Erasure and Affirmation (Hypernaturals 11)

Kiss Me

When Danny and Lori arrived earlier, Danny looked around at just the foyer and said "Fucking amazeballs, Dude!". It is not merely the foyer: he got the drive up to the house too, and the great gates, and the long view, so he has some idea as to scale. Some. No way to see or understand the entire place without a many hour tour. Most of it vineyards, but the stables and winery/brewery and other outbuildings are not insubstantial.

"Pretty much my reaction the first time I saw the place. I was just in for a month-long walk, and this was the first civilization I had seen in all that time."

"Wow. Hard to imagine. Look at this place!" Danny enthused. "I feel like I just walked into a National Geographic special about historic buildings of Europe. All the stone and polished wood and.. wow. Everything. That library looks like it has a jillion old books!"

"Pretty much. I could live in there for days. It's all originally Helen and now Fiona's doing around here though. Not like I do anything." I said.

"Don't you forget it!" Fiona injected.

"Yes. Us redheads have to stick together." Carol chimed in.

"Does he make you get naked in the pool too?" Fiona asked.

"No. He makes me strip off on the boat and forces me to go to the nude beach. Not that I fight it." Carol said. "I like how DeWayne gets uneasy around all the naked ladies. Not like Danny does, but he pretends he's not looking. He totally is. He is just being nervous about it."

"I need to keep in therapy on that." DeWayne offered. "No clothes in the pool here, right?"

"That is the rule. Later. After you marry me then you can play." Carol told him. "All your favorite Vampires naked. Your head will swivel right off."

With everyone here, we have gathered.

The sides of the pool house have large movable panels that open onto the patio between the house and the pavilion, so we are set up on the patio. With all the adults around here keeping an eye on them, I am not too worried about my kids falling in the water. That and they can all swim. Still: I would never open it up like this without a lot of supervision.

Carol stood with DeWayne before the assembled and said "Thank you all for coming." She looked at me and added with a gesture at the surrounding space, "Thank you, Adrian Claremont, for letting us use your beautiful home for this.

Nice: making a point in case anyone missed it that this is supposedly my place. As if.

Everyone is standing, but Carol and Dewayne are above the crowd on a little platform Fiona put in so we could see and hear them better.

"I hate to be calling out Adrian so much here, but you know what? Really. He changed my life. He did not know he did. I met him at the battle with William at the Siren Hall, and I had no idea what to think about him at first. He showed me I was wrong about so many things in my life. I need very much to also credit one of the other Trinity with that too. Denise. Her passionate rejection of how we, as Vampires, have been conducting our lives made me open my eyes to new possibilities. Thank all the gods that happened before I met this man. I was ready for him to come into my life at exactly the time he did. Introduced to me by Adrian and his exceptionally moronic spouse, Morgan, who let this man get away from her. Thank you, Morgan, so much: for being just that stupid." Carol grinned to take the bite out of the statement.

"You are welcome." Morgan told her from the front row where she and I are staged. "However. He is on my list, so beware."

"Oh. I know." Carol said. "From that first night in Holly's, which is Morgan and Adrian's bar out by the big lake in Austin, for those of you not aware of that, I wanted DeWayne. I wanted him in my life. my point of view of the Vampire world changed because of all the love and marriage and children swirling around me, because of Clan Sagan, the first family of Vampiredom. I wanted more than DeWayne in my bed every night. I wanted to marry him and have a child with him. Clan Sagan proved that is possible, and it was my honor to keep that secret until Ninovan blew that wide open. I went to the family and asked for their help with DeWayne. They agreed. It was a special night. No more secrets. No more lies about who I am and what I do for a living. I owe Adrian, Helen, Jessica, Morgan, and you too, Nakoma! For that night and every other thing you guys do for us in our world. There is no one here that will deny what I just said. 'First Family'. Victoria coined it, and we all use it."