And so he appears

"Think adventurous," She whispered to him.

“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Makes is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” –Winston Churchill

 

When one is faced with the chance of imminent death with all of the concerns, fears, and regrets of several hundred years; there can be only one solution for comfort for such a dilemma. Well, that is, if you managed to survive said dilemma. Otherwise, one would need a comfort in the afterlife and Shaun did not need comfort for the fact that she was in the afterlife. But for the fact that someone had tried to kill her by exploding her. Vampires, especially, Shaun didn’t take too kindly to having to entertain the thought of having her spleen splattered across a sidewalk, or any other part of her body for that matter.

 

Grey blinked up at the sign that was so prominently displayed. “Ice cream?”

 

“What’s wrong with ice cream?” Shaun asked genuinely concerned with the utter look of surprise on his face.

 

“This is what a girl has to do when her life was threatened? Go out and eat ice cream?” He asked still looking at the cone with the pastel coloured scoops of ice cream.

 

“What were you expecting me to go out to some seedy bar and start knocking back shots of vodka and hard liquor to aid me in forgetting my traumatic experience?” Shaun scoffed. “Please, this is the supernatural world, not some show about a down on his luck cop with a past.”

 

“Yeah, but you’re not a cop.”

 

“Ah, yes, how about blood chasers?” Shaun asked walking across the small parking lot heading for the entrance.

 

“Blood chasers?”

 

“The humans have the chasers get with their drinks. But vampires have taken that and gone with it in their own way. They just take a chaser and mix it with a tad bit of blood of the customers’ choice.”

 

Grey placed his hand over on the door keeping it closed and leaned around her to speak to her profile directly. “Tell me, why do you always refer to the vampires as ‘they’; you never refer to them as a ‘we’. You act like you’re not part of the collective group, that you’re a part of them.”

 

Shaun met his gaze. Aqua coloured eyes clashed with the dark blue eyes of him with the light hue striations.

 

“You can ask me anything you want about the vampire’s, but that is one question I will not answer. Especially to a person I don’t really know.”

 

“Fine,” Grey dropped his arm and took a step back giving her room. “So, why an ice cream shop?”  

 

“Not just any ice cream shop,” Shaun answered over her shoulder, opening the door and stepping through the opened door.  She breathed in deeply the smell of ice cream and chocolate dipped cones, “this is Marble Slab.”

 

“Marble Slab?”

 

“You do that a lot.”

 

Gray frowned at her.

“I say something, then, you repeat it. Plays with my head, makes me think that there’s an echo in here. But!” Shaun’s body jerked startling Gray, “that is not the reason that we’re here. The reasoning is simple… ICE CREAM!” Shaun skipped to the display glass of the different flavors. She all but drooled and caressed the glass.

 

“Ice cream, huh?” Gray slowly approached the glass, giving it a distasteful glare.

 

“Tell ya what I’ll treat you to it. Since I dragged you here and weren’t expecting it at all.”

 

Grey opened his mouth to argue about it, but in the end he kept his mouth shut since it seemed the safest bet. He glanced scrutinizing each flavour. He went with the safest choice. “Vanilla. I’ll have Vanilla.”

 

Shaun gasped and smacked him in the back of the head, “Vanilla? If you want vanilla you can just go to the store and get some. Now, this is like the forest of ice cream. You can have Cheesecake, Peanut Butter, Peanut Butter Banana, Fudge, Mango, Honey, Coconut, Peach, Cinnamon, Blueberry, Bubblegum, and… Egg Nog.  And we haven’t even started on the mixins.”

 

Gray had the feeling of a sugar high coming on and a horrible foreshadowing of him with diabetes.

 

“What can I get you two?” A man came out of the back wearing a black apron with the stores logo on it.

 

“Think adventurous…” Shaun whispered to him.

 

“Shaun?” The man behind the counter tilted his head at her.

 

“Kudjo! How’s the business?”

 

“Not selling as much since you are basically living here in the store.”

 

“Ah, yes. Things to do, people to give headaches to. You know me busy, busy, busy.”

 

Kudjo nodded understandably and leaned forward, whispering, “is it true?”

 

“Is what true?”

 

He glanced at Gray meaningfully. “You know… that the vampires are ready to call it quits.”

 

“Quits?”

 

“With the humans.”

“Depends on how pig headed they are.”

 

“The humans or the vampires?”

 

Shaun snorted.

 

Kudjo grinned at their habital banter “Your usual?”

 

“Always.”

 

The man scooped out cheesecake ice cream and mixed white chocolate pieces into it. Then, put it into a white chocolate dipped cone.

 

Gray raised an eyebrow at her, when Kudjo handed the cone to her.

 

“What?”

 

“Cheesecake and lots of white chocolate.”

 

“You trying to say something to me?”

 

“Nope,” Gray grinned with the brains of a man who’d lived with female’s, “just making an observation.”

 

“You keep making that observation and pick out some ice cream.”

 

“All right, I’ll have the Peach ice cream with chocolate covered peanuts in a chocolate dipped cone.”

 

Shaun grinned while eating her cone.

 

Gray could just see an imaginary tail being busy wagging. “What?”

 

“You know, there are times where you are just beyond cute.”

 

She felt like he took a mental step back. Just when he thought he was getting somewhere in understanding her. She threw him a curveball, totally throwing him offbase. She never made any sense. When she should go this way, she went the other way. Always so unpredictable. At times it made him wonder if she was even a vampire. It was the face of the file with the results of the blood test that had been done on her.

 

He turned to see her studying him. “What?” He asked.

 

“Nothing,” Shaun answered looking away, feeling strange around him since she had finally remembered what had been niggling at her.

 

Kudjo handed Grey his ice cream cone. Shaun paid at the cash register to a different employee.

 

Grey walked with her outside. “Is there a reason why you chose ice cream?”

 

“Life doesn’t go on and on, it ends. I know it, you know it. Basically every life on this planet knows that it ends. Nothing is forever.”

 

“Except for diamonds,” Grey murmured quietly.

 

Shaun raised an eyebrow at him when she stepped off the curb. “Humor, Grey? Don’t exert yourself too much.”

 

“Sorry,” he grinned. “You were talking about how life ends and we are all doomed to death.”

 

“I wasn’t talking about the doom of death, just how it ends. Even vampires whether it be by our own hands or the hands of Hunters.”

 

“Vampires take their own lives?”

 

“Yes. It happens more times than most others would think.” Shaun shook her head skipping back to the previous subject, “Humans, vampires, Dires - about any species gets wired around death. They let it rule their lives, defining them. But they forget about one important fact.”

 

“Life?”

 

“Yes, life it’s so important. This is why we are here. They keep on forgetting its here, to celebrate it.”

 

“And this is what you are doing? Celebrating life?”

 

“Absofreakinglutely,” Shaun nodded.

 

“Since you are on the boat of celebrating life how would feel about escorting me to the negotiations?” Grey asked taking a bite out of his ice cream.

 

Shaun smiled at him, “So, you were actually going to the negotiations.”

 

“Yes, so are you up to it?”

 

“You thinking that they might not let me in?”

 

“Considering your stomach is still digesting that compact, they might consider tossing you in a vat of boiling oil.”

 

“Nah, they wouldn’t do that. Maybe about four hundred years ago, but now… they’d be more likely to just tar and feather me. But…” Shaun actually considered her chances of survival. “I think they might not kill me too much.”

 

“As long as you believe that.”

 

 

Shaun glared up at the same two guards before the negotiations room. There had been no one guarding the walls or in the upstairs watching the walls. So, it had been easy for her to get in. Shaun was hesitant to enter the negotiation rooms the same way.

 

Grey had wanted her to head in with him, but she felt better about going in her own way. He had left her by the south wall where he had headed for the entrance.

 

So, here she was facing the same guards she had met the other night and who probably had a vendetta against her.

 

“We are not to let you through,” said the one on the left (the sword swing one that had put a gouge in the door that was still there).

 

“Oh, we are?” Shaun drawled out eyeing the two guards. She noticed the one on the right didn’t actually move an inch away from her, but she could feel him distancing himself from her.

 

The leftie one folded his arms over his chest and tried to look very intimidating. Unfortunately, Shaun had to resist the urge to giggle at him.

 

“Fine, you two just stay here and look foreboding and well… I’ll just go in there.” Shaun pointed behind them. They didn’t even glance behind them, just continued to glare at her.

 

Shaun grinned at them, without missing a beat she just walked right through them and into the negotiations room.

 

Shaun glanced about and waved at Grey as he leaned in his seat, leaning back looking bored.

 

Slowly each vampire noticed that she was standing behind them waiting for them to start either screaming or demanding vengeance. Nothing happened. They stared straight on at her; well, all for except one. He stood sitting his back to her reviewing some document. Shaun felt a dead weight in the pit of her stomach; they never regarded her so coolly.  There was always some form of disdain in their gaze, a superiority that she wasn't a part of. How they looked at her with pity in their eyes unnerved her. It also made her hair stand on end.

The doors behind her slammed open.

The two guards entered the room and grasped her arms. Shaun just phased her arms through their hands. It had gotten quiet, too quiet, whereas before the other vampires were talking to one another, discussing, arguing. Now there was just a quiet buzz about the room, It was unnatural.

Heart stopping Shaun immediately knew what it could be that would make them all regard her in that one sense. Disgust twisted her heart, churning her stomach; hatred turned her vision red. Clenching her jaw, Shaun stumped up to the man with the straight back confidently reading the papers. She planted herself near his side and glared down at him, resisting the urge to spit on him.

 

“Isolde had you come here, right?” Shaun demanded.

 

Whiskey brown emotionless brown eyes regarded her. He didn’t have to say anything, Shaun knew.

 

Unable to stand his presence, Shaun turned on her heel and left him behind her. Knowing if she stayed she’s give in to her instincts by grabbing his shoulders and pin him to the wall till he choked out his last breath.

 

Tears of frustration pushed stung her eyes as she stormed past the dire guards and out of the room.

 

“Shaun!” A familiar voice called out for her causing her to pause swallowing her tears.
 

She turned to face Grey. He slowly approached her, watching her warily. “I thought you were part of these negotiations.”

 

“Apparently I’m being replaced.” She turned to walk away, to stay strong, to quiver and cry in secret where others wouldn’t see. Instead Grey grasped her arm and when she tried to jerk away from his hold it stayed.

 

“What makes you think that?”

 

“That man that I talked to at the table, you recognize him? The one wearing the grey business suit and white shirt with the top buttons undone?”

 

“What about him?” Grey asked, distancing himself without even moving.

 

“He’s the one replacing me.”

 

“What gives you this idea that he’s replacing you?”

 

“Because I’m the Regin’s daughter, the one who’ll succeed my father in ruling the vampires. Because I’m not the perfect vampire, I love to dance without abandon, I love ice cream, cats, and I can’t stand to be around Joo Ji Lee.”

 

“Is there a reasoning behind this all?” Grey asked coolly letting go of her arm.

 

“You know, when you asked me why I never refer as myself as part of the vampire world? That man in there, he’s the reason for it.” Shaun laughed bitterly.

 

Grey stood there transfixed against his wish by her when he should be in the other room considering his options with the vampires, the humans. But here he was listening to her.

 

“Greyson,” the voice caused bile to rise to the back of Shaun’s voice. One that constantly haunted her nightmares. Lee…

 

Grey turned and motioned that he’ll be right in. Instead of turning and returning to the room, Lee approached the pair. He tilted his head and spoke to Shaun, “I hope that you will not make another scene.”

 

He turned and headed back to the room.

 

Shaun felt all the blood rush to her face, clenching her jaw she debated taking off her boots and chucking them at his head. “Excuse me, I have a wicked stepmother to maim and torture.” She smiled brightly at Grey and left him behind confused and bewildered.

Author's Note

Pic is of Joo Ji Lee. In goong he had the perfect arrogance that I see with Lee.

Reviews

[Adventerous Amy]

wow unbelievable it makes me want to read on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!