Dark Studies (Arcaneology)

by C. P. Foster

  The view was spectacular. Angie had been in luxury homes before, but none of them looked out over the city and Puget Sound like this high-rise condominium did. Even Aaron’s home in Reno had not been as impressive as this. Her bodyguard studied the place, no doubt checking for potential dangers or holes in security. He eyed the balcony in particular and the windows making up an entire wall.

  “Is that you, Angie?” Aaron called from another room. She’d warned him she was recovering from some serious injuries, though she gave no details, and suspected he was making certain he was sated before she arrived.

  “It’s me,” she called back.

  The Fallen emerged and strode toward her with an eager expression. It faded quickly, however, and his steps faltered.

  “I had no idea,” he said.

  “It isn’t as bad as it looks.” Setting down her backpack, she moved to close the distance between them.

  Aaron went pale. “That isn’t true. It is, actually, worse than it appears.”

  He tensed, started to edge back, then stopped. Angie slowed to a halt.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I didn’t realize you were so badly injured.” He took a deep breath and gestured for her to have a seat on the leather couch that faced a wall of glass overlooking the Sound. He sat in a chair far enough away that he could not touch her. “Angie, it never occurred to me to tell you. We, the Fallen, gain strength from pleasure. Pain has the opposite effect. Do you understand? Your pain weakens me. It hurts.”

  Why hadn’t she thought of this before? It was a logical conclusion, one she should have explored in their interview. It wasn’t personal, so it shouldn’t bother her that he couldn’t bring himself to come any closer. But it did. “Would it help if I took a painkiller? I have some, I’ve just been trying to tough it out because they make me a little fuzzy.”

  “It would help a great deal.” He looked relieved. “Karen? Could you get our guest some water?”

  The woman went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of mineral water that she handed to her guest with an apologetic smile. “Sorry I didn’t introduce myself. When I saw your condition, I was worried about how it would affect Aaron. I’m Karen.”

  “I’m Angie.” They shook hands. Angie fished a prescription bottle from her pocket and used the water to wash down a couple of pills.

  Turning to Joseph, Karen asked, “Can I get you anything? A drink?”

  “Water would be great.” He nodded politely. To Aaron, he said, “Would you mind if I checked the rest of the rooms? No offense, I just like to be thorough.”

  “Of course. You must do what is necessary to protect your charge.”

  Her bodyguard slipped from the living area to assess the rest of the place. When he went into the room where Aaron had been before they arrived, there was a murmur of voices, then a soft female laugh.

  Aaron tilted his head slightly to one side and studied Angie. “A vampire did this to you.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  The painkiller was already taking effect. The Fallen approached her now, with his hand extended, and touched his fingertips to the fading scars on her face. “You forget. We see the human body more clearly than you. To your eyes, the scars are barely visible, but to me the wounds are as obvious as a blueprint. Fang marks. The other injuries could have been from a car accident or any number of things, but the bites are unmistakable.” His gaze followed his touch down to her throat, and farther, to where her shirt covered the trauma done to her breasts. “This is why my people are so antagonistic toward vampires. They thrive on causing pain and terror.”

  “So that’s why the Ruler of Denver was surprised you didn’t want to kill one of her people. Do Fallen often kill vampires?”

  Aaron took her hand and sat beside her. The aura of arousal he usually projected was muted, so faint she barely noticed it, though it grew stronger as her aches and pains faded.

  “When we come upon one in the act of harming a human, most of us will automatically put a stop to the cruelty. It takes a great deal of control to temper our reaction, and we see little reason to be merciful. I have killed two of them, without hesitation and without regret.”

  “Yet you spared the life of the one who had gone mad in Lockhart’s dungeon.”

  “I am not as hasty as I once was.” He frowned. “If I had come upon her in the act of harming a human in some way, I might have killed her, but it would have been a conscious decision, not an involuntary reaction. We grow more thoughtful as we age.”

  Something that had been gnawing at the back of her mind emerged. “When we were prisoners, trying not to…you wouldn’t let me hurt myself. But we could have stopped it with pain.”

  Aaron hesitated. She started to pull her hand away, and he tightened his grasp. “How long could you have continued to harm yourself? Would you have done serious damage rather than succumb? I admit my response was partially an instinctive reaction to the pain you were causing me, but would you really have preferred to endure hours of that? Would you have had the physical stamina to maintain it? We might have put it off for a while, but not forever, and in the end you would have gained nothing.”

  “Did it ever occur to you,” she demanded, “that I would have liked to make that decision for myself?”

  He let go of her hand and bowed his head. “Yes.”

  “But you chose to make it for me.” She wanted to slap him. Instead, she retreated behind icy calm.

  “Angie, I’m sorry. My only excuse is that I wished to protect you from the injury I feared you might do yourself.”

  “Protect me.” Angie snorted. “I wish someone would protect me from overprotective males.”

  “Males?”

  “What?”

  “You said males. Plural. Someone else has disappointed you in this way?”

  He was far too perceptive. “None of your business,” she growled. “Can we get to work?”

  Joseph returned and looked back and forth between them. “Is there a problem?”

  Aaron said nothing. It was up to her whether there was a problem or not. How odd, that a predator could be so submissive at times. Was this a characteristic of the species? Or was it only true of Aaron himself?

  “No,” she said finally. “Everything’s fine.”

  Joseph accepted the bottle of water Karen brought for him and settled into a corner where he could watch all the exits and keep an eye on Angie at the same time.

  The Fallen stood and waited while she eased herself from the couch. “Are you certain you are ready for this? Perhaps you should take more time to heal.”

  “I want to get started. Is there a table where I can set up my camera?” She would be interviewing his two lovers today and looked forward to learning more about them.

  “My office,” he suggested. “It is quiet, and private.”

  Angie glanced at Joseph. “Is that all right with you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  In the office, she took her camera out of her backpack and set it up on Aaron's desk, a sleek, modern affair of glass and chrome. There was nothing on it but a telephone, a laptop computer, and a printer. A single credenza provided all of the storage space for files. Two plain white armchairs were positioned on the other side of the desk, and the walls were bare except for a large painting of two calla lilies. Angie didn't know much about art, but the sensuous curves and the way the flowers filled the frame seemed familiar.

  “Is that an original Georgia O'Keeffe?” she asked.

  Aaron smiled. “I sometimes find pleasure in other things besides sex.”

  “It's exquisite,” Angie murmured. She studied it a while before tearing herself away. “Who wants to start? Karen or Nicole?”

  “I will.” Karen, who had been hovering nearby, stepped into the room. Aaron slipped out and shut the door while his lover settled into one of the armchairs.

  Angie turned on the recorder and took a seat with her back to the painting so it wouldn't dis
tract her. She went over the consent form with Karen, and when it was signed, she took out her notes and gave Karen a smile.

  “You're protective of Aaron,” Angie observed. “What is your relationship like?”

  The woman's expression softened. “He's been good to me. The sex is amazing, of course, but there's more to it than that. I've got a great career, thanks to him. He's not particularly interested in what I do, and that's okay, I'm sure lots of people have boyfriends who don't want to talk about engineering or banking or whatever they do for a living. What's important is he encourages me to do what makes me happy.”

  “What is it you do?”

  “I'm the chief financial officer for a chain of fitness clothing stores.” She sat back and crossed her slim legs.

  Angie raised her brows. That kind of career would require a lot of overtime and travel. “It must be difficult to keep up with Aaron when you have such a demanding job. When do you sleep?”

  Karen laughed. “Fortunately, I'm one of those people who don't need much. And he can meet his needs elsewhere when I'm too busy.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “God, no. I couldn't handle him by myself. And if he brings someone new into the household, he makes sure we all like each other.”

  “How long have you been with him?”

  “Twenty years. We met right after I graduated college. The first year or so it was nonstop sex.” She grinned. “Then he met another woman and got obsessed with her for a while, so he didn't need me as much. I started thinking about other things. He was all for it when I told him I wanted to get my MBA, even paid for the schooling.”

  “He told me the Fallen's lovers rarely stay with them for long. Have you seen very many come and go?”

  “Come and go?” Karen raised a brow. Angie laughed when she realized what she’d said, and Karen chuckled with her. “Some stay longer than others. I think we're more likely to stick with him now than his lovers were when he was younger. He says he's changed a lot in the last hundred years, caring more about our lives and happiness than he used to. He's interested in us as people, not just our bodies, and that makes a big difference. The ones who leave usually do so because they want to have children. Living with Aaron isn't the best environment for raising them. I've never wanted any myself.”

  “What was your life like before you met him?”

  “I’ve always been very driven. Straight-A student, class president, varsity track team, all that sort of thing. I wasn’t a social butterfly, but I did my share of dating and partying. After I graduated summa cum laude from Stanford business school, my parents rewarded me with a trip to Europe. That’s where I met Aaron.”

  Two hours later, Karen said good night, and Nicole came in. She looked to be about twenty-five years old and reminded Angie of Renaissance paintings, with an unfashionably full hourglass figure and long dark blonde hair in a becoming state of disarray. Her cheeks were flushed, and she had the aura of a cat cleaning its whiskers after a bowl of cream. A full skirt puddled around her when she curled up in the armchair and tucked her legs to one side.

  “Sorry I didn’t come out to meet you earlier.” She gave Angie a shy smile. “I wasn’t dressed.”

  Angie chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. Did Aaron join you again after Karen and I got started?”

  “Yes.” The young woman bit her lip. “It kind of shook him up, seeing you like this. He needed…healing? Comfort? I’m not sure what the right word is. So I looked after him.”

  “Is that how you think of yourself? As someone who looks after him?”

  “I suppose so. We all take care of each other, really. I’m a homebody, so I do the cooking and housekeeping. Karen says I’m her wife.” She giggled.

  “Not Aaron’s wife?”

  “I can’t imagine him as a husband, can you? He’s our lover. He pays the bills. We don’t really share our lives with him, though, if that makes sense? I mean, we live with him and have sex—lot and lots of sex—but otherwise we’re on our own.” Her pretty face scrunched in thought. “Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have a life except for the sex. So he can’t relate to us on any other level, you know?”

  Interesting observation. Angie nodded, considering this a moment before moving on. “How did you meet him?”

  “I went to Reno with some friends as soon as I turned twenty-one. Big birthday party, right? Nightclubs, drinking, gambling—it was crazy. We all ended up at Aaron’s house one night, and I kind of stayed.”

  “Didn’t you have a job? Family?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “The job was just waitressing. Nothing I really cared about. My family doesn’t know what Aaron is, only that I’ve shacked up with this hot guy. They figure I’ll grow out of it.”

  “Will you?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine not being with him and Karen. Ten or twenty years from now could be totally different.”

  “How did you feel about moving here?”

  “It was kind of hard leaving my friends behind, but I don’t mind too much. I’m exhausted, though. Aaron had a bunch of people for booty calls in Reno. Karen’s working a lot of overtime to get up to speed after her job transfer, so until he builds a new harem here, I’m spending most of the day in bed. I never thought I’d complain about that.” She giggled again. “He goes out at night when Karen isn’t home, and that gives me time to cook and do other stuff.”

  “It sounds like you enjoy cooking.”

  “I love it! I record all the cooking shows so I can learn how to make cool stuff. You’d think I’d be skinny with all the exercise Aaron gives me, but I love food too much. That’s one of the reasons it was hard leaving my friends. I used to host dinner parties and try out new recipes. Karen says I’ll make plenty of new friends once they find out I’ll feed them.”

  “Maybe you could go into catering someday.”

  “You know, I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe I could.” She smiled.

  Interview notes:

  (For the purposes of this study, the term “human provider” will be defined as follows: a human being who satisfies the hungers of the Fallen by means of mutually pleasurable sexual interaction.)

  Subject Karen Marie Livesay, human provider, is forty-two years old and has been living with Aaron White, Fallen, for twenty years. She is a well-educated and successful businesswoman with a high-powered career. Karen attributes much of her success to Aaron, but his support appears to have been mostly passive. He paid for her MBA and encouraged her to pursue her goals, so he has certainly played a role, but a woman as driven and talented as Karen would have accomplished these things with or without his aid. This does, however, show restraint on his part in that he could have chosen to keep her so far under his influence that she would forget her ambitions. Instead, he has given her the freedom to be her own person.

  On the other hand, human provider Nicole Lynn Richardson has done little to develop her life outside of Aaron’s household. She met him at the age of twenty-one but does not seem to have had the same ambitions or direction as Karen. She is content to drift along for the time being. I suspect she will continue to do so until some outside stimulus forces her out of her complacency, and Aaron does not appear interested in providing one. I postulate that he is happy to allow his lovers to pursue their own lives, and will support them if they express a wish to do something in particular, but does so only if they take the initiative. He does not make suggestions or challenge his lovers in any way.

  Aaron, Nicole, and Karen have formed a family of sorts. He is the link holding the group together, but there is respect and affection between all three. Aaron claims his family is an anomaly among his kind. Because of his age and his recent changes in attitude, the individuals and their relationships are healthier than in the households of most of the Fallen. I look forward to meeting others for comparison.

  Angie had finished packing her camera and laptop when her cell phone rang. She didn’t have to check the display to see who it was. Only on
e person had that ring tone, and he’d been calling every night since she was released from the hospital. Angie hit the ignore button. It must be after sunset, if James had risen. She’d lost track of time and only now realized how exhausted she felt.

  Aaron had long since retired to the bedroom with his lovers. He had not asked her to join them, or even so much as made a flirtatious comment, which suited her fine. He was the second person to violate her trust in the last week. As Angie stepped out of the office, Nicole emerged from the bedroom.

  “I was just about to make dinner,” she said. “Well, heat it up anyway. We’ve got leftovers from a lasagna I made yesterday that turned out fantastic, if I do say so myself. Do you eat meat?”

  Joseph turned toward them, and Angie knew he must be as tired as she was. Staying alert for signs of trouble wasn’t easy to do for hours on end, especially in a place that seemed safe. Ron wouldn’t take over guard duty until she got home. It gave her a good excuse to go without seeing Aaron again. She’d shelved her feelings while conducting the interviews, but now her anger stirred. She had deliberately delayed taking another pain pill so he would keep his distance after the first one wore off.

  “Thanks for offering,” she answered, “but I need to go home and get some rest.”

  “Of course! Do you have all your things? I’ll see you out.” Nicole opened the door. Before Angie could leave, though, the woman touched her arm, and she paused. “Don’t be too mad at Aaron, okay? He’s only just started figuring out human emotions. Sometimes he doesn’t get it right, but he is trying.”

  Angie gave her a reluctant nod. “He pushed one of my buttons, that’s all.”

  In the elevator, Joseph glanced at her. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself. She’d learned the rules by now: the bodyguard always went through a door first. He stepped out of the elevator and glanced around the lobby, then signaled for her to follow. He did the same as they left the building.