The Shape of Things to Come (Hypernaturals 15)

Rachel's Ring

Any day spent on the Nightwing is a day well spent. My Vampire life started here. Now my Vampire family fills the place. Other than the occasional downsides, like being on Council, or having to occasionally commit perfect crimes to protect the Vampire Secret, I love this life. I love being a husband and a father especially. I was made for this.

My brother Don and my sister Liz started their families first, and they are proper human families. Monogamous. a few kids. Professional parents. I followed in our parents' more non-traditional lifestyle, even if as kids we did not know about that. Our parents loved us as kids. We did not know it at the time and Don and Liz still don't but Mom and Dad also believe in 'Love Thy Neighbor'. More or less. If Don and Liz ever find out why the shower at the house is designed that way it is, they would probably have kittens right there on the spot. My parents did raise us to question society and its mores. They didn't tell us some ways they personally rejected them. That was for us to figure out for ourselves.

This is how hippy-dippy me ended up with the biggest family. Not counting vampirism helps with that, and how the long-lived Vampire world intrinsically questions all human standards by necessity.

My entire family came along for this trip. That is not always the case. Sometimes it's various pairings wanting to have some alone time. Nightwing is big enough for all, though. When I first came on her, I thought the big boat with its Bimini covered afterdeck and huge bed in the cabin meant Jessica was a partier. That she pulled into the various parties that happen from time to time in coves of the lake and loaded it up with drunken college students. Turned out she built a big boat so fate could load it with her family instead. Way better than Frat boys.

We are not headed anywhere specific today. We have food and drinks for the day, a full tank of petrol, and some very rare free time. After putting on the Conclave, and the jillion things you have to do to be ready for that! I really hope we wait a long time before we do another one of those. That was followed immediately by the Council and Crew fight with an entire Vampire Geo. No sooner is that over when we are in the middle of the removal of an entire group of human supremacists in Amsterdam, with echoes and ramifications for weeks. Plus much more personal problems at Claremont and the fungal espionage there. Sylvie La Cour is still writing me, as Adrian Claremont. She is sorry and just wants to get married. Some of the pictures she sends are ... revealing. Muscle poses of a shaved and glistening body in top human form. It is always weird to me to see a woman with only head hair and eyebrows. Seems she spends a lot of time in the gym. Some more flexible and meant to imply wide ranges of sexual positions are available. The pheromones should have worn off by now: She is now single-mindedly fixated. How her type-A mind adapted to the Juice and the pheromones. She has a strong need to win, and if she can't do that in a head-to-head competition, then she'll find another way.

I always show the pictures to Helen. The original head-butting was between Helen and her, even if it was by proxy, while Helen was setting up an old version of herself (Helen in makeup) being replaced by a younger one (her actual self), then changed course and plopped me in instead and became my bride.

Helen showed me one she was looking at one time. "You like this position?"

I had looked, shook 'no'. "I have seen that one in the Kama Sutra. Seems like it's all about strength and proving you can do it. Not about joy. I mean: other than you were able to achieve penetration, not a single erogenous zone is being touched. Maybe the G spot, but probably not."

"Bloody damn right. Interesting geometry. Terrible for sex." Helen liked I was not interested in either Sylvie or the position depicted.

She considered the photo again. "There was a time when something like this getting out would be the end of someone's career. No woman would send something like this out where you could post it publically, more or less to the Internet. In the day of celebrity sex tapes? This is artwork. She does work hard, I have to admit." Helen had tilted her head and studied the pose. "Very hard."