Chapter Text
It took a bit to get everyone there- just saying farewells had taken a lot of time- but eventually they were back home.
"Nice place..." Quincy commented, "You look pretty well moved in..."
Sebastian grinned, "Well, we live here until Jim finishes the renovations on the house... I mean, technically I own the estate now, and I do have to stay there some days when I am handling business, but... if I have to be in London proper?" He gestured around.
Murphy- blunt as ever- asked, "So do we finally get the actual story? Because pretty clearly the story we got wasn't it." He sprawled in his usual way on the chair, and only barely refrained from putting his feet on a table. (Which was Murphy being polite- if he didn't respect them he would have put his feet up, vampire be damned).
Sebastian rolled his eyes, "Yes... but only as long as you understand this first: no matter what it sounds like- or was, at the time- it's between me and Jim, and we've got it settled, ok?"
Murphy put his hands over his face, and muttered (in Irish), "{Lord have Mercy, just what has the English fool done now?}"
Quincy laughed, "Can you be surprised? It was like every time he found a new relationship it was crazier than the last one... I figure he had to move up to vampires at some point..."
"No, no..." Murphy waved a finger at Quincy, "It's not that! I mean that he doesn't want to tell us how they met and is all like 'don't be upset...' That's never a good sign!"
"True that," Quincy agreed.
--
James looked at both men with an amused expression, then gestured for Sebastian to join his friends. "I'll fetch something for the three of you. Beer, I assume, will be much needed..."
He came back shortly with three bottles and in an impressive display of strength, popped the caps off of each for the men. "In this case... I suspect Sebby is worried that you'll be outraged and leap to his defence, which obviously would lead to... well, something horrible happening. From what he's said of you both to me, you're just as fiercely loyal as him, though... I suspect a lot less forgiving in some ways."
"Oh-" he paused, "You probably need food, too?" And he hurried back to the kitchen, only to come out and place several flavours of pudding cups on the table, along with spoons. "I think this is very fitting."
--
Sebastian looked at this array of pudding cups... and started laughing. He kept laughing until he was more or less leaning into Quincy and wheezing. He finally managed to gasp out, "Bad vampire! Bad! Murdering a hunter with in-jokes..."
Murphy watched this, at first with a bewildered look, and then slowly with a solemn look... "Oh, well, if he's murdering you that's the way to do it, obviously..." He reached out and snagged a pudding cup, "Since he's dying, Quincy and I will just snag the best flavours..."
This led to a somewhat amusing- and entirely non-serious- 'fight' over the 'best pudding cups'...
But eventually, all three of the boys disguised as elite soldiers had their pudding cups and Sebastian started telling them the whole story...
When he was telling about being sick in the alley, and that he finally figured out he had been drugged, Quincy interjected, "You got roofied?!" Quincy smacked him, "Sloppy!"
"Admitted," Sebastian sighed, "But you have to know that... I only remember a bare few bits of this: the story I am telling from here until I wake up in a not-hospital? bits of my memory, and a lot of what Jim told me..."
They both listened grimly to the story of Jim taking the drugged man home, and his soon-to-be end... until he reacted badly to the bite and fought back.
Murphy scrubbed at his face and took another swig of beer, "Basher..."
"It gets better?" Sebastian winced.
"It better get better," Quincy shook his head, "Ok, so Lady Luck stepped in, in person this time and saved your ass?"
"Err... not... quite..."
"I mean," James shrugged, "Not quite a lady, but I would say I'm damn lucky..."
Murphy and Quincy stared at him.
"I licked blood off the bathroom floor like a damn animal and held his neck together with my hands until Bruce came. You saw him- big guy. The biggest guy... although... the more I think of it, Sebastian must have introduced you since you were helping with security." James smiled- it was pleasant, or as pleasant as a smile could be while telling such a story.
A part of him- not exactly a small part, either- was just waiting for one or both of them to snap and attack.
"Our... team stabilised Sebastian. In truth, our medical is aimed more towards anemics or small injuries, not... gaping wounds. He received care, though now I realise it was inadequate and I slept for several days while my body tried to heal itself."
--
Sebastian shook his head with a smile, "So I'm just barely awake in their clinic, and Bruce is... snarling down at me, and I tried to find out what was going on, because I didn't remember a damn thing... and I asked about Jim- by description- and they decided that since I was worried about JIM... I didn't remember fighting him..."
Quincy was looking confused, but Murphy nodded slowly, "They thought you didn't know any better so they could hang on to you?"
Sebastian nodded, "And I hurt Jim very badly- and no one knew HOW... so everyone wanted to know."
Quincy nodded, "The painting that Devon did- that was Jim's back, right?"
--
"There's only a very healed scar now. You couldn't even tell that a month and a half ago it... looked like that. But that's all jumping ahead, really." James nodded, gesturing, "I wanted to keep him alive firstly because I was pissed and in pain and wanted to torture him. Then that very rapidly morphed into wanting to know how he did it- by rapidly, I mean a day or so, I wasn't visiting him and wanting to hurt him. By the time I was visiting him, I had the idea in my head that I'd make him a pet..."
A smirk grew on his face as he leaned to pat the top of Sebastian's head, "And what a good pet he is..."
--
Sebastian snorted and then made a very realistic whinnying noise- a horse rather than the dog-like bark Jim might have expected: Jim looked startled and gave him a curious look.
"If I am any kind of domestic animal I'm a horse- best you can do is feed me well and hope to hell I don't break a leg, because a horse either listens to you or doesn't and if you don't treat a horse with respect he will scrape you off on a tree... not like a dog."
Murphy snickered, "And just like a good horse we need beer with our meals." He sat back, "So you two honestly... started out trying to kill each other, and... sounds like you came damn close!"
Sebastian nodded. "And because of that Bruce- and even Bianca- started out... not liking me is an understatement. Bianca came around pretty fast, but we're getting ahead of the story..."
Everyone got their refilled beer and Sebastian told them the saga of Bianca- poor girl- pretending to be human... and then... "So instead of taking the easy out? She blurts out, 'I'm allergic to potatoes'!"
--
James sighed as Quincy and Murphy cracked up...
"She's new- the youngest. Or... well, she was. I suppose Scotty and Andrew took that title now, but she's not even thirty! She's practically a child, and hasn't spent nearly enough time around humans that weren't in the know..." He shot a rather ineffective glare at Sebastian, "I should have smacked you silly for entertaining her! She didn't know any better. A hunter... a hunter!"
"You saw her at the gallery- I'm not sure if Sebastian introduced you before. She's an utter sweetheart. Bruce found her," He paused, "Well, he killed the vampires who found her, and adopted her, essentially. You'd think I'd get more say in things as their Sire, but you'd be horribly shocked..." James shook his head, "Not all vampires are as nice to their 'food' as we are. But that's something we have in common, I suppose..."
He told Quincy and Murphy about Bianca's repeated sneaking in to see Sebastian... and how her meddling had led to the man getting to go outside...
Which, of course, only led to everything falling apart.
"He escaped. A facility that, as far as he was aware, was full of vampires, and he just walked out the front door. God, just thinking about the... Well, I'm not sure what I'd call it. Bravery? Stupidity? Either way, the more I think about it, the sexier it all is, but at the time, I was about ready to burn London down looking for my hunter..."
--
Sebastian gave him a look that promised a rather interesting night- or day- after the guests left.
"It... really wasn't so much my going outside though, I think it was being down lower- because I was in a chair- and seeing your eyes, and Bruce... Well, Bruce looms, he can’t help it..." Sebastian shrugged, "One of the few fragments of memory is from, I think, when Bruce came to save Jim and came into my bathroom; anyway I had some kind of flashback with Bruce- who was just trying to hand Jim the ice cream- but the posture? Something triggered a flashback."
Sebastian moved over closer to Jim and pulled him in against his side, "And then Bianca helped talk me down... and I got given a sedative. Now you two may remember how well sedatives and stuff don't work on me?"
Quincy winced, "Yeah, I remember that stupid doctor saying the thing about red-heads was a myth..."
Murphy made a throat clearing noise like he was about to spit, "Damned idiot! There's a reason I don't trust most docs."
"So they gave me a sedative and I 'should have been' out cold for like..." he glanced at Jim-
"Eight hours, they thought, given your health- six for sure." Jim shook his head and looked at the other two, "And yes, he had said medication didn't work right on him, but I think... well… I think the doctors thought he would be out longer..."
Sebastian nodded, "So I wake up- a bit woozy but up- and I'm panicked because now they know... they know that I know at least some of them are vamps… before I was buying time to recover, but as far as I knew, now that I know?"
Murphy nodded, "You have to get out- now."
"Exactly, so..."
He explained about the switch, and walking out and getting to his flat and… being utterly stunned.
"First of all, that kind of confirmed in my head that the 'tile' memory was at my flat, but more importantly... all my photos..."
--
James held up a hand to try and pacify his guests, “Now, before you start getting all… hitty- I’d like to point out the hopefully obvious fact that Sebastian’s stuff has completely overrun my poor, carefully decorated flat?” He lowered his hand, “We had the sense to send Bruce and the boys in to sweep the place first. Everything except the furniture was boxed and sent here, so I could sort through it when I didn’t feel like I was dying. Steel cutting through a vampire’s flesh? A Master vampire’s flesh? It’s unheard of- impossible, as far as the larger world knows, still. We weren’t sure what caused it. Maybe he oiled his blade with something from Afghanistan, or maybe he performed some profane ritual, or the metal is an alloy of some kind… We needed everything.”
He smiled- surprisingly soft, “I took quite the advantage of having his things, really. It’s shocking how willing someone is to come over for dinner if you promise them a box of their things in return… but again, getting ahead of ourselves…”
“Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson found Sebastian outside of his flat…”
More pudding cups were needed as he told what he knew of Sebastian going back to Baker street, recovering and resting… He touched briefly on how Bianca had ripped Bruce and him to shreds before going over to visit Sebastian, with chips, as a sort of… ‘truce’.
“And he told her I could come visit, too!”
--
"No one is going to hit anyone-" Quincy started to say...
"Well, maybe Basher," Murphy interjected, "We have dibs on hitting him from like... way back."
Sebastian just laughed, "True! So anyway, yes, I said he could visit, but I thought like... Bianca did? Walk up, ring the bell? Important safety tip guys, every single vampire I have talked to- even the ones at the art show- that don’t have humans they hang out with on the regular? Their perspective gets really strange. Jim's idea of 'visit' was to sneak in and wake me up... and he put his hand over my mouth so I wouldn't yell..."
"Oh you did not!?" Quincy stared at Jim.
Murphy stared at Jim too, and then slowly put his hands over his face, "No wonder Bruce looked like he had a headache..." He looked at Jim and pointed a finger at him, "That... is a good way to get a combatant to think he's about to be killed or kidnapped: Basher could have killed you and he would have felt awful!"
Seb sighed, "Jim has some sort of thing about people pointing at him."
Murphy had already put his hand down, "Oh? Ok, but... you may want to tell people before they gesture, because a lot of us talk with our hands. I didn't mean anything by it- TC does it a lot too."
"Oh yeah, and he hit me with a rolled up paper," Sebastian agreed.
Quincy just commented, “Well you deserved it."
"You don't even know why he hit me?!"
Murphy snorted, "We know you deserved it!"
Sebastian wadded up a napkin and threw it at him- he caught it. "ANYWAY..." Sebastian huffily continued, "So we talked and given how strong he was that confirmed he was Bianca and Bruce’s Sire, not a thrall... but anyway we talked and then... oh, this is the funny part..."
"This is the funny part?" Murphy repeated incredulously, he looked at Quincy, "This is the funny part?"
Quincy shook his head, "When Donald turns up, he is gonna make you buy him so much booze..."
“Probably," Sebastian muttered.
--
“I don’t think it’s very funny,” James agreed, “I think it’s quite lovely and romantic… or at the very least, incredibly arousing…” He brushed over, briefly, how Sherlock had stumbled on in, looking miserable and how he’d dipped after telling the hunter to ‘sleep tight’ and ‘don’t let the vampires bite’...
And then how he’d not even gotten that far away before the little idiot was apparently going out to get his new vampy friend dinner.
“And he was horribly injured and I was terrified he’d get a brain bleed and die in the street. So I went back to help…”
James grinned as he finished, “-and he impaled the spawn from twenty paces with a number two pencil and how could I resist snogging someone with that level of talent? And then we had a big fight and I invited him to dinner, of course.”
“Of course,” Murphy deadpanned.
--
Quincy nodded, "Nothing like a lethal fight to get the blood up, but I want more details..."
Sebastian very gleefully talked about poor Sherlock- half blind from a migraine, which got a lot of sympathy- and how he looked like a baby vampire with a sippy cup...
The whole story stopped while both men fell over laughing.
Once they stopped laughing (so much) he explained about hunting 'ethical dinner' and how he was being very glad that he wasn't fighting Jim- "He was so fast... and so strong... normally a Master Vampire... well, if you have to fight one, you know... you don't give them a chance to show off? So I was being really relieved, and I was also noticing the... Well, Jim ate one? And he- you saw the watercolour I did? That was based on that... I had gotten out a pencil to sketch the posture... and a vamp tried to rush us."
"So you threw a pencil at him?" Quincy shook his head slowly, "Only you..."
"So yes, Jim kissed me silly, and invited me to dinner- a human food dinner, not me as a dinner- and I took 'dinner' back to Sherlock... and then Mycroft came over..." He skipped the part about the misunderstanding with Mycroft apparently accusing him of lying- that was all settled after all.
He went on about John's lecture about no kissing vampires, "He realised he might want to kiss his vampire so he amended it-" (both men agreed that sounded like him) and then going to dinner…
"And we're flirting, and my libido is... well, I finally had recovered enough blood for it to go anywhere you know?" Sebastian admitted, and then talked about Jim telling him about history, "And every single vampire I had met up to that point just... dumped really distressing information on me, you know?"
Sebastian sighed, "No matter how... no matter how true the information was? It was a lot."
--
“Bianca didn’t,” James helpfully provided. “Either way, finding out about Jack completely knocked Sebastian off his feet- quite literally… I had to nurse him back to health in my bed… but honestly, I thought I was being helpful! How was I supposed to know it would nearly make him faint?”
He covered- very, very briefly- their talk and his reassurances of it all…
“And then apparently this dug into his brain and he decided to make a big fuss and prevent a war, the sweet man. Talking about truces and forgiveness and everything… Or… hm, did I skip anything?”
--
"The part where I went and talked to Mycroft and got his version... which gave me the clues I needed to figure out a lot... and I asked if anything remained from the whole Moriarty/Jack/Vernet issue and he told me, and then sent over box loads of things..." He gestured at a painting, "Including that painting of Professor Moriarty- Jim's sire- Jim, and the infamous Jack..."
"You brokered a peace treaty? Figures," Murphy nodded, "He did that in the sandbox- talking to tribal leaders and at least smoothing things over."
"And we were trying to figure out where the plague of extra spawns came from- because it wasn’t Jim..." Sebastian sighed, “And I figured... maybe, just maybe, my father knew about it. He didn’t seem to like Mycroft- or respect him- and I was starting to wonder... so... we went to visit: me playing up the poor injured routine, and Jim playing the terribly eager and sincere gay twink." He looked at the disbelieving looks on both of their faces, "No! Seriously, he's very believable!"
--
Murphy and Quincy did not look like they believed his hunter; not that James would blame them for it. He was dressed to impress for the exhibition and considering they’d met him looking smooth and deadly? It was no wonder they had issues believing the man.
He turned on the charm in an instant, leaning to wrap his arm around Sebastian’s shoulders, nuzzling into the man’s neck with his nose… “I’m very believable, aren’t I, Sebby? Your da about smacked me silly when I told him how happy I was to meet him, Mister Augustus, and then when I was talking about all my allergies and how proud he must be of you…”
The light, teasing nature in his face slipped away as his grip tightened ever so slightly around the man. “I’m very proud of you, you know. Especially tonight. The show was… truly wonderful.”
--
Sebastian all but melted onto him.
Quincy promptly started telling them both to "get a room!" And Murphy pointed out, "We are in their apartment- they have a room..." However he then pointed a finger (at Sebastian), "But we never did get the story about the boss fight and how your da actually fit into it..." He hesitated, "Assuming that’s... any of our business."
Sebastian looked thoughtful, "To give you all the details I would need to be a lot more bevved up... but the very short form is? I can only hope that my father was... far more affected by that thing than he realised, because... as much as we never got along? I always thought... better of him."
Murphy and Quincy both started apologising and Sebastian held up a hand, "Ask TC: he has most of the details- tell him I said he could tell you- but the short form is that... very very old vampire? was sleeping in our basement and no one knew except my father. When we tried to get out of there, well... he wanted to sedate me and keep me... safe, I guess? in his head anyway, until after the big war. I managed to talk to William- the cousin I mentioned?- and we were leaving... when it caught up with us."
He hugged Jim tightly, "Jim tried to hold that thing off while I got away- but you know that won’t happen."
--
“The big, heroic idiot,” James frowned, the hunter wrapped around him like he was some sort of stuffie or comfort item. “If there’s a way to stop him from doing that, you’ll need to tell me. I hope to never have to go up against… someone with that much strength and age over me again, but if I tell you to run? Then you should bloody run, you… you ridiculous man.”
He still wasn’t over that. He’d probably never be over that. The utter, paralysing fear that Sebastian hadn’t run, wouldn’t run- he’d stay there and die…
James forced himself to relax, or at least make sure he wasn’t gripping Sebastian’s arm too hard… “But he stayed, because he’s an utterly amazing man, and he won an unwinnable fight.”
--
"So... can you tell us how you got the thing?" Murphy frowned, "I mean... if he was as much faster and stronger than any of the vamps we've seen..."
"Oh it was horrific," Sebastian shuddered. "He swatted me aside without any effort and it was pure luck that I wasn't dead-"
Quincy gestured at Sebastian and commented to Jim, "Well, one thing you should know is that Lady Luck has a thing going with him, so that won't surprise anyone- him getting lucky."
Sebastian sighed- but was smiling a bit- "So... instead of being dead, I was stunned and hurt, but... it meant that the vamp wasn't paying any attention to me. He was going after Jim, and my father was... yelling about how he wasn't supposed to kill me... and William- who for everything I could ever say about him pretty well proved he wasn't stupid- managed to get into the car and... well, the vamp said my father had outlived his usefulness and threw him at the car."
"TC- and Mycroft Holmes- told us that part," Murphy said solemnly. "At least it was fast?"
"Yeah." Sebastian shrugged, "Anyway! So... I used the tactic we had discovered accidentally with Jim's injury on the vamp..."
"Which you haven't explained." Quincy pointed out.
Sebastian looked at Jim, and silently asked for permission.
--
James shook his head, "Hold, please..." and he stood, leaving the table.
Murphy and Quincy both looked a bit... baffled, and Sebastian looked concerned, but then James' voice came from the bedroom and he relaxed considerably.
"Wood prevents healing, but isn't strong enough to cut skin. It needs to pierce- a shiv, for example. Silver cuts through our skin like a hot knife through butter and causes... indescribable pain, but we can heal from it over time. Anything else? Well, blunt force trauma is a thing, but... you wouldn't hurt me if you punched me. Now, if a locomotive hit me? I'd probably be pretty beat up. I think that's what I'd describe the creature like- a locomotive..."
His voice carried from the bedroom as the man did... something... "Age is strength. The older you are, the harder it is even for things like silver to pierce your skin. Oh, it still will- but... instead of a hot knife? Maybe one at room temperature, with cold butter. Or something of that sort. Still deadly. Just... not as easy, even if you get close."
James came out, carrying a clear glass tank, and set the tank in the middle of the table. "Meet Drac."
The tank was a nice upgrade to the sad glass jar the thing had been living in a month ago. There was a green reptile mat on the bottom of the tank and a shallow dish. A small plastic cave that acted as a 'hide' was nestled in the corner and James popped the screen lid- held down by a surprisingly sturdy latch- off, and reached his hand into the cave, pulling out a darkish red... blob that quivered almost imperceptibly in his hand.
"Drac, meet our guests. That one is Quincy," he gestured, "The other is Murphy..." The blob didn't seem to really care at all, and slowly flattened in James' hand. "Drac is a blood-sucking alley-leech that Sebastian infected me with. A living lesson why you always clean and sheathe your blade, children."
--
A flood of mixed languages fell from Quincy's lips- some of it recognizable, some not. Murphy just stared for a beat of three and then said, "What- and I cannot stress this enough- the FUCK?"
Sebastian winced, "That thing creeps me out you know."
Jim snorted, "Bruce said almost the same about you for a while... me hanging about with a hunter."
Sebastian sighed and gestured at ‘Drac’. "It turned out that some of the blood of the vampire I beheaded? was still on the blade. Now if I hadn't been drugged I would have cleaned it, but..." He shrugged and started to lean back into Jim, before twitching at Drac and pulling slightly back.
"TC- Doctor Watson- was the one to have to re-open the wound and... the less said about that the better. Anyway, given what blood on a mundane steel knife did? Well, I was carrying a silver sword cane that Sherlock loaned me- remember, I had been playing helpless- and... it was horrible: Jim had been slashed by that thing, and there was ichor..."
--
James moved Drac so he was holding the thing with one hand and reached to brush the other through blonde hair, reassuring the man. “Truth be told? I was as good as dead before Sebastian dragged that blade through one of the puddles of my ichor and swung it at that creature. He… saved my life.”
After a moment he carefully set Drac back into the tank.
“The spawn he killed in the alley- it… wasn't really a spawn. Not since I had killed his Sire. The moment that connection is severed, they’re free. An odd choice of words nowadays, but my Sire- Professor Moriarty- told me that ages ago, it was more common for spawn to be disposable. Pawns, tools. As long as I live, Bianca, Bruce, Andrew, Scotty… they’re technically under my will, even if I don't use that power over them. They can't create more vampires, they won’t ever surpass me in strength- not even if they lived hundreds of years alongside me. They could never be a Master vampire, the top of the food chain. But the moment that bond is severed, something… happens. It's slow, and it takes time to come into that power, but… they’re equals.”
“The spawn Sebastian killed was technically a Master vampire, and… we may as well be poisonous to each other. The moment the spawn’s ichor got into my system, it started to attack me. Oh, it was weak- but it latched on and fed and grew. This is what it created- a… leech? A parasite, almost? Sherlock is still researching, but as far as any of us know, this is the only case where a Master vampire was attacked with a blade dirtied by another Master’s blood and lived to heal and see the results. It’s rare enough for a hunter to kill a Master- let alone a hunter fighting two of the territorial creatures in the same space, less than an hour apart.”
--
Sebastian smiled grimly, "Jim had been wounded; I could see his blood- ichor, whatever you want to call it- and knowing what had happened to Jim? I dragged the silver blade through it before I swung at the... thing." He looked very seriously at the two, “I don't use the term 'thing' lightly- he… he was monstrous."
Sebastian shuddered but continued, "Anyway, that blade would have gone clean through any other vampire's neck, but it went about half way and... I guess caught on his spine? He turned as I was pulling the blade back... and he lunged at me- got the blade through his damn heart and he still wasn't dead! Jim tossed him off of me..."
Sebastian chuckled, "And William proved he wasn't a coward- hell, I wouldn't have faulted him for running like hell: that thing? And my father crushing the car from the force of the throw? But he got out of the car and came back over and twisted the blade in him... finished him off."
Murphy, incredulously, sputtered, "He got half his neck cut through? And stabbed in the chest? With a silver blade with... with poison on it, right? And he wasn't DEAD yet?"
"He was dying; I'm pretty sure..." Sebastian shrugged. "But he wasn't dead yet, and hell yes that’s terrifying."
He brightened up, "Anyway after that we... everyone started showing up- Holmes and TC- and I was very happy to see a doctor I trusted- and Sherlock and Bianca came out with them-" He grinned, "But without any fish and chips which I still tease her about- and then Bruce and everyone came out with more bagged blood and volunteer donors... and then the cover story of the car accident and... honestly, my head was spinning. Turned out I had cracked almost all my ribs- so yeah, they still hurt- and a hairline fracture of my arm, and I was a black and blue mess... Devon loved it."
--
“You do look… utterly entrancing when you’re bruised and bloodied,” James sighed rather dreamily, “I can’t blame her. But how it happened… that, I don’t like. That creature was… he was…” He shook his head, looking at Sebastian’s friends. “I can’t say I know of a lot of vampires that were born further back than I was. Not to say I’m the oldest, but it’s not talked about. That one was… much, much older. I don’t know for sure- however old he was, he’d lost his humanity long ago, embraced his vampiric nature more than I’ve seen. I don’t know if all vampires would turn into what he was eventually, but I certainly hope to never become that monstrous.”
“I left Mycroft in charge of it all; to speak… very, very plainly? It terrified me and still does.” He squeezed Sebastian’s hand under the table, reassuring himself that the hunter was still very much alive and there, albeit still a bit bruised and sore, even now. “He informed us that the vampire had spent some time in India- and judging from the creature’s personal effects, it was likely he’d either dealt directly with a previous Moran lord or at the very least knew of the line.”
--
"So he knew... enough what to look for," Quincy said slowly... "Probably sent a controlled... whatever to check..."
"And even if my father walked into it on his own- which... I doubt? But... who can tell, really- the sheer impact of that creature... the force of it? I can’t picture anyone spending any considerable time dealing with it and not being heavily influenced."
Murphy shrugged, "So? Probably influenced even if he didn’t know it, but no indication that he tried to kill it first thing, or kept being obstinate because it wouldn't have left him mostly free-willed. So... he had a weakness and it took advantage."
--
“I was close to Lord Moran when Sebastian and him talked by the garage- when he held me captive?” James added, “Sebastian listed things he thought the creature must have offered his father. Being that close, I could tell he had a reaction to the most common ‘gift’ a vampire promises; he… thought he would become one.”
He frowned, watching Drac slowly move back to the darkness of his cave, like an odd and slow inchworm. “He was almost certainly lied to or had other ideas of how things would go. That vampire didn't care at all for its spawn so I have no idea how he thought he might live, but… I can understand the desire. If he thought his family line was falling, if he thought they would remove all the vampires in London- possibly England… and growing old…”
“And now his son gets to be Lord Moran and get what he was promised instead. Is that ironic? I feel like it must be…”
--
Quincy didn't get the implication- at least not immediately- but Murphy did.
"Sebastian... gets to be... a vampire?" He looked Sebastian over, "Thought that was about the opposite of anything you wanted, mate."
Quincy sat bolt upright and sputtered, “What?!"
Sebastian smiled and shook his head, "It’s... been offered. Right now? No. Not too long ago I would have said 'no way in hell', but... maybe I'll feel differently later." He shrugged, "Jim promised me all the time I wanted to think about it- apparently he was with his Sire as a mortal for a good many years before he was turned, and... Jack?" He gestured at the painting, "He'd been with him for at least years and... was still mortal when Professor Moriarty died."
Murphy nodded, "Well...from what you just told us, you can’t be equal in any way if you are a spawn- you'd be a child, or a lesser, right? So it seems like it would be hard to have a relationship if... Sebastian was your spawn."
Sebastian laughed, "So maybe we'll have to find some master vampire that needs to die and I can inherit from him? But either way it’s a... long way off- I'm very happy being able to taste food!"
He sat forward, "So... did I tell you my ideas about a hunter/vampire tourism agency?"
--
FIN