Conclave (Hypernaturals 3)

Adrian's Tale

We paused to refresh drinks. More beers. More Sours. More stories. So it went.

Other stories told similar tales of horrible treatment at the hands of men and society. During a lull, Iris looked at me. "What about you, Adrian? What is your tale of being turned?"

I am surprised to even be asked. "My tale of being turned is not anything like any of yours," I admitted

Iris looked around the hot tub, took a silent poll of the eyes, then back at me. "Give. We told you ours." A sort of non-optional aspect to it. This is not us playing Doctor.

I steeled myself. It is going to be hard to tell this story without giving off a few pheromones. Helen made me learn to control and tested my limits all the time. This is going to test it far more than the underwater lips in the hot tub.

I surrendered "Ok. As I said, it's nothing like you all's." I rolled my eyes up and to the left as I pulled the memories to the front. Jessica walking up to me at Hippy Hollow swam into my mind's eye. Her hair. Her face. Her lips. Her sunscreen coated body.

Images in place, hormones, and pheromones under control, I started. "I just broke up with my on-again, off-again girlfriend. We were on and off for seven years, and this time I was determined it was going to be that last time. All the previous times we drifted apart. This time, I meant to stop it for good. The good sex not enough. I wanted more. I wanted to be with someone I could trust. If you were at the sessions, this is the girlfriend Victoria mentioned. The one that turned out to be a Siren." General nods, but silence, waiting for me to go on.

I looked around, saw that they seemed generally interested. I made an offhand gesture. "I was sitting over at Hippy Hollow, thinking about life, the universe, and everything." I paused, saw Morgan caught the reference, but everyone else merely waited again. Just because Vampires live a long time does not mean they know everything. Oddly, that lack of understanding made the story easier to tell. Jessica would have gotten it.

The custom appears to be that stories are supposed to be long and detailed. Nothing juicy left out: This is not church camp. I told them about Jessica appearing on the beach, taking pity on the geeky man, sitting and chatting. Inviting me to her boat, helping me with my raging priapism, and then causing a few more, which she also dealt with. My retelling was not pornographic, but it was clear what I talked about. Iris's level of detail was my guide.

The juicy bits of the night together told I segued to the next morning when I woke in my car to a note, a picture of her cat (our cat now!), and two beers that were a remembrance of the night. I didn't remember her bites then. That came later. I did not know what she was, or even everything she had done to me, although I remembered everything she let me recall in 3d sensurround. Her taste. Her scent. Her cool flesh warming as we made love as often as my human body could.

I did not know she was Vampire. I knew I loved her. Everything about her. The sex had been sensational not because of the athletic aspects but because she is Jessica. I needed to be with her again. I had no choice in that. I thought she felt at least something similar, otherwise, why leave me the remembrances?

I didn't know, from Jessica's point of view, what a bad idea it is for Vampires to be serious about a human. How could I?

I missed her. I was in love with her. She was gone. That is all I knew.

I went into how I became ill (transition sickness), spent eight days in the hospital in a coma and dreaming, got well, and almost immediately went looking for the woman who, unknown to me at the time, turned me into a Vampire. I told the audience about how I methodically searched the boathouses and docks of the lake, trying to find her boat, the 'Nightwing'. How instead of finding her, a cop obsessed with her found me. Beat me senseless. Ran me over with a cop car. Hung me in a deer processing plant by my heels. Beat me some more. Finally, the crazed cop was about to flay me alive when Jessica showed up and saved me. I laughed at the part where she saved me not knowing who I was. She saw the cop abduct someone, followed him to the deer processing place, and set about saving whoever the poor soul was. She really had no idea it was me. That is Jessica, trying to do the right thing.

As I went on with my story I looked around from time to time to see if I am going too slow or fast. Giving too much detail, or too little. The Vampiress audience and even Morgan were amazingly rapt. I wondered if this is the start of another Vampire oral history.

I went on. I thought it is a good story, if perhaps more romantic than theirs. I told them how when Jessica figured out it was me on the hooks, she felt guilty for what happened to her poor human lover and so took me away from Austin to heal.

That took us back to a juicy part, and I noticed a keen interest when I told them we made love in the shower of a fleabag hotel, me barely able to stand. Jessica did not understand how a human could be this way about her and starting to worry about the way she felt about the wretched human in her care. I had been right about the first night. She felt something, but she was not sure if she was willing to risk the heartache of the short term, human relationship. For my part, I had no idea what she felt, only that it probably was not going to be a long-term thing, and so I would stubbornly make the most of every second she granted me.

We fled further west, to her secret condo. She figured we needed a place that the cop knew nothing about that would give her extremely damaged human lover a chance to heal. As I healed rather quickly she figured out what happened to me. That I turned.

She turned me.

We could be together!

She took me under her wing, showed me the ropes, took my parole from the Council, we killed some drug dealers together, crashed a plane in the middle of nowhere, confessed our love on top of a mountain on a moonless night, and a few months later, Jessica married me when I asked her, even though I was pretty sure she would not want to. What is a marriage when you live so long? She did not even hesitate but said 'yes', and so we got married with Helen as our witness.

I maybe raced through the last part, but I spread my hands to show that the story is over. "The rest, as they say, is history. Here we are."

"I thought you said your story is nothing like ours?" Iris scolded me. "Really: Hung upside down by your heels? With fucking HOOKS!?!"

A brunette woman named Celia who is about four hundred and fifty years old according to her story said "Also: romantic much? Oh my god! I am so horny now. The only dude here is so taken. Lucky Vampire bitch. I think I hate her."

"We all hate her" Iris agreed. She looked a little embarrassed as she looked at me. "Oh, and sorry about the sucking thing I did there, During the water fight. I really had no idea. I feel like shit now. Don't tell her. OK?"

I doubted it is so much new respect for me as it is a healthy fear of Jessica. I think they are starting to get in a visceral way that she and I really are together. The story made it more real than merely hearing the word 'Married'.