Morgan Alistair's Story

She may have thought herself silent and unnoticeable, but few people ever were to him. He understood better than such young things how to move with the world around him, to make himself nothing more than another feature of the environment. He was already so suited to blending with shadows, from his coloration down to his customary silence—it hardly seemed like a talent to waste.

“Lilia,” he said without turning around, still upkeeping his pace about the town. “It is not conventional behavior to follow someone without speaking to them, especially not if they know you’re there.” There was a note of gruff chiding in his tone—he did not want the more odd of his coven’s mannerisms to stir up suspicion before they had the good reputation to protect themselves from it, and had she been stalking anyone but him, this would definitely have gotten her some weird looks, and probably more than a little suspicion as well. This, they could not afford.

Stopping for a moment, he turned to look over his shoulder at her. Her attempts to gain height on him or look over his shoulder were vain—he was an exceedingly tall man, and his posture did not slouch unnecessarily. The look he gave her through the corner of his golden eye was eminently neutral. Ephraim was hard to read on the best of days, but he did not seem overly displeased. At least, not yet. “There is little point in following me—you would be better served trying to get to know the town, and ingratiating yourself with the people here.” That was something the other members of his coven would always be better at than he was—Ephraim intimidated people even when he did not intend to.

With that, he checked to make sure that there were no humans in the vicinity, then looked up, gauging his jump, and leapt, landing silently on the rooftop and crossing it in a low crouch to avoid silhouetting himself against the sparse moonlight of the silver crescent in the sky.

In this way, Ephraim stalked the streets a bit less conventionally than he had in Virgil’s company—admittedly, part of the goal of it was to slowly acclimatize the humans here to their new neighbors, to allow themselves to be seen out and about in conventional, perfectly ordinary settings, thus dispelling any suspicion about their newfound presence. It would get around eventually that this large family had bought the mansion just outside of town, a building which was once overgrown with weeds and vines and falling apart at the seams. With a week or so of hard nighttime work and some input from each of the new occupants, it looked very different now. Virgil had done the gardens, he’d had Morgan and Arya arrange the interiors for the most part, and to Lilia, he’d given the task of selecting the home’s new color—as long as it wasn’t something outrageous. They all had at least three rooms to themselves: a bedroom, a living space, and a bathroom, and in addition, Ephraim had claimed an office and a library on the top floor.

It was important that they feel at home here, which was why he never brought in outside contractors to do the work—unless it was something none of them had skills in. Thankfully, the plumbing and electricity had been intact here. Ephraim did not seem like the kind of man to think about details of such a nature, much less the psychological comfort of his coven members, but leadership changed people, and on a practical level, it only made sense to want them to be at home. Their lives were not always easy, and he knew that. He did what he could to make them happy, though he would ever deny any such inclinations under a near-impenetrable layer of gruff distance.

As of now, he traveled via rooftop, silent and nearly inscrutable even as a silhouette, the dark colors he wore and the attendant darkness of his hair making him difficult to pick out against the moonlit rooftops. Golden eyes were faintly aglow, gifting him with the night-vision of his kind and making it possible to pick out colors and details clearly even in the murky shadows next to buildings and the like. He was leaping between a pair of rooftops when he caught sight of the man bleeding out in the alley. Normally, he might have left something like that be—he could not afford to cast suspicion on himself or any of his coven members by being near the scene of what had been a violent crime. But there was a smell on the air, one he recognized only dimly, and that was enough to draw his attention.

Landing soundlessly in a crouch, Ephraim straightened to his full height and approached the man, who was now groaning softly in his pain. He would not survive the night—the blood he’d lost already was pooling around him on the dirty cement of the alleyway, and though Liliath might have been able to save him were she right here, she was too far away to make a difference. Through clouded eyes of indistinct brown, the man looked up at him, and blinked slowly a few times, as though to clear his vision.

“Never thought… Reapers were real,” he admitted with a half-dazed smile. “I was… sort of expecting a—ungh—a white light.” Ephraim parsed that statement for a moment, and shook his head.

“You might get one,” he said dispassionately. “You’re not dead yet. But if you want me to be Death, I could be.” The offer was clear: the man was in a lot of pain, and the vampire was offering him mercy, a swifter end than the one he currently experienced. He stood still beside the dying man, unwilling or perhaps unable to move until he knew what he would be doing with the motion.

The man coughed, sending a spray of blood onto the hand he tried to cover his mouth with. It might have been a fine, pink mist once, but he was too far gone for such subtlety now—his end would not be much longer in the coming, and he was faced instead with liquid gouts of the stuff. Ephraim’s control was great enough that he didn’t feel much temptation to indulge. “Please,” he said, nearly choking on the word, and Ephraim nodded, casting his eye about for something to use. Simply plunging his fist into the man’s chest wasn’t exactly going to seem inconspicuous, and the same went for strangling him when he was clearly bleeding out already. The idea was that the death should at once be merciful and also not look too different from what had already happened.

Exhaling softly through his nose, the vampire picked up an empty bottle from the ground and shattered it over his knee, raining the jagged pieces down over the dying man. He was left with a large, sharpened point, which would achieve his purpose just fine. “If you have last words, I will hear them.” But the man shook his head, indicating that he did not, and so Ephraim lowered himself into a crouch, careful to avoid any of the puddles of blood, and placed the ragged shard of bottle gently against the homeless man’s chest. With a sharp motion, he pushed, and the exhale that followed was a death rattle as the glass pierced his heart. Taking the fellow by one shoulder, Ephraim turned him over, so that he was laying on the shards of glass and the bottle both, and for once he was glad he tended to wear gloves. Standing again, he left the man there and removed the leather coverings from his long-fingered hands, dropping them in a public waste disposal quite far from the scene.

Shaking his head to himself, he ventured into the nearest building. This one happened to be a family-owned general store, and he supposed the man running it now was used to the late-evening shift, because he looked up from the counter and smiled at the new customer entering. Ephraim didn’t need to be here, but it was better if he pretended if he did, and had some excuse to be out and about after such an event as the murder that had just taken place. Nodding to the old man, he performed the customary exchange of names and small talk, though his answers were gruff and abbreviated, something which didn’t seem to bother the senior citizen much. Bailey’s General the store was called, and he could only presume that the old man was Mr. Bailey. Whatever the case, Ephraim occupied himself browsing for a while, trying to find something plausible to buy that wouldn’t be entirely useless. He did hate waste.

For a few minutes, the only sound worth noting was the sweeping of the old man’s broom over the wooden floor of the store. Ephraim made no noticeable sound when he moved, though his search was proving fruitless. The items here were mostly those for consumption, and unlike several of his coven members, he’d lost all appreciation for human cuisine several centuries ago. He wasn’t sure if they still ate from habit, nostalgia or a genuine enjoyment of taste, but personally his diet was nothing but blood and coffee, unless he really needed to do otherwise for the sake of at least appearing human. That in mind, he decided to just pay for a bar of chocolate or something. At least it would give him a plausible excuse to leave—

The old man leaned out the doorway of his store to wave at someone at exactly the same moment Ephraim was hit by another wall of the same scent he’d detected earlier. Sometimes, he swore that someone sat around, thinking of all the most uncomfortable things to put him through, then executed them one by one, as though simply traversing the world and trying to keep his makeshift family from the hands of the Court wasn’t difficult enough.

The thought made him angry, but he was careful enough to keep it off his face, and when the person owning the scent stepped into the store, he studiously kept his head down, still pretending to browse. Apparently, this woman—Senka was her name—knew the old man quite well, and he surmised that she must own some kind of business, likely the production of foodstuffs, for which she required supplies at such an odd hour. It explained why the general store was still open, anyway. These small deductions kept him occupied, at least until he heard his own name, and then his head snapped up sharply, dark brows narrowing over honey-colored eyes in an obvious expression of displeasure.

This seemed not to faze Mr. Bailey in the least, and Ephraim sighed through his nose. He was used to people being more intimidated by him than they knew how to handle, but something about that old man seemed rather immune. Probably a good thing, honestly—the last thing his coven needed was a reputation like that. He wanted them to be ignored, not feared. Fear made people pay attention, and they couldn’t afford that, especially not now that a murder had taken place. It would probably be all the town talked about for a week at least, and he didn’t want anyone deciding to put that news in the same breath as anything about that family moving into the old house just outside the bounds of the village. He should probably go along with this, much as it displeased him to be some stranger’s manual labor.

The elderly store owner disappeared into the back of his shop, and the woman in question approached him, offering sympathy he did not need. He took an absent moment to study her, because he was curious as to why it was that she smelled the way she did. He could detect nothing obviously special about her—she was comely enough, nothing extraordinary, but Ephraim wasn’t the kind of man who cared about how a person looked in the first place, at least not to the degree that other people seemed to. Her posture and mannerisms bespoke a middle-class upbringing, lacking the studied refinement of the wealthy and the downtrodden carriage of the poor both. He could pick out nothing that would explain the scent. Not that he really knew what to look for—this was supposed to be a rare phenomena that did not occur but once in a few million humans.

Unclenching his jaw, which had reflexively tightened as if in protest to the strong urge to bite, he replied evenly, a testament to long, long years of honing his self-control. “That will not be necessary. He is right: this is not the best time of night for anyone to be alone.” He kept his irritation to a minimum, and it came off a bit like resignation, without actual bitterness. It wasn’t as though a few bags of flour would be difficult to transport over any distance, and this might just help his family in a small way, so he was willing enough to do it.

At that point, Mr. Bailey returned with two bags of flour, which Ephraim hoisted onto a shoulder with no discernible difficulty, keeping them there with an arm like a steel bar for all that it would yield. When he tried to offer payment for the chocolate, the old man waved him off, saying that his helping this Senka woman was a personal favor to him, and that more young men ought to be as Ephraim was. The incredible irony of the statement was enough to draw a snort from the vampire—he was much older than this human, even if he didn’t look it. Regardless, he did not fuss over it, and pocketed the bar of chocolate, using his free hand to hold open the door for Senka. Not because it was polite, but because she knew where they were going, and he did not. Speaking of which—

“Where are we going, that requires a hundred pounds of flour?”

Honestly, it almost couldn’t be more fun if he’d planned it. Virgil had always liked to think of himself as the kind of man for whom luck and chance bent their own rules—it was certainly fortuitous that he was as he was, and his life was arguably quite charmed, even despite all the moving around and the occasional bout with the idiots who called themselves the Night Court. He was a powerful immortal being, and rarely if ever suffered the repercussions of that. Granted, there were some annoying rules in place about not killing humans or spilling the secret, but Ephraim’s little hangups were overall a small price to pay. He didn’t even miss the sun, really.

And life seemed intent always to provide him with ways to amuse his ancient mind. The foibles and innate absurdity of other people never ceased to draw his attentions, and he watched with great amusement as Morgan’s grip tightened on the table, the cracks in the wood lost to the general din of the atmosphere. The cause, as it happened, was surely the bleeding staff person, and Virgil had to admit, it was a rather tempting smell, as far as they went. Morgan was doing quite well for someone with scarcely more than a century’s worth of experience. It was a little disappointing. He’d been hoping for more obvious signs of distress. Perhaps the table would shatter…?

Blissfully unknowing as humans tended to be, their lovely young waitress returned with their orders, and Virgil maneuvered his sleeve so as to make the cracks concealed, because as much as he loved toying with people, he was smarter than that, and now was not the time to be dealing with the questions. His maneuvers were, as always, quite subtle. “Ah, thank you, my dear,” he said, both for himself and on behalf of Morgan, who wasn’t in much condition to be talking to anyone. “Please don’t mind him; he’s feeling a little dizzy from his acquaintance with the pole earlier. He’ll be quite all right in a few minutes, I suspect.” With a graceful gesture, Morgan used his free hand to bring the cup of tea close to his nose and inhaled delicately. It was a blend of moderate quality, but the nearby presence of so many unique humans made it positively mouthwatering.

Some people took sugar in their tea. Virgil was known to occasionally flavor his with blood. Call him eccentric, but it did compliment the bitterness ever so well.

And Morgan likely would be all right quite soon, so he wasn’t even lying. At least, not entirely. A new pair of smells, one vastly more familiar than the other, entered the shop, and Virgil smiled to himself. Ephraim had not been able to avoid the woman from earlier after all. Fate really did love Virgil, even when she hated absolutely everyone else. He’d expect nothing less, really. He realized that the young woman was asking him if he required anything additional, and there were so very many ways to answer the question that Virgil was quite nearly giddy with the possibilities. In the end, he tilted his head slightly to the side and fixed her with a look. This was one he’d perfected over many years, and it was designed to say, quite simply, I know something you don’t want me to. In this case, the falseness of her smile was obvious. “Well, since you asked, I’d immensely prefer it if that expression of yours was genuine. Alas, I do not believe that is something I can request, is it?” He used just the barest brush of his empathy to coax her into relaxing a little bit, as while the stress was interesting, he was unfortunately able to feel it as well, along with a healthy dose of Morgan’s bloodlust. Frankly, everyone was lucky that he was so used to this—else there might be more than one vampire struggling with control, and Virgil wasn’t always one to resist the most exquisite temptations.

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Ephraim had to admit, he didn’t really understand why she felt the need to compensate him. He wasn’t doing this because she had asked him—the fault for it lay with the old man, if indeed there was any fault to be found. But he didn’t make a comment on it, choosing instead to carry his burden in relative silence. She didn’t see the need to fill the space of their walk with chatter, something which he duly noted and appreciated. Humans tended to be in a hurry to do and say everything. He supposed it might have something to do with their short lifespans, but whatever the case, it generally irritated him. He was, therefore, suitably relieved that such tendencies were not present here.

The staring, he could have done without, but he was long used to it by now. Occasionally, he would meet someone’s eyes, and they would generally shy away from that, but this too was normal. When he wasn’t making active effort to allure (and he didn’t—that was definitely something closer to Virgil’s method), he tended to intimidate instead. Not that he tried to do that either. It was just some compound effect of the way he looked, the way he moved, and the way he dressed, only one of which he really had much say over.

The woman—he was bad with names—led him through the back door of the shop she professed to run, and he set the materials down in the spot she’d indicated. He could smell the fact that someone was bleeding inside the store, and that it was neither Virgil nor Morgan, who were both nevertheless present. Virgil, he wasn’t worried about. Well, no more than usual, anyway, and worried was hardly the appropriate word. Morgan might be more of a concern, as he was still quite young. There wasn’t much he could do about it now.

The smell, he noticed, was but one of several particularly-interesting ones in the place, and it seemed that all the humans in it had one, though none quite like the woman’s. Senka. He remembered that, for some reason. Perhaps the word was tied to the scent in his psychology. Ephraim suddenly understood why Virgil was here. The potential for eventful happenings in this place would have been far too great for his brother to pass up, and Ephraim wasn’t sure whether to be angry at him for dragging Morgan along, or just resign himself to being glad that Arya wasn’t also present.

Once the bags were placed where he had determined they must go, he looked around the appropriate room. There were stainless steel work counters here, and several supply shelves. The establishment was quite clearly outfitted to handle a lot of business, though he knew little of such places generally. Not particularly inclined to stay any longer than he needed to, he slipped unnoticed back through the door he’d used to enter. He was not interested in receiving compensation for his work, trivial as it was, and the bakery did not need three vampires darkening its doorstep tonight. Turning southward, Ephraim headed for the mansion he and the others had purchased, trusting that the others would be back in due time.

Flanked by his brother on one side and the much less-annoying Morgan on the other, Ephraim stopped at the border to the obvious celebrations and frowned. The general misanthrope in him was really not looking forward to this, but he had to acknowledge Virgil’s logic: part of coming to be an accepted part of this town was participating in the events that one would expect everyone to participate in. And he had to try and be nice about it, too. Ephraim wasn’t incapable, exactly… he just found attempting to be friendly and outgoing when he was not to be exhausting and more than a little annoying as well.

Well, perhaps he’d simply let the more sociable among them do most of the work and simply try not to make things more difficult than they had to be. He was capable of this much, at least. Speaking of making things more difficult… Arya was around—he could smell her. If anyone was going to cause the wrong kind of problems, it was her. Sometimes, he wasn’t exactly sure why he allowed her to stay, but she wanted to, and though it may seem a bit against type for someone like him, he didn’t prefer to turn people away from his doorstep. Especially not the useful ones. Regardless, she was just as likely to be a pain this evening as Virgil was, and less likely to do it in a way that could be easily dealt with. His brother knew where the boundaries were, and only crossed them when there was something to be gained. Arya did that sort of thing because it was fun.

“Well,” he said flatly, taking in the happy-looking humans (some of them dressed in truly absurd fashions) and the shining lakeshore. “Don’t have too much fun.” He shrugged the vague dismissal—he was the leader, but he didn’t often give commands as such. They could come and go as they pleased unless there was some pressing circumstance that required their presence, and tonight, there was not. Tugging a bit at the sleeves of his black duster, Ephraim shoved his hands in his pockets and set off slightly to the left. He had smelled something most curious. There was another vampire in the area, and he intended to find out what that was about.

He chose to ignore the fact that the Senka woman and several of her staff were in the area as well. He didn’t need the distraction.

Virgil, on the other hand, was perfectly fine with distractions of all kinds. Whereas Ephraim had simply worn his usual all-blacks, his brother had decided to go with the spirit of the event, and wore an interesting garment referred to as a yukata, which were made for both men and women. It was a little hard to tell which his had been made for, given his slender stature, but given his height, it was probably a male’s, even despite the flamboyancy of the design. The majority of the garment was kingfisher blue, but the threading about it was a bright silver, the pattern reminiscent somehow of water lilies. He was less interested in the other vampires he could smell and more in the delicious humans, but neither was he always so straightforward as Ephraim, and he did not make immediately for his targets, such as they were.

“So stern… how dull,” he said of his brother, mostly to Morgan, who was also present. Then, in a rare moment of similarity, he also shrugged, and tipped his head back to glance at the sky. “I think I’m going to go wander a bit. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, dear Momo!” he trilled with a sideways look and a smirk. They both knew there was very little Virgil wouldn’t do, if he felt the fickle desire, so it was hardly a restriction at all. Perhaps that in itself was the point.