What Happened After

  The Queen Mother was dead, and her entire army was destroyed. The Queen’s army that hadn’t been burned already was brought into the cavern and was burned. I took the Queen Mother’s sword as a trophy of our victory.

  Roberto had an interesting story; the Queen Mother went right after him. After she struck him down several of her henchman had grabbed him and they fled. The Queen Mother did not even see the end of the battle. Roberto was still alive as she fled, it was only after the Queen Mother had left the battle field did she had Roberto quartered out.

  Roberto had been greatly distressed at Horatio’s betrayal, Roberto could not watch as we burn him. No one had seen hide or hair of Heckle’s companion Rudy. Pablo said he did not notice if he slipped into the Queen’s army or if he broke off from Horatio as they fled. He was not found within the cave, so it was likely that he escaped back in Siberia. If he ever turned up we would just burn him I guess.

Like Hephaistion, Roberto had no idea what had happened to the rest of the Ancients, I figured when we all returned to Europe they would turn up.

  True to his word, Sebastian honored Pablo’s challenge of settling his long wish for revenge. One of the Council’s soldiers had picked up Hider’s rapier back in Siberia and had given it back to me after the Queen was destroyed, I gave to Pablo to use in his fight against Sebastian. It was more his style then a clumsy broadsword.

  Emma was beside herself when while she watched Pablo and Sebastian fight. We gave them the cavern to settle the long awaited debt. We all stood in a ring against the walls as they fought. Sebastian looked at first as he had no chance against Pablo, he looked slow and sluggish and he showed almost no offense. Pablo’s rage was evident as he attacked Sebastian over and over.

  But Sebastian was not the weaker fighter; he was giving Pablo his chance for revenge. As the fight went on, Sebastian’s speed and skill over Pablo’s became painfully obvious. Sebastian defense slowly but steadily became offense, and Pablo was over taken.

  Once Pablo had been disarmed, he kneeled at Sebastian’s feet and awaited his fate. Sebastian picked up Pablo’s sword and handed it back to him by the hilt, and asked him for his forgiveness. Which to my and Emma’s relief, Pablo gave. We all gathered up the weapons and dispersed them amongst Roberto, Hephaistion and myself. Hephaistion promised me that he would make sure my share were brought back to Europe and kept safe in his keeping till my fate was decided.

  Roberto had been in agreement with Hephaistion that I was to replace Cline on the Council, something I strongly disagreed with. I wanted nothing to do with the Council, but in the end I knew I was going to have to agree. So I appointed John Barleycorn as Governor of the Northern Provence of the New World. An appointment he was not thankful for.

  The next day Hephaistion and Roberto dismiss the army keeping only a small guard for themselves. The Northerners looked for me to dismiss them, but I told them they had to wait till I knew where I was going. Hephaistion has said that I needed to go to France, that everything that Cline had owned now belonged to me.

  Pablo said his good-byes to Gloria and I. I had asked what his plans were and he had told me that he would return to South America and build a it into a legitimate province. He planned to comb the jungles and destroy those would not become civilized. Butch asked me if he could go with Pablo and I said of course.

  We finally got Frank to wear clothes much to everyone’s relief. He had retrieved the boy Gabriel from little Eric, and growled if anyone came to close outside of Emma, Tabitha or Gloria. Roberto asked me to release little Eric to his service, Eric did not seem to mind so I did not asked questions. That afternoon Roberto took his leave of us and headed back to Spain, I was not sorry to see him go.

  As the sun set over Iran Hephaistion and his people, together with me and my family and John’s Northerners headed back to Europe. The terrible wound that Gloria had received on her face troubled me deeply. Not that I loved her any less, but pretty faces such as Gloria’s shouldn’t have to be scared by war. Emma, much to everyone’s surprise did not have a single mark or scratch on her body.

  Sebastian no longer hid his emotions towards Emma; their feelings towards one another reminded me of a schoolyard romance. I believe it was the first time either of them had felt love for someone else like they shared for each other. Gloria had reminded me after watching them that they didn’t need my help or my comments after all.

  Jason did not asked to be excused, the first chance he got that no one was looking he ran off to who knows where. When we noticed that he was gone we all got a good laugh at his hatred of Sebastian and I.

  As we traveled the Northerners slowly but surely disappeared till only John and Tabitha were left. My family had shrunk down to Sebastian, Emma, Gloria, Frank and the human child Gabriel. But we were not completely alone, about twenty or so random vampire soldiers wanted to stay with me and Gloria, A Council member needed his guard and I could always make more if I thought it necessary.

  It took us about five day to get back to France. Tabitha finally feed on a human. Though she thought it was weird feeding on a person, she enjoyed fresh blood to blood out of a bag. John couldn’t be happier; he had been living with a sense of dread at the idea of feeding out of a bag the rest of his days.

  It was early February when we got back to France. Cline’s fortress at Chamonix Gloria and I decided we would rebuild to be our new home. Hephaistion told us to hang out for a few days while he put some things in order back home, then he would be back to help make the arrangements for me to become the official First Chair of the Council Guard.

  I didn’t like the idea of being called the First Chair, but he said that that was the name of the title that I now held. To change it would means that the whole Council would have to change. He reassured me not to worry about it, no one really cared anyways.

  While Hephaistion was gone we were not idle, Emma and Gloria took some of the riches that we found in our new home and rented a large suit within the town limits of Chamonix. They did not want to keep the boy up here with us since there was no heat or running water, plus Gloria said they needed to do some shopping. Frank, Sebastian and I went to work right away, we completely destroyed the outside wall that was made to keep humans from escaping and we filled in the dungeon with it, the work took us three days.

  It took a week for Hephaistion to return from his territories. After about two days of meeting with human lawyers and about a thousand signatures I became the new title holder of his Lord and Grace of the First Chair of the Council Guard. After securing the title, I had to meet with an accountant that managed the First Chair’s estate. After about a day of that my brain just plain hurt.

  Gloria asked how rich we were, and I told her that we could buy a small country if we were inclined to do so. Cline had massed a huge fortune over the thousands of years. Gloria was grateful for the unlimited of funds to remodel the fortress into a home.

  She spent a two months working with an architect designing a new front for the fortress. When it was all said and done they were going to attach a three story house to the front of the fortress face, and they were going to completely remodel the inside of the original fortress.

  While Gloria worked on the house, I had the French Government work out a thing to have around twenty gallons of whatever kind of blood they could find brought to the estate every month. I had forbidden anyone from hunting humans on my lands, which in turn had pissed the members of the Council off something horrible. If the vampires in my service wanted something fresh, they had to poach it off of someone else’s land.

  Before the construction on the new front was started, she started the mountain side remodeled. The inside walls, floor and ceilings were all stone. Gloria had the dungeon filled in with concrete. From there she had electricity ran up from Chamonix to the mountain. She also had the entire place plumbed out, radiant heating placed under the new wood floor. The whole inside was sheet rocked and painted, the inside of the mountain reminded me of a hotel.

  Then they started the work on the new front, winter was still in full swing by the time the foundation was poured. Watching the humans work in the cold mountain air made me want to cringe. We rarely saw Sebastian and Emma; they stayed down in the town with Gabriel. I had sent Frank to Hephaistion; he was still too wild to have him around the human.

  Gloria and my guards stayed pretty much out of sight, as did I. Like the last time we lived around humans they feared me on sight. So I kept to myself down in the large hall that I killed Augustus. I could see a trend starting, I was going to make this room my office. I had a cheap desk brought down to me, the Council secretary was always sending me things to look over and sign.

  There was a great deal to do with the French, English and Irish governments. Anything that would upset the balance I had to over look and then send it off to the different Council members for it to be approved. And like wise they sent the same to me. For the most part I could care less what the humans did as long as the built the house and left me alone.

  By the time spring ended the framing and sheeting was finished. From time to time I would come out during the day and look at the work being done. I would wear a large turtleneck sweater and sunglasses to hide my eyes. Gloria would laugh because she had learned French over the winter and would hear the humans marveling at me. They would joke about me being a monster or something; I could care less as long as they built the house.   

  In the evenings when the workers would go home, Gloria and I would wander the new construction and the remodeled fortress; she would give me her ideas on what she wanted to do. She had yet to buy any furniture except for my desk, I was ready to furnish our new home, but Gloria was holding fast to buy it all at once.

  Sometimes after the sun went down we would walk under the night sky. We would either talk for hours or not say a word. The time we spent was now making up for the time we lost in the war against the Queen Mother.

  Though it had only been months from that first trip to Spain to getting home from Iran, it felt like years had passed and I couldn’t get enough of Gloria. The several months we were on the run it seemed I hardly got a chance to speak with her.

  Gloria would smile every time I would grimace at the angry scar that traveled down her face. She would comfort me and call me silly, she would say she only had the three scars, and I had was covered from head to toe with them. I had the scars that Hider gave me, that the Battle of the Tundra left me with. The one the top of my head that the Queen Mother gave me, so she teased me that I worried about the one that she had received on the face.

  She would not admit it, but I knew that eye had never fully healed. I would catch her looking at something with her head tilted so she could see with the one good eye. When I would ask her about it she would just give me the old Gloria line, ‘Don’t worry about it Conner, you’ll sleep better if you don’t.’ Like I sleep.

   By the middle of the second summer after coming to Chamonix, a year and a half since coming home from Iran the furniture started showing up. We brought Frank back from Hephaistion, he was grateful to have him go, I guess he chewed on everything.

  Also I kept a promise to Sebastian, a promise that Emma was not to happy about and that was sending Sebastian into outer space. I had gotten in touch with the Russian Federal Space Agency; it had cost twenty six million dollars to blast Sebastian into outer space.

  Sebastian had a great deal of fun at his flight physical. I ended up having to bribe the Russian doctors to lie on his medical charts to say he was fit to fly. I didn’t mind, to see Sebastian excited about going up in a rocket was worth every penny of Cline’s hard earned cash. The Council members were not pleased that Sebastian was going, but who cares.

  Sebastian spent eleven days aboard the International Space Station; I made sure he took lots of pictures. Gloria had told me that there was no way I was going up, four months later Hephaistion went up.

  That fall Sebastian and Emma had gotten married. We had the wedding at the house; we invited all our friends back in the States. We even invited Jason, though we had not received any word back from him if he was coming or not.

  It was good to see Tabitha and John, Pablo to my surprise also came to Sebastian and Emma’s wedding. He and Butch for the most part had clear out most of the supposed cannibalistic vampires. Pablo had successfully set up a vampire government which I supported and formally asked the individual Council members to recognize. Sebastian believed they would, recognizing Pablo’s rule there would keep other like Pablo from being exiled there.

  After the wedding we officially took residence at what was we call the Steele Estate, even though I have lived here for almost two years. Sebastian and Emma lived with us, also Frank who still did not speak, but as the days past became more and more civilized.

  The biggest treat we had here at the estate was to my surprise was the little boy Gabriel. We had estimated that he was around three when we found him. He was now two years older and Sebastian had become his personal teacher. Sebastian taught the boy everything he could think of. At five years old he spoke English and French. He also was picking up the language of the Ancients, Sebastian had taught the difficult language to all of us which we called the old language or ’speaking vampire’ as we joked.

  It surprised me how easy it was to learn a new language. I had picked up French without even really trying. Now the language of the Ancients took a little more work, but it worked its way out. The ancient language was all that was ever spoke here at the Steele Estate, it only seemed right to speak the language of the vampire.

  By early spring we had collected ten more guards, ronin vampires left master less from the Battle of the Tundra or Cline‘s death.

  From time to time I was receive visitors from the French Government wanting to complain about one thing or another, they would try to tell me that it was my job to help enforce this or that with other Council members. Usually I would hear them out and then I would asked them was the country at risk of being invaded or being sent to the poor house and they would say no, so I would send them on their way.

  If they would get to irritating I would have Gloria find Frank and I would threaten to feed them to him. That would normally give me a few weeks peace before then next big problem erupted. I would normally spend a full day behind my desk working on stupid crap from the Council, something I will never forgive Hephaistion for railroading me into. Then as the evening rolled around I would leave the problems of the world on my desk and walk the nights away with Gloria.

  It bothered me to keep Gabriel here at the estate without other children to play with, but Sebastian and Emma would play any ridicules game he wished to play without fail, and for now he was content.                                   

  So this is what has become of my life. This is how I came to be The Lord and Grace of the First Chair of the Council Guard.