"The Life of a Macedonian Vampire and His Son Alexander"   

Author: DJ Clawson (dj_clawson@yahoo.com)  

Sequal to: The Life and Times of a Macedonian Vampire (read first)

Rating: strong PG-13      

Archive: Only with permission

Characters: Aristotle, Feliks, Larry Merlin, LaCroix, Nick, Natalie, Janette, Qa'ra, Schanke

Warnings: Slash (non-explicit), Rampant cursing, vampires acting like vampires, rather frank discussion of vampire sexuality

Betas: Walt, Judith Cataldo

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Chapter 1

2004

             It was June in New Mexico, a time when thousands of tourists made their way in their minivans and SUVs to Chaco Cultural National Park, to feast their eyes on the stone remains of the ancient Pueblo cultures. A stone wall here, a house foundation there, and white Americans, starved for history in their young country, went through endless rolls of film and bought warehouse-crafted dream catchers.

            Fifty miles south, the town of Luna, New Mexico received little of this traffic, save as a pit stop for those traveling north. The sleepy town had precisely one high school, one movie theater, and two hotels, a local motel and a Holiday Inn for tourists.

            Like a bird returning to its nesting place, the desk staff was familiar with the balding, diminutive man who visited the town for three days in the first week of June. His goatee, glasses, and disarming smile made him look almost alarmingly harmless, like a university professor uncomfortable in his own skin. Every year he created some speculation even though he did nothing to fuel any suspicions, and the manager was forced to recount the more memorable visits over the last twenty years. He arrived late in the evening, took room 6 – and only room 6 – and stayed for two days, not leaving the room on the intermediary day at all. Beyond the hotel was the pool and the desert, and he went for walks, but partook in no other amusements their town offered. Any other room was unacceptable. When he called in May to reserve the room the year they were renovating, and was told it was not available, he showed up in June and convinced them to let him have it even though it had holes in the floor, no carpeting, and no furniture but the spare cot they rolled in for him. When the maid interrupted him, she said she found him drinking wine on the floor.

            “Your key, Mr. Aris,” the manager said, and his guest smiled at him. “Do you require anything else?”

            “No. Thank you.” He was always so polite to the staff. Was he touched in the head and thought someone was waiting for him, or just stuck on play like a broken record? No one knew for sure, but what they were sure about was that he was not interested in enlightening them.

                        ************************************************

            The same terrible carpeting, the same tacky prints on the walls, and the view of the same desert, the sand hiding so many secrets. Aristotle set his bag down on the wooden dresser, emptied the mini-bar of its contents, and went about restocking it with bottles of wine. Only one of them was actual wine, and not a mix of wine and his life-sustaining blood, but he wouldn’t be drinking that so much as using it.

            Aristotle pulled the drapes closed so he wouldn’t be interrupted by the deadly sun, and pushed the desk away from the only area in the room he cared about, the reason he rented room 6, and the desk was always blocking it, and he always moved the desk.

            There was only one change to his routine since the Holiday Inn replaced the grocery store that used to be on this site (and the back room was a very unpleasant place to spend a day). He picked up his phone, and dialed the first number on the speed dial.

            Alex answered immediately. “Hey, Dad.” Alex usually rotated between ‘Ari’ and ‘Master’ depending on the situation, but in the last month he’d picked up ‘Dad,’ and Aristotle did nothing to discourage him. “Where are you?”

            “The middle of nowhere. I guess I’m lucky. The hotel’s always open.”

            “Will you buy me a dream catcher?”

            “No. I will not encourage superstition.”

            “Says the vampire.”

            “Yes. Says the vampire. Are you behaving yourself?”

            “You’ve been gone for six hours! And yes, I am behaving myself. Oh, and your healer just got mauled.”

            “Are you playing on my computer?”

            “My barbarian needed backup.”

            “I do not you give you permission to use my EverQuest account.”

            “Then maybe you shouldn’t have made your password the last blood-reading challenge.”

            He cursed, but he wasn’t really angry. “If anyone calls, let the machine get it.”

            “Even if it’s for me?”

            “Especially if it’s for you. Why are they calling you on my line? I’m already suspicious.”

            “Ari, I know all of like, three people who would call me, and all of them have my number. Chill.”

            He was stressed. He hated this trip, this ritual he forced himself into every year. He hated smiling at the mortals in the dismal town they dared to build on this spot. But, he supposed, their ignorance protected it. He just did not have it in him to be that grateful, not when he was actually in the room. “If anyone asks you where I am – “

            “I don’t answer them. Which is pretty impossible, considering I’m not answering the phone. Would be kind of incredible, actually.”

            Aristotle sighed. Alex was just being himself, and normally he enjoyed it, but to be perfectly honest, he wasn’t in the mood. He would rather have him there and not say anything than apart but speaking. He knew Alex was scared, being without his master for the first time since his conversion, but he wouldn’t admit it on any conscious level. It just came through the link and Aristotle could do nothing about it. “I’ll call tomorrow. Call if there’s an emergency. And try not to get into any emergencies.”

            “Okay. Good luck.”

            He supposed Alex didn’t want to say ‘Have fun.’ “Thank you.”

            Even though the phone link was severed, a more important one remained. It was too powerful to be overcome by distance, at least not this distance. He was in New Mexico and Alex was in Northern Nevada. He tried to calculate the miles and realized he was obsessing too much.

            He removed the silver bowl from his luggage and set it on the ground. He removed two bottles of wine from the fridge – the blood wine and the libation wine. The first he uncorked and poured a glass into the stone bowl he brought with him. The second, wine pressed with his own feet, he poured it into the libation bowl. The hotel would complain if the rug was stained.

            “Kuros,” he said reverently, and laid down on the floor beside the libation plate, directly above the spot where, 2200 hundred years ago, the tribe of Anasazi burned his master alive.

                        ************************************************

            Dr. Alex Green, PhD, would not have predicted – for any amount of money – that the house in Lake Tahoe, and everything associated with it, was where his life would take him. For starters, he was supposed to be dead. Before being bitten and drained of blood, his body was riddled with cancerous nodules that no amount of chemotherapy, radiation, or cutting-edge cancer medicine could stop. Even if he had somehow beaten his death sentence, handed down when he was eighteen as Non-Hodgkin lymphoma with a particularly aggressive flair, he would have expected to be using his computer science degree to do research for Microsoft, or some start-up alternative company that didn’t pay half as well but did not require a sacrifice of dignity. Or maybe he would be an associate professor somewhere, working his way up the academic ladder.

            He spent very little time on what could have been, too consumed with what was, and what lay ahead. After so many years of doctoring, he was conditioned to keep his mind away from the future because he had none. The degree would cap his academic career and his life. Technically it did do that, at least according to the State of Massachusetts, which declared him dead in December 2003. Ari had a copy somewhere, but he wouldn’t let him have it, nor would he explain his reasons. Alex suspected he did not have a specific one, but was fathering on instinct, and not letting him dwell on the past. The certificate was merely for record purposes, because Aristotle was nothing if not a keeper (and eventual destroyer) of records. In a combination of his file cabinets and computer system were the records of every vampire he had ever met and their current whereabouts, should they ever need his relocation services. For safety reasons, Alex only had certain passwords, and all of those were designed to set of silent alarms on Aristotle’s phone. Aristotle was untouchable, but there might be a vampire stupid enough to think his fledgling was not.

            Aristotle would only be gone for three days, long enough for the messages to build up on his public line so much that Alex turned the machine down to a more reasonable volume. With no guests (Aristotle had the dignity not to leave him with a babysitter) and no appointments, and even the cleaning lady cancelled, Alex had the house completely to himself.

            As a mortal he’d lived alone since his college days, not going home to his abusive step-father and spending vacations alone in the dorm and summer in an apartment near campus. Now that he was so desperately tethered by an invisible strand to his master, the separation was nerve-wracking. For the few hours he was entirely unable to concentrate, and burned steam by tearing up more of the driveway with his skateboard. Even when he calmed down, instead of doing some actual work like he promised himself, he played EverQuest until the sun came up and passed out in his room, still clutching the bottle of blood. Absolutely pathetic.

            It wasn’t until the next night that he could focus at all, and he turned to his work to busy himself. Against the assumption of so many vampires, as he quickly learned, Aristotle did not bring him over as an assistant, to do the busywork of Aristotle’s business, ever growing in complexity as it was. If he was asked to do mundane chores, like working the laminating machine or finding documents, it was because his master was truly stressed and somewhat desperate, and he was all too eager to please him anyway. He was given tasks, but they were things he liked and wanted to do, most of them involving computer programming. Though the Ancient was more than a match for his own genius, he didn’t have a degree from MIT for nothing. His designer skills were greater and he was faster to implement ideas and to turn them into code. Aristotle worked on a theoretical level, expecting reality to prove his rule. He was not delusional. He was brilliant enough that his conclusions were accurate, just not easy to physically execute. Sometimes they were nearly impossible, and definitely would have been for someone of average intelligence.

            Though Aristotle vigorously denied that the written works that survived of his mortal life had any relevance or were merely misleading about his scientific conclusions, Alex observed otherwise. Yes, he knew his biological assertions made with no scientific instruments in the fourth century BC were embarrassing incorrect, but his observational methods hadn’t changed a lot. Alex had the good sense to keep his observations to himself, though he was fully aware that Aristotle knew of them through the link. He just didn’t say them out loud and his master pretended not to know his thoughts. It was a polite understanding that worked rather well.

            Tonight he was deep in the coding of a program to keep a live track on commercial jets by their tail number and NASA’s public transmissions. It had no direct purpose yet, but for shuttling vampires around, it had possibilities, and the fact that it was a tad on the illegal side made it all the more exciting. Other people might be uninterested in lines of incomprehensible computer code, but he was not other people. As a mortal, he’d once coded for forty-three straight hours. Ironically as a vampire, it was beyond his capabilities. He was incapable of staying awake during the day, and it cut into any marathon he attempted. Another thing that he would overcome in time, or so he was assured. Until then, it was just frustrating. He had eternity and he spent so much of it sleeping.

            The phone rang, but however enthusiastically he answered it, the voice on the other end was not his master’s. “Hi, Alex.”

            He groaned. “Nick.” Other vampires called him Nicholas, but he liked to be called Nick. In a way it was more respectful, even though vampires were so formal. Most vampires called him Alexander, even if he wasn’t introduced that way and never referred to himself as such. They also probably thought it was funny. “Hi. Did Ari tell you to call me?”

            “...Maybe.”

            “I’m fine. And he knows it.”

            “All right.” He was not fine and Nick didn’t believe his lie, but nothing was actually wrong. He was just agitated by the distance between him and his master. But Nick was a good guy, almost too good for a vampire, and played along. “Should I launch into ‘when I was a fledgling’ stories to try to explain that I can relate to you or should we just say I completed my favor and annoyed you.”

            “I’m not annoyed.” He was as bad at lying as Nick was. He was about to take the offer to go back to work when he considered it. Nicholas de Brabant was a Crusader, brought across in the Middle Ages, and his master was a brutal Roman general. It could be kind of interesting. “And if you have an interesting story, go ahead.”

            “Depends on your definition of interesting, I guess. Also, the stories that didn’t involve me hating him by the end of it are limited.”

            It interested Alex because LaCroix and Aristotle were from the same bloodline, and had similar child-rearing tactics, that made for some very powerful vampires. The difference, Aristotle very nervously explained to him, was that LaCroix’s basic ideologies were completely contradictory to Nicholas’ nature, and neither side would relent. Nicholas could not give up who he was and LaCroix would not accept who he was, nor did Aristotle personally think he really understood the depths of Nick’s concepts of faith and morality. Aristotle was determined to learn from LaCroix’s mistakes, and Alex understood that one of the reasons he was chosen was because on so many things, they were largely on the same page. Also, Alex was very aware that his master was intentionally hiding things from him about their bloodline, to be revealed when necessary, and nothing could shake him from that position. Alex knew that both Nick and Aristotle had been savagely beaten and tortured when they were fledglings, and not just for disobedience. There was something there that Aristotle didn’t want to repeat or wanted to put off as long as possible. He’d restrained him when Alex frenzied, but never struck him. “If you have something, I’ll listen. Unless I get a call on the other line.”

            “Okay. Well, I have to be a bit selective here, you have to understand. I do have plenty of embarrassing stories about Aristotle, but they all came much later, and I would like to remain friends with him. So ... all right, it must have been about around 1260, maybe 1265. Definitely after the Seventh Crusade. I remember that. LaCroix and I were visiting one of his ‘friends’ near Vienna, and say ‘friends’ because they didn’t genuinely like each other so much as genuinely tolerated each other. You understand what I mean.”

            “I do.” Most vampires were at best at least mildly antagonistic to each other. Ari said it was the predator in them, not wanting the competition.

            “I won’t give his name. I don’t think he’s alive but if he ever shows up, it’ll be better for both of us. Karl. It was very close to that. It was one of the first times Janette was away for a good period of time, and by that I mean more than a few nights. Janette was the reason I came across and she was the one who comforted me, as long as it didn’t get in the way of LaCroix’s authority, so I was very upset about these arrangements and LaCroix scolded me for it.”

            Nick and Janette had been involved, and even married for almost a hundred years. Even though they were brother and sister, they weren’t blood relations in the mortal sense, being born centuries apart, so Aristotle told Alex to toss away his notions of family connections in relation to sex. In fact, he was rather insistent about it. “Go on.”

            “I don’t really know what Karl and LaCroix had to talk about, but when we got there, I was basically ignored. At first I was relieved. The last few years had been rough between us. Eventually, I was just bored. Karl kept his estate so well-ordered that it didn’t leave much to do, and I hadn’t learned how to pass the time.”

            “So you went off and got into trouble.”

            “Who’s telling this story?” Nick said, but sounded amused. “Has Aristotle told you about the Summer Solstice?”

            The Summer Solstice was the longest day of the year, making it the shortest night of the year. Something in the vampire internal clockwork responded rather negatively to this, and most vampires spent it in a grouchy daze. “Yes.”

            “Karl had a fledgling, about twenty years older than me, named Stephan. I was very bored and he was very eager to escape his chores, so we would hunt together, but Karl had a lot of restrictions on our hunting ground. Anyway, Summer Solstice, LaCroix tells me to stay inside. He must have known that would just make me go out when he wasn’t looking, but he didn’t stop us, and went on a rather ... insane ... hunt. It was going well until we encountered a group of Templars returning from the Holy Land. I definitely wasn’t myself, to pick a fight with a group of men with crosses and swords even if they were mortals, but I decided I was upset with them for not recapturing Jerusalem and called them all G-dless sodomites. Those might have been my exact words, might not have been. You get the picture.”

            “Yes.”

            “I don’t know how we did it, but we bested them. And by that I mean ... well, you know what I mean.”

            “Yes.”

            “It was very close, and I still had a sword impaled in my stomach – metal, fortunately – when we returned, a little dizzy and not entirely sure what we did. The only reason Karl and LaCroix didn’t accost us at the door and ask why I had a sword sticking out of me was probably because of the Solstice. Stephan pulled it out and we went to sleep, happy the whole thing was over until next year.

            “I was woken rather violently around midday and dragged to Karl’s chamber to explain what eight distinguished Templars were doing lying dead on one of his roads. Thinking back on it, he must have known the precise explanation, because there was only one possible one, but the immediate punishment was forcing us to stay awake long enough to tell the story in completion. Fledglings can stay awake turning the day, if they’re distracted by something – like pain. That was our punishment. Actually rather mild in comparison to some other things they could have done, but at the time it was unbearable. I had to stay awake for three days, and while Karl was off finding a reasonable explanation for the massacre, LaCroix was making sure we both stayed awake. Ancients can go a long time without sleeping, as you’ve probably figured out. When I finally passed out, I awoke in a carriage on my way back to France with LaCroix. One of his ‘not forgotten, and not forgiven’ things. I never brought it up again, and I never saw Stephan again, though he did live a number of years after that, so at least I know my actions weren’t directly responsible for his death.”

            “So if Ari ever orders me to stay up for a few days – “

            “ – then you did something seriously wrong and you should start apologizing.”

            “Good to know. Thanks, Nick.”

            “No problem.”

            He really was thankful, for another minor distraction from obsessing about the distance between him and his master.

                        ************************************************

            Aristotle could remember the exact feeling when the bond between himself and his master was cut. The pain was indescribable, stunning him for a brief moment before he screamed. If he had not been staked to the wall, he would have happily thrown himself on the pyre, if only to try to pick up the trail of it in the puffs of smoke and ash that were now the Ancient Qum’ra. Aristotle was empty, and would never be made whole again.

            He was lost to the vampire. For how long, he didn’t know. His jailors refused to tell him, but it was easily weeks or months before he could speak again, not out of rage but having lost his human side to misery and retreating into the cold, unfeeling beast. It was his way of grieving, and it worked. Somehow he emerged, drinking the animal blood they fed him, until he was well enough for them to cast him out. It was as if they knew his exile would be more painful than remaining at the foot of his master’s resting place, crying into the ashes. It also forced him to survive.

            Aristotle first returned to America shortly before the Revolution, to scope out new opportunities for the many vampires frustrated by the stale society of the old world. He did not travel south of North Carolina, having completed his research, though he returned shortly after America achieved independence to see what this country governed by lawyers and philosophers would wrought. It was pleasure trip, and it did not last long.

            In the 1830’s, he was traveling the Old Spanish Trail on the way to California, to meet with some vampire elders from the South Pacific, when he began to recognize landmarks. Unlike the settled East coast, the sprawling lands of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas remained much the same, if now with horses and cattle instead of just buffalo. After his meeting, he declined their offer to travel back to Europe via sea route to Shanghai, and wandered the New Mexican basin, searching for something – anything. It was fruitless – the link with his master was gone and could not lead him, and his memories may have been perfect, but were not specific enough.

            With all that was going on in Europe, he did not have a chance to return again until 1875, this time following ruins that were younger than him by at least a millennia. Some settlers had taken interest in the ancient cultures, and provided him with maps. He searched for two years, and was ready to give up when he stopped at a new town, all wood structures and cattle herders, to dine. As he made a meal on the sheriff, he sensed it: a presence.

            To be fair, it was not so much a presence as the echoes of one, forever bouncing off walls that he could never hear. He wandered until he found the spot, some distance off the main road out of town, now completely surrounded by desert. The land was flat and unforgiving. Either the tremendous buildings he remembered were torn down at some point or were completely covered by dust, but that was the spot.

            He did not succeed in deluding himself into believing that any part of his master was alive. The entire body burned, and turned to ash, and villagers were afraid to tamper with the ashes and simply covered over the bonfire, creating a mount. But he felt something, like looking at a faded picture or chasing a shadow in the corner of his eyes.

            Something was better than nothing.

            Aristotle was in Europe until WWII, but after that he returned, if he was able , to that spot every year, on his estimate of the date based on the changing of the seasons. It was only an estimate, and probably a bad one at that, but he stuck to it. For one day, he would come as close as he could to the remaining emanations of his master, something both fire and time could not destroy. It was cathartic and painful at the same time, but not just painful because he grieved, but because he so dearly hated him, and the hold he still had on him.

            Qum’ra had not been kind. Qum’ra had not respected him, did not show concern for his pain, and often looked eager to toss him aside and destroy him. He was not, Aristotle only understood when the bond was cut, doing it all out of love, as Lucius did for his children. By the end there might have been some affection, but Aristotle was an experiment to Qum’ra, to see if the greatest mortal philosopher could withstand the demeaning, animalistic vampire inside him. And yet, Qum’ra wanted him to survive. He did not give up, not in their hundred years together, neither in his quest to break him or his efforts to resuscitate him when his fledgling was so close to a Final Death. Qum’ra was nothing if not persistent.

            The most irritating thing was that even after 2200 years to gain perspective, Aristotle still unabashedly loved him. He would still die for him. He wanted, if for one day, just to be with the wafting tremors of a presence of him. Aristotle admitted it because though he may have disagreed with Socrates’ philosophies, ‘Know Thyself’ was one he did not contest. Qum’ra was not the only father he’d ever known, but the only one who ever mattered. He paid an aching tribute to his grave and poured Greek libations over the spot, now room 6 of a Holiday Inn.

            He slept very little that day. He had more than usual to think about. Alex was growing by leaps and bounds, but there were challenges ahead he was still afraid of. He knew Qum’ra’s answer to all of them, but couldn’t imagine locking Alex away for years or decades, leaving him beaten, raped, then drained so he couldn’t heal. It defeated the madness in their bloodline, but it could also defeat Alex. He could not accept Alex’s hatred, as LaCroix did with Nicholas. He loved him too much.

            Was that Qum’ra’s strategy? To distance himself from a possible failure? Qum’ra was an Old One, claiming to be third generation (from what, it wasn’t clear), and he’d brought countless fledglings over, and so few had survived. Aristotle could count the ones he met or was told about by someone other than Qum’ra on one hand, and none of them (to his knowledge) were alive today. And he was the weak one, the runt of the litter so-to-speak, whom his older siblings openly mocked. He was not supposed to survive. He was not supposed to be Qum’ra’s legacy, the last of an ancient bloodline.

            And here he was.

            He laid on the carpet, which was as close as he could get to the ashes. Aristotle actually had no desire to dig them up, and always kept a real estate monitor on the hotel in case anyone tried to buy it. So far the existing buildings on the site didn’t go deep enough to find things dating back to before Caesar, but if the place was going to be bought by some developer who might, he planned to outbid them. If needed, he could manufacture a dozen reasons on the spot. Eventually it might come to that, but so far it hadn’t, and for twenty-four hours, he was at peace with his master. “Peace” was an awkward word to use, as the memories that would inevitably surface after a few hours would be troubling, but he paid his respects and it made him feel a bit more whole.

            This year was different, but not entirely. His thoughts often strayed to Alex, and he opened the link to check that he was okay and not panicking too much about being so far away from his master. Like Qum’ra had done, Aristotle kept him on a tight leash through the mind-link he so carefully nurtured, something modern vampires wouldn’t know about or begin to understand. Through the link he could make Alex a powerful vampire, resilient for the centuries that awaited him. It also made the fledgling dependent on him, but he never regretted his decision in that area. In fact, aside from the occasional check, he kept the link as closed as possible, almost as if he didn’t want Qum’ra’s evil to taint Alex in any possible way. He would take no chances.

            The next night, precisely twenty-four hours after he poured the libation wine, he opened the sliding door and poured it out into the soil – not the topsoil they imported for landscaping purposes, but the natural earth of the desert further down the way. He prayed again, as he had as a mortal, to gods he otherwise did not call upon, to protect him and honor his master.

            It was too late to leave the hotel. He could not get a night-flight this late. That was why he stayed three days, and would leave at dusk the following evening. Tired despite not having moved much in the last day and having plenty of blood around, he dialed Alex.

            “Hey, Ari,” Alex said. Aristotle smiled; he knew his fledgling was trying not to sound overly excited, but it still came through.

            “Waiting for my call, were you?”

            “It was a good guess. I don’t have much of a social life.” And Alex had caller ID. “How are you?”

            “Finished. My plane is arriving at about midnight tomorrow, assuming it arrives on time. You have all the information for the limo?”

            “Yes, Master.”

            “And I really need to give you driving lessons.”

            “Yes, Master.” Alex’s tone was a bit mocking when he said it. “And I do know how to drive.”

            “You haven’t been behind the wheel in how long?”

            “Six, seven years. Okay, eight. And we have to make me a valid license.” His old one had his old name and was expired anyway. After earning his license, he didn’t drive much, being in college and without a car. “But my senses are heightened.”

            “But you still have to work those doohickeys you always see me operating. You know, the accelerator, the brakes, the wheel...”

            He could sense Alex roll his eyes. “Yes, Master.”

            “Any calls?”

            “For you? Let me check ... Eight on the main machine, two on the semi-emergency line. None of the emergency line.”

            “Good. For you?”

            “Dr. Lambert called. He owned up to doing it as a favor to you, but only because I asked. He is kind of interesting to talk to.”

            “Nick is interesting. The Community doesn’t give him enough credit. He used to be in a perpetual bad mood, but marriage has done wonders for him. As for my EverQuest account, I’m charging you in gold for XP loss on my healer.”

            “I don’t have that much gold! And he only died twice. They were honorable deaths. I salute them. How about I just pay for the new cement barrier in the yard instead?”

            “What did you do to the old one?”

            “Toppled it with the board, and it smashed on a rock. What kind of shoddy cement barrier gets toppled?”

            Aristotle let him buy various things to make the driveway more interesting a skateboard park, provided it was with his own money. And Alex had plenty of it. “You’re stronger than you think you are.”

            “Yeah, I also broke the board.”

            “It wasn’t made for vampires.” He looked at the clock. The sun would be up soon, here and a few minutes later in Lake Tahoe. “Did you get the mail in?”

            “Yes. Archaeology magazine came. Pompeii is on the cover. Don’t we know someone who lived in Pompeii?”

            “LaCroix. He’s very sensitive about it. I wouldn’t mention it to him yourself, but I’ll probably get a good laugh out of forwarding it on and annoying him.”

            “Is it because it was destroyed?”

            “It’s because he was there the night of the eruption. His master turned him to save his life. Everyone else he knew died.”

            “Wow.”

            “He refuses to be sentimental about it. Instead he’s just snippy. He was very upset when it was unearthed. Some things are best left untouched.”

            “Do you feel that way?”

            “Not about Pompeii.” He turned on his computer, but didn’t get off the phone. Alex’s excitement was pulsing across the link. “About other things, yes.”

            “Like your master’s grave?” Alex was a bit less irreverent and bit more cautious when he said this.

            “Yes. Like my master’s grave. I’ve been lucky so far. The culture was pre-Pueblo so they have no idea yet how advanced the civilization in this area was, or they would be digging up every empty field. That and Americans are very polite about how little they care about Indians.”

            “You’re supposed to call them Native Americans.”

            “They’re not native. They came across the Bering Strait, just earlier than I did. The name is only barely less arbitrary than Indian and a word longer. But yes, I am politically correct to people who are not vampires. And some vampires.”

            “Are there Native American vampires?”

            “Yes, but the overwhelming majority are known to be turned by European vampires. There’s one conquistador who says he was turned by an Incan priestess, but she walked into the sun the next morning, so no one knows the story with her.”

            “Pre-Columbian Mexico did have a lot of bloodletting rituals and blood-drinking gods.”

            “They did. A notable amount. But the Council is slow to authorize research. They’re very Old World in their mindset. Most of them have never left the hemisphere or been south of Egypt.”

            “Afraid of unearthing something bigger and more terrible than them?”

            Aristotle smiled. Alex really was very observant, probably too much for his own good. Like his master. “Yes, precisely. And there’s another thing to never say in a mixed crowd.”

            “Yes, Master.”

            “And please don’t say that in such a patronizing tone.”

            “Yes, Master.”

            “I’m locking your skateboard up for a week, just for that.”

            “It’s already broken.”

            “Your other one.”

            “Also broken.”

            “I’m going to buy you a new skateboard and then lock it up for a week.”

            “Fine, okay, I’m sorry.”

            It was so impossible to stay mad at him. “I told you that you could put your eye out with those things.”

            “I would have to have been doing something really impressive to put my eye out with a skateboard.”

            “I suppose that’s true.”

            “My eye would grow back, right?”

            “As long as your head wasn’t completely severed from your spine, yes.”

            “That sounds painful.”

            “I don’t think it would be, because you would be dead. Having if halfway severed, or bashed in, now that’s painful.”

            “Speaking from experience?”

            “Unfortunately. My master – who didn’t do it – found me with my face sort of ... well, a boulder was involved, and I never got a good look myself. He hypnotized me into unconsciousness while I regenerated. One of the kindest things he ever did for me.”

            “Did you get the plate number of the guy who did it?”

            “Jealous sibling.” They were too numerous for his liking. While he wasn’t eager too talk about it, Alex wanted to hear his voice, and his protégé would get it out of him eventually. “The older siblings I did meet felt I was weak and were jealous of the attention Qum’ra was giving me. They made their feelings known.”

            “Did he say anything about it?”

            “He said he wasn’t happy with him – my brother, that is – but left it at that. I know he lived, but I never saw him again.”

            “Can vampires form families without violence?”

            “Not easily, though humans set a pretty good example for that. We’re just more animalistic in our emotional responses, because of the vampire, so a fight turns into a brawl. Or that’s my theory. Some people like to argue with my philosophies.”

            “I hear you can make a good living off of arguing with Aristotle’s philosophy.”

            “Smart ass.” He drew the curtains. “Do you need anything?”

            “No, Dad.”

            He smiled. “I’ll call you in the evening. Good night.”

            Alex’s voice was considerably calmer by the end of the conversation. “Good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

            He would be home tomorrow. Now there was a comforting thought.

                        ************************************************

            Alex was waiting for him at the airport before security, having hypnotized the guards to let him in. “Hi.”

            “You can get yourself into a real mess in places like airports,” Aristotle said. “Cameras and all.” He let Alex embrace him, not a particularly dignified move for either of them, but for a moment, he didn’t care. “I take it you behaved yourself.”

            “You haven’t seen the house yet, so assume away.”

            It wasn’t a large airport, and it was fairly late at night for mortals, so there weren’t a lot of people around, though more people than Alex was used to when he was in such a jumpy state. Aristotle thought he handled it well as they waited for his bag.

            “How was New Mexico?”

            “The exactly the same as I left it, thank goodness. I don’t know what I would do if they built something there that was any less convenient.” Alex was the only vampire he’d ever told anything of his yearly pilgrimage. Alex was the only one who deserved to know. “What did I miss?”

            “Well, the entire world didn’t fall apart without you.”

            “Try to sound more disappointed when you say that.”

            Alex grinned.

            Alex had a point about driving; he needed to make a license and practice his driving. In Aristotle’s opinion from the one time he tried it, skateboarding was far more difficult. He just wanted to get home. Something for another night.

            “You like driving.”

            “I do. A lot of us were reluctant to give up the horse, but I wasn’t. Hard on the back. On the other hand, if you got really lost, you could eat them.”

            “That sounds like it would taste terrible.”

            “You would have to be pretty lost. Then you would do it.”

            Alex sat back, content in his faith in modern technology. Even living out in the woods, he was so sheltered from it. Kids these days.

            The house was not a mess, though the concrete barrier outside was somehow lying in the flowerbed. He listened to messages on the machine, and decided none of them couldn’t wait until sunup or later. He showered, changed, and shaved, feeling more himself than he had been in weeks, lost in the anticipation of the journey and leaving Alex. He emerged to find his fledgling watching a downloaded movie while his other computer was compiling. “Hey. I’m finishing Sifl and Olly.”

            “What’s that?”

            “A program I watched in high school. I just got all of it from a torrent.” He minimized that screen and checked his other monitors. “Everything else should just run until tomorrow night. You can just leave it unless something starts smoking.”

            Alex wouldn’t ask him, so Aristotle just silently bit his wrist and offered. Alex was beyond infancy enough to not need his master’s blood, but this was their first separation, and he wanted it as much as Alex did. He was beginning to understand LaCroix’s obsession with Nick, if this was what they once shared. What had his own master felt?

            It was very late and Alex, after feeding slowly for a long time, was tired. But he didn’t want to go to bed, not just yet. “What was it like?”

            “I’ve been alive for 2300 years. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

            “I mean, what do you feel when you go to visit him?"

            “I can’t describe it.” Nor did he really want to express how miserable his master’s death made him for so long, not to Alex. But he had to admit something. It was deserved. “I can very briefly feel something again, like his shadow is there even though the person is gone. But you can’t spend your whole life chasing shadows.”

            “You say you hate him – “

            “I said hate was a very strong word.”

            “ – but you miss him. The people I talk to don’t talk that way about their living masters.” Alex frowned, as the wheels in his head moved very slowly, his body lost in the ecstasy of Aristotle’s blood and the fear of the rising son. “Except Nick, sort of. Because LaCroix raised Nick the old way, you said.”

            “LaCroix was never taught properly, but he was a skilled observer. Yes, LaCroix raised both Janette and Nick the old way. The bond makes them stronger, but they will never be free of each other, no matter how much one side may wish it. It’s a lesson Nick has never really been interested in learning.”

            “In the old days, were all vampires like that? Did everyone feel this way?”

            “Yes and no.” He wished he was older, and had a real answer for Alex, but the truth was he was brought across at the end of the era of great vampires and great vampire kingdoms. “I met people with all different types of links to their masters. There was a king who brought thousands across to be his slaves. Obviously they had very little daily dependence on him, but they were absolutely obedient. How he fashioned them that way, I don’t know. Our line can’t do that. Our failure rate is too high and I don’t know the method.” He could see his son was fading, but he kept talking anyway. “They say – or they used to – that all of the ancient bloodlines had special powers, that could not easily be taught to other vampires, only their descendents. Very few of them can be identified today, and those who know are very eager to make sure others don’t.”

            “Why?”

            “Because the Council was formed by people who didn’t want that kind of aristocratic world,” he said. “Yes, how the tide has turned, but this is nothing compared to 2000 years ago. But that’s a story for another time.” He let Alex rest his head on his shoulder. “Sleep.” The link went quiet, not stirring as he carried Alex up the stairs and put him in bed.

            Feeling more complete than he ever did in that hotel room, Aristotle returned to his study, and went to work.

Chapter 2

            It could no longer be put off. There were just too many reasons to call Feliks. The silence would not endure.

            “Aristotle! My goodness, please say you’re back.”

            “Is that how you greet me? With a demand?”

            There was shuffling in the background. Stacks of papers, no doubt, and it sounded like the printer was running. “I decided to be honest. If you plan on meeting with our esteemed colleague Mr. Merlin, I suggest you bring a stake. For protection.”

            “I put five people on my job!”

            “And they’re all deflecting to Larry and me. And you knew they would! Drive a vampire insane, why don’t you?”

            “I’m allowed to take a vacation once every hundred years.”

            “If only I didn’t have to suffer for it.” But Feliks was good-humored, as always. Aristotle had liked him from the start for that reason. “So you’re not making a work call, I assume?”

            “I’m willing to think about checking my email, but no promises.” He did have his computer screens on, but wasn’t answering anything yet. “I really am very ... consumed.”

            “Yes, well, I’m told children can be that way. I can only recommend plants.” He was definitely snipping. “Thank you for the bonsai, by the way. I’d forgotten how much work they were. It is very pleasantly distracting.”

            “I’m glad I can provide so many distractions for you.” He glanced out the window, the high one that was directed to only shine light onto the upper wall, to remind him if it was day or night if he actually wanted to look without fear. It was still light out. He checked the link; after several nights of disturbing dreams, Alex was sleeping peacefully. “I have a question for you.”

            “I am not a fountain of knowledge on any subject in comparison to yourself, but you may ask anyway.”

            He squirmed. He had Feliks on the line, and Feliks would understand. That didn’t make it any less embarrassing. “When was your first time with your master?”

            “What? Hmm. How should I describe it? It was a magic night, of course. The stars of Madras seemed to be burning especially bright – “

            “That’s not what I meant.”

            “Do you require a physical description?” He chuckled. “I don’t think you do.”

            Aristotle rolled his eyes. “You know why I’m asking.”

            “Then I can’t be much help in that regard. It was a mystical night, one I’ll never forget, and it had the misfortune – for you, anyway – of being a full three months before I was brought across.”

            This, he did not know. Yes, he had drunk Feliks’s blood, even intimately, but that did not mean he went probing mortal memories. It was very discourteous. “Really.”

            “Yes, really. What the hell do you think I was doing in the foreign service, anyway? Seeking to strengthen British ties with the Raj? My patriotism does not extend so far now and it didn’t when I was an officer. Ruby mines, harems, and adorable chocolate-skinned natives drove the English to India. A subject of many historians’ dissertations, I’m sure.”

            He laughed. “I can’t say it’s all that surprising.”

            “Of course it’s not. Anyway, Hajji had the gall to hypnotize me into thinking blood-letting was some Mughal sodomite ritual. I called him on it after he turned me. I was so anemic by the end of it that it’s a wonder I was still being declared fit for duty. We must have been in a tighter spot that I imagined. All the makings of a good officer, clearly.”

            “Clearly.”

            “So there you have it. I’m not sure that there’s anything else to tell that would aid you, my being the exception to the general rule of course.”

            Aristotle was sure a good percentage of the vampire population was the result of fledglings seduced by their masters, who had to turn them when they nearly killed them during a casual sexual encounter. Feliks was unusual for his own reasons, at least for his time. “I guess I just needed to talk to someone.”

            “Children these days. So much posturing about their sexuality. Though I don’t know why I’m imagining that to be any different from most of history. You just have the distinct pleasure of coming from a permissive society.”

            “Greece was not all it’s made out to be in queer literature,” he said. “I’ve probably lectured you on that before. It’s just escaping me now.”

            “I do not read queer literature, but yes, you’ve mentioned it. The point is that young Master Alexander doesn’t come from Athens. He comes from a culture where ‘fag’ is a word in everyday vocabulary as a form of masculine posturing without a clue as to the origin of its meaning, however appropriate that origin may be.”

            Feliks did have a gift for speech. He could have gone far in Athens. “Yes.”

            “Again, I’m not an expert on the subject of raising a child, but I am familiar with the shedding of societal mores, however long ago that may have been – a blink of an eye to you, yes, but still quite clear to me. I take it your master was not a shining example of guiding behavior.”

            Rape, liking being beaten or drained, was just another tool of Qum’ra’s endless quest to prove that he owned him. “No. He was not.”

            “You’ve come this far. You really like this one, don’t you?”

            “He has potential. A lot of potential.” And Feliks wouldn’t understand how much work was going into it. Feliks was young, and his master had given him a more standard, modern vampire education. He did not cultivate a blood link, he did not teach him ancient secrets of their lineage. Hajji probably didn’t know any. And the blood always made everything complicated.

            “Then take some initiative. You’re a vampire. Seduce.” He was still snipping at the bonsai tree in the background of the call. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you.”

            “It is surreal.”

            “Of all people.”

            “I am not an almighty fountain of wisdom. Very close, yes, but not almighty.” The link stirred. “I have to go. He’s waking up.”

            “If you want, I can send you some scented candles.”

            “Good night, Feliks.”

            “Good evening, Aristotle. Do call again sometime.”

                        ************************************************

            When Alex first heard that Stateline was an actual town in Nevada, he couldn’t believe it. Very soon after their move to Lake Tahoe, he saw it for himself, it being the largest major city to Aristotle’s compound. No vampires lived there, though an occasional one made a stop to see Aristotle when something couldn’t be handled over the phone (which Aristotle was exceptionally talented at doing) or couldn’t wait until he made one of his trips to a larger city.

            Aristotle took the opportunity to teach Alex how to drive, his license still warm from the laminating machine. “Watch for the – okay, that was good, but not great.” Aristotle rolled down the window and pulled the branch off the windshield. “If you break it, you bought it. And you’re hauling it to town.”

            “I think the second thing is actually worse. Hey, what’s the speed limit here?”

            “I’ll tell you when you get back on the right side of the road. A car accident would be very annoying, by the way. For legal reasons. And I suppose we could get pinned under something for awhile.”

            “I can understand why you like this.”

            “You are way too excited about this. Light!”

            Alex slammed on the breaks. Had he not been a vampire, Aristotle would have gone into the windshield. “I think you may have picked up my bad habits.”

            “I can’t help it if you don’t set a good example.”

            “I set a more careful example,” he said, and held onto the handlebar.

            They switched places for the city itself, for time purposes. There were the usual places to hit Staples, the art mega-store, and Circuit City, if only to gape at things and then try to resist buying them.

            “Do you think everything in the future will have a USB port?”

            “One can only hope.”

            “I read they have electric toothbrushes in Japan that are powered by USB cords.”

            “Awesome.” But Alex’s head soon turned by the attractive sales clerk. Her nametag said JENNIFER, though Alex was not particularly concerned with that. The vampire surged. She was more than a meal to him.

            Aristotle always monitoring him around humans, touched his shoulder. “Alex.”

            “I know.” Alex closed his eyes and stepped back behind the flat screens. “I know.” He was unintentionally projecting his thoughts, with the link currently so strong between them that Aristotle couldn’t help but listen to all of the things Alex was contemplating doing to her.

            He couldn’t, of course. He would kill her before he could go through with anything else. He would need a lot more control before his term of celibacy would be broken, at least with mortals. As for vampires ... that was another matter entirely. Aristotle wouldn’t allow anyone else to drink from his son, not for the first year at least, and it was starting to wear on the feral animal in Alex. Aristotle sighed, knowing where this would lead. Why couldn’t he take the initiative? Since meeting Alex in class, Aristotle was for the first time in centuries unsure of his course.

            “I’m okay,” Alex announced. He opened his eyes, and they were blue, not gold. But he was barely holding on. “If you’re not gonna let me, can we check out?”

            They needed new headphones. That was the issue. “Sure.”

            Alex was calmer in the car, which only smelled of them and the inks, glue, and paper for the business. It was astounding how many ordinary stores carried crucial supplies to faking documents, if one was creative about it. “I want to go somewhere.”

            Aristotle already knew he meant somewhere other than Lake Tahoe; somewhere with other vampires he could talk to without thinking constantly of consuming them. “After the Solstice.”

            “Can we at least do something during it?”

            “That’s kind of the point of it. Your ability to do things.” His current plans were to get very drunk and catch up on Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. He could get them invited somewhere, but he couldn’t rely on his own behavior, much less Alex’s. The last time he attended a Solstice party, he couldn’t look four different vampires in the eye for months. “After the Solstice, we’ll go to Reno.”

            “Vegas.”

            “We’re not haggling.” Vegas was a major vampire city, and the Elder was better at cleaning up messes than he was at preventing them. It was not a place for infant fledglings. Reno had a few vampires, mostly Vegas rejects, and usually transients. More would come in if he announced he was coming to town, but that wouldn’t make it a pleasure trip, and make monitoring Alex more difficult.

Maybe it was time to let him off the leash a little. No one would touch Aristotle’s fledgling, so the only harm that could come to him was something he brought on himself, and Aristotle could rescue him from almost anything, provided Alex didn’t go swimming in nitroglycerine while smoking a cigarette. “Reno has vampires. And gambling.”

            “That reminds me. I have to learn to count cards.” And Alex, the former Math Theory major at Yale, was perfectly capable of doing it.

            “Only do it for fun. Not to make money. Then you’ll get caught.”

            “What are they going to do? Break my kneecaps? How do you think I toppled the barrier on the lawn?”

            Aristotle laughed.

            They had one more errand, the most despicable of them, but it was better than having a guest in their home. Peter Lazarus was waiting in the all-night coffee shop, with his requisite untouched coffee in front of him as Aristotle slid into the booth and opened his laptop. “Thanks for meeting me here. This is Alex. He’s acting as my assistant.”

            Peter nodded nervously to Alex. “Thanks for not telling anyone. There are some people looking for me.”

            “So I hear,” was all Aristotle said to that. Peter’s latest disaster was creating two fledglings out of sorority girls during a drunken romp in Pittsburgh, then abandoning them to the care of the city Elder. “Any ideas as to where you want to go?”

            “I need to disappear completely. From the Community.” He reached into the pockets of his coat and removed an envelope. Alex looked in it – gold jewelry and watches, not worth what Aristotle was doing but at least an acknowledgment of his work. Aristotle didn’t charge people beyond their means.

            “Do you like ice fishing? I have something on the Siberian coast. You can get a few days a year of good fishing.”

            “Not that completely.”

            “Completely is completely. I can relocate you, but if someone’s hunting you, there’s not much I can do about that but put you in the middle of nowhere.”

            “I can’t spend eternity in the middle of nowhere. How long is Rhea going to stay pissed at me?”

            “I hear this is more about the sorority girls than Rhea.”

            “They were really in a sorority? I thought they were just saying that as a turn-on.”

            Aristotle glared at him. It didn’t hurt to be a little judgmental.

            “Fine. What about South America? That’s far, and I speak some Spanish.”

            “There’s a Community in Buenos Aires you’ll have to steer clear of, and maybe a few of us in Santiago.” His real estate sorting program was designed to work nearly as fast as his own vampire reflexes. “Small town. Coastal.”

            “Sounds nice.”

            “It’s not a beach resort. Too far south. In fact, it’s a shipping town, but that means you can get wine brought in. Also, the locals are very superstitious, so I’m not responsible for what happens if you’re not on your best behavior.” He had a very devious smile.

            Peter’s relief was obvious. “When can I go?”

            “Where are you staying?”

            “Here? I don’t have plans.”

            “Take the Resort Inn, under the name Peter Green. There'll be a courier package for you tomorrow with all of the relevant documents and the instructions for picking up a car. Pick one with a lot of trunk space and drive to Mexico City. From there, you can get a flight to Santiago. The package will include information on where to get a rental car there. Go straight to the town. Don’t linger anywhere. You’re an American author with writer’s block, trying to get some space from your last novel, which was panned by critics as unreadable. And no, you don’t get to choose the name on the passport.” He closed the laptop. “Ask the waitress for directions to the hotel. And don’t call me collect from abroad. You’ll just get the machine.”

            “I don’t know how to thank you.”

            He was completely professional. “Behave yourself.”

            Peter’s impish grin did nothing to relieve Aristotle’s worries, though to be honest, they were limited. He was used to this sort of behavior. They returned to the car, leaving Peter to his fate.

            “Why is he on the run?”

            “Fledglings in Pittsburgh. Made them by accident and skipped town. I made identities for them, but I wouldn’t put money on how long they’ll survive as vampires, though people tend to surprise me.”

            Alex emptied the envelope. “Do you want a watch?”

            “Ugh. Gold. Too ostentatious. No, we’ll melt them down, add them to the pile. The price of raw gold is going to go up again in a few years. It cycles that way. You can keep one, if you want.”

            “No, you’re right about the gold. And the necklace is pretty terrible, too.” Alex did not bother to ask why they were helping Peter. Aristotle’s business was founded on the principle that he helped without preconditions, turning people away only if he was truly unable to help them (rare) or they disobeyed his rules (even rarer). There were no exceptions. He did say, “It was sort of irresponsible of him.”

            “Yes. Very irresponsible. A lot of masters are like that. It’s so easy to bring someone across for some people. You bite them, some of your digestive system’s blood makes it into their wounds, and they turn because you forgot to finish them off or didn’t want to. But I don’t think Peter could guide those girls, even if he stuck around. Rhea is much more responsible and talented. If I had to choose, I would choose her.”

            Through the link, Alex was contemplating life without a master, and not positively. He didn’t speak, so Aristotle didn’t answer, and they returned to the house in silence.

                        ************************************************

            The following night, Alex woke in a lousy mood and tried to stave it off by warming his blood before drinking it, something he usually didn’t take the time to do before downing it straight from the bottle, but it was unsatisfying. Not completely tasteless, but it wasn’t alive. The flashes of memory from the blood were dim and uninteresting. He tried not to let his mood show to Aristotle at least visibly, and fortunately his master was caught up in a very long and complicated call to a customs officer in Brazil and Alex didn’t speak Portuguese. Maybe he was too caught up in it to notice. Maybe he would just let it slide. Either way, seeing Aristotle involved in something other than their link was a relief.

            If vampires were like humans, he was fairly sure his had hit puberty, or at least was strong enough for new demands, and it was frustrating in a way he could not easily express – or express at all – to Ari. He didn’t want to just bite – he wanted to fuck. Desperately.

            In life he had had only a few girlfriends, all brief but one, and even that one didn’t last six months. In high school he was a nerd surrounded by similarly-obsessed nerds, all focused on their academic careers and who could get into the most IVY schools. College wasn’t much better, though a few drinks and the relaxed dormitory atmosphere helped him overcome his shyness on enough occasions that he did not leave college a virgin. That said, he wasn’t a maniac. His life was carefully balanced between schoolwork and internet pornography. A normal, healthy young man, until chemotherapy killed his sex drive entirely. If anything, it just helped him focus on his studies. Every time he started to recover, he started dying again, and hospital antiseptics were a pretty effective mood-killer.

            Now he was healthy – more than healthy, aside from the room-temperature skin and the heart that only beat once every ten minutes. Not only was he healthy, but he had a monster living inside him, demanding human blood fresh from the source, thrilling in the chase and the kill, and stifling the part of him that was moral and human.

            And Ari wouldn’t let him have sex.

            The way he understood it, from awkward conversations he finally had with his master, vampire sex involved a lot of violence and biting on both sides. Since Ari refused to let anyone else feed Alex, that limited his feeding choices to humans, bottles, and Ari. He couldn’t bring himself to make conversation with a woman before he killed her and drained her blood, much less seduce her and have sex with her. That left the unfeeling bottle, and the person he constantly drank from and always wanted more. It would all be cool if that person would stop showing up in his dreams, but he didn’t.

            This was not very cool.

            Aristotle was still on the phone, and his conversation sounded complicated. Alex poured himself a mug of blood wine and retreated to the bathroom for another fruitless, painful session. He even bit himself, but his blood had less flavor to him than the bottled stuff. It was like drinking water when he wasn’t thirsty. He growled when the door opened. “Go away!”

            “I’m not looking,” Ari said. “Eyes closed.”

            “Dude, get out!”

            “I’m not looking,” Ari repeated, but didn’t retreat, leaning on the handle. His eyes were closed. “Look, just stop it. You can’t get off without biting someone else. Right now you’re just injuring yourself. Just so you know.” He shut the door, leaving Alex to his misery.

            “Jesus fucking Christ.” Alex finished his drink and sulked, too embarrassed to show his face to ‘Dad.’ When he felt he could avoid it no longer, he tried slipping past the office to his computer station, only to feel something bump into his shoe. It was the new radio-controlled truck Ari purchased yesterday, and it circled around him.

            “Had to get your attention somehow,” Ari said. He was sitting on the couch behind him, his feet up on the coffee table. “Look, I know this is hard for you, so I’ll make it brief. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The vampire in you is an animal that doesn’t know sexual category, just blood. Gender doesn’t matter, though most of us just naturally have a preference. Sex is just a natural conclusion to the emotional connection brought on by sharing blood, and you’ve had a lot of mine. I’m not going to say that every vampire has had sex with their master. I’m just going to say I don’t know a lot who haven’t, excluding the masters who abandoned them or walked into the sun the next day or something like that. So yes, I know all about your dreams. You’re kind of projecting them.” He smiled, and maneuvered the car so it was tapping against Alex’s toes. “Either it happens or it doesn’t. Your call.”

            There was no way he could stand still. “Uhm, okay.”

            “Okay.”

            He had to get out of there. Of course, not before opening his stupid mouth. “Did you ever ...?”

            Ari turned the truck around and drove it back around the couch. “Consensually? A few times. I don’t think he was that into me.”

            Nothing could have made him get out of there faster. Ari didn’t chase. Alex suspected he was still smiling.

                        ************************************************

            Half an hour later, Alex was sitting at the diner, his muddy skateboard propped against the next stool and his hands face-down on the linoleum with the untouched coffee steaming between them. The television in the corner was of more interest to the fry cook than him, though he could hear it perfectly well from where he sat, even if any other potential diners couldn’t. He wished he could smoke. That would just complete the picture of his misery.

            “Don’t like your coffee?”

            He looked up at the waitress. She couldn’t be more stereotypical, and the throbbing vein in her neck couldn’t be more appealing. “It’s a bottomless cup, right? Then I’m saving the place money by not drinking it.” For good measure, he brought the saucer to his lips, but even the flavor that touched his lips was disgusting.

            “Where’s your dad?”

            Just what he didn’t want Ari to be called tonight. “He’s not my dad.”

            “He acts like he is.”

            “I know.” And he was good at it. Ari was good at being his friend, good at being his dad, and good at being his master. What he wasn’t good at was being someone who Alex could forget about for a few hours. “He’s like a dad. Sort of.” He just didn’t want to be near him right now. He wanted space. He wanted the waitress’s blood. Hell, he would settle for the fry cook’s. But he didn’t want to kill either of them. It wasn’t in him. “Have a nice night.” He left the cost of the coffee and more than a healthy tip on the counter. From the diner he began the skate home, and was just pass the movie theater when his phone rang. He was surprised to find it was not Ari’s name on the screen. “Hey, Amanda.”

            “Hey! Did you get my email? I finally got a computer.” Amanda was deceptively young. She was only thirty in vampire years, which was old enough to be reluctant to join the computer age but young enough to still want to keep up with mortals. “Or I finally got it working. Actually, okay, Jimmy helped me. He uses his for his music mixing project. Have you heard it?”

            “It’s pretty good, actually.” Chris was a decent bass player, but he was better conceptually. “But he is a Mac Fag, so I have to hold something against him.”

            “And the difference is?”

            “Artists are always Mac Fags, so they design a lot of software for them. But a PC, you can do more with that’s not pre-programmed. In other words, the kind of stuff I do.” He stopped and sat down on the sidewalk. “And no, I haven’t been home in a few hours, if that’s when you sent it.”

            “I just did it. Janette got Ethernet with the renovations so that part was easy.”

            “How did those go?” He still felt a little bad about ruining Janette’s club by setting off the fire alarm and the sprinklers, then getting into a fight with the Chief Enforcer that ended with his body putting a hole through the dance floor.

            “She loves redecorating. And there’s a whole Neo-Gothic thing going on, but it’s very subtle. Tasteful. I like it. How are you?”

            “Okay.”

            “Busy?”

            “Actually, I’m kinda blowing off work. Just needed to get out.”

            “Well, you’re there all alone, aren’t you? Or do you have clients? Or you can’t talk about it.”

            “Most of them don’t come here. He goes to them. The house is in the middle of nowhere.”

            “Vampires are definitely city creatures. I think it’s the illumination all night, makes it easier for us to get through it. So what’s up?”

            He looked down between his feet at the cement. “Can I ask you a question that you totally do not have to answer but will totally not ask me why I asked you or bug me about it?”

            “Um, yes?”

            “Have you ever had sex with your master?”

            She had no hesitation in answering. “That’s how I met him. Besides, everyone’s had sex with their master, unless he was a douche who ran off.”

            “Even if you had a girl master?”

            “Well, I don’t, but I know people who do, and yes. And whatever filthy thoughts just entered your head, get rid of them. My master is a guy.”

            “I was totally not thinking – “

            “You don’t have to lie.”

            “I wasn’t. You’re the one who keeps bringing it up.”

            “Is it weird because your master is a guy? And he’s Aristotle?”

            “That’s not what I’m talking about!”

            “Then what are we talking about? Me and some guy you’ve never met who is avoiding me because the nightclub thing was probably his fault and I might call him on it if he comes back to the States?”

            He was tempted to hang up, his only method of running from the conversation, but he liked Amanda. He really did. “Maybe I am.”

            “Look, Alex, vampires have a whole different set of rules. And they keep changing them, which really doesn’t help. Let your instincts guide you.”

            “I have the instincts of a serial killer.”

            “Your other instincts. My master has said a lot of stupid stuff, but he also says, ‘Eternity is useless if you’re going to spend it miserable.’”

            “I guess. I need to get out of Tahoe.”

            “Sounds like it.”

            “We’re going to Reno, sometime after the Solstice.”

            “You’re really close to Vegas, aren’t you?”

            “He says I’m not old enough for Vegas.”

            “He may have a point there.”

            “Hey!”

            “Sorry,” Amanda laughed, “but Vegas is crazy. I was there for three days and that was enough. A lot of older vampires – older for the States, which isn’t very old – go there to do the things they can’t get away with in other cities.”

            “So, basically the same as everyone else in Vegas.”

            “Yeah, except less magic shows and more dead hookers. Okay, slightly more dead hookers. I don’t know how many hooker deaths are not vampire-related there. I bet, more than average.”

            “I bet.”

            “So chill, okay? You have the rest of existence to freak out about something or other. Don’t start now.”

            “Thanks.” He stood. “I mean it. And I have to get back. Work to do before sunrise.”

            “Check your email!”

            “I’ll hit you back.” She was way too excited about it. “Good night.”

            “’night.”

            Relieved, Alex rode until he was back on the road, out of sight of mortals. Then he flew.

                        ************************************************

            Aristotle did not bring up the subject again, and neither did Alex. While it was not the farthest thing from his mind, he was able to throw himself back into his work, as the airplane-tracking program started to come together without hacking NORAD like he thought he might have to. He was increasingly edgy the next day, before the Solstice. His master said it was the power of the light on the vampire.

            “Do you know why we’re like this?”

            “I’m sure there’s a perfectly natural explanation for the vampire’s allergy to sunlight, but the Council keeps shutting down any research. As for legends, there’s a lot of different variations on the whole ‘cursed’ theme. The most popular one when I was a fledgling was about how the sun, representing Ra, the sun god of the Egyptians, was holy and looked at us with anger and spite.”

            “Why did the Council forbid research?”

            Aristotle raised an eyebrow. “They lack your scientific curiosity. And mine.” He wheeled his chair to the file cabinet that usually went untouched, and opened the bottom drawer, retrieving a set of notebooks and manila folders held together with a rubber bad. “These are the notes of Dr. Lambert. They contain more on the scientific explanation behind the vampire than all of our literature combined.”

            “I thought Nick was an archaeologist.”

            “His wife. Dr. Natalie Lambert. Her maiden name – Nick took it when they had to move on.” He wheeled back and handed the files to Alex. “One of the conditions for being allowed to move on with him and raise a mortal child together was that she cease her research into a search for Nick’s ‘cure’ and give up her notes. She wasn’t very happy about it, but I suspect she had them memorized anyway. The Enforcers were going to destroy them, but I pleaded the case that they should be saved for posterity and they were gifted to me. No one else is allowed to see them. This was before you, of course.”

            There were four spiral-bound notebooks, all worn from use, and what looked like medical charts in the folders. Alex ran his finger over the “Lambert, M.D.” sticker. “That’s right, she was studying Nick.”

            “That as how they met, as I understand it. Very Code-breaking but she’s a talented researcher. And the advancement of medical technology in the last two thousand years has helped. How’s your biology?”

            “Not terrible.” He removed the rubber bands and sat down. The notebooks were detailed records in neat, feminine handwriting. Nick was never mentioned in name, just ‘the subject.’ He moved to the charts, but couldn’t make sense of them.

            “We have three extra nucleotides,” Ari said. “Vampires, that is. Or Nick does. She never tested anyone else. She thought she could eliminate the vampire by destroying the nucleotides.”

            “And it didn’t work.”

            “She tried a couple different things, all to varying but interesting degrees of failure. She only succeeded in suppressing the vampire or harming it, but not causing permanent injury. Which is good, because if she’d killed the vampire, she would have killed Nicholas. She failed to grasp that basic concept and he refused to see it because he was – and is – so desperate for the cure.”

            “You don’t think it’s possible.”

            “Not with my current understanding of biology. Her mode of attack was to shut off the vampire, but our bodies are dependent on the vampire. When we are brought across, the biological changes are so drastic as to shut down or kill any part of our systems that stand in the way of the new requirements for survival. Most of our organs don’t work, and the chemicals she introduced to Nick's system wouldn't serve to reanimate them. Nick can’t live as a mortal without a liver or a pancreas or a functioning respiratory system – all things he doesn’t have.”

            “You’re saying you believe the conversion can’t be undone. The vampire pathogen destroys too much of the human body for it to function as a human organism again, even if the vampire disappeared.”

            “Yes. That’s precisely what I’m saying and Nick refuses to believe. There is no way back that doesn’t involve a final death. Half his body is dead. The other half can’t be expected to do the entire job.”

            “But – in theory – the rest of him could be reanimated. The systems that don’t work could be still intact. The body must need them for them to regenerate when they’re destroyed. If I were to be staked in the liver, it wouldn’t kill me, but the liver would heal. It just doesn’t operate like a liver. Like an engine that’s shut off. Can it be turned back on?”

            Aristotle scratched his goatee. “Now you’re thinking like a scientist. Yes, in theory, it could be turned back on – the same way a dead corpse could be reanimated. In theory. After all, if the person died of something that left their body intact, why couldn’t they be brought easily back to life?”

            “Because they’re dead.”

            “Precisely. And we don’t live in the world of Dr. Frankenstein.”

            “Not Mary Shelley. Just Bram Stoker.”

            “Smart aleck.” He picked up one of the charts. “It really was fascinating work that she did. She also discovered a lot of new ways to kill vampires, if unintentionally. Hence the Council’s decision.”

            “Isn’t it better to know our weaknesses?”

            “Now you’re talking like a scientist and not a Councilman.” He had a twinkle in his eyes. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

            Alex spent the rest of the evening reading the notebooks and trying to make sense of the charts, though his abilities to read blood tests were limited beyond tracking white cell count and CED rates. Dr. Lambert was very meticulous to write down everything ‘the subject’ said, which seemed to not be a whole lot for a vampire going to a human to be cured. In fact, most of her early notes implied some frustration about his reluctance to speak about his condition beyond what was absolutely required for her research, and it took her a month to convince him to let her get a blood sample, and another to convince him to give her another one after she accidentally left the tube where the sun hit it and caused it to explode, ruining the sample. The subject’s emotional state was usually ‘reserved’ or ‘testy’ or just ‘frustrating the hell out of me.’ Typical guy behavior in a doctor’s office. And she was clearly emotionally involved in her patient. ‘Patient unable to produce urine or sperm samples, despite repeated requests. Explanation refused.’ He laughed. Nick wouldn’t even tell his doctor that vampires didn’t ‘go’ and wouldn’t explain the other part. It must have made for an amusing set of appointments.

            Perhaps the most interesting thing to him was the sole X-Ray she had of his jaw, clearly showing the receded canines. So his fangs didn’t shrink – they just retracted back into the gums, but were always the same length. The feeling that Alex’s teeth were growing was an illusion.

            “Can I go to the dentist?” he said as Aristotle entered his work area.

            “You know my follow-up question to that.”

            “I want X-Rays. Of my canines.” He held Nick’s up to the light. “This is awesome.”

            “We’re not supposed to leave evidence of our existence.”

            “Bigfoot leaves all kinds of evidence and he doesn’t even exist.” If there was one way to convince his master of something, it was to set his natural curiosity against his desire to adhere to vampire law. Scientific curiosity would always win. “We could just break in and use their machines.”

            “Not good enough,” Ari said. Alex was about to make a final plea when his master added, “We’ll have to buy our own.”

                        ************************************************

            Alex awoke the following night crabby and confused. While he wasn’t a bumbling idiot, he certainly couldn’t concentrate on any work. He found Ari in the den, watching C-SPAN. Aristotle was possibly the only person in the world who loved C-SPAN.

            His master sensed his approach and offered him a bottle. “Drink?”

            “What is it?” The bottle was reused plastic, and the drink a lighter shade of red than just blood, almost an orange.

            “Rum, mostly.”

            Alex did take a swig, and fought back the urge to spit it out. It wasn’t foul and there was enough blood it in to make it go down, but it was spicy in a very unfavorable way. “Ugh. How can you drink this?”

            “It’s an acquired taste. And I can’t drink wine all the time. How uncreative.” Aristotle gestured and Alex joined him on the couch, kicking away the magazines on the table before putting his feet up. The rum hit him pretty hard, and Alex imagined himself sinking into the coach and being swallowed by it.

            “That guy has a funny voice.”

            “That’s Barney Frank. Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts’s 4^th District.” He giggled. “Terrible ties for a gay man. Not a great orator. Doesn’t have the voice. I sympathize.”

            “Do we have to watch this?”

            “I don’t know where the remote is.”

            Alex looked around. He didn’t know, either. “Well, shit.” And he didn’t feel like getting up. “What are they discussing?”

            “House Appropriations Bill Number ... it’s in the nineties ... nine hundreds. He’s very upset about a rider.”

            “I heard people get upset about those ... things.”

            “Riders.”

            “Yes.”

            It was the shortest night of the year, and Alexander spent his first summer solstice as a vampire watching C-SPAN and not comprehending a thing.

Chapter 3

            A week later, Aristotle was trying to concentrate on the work he needed to finish before they left for Reno, but Alex was making it difficult as he was counting out loud with the card-counting teaching software. He had the head for numbers to pick it up quickly, but not quietly.

            Aristotle was about to ask him to take it upstairs when the phone rang. The caller ID was blocked. Not unusual, but not his preferred method of contact. “Hello?”

            “It’s me,” Marius said, his voice somewhat distorted by the quality of the payphone he was calling from. Aristotle could hear cars and other ordinary city noises in the background. “I wanted to call ahead, so you didn’t freak out when you sensed me.”

            “How kind of you,” Aristotle growled. He hadn’t spoken to Marius since the younger vampire shot him full of tranquilizer darts of curare and broke almost every bone in his son’s body. “You’re in Stateline?”

            “Yes. I need your help.”

            “You must find being hunted by your own Enforcers somewhat troubling.” He had so little sympathy for Marius. “But who am I to say? I’ve never been foolish enough to put myself in that position.”

            “I want to apologize – to you and Alexander. If you want to turn me in instead, fine. Have the Enforcers waiting for me when I get there. I’m willing to take that chance. But my money is on that you’ll be curious enough to listen to what I have to say first. And then you can decide whether to turn me in or help me disappear.”

            Marius was right, of course. Aristotle was probably the only person who could help him, if he was so desperate as to go to the only vampire who had a solid reason to want him dead. But Aristotle didn’t want him dead. He was angry, yes. He was more unforgiving than usual, yes. But he didn’t want Marius dead.

            And the Enforcers might just kill Marius.

            “Hold on.” Without giving Marius any option to do otherwise, he put him on hold and moved to the next room, and Alex’s workstation. “Marius is on the phone. He wants to apologize.”

            Alex removed his headphones. “What?”

            “He wants me to help him disappear. He knows I can do it.”

            “Isn’t there a warrant for his arrest?”

            “Yes, so to speak. But I can ignore it. I’m allowed to do it. If they find him where I send him, that’s his business, not mine.” He crossed his arms. “That doesn’t mean I want to help him.”

            Even without the link, he would have known about Alex’s fear, so naked on his face. “Why are you asking me?”

            “I’m not the only one he’s asking for forgiveness. He’s on hold, somewhere in Stateline. He wants to come over and apologize. And probably do a lot of begging if we make him. Or we can turn him in.”

            “Do you trust him?”

            “He knows I won’t turn him in without saying I’m going to,” Aristotle said, “and while he hasn’t been true to his word in the past year, that goes against the Marius I’ve known for centuries. Also if he attacks you again, I’ll kill him. He knows that.” He added, for good measure, “He’s one of the few people alive who knows what I’m capable of.”

            “You want to forgive him.”

            “I want to give him a chance to be forgiven, but it’s your call, too. He nearly killed you.” And he was not that eager to have Marius in his presence ever again. He could turn him away, refusing to be involved at all. He didn’t have to take all comers.

            Alex weighed the issue. “If you want to do it, then okay.” He knew Aristotle would protect him, he just didn’t feel great about it. Or about seeing Marius again. But he wasn’t cruel.

            “I’ll let him know. Then I’m going to find my flamethrower.”

            Alex smiled, and Aristotle returned to his desk and the phone. “When can you be here?”

            “Your Tahoe place? Ten minutes.”

            “Make it half an hour. On the porch, second story.”

            “Thank you.”

            Aristotle hung up. He wasn’t ready for thanks, not just yet.

                        ************************************************

            Half an hour later, Aristotle was sitting on the outside chair for his massive wooden deck overlooking the lake. There was a cool breeze for mid-June, though that didn’t matter much to him. He had a bottle of blood wine (not his best), two glasses, and another chair.

            Marius landed next to the chair, but stood. “You weren’t kidding about the flamethrower. Councilman Aristotle.”

            “Of course not. Councilman Marius.” They never officially lost their titles, which followed them after they left office. In his lap was a gassed-up flamethrower, though if he had to kill Marius, that wasn’t how he would do it. Both of them knew that. He just didn’t have much opportunity to threaten people with his awesome flamethrower.

            Marius did not look good. He appeared as he was, a hunted man, wearing clothing that hadn’t been changed in weeks and with his normally perfectly-trimmed hair a bit overgrown. He was nervous, but didn’t show it – he was still Marius – but Aristotle could sense it through the dim link between them. “First, I have to apologize.”

            “You do.”

            “There is a longer explanation for what happened that night, but first let me apologize for tricking you. I sincerely did not mean you any harm, except for the headache you must have had when you woke up, and even that was something beyond my control.”

            Aristotle said nothing.

            “I didn’t know the fledgling was Alexander. You know I wouldn’t have touched him if I knew. He probably only survived because he was your child, not some modern weakling’s.”

            “I do understand it was very close.” Aristotle sensed that Marius was trying to connect more intimately through the remaining blood link, but he closed it to him. Anything that would be said would be said out loud. “And I wasn’t available to help him.”

            “If it could have been any other way – “

            “But it couldn’t. It happened exactly as it happened.”

            “And I am sorry for it.”

            Aristotle checked his other link, the one he cared about, and nodded for Alex to come. Alex, looking even less confident than Marius but not wielding any weaponry, stepped through the sliding door and shut it behind him.

            “Marius, this is my son, Alex. I understand you weren’t properly introduced.”

            Marius bowed. “Alex. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding in Los Angeles. I panicked, and I didn’t know who you were.”

            Aristotle looked up at his son. “You aren’t obligated to forgive him.”

            Alex looked down at his feet, then up at Aristotle for the silent approval he needed before speaking to Marius again. “Okay. Apology accepted. What about what you did to my master?”

            “It was meant to protect him. Not a very good excuse, I understand, but it was. My orders were to drug him and remove him from the premises.”

            “You didn’t do that. You ran.”

            “I didn’t follow my other orders, either.” He looked to Aristotle, who nodded for him to sit, and took his hand off the flamethrower long enough to pour him a glass of wine. “My real orders are not for public consumption.”

            “Alex is privy to all of my business,” Aristotle said. Seeing Marius wasn’t going to budge, he added, “And I’m just going to tell him afterward anyway. If I decide to help you, and not turn you in, you’re going to have to be a lot more forthright than you were last time.”

            “It might put him in danger. That’s why I’m saying it now. The conversation we’re going to have is going to put you both in danger.”

            Aristotle knew he was telling the truth. He could tell through the link. Marius was blasting it. “Alex, your call.”

            Alex shifted his weight around before deciding. “I’ll be inside if you need anything.”

            He nodded with approval. Alex had a right to stay, in his opinion, but leaving was the smart thing to do, and Alex was nothing if not smart. Sometimes he was too smart for his own good, but this was not one of those times. “So.” Aristotle turned back to Marius. “What were your real orders, and from where they descend?”

            “The only place they could have,” Marius said, lapsing into the Greek they spoke on the Council, a dialect that developed on its own among Councilmen and no one else. He really did want to keep this private. “I was supposed to do as I did – deliver the news about the measure, drug you, then remove you from the premises. After that, I was supposed to burn the place down. If the Council had anyone on me, which they didn’t, they would have known I wasn’t going to go through with it by not placing the chargers the night before.”

            Now his voice was not so even. “The Council ordered you to blow up a room full of Elders?”

            “Not Elders in there esteem. LaCroix would have qualified, and they’ve never liked LaCroix.”

            LaCroix didn’t like them. For good reason, it seemed. “Why?”

            “They knew the Americans would oppose it.”

            “Everyone sane will oppose it. They must have singled the New World out. Do you really expect me to believe that?”

            Marius drank and shrugged. “You can choose not to believe it, but it’s the truth. When was the last time you actually spoke to the Council?”

            “In Egypt? As in, actually went there?” He had to think about it. “After World War II, I spent a few days there, briefing them. I know there’ve been no changes to the circle since then.”

            “Sometime in the next year, the Council is going to offer you a position again. Someone’s going to step down – I don’t know who. Not Devana. Then you wouldn’t take it. And probably not Orpheus, for a similar reason. But someone would step down, specifically to open the seat for you.”

            “I won’t take it. They know that.” He’d received the lofty offer before, and always refused.

            “They plan to be extremely convincing. They planned this before you brought Alexander across, and they have no intention of comprehending that it might affect your decision. Your duty is first to the Code.”

            “The Council is not the Code. The Code predates the Council.”

            “We both know that, and they know that, but that’s become irrelevant to them.”

            “They’re not mad with power. I spoke to Devana six years ago, and she seemed perfectly sensible.”

            “Yes, separately they are. But when they’re in that chamber together ...” He shook his head. “Something’s happened to them. I can’t describe it. I’m no longer linked to them and I don’t want to be. They’ve found some way to feed exclusively off each other – they think it preserves them, but I think it’s downright incestuous.”

            He wasn’t sure how good Marius’ observations were, but then again, Marius would not be quick to judge the Council in an ill light – unless he was being hunted by them. Yes, that had to be taken into account before Aristotle could pass judgment on the story. It couldn’t be independently verified. “Does anyone else feel this way?”

            “I haven’t spoken to anyone else about it.” And no one who wasn’t a servant or thrall had as much contact with the Council as Marius.

            “So supposing that your story is true, that the Council has gone mad with power and intended to prematurely destroy everyone who would oppose their ludicrous proposal using your army, what were your intentions in terms of how you actually operated that night?”

            “I did have to drug you, to spy on them. I didn’t mean to get caught. I would return to the Council with some story that would spare me their wrath long enough for me to build my resources.”

            “You’re going to wage war on the Council?”

            “It was a serious consideration.”

            Now Marius was in seditious territory. Even if he was speaking complete lies, Aristotle could turn him in for this alone, and he would earn a removal from his post and possibly a term of imprisonment. And the Council would believe Aristotle over Marius at this point. He really was putting himself at Aristotle’s mercy. “What do you plan to do now?”

            “Keep moving. My course is run. Nature will balance itself – someone else will notice something is amiss, and maybe then I will join them. In my current position, I am powerless.”

            The Marius Aristotle knew was a general who knew when to retreat, to fight another day. That was this Marius, still capable of careful calculations, even when he was desperate. “What you are implying is that if I help you, even I could be held responsible.”

            “If they are completely reasonable and find out you helped me, yes. They might. It’s unlikely, but it’s a possibility. Turn me away if you wish. One of us should survive, and you’re the stronger of us.”

            “I doubt that’s true,” he said, though he wasn’t sure if it was. He was older, and his bloodline was stronger. He could certainly withstand their mental attacks, but physically, he was weaker. And they knew all of his tricks. “If I help you, I expect every courtesy from you in the future. Our ridiculous feud is over.”

            “Yes.”

            “And you will treat Alexander like your own son, if given the opportunity, short of feeding him yourself.”

            “Yes.”

            He stroked his goatee. “Siberia’s too obvious. If anyone had to guess as to where I would send you, it’s always first on their list. How’s your Kalaallisut?”

            “Greenlandic? Not great, but you know I’m a fast learner.”

            “There’s very few people and very little wildlife. There is, however, a significant amount of shipping in the summer and the sea is less frozen. You’ll have to get your blood supply in mass quantities during that period and stock up for the rest of the year. I can create an untraceable account that is meant to go to Canada from Europe but will get lost on the way. Since no one will be on the other end to collect it, no one will notice. I’ll need a week to set it up, maybe two to be sure. The Intuits have incredible methods for storage in the ice – you should look into it.” He stood. “You can’t stay here while I make the arrangements. You have to leave the States now. Do you need cash?”

            “I have some.”

            Aristotle opened the door and went to the bookshelf, motioning for Marius to follow. He removed a heavy medical book and opened it, retrieving the tin from the hollowed-out hole inside. “Here’s a thousand dollars American and two thousand Canadian. I don’t have any Danish krones, but they’re easy to get in Newfoundland. Stay away from Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax. There’s still vampires there. Call me in a week, on this number.” He wrote down his cell phone on the back of a business card for the Bronx Zoo’s elephant specialist. “And buy some books. It’ll be boring there.”

            “I can’t thank you enough.”

            “No.” He put the bills in Marius’ front pocket. “You can’t. Good luck.”

            Marius flew out the way he came. Just like that, he was gone, and Alex reappeared. “Is he gone?”

            “For good, I think.” He closed the tin and smiled supportively at Alex. “I suppose I shouldn’t have helped him.”

            “If you didn’t like helping people you wouldn’t have this business.” Alex’s voice was of approval. “Are you going to tell me what he said?”

            “No. I’m not sure what to think of it yet.” He replaced the tin and the book on the shelf. “I can’t teach you all the blocking techniques myself. Eventually I’m going to have to track down the person who taught me, if he’s still around.”

            “It’s that important?”

            “If it ever comes up, it will be something that saves your life.” He knew there was a danger in Alex knowing that he helped Marius, if people came asking. Alex wouldn’t be able to hide it. He could take those memories away, but he would feel guilty about it. And he was uneasy enough with his actions tonight. “I have to work at this.”

            Alex took the hint that he should make himself scarce, and Aristotle went about making Marius disappear.

                        ************************************************

430 AD

            Aristotle’s private Council chambers were filled with knickknacks, ordered in some system that was perfect but only made sense to him. The casual observer – and there were none, save his personal servants and maybe other Council members – wouldn’t understand why which scroll was where, but that was none of his concern. He pushed the marble elephant carving into the wax of the stylus, creating a little footpath as if it had walked across, right over his notes.

            “You’re like a child.”

            “A child is very much like wax: unformed and easy to imprint on.”

            “I mean the way you play with your toys.”

            He rolled over, facing Devana again on his mattress. “You’re just jealous because you don’t have any. Why else would you spend time here? Your room is so much bigger.”

            “They’re all the same size and you know it.” She kissed him. “You delight in taunting me.”

            “I prefer not to consider it taunting.” He took the elephant in his hand and pulled the wax debris off its tiny feet. “There are things that interest me other than what can be found in the Council chambers, or the Councilman, or a certain – maybe I should have phrased this better. I bring shame upon my name with lazy rhetoric.”

            “You are not lecturing me. I hope.” In her life Devana had been a warrior queen, and he a teacher. He was positive he would lose in a fight, having lost several rather good-natured ones that were precursors to other things. Though, to be fair, he wasn’t trying to win in those cases.

            “The particular setting of my dialogue is no excuse,” he said. “You will forgive me.”

            She played with the strands of hair still on the top of his head. “I may. If you earn it.”

            He answered her with a kiss.

                        ************************************************

2004

            Aristotle woke with a start, and stumbled to the bathroom He spent most of the time in the shower wishing the dream had gone on just a little bit longer, but it seemed the nature of dreams to so inconveniently end. He had seen Devana a few years ago, when he lived in Ottawa. Her visit was brief but intense. Could she truly be mad? He couldn’t imagine it, but Marius could, and Marius was sensible enough most of the time.

            He had to delay their trip to Reno until he was sure the arrangements for Marius would be ready with a two-day absence, but Alex was patient, mainly because he had yet to perfect counting cards and was absolutely determined to get himself kicked out of a casino. Aristotle was relieved when they were actually on the road, and away from all of the stresses as of late.

            As a rule he found gambling senseless. The math clearly indicated that the house was the winner, therefore any attempt to beat it without breaking a casino rule was futile. He lamented that he hadn’t had time to program anything neat to try at the slots. In the old days, he could manipulate them with magnets, but now they were programmed by microchips. He was sure there was a way to hack them, but other things demanded his time and that project was shelved. Alex spent the brief trip reading about poker. Aristotle turned on the radio and left the link between them alone.

            Reno wasn’t far, just under an hour if he wasn’t speeding and he was always speeding, so they were there in thirty-five minutes. The town always stunk of desperation and manipulation, without even the false glamour of Vegas. But it was also an excellent place to buy a fake ID, and he was always curious to see the latest in fake ID technology.

            Alex held up considerably well to the influx of humanity to his senses as they entered the casino. The heartbeats were drowned out by the machines, and it was late at night. “Don’t get into trouble,” Aristotle said, and left him to his blackjack, intending to return before he did get into trouble.

            He had a mortal contact in Reno, someone with shared interests in fake identities and not much else. And he was good at sneaking up on him. “Slow night?”

            “Ari!” Jack looked pleased when he was done being frightened by the surprise. Not that the cops really cared to go after him, or they would have found him years ago. Aristotle suspected they made more money fining kids with fake IDs than they would by putting him away and they knew it. “How are you?”

            Everything about Jack shouted ‘I have something illegal to sell.’ He had the trench coat, the day-old beard, and the graying, unattractive hair. They had a lot in common. “Can’t complain. You?”

            “I love the summer crowd. Though I don’t know who considers Reno a good vacation spot. You know there are actually kid’s bus tours that stop here? They let them ‘gamble’ at that place with carnival games.”

            “Bus tours?”

            “Summer tours around the States for spoiled rich kids. Usually with a youth group. There’s one now in the next casino, bored out of their minds. None of them could pass for eighteen, much less twenty-one. One of them came up to me with a fake beard. Even I can’t have that kind of attention.”

            “Was it with spirit gum or the string in the back?”

            “String in the back. Technically an elastic band.”

            Aristotle laughed and ordered a drink from the waitress. “So exactly what does the casino do to people who count cards these days?”

            “Why? Do you know how? Because it’s really not worth it. You barely make minimum wage if you calculate how long it takes unless you’re in the high roller’s club, and they’ll catch you in the high roller’s club.”

            “I just want to find out what’s going to happen to my son when my back is turned.”

            “I didn’t know you had a kid.”

            “Adopted.”

            “And he thinks he can count cards?”

            “It’s more the getting caught part I’m worried about.” He checked the link. Alex’s head was filled with numbers. He was tracking the cards dealt. “He’s fine. For now.” He accepted the gin and tonic and took a fake sip. “So how are you?”

                        ************************************************

            Counting cards was more frustrating than Alex expected, and not for the reason he expected. He was able to keep the stream of numbers associated with high and low cards in his head, but that didn’t change the basic variables of the game, meaning he could have a long streak of not betting because he knew he would lose, and knowing didn’t make him not lose, just not lose as much.

            He took a break and went to the poker table with the lowest entering bid. To his delight, the game was actually made quite easy by the fact that the other players’ hearts would race when they got a good hand. But cheating other players wasn’t the same as cheating the house, so he didn’t use it to his full advantage.

            It was not the first time he was asked to show his ID. The name was fake, but the birth date was real. “Here.”

            “Lemme see,” said the guy next to him. “I can spot a fake ID from a mile away.”

            “Alright, but I really am twenty-four. Be twenty-five next month.” And this was the last year he could say that and have it be true, but he felt like humoring the guy whose money he was probably going to take, depending on his hand. The man to his right was a portly fellow, overdressed in a tacky suit, with gray hair and a receding but not disappeared hairline. “I just have a young face, I guess.”

            The tourist sized him up. “Dr. Green?”

            “Doctorate in computer engineering. What would you like to know about solving large-scale systems of non-linear equations?” He took the ID out of his hand and put it back in his wallet.

            “Does that make you a poker genius? Because I can find another table.”

            “If I was a poker genius, would I be in Reno at the five dollar table?”

            “No,” Aristotle said, appearing on the other side of the tourist and reaching over to take Alex’s cards of his hand and toss them on the table. “And you wouldn’t be taking his money, either. And his high blood pressure is throwing you off.”

            “You!” The tourist turned his head. “I know you. Where do I know you from?”

            Aristotle sat down on the stool, the game now ended. “Nick’s wedding.”

            “You were standing next to the plant guy. With the moustache.” He snapped his pudgy fingers. “Aphrodite.”

            “Aristotle. Very close, Detective Schanke.” He shook his hand. “Alex, this is Don Schanke, Nick’s partner from the Toronto police force. Detective, this my son. And he is twenty-four.”

            “That’s Captain Schanke to you,” he corrected, and shook Alex’s hand. He had a very warm grip, even for a mortal. “Celebrating my promotion with the wife and kids. They’re at that kiddy carnival – gambling for kids. Can you believe it? Like a game of chance is any different from slots just because you win a crummy toy instead of money. Either way it just goes into the casino’s pocket. Hey, aren’t you also the real estate guy?”

            “Yes, I’m the real estate guy,” Aristotle said. “You’re thinking of the move to Winnipeg. You have a good memory.”

            “They did promote me for something. Kinda reluctant to take it, actually. I miss the fresh air of the crime scene, the thrill of the case – but it hasn’t been the same since Nick moved on and took Natalie with him. You should see the new coroner – or you shouldn’t. Guard your eyes like she’s the Ark of the Covenant. But you know how it is – getting older, need to pay the college fund. I had to take it. The last chase almost threw my back out.” He slapped Aristotle on the back in an overly friendly way. “So what are you here for?”

            “Celebrating ... what are we celebrating?”

            “The fact that you finally let me go to Reno,” Alex said. “But next time, Vegas.”

            “I’ll be there next week. Rented a car, traveling around. Myra wants to see the Grand Canyon. Do one of those donkey tours. Have you ever done one of those?”

            “I’ve ridden a donkey,” Aristotle said. “Bring a lot of water.”

            Alex smiled. Imagining this guy – this policeman – riding a donkey down and up the Grand Canyon made him want to sweat – and he couldn’t sweat. Not water, anyway, and not from the heat.

            Ten minutes later they were at the bar, and Aristotle was buying them all drinks, even if Schanke was the only one drinking as he went through his ‘classic hits of Nick’ record.

            “So this one time, he’s got the guy – where did you meet Knight, anyway?”

            “Toledo.”

            “Toledo. So, he’s pretending to be the victim, and the suspect comes in, and Nick tosses him through the window and holds him up by his jacket. Really looks like he’s gonna drop him. He’s only got one arm out the window and the guy murdered his fiancé and was about to murder a guy with terminal cancer. So I said, ‘Think of the paperwork if you drop him!’ and BOOM! He pulls him in.”

            Alex was beginning to see the appeal of his gregarious mortal. How much he knew about vampires, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed to be something, even if he wouldn’t say it. A little while with him was amusing, though Alex imagined a long stakeout would be nearly unbearable.

            “Oh – midnight. Time for me to turn into a pumpkin!” He gave Aristotle a friendly tug/throttle. “Good to see you again. If you see him first, say hi to Nick for me. Good to meet you, Alex. Hasta la Bye-bye.” He left a tip on the table, and stumbled to the door.

            “Did he just say – “

            “He says that. And he knows about us. Nicholas got sick of hypnotizing him. Thought one day he would just zap him into total amnesia. You would think he couldn’t keep a secret, but you would be wrong.” Aristotle paid the rest of the tab. “So how was it?”

            “Kind of interesting, but not a lot different from the computer program at such low stakes.”

            “The mortal obsession with money usually eludes us. I don’t think we get the same adrenaline rush from material goods – most of us, anyway. What do you want to do now?”

            “Get out of here. I’m starving.” And he wasn’t joking. Hours of being surrounded by overexcited mortals was wearing on him. He wanted blood, and he wanted it fresh. “Can I possibly – “

            “I don’t have the city Elder’s permission,” Aristotle said as they walked out into the night air. “Then again, there is no city Elder. But I’m not cleaning up a mess. Where are you going to dispose of the body?”

            “Dumpster?”

            Aristotle drew his finger across his neck. “You have to cover the bite mark.”

            Alex shuddered. The thought of cutting someone’s throat – why was he obsessing over that? He was going to kill her first? But Aristotle just smiled at him knowingly and gave him a pocketknife. “You said you were hungry. If you chicken out, there’s a bottle in the trunk of the car. See you at sunrise.” And with a smirk and a whoosh of air, he was gone, leaving Alex at the back door of the casino.

            He knew a challenge when he saw heard one.

                        ************************************************

            The newsstands and phone books were full of ads for escort ads, but that was too obvious, too conspicuous, and not enough of a challenge for the vampire in him that wanted to hunt. He leapt silently from rooftop to rooftop, following the people in the alleys and corners of the streets below, avoiding the bright lights of the casinos as he went. The air smelled of humanity – garbage and sweat, and all the colognes and perfumes they used to cover their natural scents.

            After some inner debate, his final target was a prostitute in a red dress, as if she could have been less obvious. She was the only one on the streets with all of her teeth, not that she would have much chance to use them. He descended behind her and casually approached. Looking nervous was not all that difficult. Almost came naturally.

            It was hard to hear her voice over her beating heart, steady but ever-so-enticing, as they negotiated a price. “A hundred.”

            He nodded, not putting much effort into the negotiations. He put half in up front, as if she would have any use for the money, and they went to the motel he rented ahead. He looked around, looking for anyone watching them enter.

            “Relax,” she said, wrapping her hands around his neck, which only drew his attention to hers as he locked the door behind him. “This is Reno.”

            Yes, it was. He was a long way from MIT.

            He reminded himself that this was a whore, and she was paid to seduce him, not the other way around. His job was to keep the vampire in control until the crucial moment and let her do the rest. He considered his job harder, especially when she touched him to unbutton his shirt. He grabbed one of her hands and held it to his lips. He could feel her pulse throbbing, and his fangs descend. No, not yet. Alex closed his eyes and forced the vampire back down. Not yet. He paid too much for this room.

            The chase was supposed to be thrilling, but it was just frustrating. Some part of him was still human, wanting to see the rest of her body, and the other part of him was painfully inpatient, knowing her blood would offer everything he needed and could ever want. Still, alive from a few scars and marks from age, she was perfect. Not a model, but not a freak show either, and he wasn’t able to focus his eyes very well, his other senses taking control. She smelled of her foul perfume, that to some mortal might have seemed pleasant, but he just smelled chemicals. Beneath it, she had a cherry flavor, like the color of her now-discarded dress. He wanted to taste her, and while her attentive hands went elsewhere, he licked her shoulder, the tips of his fangs scraping skin.

            She giggled. He supposed it was supposed to be erotic, or maybe she was just surprised that he was tickling her, when that wasn’t at all what he was doing. The smell of blood from the scrape hit his nose, and that was it. He growled and shoved her onto the bed, his eyes glowing red with hunger. Her body tensing with fear was more interesting to him than any of her previous actions, and he tore into neck, close enough to her throat to stifle her scream. And he drank.

            It really was glorious. All of her self-assurance that she built up to make it through her life in Reno dissolved in an instant. That moment where the mortal – he never learned her name – knew she was going to die was orgasmic. Maybe if he had held himself back longer, been prepared, he could have done more than just drain her, but he was lost to the hunger. He howled as she dropped limp on the bed, and he laid down next to her, savoring the moment before he had to make his next move. Her blood was laced with a combination of alcohol and tranquilizers, not enough to inhibit her abilities, but enough to kill some of the pain of living.

            He was not satisfied. His thirst was quenched, but his hunger was not. His hands still quivering, he took the knife and slashed her throat, careful to let her remaining blood only get on the towel he wrapped her in, and then he was gone, leaving the room key in the door. He flew across the city, deposited her body in a particularly ripe dumpster that would hide the smell, and flew to the hotel. Aristotle chose it because it had a balcony, better access for both of them. Aristotle was drinking and watching C-SPAN, the link unreadable. “How did it go?”

            He was not in control and he knew it. He was happy about it. “Find out,” he said, his voice barely more than a growl, as he held out his wrist. His master paused for a painful second to consider the offer, then bit. He wanted the pain. He wanted the sensation of Ari taking his life force, feeling the same things he felt. He was determined to know what was at the mysterious other end.

            Before he could bite his neck, Ari caught him, holding his palm against Alex’s open mouth. “Make sure you want to do this,” he said, his own mouth still full of Alex’s blood.

            He’d bitten, and been bitten before, but never at the same time. Ari made sure of it. Alex had suspected the reason why for some time, but never asked. Now he didn’t care. He didn’t care that he was a little doped, still high from the rush of the hooker’s blood, and horny as all fucking hell. He wanted to bite and he would chomp down on Ari’s fingers if he had to, to get his message across.

            “Fine,” Ari said, getting the message through the link, and released him to do as he pleased. “Don’t bite the scar.” He had a scar on his shoulder, further from the neck than most vampire bites, that was clearly a bite that had healed badly. The details behind it he once told Alex, but nothing that comprehensive was clear to Alex now. He ignored the twisted lines and blue tint to the skin and went for the vein in his neck. His master’s blood was sweeter than any wine, even without the powerful images mortals provided him with. From Aristotle he received, for the moment, only emotions, and to be honest, he was having trouble concentrating on even them. In the frenzy he worried he might drain him painfully low, but Aristotle’s response to the worry was to return the bite with one on Alex’s neck, completing the circle.

            For a moment, he saw only red, and not out of anger but naked lust. It was more intense than the feeling with the mortal, or any other previous feeding. Maybe the feelings he had when he was brought across could compare, but he couldn’t remember them that well, and they were so filled with pain and struggle while this was pure ecstasy. When he could see again, he could process that he was pushing Ari down on the bed the same way he did the whore, only this time, he would get what he wanted.

            “I told you,” Ari said, that stupid grin on his face, his eyes a beautiful shade of gold. “Blood is everything.”

            Alex wanted everything, and he would have everything.

                        ************************************************

            When Alex emerged from his post-crash doze, it was still dark, if only for a bit longer, but Aristotle was asleep. Not very deeply, but his eyes were shut, and Alex realized it was the first time he saw his master sleep. Ari required far less sleep than he did and never slept at night, meaning he seemed perpetually awake and probably was, except for these moments before he woke again to be his usual vigilant self. When asleep, he lost both the professional veneer and forced casualness that he projected most of the time, gravitating between someone not worthy of notice and an orator of great interest depending on the situation. There was no tailored image now, or protective gestures, just a sleepy old man. His wounds were long-healed, except for the ones from his mortal past, and the two that would never heal. Near his collarbone was his Maker’s Mark, the perfect little dots that were hard to see with the naked eye, where Qum’ra bit him to bring him into the darkness 2300 years ago. On the other side was the nasty scar from his uncle, Qa’ra. With Ari’s blood in Alex’s veins, he could remember clearly being told the real story of a fledgling Aristotle being poisoned by Qa’ra as only someone of their bloodline could, his wounds unable to heal while he killed everything in sight until his master drained him and fed him, replacing all of his tainted blood with his own. Ari told other vampires it was from his mortal past, that he was bitten during his lifetime, and put whatever story behind it that would sound most interesting at the time. He did not want others to know their bloodline was poisonous. Alex could tell clearly now, without asking, that Ari didn’t want him to bite there not because it was still tender, but because of some paranoia that there might be poison in the wound that survived all these years and would make Alex sick. He would never allow that to happen.

            That was why Marius was afraid of him. Marius was on the Council with him, and they knew each other’s secrets. Marius knew Aristotle could poison people beyond their abilities to heal. He was just relieved that Aristotle never used it and hoped he’d forgotten how.

            Alex expected the afterglow to be awkward, but it wasn’t. Everything was fine. Everything was perfect. He was more content than he could remember ever being. He had been fucked senseless by his master and he was fine with that. Thrilled about it. Knew he would be unable to replicate the experience with anyone else, not unless he brought someone across himself, someone he loved. And Aristotle did love him.

            In the final moments before Alex passed out from exhaustion, Ari had opened the link on his end, letting the emotions he kept to himself flood through before snapping it shut. There was so much fear there – a stunning lack of confidence in himself, worries that he wouldn’t do the right thing or wasn’t doing the right thing, that he would somehow put Alex in danger. The normal fears of fatherhood, Alex could reflect now, after the event. Though he appeared confident and knowing in all of his decisions, he wasn’t. He was clinging to what little he knew of raising a fledgling without repeating the abuse of his own infancy as a vampire, in hopes that Alex would grow strong and yet not come to hate him, as so many did of their masters when raised so ferociously. He did not want to be like Lucien LaCroix; he did not want to be hated. He wanted to be loved.

            Ari held back on the issue of sex for so long because he feared Alex’s rejection. He wished he was younger, slimmer, had more hair, and if possible, was a woman. He knew under no normal circumstances would Alex be attracted to him, but there had never been normal circumstances for them. Alex wondered how far back he’d caught Ari’s attention.

            Speaking of, Ari yawned, currently without fangs, and opened his eyes.

            “When did you first notice me?”

            “I’m not attracted to mortals,” Ari said and Alex’s response was to playfully nudge him. “I’m not. Really.”

            “You know what I meant.”

            “You should be able to guess this one.”

            “I’m tired. Don’t make me.”

            His master didn’t for once. “The night at the hospital. I liked you before, but I haven’t brought anyone across in five hundred years. It wasn’t on my mind. Being around young people means you put off the idea of losing them, even though they’re mortal. You know you’re going to have to move on long before they expire, so you get to choose the timing of the end of the acquaintanceship. It’s still painful, but not as much as it would have been if we hadn’t got you to the hospital in time. I wouldn’t have brought you across even if they couldn’t save you – I’m not that spontaneous. You would have died, and I would have regretted my inaction and moved on. While you were in the ICU, I had hours to consider what I might have lost. When you woke in the morning, I decided. Started making plans. And then there was the chance that you would go into the light, or not make the transfer and just die on me ... So I waited until the last possible moment. I’m not very brave.”

            “You don’t give yourself a lot of credit,” Alex said. “You survived Qum’ra and Qa’ra, you walked across the entire world, you sat on the Council, and you stood up to Marius. And then you turned around and helped him because you knew it was the right thing to do.”

            “I don’t know that it was.” But he didn’t regret it. Alex could tell. Their link was unusually active from sharing so much blood. “I’ve survived this long – longer than any of my siblings and most of my contemporaries – by running away.”

            “Seeing how it meant we crossed paths, I have no complaints.” Ari smiled at that. “I can probably ask you anything now; you’re in such a good mood.”

            “I’m relieved. So ask.”

            “Who was your first?”

            “My first what? Fledgling? Love? Pet elephant? I’ve only had one. Have had a number of carved ones, though.”

            “Your first as in, the person you had sex with.”

            “Like everyone else at the time, my wrestling tutor. I don’t remember his name.” He giggled at Alex’s reaction. “You wanted to know. Yes, it was perfectly acceptable to get raped by your wrestling coach in Macedonia, especially if your father was rich enough to afford a personal one. And NAMBLA’s always going on about how great a culture we were.”

            “So are a lot of historians.”

            “I’m sure they love having that in common. The first consensual person was ... what was his name? I was old when I was brought across. I have an old man’s memory. You can’t ask me for names.”

            “Your first love. You know, strong enough that you can actually give me a name.”

            “Requited, Pythias,” he answered, referring to his wife. It was one of the few aspects of his life historians got right. “Unrequited, Plato. The subject of many gender studies major’s papers, I’m sure. They read homosexual yearning into everything.”

            “I wrote a paper on the Miller’s Tale being all about homosexuality. Or maybe it was the Parson’s Tale. I don’t remember, but the professor was really into it so I got an A minus.”

            “Did you write that Chaucer was gay?”

            “No.”

            “Good. You have some respect for history,” Ari said. “Someone once published a paper online about me and Alexander. That set me off. There are limits. I knew him when he was twelve. Christ. If I hadn’t been caught up in this whole real estate thing in Quebec at the time, I might have written a response paper. Or just gone to the University of Minnesota and punched him.” He ignored Alex’s laughter. “Don’t ever become a historical figure. It’s downright painful.”

            “I’m named after one.”

            “Not as bad. Though your name was kind of an unintended bonus for me. Or it will be when the Community shuts up about it.”

            “You love the attention. Admit it.”

            “No.”

            “You love it because it makes you look harmless.”

            “Fine. Maybe.” He tapped him on the nose. “Go to sleep. The scary sun is coming to get you.”

            “When am I gonna grow out of that?”

            “Give it a good fifty years. Maybe a seventy. A hundred to be safe.”

            Alex growled, but Ari pulled him closer. In his master’s embrace, he could relax, never wanting to move again.  

Chapter 4

            “We should have gone to Vegas.”

            The atmosphere in the return ride was considerably more relaxed, and it was the first thing Alex said since leaving the city line. Aristotle looked off the road for a moment. “Why?”

            “Because now we’ll have to say, ‘We’ll always have Reno.’ Vegas would have been a cooler line.”

            “While I have to concede on your last point, until we have a reason to be there, no Vegas. It’s not a town for fledglings.”

            “We could stay at Caesar’s Palace and bask in the irony.”

            “It’s not really ironic. And no, I did not know Caesar. Of him, yes, but everyone did. I never actually met him. Slaves weren’t invited to his parties.”

            “You were a slave in Rome?”

            “Sold myself to a mortal. Best forty-five years of my existence. He was a merchant and I was his general manager. He robbed graves and I got to do inventory on a lot of neat stuff. Holy items, too – people’s personal idols and whatnot. Got burned a lot, but it was worth it.”

            “I take it there’s like, way more involved in this story than that.”

            “Well, yes, you don’t just go selling yourself into slavery for the hell of it. He saved my life, or more precisely, didn’t kill me when he had the chance, and I wanted to get away from vampire society at that precise moment. So I promised my undying servitude for the rest of his life and I saw no reason not to keep my word.”

            “Really?”

            “Do I even need to make stories up? Of course, really.”

            “I want to hear the whole story sometime.”

            “Fine. When I’m not driving.” He was in a good mood. They both were. The days started getting shorter again. Even if only by a minute a day or less, it still put their minds at ease. Of course, that wasn’t the only reason.

            He needed to teach Alex how to drive. It wasn’t the first time he thought that, but it was inching up on the list of priorities. Of course, Alex wouldn’t get them home as fast as he did, and hypnotizing traffic cops was always good practice, but in the end it would be worth it.

Aristotle had so much to teach him.

                        ************************************************

            Aristotle looked up from the North Atlantic shipping records he was studying to see Alex hovering around. “What?” It came out harsher than he meant it to, but he knew Alex meant to say something, and usually had the courage to just do it.

            “I want to take a summer course at the University of Nevada.”

            “In Carson City?”

            “Yes.”

            “It’s that late at night?”

            “It’s that late at night.”

            “I’m sure you can afford it,” he said. “Do you want my permission or something?”

            “I will be gone most of the early evening, on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. And I need to borrow the car. And learn to drive.”

            “Yes, there’s that. Though I suppose you don’t need the car.” Though it was a long distance for a fledgling to fly. “Okay.”

            “Thanks.”

            He debated just letting him go, as Alex was clearly so eager to do, but didn’t let him make it to the door. “What’s it on?”

            Alex squirmed, then dashed over and put the open catalog down on the desk. The highlighted class listing was titled ‘An Introduction to the Greek Masters of Philosophy.’ He resisted the urge to smile. “I’m not helping you with your homework.”

            “I know.”

            “In fact, I don’t want to hear about your homework.”

            “Yes, Master.”

            He chuckled, and handed the catalog back to his son. “I suppose not everything you learn will be through layers of misinterpretation, but I’m still not correcting anything until after the course is over. And I expect an A, young man!”

            “You seem to forget I was good at studying,” Alex said, and kissed him on the cheek before disappearing.

            “Kids,” Aristotle grumbled good-naturedly, and returned to his own studies.

                        ************************************************

            Vampires, like humans, had a great desire to communicate through eating. Where the human family would sit down to dinner together, executives would take long lunches, and compact, often immigrant, neighborhoods would host barbeques and block parties, something in the vampire psyche still expressed this desire to be close to a fellow through the collective act of consumption. Though hunting in packs was too competitive and often more trouble than it was worth, drinking communally from thralls was an ancient custom of the Old World, gone out of practice by the greater need for secrecy and the establishment of the Council. After that, they made due with sharing blood wine, to receive the sense of friendship of being two people who enjoyed the same pleasures.

            Aristotle, whose taste in wines was downright aristocratic in his lifetime and hadn’t altered much by being brought across, did not serve his guests ordinary fair. If he couldn’t get the right wine, which he mixed himself, he pressed the grapes himself. The ridiculously plebian action of stomping a bathtub of grapes, however ridiculous it looked (and made his feet look odd for days), was him taking responsibility for the quality of his own faire. It was also something to do while Alex was at class, learning whatever nonsense could be gleaned from poor translations of mismatched texts. “Stop laughing. And put away your camera phone.”

            Alex thought his arrival was silent, and it would have been, but for the link. He did snap his new camera phone shut. “I thought you didn’t want the Community to think too much of you.”

            “If I am to be publicly humiliated, I would prefer to choose the method,” he replied, looking up from his WIRED magazine. “Your movie finished downloading.”

            “Which one?”

            “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

            “I heard it’s a classic.”

            “It is.” He saw it when it came out. Rarely did humanity project its insecurities so nakedly, preferring the metaphor of aliens and monsters to do so. “It’s very much like a Twilight Zone episode, without the twist at the end.” He handed the magazine to Alex and climbed out of the outdoor bathtub, setting it to drain before wiping his feet, as if that would do much. He had a pair of well-stained sandals for this purpose. He did not ask about class. He was more curious than he thought he would be, but keeping his word was more important to him. It would be more interesting at the end of it. “I have to go to New York next week and meet with some investors. I thought about taking you, but it’s too close to Boston so soon after your death, and you’ll be closed out of the meetings anyway. The investors are mortals.”

            “There’s eight million people in New York City. What are the chances of me running into someone I know and them recognizing me?”

            “Plus you’ll miss class. And you know how I feel about class attendance, whatever the subject.” He could sense Alex’s anxiety at the idea of another separation. “If you want, you can invite someone over – but it has to be someone I know.”

            “I don’t need a babysitter.”

            “I didn’t say babysitter. And I would say no keggers, but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, is it?” He put a hand on Alex’s shoulder. “If I could avoid it, I would, but they expect me to be there, and I need to keep up the contacts. And you need to learn to live without me.” Some of that was his fault, of course, by developing such a powerful link between them. But Alex did well during the New Mexico trip. He only broke two skateboards and a cement barrier. All replaceable things. In Tahoe, Alex was too isolated to do any real damage.

            “Just don’t get shot up with tranquilizer darts this time,” Alex said, joking to hide his nervousness, “because I will not be there to save you.”

                        ************************************************

            Aristotle shaved the little trimmings of a beard he usually left on his face and grew out his goatee before dying it black the night before his departure. Alex complained that he smelled of the dye, and though it was a valid complaint, there was nothing he could do about it. “This character has a black goatee.”

            “Who is he?”

            “A Qatari investor who was blown up in a US air strike about ten years ago. The official story is that he’s in hiding somewhere in Europe or the States. I managed to get his passport and Qatari Arabic isn’t that different from the rest of the Persian Gulf, and he gave me access to an important investment group.”

            “I thought we’re not supposed to get mixed up in mortal politics.”

            “That opinion varies. It’s mainly to keep an eye on the situation the Middle East. A lot of Ancient – and I mean truly ancient – vampires are either living there or are sleeping beneath some ruin. Every once in a while, an Islamic group goes and blows something up, like the Taliban did with those Buddha statues. Creates a real problem. A friend of mine is buried in Iraq – and you know the situation there.”

            “Vaguely. The situation in Egypt is pretty bad, too.”

            “Luxor has gotten pretty dangerous, and there’s a lot of graves there. It’s actually a boon – keeps mortal tourists away.”

            “Were any of the pharaohs vampires?”

            “Legend has it, some were. Maybe a handful at most – and they would have been very early ones. I wish I knew the whole of it, but no one really does.”

            There was little time to lament over the state of vampire history that night. Alex’s goodbye blood-sharing session turned rather heated, which was what they both wanted. He read it in the blood. Alex was still unsure where this was going, when it would end, how he should act on his desires – but that would all be sorted in time.

            At the very end of the evening, Alex showered and put himself together enough to greet his two guests – Jimmy and Amanda, the young vampires he met in LA. They nodded very politely to Aristotle, but they were intimidated by him. Not terrified, but definitely intimidated. He gave them one of his disarming smiles, checked that everything business-related was secured behind bolted doors, and said goodbye before flying to the airport. Daylights could be frustrating and possibly dangerous, but there was no sense in losing a night to travel. The private jet company knew his preferences for drawn shade and uninterrupted sleep. He sent Alex a final text to behave himself, and went to sleep to the incessant humming of the jet’s engines.

                        ************************************************

            It was late and Alex barely had time to show his guests to their rooms before dropping out with the rising sun, still bathing in the afterglow of uninhibited union with his master. When he woke, most of it was gone. He forced himself awake, remembering he had guests who were better at rising than he was, and went for the fridge.

            Amanda, the oldest, was slightly more bright-eyed than him in the kitchen. “Has anyone ever used this stuff?” She gestured to the fully-equipped kitchen, mostly stainless steel and granite, as she took a seat at the counter.

            “I doubt it,” he said, pouring her a glass of uncut blood. He had a mug from the University of Nevada, a school store impulse buy. “People rarely come over, and definitely not mortals. Except Madeline.”

            “Who’s she?”

            “The cleaning lady. She’s only here during the day. I’ve never met her.” He didn’t even know what she looked like. She was certainly never in his room, which was a mess. Her job was mostly to make the rest of the house look used, and since it was more of a mansion, that took considerable effort. “I guess I never will.”

            Jimmy Deisei stumbled into the kitchen and didn’t say anything until he had downed a full glass of blood. He was only ten years old, and not putting the effort into being the wide-awake host. He was more like what Alex was like on a usual night. “Thanks. So, you have class or something?”

            “Tomorrow and Tuesday. Ancient philosophy.”

            “He’s making you take a class on ancient philosophy?”

            “The reverse, really. You can get him started on how it’s all misunderstood nonsense pretty easily. You don’t choose a name without, like, knowing something about the guy.” He was working on the established premise that Aristotle was his code name, and not his real one – or if it was, he was named after Aristotle. “He refuses to help me with my homework.”

            “I was big into philosophy before I dropped out of college,” Amanda said. She was an ex-hippie, a true member of the tune in-drop out generation. “Mainly French Enlightenment. It’s all a blur now. I did so much drugs afterward, killed all the brain cells that went to that with a lot of acid. My master insists vampires can’t do acid, but I think he’s just trying to protect me.”

            “I know we can do hashish,” Alex said. “Or, I’ve been told we can. I can’t get past the smoke part of it.”

            “Janette smokes sometimes. Drives us crazy. And yet, we totally want to be her.”

            “Smoking women are sexy,” Jimmy said.

            “Everything Janette does is sexy,” Amanda said with a roll of her eyes. “Some of us have to work at it. Not hard, but we do.”

            Jimmy threw his hands up. “I admit it. I was a dork before I was a vampire. Terrible skin, uncoordinated, terrible musician but didn’t know it ... I wanted to start a band and name it Undead Rocks but my master said no.”

            “I think the reason behind that should be kinda obvious,” Alex said.

                        ************************************************

            Aristotle had decidedly mixed feelings about New York. It could be a fascinating city, full of colorful residents and both legal and illegal forms of entertainment. It really was more fun before Mayor Giuliani started to crack down on crime, and the police made more of an effort to investigate every dead transient in a dumpster. Aristotle suspected that eventually every corner of the world would be so carefully monitored, and the vampire world would have to make some kind of evolutionary sacrifice, just as they had two thousand years before by giving up their holdings and retreating to shadows. But he was not one to linger on the doom and gloom the vampire future promised, when the human one was so very interesting.

            It was early summer, and dusk came exceptionally late, trapping him in the private airport before he could make his way to Manhattan. The city was, perhaps even more than most American cities, living in a perpetual daylight of neon lights and streetlamps at full blast to prevent crime. Not wanting to extend his trip any longer than necessary, he only told the city Elder (who could barely be called that) that he would be in town and told him to keep it to himself. Once he was settled in the hotel, he changed and took the train to Brooklyn, to have tea with some old mortal contacts in the illegal immigrant community. He knew better than to refuse an offer of hot tea from a Farsi-speaking Kurd who spent his daylight hours in a convenience store and his evenings cutting up and pasting passports back together. It was downright rude. By now, he could tolerate tea enough to hold it down for the length of their conversation. People really opened up to them when he spoke their language, though he got more ‘Are you a cop?’ questions than usual.

            “It’s good money, to translate for the CIA,” Pojknamn said. “They have all kinds of documents smuggled out of Iran they don’t know what to do with it. But I don’t want the attention.”

            “Attention is generally a bad thing,” Aristotle said, twirling his tiny spoon in the tea. “On the other hand, if you’re looking to retire ...”

            “Not that kind of money they’re offering,” his friend said. “And someone would slit my throat, I’m sure. I couldn’t keep it a secret. They’re so obvious about it. Do you think someone will notice when two white men in awful blue suits come by?”

            “You have to protect yourself.”

            “And you?”

            Aristotle shook his head and laughed. “I’ve been in prison before. If gulag couldn’t break me, nothing can.”

            By the time he was back at the hotel, it was very late, nearly sunup. The hotel no longer had balconies and had security cameras everywhere, even the roof, so he took the ordinary entrance and called Alex, who sounded a little drunk over the phone.

            “’s fine,” his son said. “Um, when are you coming home?” Even a haze of alcohol couldn’t distort his longing for his master’s presence. “Everything’s cool by the way.” In the background, the television was running especially loud, the noises incomprehensible. “We’re playing that game where Pikachu beats up Megaman. Dudes, say hi.”

            “Hi, Aristotle!” shouted Amanda and Jimmy.

            He was relieved, more than he would admit on the phone. “Behave yourself.”

            “Duh. G’night.”

            “Good night.”

            He had little time for sleep himself. The conference started at nine, and he had a lot of reading to do if he was going to sound like he’d been paying any attention to Middle Eastern politics in the last year. By eight-thirty he was changed into a ludicrously expensive suit and a white khaffiya of the al-Asad tribe, and began his way through the layers of security required to enter the conference room. He knew he barely rated beside the oil barons (Texan and Arab), Euro-trash investors, and politicians in the room, and he preferred it that way. What he did not feel comfortable about was leaving his cell phone in a bin outside. He checked the link. Alex, of course, was sleeping.

            He sensed the presence but didn’t acknowledge it until the other approached. He wasn’t used to other vampires in the room, though he couldn’t be all that surprised. Who it was, that was more of a surprise, though he realized he didn’t know Hajji’s current name. Aristotle hadn’t seen him in decades, maybe a century, and the former poet of the Abbasid dynasty looked quite different in a respectable suit and tie, his hair cut short and his beard shaven. “Mahmood Bhatti.”

            Aristotle shook his hand. “Mohammed bin Hamad al-Asad.”

            “I heard you died in a car crash,” Hajji whispered with amusement.

            “Truth is so much stranger than fiction,” he answered, and they took their positions against the wall in the back. “Does Feliks know you’re here?”

            “I’m going up north after this to see him. Your Arabic is pretty good.”

            He smiled. “I try.”

            The presentation began. It was mainly about oil, of course, and possible threats to the current lines that supplied the rest of the world with fuel. Hajji, a former Mughal prince, found the developments in Kashmir more interesting than Aristotle, who wanted to know about war in places normal people actually went. He did not like sending vampires into war zones, or stumbling into one himself.

            “All the way on the left,” Aristotle whispered in a more ancient Arabic, “is that President Bush?”

            “Yes. What, the secret service didn’t give him away?”

            “I thought he was with the Carlyle Group,” he said, referring to the former President, George Bush Senior.

            “That’s not the only group concerned with the Arab world.”

            “I don’t like it. Too much attention.” He might have to drop his membership with the group, or at least stop showing up to meetings.

            “Actually, I kind of wanted to meet him,” Hajji said. “It’s why I’m here.”

            “It’s not very safe.”

            “Please. I’m just another Arab to him.” Hajji did look rather inconspicuous. He was younger, brought across in his thirties, and had few distinguishing features that came with age.

            When the presentation ended, there was a lengthy question-and-answer session, some of it very technical, but most of it interesting. Then came the conversations and introductions, and Hajji got his wish, and shook the hand of the former President and father of the current President. Since Aristotle was standing next to him, he could not avoid the honor, much to his displeasure. Fortunately cameras were forbidden in the room, except for the hidden ones. Still, he was much happier to be outside the room when they broke for lunch, and invited Hajji up to his suite for their own meal.

            “I am not so backwards, you know,” Hajji said as they road the elevator up. “Just because this is my first time out of India in three hundred years.” His English was fluent, but in a thick Indian accent. “We have technology there.”

            “I wasn’t saying you didn’t.”

            “Feliks offered to escort me to New York. Like a guide dog. He’s a dear, but no, I can handle myself.”

            Hajji was twelve hundred years old. Aristotle supposed he could. “Maybe he just wants to see you.”

            “I’m sure he does. But, business before pleasure. I am staying at another hotel. This trip was very last minute.”

            “You can stay here for the day,” Aristotle said, ushering him into his suite. “Just don’t tell Feliks I offered.”

            “My lieutenant is such a jealous little creature, is he not?”

            “Only about you,” he said rather diplomatically, pouring him a glass of his traveling stock. “And children can be amusing.”

            “Aren’t you the talk of the town!”

            “I hope that town isn’t Calcutta.”

            “No, but I am on the internet, thank you very much. And anyway, Feliks can keep nothing from me, and I don’t think he wants to.” They clinked glasses to fatherhood. “Besides, pushing around Chief Enforcer is something that gets you noticed.”

            “He pushed me around, to be precise.”

            “And now he is ... disappeared.”

            “So I understand.”

            Hajji had always been particularly observant, even for a vampire. He looked suspiciously at Aristotle, but said nothing in that quarter, knowing nothing would be gained. Instead he changed the subject. “They talked about Syria a lot.”

            “It’s a very hostile situation.”

            “I was thinking of making a pilgrimage on my return trip.”

            Aristotle wracked his brains, and came up empty. Even if there was a Muslim holy site in Syria, it wasn’t as if Hajji could go anywhere near it or would want to. “May I ask why?”

            “You don’t know the legend, that the first of our kind is buried there?”

            “That old story?” No wonder he hadn’t thought of it. “Of all the legends that might be true or are true, I would be hesitant to categorize that one as deserving of the consideration. If even a second generation Old One was buried there, someone would have found the tomb by now. There’s nothing in Syria but sand and missiles pointed at Israel that only have a striking distance of Lebanon.”

            “You are so sure?”

            “I can’t prove a negative,” he said, “but I would go as far as to say I am fairly sure it’s nonsense. Unless you heard it from a reliable source.” There was one Old One alive and well in India, or so they said. The last sighting of him was in the 1830’s.

            “Not as reliable as an Ancient, no. Just a story I’ve heard again and again, about an important tomb in Syria. I was curious, but now I am inclined to believe you. You are such a killjoy, Aristotle.”

            “Go if you like. Certainly if you find something, take a lot of pictures and send them to me.” He looked at his watch. “I have a meeting with some investors in Alaskan drilling. Do you have anything on your schedule?”

            “Not until the banquet. Do you mind ...?”

            “No. Of course not.” He checked his phone again for messages, then left the other vampire sleeping on the couch.

                        ************************************************

            Alex had to wake as quickly as possible, see that his guests were seen to, then drive to Carson City without doing any serious damage to the car in time for class. He was only five minutes late, which he thought was a considerable victory. The lecture was still on Socrates, whom Aristotle hadn’t known, so he could pay better attention without imagining what reprimands his master would have for the professor. Then it was fielding a call from Ari, who called five minutes after the end of his class. He did not linger on the phone as much as he wanted to because he had guests and they were back in Tahoe, for which he apologized profusely. Ari seemed more amused that he was apologizing to him than anything and wished him well.

            He made it back to the Tahoe house in record time. Amanda and Jimmy were still playing that fighting game, finding it as addictive as he did. “Hey. Sorry – got held up on a phone call.” He dumped his backpack on the table and joined them. His hands were still shaking from the presence of so many mortals for so long and then the stress of driving so quickly. Blood made them stop.

            “So, we were like, really tempted to see what the unlabeled tapes were,” Amanda admitted, her eyes darting to the neatly-stacked VHS tables in the bookshelf. “But we also kind of weren’t. There’s a reason people don’t label tapes.”

            “They’re not unlabeled.” He pulled one out and showed the side label, which had tiny Greek letters. “I don’t know the system, but those are dates. It’s C-SPAN.” He added, “I hope it’s C-SPAN. He says it is. He runs the tape and if he didn’t like the arguments, he tapes it over. These are his favorites. That or they’re secret vampire sex tapes, but I really bet it’s C-SPAN. He gets really obsessed with stuff in the House.”

            “You belong to the nerdiest vampire ever.”

            Alex replaced the tape in its proper order, or what he hoped was its proper order. “It’s not worth denying. Not that I was Mr. Popular when I was mortal.”

            “I thought I was,” Jimmy said. “I was in a band, I had a girlfriend – okay, she was a bit of a skank, but it was the grunge scene. We all were. I was going to make it big. Like Nirvana.”

            Alex raised his eyebrow, his only indication to continue the story.

            “I was one of those accident vampires,” Jimmy said. “Really bad bar fight at a new place. We had no idea what kind of place it was. This audience member brought me across because the paramedics were stuck downtown at with some warehouse fire.”

            “My master says that most vampires are accident vampires,” Alex assured him. “I was an almost-miss. He was planning it, but he drew it out because I had things I wanted to do. Then my liver failed and he got me when I was in ICU. If no one had called him to tell him I was dying, I might be dead.”

            “I assume I wasn’t an accident,” Amanda chipped in. “I mean, he did mention the whole ‘do you want to live forever’ thing to me before he bit me, which for Michael is a lot of forethought. We knew each other for a few weeks leading up to it. That measure didn’t pass, right? The one where all new vampires had to be approved?”

            “I definitely would have heard if it did.” Alex was surprised how easily he picked up Aristotle’s custom of answers that avoided a solid ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Even when he didn’t mean to. “Ever had blood rum? Kinda grows on you.”

                        ************************************************

            The banquet was, as usual, unbearable. At least this time, Aristotle had Hajji to pass it with. The younger vampire was much more interested in circulating the tables and playing who’s-who of the oil world, a game Aristotle had grown tired of long ago. Through a fake but passable Arabian accent, he spent his time talking to the assistant to a senator about prospects in Africa. The assistant mentioned Sudan, as if completely oblivious to the human rights disaster there. Even Aristotle didn’t have it in him to send vampires into a genocide, however easy feeding would be. Disgusted, he sipped his overpriced champagne and left early to field a call from the Elder of New York. “What?” he said when he was safely in the emergency staircase. The Elder was newly-minted as such, after almost everyone left New York either because of the 9/11 attacks or because of the nightclub disaster last year. Aristotle didn’t envy him.

            “You remember Michael?” Dimitri said, barely hiding his frustration.

            “I know a lot of Michaels, but I’m going to take a wild guess and assume he was involved in the nightclub disaster.”

            “Yes. He’s here. He doesn’t know that I know yet, but he is.”

            Aristotle opened his PDA as he talked. “Is anyone with him?”

            “Not that I know of. Just some local thugs – mortals. He’s supposed to be in Paris, isn’t he?”

            “Yes. And if not, he’s forbidden to be within a hundred miles of New York City for the next 49 years. Where is he?”

            “South of Chelsea, moving farther south. I haven’t called the Enforcers. I don’t know if I should.”

            “My rules are not the Code,” Aristotle said. “They are meant to prevent the Code from being broken, and knowing Michael, he’s about to do something very stupid. Keep an eye on him – he’s probably headed to the old club site. I think they’re turning into a Starbucks, but it might not be done yet. I’ll go down myself and try to talk some sense into him.” And possibly, remind him he had a daughter who was waiting for his return to the States. Not that Michael was the best of tutors. “The Enforcers are a last resort.”

            “Okay.” Dimitri sounded considerably better with this news. “We’ll be in touch.”

            Aristotle returned to the banquet to collect Hajji, who was much more interested in vampire scandal than rich human politics. Hajji had a car rented for his stay, so Aristotle merely gave the driver the directions from his PDA. There would be no stopping Hajji, of course, until he told the whole story. “A couple years ago, a fledgling named Amanda decides to open a bar in New York City. She goes through all of the hoops, gets financiers, gets approval from the Elder and the Enforcers, and really shows a lot of responsibility for her age. Everything goes fine until a year ago, maybe a year-and-a-half now, a couple months after it opens. There’s a huge drug bust – turns out her master was using the bar to deal cocaine. Not just in party doses – raw stuff, straight from Vietnam, to buyers. The FBI comes in and takes inventory of everything, finds the hidden stocks. Larry Merlin stays in New York for two weeks, destroying records and the Elder hypnotizes dozens of different agents and reporters. Michael flew the coop at the first sign of trouble, pleaded his case to Elaine in Paris, and got sanctuary with her. Amanda, his thirty-year-old daughter, got the blame, and I set her up with Janette in LA. She was a wreck.”

            “Where is she now?”

            “Tahoe, visiting my son. They’re friends. She’s been on her absolute best behavior. I don’t blame her.”

            “Is she mad at her master?”

            “I think she’s used to his bad parenting. He brought her across in a similar situation.”

            Hajji shook his head. “So what’s he doing in New York?”

            “If he’s going back to the old site – which it sounds like he is – he must be after something he thinks is still there.”

            “A lot of cocaine?”

            “You would think they would have found it. They were so good at finding blood and coffins.”

            “You would think that, but maybe Michael thinks you’re wrong.”

            The former club was not in a district paid much attention to by those who wanted New York to look better for tourists. Even the “Starbucks – Coming Soon!” sign couldn’t glamour up the street of camera shops and no-name video stores with paint covering the windows. Hajji dismissed his driver and told him to keep his phone on.

            It was well after midnight and the street was fairly deserted. They only had to wait a few minutes for all the cars to pass to safely fly up to the roof, faster than any camera could record, to discover the door to the stairwell was already broken open.

            “I believe we have discovered him,” Hajji said with his regular amount of dramatic flourish.

            Aristotle silently flew down the stairs, following the human heartbeats, and landed in what used to be the back of the old club. Since he’d last been here, all the trappings of a night club were removed and a few pieces of Starbucks brand furniture were already in place. Hajji landed silently behind him, sniffing. “Another blasted coffee shop. I am so tired of that scent.”

            “And it doesn’t even smell like coffee yet,” Aristotle said, moving to the door to the basement, which had a separate set of stairs. He remembered this, though his last visit was not concerned with the layout of the building. The door wasn’t opened, but it wasn’t locked, either. Aside from the humans in adjoining buildings, the heartbeats were definitely downstairs.

            There were two of them. Aristotle met them at the bottom of the stairs long before they had time to notice his presence. “You,” he said, focusing on their heartbeats, “should leave. Now.”

            They stared blankly at him for a moment before putting down their clubs and ascending the stairs behind him to leave.

            “Then I expect you to help,” said the vampire in the back corner, who was prying lose a floor tile with a crowbar. “I paid good money for them.” Michael looked up at him. “Don’t look at me that way. I’ll make it worth your while.”

            “I’m sure you think you will. You do have some concept of rules, don’t you? The ones that apply to us?”

            Michael groaned but succeeded in removing the well-glued tile, revealing at treasure horde of white bags. Upon close inspection, they were clear plastic bags filled with white powder like sandbags. Michael picked up the top one and tossed it at Aristotle, who caught it. “For your trouble.”

            Hajji peered in the bag, a took a sniff. Then he staggered back, wiping his nose. “So ... wow. Cocaine does work on us. I’ll be a moment.”

            Aristotle growled and threw the bag back at Michael. “I can have the Enforcers here in five minutes for violating the Code.”

            “I know enough of the Code to know breaking-and-entering an abandoned building does not threaten the nature of our existence, just because it violates your arbitrary rules.”

            Aristotle pointed to the cocaine. “This is why the Enforcers had to banish you to Europe in the first place. You attracted mortal attention – and ruined your daughter’s club.”

            “Like she’s not capable of building another club.” Michael groaned. “If it makes you feel better, there’s be enough money after I unload this to finance two new clubs, if she wants it.”

            A second later Aristotle had Michael against the wall, held a foot off the ground by his rarely-used Ancient strength, and all Michael could do was bare his fangs and wiggle helplessly. “You listen to me,” Aristotle said, his eyes glowing red. “Last time you were here, you nearly exposed the entire New York Community and ruined your daughter’s dream. I had to relocate twenty vampires while you let a thirty-year-old fledgling take the blame. And now you still want to profit from it?”

            Michael’s tone slowly changed to laughter. “So the geek’s gloves finally come off. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

            “You’d be surprised what I have in me,” he snarled. He wasn’t sure why he was so angry about this, but he was, and tossed Michael across the room. “I don’t know why Elaine gave you sanctuary, but you’d better crawl back to it. You’re forbidden from my services until I find some reason to forgive you – and in this respect, I am not very forgiving.”

            Michael looked at him, looked at the serene Hajji on the steps, and made a break for the exposed bags. When Aristotle chased, he tore one open and tossed it at his head, adequately slowing him down to give the younger vampire enough time to flee. Aristotle let the bag drop and removed his glasses to clean them, only to find his hands felt funny. The next sound he heard was Hajji’s laughter. “Smile!”

            Hajji had a camera. That bastard. And he took a picture. Yet, the vampire couldn’t find it in him to be all that angry. If anything, he was thrilled by this prospect. He wanted to hug Hajji. He wanted to dance. Fuck, he wanted to tear the place apart. “...Fuck.” He could barely stand, and scrambled to the steps next to Hajji. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. This is so much worse than hashish.”

            “You mean better.”

            “Oh my G-d, I do,” he giggled, his fangs descended. “I fucking do.”  

Chapter 5

            Alex was nervous, but he was trying to hide it. He’d heard nothing from his master in the past day and most of the following night, even after class, and all the while, the link was distracting him from trying to learn about his master. Or what the philosophy professor thought of his master. He was not accustomed to receiving strong emotions from the link, but wherever Aristotle was, he was having an indecipherably good time, and not letting Alex in on it was making him downright jealous.

            Returning to the house, Jimmy was helping himself to the new skateboard, or trying to. Being able to fly was supernatural, and had little to do with the human balance required to operate the board normally. Amanda was much better, and managed to circle around the driveway without falling over as Jimmy watched on.

            “She is so good,” he said to Alex. “So ... awesome.”

            Alex raised an eyebrow. “You should do it.”

            “What?”

            “Stop mooning after her and go for her. I would, if I stared at her like you do.”

            “I do not!”

            He smiled for the first time since late last night. “You do. I think she’s being polite by not noticing it.”

            “If I were mortal she would be so ... above me.”

            “But you’re not. And she’s not. You’re not even that different in age.” He added, “Trust me, I envy you. Not because I like Amanda like that, but because I couldn’t do anything if I did. Aristotle has me on this whole ‘don’t drink from other vampires’ thing.”

            “That’s a little whacked.”

            “Did your master tell you something similar when you were a fledgling?”

            Jimmy still technically was, but he wasn’t an infant like Alex. “He just said to stay away from older vampires. They would break me in half. It took me five years to have the courage to walk up to one and she still rejected me.”

            “Well he was probably looking out for your best interests. Feeding a fledgling without its master’s permission used to be forbidden – really forbidden. You could get killed for it.”

            Jimmy looked skeptical. “When was this? Ancient Egypt?”

            “And into the Middle Ages, I think. Maybe later. I’m not clear on the specifics.” He saw Amanda approaching them. “Anyway, my advice stands.”

            “Says the virgin.”

            Alex blushed and congratulated Amanda on her newfound talent to distract himself from the link, which had been blasting for so long and now was mysteriously quiet. When they returned to the house, he called again, and got the answering machine again. Aristotle’s phone was still on, but he wasn’t picking up. Alex growled and dialed again.

            His master’s voice was ragged. “What?”

            “Um, hi.” He suddenly felt like he was intruding. “Are you okay?”

            “I’m fine. Keep your voice down. Ow.” He sounded like he was in pain. “Loud noises. What can I do for you?” He asked in a way that clearly implied he did not want to be on the phone.

            “Sorry, I just felt – “

            “What, did you feel that? I guess I couldn’t control it.” Aristotle spoke slowly and quietly. “My apologies. Can I go now?”

            “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

            “Do you know anything about a crash?”

            “What, like a car crash?”

            “No, when you crash. From drugs. What to do.”

            “What drugs?”

            “Cocaine.”

            He could not have stopped himself from laughing. “You did what?”

            “Cocaine. I said that already. Ask your friends. Former druggies.”

            “I think you have to wait it out.”

            “Check the internet.”

            “I’ll check, but really, wait it out. And don’t do anymore.”

            “It wasn’t intentional. He threw it at me.” And without further explanation, he terminated the call.

            Flabbergasted, Alex put away his cell phone and looked to his curious friends. “What do you do when you’re coming down from cocaine?”

            “Think about how to get more,” Jimmy said. “Why?”

            “I shouldn’t tell. I don’t have the whole story yet.” But he had guests – and Aristotle went on and on about the importance of being hospitable to guests. Seeing to their every need. “But if I guess if it’s not Code-breaking...”

                        ************************************************

            Aristotle felt bad about hanging up on his son, but he felt bad about everything. Lying on the couch in his hotel suite, he was absolutely positive of only one thing, and it was that he was incapable of feeling anything but misery. He could not dream of relief.

            And he certainly did not want Feliks Twist shaking him by his torn shirt to point of almost throttling him. “How could you do this to me?”

            On any other day he might have been amused by a livid Feliks. The British vampire was so pale, unusually so even for their kind, that seeing his face red could have brought a smile to Aristotle’s face, if he wasn’t in the middle of a major depression brought on by accidentally ingesting a face full of cocaine. “...What?”

            Feliks looked ready to cry. He really did. While Aristotle struggled for something resembling a question, Hajji’s voice interrupted them. “Put down Aristotle. He’s had a rough ... day.”

            “Master!” His attention immediately diverted, Feliks quite literally flew over the couch and out of Aristotle’s view. He put his head back down. There was no reason to interrupt their moment, and he couldn’t understand Tamil. He spoke a number of Indian languages, but this wasn’t one of them. Instead he waited, then slowly sat up to take stock of himself.

            His clothes were still mostly on. Good. He was no longer caked in powdered cocaine. Also good. His suite appeared trashed. Not so good. He had a pounding headache. Bad.

            There was a dead body on the floor, beneath the desk. A drained female. Very bad.

            Apparently they didn’t have a word for “cocaine” or “Starbucks” in Tamil, so Aristotle grasped that Hajji was offering a rather slow but steady explanation of the previous night’s events. Let Hajji deal with his child. Aristotle checked his phone, with only a missed call from a Dimitri. Good. A single one wasn’t so bad. He stepped over the body and opened the mini-fridge. He couldn’t find the glasses, just a lot of broken glass, so he drank straight from the bottle. The blood wine did a lot for his headache and he held it out to Hajji. “Want some?”

            “Yes.” Hajji finished his speech to a calmer Feliks, kissed him on the cheek, then flew over to take the bottle out of Aristotle’s hands and finish it off right there. “Thank you.” He took out another bottle, this one for the new arrival. “You were right. I should have come to Toronto first. Though I admit it was a fun ride while it lasted. Aristotle, you have a dead hooker on your bed.”

            “That would make two,” Aristotle said, gesturing to the one at their feet. Hajji hadn’t even noticed her, but didn’t look surprised. “Thank goodness Dimitri owes me a favor. Feliks, make yourself at home,” as his master clearly had already done. At least Hajji was also dressed. Feliks could be such a jealous little bitch. Though there were blank spots in Aristotle’s memory of the night before and much of the morning, he would still feel it if he’d had any of Hajji’s blood. Instead, apparently, they sated themselves on whomever they encountered on the way home. He opened his phone and dialed. “Dimitri? This is Aristotle. Did Michael leave town?”

            “First thing this evening, JFK International. What did you say to him?”

            “Doesn’t matter. Look, I need a clean-up crew for my hotel room – soon.” He nudged the dead woman with his foot. She was already stiff. “Very soon. Consider it payment for getting Michael out of your hair.”

            “Done.” Then the Elder asked nervously, “How big a crew, exactly?”

            Two hours later, they were safety ensconced to Hajji’s room in another hotel, and the three bodies (a third was found in the bathroom) were being removed by Dimitri’s thralls. Aristotle would not be returning to the hotel or the conference, which was practically over anyway. He would catch a flight first thing in the evening back to Tahoe. He also rented another room in the hotel. Though Hajji owed him, he knew better than to be trapped during the day with a reunited Hajji and his youngest child. 

            Feliks was in a considerably apologetic mood about throttling him earlier and distracted himself from what he was probably thinking of doing long enough to actually ask Aristotle some questions about how Alex was doing.

            “Fine. Though a little confused. Seems I blasted what I was thinking over the link – “

            To Hajji’s open question, Feliks said, “I assure you, you did not fail to do the same.”

“ - and then when he finally the courage to call, I nearly tore his head off. Fortunately his generation is very familiar with mind-altering powders.”

            “And Michael threw it in your face?”

            “Very effective at slowing down an Ancient,” Hajji said. “I wonder when hunters will figure it out. And I have a picture.”

            “No! Don’t show him!” But it was already too late, and Hajji was too amused with his new digital camera not to immediately bring up the picture for Feliks to giggle over. “I think this campaign of looking harmless is backfiring.”

            “Oh, I’ll send you a copy when you’re in a better mood and I have a computer,” Hajji said.

                        ************************************************

            Not to be a third wheel, Aristotle retreated to his room for the day and sleep an unusually long time, then spent the afternoon playing EverQuest instead of walking in on anything. Hajji and Feliks did share a drink with him after dark and saw him off, as if he didn’t know how to call a cab to the airport himself.

            It was nearly dawn when he was finally back in Tahoe. Alex picked him up at the airport, a mixture of eagerness and tension, which Aristotle relieved by embracing him. “Sorry about yesterday.”

            “You’re going to tell me what happened.”

            “I am. Just not right this second.” He climbed in the passenger seat, content that if he was going to die, being killed by his son’s driving was not the worst possible way to go. “Feliks says hi.”

            “I didn’t know he was going to be in New York.”

            “Neither did I.” He couldn’t explain the bit with Michael until Amanda left. He wasn’t sure it was his place to tell her about her master. “So what did you break?”

            “Only the second Super Nintendo controller, and I ordered a new one on eBay. It’ll be here next week, probably Tuesday.”

            “Good boy,” Aristotle said, relaxing. Alex’s driving had improved, no disasters had happened, and the link was peaceful now that they were back together.

            Amanda and Jimmy were still at the house, and would be leaving the following night. “Hello, Aristotle,” they both nervously mumbled. Kids. In a few hundred years they would be full of themselves and their newfound adulthood and forget that they were supposed to respect him like everyone else did.

            He excused himself to make a call, and found the others lounging around with the normal lethargy of an early morning, just before the light. Alex was already asleep in the lounge chair and Jimmy was fading. Fortunately for him, Amanda was in the kitchen and away from the others, pouring herself a glass of wine. “Mr. Aristotle.”

            He just indicated for her to pour a second for him and sat down at the counter. “I saw you master in New York.”

            “In the city? He’s not supposed to be within a hundred miles of it!” Clearly, and with no surprise to Aristotle, she had not been told by him or anyone else. “Is he still there?”

            “No. I just spoke to Elaine – he’s back in Paris. He just went back for four pounds of cocaine that were hidden under a tile in the basement.”

            Her hand was shaking as she poured. “The cops wrecked that place.”

            “But missed one stash. The Elder called, asked me what to do, so I told Michael to get lost. He hurled an open bag at my head. When I came down, he was already on the plane. If Alex was a little moody last night, that’s why.” He drank. “I tried to remind him about the rules. He did offer to finance a place, with the money he would have made. But unloading that amount was too dangerous and he left it behind on my orders.”

            “Were the Enforcers involved?”

            “He didn’t technically break the Code this time, so no. I don’t like to involve them if I can possibly avoid it.” On this, he could sense her relief. Michael would probably not survive a serious confrontation with the Enforcers. No one did. “He’s forbidden to use my services until I feel like forgiving him,” which to some active vampires was a death sentence, “and I will probably feel like doing that when he owns up to you for New York.”

            “Did you tell him that?”

            “It was implied, but I wouldn’t put my money on him getting it. You can tell him, if you want.”

            She looked away. Of course she didn’t have it in her to give Michael the reprimand he so clearly deserved, even if she was inching toward it. He was still her master and she was still his fledgling, and Aristotle didn’t doubt for a second that she still loved Michael as much as she had when he brought her across. Lovers were so uneager to confront and so quick to forgive. “Thank you for not calling the Enforcers.”

            “You’re welcome.”

            “If Michael was even thinking of speaking to me again, don’t you think he would have called before coming back to the States? He knows my number.” And she couldn’t sense him, because their link was very weak. She probably didn’t even know she could sense if he was alive, and wouldn’t realize it until he died and the link was severed. “But he is impulsive.”

            “A lot of vampires are. They think immortality comes without strings,” he said. “On the other hand, if he wasn’t so impulsive, he might not have made you. Most vampires are made on impulse.”

            “You planned Alex.”

            “Do I look like I do anything without as much paperwork as possible?” he said, which put a little smile on her face. “And I almost messed it up. He was on his deathbed when I finally turned him. Another few hours and he would have been too weak to accept the change.” The thought made him shiver.

            “Alex is going to be stronger than either of us, isn’t he? Because of the way you made him. He didn’t say it, but I think so anyway.”

            He accepted the change in conversation. He didn’t really want to tell her, but a non-answer would just confirm her suspicions. “Yes. But it has its disadvantages. He has a lot of dependence on me and he will for a long time.”

            “He was freaking out when you left. He did a good job of hiding it, I think.”

            She was fairly intelligent for a thirty-year-old. Aristotle reminded himself that age wasn’t necessarily a requirement for wisdom. “The way it used to be, you didn’t leave your master’s side for a hundred years, even if you could. If you didn’t like your master, too bad. He could destroy you.” The final law still stood, technically. Michael could destroy her and not have to justify his actions. But if she didn’t already know that, this was not the time to tell her. “Some customs have improved with time.”

            The morning light was now visible through the skylight. Even if she wanted to continue the conversation, she probably could not. “Thank you, Aristotle.”

            He smiled. “My thanks are not required.”

                        ************************************************

            The rest of the summer passed peacefully for the two residents of the Tahoe house. Aristotle was pleased that June was behind him, with both the visit to his master’s grave and the Solstice being the down points of his year, and Alex celebrated his (real) twenty-fifth birthday in August. Vampires didn’t traditionally celebrate birthdays, though in the last few centuries fledglings held on to the date as something more significant for a few more years before discarding it.

            “You haven’t been through enough calendar changes to have no idea when you were born,” Aristotle said, having been born in no less than four different calendars just within Europe.

            He was pleased with Alex’s progress. Alex was very smart to take the course, accidentally forcing himself away from Aristotle and into the company of dozens of humans for hours at a time, three times a week. When Alex came home one night particularly testy about it, Aristotle grinned and said he couldn’t have planned it better himself. Alex hurled a book at him, but not with enough force or accuracy to it to come anywhere near him. Aristotle was tempted to go on about showing some respect to Euclid instead of tossing him across the kitchen, but decided to let it pass. It was the vampire acting out, not Alex, and he was reluctant to punish them both.

            Now if he had thrown Plato’s Republic, that would have been different.

            As Alex was reveling in his new life, the vampire was reveling in its growing strength. Unlike Alex, it could not be reasoned with. The downside of teaching the vampire to hunt was it only fed its innate desire to do it, and Aristotle was definitely exceeding the limit to how many deaths in the Tahoe area could go unnoticed. The vampire would never be satisfied by the bottle; they all just were good at convincing themselves of otherwise.

            More disconcerting was that Alex’s natural human impulses, stifled so long by their weakness against the vampire and his avoidance of human contact as a necessity, were also emerging again. Desperate to please his master, Alex didn’t show his regret – or thought he didn’t. Aristotle didn’t bother to shake him out of it anyway. “They’re our food, Alex. If you don’t want to kill, you have that opportunity. Modern technology and all that. But if you keep your mortal sense of guilt, it will weigh you down. Eventually, it will kill you.”

            “You say that like it’s easy,” Alex said.

            “I never said it was. Every vampire has to make peace with the killer inside them, very early on. Usually in their first year. If they don’t succeed, no good comes of it.” He took Alex’s arm. “You are not mortal. You are not bound by their rules. They kill for their own sustenance, and so do you. A vampire has to control his thoughts and instincts, like a driver does a chariot.”

            Alex grinned. “You mean a philosopher. You’re quoting yourself.”

            He growled. “Maybe.” But he wasn’t truly annoyed. If he was, he would have stopped Alex from taking that damn philosophy class.

            “The chariot reference gave it away.”

            “I know it did!” But he would rather have Alex amused at his own annoyance than the other way around.

            There were other ways of placating the vampire, and Aristotle was more than happy to oblige on those occasions. Alex finally abandoned his sexual mores, driven by the adolescent vampire and his own nature as a healthy young man. He wasn’t strong enough to control himself long enough with his food, and he seemed to have some understanding of Aristotle’s restriction on feeding on other vampires, a necessary requirement for sex. For now, his master could provide him with everything he wanted.

            Aristotle had not been in a sustained relationship for centuries. Possibly since his years on the Council. He knew he wasn’t the most attractive of vampires, and he made himself less so by dampening his aura and hiding his age. Vampires were always attracted to power, wanting to taste it themselves. He would rather keep others at a distance, a method that had preserved him through the centuries, with the occasional friendship that was close enough to turn into something more. He knew it was directly related to his experience as a fledgling, but never saw any reason to overcome it and throw himself into the hedonistic side of the vampire scene. If anyone would reject him, it would be himself.

            Reluctantly he admitted that Alex was everything he wanted. A lot of that was the blood link talking, yes, but Alex was perfect in his eyes. Young, handsome, not overly built, and his body unscarred by Aristotle’s standards. All he had were tiny nicks from his various procedures and scarring in his skin from the dozens of IV tubes, and a few scrapes on his legs from his childhood skateboarding days, which amounted to nothing by any standard but the modern world’s. He would look this way forever – a young man, now just an adult, ready for anything the world handed him.

To top it off, Aristotle got more sleep than he did in years with Alex beside him.

            The phone woke him one afternoon, and he looked at the clock first. Figuring it was a European vampire and wondering why they were calling on the house line, he reached for the phone and answered it. “Hello?”

            “Aristotle? It’s Linda. From down the street?”

            ‘Down the street’ referred to the next complex on the shore, some half a mile down. The Cormans owned a yacht, and sometimes invited whoever was local and owned a fashionable enough house for a ride on it. As it was almost always during the day, Aristotle always said no. “Yes, hi.” He tried not to sound half-asleep and looked over at Alex, dead to the world. “What can I do for you?”

            “I know you work all day, but we haven’t seen you for years it feels like, and we haven’t met your son – “

            “Stepson, technically, but yes.”

            “ – so Richard and I were just wondering if you wanted to come by for a little shindig we’re hosting on Saturday – 7pm to question mark.”

            “On the yacht? I’m not really a water person.”

            “Then why do you live on a lake?”

            “The view.”

            “Anyway, it’s at the house. Just some locals, and Richard’s business partner and his wife are in town with us, and they’re a lot of fun. Will you consider it?”

            He looked at Alex. “Let me discuss it with my stepson and call you back tonight.”

            “Great! We can’t wait to see you.” Of course, she took it as yes. She was that sort of person. “And you don’t have to bring anything!”

            Of course he would, a bottle of red wine in case they didn’t have one open (unlikely but possible) to spike in the bathroom, but he didn’t tell her that. He let her hang up and replaced the phone, then rolled over and put his arm around Alex. He wasn’t tired and wouldn’t go back to sleep, but he didn’t want to move, either.

            Alex woke when the sun disappeared, yawning with his fangs, a bit incoherent and anxious until he bit into Aristotle’s arm, only drawing enough blood to soothe the beast. He licked the wound until he it closed. “Sorry.”

            Aristotle just ran his hand through Alex’s hair, a mess from sleep and blood sweat. “You need a bath.”

            “I’m not a baby.”

            “I didn’t say you were.” He got up, putting on a robe and retrieving a bottle from his mini-fridge. “The Cormans invited us over for some kind of gathering on Saturday. She called it a shindig.”

            “Wow, she was trying to be cool. She could just say barbeque but I bet she thinks they’re above that. A servant will just be grilling something. Why? Are you considering it?”

            “Mortal facades are worth keeping up. I’ve refused her so many times she’s probably positive I’m a loner with bodies in the backyard.”

            “The bodies aren’t in the backyard.”

            “And now I have a stepson for them to gossip about. If they’re going to do it, we might as well overhear them while drinking their wine.” He kissed him. “I have to get some work done. Unless you have a good excuse I’m telling her we’re coming.”

            “I have my final paper due!”

            “You did it already.”

            “Stop reading my mind!” 

            Aristotle ignored his pleas, smiling as he left.

                        ************************************************

            Alex returned from Carson City with a triumphant look on his face, and dropped the paper down on Aristotle’s desk. Aristotle adjusted his glasses and read the title page. “‘Aristotle on Mathematical Existence.’ Well, I agree with you on the first point, which is that math exists.”

            “You owe me.”

            “Ah, but knowledge is its own reward.” He frowned. “Who said that? Am I quoting myself again?”

            Alex opened his textbook to Raphael’s famous painting, The School of Athens. In it was, to his Renaissance imagination, every important ancient philosopher (and himself), with old Plato in the center pointing upwards, and a younger Aristotle beside him pointing forward, towards the world in front of them and the crowd. According to art historians, it was supposed to represent their stances on the physical world. Plato focused on the metaphysical one, while Aristotle used his philosophical learning to study biology.

            “Too much color,” Aristotle said to the painting. “White was so fashionable in Athens. And cheaper. No dyes. And I don’t know why Plato is barefoot. I think Raphael got him mixed up with Socrates, who was known for that.” He glanced at the representation of Plato’s favorite student. “It’s pretty close. My hair was redder and we kept our beards properly trimmed. This is why I hate portraits of me; they show me when I had hair.” He still had hair, just mainly around his ears and the back of his head, and it was all gray now. “Also Raphael wasn’t there. That’s just grossly inaccurate. Now what do you want? Should I get out your high school prom photos and comment on your acne?”

            “I didn’t go to prom and you know it.”

            “Chess club then. I’m sure I have something on you.”

            “Quiz club?”

            “Yes. That’s it. And no, I’m not telling you where the negatives are. I’m saving that for blackmail. Might need it some day.”

            “Fine.” But Alex wasn’t done. “I have other questions.”

            “I’m sure you do.”

            “I want to know about the death of Socrates.”

            Aristotle idly types a few words on his keyboard, checking his mail and his downloads. “I wasn’t there, as I’m sure you’re well aware. And it is a subject that is extensively discussed in literature from the time. I don’t really know what I can say that will clear up your questions. You’ll have to be more specific.”

            “Why wasn’t Plato there?” He meant at the execution, of course, when Socrates drank his court-appointed hemlock after a mockery of a trial. His most notable student’s absence was recorded in history.

            Aristotle stopped typing. “I believe it says he was ill. Sick to his stomach over the whole thing, to be precise. Which is, for the most part, accurate.” He could sense Alex probing the link, which was about as effective at hurling a snowball at a brick wall, but it also meant his son knew he was holding back. “I can’t tell you why he didn’t go. He never actually told me, but I think he regretted his decision. His relationship with Socrates was more complicated than it’s made out to be.”

            Alex, of course, wouldn’t quit. “Socrates was on trial for pederasty.”

            Damn, he was a good guesser. “Pederasty was not illegal. The charges were mainly irrelevant to the case, as history doesn’t disguise. Seducing the sons of Athens either for sex or philosophy was not a crime, certainly not one with a death penalty. But Socrates was an atheist, so they could nail him on impiety – which was a capital crime.” The historical Aristotle famously fled Athens at the end of his life when the same accusation was selected to eliminate him for being a Macedonian and political ally of the Macedonian court.

            Alex sat in the extra chair, having no intention of going away or leaving this subject alone. He was right; he had earned it. It wasn’t the only reason he took the course, but it was one of them. “Something bad happened between Plato and Socrates. Something not philosophic.”

            “I don’t know. I really don’t. He never spoke of it directly, though he took a rather aggressive stance against all sexual activity within the Academy. Which is where that damn word platonic comes from. He couldn’t put a stopper on society, but he could berate us – for hours if he wanted to.” He added, “It was the part of him I didn’t care for. I suppose I should account for his own emotional trauma, but Plato was above petty psychology. He was utterly devoted to the ultimate search for wisdom. Even if I have a perfectly clear lens doesn’t mean I want to look at something.”

            “That doesn’t sound like you. The only thing I love more than Plato is –’”

            “ – the truth, yes. Please stop quoting me. Yes, well, that’s all well and good in a night class at an American University, but real life is quite different.” He glared at Alex, who withered under the expression. “You can call me a hypocrite if you like, if that’s what you want.”

            “Ari, no – “

            “It would be an accurate description of me, being unwilling to assess a situation with a purely scientific eye. I wrote at great length about love and friendship; I should be able to apply my theories to myself. That was Socrates’ great victory, if the recorded speech he gave at his trial is accurate. He was willing to inform everyone of his opinion of himself and of them, and its accuracy was so stunning that it damned him. And he went happily to his death.” And Aristotle ran away, to die outside of his beloved Athens. “Believe me, I wish I could have known him. I wish that I was half the philosopher he was. And I wish Plato had been as brave as he had been, but he wasn’t.” His eyes, he supposed, were almost pleading. “Let me have one aspect of my life not open to introspection.”

            “I’m sorry.” Alex went for the open textbook, but Aristotle put a hand down to stop him.

            “Leave it.”

            “I shouldn’t have – “

            “No. You should have. No one should be afraid of seeking the truth.” He was more angry at himself than Alex, but he couldn’t express that. It was probably obvious enough. “I need to get back to work.” He just needed to be alone. After so many years of lamenting his loneliness, the very alive connection he had to the other person in the room was suddenly too crowding.

            His son knew a dismissal when he heard one. Aristotle sighed. He would have to explain later that it was fine, that Alex was just curious and didn’t know how far he was taking it, that Aristotle should have been more comfortable answering questions anyway, and that he still loved him. Fledglings were so sensitive, as he had been as a man of Alex’s age, a student to the greatest teacher in the world, one of the greatest minds in human history. When a young, brazen Aristotle defeated the elderly Plato in a public argument, the schoolmaster left Athens for three full months. Aristotle cried when he returned, in private, but unlike now, his tears were not of blood.

Chapter 6

            It was not very hard to make up with Alex. He only asked not to dwell on it, knowing full well his son would never bring up the subject again if he could possibly avoid it. He didn’t want to put him off his own decisions to study philosophy, and said so, but even Aristotle had nerves that could be struck. He didn’t want to think about it anymore, but instead of getting drunk (a usual method) or throwing himself into a new project (not always successful), he got drunk on Alex’s blood, as intoxicating as it had been the night he brought him across. He tossed concerns about the irony of their previous conversation and their current condition aside, but kept the link tightly closed between them. Alex would be spared his pain, and know only pleasure, and through the blood he would receive it in return. Such a perfect little circle they made.

            The old custom of a hundred years was looking better all the time. He wouldn’t hold him to it, of course, but it was a pleasant thought nonetheless.

            Friday they went to Stateline, to meet with a courier Aristotle liked to use for documents vampires discovered they needed yesterday, and celebrated Alex’s course completion by sneaking up on two very lost hikers on the way home. Scenic Tahoe had its advantages, especially in the summer. One of the hikers had a habit of eating coffee beans, and being Alex’s meal, the result was a hyperactive vampire tearing through the woods all the way home and nearly flying right through the glass doors on the deck. He stopped himself by grabbing the railing, and tore it right off. Aristotle wondered if any of the house would be left standing by the end of the year, but he did little to Alex beside looking at him with a ‘tsk tsk’ sound.

            Despite Alex’s soothing presence (once he calmed down), Aristotle got very little sleep on Saturday. Elaine called with a Parisian passport emergency her own people couldn’t solve, and he had to make the documents himself and have them overnighted. It was daylight and his son couldn’t help him, not that it was beyond his abilities to finish the passports and other necessary documentation for three different vampires in time for the courier to swing by at 6. A very relieved Elaine thanked him, sang his praises for a little while, then let him go. With barely an hour to sunset, he returned to bed still clothed, only kicking off his shoes, and slept.

            He woke when Alex did, and more slowly, quieting his own vampire as Alex reached for the nearest available bottle.

            “No wine,” Aristotle reminded him. “We have that party tonight.”

            “I forgot about that.” He looked at his fully-clothed master, himself only in a T-shirt and boxers. “Do you always get up and work when I sleep?”

            “Elaine just called me with some emergency.”

            “What if you weren’t available?”

            “Then she would find someone else who wouldn’t do as good a job.” He dressed while Alex showered. It was easier to dress for mortals, because he didn’t really care about their opinion. Vampires were all about image, especially amongst themselves. He would only know these neighbors until they flipped their house for a profit or another wildfire burned it down. Or he hoped so.

            When he made it down to the kitchen, Alex was filling his flask for the night. “What do you want? Blood, or a mix?”

            “Just blood. The bottle with the blue label.”

            Alex pulled out the bottle and uncorked it. Because he was lazy, he used one of his fangs. Or maybe he just liked doing it. “Do they really have donor centers for bottled blood?”

            “They say all of their donors are willing, but that’s nonsense. The high end stuff is obviously someone who was drained to death. That’s what makes it good. The fear of death. You can taste it.” He put his own flask down on the counter for Alex to fill. “The normal blood, middle grade and lower grade, I’m pretty sure that’s from those blood banks that pay homeless people in cookies. I used to be friendly with a major distributor before he was bought out, but I never asked him about it specifically.”

            “Are we going with the stepson story or the adopted son story?”

            “Stepson.”

            “Did you give a name for my mom?”

            “No. If it comes up, it’s too painful to talk about.”

            “Then they’ll be all embarrassed.”

            “That’s how you stop them from asking questions.” They hid their flasks under their jackets, and they were off.

                        ************************************************

            “You made it!” A very blond woman (with very brown roots) greeted them at the door, and accepted the bottle of wine Aristotle offered. “And thank you. Can I call you – “

            “Aristotle, yes. And this is my stepson, Alex. Alex, Linda Corman.”

            “So nice to finally meet you!” She was definitely way too excited as she shook Alex’s hand. She also had too many rings on, in his opinion. He thought the rich tried to be understated. “Let me show you in and introduce you. We have some friends in from Richard’s business, and the Feldmans from down the road, and their friends.”

            Alex looked to his master, who was much better at pretending to be way more excited to meet these mortals. Ari was going to owe him for this.

            It was a wine-and-cheese sort of affair, or at least that portion of it was, which was much better for them than sitting down for a meal. Catered, of course – Linda Corman didn’t look like she would be caught dead buying a cheese wheel in a grocery store. Her husband was stuffing himself, but stopped long enough to introduce himself. He was a portly, middle-aged and overly tanned fellow who seemed to think Aristotle was a day trader and was quickly after him for stock tips, and then when Ari corrected him (he worked in estates), asked him about the real estate market.

            The rest were a collection of people rich enough to own a summer house on Lake Tahoe and people lucky enough to be friends with them. One aggressive mother was very interested when Alex answered that he was working for his stepfather since graduating from Harvard. “What was your degree in?”

            “Doctorate in computer science.”

            “My son is a junior, and he’s trying to decide whether to apply to Harvard or Yale early decision – “

            “Harvard.” Even though he had never been there except once to tour the campus while looking at grad schools, he was ready to endorse it. “Yale is in New Haven, and New Haven is a terrible place to be.”

            “Brown has early action. You can apply early but you don’t have to commit. I’ve heard good things about it.”

            He shrugged. “It’s been awhile since I applied anywhere.”

            “He’s very nervous about college. Maybe you could speak to him.”

            As long as it ended the conversation, he would agree. “Sure. Who is he?”

            She pointed out the terminally-bored teenager on the deck, and he politely nodded, grabbing a little plate of various disgusting-smelling cheeses as he went, then depositing them all through the cracks of the deck.

            “You’re that guy,” said the girl sitting next to the high school kid. She was older – definitely in college. “That crazy guy who skateboards at like, four in the morning.”

            “I’m kind of a night person.” He tried to look at her face, and not her neck, which was so delightfully bare. “Skateboarding does not make you crazy.”

            “That’s not what I meant!” All right, so she wasn’t the brightest bulb. He cared more about her heartbeat than her brains. “I saw you grab onto a moving van. They didn’t even notice you. Isn’t that dangerous?”

            “That’s what helmets are for.” He would have to pass her house less, whoever she was. “Hi, I’m Alex.”

            She shook his hand. “Summer. Yeah, I know, my parents were going through this hippie phase when they named me. Now they’re total sellouts.”

            “To what?” He pulled his hand back as quickly as possible because it was shaking.

            “What do you mean?”

            “What have they sold out to?”

            She blanked. “Like, their culture. They’re yuppies now.”

            “Selling out implies that someone bought your ideals.”

            “You know what I mean.” She huffed and grabbed a glass form the passing tray. “It’s not literal.” She seemed inclined to leave and he was not inclined to stop her, however much he wanted to needle her about her very shallow understanding of cultural change and the influence of wealth in society. She was just too tempting.

He shook his head, and sat down next to the quiet kid he was supposed to be talking to. “Hey.”

“Hey.” The kid looked up, and even in the poor lighting on the deck, his eyes were still bloodshot.

“You came baked?”

“The only way to get through these things. At least you’re old enough to drink. I’m having to cut back, anyway. Study for the SATs.”

“Your mom didn’t notice?”

“She thinks I have ADD or something. Connor, by the way.”

“Alex. Your mom wanted me to talk to you about college.”

“Why? Do you work in some admissions office?”

“No. I think she’s just asking because I told her I went to Harvard.”

“Harvard? That’s supposed to be awesome.”

Alex grinned. “Dude, you are totally the Brown type. And I did undergrad at MIT anyway. What the hell is that noise?”

“The Corman’s dog. He’s supposed to be all trained and stuff, but he isn’t. They don’t have the patience. He’s in the pen.” He stood up. “I’ll show you.”

The pen wasn’t used the train of a dog hurling itself against it, and when they approached by walking across the lawn, it made a horrible squeal as the dog began to bark more ferociously. “What the hell is that?” It looked like a dog with its face flattened. It had white fur like a poodle, but was way too big. And it was definitely barking at him.

“It’s a labradoodle. The latest craze in dog breeding. A cross between a Labrador retriever and a toy poodle.”

“Wow. That is ... I don’t know anything about dogs, and I can already tell that was a horrible idea.” And it would probably good idea to hypnotize this dog or move away, because it was really after him now.

Or it would have been was more accurate, because the dog managed to tear down the rusty fence door between it and hurl itself at Alex, sinking its teeth into his hand. “Ow! Shit!” He had so much trouble hypnotizing animals. Maybe it was like Aristotle said, that they were hard because they didn’t have too much intelligence, like this failed science experiment of a breed. Instead he did what came naturally to him, which was to bare his fangs and growl at the dog, who took off running with a whimper and actually went right into the dog house inside its cage.

“Holy shit,” Connor said, his reflexes fortunately dulled by his drugged state. “You’re bleeding.”

He was. He covered a hand over his eyes and closed his mouth, shoving down the vampire. When he was breathing steady again, he looked down at his hand, which was quickly healing, and wiped it on the inside of his jacket. “No, it’s cool.”

“Dude, you should totally – “

“I’m fine.” He presented his now-healed hand. It was too dark to see any remaining traces of his blood on the skin. “Look. Didn’t even break the skin. Don’t tell the Cormans, okay? They’ll just make a big deal out of it.”

“Sure, but you should still get it checked out.” Connor looked back warily at the dog pen, but that dog was not coming out of his shelter anytime soon.

When they returned to the party, Ari was waiting by the door, if a little hidden by the fake plant on the wall. “What did you do?” he whispered.

“Dog. Freaked out and bit me.”

Ari looked around, then grabbed his sleeve and dragged him back out on the deck, which was now empty. “Did he draw blood?”

“Yeah, but no one saw it before it healed.”

“Did it drink your blood?”

“What? I don’t know. Maybe it got a mouthful.” When he looked up from his hand, his master was gone, already standing at the entrance to the dog pen. Alex quickly caught up. “I’m sure it’s had all its shots.”

“It’s not you that concerns me for once,” Ari said, and reached in to grab the limp dog and pull him out just enough for the head to show. The dog was in some kind of trance as he pulled open his mouth to look at his canines. “Congratulations.” He unceremoniously shoved the dog back in its house, and closed the pen best he could in its broken state. “You made their dog into a vampire.”

 “What?”

 “Or a carouche. A lesser form of vampire. Hopefully a carouche. It depends what its first blood is, human or animal. If it drinks animal blood, it’ll be a carouche, and just go after animals. Vampire dog is going to go after the bigger kill.”

            “What the hell are we going to do?”

            “Nothing.” Aristotle started walking back to the house as if nothing was amiss. “Hope it eats the housecat first, I suppose. Or it’ll just bite someone badly and they’ll have it put down. Or try. Poison won’t kill it so it’ll just escape and become some wild animal.” He shrugged. “If it stays out of the sunlight, that dog is going to outlive its owners. Also, what the hell kind of dog was that?”

            “Labradoodle. It’s a cross between a Labrador and a – “

            “A freak of nature is what that dog is. You just gave it another step in that direction.” He shook his head. “Labradoodle.”

            “That was my reaction. Before it attacked me.”

            “It was scared. You’re scary.” But he was smiling as he said it, because their very unknowing host was approaching them to introduce them to a new arrival.

            Alex spent the rest of the evening – or the segment of it spent at the party – wondering what Aristotle’s real reaction was, and he didn’t find out until they got in the car and Ari burst out laughing. “Don’t ever fucking do that again!” But he was not particularly serious in tone, even if his words were. It even took him a minute to collect himself enough to drive.

            “Sorry. I didn’t know. I tried to hypnotize it, but it was too dumb.”

            “That’s what ultra in-breeding gets you, I suppose.” He was still chuckling. “New rule: stay aware from the neighbor’s pets.”

            “Yes, Master. Sure. Are you going to tell them anything?”

            “Of course not. Though I will have to find a way to inquire how this plays out without, you know, bringing up the subject myself. Vampire dog.”

            “Vampire Labradoodle.”

            “It’s like a children’s book.”

            “A really lame children’s book.”

            “Yes. Very, very lame.”

            At which point, Alex decided he was off the hook for this one.

                        ************************************************

            Summer became fall, and their area of Tahoe began to quiet down as the summer folks departed, shutting up their houses or leaving them with a sitter. The hikers came for the colors, but Aristotle was reluctant to push the limit on how many hikers could really disappear without serious media attention. The Cormans went back to their New York penthouse, intending to take their dog with them to see a dog psychiatrist in Manhattan (because apparently such people existed), only to discover he broke out of his pen one night despite the new reinforcements and disappeared into the woods. Linda was talked out of sending a search party to find him when Aristotle offered his sage wisdom that if the dog was found, it would probably be rabid and they would have to put their precious little overly-expensive monstrosity to sleep. He phrased it differently, and it worked. They preferred a theoretical slow death of starvation in the woods to having to face seeing him be put to sleep.

            “Do you think it’ll make it through the winter?” Alex asked his master.

            “Uh, yes. I think it will see more winters than this house.” Aristotle was perpetually amused by this, which was just fine in Alex’s book.

            There were very few visitors and they all came on business, of which there was quite a lot. Alex was not given drudge work unless his master was absolutely up to his fangs in it, and otherwise spent his time coding small programs to help Aristotle with his work. Security was always important, and the internet was making tracking programs for shipping and real estate possible. They were always in the market for new places to hide vampires.

            Alex was in the middle of lines of code when he noticed a little icon pop up that hadn’t been there before. After some checking, he removed his headphones and walked into his master’s office. “There’s someone on the remote server.”

            “Is it Larry’s IP?”

            “He could be using a proxy, but then he would just log in, wouldn’t he?”

            Aristotle pushed his chair away from the typewriter, leaving the birth certificate still loaded in it, and rolled in front of his monitors. “Is there a name to the user?”

            “No. Just the default guest. The IP starts with 161 – you’ll see it below mine.”

            Aristotle squinted at the tiny indicator on the very complicated screen. “That’s a Philippine IP. Proxy server. How long has he been there?”

            “It just came up.”

            “Find out what he’s doing before I shut down the server. If we can leave it open, I want to take the time to trace him.”

            Alex grabbed his laptop and plugged it into Aristotle’s station. “I need your administrator password.”

            It wasn’t that his master didn’t trust him. It was for his own safety that he didn’t know certain things, and Ari got up and typed it in on Alex’s computer for him, and set it not to save the password. “Go. I’m going to start the tracer, but if you see him downloading files, we’re pulling the plug.”

            “He’s not doing anything yet. Just looking around maybe. It could be a white hat.”

            “I don’t care. I don’t want anyone on my server, whatever their intentions.” A white hat was a hacker who broke into people’s servers to test their security barriers and then told the owner what was wrong with the security system and how to repair it. A black hat was a more stereotypical hacker, penetrating systems for his own reasons. “It’s a proxy. Probably several of them.”

            “There’s some downloading, but it’s like kilobytes in the double digits. Maybe just normal flow of data. Wait – there’s a spike. He’s taking something.”

            “No, he’s not,” Aristotle growled, typing faster than the computer could probably keep up with, and Alex’s screen when dark before reloading with just the desktop. The server was shut down. Aristotle sighed, and stared blankly at his screen for a moment, but his head was undoubtedly full of concerns, not empty. “How much do you think he got?”

            “Maybe a meg. Probably part of a small file. What did you have on there?”

            “Assorted things I share with Larry. And some contact information, all mundane stuff for if I get stuck somewhere without my computer and have to look something up in a café. I’m not even sure entirely. Definitely some socials. Definitely.” His voice still had an edge to it, the vampire just barely at bay. “We’re going to have to set something better up, ASAP.”

            “It could have been a white hat.”

            “I don’t are if it was a white hat or a government task force set to confirm the existence of vampires. I do not want anyone in my system. Anyone.” Even if he was very quite about it, he was still obviously very angry. “I’m going to take us offline for a few hours.”

            “What?” It was akin to saying they should exist without electricity and a roof over their heads.

            “Exactly what I said.” Aristotle rose, walked over to the multiple lines in the wall, and pulled out all the internet-concerned cables. “Until I figure this out, the only computers allowed an online connection are ones with no incriminating files on them. You can have my spare laptop until we get a new one, and we’ll move all the files off one computer and that laptop and use those two for internet.”

            “That’s shutting down a lot of programs.”

            “I made it 2300 hundred years without tracking programs. I can make it a few days more. Until this is sorted out.” His tone indicated he did not want further questioning; he wanted Alex to work.

            Alex soon fell asleep on the sofa near the computer station, waking in the exact same position twelve hours later to find Aristotle still at the desk, a tired fury in his eyes. “Here.” He tossed the laptop onto the couch. “It’s clean. The wireless is back up, password is Carson City blues, no capitalization, periods between the words. But I prefer you to use the Ethernet instead.” He turned back to his monitors. “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with my system.”

            “Systems get hacked. It’s what happens,” Alex said, and went to fetch blood for himself and his master, who clearly hadn’t stood much less fed, since this happened. “Now we know there was a security flaw and we can get a whole new system. A better one.”

            Ari accepted the drink and gulped it with no mind behind it at all. His focus was rather absolute. “I wanted to put my files in Greek, but Larry can’t read Greek. We need to find some language we both know but isn’t common. But that won’t help with other people’s records.” His eyes didn’t move from the screen currently in front of him. “Thank you for noticing the intrusion.”

            “It’s what I’m here for, I guess.”

            Ari was a better hacker than he was, having years of experience, so he tried to trace back the now-dead signal while Alex was given the grueling task of crawling all of the files on every computer for possible intrusions. They worked for a long time in silence, the link between them just relaying frustration on both ends. By the end of the night, Alex was convinced whoever tried to get in only attempted to access the remote server and didn’t get far, barely a foot in the door, and now that that was down would get no farther. It was probably a spammer or a white hat. He mumbled these arguments to Ari, who was too worked up to hear them.

            Alex made the mind-numbing task of scrolling through several networks of file a bit more bearable by actually looking at some of the files, if only for a few seconds. Aside from lines of spaghetti code from outdated programs, Aristotle had a massive collection of data, not all of it on vampires and their current locations. He had scanned books and photography of places all over the world. He had files with seemingly random notations about something he’d seen or heard. Some of it was in Greek or Latin, but Alex could read both, even Ari’s shorthand versions. “I need another password.”

            “To what?”

            “Some locked directory called Antediluvian.”

            “Computer.” Meaning, he wanted Alex to bring the keyboard to him, so he could type it in instead of giving him the password. “You’re just looking for intrusions. But check it anyway, even with the password protection.” He opened the files for him.

            Ari said repeatedly that he liked Alex’s habit of asking questions, but Alex knew he was treading the line here. Still, Ari was too distracted to really punish him, so he asked, “What’s an Antediluvian?”

            “It refers to the biblical period between the creation of earth and the flood. From the Hebrew calendar’s year 0 to 1656 years after that.” He did not wait for the second question. “They’re my personal notes on Old Ones. The original vampires. And they’re not for your eyes.”

            “Understood.” He wasn’t going to fight over this one. Someday, when they didn’t have a major crisis on their hands, he would ask more, but instead he just scrolled through the file logs. None of the files were named, just numbered, and they hadn’t been accessed since they were loaded on to the computer when it was new. He closed the folder and moved on.

            Aristotle continued for two more days, quite obviously without sleep unless he passed out at various points on his desk because his clothing was unchanged, he was unshaven, and he only seemed to eat when Alex brought the blood to him. Alex wondered how long he could actually go without sleep. At first he was jealous, but after a few days, the grandeur of it waned. Vampires could look tired and strung-out too, even if they were well-fed. “Ari, you should really – “

            “Sleep. Yes. I have eternity to sleep. I have very little time to catch this guy if I’m ever going to.”

            “I don’t think you’re going to, unless you get attacked again from the same IP, and you can’t even be because you shut down the remote server. Which was remote, meaning it didn’t involve the computers you had online in this room. What are you going to narrow it down to? A country, maybe? It was probably a random hit, a hacker looking for something new.”

            “I know.”

            That was all his master said. He just kept working, doing whatever it was that was satisfying his desire for control. Every detail had to be attended to with extra attention. The doorbell was not his concern. “Get rid of them. If it’s Mormons again, eat one and save the other for me.”

            Alex was convinced that the last part of Aristotle to die would be his dark sense of humor. He was almost smiling as he opened one of the double doors. “Whatever it is – ” He changed horses mid-stream on that one at the sight of two angry-looking Enforcers, “ – can be dealt with in a calm and efficient manner. Won’t you come in?”

            Of course they would. They disregarded him almost entirely, heading for Aristotle’s office. His master must have sensed his alarm, because he was standing to greet them when they entered instead of pounding away at the keyboard. “I know about the hack of my server. It’s taken care of. Unless you have another lead.” His voice was not as animated as usual, but he was definitely putting all his effort into sounding stronger than he was.

            Both Enforcers were male, dressed in long overcoats despite the relatively warm weather. One seemed to never retract his fangs, perpetually growling softly while the other spoke, “This is not about whatever you’re speaking of.”

            “Oh.” He tried not to sound surprised. “Well. I’m sure you’ve come a long way, so why don’t you have a seat and some wine and I’ll be right with you.”

            “We have orders – “

            “I’m sure you have orders, and they don’t send Enforcers around all willy-nilly, but I need a moment with my son. Excuse me.” He was projecting authority, as much as he could muster, as he grabbed Alex and pulled him out of the room, shutting the door behind them. “No questions. They’re no time,” he said in Greek. The Enforcers probably didn’t speak it. “I have to suppress your memories of Marius ever being here.”

            “But – “

            “No buts. No arguments.” He held him by both arms, so tightly as to almost break bone. “You have to give your will over to me. I can’t completely hypnotize you unless it’s partially voluntary.”

            Not that he could voluntarily not agree to it, but this was not the time to press the point. “Will you bring the memories back?”

            “I don’t know. Probably.” His eyes were very intense, even if they were still his natural brown eyes. “Do you agree?”

            “Yes.”

            “Look into my eyes.” His voice was different, as if it could be heard on different levels and from different places. “You haven’t seen Marius since LA.”

            “I haven’t seen Marius since LA.”

            “You don’t know where he is and neither do I.”

            “I don’t know where he is and neither do you.”

            Aristotle snapped his fingers.

                        ************************************************

            The light faded and the room came back into focus. “What was that?” Alex said. He was discussing something, but it was fading, and there were Enforcers on the other side of the door.

            “I’ll tell you later,” his master promised in Greek. “Don’t try to lie to the Enforcers. They can sense if you do and they’ll be very angry. Only tell the truth.”

            “Okay.”

            Aristotle opened the door and returned to the office. The Enforcers were still standing, and the bigger one was still hissing. “Sorry, gentleman. What can I do for you?”

            “Your computers are not our concern,” the shorter one said. “We are looking for Marius.”

            “I suppose I would have heard if you had caught him, with me pressing charges and all,” Aristotle said, sitting down. Alex wasn’t entirely sure he could stand. He was putting so much effort into looking awake and aware. That much was obvious through the link. Why were they asking Aristotle about Marius? He hadn’t seen him since LA, unless it was during one of his two trips and he hadn’t said anything to Alex about it.

            “Do you know where he is?”

            “No.”

            “Are you sure?”

            There was no hesitation in his voice. “Yes. I am sure I do not know where he is right now.”

            “But you helped him disappear.”

            Aristotle’s voice was almost monotone. “I don’t answer questions about my business.”

            “You are required by the Code to answer all of our questions. Even you, Aristotle.”

            “I did answer your question, though you didn’t phrase it as a question. More of an accusation. I do not answer questions about my business. That is my final answer and I am not, according to the Code, required to give you anything else, even if I had something to give.” Here he was steadier, because he was on steady ground.

            The shorter Enforcer turned to Alex. “Do you know where Marius is?”

            “No,” Alex said. “I haven’t seen him since LA.”

            “Did your master help him disappear?”

            Alex looked to Aristotle, who just said, “Answer honestly.”

            “No. He doesn’t know where he is.” He didn’t like the Enforcers’ stares, but then again, he wasn’t supposed to. He was very relieved when they turned away from him and back to his master, who could deal with them.

            “We have reason to suspect you did help Marius, and that you are somehow lying to us.”

            “I have not lied to you. I do not currently know where Marius is and I do not answer questions about my business. Repeating it over and over to you is not going to make it more true, but if it satisfies you to hear it a second time, so be it. It is not my intention to break the Code by disobeying the Enforcers.”

            The shorter one sighed, but it came out more feral than that. “We have instructions to seize your computers if you do not comply.”

            “That’s ridiculous! I have complied with you, to the letter. You asked me a question, I answered. I’m sorry if it wasn’t the answer you wanted, but we can’t always have what we want. Moreover, no one, not even the Council, has the right to look at files pertaining to my business unless I authorize them. So if you take these computers and interfere with my business, you are breaking the Code, and Enforcers are only allowed to break the Code to preserve it. And since we are not currently in a Code-breaking situation, you have no such authority.”

            The shorter Enforcer looked down, then back up, his face pure determination. “As I’m sure you aware, in a matter in which the nature of the Code is in dispute, all parties involved must present their arguments before the Council in Tribunal. So if you want to protect your data and your bytes, you must come to us with Egypt – bringing said items with you – and argue the point yourself. You may win, you may not. I suspect you won’t.” He added, “Fighting us will just weaken your argument. Unless you wish to change your answer about Marius, we are taking anything we deem necessary to the search to our headquarters. Whether you wish to come with us to Egypt and dispute it is your decision.”

            The taller one moved to the closest computer, but Aristotle got in his way. If there was to be a fight, Alex suspected it would be over before he could even join the action, but he would, to protect his master. He could not imagine doing otherwise.

            But Aristotle’s fangs weren’t bared, his eyes a very soft brown. “Let me unplug them for you. You might damage them.”

            Alex wanted to scream, to hurl himself at the Enforcers with the full might of the vampire (however weak it may be in actuality), but a harsh look from Aristotle told him that it was not a possibility. They were going to rob him of his work and personal possessions, and he was going to let them, rather than face the alternative. He unplugged the main monitors from the towers beneath and pulled them out. He might have wrapped them in bubble wrap if he had any.

            “Are there are computers in this house?”

            “Yes.” Aristotle did not argue. He did not fight. “You can go through the whole place if you’d like. There’s nothing Code-breaking in this house.”

            The shorter Enforcer was staring at him, as if to make out if he was telling the truth or leading them along, but when he stepped toward Aristotle, Alex growled.

            “No,” Aristotle said, grabbing his arm. “This is not your fight. Sit down.”

            And he sat. Like an obedient dog. Not because he wanted to, but because Aristotle was blasting through the link that he would make him if he didn’t, and his master didn’t need the extra stress right now. He didn’t know how he was even still standing. Aristotle wasn’t in the best shape when the Enforcers arrived and this was making it worse. He just stood numbly and watched. When the moved on to the rest of the house, he sat down on the touch, his face pointed at the floor between his legs.

            Despite Aristotle’s many protests to the contrary, Alex knew when to be quiet.

            There were so many things they needed a handcart. The Enforcers let them see it, as if waiting for Aristotle’s nod of approval at the outright theft of his current life’s work. “If you put me out of business, you’re going to have a lot of vampires who are going to be stranded. You could make it easier by just going on Leno and announcing vampires exist.”

            “We’re not without our own resources,” the Enforcer said confidently. “Be sure to direct your customers to this number.” He gave him a card with only a number on it, no name. So they were robbing him not only of his property but his job as well. “If you want to challenge this, speak to Abasi.”

            Aristotle nodded. That was all he did. Nod. He looked down and didn’t watch them cart away all of his equipment, just listened to the door slam. The room was very empty, the desk a mess of wires that led nowhere and discarded power cords, and papers that had been hidden for years under the crushing weight of the monitors. Even though the rest of the furniture was still in place, the paintings still on the wall, and the half-finished glass of blood beside the telephone, it appeared to Alex utterly and painfully abandoned. No wonder Aristotle didn’t want to look.

            “Are you going to fight this?” He asked it more because he needed to hear his master’s voice at that precise moment.

            “I don’t know.”

            “Are you going to speak to this Abasi guy?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Do you want me to call anyone?”

            “I don’t know.”

            Alex suspected that would be the answer to every question he asked. Instead of continuing, he stood and went to the kitchen, and pulled the grain alcohol off the shelf above the fridge. The bottle was still sealed, and he returned with it, a fresh bottle of blood, and a tumbler, and put them on the coffee table before Aristotle.

            Aristotle stared for a long time before he spoke. “At least someone understands me.” There was no humor in his voice at all. He poured the alcohol first, probably enough to kill a human being, then the blood right on top of it, stirred it with his finger, and swallowed the entire glass in one gulp. “I want to be alone.”