BACK TO FRASER'S FRACTURED FICTION

Complicated Lives part 3

by A. Fraser and J. Hontz

Part 3

© Copyright 2005 A. Fraser and J. Hontz, with Amanda Rush as Nimue. All rights reserved.

Meanwhile, Adele, having freed herself from Guy, glanced toward Alex, who was busy speaking to Josh. She watched him for a time, a thoughtful look on her face, but turned away so he wouldn't catch her watching him when he seemed to feel a set of eyes were on him. She pretended interest in Nimue and Tagd's greeting.

"So, do you think that went over well?" Alex asked Josh, eyes sliding towards Adele, who was busy talking to Nimue.

"I'd say so," Josh grinned. "She keeps looking at you when you aren't looking."

Guy headed for the safer confines of the maler section of the room. Oh, oops, Maggie was there holding court with Evan and Ray. Estella and Pandora seemed to be telling jokes in the corner. They were safe enough anyway. Mitch was being all cute and cuddly with Bess. Alex and Josh were busy, and Gideon was his usual unruffled self. Ah, safety, Guy thought, heading as straight as he could do through the crowd to Gideon.

Nimue, having untangled herself from Adele and the Fairlawns, was headed over to the multi-limbed melee. The children, with that extra sense children are born with, seemed to know that they were being watched by an adult and jumped to their feet in the standard innocence inspiring position. Nimue laughed, and the twins, noticing who it was, relaxed.

"Is Julian with you?"

"Did you bring any drinks?"

"Are you planning any pranks?"

"Did you find your cat?"

"No, to all. Sorry guys. But I did want to have a quick word with you, Vivain." Nimue gestured the lanky redhead to follow her. When they had reached safe distance from the crowds, Nimue stopped and turned to Vivain.

"I wanted to thank you for your concern regarding me and my lost cat. I was very moved by your efforts on my behalf, and to thank you, I wanted to give you this." She reached one hand behind her back, and mock-rummaged around, as if digging through a back pack. She winked, and then pulled her hand back in front of her. She held an action figure of Legolas, still in its box. Vivain took the box from her. As she looked down at it, Legolas stirred, and smacked his fists against the inside of the box. Vivain shrieked and dropped the box. It smacked against the floor, and a jarred Legolas pulled out his tiny knife and ripped the plastic casing open. He grabbed his weapons and swung himself gracefully out of the packaging. As he scanned the room, he spotted a cat lazily ambling about. He shouted, "The enemy approaches!" Whipping out his bow and arrow, he took off running, all the while rapid firing at the now greatly disturbed feline.

"Oh, totally cool!" Vivain exclaimed. "Thanks!" She gave the older redhead an impulsive hug. "But poor Orlando." She giggled and rescued her cat. Like his owner, Orlando was a lanky adolescent, a bit scruffy at the moment but with promise of being quite handsome. He was obviously not one of those shy cats that hide from noisy company.

"He's lovely," said Nimue, endearing herself to Vivain forever. "Just like his namesake."

"Couldn't you, like, just die when Orlando Bloom gives that look of his?" Vivain sighed.

Most unfortunately, her brother had come to see what was happening and heard this. He made gagging noises.

"Go thump him for me," Nimue suggested with a smile.

As Vivain ran after Galen, still clutching her cat, Nimue watched the twins.

Guy watched all of this with wide eyes. At least his tattoo wasn't acting out. "Are you still angry with Nimue? I heard about the St Patrick's day party," Guy asked Gideon.

His dark eyes flickered towards the sorceress in question before Gideon answered. "No," he admitted. "I'm not angry at any of the co-conspirators. It was a foolish prank that got out of hand. I don't think I'll be attending the party this year if there is one, but all is forgiven." He glanced off in another direction, towards a certain blond young man. "But don't tell Francis that," he added, with something suspiciously like a very unBaronial grin. "It's quite entertaining having him scared witless of what I, or worse, Evan, might do to him."

Guy surprised Gideon by laughing aloud. Francis, feeling paranoid about the Baron already, didn't like the sound of that at all.

Adele was standing with Mary and Michael when poor Orlando met Orlando. Adele's bright laughter rang out. "Oh, she is a devil."

Mary assumed she meant Nimue and not her daughter. (Now, her son, on the other hand... )

"So," Mary asked Adele, once Orlando the younger was rescued, "how is Paris? And Julian?"

"Oh, Paris is wonderful. Julian is... uhm, Julian."

Nimue heard Julian's name drift out through the wisps of conversation.  She looked up, a flutter in her stomach, hoping to spot him among the little bundles of people here and there. What she saw instead was a man in black, watching her look around. She felt another flutter, but this one was different. More of regret, and sadness. Estella was at Ray's arm. Nimue gave him a small, timid smile.

He held out his hands and grasped hers. "Nimue. Please believe that I never, ever meant to hurt you."

"Only if you promise to believe the same of me." She glanced at Estella, and then back to Ray. "But we have to stop having this conversation. How's Andrei?"

"Andrei is fine," said Ray, casting worried looks between the two women. "Er, have you met Estella?" he asked.

"Oh, don't be such a silly," Estella snorted, giving Nimue a wide smile. "You look like you expect us to pull each other's hair or something. Hello, Nimue."

"That would be silly. Ray knows I fight much dirtier than that. It was lovely to see you both again, but I'm afraid I must scurry away. I've been meaning to speak with," She scanned the room quickly, and spotted Guy with Gideon, "Gideon all evening. Please excuse me."

Adele, seeing Nimue in conversation with Ray and Estella took a deep breath and walked over to sink onto the arm of the chair beside Alex.

Alex wasn't expecting that. Adele winked at Josh and smiled wickedly down at Alex. "So, what does a girl have to do to get a little attention around here anyway?"

 Josh opened his mouth to make some smart reply, but Alex was quicker.

"I'm sure," said the Hungarian Graf to the Midwestern antiques broker, "that you have somewhere else to be right now. Joshua?"

At the expression in those stormy grey eyes, Josh closed his mouth again. He'd once been fetched a quite sound smack upside the ear by Alex, and wasn't anxious to repeat the experience. "I think I need a fresh drink," he said, winking at Adele, and ambled discretely in the general direction of the drinks table.

"Adele," said Alex, looking at her.

"Oh, good, you know my name," she said brightly. "That's a start."

He sighed. Whatever manic impulse had sent him here to Fairlawn tonight, bearing a rose between his teeth (and he could still taste the stem, despite a serious attempt to wash the flavour away with Scotch) and carrying a dozen more, was fading. There were too many people here, and too many of those were children. Admittedly only three, but that was still too many for Alex.

Francis kept glaring at him, too.

"Would you," he asked, "like to walk in the garden with me?" He'd quite forgotten it was February.

Adele met his eyes and responded, "Darling, these boots are made for walking but they don't walk very well through crunchy snow. How about we just adjourn to the porch."

"Right," he replied, moving to get up immediately.

She put her hand on his shoulder. She opened her mouth to add something else, but changed her mind before it got out. "Right," was all she replied.

The two of them arose and made their way through the crowd to the back of the house. They weren't touching one another, but Adele as acutely aware of his nearness as they weaved through the crowd. How many pair of eyes were on them Adele didn't really want to know. She hesitated only long enough to grab her cape and throw it over her shoulders. Alex helped her with it, his hand brushing the back of her neck. She shivered. Then they were out on the porch, alone, in the clear brilliance of a cold, silent night.

---------

Nimue, as she headed towards Gideon's spot in the back of the room, saw Adele and Alex disappear. So she's made her choice, Nimue thought to herself. She briefly considered retiring early to where her choice was waiting for her, but felt it would be rude to leave so soon. Plus, she was very curious about the newest non-feline addition to the Fairlawn home.

Guy and Gideon were in deep conversation. Nimue strolled up and stood primly next to Gideon.

"So, how's the gentlemanliness coming along these days?"

To her surprise, he smiled. "As well as it ever does," he said. "It's something of a dying art, I'm afraid. How is the sorcerery business?"

In another corner, nearly forgotten because he'd been so quiet; a tall, muscular, auburn-haired man stirred, hazel eyes narrowing at the sight of the red-haired woman talking to his employer. Evan Jones, low cycle or not, pried himself out of his chair, and began sidling his way gently towards Gideon, Guy and Nimue. Evan could sense that there was going to be trouble here tonight, and, not without justification, suspected that Nimue could be a potential source of it.

Thank all the gods that Julian wasn't here, too.

Another red-head decided to get in on the fun. Maggie decided that she ought to cull Guy out of the herd. Wasn't she entitled to a little fun, too? She started making her way towards the little group.

Nimue smiled back. She couldn't help it. "As well as it ever is," she replied to Gideon's question. "I hear you had quite the adventure in Paris with Julian."

Gideon noticed the wistfulness with which that name was spoken. People thought he didn't notice their emotions because he kept his own under such tight control. "Yes," the Baron answered. "Quite the adventure. Pity you weren't there; I think you would have enjoyed it."

Many of the other members of the Brotherhood, sensing a current of some sort happening, were starting to look round at that particular corner. Nobody at all noticed Francis slink quietly out of the living room and head purposefully for the back porch.

Guy certainly didn't notice Francis. He was looking from one redhead to another. As Gideon introduced him to Nimue, he managed to look, well, gentlemanly. His tattoo even behaved itself. He bowed over her hand barely remembering not to raise it to his lips for a kiss. Nimue struck him as the kind of woman who frequently terrified men into such behaviour. Then, as Maggie glided in to join them, his tattoo slammed into protective mode.

Guy was not all that innocent of predatory females. Most of the young women he'd met in his life were formed and educated for one thing, and one thing only: to capture a wealthy and titled husband. Granted, the mothers were more predatory than were their daughters, and the fathers and brothers were there to enforce proper selection and discipline, still.. So Guy was not unaware of what that look on Maggie's face meant. He swallowed.

"Oh, your ...tattoo!" Nimue commented. "Does it do that often?"

"Periodically. It tends to do that when I'm presented with a challenge. Or perhaps with some form of disapproval."

Nimue smiled at him. "Certainly not from me." Then, noting Maggie's sultry approach she added, "Ah, I see. Don't worry, I'll protect you."

There was a sudden convergence of redheads. Not only Maggie, who smiled at Guy in a way that made him turn as red as all the hair around him and gulp; but Evan and the twins were also drawn like magnets. Vivain carried Legolas now; the little figure was firing arrows at Galen in the not entirely misguided opinion that the boy was a cave troll. Evan, seeing the light in Maggie's eyes, put his hand on her arm and whispered something in her ear. She sagged a bit, and turned away from Guy to look at the twins and comment on Vivain's gift.

Guy, despite himself, looked relieved. Maggie intrigued him, but terror of her was paramount.

Nimue's attention drifted. She looked at the hallway Adele and Alex had vanished down, and thought about the last time she had been at a gathering like this. Julian had hidden in the library at Oakwoods, and Nimue had found him. In their moment of solitude, she had almost told him something she had never meant to say, much less feel, to Julian. She could feel her chest do that thing that it had been doing every time she thought about Julian since she had come back from putting her past to rest. It constricted, as if she were happy, but there was a cold fear knotted right in the core of her. Nimue had been raised to be strong, taught to always maintain control of her surroundings.

It was the backbone of her power. But something wild and uncontrollable grew in her when she was with Julian. She feared it, and always wanted more. And yet, and yet, she thought to herself. A bond between them that was something more than the camaraderie of the bored immortal had started to grow just before she left without a word. Her folly may have broken it forever. Nimue couldn't understand if she viewed this as a tragedy, or a relief. And suddenly, she knew she was being watched. As she raised her head, she saw Tagd's eyes on her. He smiled that same warm smile.

Nimue could hear his words in her head - follow your heart. (What he'd actually _said_ had been "Look both ways before you cross the street", but she'd heard his unspoken words as well.) She didn't understand what her heart was telling her, but she knew one thing to be fact - she wouldn't figure it out here. She smiled back, and mouthed the words, 'Thank you' to Tagd. He nodded his head.

And just like that, Nimue was gone.

_________

Alex stared at Adele for a moment, feeling... awkward. Now that he had the girl alone, he didn't know what the hell to say to her. She wasn't like, say, Maggie; or like any of the women Alex usually met in casinos and resorts. She wasn't playing The Game. He wasn't sure he knew how to talk to a woman who wasn't.

To cover his embarrassment, he reached into his pocket for his cigarette case. "D'you mind?" he asked diffidently. "I'm dying for a smoke."

Adele couldn't help her reaction. She started to giggle.

"What?" Alex looked at her as if she was an alien.

"How can you be dying for a smoke?" she gasped. "You're already dead."

He started laughing, too. "Good point." He extracted one of his specially-made black cigarettes and lit it, careful to blow the smoke the other way. "I can't light up inside; Mary would have my head."

Adele laughed again. "It really wouldn't look good mounted over the door," she said.

"No, I like it where it is."

"As do I. I quite like it where it is. You could however..."

"I could?" Alex asked.

"Offer me a smoke," Adele said with a smile in her voice. "Oh! I've no idea what happened to my manners. It is just that smoking has become...."

"A reviled filthy habit," Adele finished for him as she took one of the cigarettes he offered her from his elegant case. He lit it for her and she took a deep drag. She didn't cough. "Not bad," was her adjudged opinion.

At his look she commented, "Not a reviled filthy habit in my natural world. Although I will admit women were not considered good enough to join men in this particular moral degeneracy. But in the privacy of our boudoirs..."

The silence was friendlier now, less awkward. They were both enjoying the moment, and Adele's eyes were on the brilliance of the snow lit by a sliver of silvery moon.

"I shouldn't keep you out here too long," Alex said after a moment. "Just out of curiosity, though... why did you want to meet me? It's not as if," he made a face, "you weren't amply warned."

Adele turned to meet his eyes. "I've never pretended to be morally upright. Although I will confess to quite often pretending to be the innocent." She smoked for awhile then added, "I was most seriously warned about Julian, you see. What a rogue he was, how dreadful, why he even had male lovers sometimes. My father tried to kill him. Several times I believe. But when I was three he began to come to visit me and bring me sweets and laughter. My father was furious when he found out. Julian once stopped my father from expecting me to.. Well, to do something I would have greatly regretted later on in life."

Her face closed down then. But after a moment, when she continued, her voice was lighter, more teasing. "So you see, I've learned to take gossip about people with a very large grain of salt." Then she added, "Do you live up to your reputation? And if you do, is it by choice, or for spite? Or perhaps because it is what is expected of you?"

He stubbed out his cigarette and carefully flicked the butt into a snowdrift. Adele was used to not getting immediate answers to deep questions from vampires; they all seemed to feel they had to carefully think about what they were going to say. There was something about Alex, oddly enough, that most masculine of men, that reminded her of Genevieve. A stance, perhaps, or that perfect silence...

"Which reputation?" he asked. "As a playboy? As a cad, blackguard and bounder? As someone who can't keep a steady relationship with one woman? Or as someone who raped and brutally turned his poor, innocent cousin into a vampire?"

She flicked her own butt into the snowbank and then laughed out loud. It was not a pleasant sound. "Goddess, you are just like Julian. Shock the poor girl into speechlessness. Prove to her you are worthless, thus, fulfilling your own prophecy: see, she rejects me, I am worthless." Her eyes were flashing, anger there. "Idiot!"

She spun on the heel of one stiletto boot and took a step toward the door to reenter the house.

Only to be nearly knocked aside by a figure running out of the house. She caught her balance just on time to recognize Francis as he barrelled into Alex. Francis was lightly built, slender, and lacked at least four or five inches of Alex's height; but he managed to very nearly send the older, taller vampire batapulting over the porch railing.

"Leave her alone!" the younger man yelled, flailing somewhat ineffectually at Alex with his fists.

Poor Alex. His conversation with Adele had not gone well right there at the end; he knew it was his own damn fault. Foot in mouth disease had cursed him again. And now suddenly he had a furious teenager, who probably weighed about a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, trying to beat him up.

Alex's fist was cocked, purely on instinct, and that caught Adele's full attention. "Don't. Even. Think. About. It." Her eyes were locked on Alex's.

He really hadn't been thinking about it but as Francis was still flailing away at him and he was doing nothing to defend himself and his entire attention was on Adele who looked sexy as shit all fired up like that ....One of Francis's fists caught Alex on the cheek, knocking Alex's head aside and necessarily breaking his eye contact with Adele.

Adele ... Shouted... Screamed? Something came out of her mouth, not exactly words, but not exactly wordless either, and suddenly both Alex and Francis were on their butts in the snowbank in a heap. Adele stood on the porch looked down at them, her hands on her hips. "Oh, what the hell," she muttered and dove into the snow bank with them, more or less landing on top of both of them.

The sounds from the back porch had not gone unnoticed in the house. Especially Adele's... vocalization. A large number of people, Michael in the forefront, came hurriedly out the back door. The Archdruid stopped and stared at the tableau in his yard. Francis was struggling to get free and continue to pound out his frustrations on Alex. Alex was staring into Adele's eyes, and she was keeping Francis down with one hand and making slow lazy doodles in the snow with the other.

"Stop it," she warned the spluttering Mr. Calvert, "or I'll wash your face in snow."

"Somebody get them out of there," Mary said, 'mom' ringing in every tone, "before Adele gets frostbite."

There were a few smiles, but nobody dared laugh out loud, not with Mary in that mood. Evan leaned over the porch railing and extended his hand to Adele.

"I'll pull you down in here with me," she warned.

A certain man in black had also made his way through the throng on the porch. Heck, everybody was there. The porch was sagging. A word, a gesture... and the three in the snowbank were suddenly three slightly soggy, shivering people back on the porch.

Francis suddenly remembered something Adele had said to the entire Telegraph, and tried to slink back out of reach.

"You'd better not let me get my hands on you, Francis Calvert," Adele muttered. Her clothes were sopping wet, and clung to her every curve leaving nothing whatever to the imagination. And everyone was looking. She waved a hand and the clothes disappeared, leaving her standing there, poised and naked, wearing only her boots.

The men goggled. (Except for Michael, who merely sighed, and Gideon and Josh, who both closed their eyes.) The boys really goggled.

Adele commented, "Oh, I'm sure none of you have ever seen a naked woman before."

Galen whispered to Aisling, "Only in the magazines I'm not supposed to know about."

"Mary, would you happen to have a hair dryer I can use?"

"And a robe," Mary added. The two of them headed off to a bedroom to repair damages. They left the two wet vampires to fend for themselves. After all, _they_ didn't have to worry about frostbite.

Guy, who'd managed to see everything too, was still goggling. "That was different," he was heard to mutter wonderingly.

Michael confronted the two dripping undead, and then the rest of the (mostly) amused crowd. "Anyone for coffee?" he asked. He caught Pandora's eye. "Or tea?"

The healer laughed, and collected her small son, steering him away from Galen's influence. "I think it might be time to go home," she said.

"It was certainly an... interesting party," added Nicholas, with a grin.His wife had given him quite a dig in the ribs when she'd caught him goggling at Adele. "Do have one again soon, won't you?"

"Maybe I should go dive in a snowbank," Maggie said thoughtfully. "It seems to be the way to get attention around here."

Francis shot her a dirty look. Evan reached out lazily and hooked the boy by an ear.

"Definitely time to go home," said the Nameless One. "And if you ever pull a stunt like this again, Francis, I'll turn you over..."

"Your knee?" Francis challenged him. "I'm not a kid."

"I was going to say 'turn you over to Estella's Uncle Rigo'," Evan finished.

Francis went a little paler, if that was possible. Estella, hearing her name and that of her uncle, nodded.

One by one, Alex and Francis still leaving snowmelt on the carpet, the Brotherhood left.

Michael looked from Guy to his own three children. "Shall we clean up?" he asked cheerfully.

Guy was more than happy to pitch in. It kept him close to Bess. He watched Bess out of the corner of his eye. Michael noticed, the twins noticed, Bess didn't see to notice him at all.

And upstairs, in the ensuite bathroom off the master bedroom, two women were lost in a fit of giggles.


 

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