"Sorry, what did you say?"
"I asked if you knew what happened after I went into the alley," he said.
"Oh, right. You were attacked."
"Why aren't I in hospital then?" he asked, an adorably confused look in his eyes. "And why don't I hurt? I mean, I feel odd, but I don't feel hurt."
"You were attacked by a vampire," Eden blurted out. There was probably a better way to say it, but for some reason, words seemed to be failing her right now.
To Eden's surprise, Tony didn't start laughing. Instead, he got a thoughtful look on his face.
"Are you sure?" he asked, giving her an appraising look. Almost as if he thought she was the crazy one. Eden sighed, she'd wanted to avoid doing this, but knew she had no choice.
"It wasn't me, but..." she opened he mouth and let her fangs descend, careful not to emit the hissing sound that often accompanied the action.
2
Tony stared at the woman in front of him, not quite sure how to react to what he was seeing. She them.
He'd always believed that humans weren't alone in the world; how could they be when there was so many unexplained happenings. Plus, evolution just meant that it made sense for there to be something more than humans about. Just like he suspected that aliens were probably real too. And considering that he was conversing with a vampire, aliens seemed just as likely.
"And it wasn't you?" he asked slowly. Eden closed her mouth, looking a little unsure of herself. She was probably used to people freaking out when they discovered the truth.
"No," she said softly, shaking her head and making it so that the shoulder length strands of bright pink hair fluttered around her face. Before today, Tony would never have guessed that he'd find the colour attractive on a woman, but there was something about Eden that was definitely affecting him that way. "I stopped him from killing you, and, erm..." she trailed off, a guilty look on her face.
"You drank from me, didn't you?" he asked, wondering if it was something they chose to do, or had to do. He didn't know which would be worse.
"What? No, of course not," she protested, sounding genuinely outraged at the suggestion. Which was interesting to say the least. "I'd never do that without permission."
"So, you don't have to drink blood?" he asked, curiously.
"I do. But it's not a compulsion. Unless I go too long, I can choose the when and where." She shrugged, like it wasn't a big deal. But then, he supposed it probably wasn't to her. Even he was more fascinated than worried, and he was in a vampire's bedroom.
"How long is too long?" he asked.
"Not sure, I fed a couple of months ago I think."
"A couple of months?" he half-shouted, surprised she could go that long.
"Well sure, at my age that's to be expected. You, on the other hand, will be able to go anywhere between two days and a week depending on your self-control," she said flippantly. Tony gaped at her, not sure what he wanted to deal with first. She looked younger than he did, and he was only twenty-eight, which would mean that the immortality and not aging myths were true. But that wasn't what shocked him the most. It took a moment for his brain to process what she’d truly said, but the moment it hit, it felt like the world tilted on its axis. Tony quickly regained control, knowing that he needed answers more than he needed anger.
"Me?" he demanded. Guilt crossed Eden's face.
"My choice was to let you die or turn you. It's not something I normally do," she said. He lay there silently, not quite knowing how to respond. Part of him wanted to be angry with her for doing something so life changing without his permission, but the other part of him could recognise the rest of what she's said; if she hadn't done it, then he'd be dead.
"Guess that's no more garlic for me then," he muttered, amazed that he could still make a joke.
"We can eat garlic," she said, a perplexed look crossing her almost black eyes.
"Go out in sunlight?"
"Yep."
"Turn into a bat?"
"Sadly not," she said, an amused glint in her eyes.
"Go into a church?"
"Any day we want."
"Damn, I was hoping for a good excuse not to go," he said, thinking of his highly Catholic mother and her insistence on going to church every Sunday. Which he hated. It wasn't that he disagreed with her faith, just that the outward sign of devotion seemed more for other people than for her God. Eden just laughed. "Are any of the myths true?"
"Not really. We're difficult to kill. That's probably about it," she said with a shrug and an amused smile.
"Well that's disappointing."
"I know a vampire who sleeps in a coffin, if that helps?" she offered.
"It does," he replied, even if he was still feeling a bit disappointed about not being able to turn into a bat at will. "Guess Bram Stoker got it wrong," he muttered.
"And why do you think that was?" she asked, taking a seat on the bed, and making herself comfortable.
"You're not trying to tell me that Bram Stoker was a vampire, are you?" She laughed again, the action lighting up her face.
"No, but one of his lovers was."
"And he knew that?" he asked surprised.
“You realise we're not exactly the monsters we're made out to be, right? Well, most of us aren't," she added, a dark look crossing her face as she finished speaking.
"Like the one who attacked me?" he asked. He was pretty sure he already knew her answer, but he was pretty good at reading people, and could tell that she was dying to say it out loud.
"Todd would definitely have been one of those," she said, and Tony didn’t dare question why she was talking about the vampire in the past tense. "Among others. In fact, we need to go see one of them later today."
"We need to go see one of the bad guys?" Tony asked, raising an eyebrow in disbelief. It seemed to be a little against what was in their best interests.
"Not by choice," Eden muttered. "Unfortunately, new vampires are required to be brought before the Elders by their makers. It's a tedious and boring tradition," she told him.
"Have you made a lot of new vampires then?" he asked, suddenly feeling a lot less special than he had before.
"You'd be the second," Eden replied with a sincerity that couldn't be faked.
"Then how do you know about the tradition? Is it common knowledge?" She shook her head.
"A summons gets sent."
"And we've had one already?" he asked, worried by what that meant.
"No, I'm one of the Elders,” she said, surprising him. Of all the things she could have said, that wasn’t what he was expecting. “I hope you own a suit."
3
Eden was nervous. Probably far more nervous than she needed to be. There weren't really any laws about turning new vampires, so it wasn't like she was breaking any of them by bringing Tony into their world. Nor was she overly worried about the kick back from staking Todd. Other than Maurice, she imagined the others would be mostly grateful that they no longer had to deal with the menace he was.
They'd tried to get rid of him several times in the past. But unfortunately, the votes of the Elders were weighted based on age. And as Maurice was the oldest, and he had both the younger male vampires onside, Eden and Ramona, the other female Elder, frequently found themselves outvoted. Luckily, Edward and Rueben were just easily swayed, and underneath they were decent men. Or they would be, if Eden could just get rid of Maurice.
Beside her, Tony looked a little shaken as they descended into the earth. Annoyingly, or at least, annoyingly for Eden, there were a few myths that vampires actively tried to encourage; and meeting underground, in dark, deep and damp cellars and caverns, was one of them. She'd been over that phase even before the air raids of World War Two. They hadn't been fun for anyone, even vampires. Being blown to bits by a bomb was one way of making sure anything was dead.
Eden almost reached out to take his hand, but stopped herself before doing so. It seemed like she was having a lot of those kind of moments since Tony h
ad woken up, and she couldn't think of any reason why. She was attracted to him, had been since the beginning, but then, she’d been attracted to people before, and yet hadn't felt the urge to touch them quite so often, nor so innocently.
He looked particularly dashing in his suit too, which wasn't helping. They'd gone back to his flat for him to change, before making their way to where the Elders’ meeting would take place, and she'd been grateful for the lack of his flatmate being about. That could cause far too many unanswerable questions for Eden's liking. Like how old she was and what she did for a living.
She supposed she could say twenty-three for the first, which was the age she was turned and so how old she looked, but that would make answering the latter question a bit trickier. She'd always been a whizz with numbers, as well as patient about when her investments paid off. Technically, that meant she didn't actually have a job. Though she did continue to manage her portfolio; partly for fun, and partly just to make sure that she wouldn’t ever run out of money.
"What should I expect?" Tony stage whispered to her.
"Them to grill me about Todd. They likely won't say anything to you," she replied, whispering back to him despite knowing that it wasn't necessary. The Elders’ chambers were soundproofed. And while she'd never asked why that was the case, she had a good idea of the reason. In the beginning, she'd woken up to more than one bad dream about what used to happen within those four walls.
"Then why am I here?" His voice shook, and she longed to comfort him again. Eden shrugged.
"Tradition. Vampires are annoyingly big on it," she replied, thinking back to more than one strange thing she'd done over the years for that reason. "When we go in, I'll go take my seat. You need to stand to the left behind me. Don't make eye contact with any of the men if you can help it. Maurice is a nasty piece of work, and I don't want to give him the chance to hypnotise you."
"Is that possible?" he said, gulping audibly.
"I honestly don't know. As far as I'm aware, vampires can't hypnotise other vampires. but I don't want to test that with Maurice. You don't want to have to do the things he's make you to."
"He's that bad?"
"Think every bad thing you've ever heard about vampires, and probably add some. There's even a rumour that he killed one of the Popes three hundred years ago or so," she said, belatedly realising that it probably wasn't wise to make Tony think Maurice was too bad when they were about to enter where he'd be. But then, it was best to be prepared, and at least she'd left out some of the gorier details.
Eden stepped towards the large iron door, taking a key from her pocket and fitting it to the lock. With a sharp twist, she unlocked it, and the two of them stepped into the dimly lit cellar that they used for meetings. Not for the first time, she found herself looking forward to Maurice's dismissal just so that a redecorate could happen. Ramona, as the second oldest Elder, would take over once he was gone, and much like Eden was, Ramona wasn't much affected by the tastes of the generation she was born into. In fact, Ramona was probably even more modernised than Eden was.
She crossed the room, and dropped into her cold stone chair. Though calling it a chair wasn't quite right. It was almost throne like, with carvings of skeletons and bodies of humans. Most likely a depiction of Maurice's views that all humans were beneath them.
For his part, Tony took his instructed place with nothing more than a look of unease on his face, though she suspected that he was more worried than he was letting on, given the look in his eyes. As he walked past, she even raised her hand to brush his, receiving a small smile for her trouble. Small as it was, that smile still lit something up within her. Ramona threw her a questioning look from her chair opposite, but Eden just shook her head once; she didn't want to draw any more attention to Tony than was absolutely necessary.
At least Edward and Rueben weren't paying any attention, though that was probably due to the two female vampires they seemed to have brought with them. They must have turned the women themselves, or they wouldn't be allowed into Council. Though from the state of the women, it wouldn't matter if they were around to spy on meetings. Bottle blonde, and with breasts that almost certainly fake, they just didn't look like they had it in them to even understand what was going on. Especially as one of them looked as if she was about to do highly inappropriate things to Edward.
Curious, Eden looked at Tony from the corner of her eye, and was pleased to find that he was looking away, disgust clearly written on his face. He'd told her while he was changing that he was an accountant, and from the conversations they'd been having, he definitely seemed like the type who liked his women actually able to hold a conversation and not just be there to give him pleasure. Not that Eden was against that idea. In fact, she was fully on board with it, even if he wasn't actually aware of that.
"Edward. please control her," Eden said eventually, losing patience with the younger vampire's behaviour. She'd never really felt like Edward took his role on the Council seriously, and as such, had even less patience for him than she had for Rueben.
"Jealous that your own isn't seeing to you?" Edward shot back, causing Rueben to snicker and the girl touching Edward to gain a look of uncertainty, as if she didn't know whether she should carry on or not.
"Other vampires aren't our toys, Edward." He rolled his eyes in response to Eden's words, which just riled her up. On his side, Rueben’s woman ran a hand up his thigh.
"Stop," Rueben said firmly, placing his hand over the woman's to reinforce the point. At least Eden had reached one of them.
"Sometimes it amazes me that you’ve lived this long, Eden," Maurice's drawl came from the doorway as he sloped in and took his seat at the head of the other vampires. She wasn't sure if the layout was pre-, or post-Maurice, but it was certainly designed to make the younger vampire Elders feel inferior.
Maurice's chair was at the front and centre of the room, with Eden and Ramona's placed opposite each other, almost as if they were at a dining table. The two younger vampires' chairs were opposite each other too, but further down than the two women.
"I've found being a reasonable person works well for surviving," Eden snarled, her fangs threatening to descend, as they often did around Maurice.
"If you say so," he replied; as normal he seemed to want to have the last word. Ignoring him, Eden went about doing what she was required to.
"I'd like to formally introduce my fledgling, Tony." She waved behind her, but didn't look backwards, not wanting to draw attention to the man who was clearly now incredibly nervous.
"I'd like to formally introduce a fledgling too," Edward interjected before anyone could say anything. "This is Sage." He motioned towards the bottle blonde who'd been touching him earlier, and Eden could almost have sworn that she saw a glint of intelligence behind the woman's eyes. Maybe there was more going on there. She'd have to pay close attention to the conversation and see where it went.
"Welcome, Tony and Sage," Ramona said sweetly, taking on the role that was supposed to be Maurice's, but that he wasn't polite enough to actually do.
"Anything else you need to tell us, Eden?" Maurice asked with a sadistic look on his face. Eden took a deep, calming breath.
"Todd's dead," she said. She didn't even need to say anymore; the vampire community in the city was small enough that they'd all know who she was talking about, and the vampire community outside the city was so big that it likely wouldn't have even been a raised issue if another vampire didn't bring it before them. They were in a uniquely odd situation of being both the local, and national, government for vampires, and they tended to leave most clans and covens to their own devices.
"Did that vampire hunter of his finally catch up with him?" Maurice smirked, clearly toying with Eden and already knowing what happened, no doubt one of his spies had told him. The witches who'd been present didn't seem the types to report into Maurice. Especially as Eden had heard rumours that they were now in with Dana Stephenson, a big cat shifter of some kind, as well as the sp
okeswoman for an endangered animal charity.
"The Romani or the bat shifter?" Ramona asked wryly, a glint of amusement in her eyes. "Though I heard they were just jilted conquests, and that it was the hawk he really needed to be wary of." Behind her, Tony snorted slightly, and Eden had to suppress a smile. At least he wasn't freaking out after finding out that it wasn't just vampires that existed, but other things too.
"They're both lucky to be alive," Eden said darkly. "I caught him trying to make a snack out of a witch. He'd attacked a human too, and left him for dead. I had no choice but to end him." Eden steeled her eyes, knowing that there would likely be a fair bit of kick back from her statement. Todd had most definitely been a favourite of Maurice's. He was also most definitely best-off dead; for the sake of everyone.
"Which you probably enjoyed a little too much, Eden," Maurice said offhandedly, not showing much emotion at all considering he'd just discovered that someone he would probably consider a friend was dead.
4
"Well, that was enlightening," Tony said offhandedly as they walked away from the meeting. He was first to admit that it was a lot to take in, but at the same time, it helped a lot of life's mysteries slot into place. At least now he knew that other things existed, and he could prepare for that.
"I'm looking forward to the day that I can stick a stake through that man's heart," Eden muttered darkly, which surprised him. Other than that statement, and her altercation with Todd, she came across as level headed and sort of sweet to Tony. So the violent side was surprising. Though given what he'd just witnessed from Maurice, he could sympathise.
"I don't blame you," he said evenly. If he was honest, he'd rather that she wasn't the one who actually did the deed. Despite the fact that she was a lot older than he was, he felt a need to shelter and protect her. Though he wasn't about to admit that. Not because he didn't want her to know, but more because it was clear to him that she wasn't the kind of woman who really wanted or needed protecting. After all, she'd been the one to save him when he'd been in trouble, not the other way around.
The Paranormal Council Complete Series 1-5 Page 17