you figure anything out Aslinn?” asked Renee.
“I am not sure,” I said. “I am really used to things being concrete for me, everything in a straight line, clear boundaries between the mythological, the esoteric, and the mundane. Now those boundaries are being smudged up.”
“I would say after running with Vampires, your neat little piles would get a little smudged up,” said Barrister. “I mean, a few years ago, we would never have accepted this. Why do we now?”
“I don’t know,” I said, echoing Eric’s last words to me. I looked over at him and he was smiling that lop sided smile of his at something being said to him by Bella. That Bella, if anyone could make a Vampire smile, it was our Bella. Aolani looked over and I waved her over. She came over.
“Okay, so this is what I was thinking though I really don’t know what it means,” I said. I told Aolani the story of Fionn MacCumhail and then the story of the sword, and then the little bit about The Pale from Eric. “But of what importance is it to us?”
“I am not sure. The biggest thing about legends and mythology is they intersect, that is what makes the myth so durable and believable,” she said. “Even us traveling aboard a ferry with a gold coin, it echoes the story of Persis and his voyage across the river Styx. Every hero must go on a journey.”
“Eric, a hero?” I whispered almost mouthing the word. Aolani nodded.
“And us too,” she said.
“I am going to take Eric to the Giant’s Causeway,” I said. “I think this story has to do with Eric’s past and Eric’s future truth be told, but I just don’t see it. Aolani, can we tell a Vampire’s fortune?”
“I would have said no until I listened to the explanation given to us by the fae last night about why Vampires seem to be dead,” she said. “But since they are indeed alive, we could try.”
“Let’s have a meeting, shall we?” said Eric. We got up and sat down in the parlor of the hotel. Strangely, the Vampires all took places outside our circle, just as it had been in the old days when we were somewhere else and they stood apart from us in the shadows.
“What are we thinking on the upcoming adventures?” asked Eric.
“Oh give me a small break,” I said. “We are here to solve some puzzle about you and the Vampire world and you want to discuss the adventure?”
“Yes, Aslinn, I do,” said Eric. I blew out an impatient breath and folded my arms and slumped down in my chair.
“Well, the biggest part of the adventure is the search for Bill and the plot that caused him to be taken,” said Minnie. “Edgington is obviously involved and he is in some sort of partnership with Werewolves.”
“Which is really weird because they don’t really get along in that world,” said Westexan. “I don’t get it, why is he doing this?”
“Well, you could ask the same thing about Sophie Ann and the V, why is she doing something that is so disgusting to Vampires, something that victimizes Vampires,” said God Speed.
“And humans,” added Vi.
“Well,” said Scarlett. “You can feel that way, but Vampires don’t care if humans get strung out on V. They could care less if humans are addicted to anything.”
“They should care,” said Body Guard. “Particularly if other supes are using V. V use among Weres is growing. The combination of the genetic trait for Werewolfism and the magikal compounds of V is a very potent mix. I could drive us mad.”
“Have you ever done V before?” asked Eric.
“And if I tell you, what would you do Eric?” asked Body Guard.
“Just a request for information, not an indictment,” said Eric.
“Okay,” said Body Guard. “There are reasons for a were to use V. There were some people who were interested in whether or not there was a military application for V.”
“Just like they did in Vietnam with LSD,” I said.
“Explain please Aslinn,” said Eric.
“During the Vietnam War, the government did tests on soldiers using drugs. This isn’t a new idea, Hitler gave his soldiers meth amphetamine to make them more alert and less afraid. What they found out though was that LSD was dangerous, the results unpredictable, the soldiers became berserkers…..” I looked at Body Guard. “They were trying to make a Berserker?”
“Yes,” said Body Guard. “They called it Berserker, after the legend.”
“So what did they decide?” I asked.
“They abandoned it just as they did with the LSD. The weres who used it were insane,” said Body Guard.
“So, the were’s the King of Mississippi are using V to what? Berserk?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said.
“So, maybe they have taken Bill because he knows about the queen selling V,” said Vi. “But to what end? If I were the queen, I would just have Bill killed.” She turned around to look at Bill. “Sorry Bill, just thinking out of the box.”
“It is fine Violetta,” said Bill.
“Oh my God,” said Lina. “What if Edgington is wanting to start a war?”
“He could be,” I said. “With whom though?”
“The Fellowship of the Sun, human government, another kingdom,” said Barrister.
“All three or none of the above,” I said. “So they kidnapped Bill and they are doing what? Holding him ransom? Using him as leverage in some sort of power play? That is silly, Eric has no sentimentality to Bill, the only thing that attaches Eric to Bill is Sookie.”
“What does Franklin Mott want to know about Sookie and Bill?” asked Minnie. “Is he working for someone?”
“Maybe the queen, maybe the King of Mississippi,” said God Speed.
“And Sookie is part fae,” said Scarlett. “Maybe they are trying to find the fae humans in America. All the names in those books are of the fae and part fae that were collected by Markingham. The American borne fae are unregistered.”
“But Sookie is only one half breed fairy they would know of,” said Raki.
“If they moved against her they would have to account to Niall and this would be a bad thing,” said Renee.
“But if she were say, trespassing, then that would be another matter. The Vampires could argue that she trespassed into Vampire business, where she was not invited, and they had a right to do…whatever,” said Westexan. “So, they steal Bill at the behest of people or Vampires unknown to draw Sookie into the trouble so that they could….hold her, put her on trial, kill her?”
“Force her to work for Vampires,” suggested Chris.
“That could be it,” said Body Guard. “They would not have to pay her then. She would be their property.”
“That is very thin,” said Barrister.
“Anorexic,” I said, bleakly.
“We will stop for now,” said Pam. “Excellent work everyone.”
I got ready to stand up and someone appeared in front of me. I looked up.
“You wanted to take me somewhere Aslinn?” Eric said.
To Be Continued
We were up and at ‘em at noon at Barrister’s house and we were trying to piece together what we were going to do in Ireland. There was a part of me that was glad I made the trip to be with my friends during our hiatus and yet there was a part of me that wished we hadn’t. I got the same sinking feeling Sookie sometimes got when she felt herself being pulled into dangerous and scary things in the supernatural world. This was not Eric’s fault, precisely. As a Truebie and a junkie and walking encyclopedia of the weird and unusual and the mythic I knew what I was getting into, I knew that just as there were dangers in the mundane world there were dangers also in the supernatural world. Dying by the supernatural world and dying by the mundane world was no great difference. And then there were the things that were going to happen in the new adventures. How would my sister wives and I get through the time when Bill was gone? Would I be able to look at Eric and not think about the disturbing dream? I brooded over these things as I did mine and Barrister’s laundry and packed to get ready for the trip.
I was also worried about a couple of special members of our group. Both were Eric wives and both were important to Eric for very different reasons. I was tempted to ask them both to stay here in England where they would be safe. I thought of all the books I had sent to Bill’s house and wondered what else I was going to see in the carefully hand written books bound in leather and stamped in gold. I packed the suitcases and checked the notebook I kept. Eric and I had a quick meeting before he went to his daytime rest. We were to fly from Heathrow to Armagh in Northern Ireland.
I went into what I thought of as my personal database, a blog I had been working on for some time, and found the entry I wanted. Amergin the bard had waged war with the fae and in the end was invited to treat with the Tuatha in the faerie rade where the king of the fae lived and made the deal that pulled the veil between the world of man and the world of the fae. I knew that there was something of a temple on top of the hill now, but I wondered who we were to meet and what we were supposed to learn there.
Our accommodations were at a Vampire hotel. I could not imagine a Vampire hotel in Northern Ireland considering the troubled history. Humans could scarcely rest easily much less a Vampire who would be restricted to night time hours and trapped in the care of humans. I disliked the thought of us in a hotel rather than a private home. At least at Barrister’s there was a bit more security with the old retainers who are on staff and a familiar floor plan. This was unscoped territory and it made me nervous.
After the last of the laundry was packed, I settled down to read more of the three books I had gotten from the Markingham Lair, now in ashes. There was talk of the crown taking the land and rebuilding the abbey for historical purposes. They assumed of course that the owner perished in the flames, but I would never forget the way his thick blood fanned out from Eric’s fingers when Eric pulled his arms out of his body.
Just before sundown, I went and heated a bottle of Tru:Blood and went down into the light tight guest rooms of Barrister’s estate. Barrister had told me that these were once wine and food cellars but he talked his parents into letting him make it a crash pad when he was in secondary school for he and his mates to go and play loud music, drink that all important mostly warm lager. When he grew up and went to university, they turned it into guest rooms.
The main room was a sitting room. I noted a couple of bottles of T:B in the coffee table. I went and grabbed them and walked on down the hall to the room where Bill was. I opened the door and walked in and stepped into the bathroom and rinsed the bottles and put them in the trash and came back in. Bill was “asleep” on his belly, the covers pulled up to his waist. I went and sat on the empty side of the bed and leaned back on the head board. I gently brushed away some of his hair and took a deep breath and let it out slowly and continued to pet him. It was odd to think he was sleeping deeper than another person, that he was clinically dead until the sun was down. I held the warm bottle of blood and stroked his dark hair until I felt him stir. He raised up on his elbows and blinked his eyes a few times and looked at me. He smiled that brief closed lipped smile and reached out and cupped my face.
“How are you sweetheart?” he said.
“I am well,” I said. “I brought you some Tru:Blood.” He sat up and took the bottle and drank some of it. “Bill, I have to say that I am a little afraid of what we are doing here.”
“I know. Aslinn, when we began counseling you and the others, we thought it was just to find out what humans thought of us. We never thought it would pull us so close together,” he said.
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“We were going to create an atmosphere where we were able to gage how people would react to us, how we would be able to move around in certain groups of people. We never expected that we would learn to care about you the way we do and need you the way we do,” explained Bill. “And we, that is Eric, never imagined that he would feel the way he has been feeling because of his interaction with you, that is the group. You make him remember things he thought he had forgotten and this is both a wonderful and dangerous thing for him. He wants to know what it might be like to be free of this ancient thing that has ruled him.”
“The Vampire Hierarchy,” I said.
“Yes, the hierarchy, but also the loss of his humanity. It was very painful for me to find my humanity, and it was a difficult journey, but imagine what it must be like for Eric,” he said. I looked at him with an astonished look on my face. “What darling?”
“You feel empathy for him,” I said. He smiled that sweet sad smile.
“I feel it because you feel it,” he said. “The blood bond works both ways.”
“How does Eric feel about his wives?” I asked.
“I think Eric loves them. You have to understand Vampire love is very intense, very devoted and Eric has done his level best not to feel it for humans. Vampires are very possessive and jealous of one another and we don’t appreciate anyone else in your company,” he took a drink of the blood and looked at me.
“So you don’t like it that I am with Barrister?” I asked.
“I cannot say that I have evolved any more than Eric but I try to understand that you need more than I can give you. Not just in the way of a lover, but as a man, because as much as I would like to say I am no different from any other man, I know that I am not human and cannot give you the companionship you deserve,” he said. “Humans need their daytime lives to be as rich as their nighttime lives. Eric, however, would not be upset if his human wed wives were to leave their husbands and devote themselves only to him.” He looked at me. “Does Fairy know what you have found out?”
“No,” I said. Eric had asked me not to tell her until we had treated with the fae. For some reason, I suspected that if did not precisely know about Fairy, or Markingham for that matter, that he had some strong suspicions. “Does he say anything about Butter?”
“He worries for her safety and the safety of her child. He loves the very idea of the child inside her. You should see the way he is when he speaks of the child. You would think he was the father her baby,” said Bill. “He should send her home; it was foolish to bring her.”
“Have you said as much to him?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Bill. “He doesn’t say anything beyond she is fine.”
“How do you feel about us killing Vampires?” I asked.
“It places you in danger,” said Bill. “All of you.”
“Thanks Eric,” I said.
“I heard my name being mentioned,” said Eric, leaning against the door frame. He was dressed for travel.
“I would not be down here speaking so freely of you Viking if I were going to something about you that I would not say to your face,” I said to Eric.
“Come, we have a plane to catch,” he said, giving me a look. He turned and walked away and I looked at Bill.
I got up and left Bill to get dressed and I went up and helped get my things together. The chartered bus was idling outside and we brought our bags out and watched them being loaded. I marked them in my notebook again, and got on the bus and checked and made sure everyone had their passports and tickets, marking each again. I sat down by Barrister and felt a sense of trouble coming.
The plane trip was quick and we landed in Belfast and was shuttled to the Red Moon Hotel in Belfast. It had been a human hotel in the past couple of decades and had been bought by Vampires and retrofitted for Vampires, which essentially meant there were no windows in the hotel. The windows had been bricked in and the entire building given a coat of red paint. The roof of the building was a glassed in affair with a small pool and electric lights but during the day it would be sunny. I had not lied to Eric, I loved the sun, and I missed her.
We checked in and made ourselves comfortable. Pam stopped by our open door. “Eric wanted me to tell you that you are dress formally for where we are going this evening,” she said. I looked at her. Pam was wearing a plaid A-lined skirt, black leather pumps and a green Aryan sweater.
“You look very Celtic Pam,” I said to the Vampire. “Great shoes.”
“Thank you,” she said. She headed on down the hall to speak to the others. I went to the closet and pulled out my clothes for this evening. I was wearing a skirt as well, one of my favorite broomstick skirts made of Indian linen. It was black and printed in gold in heavy Celtic knots around the edges. I was wearing a gold sweater of the same color, a light weight thing that would not be too warm. But in Northern Ireland, it is not too warm ever. I put on a little makeup and lipstick and wore my Celtic jewelry. One of my favorite pieces was a heavy beaded Celtic cross necklace. I put on a thick pewter wrist band and hooked my belt around my hips. It was gold toned aluminum. I slid on my lace up boots and strapped a knife to my calf. It was a regular hunting knife but it was full of iron. I also put a small vial of fairy dust in my purse. Aolani and I made a quick job of dividing and bottling the fairy dust into small vials and giving them to each member and even the vampires. We explained to them that they could draw a magikal door with the dust and get out of fairy and into the human world with ease by simply drawing a circle on the ground.
Before we left the estate, Aolani had cut us some hawthorn. Hawthorne is the bane of the fae and can be used like a stake. Then there is the salt water. Lemons in the world of Charlaine Harris might work, but in the old world, the thing that gets the fae is salt water. Considered the true holy water because it is a part of the earth’s womb, salt water, to be more specific, sea water is as corrosive as acid. Human tears too can be used to an extent, but because there is not enough to do real damage, Aolani made sure we had sea water from the pacific. I put all these things in my medium sized big bag of crazy made of black leather and ran the strap across my chest to hang on my hip.
Barrister was wearing a black sweater and jeans and his black lace up boots. I took his hand and walked out of our suite and went down to the lobby. They dry smell of Vampire was everywhere and the lobby was busy with both humans and Vampires. Some of them looked us over until they saw our Vampires join us. They adhere very strictly to the Mine rule here in Ireland.
We went out and got into a chartered bus and headed into the night. Eric stood up. “Aolani and Aslinn have prepared a few words for fairy regarding fairy customs and etiquette,” said Eric. “So pay close attention.” He sat back down and I nodded at Aolani to start her talk.
“I have given you all some things to use as weapons in case you need it,” she said. “But here are the basic rules of thumb. Fairies are tricksters, they love to gamble, so make sure you do not make any wagers, not even what you consider to be trifling. Also, do not eat or drink anything a fairy offers you, they will not be offended by your refusal. Their food is enchanted. Do not go anywhere with a fairy alone, they are dangerous.”
“Be careful of touching fairies, particularly fairy children, they don’t like for us to treat them personally,” I said. “And you Vampires will simply have to do something about your fairy fixation, we can’t have you jumping on them and eating them.” They all gave me what I considered an embarrassed smile.
“They will not be hungry for fairy,” said Aolani. “I made them something like narcan, an anti fairy drug.”
“How did you do that?” I asked. “They can’t drink anything but blood.”
“I made a rub, and gave it to them to use when they woke up this evening. We would use something very similar to it to protect us from dark magik and hexes,” said Aolani. “I mixed it with fairy dust and hawthorn and essence of silver and some of our Fairy’s blood. It made a little irritation but it will go away when they shower. It will make the smell of them unattractive and the taste of them will make them a little ill.”
“Sorry guys,” I looked at them a little ruefully. Eric put his hand up like it was nothing.
“We will be going into what appears to be a monument, but is actually a gate way into the rade. The rade is underground. We will be surrounded by the fae. Butter, wear this iron chain around your belly to protect the baby,” she said, giving Butter what appeared to be a steel chain to hook around her belly. Eric twisted around in his seat to help her and he rubbed her belly. “Fairies are womb raiders, so stay next to a Vampire, preferably Eric but any Vampire will do.”
“Okay,” she said. She grabbed Eric’s hand and held on to it. He leaned over and kissed her on the temple. I did not like this situation at all.
“Will they recognize Fairy as being of their blood?” asked God Speed.
“Yes, they will sense her blood,” said Aolani. “Contrary to the Connection, they will be very interested in her.”
“Will they recognize the both of you as witches?” asked Scarlett.
“They will, and they will recognize Body Guard as were,” said Aolani. “They may be very careful with Vampires, but they will be very very careful with weres.”
“They should be,” said Body Guard. “The Fae and the rest of the supernatural world has been at odds for as long as the world has turned.”
“I need everyone to be still for a moment, I am going to enchant you against the weapons of fairy.”
Fairies all had different talents. Just as Vampires had different skills, so did they. Some could give you elf stroke, you could be pixy led, they could pelt you with a stray sod, a sort of brownie who would stun you. There were aslinn’s a Vampire like fairy that liked to dance with their human victims til they are exhausted, singing siren like to enchant you and then devour you. There were gnomes who would steal from you and sprites that would lead you astray and spriggan who would do magikal bindings against you. Aolani worked an intricate charm against all of them. Would the charm protect the Vampires too?
We finally made it to the rade and climbed out of the bus. We made it a point to group ourselves with a Vampire. We climbed the stone steps up the hill, Eric picked up Butter and carried her and we came to the top. The building at the top looked like an astronomical observation building with a domed roof and roman style pillars around it with highly decorative cornices and plinths with statues of the Irish heroes. The walls were intricately carved with Celtic knots and intanglioed horses and salmon and hounds and men. Above the archway there were the words Anseo Sioa Talamh A : Here be Fairy Land.
“How do we enter?” asked Eric, looking at the large Irish oak doors that did not seem to have a door knob.
“You have to knock three times,” I said. He raised his hand and knocked on the doors. There was an echoey click and the door popped open. Eric opened it a little further and looked inside.
“Down here Vampire,” said a voice with an Irish brogue so thick you could cut it with a knife. I looked down. “Welcome to the Fairy Rade of the Tuatha Vampire.” The fairy who answered Eric’s knock was very short, brownish of skin and purple of eye. He smiled and showed his jagged shark like teeth to Eric. “Well, come in, you are letting all the magik out,” he said, standing away from the door. Eric took Butter’s hand and pulled her close to him. “Ummmm a baby. Is it yours Vampire? I will give you a very good price for it.”
“The woman and her child are under my protection,” said Eric softly, and as I have told you before, when Eric’s voice gets very soft it means he is very irritated. I looked at Bill, who was holding hands with Renee and Vi. Bella was behind him, her arm around his waist a little. He rolled his eyes a bit and walked forward. The fairy, I had not figured out his race yet, sniffed Body Guard. The fairy backed up a little more and tried to make himself smaller than he was.
“Are you an elf?” I asked the little man.
“I am indeed witch, and my name is Fergal and I am the door keeper of the Rade,” he said. His eyes drifted over Fairy. “And you are my kissing cousin,” he said and made to embrace Fairy but she stepped back from the dark little creature. Eric put his arm in front of her.
“No harm Vampire, I wanted only to greet my cousin with a fairy kiss,” he said.
“Fairy kisses are a type of enchantment,” I whispered to my feet, but I knew the Vampires heard me. Heightened senses are a common side effect to their condition. We stood there and we waited then I looked up to see the domed roof was quite far away. I tightened my hold on Barrister’s arm and he looked up. We had been moving down for some time and not noticed it. “I don’t like this,” I whispered. Eric reached out and squeezed my fingers gently and let them go.
The ground finally stopped and a door appeared and the elf knocked upon it six times and it opened to Faery.
Faery is everything you thought it would be had it been painted by Hieronymus Bosch. The walls glimmered with Faery glamour and there were hundreds of tiny things that seemed to be one thing but then they moved and revealed themselves as living creatures. Giants lumbered along, making the Viking look like a man in miniature. I looked at the Vampires. Their eyes ran over everything at once, taking in all the magik and the wonder of the place. Something brushed against my skirts and I looked down at something that may have been a pixie. The little male was looking under my skirts.
“She’s wearing panflooties!” he giggled and ran and whispered it loudly. “She is with a Vampire and she wears panflooties!!!”
“I may run with Vampires but I am not a slut,” I said in a low voice and Fairy laughed out loud. Her laughter caused a wave of talk, the most prevalent words were “kissing cousin”.
The words Kissing Cousin were words to describe distant relatives that might be suitable to courtship. Anything after second cousin was acceptable though I have known second cousins to fall in love. Evidently, they were recognizing Fairy as some long lost kin because of her fae blood.
We were led into a great room. It was riot of colors, green and gold and scarlet and royal blues and purples. The ceiling was a masterpiece of moving objects. There were wheels of time, wheels depicting the Celtic calendar, wheels with the signs of astrology of numerous cultures. There were depictions of strange beasts swimming and flying and running across the ceiling. Everything seemed to be crusted in jewels and precious metals. I grabbed Pam and pointed to the floor where two empty thrones sat. The dais was covered in silver. She nodded and seemed to transmit the information to the others and they looked and nodded to her.
We were asked to sit down at a large table heavily laden with an embroidered table cloth. The embroidery was enchanted because I watched a stitched butterfly flutter from one sewn flower to another. The food was intoxicating and the wine was sweet smelling. It would take all my energy to ignore the food. The fairies tried to separate us from our Vampires but we refused to sit where we could not be close to them and they let the matter drop and allowed us to seat ourselves.
“All hail the king and queen of Tuatha. Rise and be accounted,” announced a creature I would call a troll. He was huge and heavily armored and had a booming voice. Behind the thrones where I imagined there were doors, came two of the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. Despite their fairy narcan, you could see the Vampires were equally entranced. Raki pulled on my sleeve.
“They are beautiful,” she whispered. I nodded. Linzy and Lina were looking around at the fae and the king and queen. Bella was wide eyed and Bill was too, his blue eyes seeming paler in the golden light. We stood up along with the fae and though we did not bow, we nodded at their presence.
“Please, sit down,” said the king of fairy. “I am Jarrod, the king of the fae and kin to the people of Tir Nan Og,” he said. Eric leaned back a little. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“The land of Eternal Youth and Beauty,” I said very quietly. He nodded and leaded forward again.
“What can the people of the Tuatha do for you Vampire?” he asked Eric.
“I have many questions,” he said.
“Yes, you do. You want to know where you came from, the origins of your people, and the trade between your people and the fae,” said the king. I looked at Bill. “He is a telepath,” I mouthed.
“Yes, witch, I am a telepath, but I can read not only human minds but the minds of the dead,” he said, looking at our Vampires. “Curse yourself all you like my dear, but there was no way you could have known.”
“She has taken the name of the aslinn,” said the fairy queen. “I am Sive, and I am the queen of the fae.”
“There is no Fae blood in you,” said the king, looking at me. “It is a magikal name.”
“What can you tell me?” asked Eric.
“I can smell the blood of a Vampire on you,” said the fairy. “His name was not unknown to us, Markingham. We had no love for him. Please accept this gift as a reward.” He snapped his fingers and a cup was brought out to present to him.
“No, thank you for your gift majesty, “said Eric. We had explained that fairy gifts were often enchantments and became something ordinary in a day or could turn into something dangerous. “A better gift of information would be better.”
“Eric, are you sure you want to know where you come from, your race?” asked the king, not unkindly. “Your maker, the Vampire Godric was mistaken when he said the Vampire was wrong, that you did not belong here.”
“How do you mean?” asked the Viking.
“I mean this because your race was once fae too,” said the king. I looked around at our group. Aolani was too. They were being glamoured. Aolani was muttering a spell under her breath to try and break the glamour. They seemed to wake up. She stood up.
“Pardon me,” she said. “But we need to have your glamour lifted. We are here as friends and it is unsporting of you to glamour us. It is also dangerous to you as well you know, Vampires cannot resist fairy blood.”
“Quite true, witch,” said the king. He uttered a chant and the glamour was lifted. The room seemed the same but not as bright. The Vampires blinked hard, trying to understand what had happened. Pam looked nervous but I tipped her a wink. She smiled at me. “And the reason they long for fairy blood is because they were once a tribe of fae.”
To Be Continued
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
“There are many races among the fae but there are two tribes. There are the Fae of the light, known as the Seelie Court and the Fae of the Dark and they are called the Unseelie. Both courts are a part of what made you,” said the king.
“Then Vampires are Fae?” asked the Viking.
“No, not for many aeons. But the first Vampire was Fae. There was a queen of the Unseelie who fell in love with the King of Seelie. She wanted him with a lust that would have driven mortals mad and it did make her mad. So she treated with a daemon, a creature that lives beyond the world of Faerie and the world of man and he made her promise that the first child she had would be given over to the daemon to be raised as his child. The queen agreed and the daemon cast a powerful enchantment over the Seelie king and he fell in love with her and went to live her in her kingdom,” said the Fairy. “So, after a time, Viking, a time that may have spanned hundreds of years in human time, a child was born and it was a male child. When the child was born, there was a great storm and the fae knew this was a child of omen and prophecy and when the daemon learned of the child’s birth, he went to get his reward. But the queen refused. She did not want to give the child up. So he cursed the child. ‘Live in darkness and be damned to ye, And may the gods put their curse on ya that the sun would never know your face, And your food will be the flesh of your own and blood the only wine you’ll drink, Lost in the world know nothing but night, and let all love disappear from your sight’
“So the child grew up and he was a sad and lonely creature who could not be nourished by anything but flesh and blood of his own kind. And this secret the Queen kept from her husband. Everything that made the child wrong she explained away except for the fact the child had to eat and brink flesh and blood. That she kept hidden. For even among the fae such a thing was thought queer. Then, one night, the king found his son feeding on one of his servants and he sent him out of Unseelie and he walked the world alone and finally came to a lovely woman, standing by a moonlit pool, singing to the water. And for the first time he loved another person. But he was also ravenous with the hunger that he fell upon her and drained her nearly dry though he desperately did not want to kill her. She looked at him as she lay dying and she told him that the water sprites had told her he was to be her own true lover and he cried and he tore his wrist and fed her his blood to try and keep her alive and so he made her as he was a night creature.
“The two lived together for many years and they were content except for one thing, they had no children and they cried out for a child and no god of fairy or of man heard them. They began to hate one another and they wandered away from each other and they killed to eat. And they never saw each other again. One night, he came upon a young woman, this one a human woman, and he took her and fed on her and out of remorse he repeated the same thing and fed her his blood. This time however, this Vampire was different, because it was a human child, and she was bitter and dangerous and she hated her fae Vampire maker and she went into the world and became the first Vampire, the first human Vampire,” finished the fae.
I leaned forward. “Eric, ask for her name.”
“What was her name?” asked Eric.
“Some call her Lamia, some call her Belspeth, we called her Leanan Sidhe, though she was not a fae, but your friend’s Christian mythology called her Lilith and she was the mother of human Vampires,” said Jarrod.
“Why are we like we are?” asked Jessica.
“Are you asking why you are dead?” asked the fairy. Jessica nodded. “Humans call it being dead, but we don’t believe you are dead.”
“Why are we immortal?” asked Pam.
“Immortal? Your fairy father was immortal because legend among my people said his mother bathed him the salty waters of Tir Nan Og because she thought the curse could be cured with a bath in the waters. When your fairy father made his human Vampire, she was not immortal, for she could be killed, but she was preserved as she was the moment she was made Vampire,” said Jarrod.
“So,” Jessica panted impatiently. “I am not dead.”
“To humans, your body is dead, though you do not decay, but to the fae you are very much alive. The Vampire Fae have a heart beat so slow it may beat only once in a millennia. And perhaps only because of deep emotional pain. You do not suffer emotional attachments the way humans do, so you may cause your heart to beat so seldomly that people who try to detect the spark of life in you, cannot hear your heart beat and say you are dead,” explained the fae. “Tell me Vampire, have you ever felt your heart beat?”
“No,” said Eric. Suddenly Jarrod bounded off the dais and put his hand on Eric’s chest and closed his eyes. Eric tried to remove his hand as though the fairy’s palm burned him. Jarrod kept his eyes closed and seemed to feel something that was inarticulate. Eric finally broke the fairy’s hold on him and flung his arm away.
“You have Eric, you have felt it beat only twice in a thousand years. The first time when you saw something terrible happen and last when you lost your maker,” said the fairy. “Why lie brother? Are these humans not your friends? Can you not show your emotions to your friends?”
“I have another question, and then we will go,” said Eric.
“Of course,” said Jarrod.
“Did you know about Markingham?” asked Eric.
“Niall Brigant,” said Jarrod. We all sat up to listen to what he had to say to us about Niall Brigant, the Great Grandfather of Sookie Stackhouse. Instead he addressed someone coming into the room. “So good of you to join us. Perhaps you can explain things to Eric about Edward Markingham.”
The tall and beautiful fairy came in and sat down at the head of the table and looked at Eric. “Eric, so wonderful of you to come. Now, what is it you want to know?”
So this was how Eric gained access to the world of faery. He may not be able to give Eric access in the new world (and perhaps it was good the Vampire could not travel into faery in America) but Niall made arrangements for Eric to talk to the source without risking the delicate hold he had on the faery realm in the states, where there were fewer fae and the lingering tensions of civil war among them.
“You want to know about the world of faery in your own territory and how much influence this Markingham had and whether or not he and his friends will pose further danger to your friends here, and to my great granddaughter and your area,” said Niall.
“Yes,” said Eric. I watched Niall looking at both Eric and Bill and I wondered who it was he meant when he told Sookie the Vampire is not a bad man. I personally did not think either Vampire was bad, they were simply Vampires and it was something Sookie often ignored about them. Which was wrong in my estimation. It was like them ignoring the fact she was human, which they never did.
“We fae in the old world dealt with Markingham and many like him to replenish our stock and strengthen our bloodlines. Like your friend here with her bit fae blood, even she could have had children with a full blooded fae and give birth to children who were more fae than human and so on until her grand children were full blooded fae. And we in the new world were excited as to the prospects that there would be many more like her but we never counted on the possibility the Vampires would turn it to their advantage and use the careful records as a way to track fae babies in the human world,” explained Niall.
“So why didn’t you do something about it?” I asked. “You knew this is what they were doing, why didn’t you go to the Vampires?”
“Easier said than done my dear,” said Niall. “We colonists from Faery to the new world found your world a dangerous place to be. It took us many generations to create the veil between your world in America and the new Faery. And many of us were killed.”
“Killed? By whom? The Americas were not so inhabited as it is now,” asked Minnie.
“True,” said Niall. “But you out bred us and it was far more important for us to create the world of Faerie in the new world than to fight with Vampires over a few half breeds.”
“So you just let this happen,” said God Speed. “You let the Vampires buy and sell human and half human babies for some sort of weird cache of exotic Vampire chow.”
“Regrettably,” said Niall. “So now I have a favor to ask of you Eric, and you can decide to help us or not.”
“What is the favor and what is in it for me?” asked Eric. I rolled my eyes. Eric even at the moment he was to be made Vampire by Godric wanted to know what was in it for him.
“Faery is becoming too crowded in Europe, especially here in Faery Land,” said Niall. “We need someone who can help us bring more fae into America.”
“Why would I want to help you?” asked Eric.
“Because with greater numbers of fae, we can help you when the time comes,” said Niall. “Dangerous times are ahead for you and your friends, things so terrible, even I cannot understand them. Many are against you Eric, and will be against the weres and shifters as they come out of the shadows to humans. Am I not speaking the truth werewolf?” He looked at Body Guard. He did not answer. Body Guard had many secrets and he was not open to chatting out in the open.
“If you cannot see the future, Niall, how are we to know what is the right thing to do?” asked Bill.
“You must go South, to the dolmen stones and see the fairy oracle,” said Niall. “See the fairy oracle and she will tell you what you want to know, and she will tell you Eric, what you want in your heart.”
Eric looked uncomfortable. He shifted a little in his chair, something uncharacteristic of him. Bill and Pam looked at each other, it must be something very intense for Eric. Perhaps something to do with his family. Niall reached in his pocket and took out a pocket watch.
“You have two hours til dawn, Viking, you must go to your daytime rest,” said Niall. He reached again into his pocket and extracted a gold coin. He laid it on the table in front of Eric. “Take this coin to County Offaly in Southern Ireland. There a lake, called Lough Derg. There in the center of the lake are several small islands. The centermost island has a circle of Dolmen Stones. To get to the island, you must take a ferry. The goblin will not allow you to board the ferry without this coin. When your business is over, he will take you back.” Niall stood up to go. “Do not waste too much time deciding Eric, or you may wait too late.” And as suddenly as he had appeared, Niall Brigant was gone.
It was no time that we were topside again. After being in the world of faery, the human world seemed less bright, less attractive. I found myself wishing that I could back and I could sense the same emotions coming from my friends, well, my human friends. To be honest, the Vampires looked relieved to be away from them. I sat there in the bus we had boarded and thought about the world we’d just left. Eric turned in his seat to me.
“Aslinn, what do you know about this place?” asked Eric.
“I will have something for you by sundown Eric, I honestly know very little of the fae oracle and the place we are going,” I said. “How are you feeling Eric? You okay? Did you get the answers you were wondering about?”
“No, I did not,” he said.
“The queen of fairy was quite beautiful,” I said. “The name Sive is a very ancient name, the name from a legend.”
“Could it be important for us to know about?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” I said. “I will tell you more about it tomorrow.”
Eric turned around and said no more.
To Be Continued
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
I did not have access to my extensive library in my attic room. But I did have my computer and what I thought of as my personal data base about the word of the occult. I sat down at the desk and switched out the small lamp and looked over at Barrister who was asleep. I turned on my computer and waited for it to wake up and rubbed my eyes. I was tempted to make the tea waiting for us, but I decided not to. Fortunately, the hotel had soda machines and I slipped down the hall and went to get a cold one. I came back and sat down.
I wished Bill were awake. I would sit in his room and we would look at the things I had and I could talk about all my suspicions and he would not judge the value of my words, he would simply listen to me and ask questions and let me work the puzzle. And this is what all of this was. There was a part of me that loved the adventure, but there was a part of me that resented it because I suspected that at least part of this was personally motivated by Eric and would really effect us very little. Part of me loved him for thinking of us and wanting us to join him on this trip where he might be revealed as something else, something more human. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when Toto pulled the curtain back to expose the Wizard: Ignore the man behind the curtain.
But I suppose I still kept Eric in the shadows in my mind like I did in real life. Part of it was because of his beauty and undeniable sexual energy, but there was a part of me that wanted to keep him in the shadows because that is where he belonged in my mind. A Night Walker, and Shadow Creature, fearsome and deadly.
Bill on the other hand was sometimes too human for his own good. He should never forget he is Vampire. I mean it was wonderful to be with him, to go places with him and sit with him and chat and to feel him hold me and…other things .I looked over at Barrister. I never really felt guilty precisely over my affections for Bill. Well, for the most part.
I went into my database and I began to search the information. Lough Derg, that was a name I thought I knew, but I did not remember precisely where I had read it. I clicked slowly through the index, looking at one thing then another.
I found two fae who were Vampiric: The Glastig and the Leanan Sidhe. They were beautiful and treacherous and most often female though there were some stories of male counterparts. I typed in the name Sive.
Sive was a shifter, a shape shifter who was the wife of Fionn MacCumhail, also known as Finn McCool. There were tales that he fell in love with her and she gave him a son named Ossian, and when the boy was very young, the two of them disappeared. He came to believe his wife had turned into an Irish roe, a small deer and his son a fawn. He searched for them for many years and one day found a wild boy with bright blond hair like himself who was running with the deer. He asked the boy his name and he did not or could not tell him but he pointed at the deer and said they were his people. As far as Fionn was concerned, the boy was Ossian.
Fionn came to believe Sive had been not just a shape shifter, but an elemental, a creature so powerful with magik that it cannot be understood. She was a spirit of creation. Fionn did try to find happiness, but he never did. He was later betrothed to a young woman called Grainne but she ran away with a man named Darimuid and shamed Fionn.
But why did this seem to be a piece of the puzzle. I queried the database about the etymology of the Fionn MacCumhail stories. All legends have their parallel stories in other cultures. This one had its sister tale in Sweden. I carefully scanned the page. It seemed to have a common genesis of the Vampires and the story of a Norse fighter, but was there something I was missing.
I tried to see other details. One of the features of Celtic tales were the emergence of a sword. While in Christian Europe, the crown was the symbol of power, the Celts saw the sword as a symbol of power. Everyone knew of Excalibur, but there was the Answerer in Nordic tales. I clicked through the page and looked at paintings depicting the great Norse cycle tales. Some of them were red headed and bushy beards that hid their face. I tried to see Eric with a big bushy blond beard. He probably had one in the winter but in the spring cut it off because it was cooler and cleaner. So Eric would have died in the spring or summer…well…not died but become Vampire. It would have to be early enough for him not to be gone raiding but too late for him to still have his beard. Perhaps he had shaved special for his trip to meet the woman he wanted to marry when Aude died.
I looked at other pictures and came to one by Frank Frazetta. I loved Frazetta and I loved the painting of the Valkyrie in Eric’s living room. There was a picture of a blond, with long blond hair and grey green eyes. It looked like Eric but I imagined that when we got to Sweden there would be many men who would be handsome like Eric and even pass for a brother. I was about to give up when I found a caption under a story referencing a picture to a legend. I typed in the name of the legend and began to read and that is when it dawned on me. That was when it began to make sense. Well, sorta.
I cut and pasted the information and saved it on my USB and turned off the computer and went to bed.
I was walking alone in a forest. All around me were the trees and the brush. I could smell and hear the forest and there were other, distant sounds. I kept walking. I knew there were others walking in the forest with me but I could not see them. I got the sense they were not my friends but strangers and I kept walking. The sounds were clearer and though at first they sounded like revelry, I realized they were quite something else. They were fearsome sounds. I…..
I raised up and pressed my hand to my chest, trying to catch my breath. I looked around the windowless room. I felt claustrophobic. I had to get out of this box and get some air. I jumped out of bed and went out of the room and down the hall to the stairs that would take me up on the roof. It was a good two hours before sundown. I sat down at a small table and looked out over the once troubled city, where two communities once warred with each other in the streets.
“I always like to see the sunset,” said a voice. I turned. Eric was standing in a darkened doorway, well out of the sunlight. I could just make him out in the shadows. I turned back to look at the reddish sun.
“What are you doing up?” I asked. “You should be asleep.”
“Dreams, I had a dream,” said Eric. “You know, I never used to dream, until now.”
“What was your dream Eric?” I said.
“Are you going to interpret it for me?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “What do Vampires dream about, when they dream?”
“I don’t know what Vampires dream of, all I know is what I have dreamed,” he said. “I don’t like it, Aslinn. I don’t like having feelings, I don’t like loving people, I don’t like being confused.”
“Welcome to your humanity,” I said, laughing under my breath a little.
“I don’t want it,” he said.
“Too damned bad Viking,” I said. “You got it now, you will just have to live with it.”
“Live, right,” said Eric. “I should have had my maker kill me instead of being like this.” I turned around to look at Eric.
“Be quiet Eric, you don’t know what you are talking about,” I said.
“There is enough sunlight to do me in,” said Eric. “I could just step out into the day and be gone.”
“Selfish to the end aren’t you Eric,” I said, turning away from him once more. “Suicide solution….is no solution at all. Godric was a coward.”
“Don’t speak of Godric that way,” he said, his voice full of menace.
“Why do you care,” I said. “You are going to greet the sun. I will say what I like about him, and about you.”
“I see,” said Eric.
“Do you?” I asked. “You look down your nose at Bill and judge him for his sentimentality and his emotions and his love and now you are becoming the same as him, loving and being loved by mere humans.”
“Are you speaking of Sookie?” he asked.
“Sookie, your sister wives, the friendships you have made with GS and Barrister and Body Guard. I have watched you Eric, standing there with them, a warm bottle of blood in your hand, shooting the shit like a couple of blokes just in for a bit of carousing and chat. You don’t look any different from them. You are such an arrogant shit, you think just because you are Vampire you are above us. But we are just like you and you are just like us. Vampires should have stayed in the coffin, you would have been happier there,” I said. The sun was nearly down.
“Did you find anything useful Aslinn?” he asked.
“Eric, what is the Answerer?” I asked.
“It was a sword,” said Eric.
“Did you ever see it?” I asked.
“I was told that the sword was carried by a great chieftain called The Pale, because he was so fair. It was said he came from across the sea on great stones he raised by magik to wage a great war. He was a giant, I was told, who could sing all the stories of the people. It was said he fell in love with a doe in a far away land and he never returned from there, but when he died, the sword was returned to the gods in Valhalla. It was said that when a great man was to rise up and be the king, the sword would appear in his scabbard,” said Eric.
“So you never saw the sword?” I asked.
“My father had a great sword, and he said when he was made king, it appeared in his scabbard, but honestly Aslinn, every chieftain swore they had the sword,” said Eric.
“Did they ever say what land The Pale went to?” I asked.
“A land we had never known,” said Eric.
“When the sun goes down, I will take you somewhere,” I said. “I don’t know what it means yet, but maybe you will know what it is.”
“You don’t like being here do you?” asked Eric.
“I don’t like not knowing why I am here,” I said.
“That makes two of us,” said the Viking.
“Eric, when you were fighting, the battle you were fighting when you were taken by Godric, what were you and your people fighting about?” I asked.
“You will learn that soon,” said Eric.
“Is that why we are all here?” I asked.
“I do not know,” he said.
The sun finally disappeared and so had Eric, inside for a meal I reckoned. I got up and stretched and went inside myself.
Everyone was up and chattering away. Food had been brought in, fish and chips and I settled down by Barrister and Westexan and Vi and Renee and ate my supper. Aolani and Scarlett and Minnie and Linzy and Lina were chatting with Pam. Fairy and Raki and Bella and Chris were chatting with Eric. Jessica and God Speed and Jen and Body Guard were chatting. I think Body Guard was teaching Jessica some basic self defense. Of course Jessica would be stronger than any human but she would not be much of a challenge to an older Vampire. Bill was chatting with Butter and she grabbed the Vampire’s hand and put it on her belly, holding his palm down on her to feel the baby move. Bill seemed a bit abashed, his old fashioned ways dictated that he not be over familiar with women, but his Vampire fascination was over whelming.
“Did you figure anything out Aslinn?” asked Renee.
“I am not sure,” I said. “I am really used to things being concrete for me, everything in a straight line, clear boundaries between the mythological, the esoteric, and the mundane. Now those boundaries are being smudged up.”
“I would say after running with Vampires, your neat little piles would get a little smudged up,” said Barrister. “I mean, a few years ago, we would never have accepted this. Why do we now?”
“I don’t know,” I said, echoing Eric’s last words to me. I looked over at him and he was smiling that lop sided smile of his at something being said to him by Bella. That Bella, if anyone could make a Vampire smile, it was our Bella. Aolani looked over and I waved her over. She came over.
“Okay, so this is what I was thinking though I really don’t know what it means,” I said. I told Aolani the story of Fionn MacCumhail and then the story of the sword, and then the little bit about The Pale from Eric. “But of what importance is it to us?”
“I am not sure. The biggest thing about legends and mythology is they intersect, that is what makes the myth so durable and believable,” she said. “Even us traveling aboard a ferry with a gold coin, it echoes the story of Persis and his voyage across the river Styx. Every hero must go on a journey.”
“Eric, a hero?” I whispered almost mouthing the word. Aolani nodded.
“And us too,” she said.
“I am going to take Eric to the Giant’s Causeway,” I said. “I think this story has to do with Eric’s past and Eric’s future truth be told, but I just don’t see it. Aolani, can we tell a Vampire’s fortune?”
“I would have said no until I listened to the explanation given to us by the fae last night about why Vampires seem to be dead,” she said. “But since they are indeed alive, we could try.”
“Let’s have a meeting, shall we?” said Eric. We got up and sat down in the parlor of the hotel. Strangely, the Vampires all took places outside our circle, just as it had been in the old days when we were somewhere else and they stood apart from us in the shadows.
“What are we thinking on the upcoming adventures?” asked Eric.
“Oh give me a small break,” I said. “We are here to solve some puzzle about you and the Vampire world and you want to discuss the adventure?”
“Yes, Aslinn, I do,” said Eric. I blew out an impatient breath and folded my arms and slumped down in my chair.
“Well, the biggest part of the adventure is the search for Bill and the plot that caused him to be taken,” said Minnie. “Edgington is obviously involved and he is in some sort of partnership with Werewolves.”
“Which is really weird because they don’t really get along in that world,” said Westexan. “I don’t get it, why is he doing this?”
“Well, you could ask the same thing about Sophie Ann and the V, why is she doing something that is so disgusting to Vampires, something that victimizes Vampires,” said God Speed.
“And humans,” added Vi.
“Well,” said Scarlett. “You can feel that way, but Vampires don’t care if humans get strung out on V. They could care less if humans are addicted to anything.”
“They should care,” said Body Guard. “Particularly if other supes are using V. V use among Weres is growing. The combination of the genetic trait for Werewolfism and the magikal compounds of V is a very potent mix. I could drive us mad.”
“Have you ever done V before?” asked Eric.
“And if I tell you, what would you do Eric?” asked Body Guard.
“Just a request for information, not an indictment,” said Eric.
“Okay,” said Body Guard. “There are reasons for a were to use V. There were some people who were interested in whether or not there was a military application for V.”
“Just like they did in Vietnam with LSD,” I said.
“Explain please Aslinn,” said Eric.
“During the Vietnam War, the government did tests on soldiers using drugs. This isn’t a new idea, Hitler gave his soldiers meth amphetamine to make them more alert and less afraid. What they found out though was that LSD was dangerous, the results unpredictable, the soldiers became berserkers…..” I looked at Body Guard. “They were trying to make a Berserker?”
“Yes,” said Body Guard. “They called it Berserker, after the legend.”
“So what did they decide?” I asked.
“They abandoned it just as they did with the LSD. The weres who used it were insane,” said Body Guard.
“So, the were’s the King of Mississippi are using V to what? Berserk?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said.
“So, maybe they have taken Bill because he knows about the queen selling V,” said Vi. “But to what end? If I were the queen, I would just have Bill killed.” She turned around to look at Bill. “Sorry Bill, just thinking out of the box.”
“It is fine Violetta,” said Bill.
“Oh my God,” said Lina. “What if Edgington is wanting to start a war?”
“He could be,” I said. “With whom though?”
“The Fellowship of the Sun, human government, another kingdom,” said Barrister.
“All three or none of the above,” I said. “So they kidnapped Bill and they are doing what? Holding him ransom? Using him as leverage in some sort of power play? That is silly, Eric has no sentimentality to Bill, the only thing that attaches Eric to Bill is Sookie.”
“What does Franklin Mott want to know about Sookie and Bill?” asked Minnie. “Is he working for someone?”
“Maybe the queen, maybe the King of Mississippi,” said God Speed.
“And Sookie is part fae,” said Scarlett. “Maybe they are trying to find the fae humans in America. All the names in those books are of the fae and part fae that were collected by Markingham. The American borne fae are unregistered.”
“But Sookie is only one half breed fairy they would know of,” said Raki.
“If they moved against her they would have to account to Niall and this would be a bad thing,” said Renee.
“But if she were say, trespassing, then that would be another matter. The Vampires could argue that she trespassed into Vampire business, where she was not invited, and they had a right to do…whatever,” said Westexan. “So, they steal Bill at the behest of people or Vampires unknown to draw Sookie into the trouble so that they could….hold her, put her on trial, kill her?”
“Force her to work for Vampires,” suggested Chris.
“That could be it,” said Body Guard. “They would not have to pay her then. She would be their property.”
“That is very thin,” said Barrister.
“Anorexic,” I said, bleakly.
“We will stop for now,” said Pam. “Excellent work everyone.”
I got ready to stand up and someone appeared in front of me. I looked up.
“You wanted to take me somewhere Aslinn?” Eric said.
To Be Continued
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