Jose Posted November 28, 2005 Share Posted November 28, 2005 “Master?” The rich leather of the armchair creaked beneath my fingers slightly as I keyed the remote control for the stereo at the interruption. Giacomo Carissimi’s Vittoria, Mio Core! grew just a shade more full as I adjusted the volume, the music washing over me in waves of regret and despair that soothed my tortured soul. The servants had been tastefully arranging the drawing room in which I sat for the past decade to suit my particular tastes; which were apparent from a quick inventory of the room: The furniture was ebony and red leather; the floor a sunburst mosaic of white jade, gold, and silver tiles. The walls were bare, except for an ornate triptych of the crucifixion done by my friend Pietro Perugino in 1485 that hung above the fireplace. Pietro gave it to me as a gift; mine the superior version of the same painting that hung so prominently in the Vatican. My chair was a study in the overuse of carved skulls and thorns, but easeful to me nonetheless, the leather having conformed slowly to the angles and points of my body over the intervening centuries since it was given to me. The only other chair in the room was identical to the one in which I sat, but it had never been rested upon. Everything in this room was a gift, from the tiles that lined the floor, to the perfectly engineered stereo and every compact disc that could be played on it, to the chandelier of filigreed gold and unused beeswax candles that hung above my head. The fireplace of sun-dried Egyptian brick given to me two hundred and thirty years ago was cold, as it always had been, and always would be. I do not permit fires larger than a cigarette lighter in my home. The fireplace as a gift was a jibe from an old friend, who had lined the interior of the fireplace with mirrors for another little jest. My oldest friend, of course, was myself. No matter the state of my soul, no matter what atrocities I commit, no matter how black my heart grows, I am the one person who does not have trouble meeting my own gaze in the mirror each evening when I awake. Pardon me, that was but a jest of my own. As the aria wore down to one last plaintive cry of, “Non lagrimar piu, E sciolta d’Amore La vil servitu!” I waited one more moment before responding to the servant still waiting at the door. “What is it, Geoffrey?” A slight shuffling of his feet bespoke his daydreaming without even having to turn around and catch the fearful expression on his face as he was caught unawares by my voice. He cleared his throat quietly and said, “Tonight is the full moon, Lord.” A glance at the expensive watch on my wrist confirmed this fact. The watch was also a gift, but not from a friend. “So it is, Geoffrey… are you perchance presuming to remind me of something, or do you wish only to interrupt my solitude with an astronomical insignificance?” I could hear his heart beating faster at my implied rebuke. It’s good to know that I can still cause bowel-paralyzing fear with even the quietest of syllables, especially since this was a game I played every night with Geoffrey. Only the music had changed for over a year... I would have thought that the man would be used to my way of doing things, but alas, here he stood, shaking like a rabbit before the wolf. “I meant no disrespect, Master! You specifically requested that I inform you of the phases of the moon!” I smiled as I stood; the rasp of my trousers against the leather of the chair was almost unbelievably loud in the silence of my sitting room. I walked over to Geoffrey as he stood trembling in the doorway and brought myself almost nose to nose, or rather, as close as I could get, since I was almost six inches shorter than the man trembling before me. I simply stood in fearful proximity to him for a moment before speaking. I could see his nose wrinkle slightly at the smell of rot that perpetually wafted up from my interior regions regardless of the amount of mouthwash I use daily. “And so, in the spirit of loyalty, you come here to remind me of my commands to you in that supercilious way of yours? As if you were the master, and I the recalcitrant servant who is unaware of his place?” The shock blossomed in his eyes, and the fear followed a scant second later as he felt my index finger lightly begin stroking his neck. He sputtered for a moment, trying to speak, until he realized that he was spraying his master with saliva, “B-b-b-but, muh-muh-master! I d-don’t think, er… I uh…” I smelled urine. “Geoffrey! You’ve piddled on the floor!” A quick thrust, hooked behind the carotid, then a sharp jerk away ended the game once and for all. I allowed the twitching man to fall into the puddle of his own piss where eventually, he would bleed to death. I squatted on my haunches before shaking my crimson finger in front of his wide, staring eyes, “Bad, Geoffrey! Bad!” As the light in his eyes faded, leaving only the remnants of shocked disbelief on his visage, I began to laugh. The corridors echoed with my mirth, the hallways resounded with my gaiety, and I was suddenly sure that upon hearing my chuckles, the surviving servants said a prayer more for themselves than for their extinct brother. I laughed even louder. ~~~~~==+==~~~~~ After I had finished with the corpse of Geoffrey, I walked to my bathing area and the girl who was responsible for my hygiene greeted me demurely. She scrubbed the blood from under my fingernails and combed it out of my beard to turn the frothing, soapy water pink. She was deft and good at what she did, the scissors flashing as she trimmed my hair, her eyes as critical of my appearance as mine would be. I didn’t know her name. I’ve always called her ‘girl.’ I didn’t want to break her concentration, but I felt the need to speak to someone so I cleared my throat to warn her straight razor away from my lips. She stopped slicing stray hairs in my beard away one by one and sat back on the edge of the tub at the noise. The girl folded the razor and her arms, and crossed her legs modestly. The expectancy on her face was quite tangible and it was then that I realized I hadn’t spoken a single word to her in over a decade. I began, “I wasn’t always this cruel, you know.” Nothing from her, not even the ‘skeptical eyebrow,’ as I’ve come to call it on my servants. I moistened my lips with bloody water from the tub and reclined a bit, leaving an empty space in the bubbling porcelain monstrosity, ”Join me here, girl.” Without a word, she placed her razor on the shelf behind her, stripped down to nothing and slipped into the bubbling tub. I waited until she seemed settled in before continuing, “Have I ever told you my name, girl?” “No, Master, you have not.” “Have I ever asked your name, girl?” Again, “No, Master, you have not.” I shrugged my way deeper into the hot water, creating waves that lapped at her dusky skin. I settled in more comfortably and turned the heat down a bit. I could see sweat beginning to form on her upper lip and at the edges of her luxurious black hair, “Well, what is it then?” “My mother named me Tara, Master.” A moment of eternity slipped past in silence. “My name is Eric, Tara.” “I know, Master.” I looked askance at her, “You just said that I have never told you my name, Tara.” She didn’t even bat an eye as she replied, “You haven’t, Master. The other servants told me.” I slid down in the tub until my chin barely broke the surface of the water and my feet were in her lap under the bubbles, ”Trim my toenails, girl.” “Of course, Master.” What a nice conversation. ~~~~~==+==~~~~~ I sat in my sitting room staring into the mirrors of the fireplace. Of course, I did not appear in them, but even after all of these years, it still amuses me to see a book floating in midair as I read it. I still have not figured out why the clothes I wear do not appear in the mirror, but any objects I hold do. A question for those wiser than me, no doubt. I stared into the fireplace thinking about my old friend. I held a gift from him in my hands even now, a compact disc by a band of musicians named Dead Can Dance . The play on words is sophomoric, but the music was anything but. Cantara in particular evoked quite strong emotions as I listened to it. Doubtless my old friend knew it would have this effect and that’s why he brought it by earlier… “Eric, my friend!” He grasped me in his embrace and kissed me on both cheeks, as was his custom. I stood by rigidly and allowed this indignity to be visited upon me, as was mine. Once he had finished slobbering on my cheeks, I turned and motioned for him to enter the vestibule. “Gerald, what brings you here, you scalawag?” “Scalawag?” He narrowed his eyes at me with mock anger. “Better than 'baby-raping bastard child of the desert,' isn’t it?” He roared with laughter and followed me into my sitting room, pinching servants as he went. After the third or fourth squeal, I spun on him, “Stop that, Gerald!” “Huh? Stop what?” Innocence was a completely foreign expression on his face, but somehow he pulled it off and we began walking once more. Another yelp from a servant and the accompanying laughter from my old friend almost stopped me again. I decided against upbraiding him. There was always the chance he had recently come up with some scathing remark to which there was no intelligent reply and was just waiting for his chance to spring it on me in front of my servants so I would curse at him like a foulmouthed child when my composure broke. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction this time. At least the servants had the presence of mind to look embarrassed at his behavior. “I’m sorry, Eric. I was just testing them for blood.” I stopped again in the hallway and met his gaze… he looked serious. “Excuse me, Gerald?” I threw him the ‘skeptical eyebrow,’ “What exactly do you mean by that, pray tell?” He broke into a grin, ”Well, with all the somber décor and organ music in the background, I had to make sure they weren’t already embalmed. It seems that you’ve changed this place into a mortuary since my last visit.” There it was. I wouldn’t say it, I wouldn’t… “Fuck you.” Damn. ~~~~~==+==~~~~~ We talked of inconsequentialities for over an hour before he produced the disc from one of the many unnecessary pockets in his pants and walked over to the stereo to put it on. As the opening notes filled the room I asked him, “What is this, Gerald?” “Dead Can Dance … that’s one ugly fucking chair.” “It was a gift from Eloise.” ”Who?” “Eloise… you remember? The woman poet? You met her in Berlin when we went to visit your friend Johannes.” “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.” “Never mind the chair, Gerald. It was a gift and I like it.” I brought out a box of cigars and offered him one, which he declined disdainfully, “With all your fucking money you can’t afford a humidor?” I racked my brain for a second, but all my Latin told me was that it had something to do with moisture in the air, but there was no way I’d admit to Gerald that I had no idea what he was talking about, “I’ve never liked wet cigars, personally.” He brought his entire body into the exasperated sigh and grabbed a cigar, “Never mind, old son. It’s another of the secrets of the modern age passing you by.” “You’re older than I am, Gerald.” He stood and began pacing in front of the fireplace, flicking a wooden match he had procured from somewhere into life with his thumbnail and applying it to the tobacco with practiced ease until he had a nicely glowing coal at the tip of the cigar. He was beginning to make me nervous with his pacing. I had never seen him agitated. Obnoxious, constantly. Angry, occasionally. Annoying, doubtlessly every waking moment. Agitated, never. What could he possibly have to be nervous about? He was near godlike, what could get under his skin like this? I let him pace. He would either tell me or not. “You know what, Evnissyen? You’re a liar.” Ah… I recognized the set up for one of his jests, “Of course, but you make it sound like it’s a bad thing.” I smiled to show that I was in on the joke. He stopped pacing and met my eyes, “It is when the person you’re lying to is yourself.” I stopped smiling, this was not a laughing matter, “Excuse me, P’hrsti al’Aten ,” I bit his name off like a curse. “I’m not sure what you’re going on about.” “You. This. I mean, look at you. How old are you now?” He was gesturing around the sitting room wildly, a strange look in his eyes. I thought it best to humor him for a bit, at least until I discovered what all this was about, “I’ll be one thousand, one-hundred and fifty-three years old this September.” He stopped gesturing and walked to the mantle in silence. He stood before the triptych in silence for a moment. He reached out and began to stroke the polished olive wood frame, “This is better than the one he hung in that chapel.” “’That chapel?’ Do you mean the Vatican?” Gerald stopped his perusal of the triptych and stared hard at me with that long-suffering expression of his, “Vatican, chapel, house, mansion, hut, pit… it all comes to ruins and dust.” I paused before replying, “Except us, Gerald.” “Especially us, Eric. Look at you, you’re sitting in a mansion surrounded by wealth and servants and what do you do with eternity? You sit around with your thumb up your ass all night doing nothing.” “I most assuredly…” He cut me off with a casual wave of his hand, using his status as one of three beings on the planet able to interrupt me and still move on their own afterwards, “I don’t doubt that you think you’re thinking deep thoughts, but what you’re actually doing is diddly-fucking-squat. Don’t tell me you matter anymore, because you don’t. You’ve followed your own mortal legacy down into dust… sure, you’re still above ground, but then, so is the Coliseum.” He sighed deeply, “And just like the Coliseum, you’re broken, empty, and obsolete.” I know my face didn’t betray what I was feeling, but somehow, like always, he knew. “Enjoy the CD… I’ll let myself out.” He ground out his cigar in a crystal ashtray and walked out of the room. ~~~~~==+==~~~~~ I was unaware of the depths of constancy to which I had sunk until after Gerald’s visit, but with fresh perspective, I began examining each and every day. I was examining them at first to prove him wrong, but after about a week, I began to see the wisdom of his words. Each night during my ‘observation period,’ I awoke promptly at sunset as I always did. I would have enjoyed lolling about for hours in bed, but my peculiar metabolism forced me to rise whether I wanted to or not. I suppose that once upon a time, this would have insured the survival of my species by waking before all the food had gone to sleep, but now, when I had everything I needed to survive brought directly to me by servants, it was just annoying. Immediately upon waking naked in my bed, I was whisked into the bathroom where the girl… Tara… would bathe me and cut the hair that had grown overnight. It was during this time of day that I was most grateful I could not observe myself in mirrors. To see myself with ratty and clumped hair to my shoulders and a stringy beard that reached my stomach each morning would have been unbearable. I looked far too much like my brother for comfort before my shave. After spending almost an hour being groomed, which entailed clipping the inch-long nails that grew each night, the inevitable shave and haircut, and the washing and quick healing of the ancient wounds on my neck, Tara would then dress me. I had over a hundred suits, each one tailored specifically to my body, each one identical: a black, three-button linen jacket with silk lining, freshly-pressed trousers, a pair of Italian leather dress shoes over silk, calf-high socks, a red or white (I alternate) heavily-starched, pointed collar dress shirt and a texture patterned black silk tie was my usual ensemble. After I was fully dressed, Tara would then style my hair in either a conservative Caesar or a severely tied ponytail, apply moustache wax to the unruly pointed goatee that I was left with after my shave, and then polish and buff my shoes to a high gloss. Once released from Tara’s care, I would deliver myself to the dining room, where the erstwhile Geoffrey had once waited on me. It was Tara’s brother Michael who brought me breakfast from my cellar reserve now, and he was far more efficient at quieting the reserve down after their ‘donation’ than Geoffrey ever was. It was warmed to precisely one hundred degrees (naturally, each new servant is confused by this at first, but after running down frightened prey for over a millennia, I can confidently say that the fear of extinction raises the body temperature of the prospective meal by approximately one and a half degrees) and served in an Austrian crystal decanter on a warming plate with a matching wineglass. It was thus engaged in breakfast that I would read the papers delivered to my front door in the morning. The New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and my local paper, The Times-Picayune were daily fare, with Newsweek, Time, Businessweek, and five issues each of The London Observer & The London Times being delivered by mail weekly on Fridays. Money, Wired, CFO, and my neighborhood association’s newsletter were monthly publications that the servants left in my office, rather than bringing to the table. Thus engaged in reading, I would sit in the dining room until almost midnight until I was done with the daily papers, unless it was a weekend, in which case I would sit there until close to two o’clock in the morning reading the weekly periodicals. After the last page was read, I would call for Michael and he would clear all the papers, as well as the remains of my meal from the table and bring out my laptop computer. I would recap how my investments performed during the day and place buy or sell orders for the following business day with the broker accordingly. Since I’m not, by nature, very impressed with flash-in-the-pan stocks, the recent recession hasn’t affected me greatly. While everyone else is selling their long-term holdings in precious metals, I’m buying them like mad. Right now, it’s costing me dearly; but in the future, I’ll be glad I hung onto those investments. If you live long enough, you start to realize that everything is cyclical and nothing changes except in an almost preordained pattern. Maybe Gerald was making a point about my current lack of mutability, rather than simply insulting me. After breakfast, reading, and money-making, I retire to my sitting room to relax, listen to music, and read for an hour or two, except on Thursdays and Sundays, when I use this time to answer and originate correspondence to my friends all over the world. I have about fifty acquaintances that I’ve kept in touch with for the last few centuries, and since most of us refuse to speak on the telephone, this affords me the opportunity to keep apprised of the ever-shifting allegiances and political moves of the others of my species. It’s a rare month when I do not receive a letter explaining to me in vaguely coded terms that such-and-such had recently thrown in with so-and-so and wasn’t that terrible and shouldn’t we do something about it? As if I wasn’t old enough to have achieved a measure of security and was willing to throw it all away by starting a blood feud on their behalf. The temerity of my peers still shocks me after all these years. After all of this, dawn was usually less than an hour away, so I would allow Tara to undress me, bathe me once more to get the hair gel and moustache wax off, and then Michael would bring me an aperitif from the cellar as I reclined in my bed. At the exact moment the sun rose, I would drop once more into the deep sleep of my kind and trust in my servants’ artificially-enforced loyalty to watch over me during the day when I was at my most vulnerable. How very, very dull my life had become. ~~~~~==+==~~~~~ Change comes slowly to my kind, so it was another year before I let my newfound boredom overcome my natural inclination to sequester myself away from the world. I had transferred a large portion of my stock assets into a low-yield, low-risk mutual fund, so I had no reason for the many financial papers or the constant perusal of a large portfolio on the Internet. This left me with a huge chunk of time on my hands which I filled by educating myself on various humidors and their effectiveness. I finally decided on a walk-in model to be installed in the closet of my sitting room and by dint of being able to sleep like the dead (ha, ha), I managed to miss all of the construction noise that kept the staff surly and edgy for all three days of building. Obviously the three interior servants had acclimatized themselves to my schedule even better than I had expected, but mortals are resilient and I expect they’ll fully recover from their sleeplessness soon. Tara had been a new source of amusement for me of late as well. It was very rare indeed that a servant attracted enough of my attention for me to inquire about their names, much less about their personal lives, but Tara proved the exception in this regard, being, if possible, even more reclusive and taciturn than I. “Tell me again about your brother, Tara.” She paused in the styling of my hair for just a moment, “Master? Michael lives with you here. What could you possibly…” “No, no. Not Michael. The other one. The one that died before you came to me.” She suddenly began clipping and arranging my hair with short, jerky motions. It seemed that I was bound for a crew-cut this evening, “I don’t like to talk about him, so I won’t.” Defiance? This was new. I most assuredly noted the loss of my honorific, ‘Master.’ I must have touched on a very sensitive subject indeed for her to forget that her lack of respect could be punished with death. I decided to subtly remind her of our relationship and the ground it was founded upon, “I could compel you to tell me.” I reached up to stop her hand before she chopped my remaining bangs into an uneven, ragged mess, “I could make you do anything at all.” She stared pointedly at my hand holding hers for a long moment, “But you won’t,” she looked faintly desperate as the full gravity of her situation became apparent to her. She had seen many, many servants die in the decades she had served me, “Will you, Master Eric?” I dropped my hand away from hers, resting it once more on the hard plastic of the barber’s chair, “No, Tara. I don’t suppose I will.” Her shoulders slumped with relief as her hands regained their dexterity and began cutting once more. I could barely hear her quiet, “Thank you, Master.” ~~~~~==+==~~~~~ “Master?” I was in my sitting room watching a movie on my recently purchased Digital Video Disc player and flat-screened television set. The movie was called John Carpenter’s Vampires, which I didn’t understand. I had known a John Carpenter in the 14th century when I was funding the Coventry cathedral. He was a secondary journeyman, barely intelligible through his toothless maw, and he was definitely no vampire. For that matter, neither were the animals being hunted in the movie deserving of the name. I thumbed the ‘Pause’ button, freezing a priest in a hotel room in mid-drunken-revel, which was probably the most accurate thing about the picture so far and sighed heavily at the interruption, “I’m watching a movie, Tara. What is it?” Her voice came from far closer than I had expected, just behind my chair, actually. I almost jumped, but centuries of discipline allowed me to proceed as if she hadn’t startled me. She didn’t seem to notice that my fingers had grown by almost an inch and my fangs now pricked tiny spots of blood from my lower lip, “I’d like to watch the movie with you, Master.” She came completely around the chair to stand in front of me, “I love vampire movies.” “You’ve lived with a vampire for almost a century, Tara. What’s so wonderful about vampire movies?” I said in confusion. She shuffled her feet and stared at the floor in front of me before answering, “It’s just different, Master. The movie vampires are so… I don’t know… sensual?” Sensual? Blood-drinking, ambulatory corpses were a turn-on in the modern age? Mayhap the current state of the world wasn’t so bad after all. I was still confused, but no longer willing to dismiss her out of hand, ”If you say so, Tara.” I shrugged, “I’ve always found my peers to be rather stodgy and more than a bit pretentious.” She suddenly crouched down in front of me, coming to rest sitting on her knees, her face mere inches from my knee, a strange smile on her face, ”Like you, Master?” My claws were gripping her face before the last syllable had left her mouth. Blood from ten tiny puncture wounds welled up beneath my fingers while my fangs instinctively reacted to the perceived threat to my dominance and imminent feeding by hyper-extending to almost two inches long before I saw the expression on Tara’s face. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slightly open, with her tongue curled under and behind her front teeth in an expression of sexual desire. Her hands were twisting the cloth of her skirts and pressing the knot of fabric deeply into the divide between her legs. I smelled a sudden, pungent odor emanating from her which I recognized from hundreds of bedrooms throughout the ages. As I ran the flavor of the air over my tongue, I could almost taste the lingering sweetness of her monthly blood mixed in her desire and my death grip on her head loosened, smearing her claret fluids along the hollows of her cheeks as I stroked her face with the hands that would have extinguished her life a moment ago. I leaned forward to kiss her bloodstained lips and she met me halfway eagerly. Our tongues danced their erotic dance until Tara surfaced, gasping for air. She rose without saying a word and walked to the door. I watched her in the fireplace mirrors as she closed, and then locked the door in her brother’s astonished face where he waited in the hallway with an aperitif for me. As she came to stand before me once again, she held out her hands for me to take. I placed my crimson hands in her alabaster palms and she pulled me up into a standing position where she proceeded to undo the work that she had done earlier of dressing me. Somehow it was different now… ordinarily, she only seemed concerned with efficiency. This time though, she drew the process out for long moments of kissing and biting as each bit of me was exposed to the air. I arched my back and luxuriated in the attention like a satiated cat until I was completely naked in the soft glow of the television, where the priest still held his drunken pose in perfect DVD clarity. I turned the tables on her, plucking buttons from her silken blouse with my claws one by one and tossing them into the cold fireplace where they clattered noisily to motionlessness. This, far more than the simple act of undressing her, seemed to excite her all the more intensely. She moaned and pressed her skin against my gleaming, black claws, which drew blood everywhere they touched. Her undergarments of white lace became stained with the pinkish mixture of her fresh blood and the sweat of her desire to become almost completely transparent. I traced the curve of her breasts with the sides of my hands, hooking my smallest finger into the fabric as I did so to slice it neatly away from her. I worried at the lace of her panties with my fangs until the weak fabric unraveled itself and she stood nude before me. Her form was as different from my own as was possible. Where I was composed of angles and planes of pale white with dark hair dusting my chest, legs, and groin; she was all curves and swells of dusky olive skin and, apart from her head, completely hairless. I took advantage of her hairlessness as I knelt before her to explore her nether regions with my tongue without fear of getting anything stuck to my teeth. Her moans had become much louder and I feared for a moment that her brother, who I hadn’t forgotten was directly outside the door, would attempt to burst in and ruin this perfect moment. I would have no choice but to kill him in front of her. That kind of behavior from servants is simply unacceptable, regardless of how intensely beautiful his sister was. I tasted a flood of juices from her as her screams grew in pitch and volume and she would have collapsed onto the floor had I not caught her in my arms. I lay her gently on the rug in front of the fireplace and contented myself with studying her nude form between salty kisses. Her Latin descent showed clearly in her full features and dark eyes, in her turgid brown nipples and the full swell of her hips… I knew as I gazed at her beauty that I could never let it spoil, with or without my patronage. I drew my gaze back up to her face and I assume that she saw something in my face had changed, “What are you thinking about, Eric?” There was no graceful way of saying that I would drain her of her blood and then resurrect her corpse into a parody of eternal life before the end of the night, so I simply said, “My name is Evnissyen, Tara.” She smiled her perfect white smile at me, with a mouth that would see fangs grow before daybreak, “I know.” ~~~~~==+==~~~~~ Gerald had been sitting in my study for over an hour and was still remarking on the changes that I had affected in my lifestyle, “I can’t believe you bought a Hummer.” “What else was I supposed to buy?” “It’s yellow.” “So?” “I figured you for a nice black Lexus, or something sinister. I don’t know… like a hearse or a Bentley or something.” I glanced out the window at the garage which now held more automobiles than I had owned since their invention, “I bought one of those too.” “Which one? The hearse, the Bentley, or the something?” I chuckled, “One of each, actually… but Michael drives the hearse. He says it’s great for picking up women.” I walked over to the humidor and selected an Havana from the shelf, “Want one?” Gerald put his feet up on my desk and swirled the brandied blood in his glass, “If you’re offering, it would be rude to refuse, wouldn’t it?” He winked. I glanced at the door to the study where the youngest vampire in the house now stood, “And you, Tara?” “Of course, Evnissyen.” Gerald brought his feet down from my mahogany desk and stared back and forth from Tara to me and then back, “’Evnissyen,’ is it?” He looked at me in shock, “You didn’t!” I smirked at him. He began chuckling as Tara brought me a glass of the reserve. She looked at him in confusion, “What’s so funny?” Gerald’s laughter tapered off to silence, but his eyes were still full of glee, “You know what this means, don’t you, Evnissyen?” I sipped from my glass, “What’s that?” He stood regally in front of Tara and held out his hand to her. She placed hers within his grip to allow him to kiss it and giggled as his rough beard scraped her fingers. He stood before her like the Pharaoh he once was and said, “We’ve got a trip to make.” I smiled as I realized his meaning. Tara’s confusion only added to my grin, “London?” She looked to me again, seeking explanations, “What are you talking about? London?” I stood in front of her, grasping her hands in mine. I winked at Gerald, who said, “You see, Tara… now that you’re part of the family, there are a few people you have to meet.” She glanced from me to him and back, “Who?” I smiled at her as I took her into my embrace and whispered in her ear, “The woman who will teach you to use your eternal beauty as an irresistible seductress, the woman who knows more about the gathering and retaining of power than anyone on this planet, the woman who will insure your greatness throughout the ages,” I kissed her ear gently and stepped back from her, still holding both of her hands as I said, “Tara… it’s time for you to meet my mother.” ~~~~~== The End ==~~~~~ Copyright © 2003 , José G. Valdes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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