Blood and Light and Magic and Truth
“You heard her crying all night?”
It was more statement than question, echoed in still of their dark hermetic chamber. It had been a very long time since they had both lain here, side by side, her hand in his.
“I did.” He admitted it. He knew she wanted him to.
She didn’t bother to turn her head towards him when she knew his face was impassive. She was still surprised that he had come here this day after he had seen Sophie. She could tell he had fed, in no way was physically diminished, had not spoken of anything, had simply done that they used to do: strip down to his underclothes and climbed onto the comfortable queen mattress, hand taking hers as he settled, as if it hadn’t been decades since the last time. Outwardly, he was calm, days of his heightened anger and command completely given way to an impeccable peace.
He had kept the emotional link between them shut for as many years as he had avoided their shared resting space. But the subtle tension that told her of the effort was also absent, as if she could reach out and have access to the Maurice of old.
He had been with Sophie. He’d been perfumed with her scent, like he bathed in the essence. When he breathed, he exhaled the infinitesimal bouquet of her sweat, her saliva. He had been with Sophie and come back to her. Come back to her with resolve. With calm. Perhaps whatever battle he had convinced himself to wage had worked itself out with their success over the vampire.
Ba, not really a vampire after all. A dangerous pretender, yes. But her irregulars had had little effort taking him out. In fact, Ritterreiter declared them ready for the next phase of their training. That is, in between swearing about their lack of discipline and general complaints about the youth these days.
She blinked hard. She was distracting herself. He’d been with Sophie.
“I did not lay with her.”
She turned her head towards him.
“I did kiss her. She needed healing.” He paused, searching for words. “I had to know.”
“And?” her concern was growing. She rolled to her side facing him.
The silence echoed. The words wouldn’t tumble out of his mouth. He clenched his eyes. He wanted to spare her but knew she would discover the truth on her own. She just didn’t know the question to ask.
She lay back flat again, frustrated.
He sighed. This was it. The last night like this. The last night it could just be the two of them, together, against the world. After years of rejecting it, fighting to find others, wanting someone for himself that could be more than a sister, all he wanted now was her. Her love, her trust, her eternal hand in his, together for all time.
But their paths diverged here. After he shared with his sister what he suspected when he first smelled this age’s Sophie Quinn as she revealed herself at the comic book shop. A truth that they had never sought and yet, she carried it with her completely unaware of the enormity of it.
He knew Lucy had always suspected he’d fancied Tante. Felt it was the reason for Caroline, an older companion to mirror the mother figure they’d both lost when their Tante had died. And maybe when he was a naïve youth, the comfort of her care, her love especially as he’d matured and etched into his youthful desires.
But no, that wasn’t why he’d kissed Sophie. While it was easier to heal her that way, he could’ve chosen any other number of forms and fashions to seep his essence deep into her wounds. Some even without touching her at all. Some that took nothing more than a breath. He’d perfected them over the years with the Irregulars that his sister insisted on taking on and trying to support them.
There was no way to spare her the shock and she hadn’t trusted his words for quite some time. And lately he’d been a brute to her and hadn’t known why, hadn’t been aware until his senses knitted together the puzzle that Sophie presented. But once he suspected, he had to disprove it. How could it possibly be so?
“Lucy, my heart, my beloved sister, I had to kiss this Sophie because….because she carries an essence with her, within her, one that, one that I had to understand.”
Lucy frowned but felt the blocked bond between them burst wide open and her eyes shot open.
“I don’t know how else for you to know that it is true.” He paused as he dispelled the wall between them so she could feel all the emotions underneath his calm. It wasn’t resolve at all. It was awareness. It was epiphany.
“The essence I first smelled on Sophie wasn’t this ange of hers frozen in marble. I met him and he….he is something entirely unlike Vampire.” He sighed, letting himself feel the incredulity of it all.
“Gods, you are horrible at confessions! What?” she demanded.
“Blood and light and magic. That’s how you described it.”
“That was Morena!”
“The light, yes. Her ange.”
“You keep calling him that–.”
“He is not the point! Blood and magic. That’s what you said.”
She felt a prick of foreboding. His emotions were so deep and unfamiliar to her after all this time; she could barely discern where they ended and her own began. It was as if all this time, he’d never really been separated from her. He’d kept her intact in his own being even as he blocked their active connection.
“Yes?”
“Lucy, the essence Sophie carries. It’s what saved her from that evil liquid the pretender made her drink. That essence,” It was his turn to shift towards her, holder her hand up to his chest. “It’s our Father.”
Vampirony 
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