Entre l'Amour et la Mort, Chapter 22, part 2

[sav8801]

Title: Entre l'Amour et la Mort
Author: P-L
Fandom: The Hollows, AKA the Rachel Morgan Series, Rachel/Ivy
Rating: M
Disclaimer: Those characters belong to Kim Harrison. I'm just having a little fun with them.
Summary: A run gone wrong sets events into motion, events that lead to a bittersweet realisation... and the birth of Rachel's worst nightmare



"Is something the matter?" I paused and asked, a little cool and on guard. It's not like the man and I had suddenly turned best buddies after all. I hadn't forgotten the cold treatment he'd given me during our brief acquaintance.

"No, nothing. In fact things are almost going well, all things considered. That's exactly the point." The older man said. "I wanted to thank you for what you've done for my daughter once more. It's in large part thanks to you that catastrophe in the cemetery was averted." He grimaced a bit at the reminder, like the memory of his three beloved girls verbally tearing into each other tasted sour to him. "It's not the first time I've been wrong as well. I owe you a deeper apology. I've been giving you the cold shoulder ever since we first met, and it was not fair of me. If you don't think too little of me already and are willing to hear me out, there are some things I think I should explain to you." He asked, gesturing for me to take a seat.

"As long as you're not planning on chewing me out, I'm listening." I said neutrally as I sat down.

"I can't say I begrudge you that guardedness." He nonetheless winced, and sat himself down across from me, his fingers intertwined on the table. "To start I want you to know that I never had anything against you personally." He began. "I never made the effort to know you well enough for that. As far as I knew before today, you were only an intriguing mark on my daughter's radar. Ivy's obsession with hunting you made no sense to me, especially since she was willing to give up so much for you. The way she quit the I.S., what it cost her... I never fathomed you could mean so much to her. I thought I knew my eldest, and trust me when I say she was never a romantic. When Ivy loves, she does so deeply and ferociously, but falling in love, or even forming friendship, was never easy for her. It never crossed my mind she could have with you, never mind to such an extent."

"Oh, I hear that. It took me a while to wrap my head around the idea she even liked me that way too." I agreed with a little scoff. When I first met her, I could have pictured Ivy dating, going out, finding random hook-ups and making them beg at her slightest whim, even collecting admirers (before I found out she was independently wealthy, with her expensive fashion sense and her high-class Nightwing bike, I was secretly convinced she had a sugar daddy or three on the side), but definitely not pining longingly after an average-Jane witch like me. Looking back, there were hints here and there that Ivy was sweet on me, though I could really just make them out now that I'd seen the professional and sometimes distant way she treated most everyone else, but capital-L Love? Totally blindsided me.

"It made little sense to me, but there wasn't much I could do about her choices. She's a grown woman, and just as headstrong as her mother. It's been nearly two decades since I could sway her when she put her mind to something. In all honesty, I'm aware Ivy was disillusioned about her work at the I.S. in the end, so I could accept she threw away her inheritance to get herself out of such a soul-sucking position. I could even convince myself you were only a small sideline she pursued at the same time she did a broader goal, and not the actual reason she left in the first place. I only began to truly find her fascination with you unhealthy when Skimmer entered the scene."

What little rapport we'd established instantly flew out the window, riding on an erupting geyser of boiling jealousy. My face hardened and my eyes narrowed as I was completely set off like a straw fire. Even though Mr Randall showed no sign of aggression, he'd touched a nerve.

"Let me guess. If you must have a daughter in law, you'd rather have the picture perfect little blond blue-eyed vamp than me, right?" I asked bitingly, the mention of Skimmer reminding me of Nathalie's judgemental comments on Ivy's poor choices of partner. Crap on toast, her father or not, I didn't need another vamp sneering down his nose at me about how much better a match Skimmer would be for my freaking girlfriend.

"No." Mr Randall replied much more calmly than I could have ever managed in his shoes. "Man or woman, vampire, witch, were or even human, I'd rather see my daughters with someone who has proven they can make them happy. Skimmer happened to do just that for Ivy a decade ago. Up until last week, I had no idea you could be more than a hearty snack." It was the first time I heard the man use vampire slang, and upset or not I didn't much care for it.

"Sorry, it's just..." I deflated and dropped my eyes to my shoes, reminding myself not to antagonise my father-in-law/dangerous vampire scion who could snap my neck with the blink of an eye. "I know you love her, but Ivy's my girl, and I'm fed up with people either second-guessing what we feel for each other, or worse assuming it's just some kind of cheap arrangement for blood and sex. I love her as much as she does me."

Mr Randall rubbed his face, sighed, and cleared his throat before resuming. "I see that now, but remember that dedication was one-sided at the time. You and Ivy were not together back then, and she was pushing someone who moved across the country to be with her away, just to keep herself available. For you."

"Ivy had already grown too far from the girl Skimmer met, you know." I replied. This was an old topic, one I'd been around before. I thought I was over it, but I guess you never get used to your lover having that kind of ex. Stupid Ms Perfect... "They weren't really working out. Ivy admitted to that herself. Even if I hadn't been around, I doubt they would have lasted too long. Skimmer is just too into being a vampire. No offense, I just mean that Ivy was always struggling with those things."

"'Those things' are part of her, Rachel, and I am well aware of the anguish she felt over them over the years." Mr Randall sharply told me. "It's another reason why I would have greatly preferred Ivy to rekindle their old flame. Skimmer always had a way to bring her a measure of peace over her heritage."

"Even if Ivy herself didn't want to make peace with it?" I asked uneasily.

"Is it wrong that as her father I would have preferred that Ivy make peace with something she could never have changed rather than agonise over it?" Mr Randall stayed calm while I was getting agitated. Nice control he had there. Ivy must have inherited her mother's temper. "She was a living vampire with needs, natural needs, and the only wrongness to that was in her head. Skimmer accepted her, loved her as she was, and it was my belief she could have gotten Ivy to accept herself as well."

"I know." I reluctantly conceded after a long pause. "But isn't it worth something that I managed to give Ivy what she was looking for in her vampire needs?" For however short a time we had truly been together when she was alive, I had managed to prove to Ivy being a vampire could be beautiful the way she wanted it to be. It had to be worth something, and in my mind at least, it was more than anything Skimmer could have given her. The blond vamp had just been convinced the two of them could enjoy what Piscary had twisted Ivy into, and that's not jealousy talking, those were the words out of Ivy's mouth.

"That's between you and Ivy. As long as she's happy now, I'll have to be content with her choice of romantic involvements. Don't take this to mean I disapprove of you now. You've demonstrated your worth, as far as I'm concerned. Skimmer might have balanced out Ivy as a living vampire, but their upbringing would likely hinder her now. You're a much better candidate to help my daughter remember herself as she is now." That's all he said, yet I got the distinct feeling that, even as he fell silent, there was more the older man wasn't telling me. His eyes were too haunted, his demeanour too guarded. Honestly, I should have known better at this point than to go sticking my nose in any vampire's baggage, but he and I were near family now that I was dating (and more) his daughter. I wanted us to lay all of our cards on the table

"Was that all it was, then?" I asked with narrowed eyes. "You were just being a father looking out for your big girl, trying to make sure she got a good match? That's noble, but I'm not sure I buy it."

That must have hit a nerve, because with a deep, loaded sigh, Mr Randall pushed off his seat and rose, turning his back to me so he could pensively gaze out the window at his back, overlooking the estate's many acres of backyard.

"What makes you think so?" The older vampire asked me.

"Other than basic math? Like, you said you were 'wrong again' and you have only told me about one wrong? Just a gut feeling. That and I've dealt with vampires a few times in my life. If there's one thing I learned from the experience, it's that your situations are almost never simple. I don't know you're keeping something from me, but if you aren't, then your initial distrust of me is one of the most down to earth display of solicitude I've ever seen coming from a vamp. It's downright... plebeian, actually."

"You're no fool at all, are you?" Mr Randall asked rhetorically, and I shrugged. "But then again, Ivy would not have fallen so hard for you if you were only a pretty throat to sink her fangs in. There was more to it than that." He admitted after a few seconds gathering his thoughts. "Suffice to say that Ivy's pursuit of you threw a wrench in the plans I had for her."

"What 'plans'?" I asked suspiciously. Again, I'd heard a few so called plans vampires tended to concoct for one another, and I could count on no fingers at all the ones I'd thought sounded like good, wholesome ideas. Even if I didn't particularly liked him, I respected Mr Randall's devotion to his family, and I didn't want to lose that respect.

"Did Ivy ever tell you she was born outside of wedlock?" Mr Randall asked me without turning around. If there was a purpose to the question, I didn't see it.

"No. Well, not exactly." I responded, slightly thrown off by the sudden curveball. "I know you and your wife had her really young, so I did assume it was the case, but it's not something she ever brought up. I don't see what that's got to do with anything, though."

"You mustn't." He agreed. "If you want to understand why exactly I wanted you away from Ivy, however, I have to take you back to the very beginning, when Annabelle and I first became acquainted and fell in love."

"When I first met Ivy's mother, both of us were in a similar situation Ivy was with Kisten and Erica was with Seth; engaged in a politically arranged marriage, nearly from the moment we were born. The difference was that we weren't meant for each other, despite quickly growing very fond of each other. We were young, but we quickly got to the point we became inseparable. A problem, as you can imagine. You must understand this was not that long after the Turn, and the rules of old held much greater sway over us still. We couldn't simply elope, or break off our engagements like Kisten and Ivy did. We needed the consent of our parents and masters. My family has ample monetary assets, but it was severely lacking in prestige. The Randalls are influent enough, but they are young blood. I can only trace my lineage back a hundred years, barely a third of the heritage flowing in Annabelle's veins. It was inconceivable our families, or at least the Tamwoods, would go back on their previous arrangements to allow us to be together."

"So how did you manage to end up married, then?" I asked, curious to see how this could possibly relate to Skimmer being with Ivy.

"Annabelle found a way in our oldest traditions, one that we were probably too young to exploit, but also too infatuated with each other not to. We had our first child."

"You do mean Ivy, right?" I wondered with no small amount of dread, because I didn't want to hear Ivy had another sibling somewhere, or rather what had become of them if she didn't.

"I do." Mr Randall acknowledged, to my relief. "We weren't solely motivated by ruthless calculus, however. Don't think for a second we had Ivy just so the two of us could be together. We wanted her dearly, but circumstances forced us to turn our dreams of a family into a desperate bid for the life we wanted. Annabelle was young, but she was fiercely determined not to let anyone keep us apart. She delved deep into vampire traditions and laws to figure out a way to overrule our parents and masters' decision. The key she found was the rule of reciprocity. It's basically an old edict put into place to protect the interest of lesser families from more aggressive breeding stratagems masters can come up with. If the woman in a coupling holds the greater name, she is honour bound to give her chosen mate an heir as well."

"Only if the woman does?" I asked, not quite liking that. Society had given women the short end of the stick throughout history on a great many occasions, but in my idealistic opinion that was no reason to do the same to men.

"Yes. That way, a female vampire who claims a fitting but lesser mate for a night in order to conceive a child, she, or more likely her master, cannot simply discard him once he fulfilled his purpose unless he releases her."

"I still don't get why this rule of yours goes only one way." I frowned. "What if a male from a greater family forces a female from a lesser one to give him a child, then tosses her aside? That's no less wrong." I said, though honestly, right or wrong likely had nothing to do with it at all. When it came to vampire, they were always working an angle, and almost never a nice one.

"Mostly because no male this callously interested in his breeding line would do so. You're thinking in terms of conventional DNA transmission, Rachel, like humans, weres, witches, where half the genes of the offspring come from each parent. On that basis, you would be correct to assume such a law would go both way, but vampires don't quite function the same way as most other species. In our case, the percentage split hovers around sixty to forty, in favour of the mother."

"And I'm guessing that those extra genes make a difference? Wait..." I held out a hand as a connection clicked in my mind, "you're talking about vampire traits, aren't you? In-utero infection by the vampire virus?"

"Exactly." Mr Randall nodded in approval. "Vampires share a great deal of DNA with humans. The parts that we do not have in common are almost exclusively transmitted from the mother's viral strains. It's why the strength of the mother's line is the sole determining factor of the potency of the child's blood. It's also why throughout history, vampire have been one of the cultures privileging daughters over sons. Only they can extend bloodlines. Evidence even suggests we were fully matriarchal long ago, before our dissolution into human society along the rest of Inderland. An unbroken line of women from one generation to the next bolsters the potency of the virus, allows it to evolve, mutate and adapt faster, which is why Ivy and Erica, Kisten, and to a much greater extent Skimmer, are genetically further along than a vampire of more common birth like myself. In comparison, males only bring 'human' traits to the table when it comes to breeding. That's why they're the ones were getting the short end of the stick handed to them. As long as they're healthy and fit, their stations don't matter so much as their good looks or intellects, unless they're used to set up political alliances. They're much more liable to be used and discarded." It made sense in a way. Selective breeding certainly explained why there were comparatively so many fair, blond and blue-eyed vampires, despite the genes being just as recessive in them as they were in other species. Vamps do love their pale complexions.

"So, why do vampires keep both names, if only the mother truly matters?" I asked. "Wouldn't it make more sense for all children carry their mother's name, like most humans do with their father's?"

"There's a difference between the name and the bloodline, Rachel. Even though in this day and age, they're used almost interchangeably, it's technically a mistake. Bloodlines are the ancestral measure of our genetic worth, the purity and potency of our blood. Names are a form of aristocracy we inherited over time from humanity, as we became less distinct from them along the rest of Inderland. Once the old conflicts were laid to rest and martial might took a backseat to influence, wealth and beauty canons, names and families became for all intents and purposes the more valued of the two... not that a long living bloodline isn't a great source of respect in our inner circles."

"A millennium old, unbroken line..." I murmured, the thought occurring to me this was something Mr Randall himself had mentioned the first time we met. "That's what Skimmer has behind her, isn't it? A thousand years of mothers and daughters, all carrying Nathalie's blood." That also explained why bloodlines the likes of Ivy's and Skimmer's were rare; having only male heirs would end a bloodline. It was not something I had time to contemplate, however. As soon as I said Nathalie's name, the quiet sound of cracking glass slowly breaking under the crushing pressure of vampire fingers filled the kitchen. I looked up, startled to see Mr Randall struggling not to shatter the glass in his hand, murder clear and present in his eyes. Without a word, the older vampire walked to the sink and poured down what was left of his drink, and just as quietly strode to a nearby trash can where he dumped the now-ruined crystal glass he'd been drinking out of.

"I'm sorry." The man apologised once he got his emotions under control. "Even after all this time, it's still hard for me to hear that... woman's name." He might have said 'woman', but I think you can guess his tone suggested the word could be swapped with a much nastier one. You know, one that starts with 'B' and ends in '-itch'.

"You and me both." I responded, though I had my doubts I truly did understand. Ivy's death was relatively recent. Even if I'd grown much closer to her and mended much of what I thought had been irrevocably broken between us, I certainly still felt rage at the monstrous woman who'd murdered my lover. Nathalie's actions had torn this family apart, even when it had ways to go to mend itself after Mrs Tamwood's awakening. Why should he have forgiven her?

"To answer your question, yes, Skimmer does indeed descend from a long line of women, stretching back centuries. It's not irrelevant, but I'll get to that. What I want you to understand is that I've fought all my life to be with Annabelle and give us the family we wanted. We got what we hoped for, but we also had to pay the price for it. Annabelle offered herself as Scion to Piscary in order to keep him from paying our transgressions, and Ivy, too much heed. I had to give up my career plans in order to work for him, make myself too useful to discard out of hand." Somehow, hearing him speak about his people's customs, I wouldn't have been surprised to hear this dream had involved some form of teaching or another. He seemed to have the sting for the subject.

"In the end we earned ourselves nearly seventeen years of peace by playing the part of the perfect little vampire couple honouring their fealties to their master, only stepping out of line when our daughter's safety and integrity were in jeopardy. Eventually, once Annabelle was sufficiently reassured Piscary wouldn't use our compromised marital status to separate us, she asked to give me a child of my own name, even though we knew that would resolve her debt to me, and thus cancel out the one guarantee we had not to be separated. She was worried, we both were, but she was tired of us merely getting by. We finally married when Ivy was around twelve, and Erica was born about twenty months later. Two beautiful little girls, and the most remarkable woman I ever met... they were perfect, all three of them." His eyes were misty, the memory probably bittersweet. It didn't sound like those days were perfect, but in that moment, I seriously doubted the man gave a rat's ass, he would have given anything to go back to them. I felt a little nauseous knowing how exactly this story ended now that I was learning how everyone involved had sacrificed to get even that much. It was hardly the first time I thought I would never trade my semi-difficult childhood for Ivy's gilded nightmare, but it was something else to hear about it from her father, in this beautiful mausoleum of a house she grew up in.

"But everything went wrong when Ivy came of age, didn't it?" I murmured. I knew this part well, and so I decided to take over while pain rendered my father-in-law speechless. "Piscary took too much interest too soon, so you sent her away once she was seventeen, so she could finish high school in peace."

"Yes."

"California. Some boarding school near San Francisco. Far from here. Deep into the territory of a rival vampire of Piscary's. Some place that should have been out of his reach."

"It sounded like a good idea in theory. Risky, perhaps, but Ivy had status and, I thought, gender preference on her side. Nathalie wouldn't have let any of her affiliated undead lay a finger on her, not unless she herself did first. The woman is notorious for her sexual preferences, but before she met Skimmer, Ivy herself never displayed a hint of bisexuality. The likelihood of an encounter between them was between slim and nil. It all seemed sound."

"It was, but it wasn't, as well." I said. "Ivy turned out to be into both men and women. It just took someone else who'd been with a master vamp before to make her see it."

"I still don't know if it's serendipity that brought the two of them together, or if Nathalie somehow plotted for Ivy and Skimmer to be rooming together." Mr Randall picked up after me. "I suppose there's no point in wondering. She fell for Skimmer. I like to think the girl was guileless, but Nathalie did use the affection between them to lure Ivy into her clutches. When he learned of her transgression, Piscary..." The older man choked up, not quite crying but definitely unable to think or talk about what came next.

"In his sick and twisted mind, Ivy dishonoured him. So he took her mother away as punishment." I murmured, my heart clenching both at the sight of my interlocutor and the memory of a very similar look on Ivy's face when she was confronted by the consequences of her youthful mistake. It took me a little while, but I got it now, why he would despise Nathalie even more than I did. He'd lost both a wife and a daughter to the loathsome bitch, and he'd been aware of the root cause and his hand in it.

"When we got what was left of her back, Annabelle was just a ruined shadow of her former self. Piscary was neither clean nor quick dealing with her. He broke her completely before granting her her first death. All of her morals, all of her resolve, he tortured out of her. For all intents and purposes, she was brainwashed by the time she bled her last." Rage replaced his grief while he recounted his wife's final hours, one whose twin burned in my own heart. Was that why Mrs Tamwood was now obsessed with her line and her vampire prestige at the expense of her family's happiness? The strong and kind-hearted woman Mr Randall described her to be certainly didn't bear the slightest resemblance to the frigidly aristocratic undead vampire she had become. Piscary's handiwork, at its finest ladies and gentlemen. Hope your stomachs are sturdier than mine felt then, because I was suddenly grateful it was nearly empty.

"You hate him as well." I realised, remembering the first time we met, and how he'd seemed to take Piscary's side against his daughter when she'd come to him for aid.

"Of course I do." Mr Randall growled. "What kind of man wouldn't despise the monster that destroyed his wife and forced itself upon his own flesh and blood?"

"I'm sorry." It was my turn to apologise. I'd misjudged him as well. "I should have realised when we met it was just posturing for my benefit."

"It was. I could never have told Ivy what I said then if we were away from prying eyes. I didn't know you yet, not well enough to let you see how flawed Piscary's power base really was. I never could voice how despicable I found him before his death. Open defiance cost me and my family too much as it is."

"You tried to do what was best for your family. It's admirable, even if it... backfired." I swallowed when Mr Randall met my gaze, his eyes unsurprisingly black as pitch.

"Good intentions are a cold comfort at times."

"Hear, hear." I murmured with a thought to Kisten and the circumstances of his death, my role in them and the injustice of it all. "You fought the system for them." I sighed morosely. "I get it. I still can't figure how Skimmer used to fit into your plan, though, or why you'd dislike me. I was the one who put Piscary behind bars. I don't exactly work within vamp societal norms either."

"You did, but that was a temporary solution, and no prison cell could keep him from mentally violating Ivy whenever he felt like it. You couldn't give her the safety and distance she needed. I'd hoped Skimmer could, the same way Annabelle did with me." He dropped that statement like it was obvious, but all I could do was blink incomprehensively.

"Bu-... I mean..." I laughed nervously, because oh boy, was I not getting it. "You mean you wanted Ivy and Skimmer to have a kid together?" My face fell when he nodded. "How the heck would that even... I suppose it's possible with science and a sperm donation and all, but... what would that accomplish?" Okay, I know it's possible for a woman to carry another couple's child, so I suppose with a bit of help Skimmer and Ivy could have had a baby that would belong to them, but how could that translate into Ivy's salvation? Even if one of them gave birth, wouldn't vamp law take into account that the mother hadn't really contributed to the genetic potluck? Or would such old traditions not take modern science into account?

"Reciprocity, Rachel. It's been the key to my marriage, and it could have been the key to saving Ivy from Piscary." Again, I chuckled uncomfortably. Mr Randall sighed, as if I was a slow school kid he was getting a bit weary of trying to explain a subject to. "I know it probably sounds insane to you."

"Hum, yeah, kinda. Sorry, I don't get it. I mean, even if Skimmer carried one of Ivy's eggs, that child wouldn't have belonged to her in genetic terms, right? And that's what matters."

"Wrong." Mr Randall corrected me. "You're still thinking of traditional genetic transmission, Rachel, which I just explained doesn't apply to vampires. With a little help, as strange as it sounds, a vampire child can have three parents. Even if she wasn't the originator of the portion of genes traditionally attributed to the mother, Skimmer would have contributed to the child's genes through exposure to her viral strain. One part from an anonymous or carefully cut off donor, one part from Ivy, one part from Skimmer," Mr counted on his fingers, "and the end result would have been a child that carries both Skimmer and Ivy's lineage, and the Claymor name. Skimmer would thus have been honour bound, and gladly so, to provide a second child to carry Ivy's name."

"And the child would have carried Nathalie's bloodline as well, wouldn't it? Her millennium-old line would have been more than incentive enough for her to challenge Piscary for her claim to be its master, and she would have needed to nab both Skimmer and Ivy as well." I reasoned, my mind spinning now that I finally understood just what it was Mr Randall had attempted. My God, that was convoluted, but if it had worked... crap, Ivy just might have been saved. More than saved, she might have gotten the life she wanted, with a kid she never trusted the world enough to have in life. Crap on toast, no wonder Mr Randall had thought I was seriously interfering. It was a small wonder he hadn't put out a hit on me, considering the lengths he'd gone to to ensure his family's integrity.

"A plot to manipulate the woman who was indirectly responsible for her mother's death into granting Ivy asylum wasn't what I'd call ideal, but at least she would have been safe from Piscary. Nathalie's reputation is far less nefarious than his, and she's simply too powerful to be crossed. Plus Skimmer is her favourite, which would have shielded Ivy from Nathalie's attentions, whatever they might have been."

It isn't right, damnit... no man should have to make that kind of deal with the devil to protect his own children. I thought, nauseated and light-headed.

"Piscary would have killed you over that, you know." I murmured, then thought about it for a second, and realised the rat bastard would have likely done worse. "Or even better, he would have replaced Ivy with Erica."

"No. I wouldn't have given him the chance." Mr Randall growled, the thought of an undead's hands on his daughter obviously as pleasant to him as it was to me. "I might have sworn fealty to Piscary when I married Annabelle, but I haven't severed all ties with my old Camarilla. That I wasn't born into his was another reason why it was unthinkable for us to marry through regular means. I still have ties to my old master, and favours I can call upon. Even if I'm expendable as far as breeding goes, Erica carries Piscary's bloodline, and the Randall name thanks to me. She's invaluable. No master would turn a claim over her down. No, the worst he could do, he already did the day he killed Annabelle. At most, he could have outcast her, expelled her from the Camarilla and declared her persona non grata in this city, but I've been preparing for this eventuality ever since the day she died."

Oh, my God... that's why... "That's why you don't let anyone else feed her, isn't it?"

"It's one of the reasons, yes." He replied, his black eyes void and lost. He didn't seem surprised I knew about his wife's exclusively marital diet, but at this point, it was no doubt clear to him Ivy had confided a lot about her family in me. "It's taken its toll, but I've conditioned myself to sustain her on my own. There are other benefits as well for an undead in post-death stupor to feed exclusively on someone they had a deep connection with in life. They form deeper... bonds, that help their minds mend." He caught himself, like he'd nearly let a secret slip. Rule one of aura bonds, you don't talk about aura bonds; rule two of aura bonds, you don't fucking talk about aura bonds... "She still has a long way to go, but Annabelle has gotten better much quicker than she should have, considering how difficult and drawn out her first death was."

"I see." I said, more glad than ever Nathalie had helped Ivy through her transition, because God help me I didn't think I could have done for her what Mr Randall had done for his wife. I didn't have that selflessness.

"Now you know the whole story." Mr Randall inhaled sharply and fixed his gaze to the ceiling luminary dangling high over the kitchen table in an effort to get his pupils back to an acceptable dilation. He'd spent much of our conversation slightly hunched on himself, but as he stood more upright now, a weight seemed to lift off his shoulders, like he'd just shed a great burden.

"I'm the first person to hear it, aren't I?" I inquired. "The whole deal, from start to finish?"

"Yes." Mr Randall nodded. "You can imagine these aren't confidences I could make to anyone while we were under Piscary's thumb."

"Yeah. Yeah, I can."

"Now that you know, do you-"

I cut him off by grabbing his arm. The motion surprised him, but he made no move to remove my hand. "Mr Randall, you don't have anything to apologise for." I told him insistently. "Especially not to me. Ivy... she's the best thing that ever happened to me. Without her, I can safely say I'd be dead by now. You helped keep her whole through the mess of this life you had. That's more priceless to me than words can convey." I squeezed his arm harder, not that he really noticed, and earnestly looked him in the eye. "Thank you. Thank you, for everything you did, and everything you tried to do."

"You're welcome." He had to look down at me due to his height, but the appreciation in his eyes kept it from being condescending. "Annabelle and I have done all we could for Ivy. I don't know if it was all in vain, but now... now it's up to you, Rachel." He took my hand as he solemnly declared. "My daughter's in your hands now. Please, look after her."

Tell me I'm not the only one who feels like he just granted me Ivy's hand... I thought. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, or about another vampire pinning his hope on me.

"I... I want to. I want her to be happy." I reluctantly answered. "I'll try, but in all honesty, I can't promise I'll... I don't think I can do... what you've done for her. Or for your wife." Especially not what he'd done for his wife. God, that scared the living daylight out of me. If it made me unworthy of Ivy's love, well... the universe could go screw itself. It was her choice who she gave her heart to.

Now, if only I could convince myself of that...

I expected Mr Randall to be disappointed by my admittance of cowardice, but rather than let go of my hand and step away, he gave it a comforting squeeze and offered a compassionate and understanding smile.

"You never know what you're capable of until life forces you to choose between watching what you care about fade away or taking up arms to save it. Until you've faced that choice and come up short, don't assume you're too weak to do what needs to be done to protect her."

Entre l'amour et la mort... who would have thought you could abandon her? From the back of my mind, Nathalie's loathsome voice taunted me.

"I promise." I murmured. "I promise I won't leave her alone in the dark."

"Attagirl." Mr Randall said approvingly.

"I might need you to give me a pointer or two once in a while though." I smiled wanly and said. "You've been doing this a lot longer than me."

"Oh, deal then." He shook my hand and let go. I let out a long sigh. Don't get me wrong, I was glad we'd cleared the air, but damnit, I said I didn't want people relying on me the way Heidi and Mr Randall were, and I meant it. I'm a runner. I help people through brief crises that require radical solutions and expertise, and then walk out of their lives. I didn't want to be anyone's anchor. I was Ivy's girlfriend; I signed on for companionship, closeness, and hot monkey sex, not to be her conscience, and even less to be her source of deeply connected blood, or whatever Mr Randall was to his wife. She could cry on my shoulder all she wanted. Who, why, when, where and how to eat people, though? She was on her own. It would have to be enough, because it was all I could give.

With that lovely thought in mind, I walked out of the kitchen in search of Erica or Heidi and Reed, leaving Mr Randall behind as he began to fill a tray with assorted drinks for his guests. I'd only made it a few feet out in the hallway when I heard a soft, very familiar and melodious voice coming the opposite way.

"Ian, I need to speak to..." Mrs Tamwood rounded the corner, and suddenly, I was staring my own death in the face. "You." The undead hissed angrily through her filed, pointy teeth. "Rachel Morgan. Annabelle Tamwood. You're sleeping with my daughter? I don't believe we've ever had the pleasure."

If by pleasure, she meant nailing me to the wall with a staggeringly powerful vampy aura, then she was right. Doubtful, but even then, we'd never been introduced, which might account for the pulse still beating wildly in my chest, the blood cascading in my veins and the air filling my lungs, traits she shared not a one. The way she glared at me, though, certainly hinted she wouldn't mind making us just a little more alike in that regard. How nice of her.

Seriously, isn't bonding with your in-laws just swell?

A/N: So, when is the next update coming? Hopefully within the next two weeks. I've got most of the next two chapters done, so I'm going to space them out a little, give myself a chance to work on them, give them a bit of extra polish. After that, it might be a long while again, I don't know. The story's going to pick up a bit then, and hopefully I'll be more motivated to pump out chapters if they're more thrilling to write. We'll see.