Chapter 8: Inheritance

The drive home was quiet and peaceful; the roads fairly empty as the hour approached eleven. When the questions piling up in my head started to become repetitive or redundant, I stopped thinking about Angelica and Ixandarius and turned my thoughts to Melanie. Sex with her was beyond outstanding, but I was longing for more. If Ixandarius was warning me away from mortals, perhaps it was time to find out if Melanie was amenable to something more than the intense but very casual relationship we seemed to have developed in such a short time. Getting that far in my thinking had me wondering what sprites liked to do other than take care of plants and f•©k? And if I asked her out, did Melanie have clothes more suitable for a date? Showing up with someone that barely looked like she was old enough to be out of middle school dressed like the sexy nymph usually dressed would get me killed in Georgia!

Pondering that got me all the way to Hereford Farm Road. The twenty minute drive out to Columbia County helped me clear the adrenaline and approach my coming conversation a little more calmly. That there were things Ixandarius failed to mention in the months during which he was tutoring me on my immortality was obvious. Now, there could be perfectly good reasons for that. If there were, however, the Greek better damn well come up with them or we would be having a problem!

A couple of minutes later I was pulling up the driveway and into the garage. The moon lit up the rural landscape around the few houses that dotted the countryside around my property. Augusta, and therefore Columbia County, was growing despite the overall economy. In fact, Columbia County was growing even faster. The developers seemed bound and determined to throw up as much new housing as fast as they could. Despite that, my little pocket of it seemed to remain immune to the suburbanization fever, thus far at least. I was hoping it would remain so and I now had the money that I could make sure it would if I had to. It would be far easier to do my job as a sentinel without tons of neighbors.

Which brought me back to the reason there was a light on in my kitchen and a Greek sitting at my table with his powerful hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea. He opened his mouth to say something and I held up my hand. "Before we get started, I need something to eat and drink, especially if this is going to be as long a talk as I suspect it will be," I told him, getting a box of Tai Pei Shrimp Fried Rice out of the freezer and popping it in the microwave. I grabbed the apple juice from the fridge and poured myself a glass. "While we are waiting on the rice, I had a quick question about sprites: other than sex and taking care of their plants, what do they like to do?"

Ixandarius stared at me for a long minute before burying his face in his hands and scrubbing vigorously. "I imagine this is what high school feels like," he grumbled irritably. "Just because we are immortal does not mean we stop being people. If you wish to court Melanie, you will have to find out what she likes to do, not what sprites like to do. All females eat, even vegetarian sprites, so start there and find out the rest of it yourself. Courtship rituals are the same now as when you were mortal. The only difference comes when you try to court one of the hermits that lock themselves away for centuries at a time. Those anomalies haven't changed with the times and might take some special care."

With that bit of advice given, my dinner dinged. I poured it into a bowl, added a dash of soy sauce, grabbed my juice, and I was ready to eat while interrogating. "What is the Brotherhood of Blood? We will start with what should be an easy one. The answer should be something along the lines of 'They are a group of vampires that... , " I began with more than a bit of biting sarcasm.

He shook his head with a frustrated look on his face. "Actually, it isn't that simple," he retorted wearily, setting his cup on the saucer with meticulous precision. "As a matter of fact, it is more than a bit complicated and I am not really sure how to start."

"How about at the beginning?" I said around a mouthful of rice and shrimp.

He grimaced; I wasn't sure whether it was because of my bad manners or my suggestion. "Again, not nearly as simple as it sounds," was his curt reply. "The beginning was more than three centuries ago when a group of anomalies, most predatory towards humans, banded together for mutual protection against stronger anomalies, mainly guardians and sentinels. They grew weary of the restrictions the Fates, through us, put on their feeding habits and lifestyles. They fled Europe and came to the New World, finding even more anomalies who thought as they do. Anomalies who were native to this land. Thusly was begun the Brotherhood of Blood and what followed were the Blood Wars.

"The Blood Wars went on, mostly out of sight of the mortal world, for most of the eighteenth century, culminating in the quaintly named Whiskey Rebellion. Instead of what happened, George Washington was supposed to march right into a Brotherhood massacre, allowing them to take over the new country and reveal themselves to the rest of the world," he told me rather blandly, as if describing a new shirt he just bought. "As a professor of History, I am sure you grasp the importance of keeping Mr. Washington alive and in control of the nascent republic. Instead of George Washington, the Brotherhood got a couple dozen sentinels backed by three score guardians. By the time the Brotherhood fled in rout, their leadership cadre was slaughtered and more than half of their compliment lay dead on the field. They were able to engineer the War of 1812 but very little has been heard from them since they lost the Battle of New Orleans to the Guardian of New Orleans and her pirate lover."

My dinner was cooling and I was staring at the Greek in open-mouthed astonishment. "Um, ok. I guess that answers that, but why the hell do they hate me enough to attack me in public? I am fairly new and have never crossed them!"

"Ah, another simple question with a complicated answer," he said with a sad smile. He sipped his tea and grimaced, getting up to pour it into the sink. "The answer has two parts, both mostly my fault. The first part of the answer has to do with ancient (to Americans) history. I led the sentinels who nearly wiped out the Brotherhood. Our Mistresses left it to me to handle the situation before the Tapestry was completely torn asunder. I spent much of the late 1700's in the saddle fighting anomalies the likes of which you will probably never encounter outside of your studies across half the continent. I was at the Battle of the Plain of Abraham in 1759 fighting vampires. I was at Yorktown battling nalusa falaya, a type of Native American, non-lethal vampire. And I led the fight at Bower Hill, slaughtering more vampires than you will likely see in centuries as a sentinel.

"And then there is the part of the equation that deals directly with how you died, becoming an immortal. Xavier de Boers was a baby vampire when the Blood Wars happened but because of his personality, he immediately fit right in with the Brotherhood and was one of the few to survive the Battle of New Orleans. Over the past few centuries, he has been one of the better recruiters of new vampires for the Brotherhood," Ixandarius revealed grimly. "That is what I was doing following him around the country. He was a vicious animal who enjoyed the torture and slaughter that preceded an anomaly's death and in your birthday party he had an entire banquet of pain. You were going to be his latest recruit and I stopped that, making you one of ours. In their minds, you were not only responsible for Xavier's death, you were one of theirs and turned against them. For those reasons, plus the hurt it would cause me to have one of my protégés killed, you must die."

I sat gaping at him incredulously. "F•©king lovely!" I snapped with outrage. "So what you are saying is that I have inherited a blood feud with a bunch of lunatic, sadist vampires?"

"Hmm, very well phrased, actually," was his singularly irritating reply.

"F•©k!"

Disgusted, I stood and walked to the sink, throwing the rest of my rice down the garbage disposal and running some water and soap into the bowl to soak overnight. "I am going to bed."

As I stalked back to my room I heard Ixandarius say, "I will be here when you get home from work. We have some lessons on warding to go over."

The next week dragged by. Every night I would come home to find Ixandarius at my kitchen table, sipping tea. During the first few months of my new life, the Greek had mentioned warding and showed me how to do the rudimentary, though powerful, shielding. What he showed me that week was different in that it was a way to use power for warding without me having to keep a continuous effort on doing so. It was in the nature of a spell. I simply wove my power into the very foundations of my house and the ground surrounding it. The power sank into the ground and lingered to warn me who or what crossed the property line. It also sank into the foundations of the house to close it to any other anomalies unless I specifically modify the warding to allow them in.

So far, only Ixandarius and Melanie got passes and I was tempted to revoke the Greek's.

Having a group of sadistic vampires after me inspired me to use some of my lessons in a more practical way. So, the next weekend I got up early on Saturday and spent the morning repeatedly walking around the property in a concentric pattern. If I had any neighbors who lived close to me, they would have probably thought I lost my marbles and was trying to find them. For each new line in the defenses I placed a new ward with different properties to it. The first, outer layer was aimed specifically at vampires and would cause excruciating, electric shock-like pain should they cross the identification ward. The inner-most ward dropped a nearly unbreakable static field down on the property that would put any anomaly who trespassed that far into a stasis trance similar to a coma until I decided to let them go. I also put another ward on my house, just in case someone got through the outer wards and the house shield ward. This one would kill any anomaly other than those allowed to pass the house shield. By the time I was done, my house and yard glowed in my Sight with the magic saturating it.

It is not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

I went to bed early Saturday, exhausted but satisfied with my work. Very early Sunday morning I was awakened by a spike of ... some emotion. My eyes saw nothing out of the ordinary in my bedroom as I sat up in a sudden sweat. If it wasn't something close enough to ping my wards then it must be something else farther away, I thought to myself as I tried to get my heart rate and breathing back under control. In my first really conscious use of my Sight, I sent my inner vision scanning the neighborhood only to find nothing but sleeping mortals. Thinking of Ixandarius, I tried to Look for him but he was often warded against others' ability to find him. A paranoid habit of ages as a sentinel, he claimed. But if I couldn't See him then I sure as hell wouldn't get a spurt of something close to anxiety or fear for him.

That left Melanie.

Sending my Sight looking for her was rather easy and there was no way a sprite could block my vision, no matter how much older than me she was. I found her weeping in the protective tangle of an overgrown rose bush somewhere out in South Augusta. Looking around the land the rose bush was on showed a rundown yard in desperate need of a lawn service and a horticulturalist. Nobody lived in the house against which the rose bush grew. There was a stout, fairly tall privacy fence around the small, three bedroom ranch-style house in a bad part of the rundown region of the city of Augusta.

Normally, in Melanie's diminutive form she is about a foot tall. The sprite I saw curled up in the crook of the wild-looking roses was four inches at most. She never would have gotten into the interwoven mess of thorned canes that now protected her were she any bigger. Dressed in nothing but boxers and a robe, I tried to get her to talk to me but I doubt she heard me over her broken-hearted weeping.

Sheathing my arm and chest with magic to shield me from the inch-long thorns, I reached into the roses and pulled out the sprite curled into a fetal position. As I reappeared in my bedroom I found myself holding a full-grown Melanie trying with some success to wrap herself around me while wracking sobs shuddered through her lithe body. Shivers began rippling through her muscles so I held her close with gentle strength until I knew what was wrong with her and knee-walked to the center of the bed. Setting her down as much as her clinging limbs would allow, I hauled the comforter and sheet over us and let her huddle into my warmth, fearing she was in shock.

I fell asleep. The slow, sensual stroking of a silky soft hand on my face and chest stirred me out of a confusing welter of sounds and images chasing me around my dreams over which echoed the shattered, broken wails of a sprite. My eyes slowly opened and flicked downward into the red-rimmed and pain-filled blue orbs that had captivated me from the moment I first laid eyes on her. I felt my face harden as sleep was chased away by the sight of an ugly bruise on her right cheek and a fat lip on the left side of the normally sensual mouth I so loved.