The Scarlet Heron

by Sharilyn Skye

  Noah explained the theory of Vampire Infectious Disease and my heart sank. I worried for Paul and for the man that I had drank from last night. If this...disease was indeed fatal, there may be many innocent human lives ended because of my special needs and inability to have a stable Source. It also placed in jeopardy those who simply enjoyed drinking from many different sources. It is common enough among us to be a real danger. I was not solely responsible for this problem, but it felt that way to me. I would call all of the pharmaceutical companies under my umbrella in the morning and have them drop everything to work on the problem. I would have a hundred scientists working on it by dawn. A virus such as this would be devastating to the community that supports us and could have personal and legal ramifications worldwide for vampires. It could not be allowed to spread.

  Lara struggled to save Paul, it was not as effortless as it had been with Geenie in Charleston. She wrestled and fought the virus like a physical thing. Taking his blood into her body and nearly dying in the process. At least it seemed so to me, but she did not worry. The sick smell of death hung in the room as she worked. Paul hovered on the edge of it for what seemed like an eternity. It was difficult to watch. I could hear the instability of his heart and the raggedness in his breathing, as she fought this invisible enemy with only her bare hands. Grania accused and threatened, but Lara did not take it into her heart, she only worked harder. She shushed Grania and comforted her and went about Healing Paul in the way that is uniquely hers; slash, burn, heal and to hell with the consequences. And he did heal. The virus in him was extinguished and he was stronger than he had been in years. It was incredible, even to one as old as I.

  Then she asked to heal me too, and I was forced to decline. I knew it needed done, but the fear I felt at being infected by this virus was outweighed by concern for her. Her eyes were fevered and her limit reached. She blacked out in my arms and I lifted her onto her little bed. She weighed nothing, less than a bird, her clothes hung from her body two sizes too large. She will die caring for others, with no thought for herself. I knew this already and now so did the others. Noah licked her wounds clean, for that is part of his magic. His saliva will close almost any wound and leave no scar. He had faith that her blood would counteract the virus before it could do him any harm. To me though, we could no longer take it for granted that the Supernatural cannot get ill. I watched as he licked her wounds closed. It did not anger me that he did it. I was grateful, for I do not have that skill. My saliva allows blood to flow freely and she would have bled more had I tried the same trick. He however, was very angry and a heated argument ensued about Lara and her heritage. He knew then, at least to some extent, what she was. I did not want an entire community of supernaturals angry, but I could not risk losing her to the world either. In the end, we agreed to help one another keep her safe. His people were welcome in her clinic, should they need her and together we would expand her knowledge of all supernatural types. In having Noah meet her, I had a new ally to the cause of keeping her safe. I hoped that she would call on him, if needed.

  I watched her breathe for an hour before I would leave her. Noah, Grania and Paul had long left, but only when I was sure that she was healing from the VID and her color and temperature returned to normal did I follow. I ran home to make arrangements for our date tonight and hoped she would feel up to going because it was to be a special night. Plans had been in the works for months to host the AVA fundraiser at the small theater on Main Street in Westminster. I’ve been to Hollywood and don’t care for the place, plus it is difficult for me to get away from my obligations in the District as well as those in Baltimore. Despite the remote location, stars lined up to get invitations, as vampires were the new thing and any fundraiser involving us was judged the place to be. Tickets sold for thirty thousand dollars a couple or two hundred fifty thousand for a table and sold out within hours of being marketed. The money would be used to improve vampire-human relations by starting programs and running ads on all types of media. There were thousands of hereditary vampire children and regular vampire households that would benefit from this. Most of them go through their lives without drama and fighting, they deserved to keep their lives normal and this event would help that.

  A month ago, I had flown to New York and bought the ruby necklace, planning on giving it to her on this night. I went looking for something special and the ruby set at Harry Winston’s had called to me. The rubies would set her skin ablaze with the color of my House and they would tease me when I looked at them because they remind me of the blood that flows under the surface of her perfect skin. It was a magnificent set. If I told her how much it cost, she would likely punch me. She is ever so fond of doing that.

  Grania and I snuck into her house planning to check on her and leave one of the boxes for her to find, but she was already awake and caught us. We are not technically supposed to have access to her rooms upstairs, but I have never gotten hung up on technicalities. There is another box however, that I hold back and I am ever so glad that I did, for she will not like it. Not yet. Perhaps someday.

  There is a ring that matches the necklace. It is a single, perfect round cut, natural ruby surrounded by a circle of equally perfect smaller round diamonds, set on a platinum band. The diamonds circle all but the back of the band and it is stunning, there is a diamond band that molds to the ring perfectly The facets in the ruby make the stone shimmer in the light. It is perfect for her. For some day. I long to have her make decisions with me. I want her to pick out furniture for our home. I want her to help chose the people we surround ourselves with. I want her at my side constantly. I want to see her last thing in the morning and first thing at night for as long as we both shall live. She worries about becoming addicted to me in the way humans do, she worries about binding herself to me in the manner of a vampire. I do not believe this could happen, nor would I ever try. The blood we share gives us both equal access to the other’s mind, but it does not bind us. I would never try to say the words or do the magic of a binding and if I did try, I fully expect that she will smack me down. She has the power. If anything, it is more probable that I will be unable to leave her. Should we ever truly become one being I believe that she will bind me to her side always. I have difficulty now leaving her. Like a moth to a flame, I cannot turn away, even though I know her light is a dangerous thing that could bring me a final end. The Healers of old could unmake any magic and all I am is magic. So I kept the ring in a safe deposit box. Someday, Goddess providing, I will bend my knee and give it to her. That thought alone has kept me sane on many a day, especially in this captivity. She said that she wants a relationship with me and I want nothing more. I will walk away from everything, if that is her price. Why do I want only her and her to have only me when this is a foreign concept to my people? I honestly do not know. The love of many has never interested me, even though I was raised to believe that is the norm. I have never wanted it. I have never wanted to share the way my fathers did or my father’s fathers. Since I kissed her lips the first time, the desire to kiss another’s became nonexistent. I don’t know why, for I was not raised this way. To me the challenge is to find the love of one and keep it, fanning the flames and watching them grow to their full potential. That is more of an achievement to me than flitting around, spreading one’s affections on the wind. It will be incredibly difficult to keep the affections of this one little Faerie woman, with all her moods and prodigious volatile nature. I look forward to the challenge.

  We talked as I watched her dress, she moved about easily and happily, as she prepared to go on a date with me. We talked about Noah and her dream and nothing of importance, really. It was comfortable. Peaceful. A normal thing to do, talking as she got ready. Something all couples experience. I longed for a day when this was commonplace.

  She dropped her cover spell and flipped her long, auburn hair upside down, twisting and turning it until it lay on top of her head in a beautiful mess, leaving her neck bare. The sight of her in a red dress wi
th a bare neck caused my fangs to descend without my asking them to, which is a rarity for me. I kept my mouth shut so that she could not see. I had promised to go slowly with her and wait until I knew she was mine before I would touch her. I was certain that once she had been in my bed, or I in hers, there would be no going back for me. Despite my desire to be a newer and gentler Aedan, I did not believe I could let her go once I made love to her. I was fooling myself that I might still be able to let her go under any circumstance.

  We climbed in with Paul and Grania, who looked almost as stunning as Lara, but not quite. I handed her my gift once we were settled in the limo and her hands shook as she took it, looking at it like it was by far the most dangerous thing in the tight space, even though she had two much more dangerous things watching her wide eyed horror as she stared at the little black box with its black and gold ribbon. For the first time since I have known her, she felt real fear, it flowed over me in its chilling intensity. Her eyes were bright and wide with it. Color drained from her face at the sight of a small box. What happened in her short life, that a gift could set her hands to shaking so? I did not know and wished I did, so that I could right it. I felt another shift in her thoughts, like so many grains of sand on an unstable fault line, they were thrilling, unsettling and unpredictable. Just like the creature herself. Despite her reluctance, she loved the necklace and earrings and they did indeed set her skin on fire. She never looked more like the Queen she is, than she did in her new jewels. It made me proud that I could provide her this one small thing. She smiled at me, her eyes bright and shiny, pounding yet one more nail in my coffin.

  Reporters lined up and flash bulbs went off. We were late to our own party. The others were seated when we got there and understandably, all conversation stopped when we entered the room. Grania is a gorgeous woman and Paul a handsome man, but all eyes were on Lara as she walked gracefully into the room, covered head to toe in red. I greeted others and shook hands, introducing her as I went. Usually questions at these events gear towards how I am doing or what I am doing, but tonight all anyone asked about was Lara. It is nice to be beside someone who eclipses your own notoriety and that is what she did. She did not notice the stir she made as she smiled, made eye contact and shook hands like a well groomed Queen. She is excellent with crowds and her easy manner makes her instantly likeable.

  On the dance floor I felt with final certainty the cracked shell of her break and I was flooded with her emotions. Her lips parted and her hands stilled on my chest as she met my eyes, looking for an answer as to what was happening to her. She felt fear then too, not like she had in the car, but a new kind of fear, the thrilling fear love brings. She always looks me in the eyes with impunity and you must understand that very few can look in them at all. She got lost in my eyes and I knew through my blood in her veins what she felt in that moment. She was flooded with warmth and love, it burned through her like a wildfire wiping out any remaining shell she had. She did not understand or recognize this. She had never felt it, not for a man. Her shields were completely gone and she stared into my eyes, trying to put a name to this new horror she was feeling. She did not realize that this is the exact moment she fell in love with me, but I did. She did not even know how to put the word with the emotion. She had struggled and fought against love her entire short life, but that night, she lost the battle. I smelled her confusion, fear and the soft scent of her arousal as she went limp in my arms and her brows knit together. Her heart pounded and she glowed softly in the dim light of the dance floor, casting us both in her circle. I wished for the moment to never end. She loved me. It was a glorious feeling as her love washed over me in crushing intensity. I knew then that perhaps there was a reason she was cautious to love. What she felt was almost painful and knowing her as I do, I doubted she could feel this much emotion and be comfortable in her skin, there was a fierceness at the edge of it that took me by surprise. I am guessing that Lara in love will be much like Lara in all her life, slash, burn, love and to hell with the consequences. It was like the warmth from a thousand suns shined upon me. Having felt it, I could have died then and been at peace. I worry for her now, for the billionth time since I first saw her riding a Guardian on an old farm lane. If her first experience with adult love ends in death, she may never allow herself to love again and that would be terrible. Her love is fierce and divine, unlike anything I have felt before. It is shocking and humbling in its intensity and awesome in its fierceness. I could feel the power of it in its infancy and knew it would be staggering when it bloomed. I could not die in this cell. I needed to live to see what her love felt like as it grew.

  Then Grania interrupted. I could have strangled her to her second death in front of everyone in that room and not blinked an eye. She whisked Lara away and when she returned, her shields and cover spell were firmly in place, but it was too late. Most of the people in that room had an excellent sense of smell and hearing and there was no doubt that they caught a hint of her private thoughts in that moment, as she was so bad at hiding them. Word would spread, I cared not for the trouble it could cause. I was alive for the first time since my Change and nothing else truly mattered.

  The movie was amazing and Lara had fun, laughter flowed often and unconsciously out of her. To the entire room, she was a joy to watch. There was not a single vampire in that room that hadn’t seen the original Dracula at least once, it is somewhat a rite of passage. They have not, however, seen a High Blood Daoine Sidhe Queen in love and laughing at the movie Dracula with joy and abandon. She watched the movie and they watched her. The AVA made more money that night than at any fundraiser ever. Checks were written that would make the wealthiest banker stutter and that is the Lara Hennessey Effect. Her joy was infectious and her light so warm that not one creature in that room missed the brightness of it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I should have stayed with her that night and never left. Instead, I went home to send an email to the House Majority Leader containing details of the changes that needed made to the Bill of Vampire Rights. It was important. I absolutely needed to send it and should have done it before I left that night. It was never my intention to stay the night with Lara after the fundraiser, but after that moment on the dance floor and those that followed on the limo ride home, I had changed my mind. I could feel her love and desire. She was smothering in it and so was I for that matter. I had been patient. She wanted a physical relationship from the beginning, but shied away from an emotional one, until these last few days. Her desire for love and intimacy outweighed her fear of it now. Finally. I had never waited so long for anything in my existence and it has been a good lesson for me as well. Funny how the very young can manage to teach the very old a thing or two. I should have taken her to my bed and not gone to hers and the rest of the sordid night would never have played out. Why I chose not to will always be a mystery.

  When I got back to Lara’s house and found Aramea, the Faerie Queen’s second in command, the creature responsible for the deaths of my beloved Elizabeth, my unborn child and myself. I was ready, once again, to go to war with what was left of Talamh na Sithe. The woman was Lara’s grandmother. I could see it then. Only the passage of time had kept me from seeing it earlier. I had not seen Aramea in two thousand years and in my memory she was blackened, twisted and ugly, but memory does that to things we fear. Aramea is almost as beautiful on the outside as Lara and the resemblance is quite astonishing, but that is where the similarities end.

  Nothing happened in Faerie that Aramea did not know about. She had her finger in every plot, twist or story line there was. Her reach was insidious and far. She would have been Queen, but for the Queen. If there is a creature more foul than I, it is she. She has destroyed more families, bloodlines and happiness than even I. The difference is, unlike myself, I do not believe she has changed. Her kindly manner with Lara is belied by her twisted picture of her soul and the unappealing color of her aura. I’m surprised, yet not, that the Goddess has found no way to deal with her
. For a moment, just one, I thought about giving it up then. I could move. I could start over. I have lost many things in my long life that surely one more would not matter, but in the end I can not hold the deeds of Lara’s blood against her. It worried me though, I will not lie. There are many sayings about apples and trees and how blood will out, but in the end, I chose to ignore them. Lara’s mother had run from her own mother for a reason and Lara had been raised by her, not Aramea. The bond that makes a family does not always flow through the blood, it can be forged from love, loyalty and choice, I know this better than most. I tried to calm the rising feelings of loss, betrayal and anger before they could change what had just begun to grow.

  Yet Aramea’s visit set us all back a bit, regardless of our desire to not let it. Grania mourned again the life she would have led, again and studiously avoided me. Lara put on a bright smile and forced herself to act normal and I tried not to see the face of my torturer when I looked at her. It was a trying time. I would not let the root of Aramea’s evil grow and flower. I pulled glass from my beloved’s back and pretended each piece was a wisp of her grandmother’s plans to disrupt us. I would pull them out root, stem and flower. I told Lara why I was punished and by whom. She needed to know. I would not allow Aramea to tell a story that was not hers to tell. I did not tell her the whole story, for the full weight of that is something no one but the guilty should have to bear.

  She cried as she tried to comfort me, I could not stand the sight of those tears even as my own rolled down my face. I left her there, on her belly, as her back healed before my eyes, yet another testament to the power she has. I needed to be alone and come to terms with this new thing threatening to come between us, even as she needed to rest and heal. It was a setback, yes, but nothing that would come between us in a permanent way. I would see Aramea dead before that happened. I may yet see her dead regardless. She had once destroyed everything good in my life and I would not allow that again. What I would have given, once upon a time, to have her hanging in iron chains, but I am not that person anymore. However, I will not suffer her to live if she is a danger to Lara and the rest of my family. If she makes it her mission to get Lara under her thumb, I will kill her. It is my right as a survivor to do so.