My Familiar Stranger (12 page)

“Vampire,” she said. “Plural. The plural of vampire is vampire, right?”

Kay exchanged a surprised glance with Storm, thought about it for a second and then asked, “How do you know?”

“Black Swan Field Training Manual, Section One, Chapter One, Number One.”

Kay chuckled softly and shook his head. “I mean, how do you know there aren’t vampire in your dimension? Only a tiny fraction of our population knows that our world is crawling with them.”

Her brows drew together as she considered that. “Crawling?”

He smiled at having been called out on an exaggeration. “Okay. Maybe crawling is a bit much. I guess it just seems that way to us sometimes.”

When they took the soup bowls away, Elora realized that Rammel had been staring at her the entire time. She knew that cultured persons do not initiate confrontations, but she’d had enough so she trained the full force of her attention on the man across the table. “Why are you staring like that?”

Kay looked from Elora to Ram. “Don’t let him bother you. Elves are not known for manners.”

Ram dragged his eyes away from Elora long enough to turn a sarcastic comment toward Kay. “Oh. And berserkers are the essence of Miss Emily Post I suppose?”

“What do you mean elves?” she asked Kay.

Kay shifted in his seat and looked at Storm like he was trying to get a clue if he’d said the wrong thing. “You know. Elves. Pointy ears? Big feet?”

She looked at him waiting for the punch line or the clue that it was an inside joke. “You mean like in fairy tales?”

Rammel’s head jerked up and his face took on a slightly pinker color as he sucked in a gasp. He had the look of a person who had just been slapped. “I am no’ a fairy!” He stared at Elora with gaping indignation like she had just delivered the most profound insult in the history of effrontery.

“Um,” Storm began, “Elves and fairies have been at war for over a thousand years. They hate each other.” He glanced at Ram. “A lot.”

It took a minute for Elora to realize that they were being serious. Somehow it was easier to accept the possibility of vampire than elves, maybe because of her love of fairy tales. She turned to Kay, “Would you mind changing places with me?”

She caught a flicker of surprise, but, like a gentleman, he said, “Not at all,” as he rose and surrendered the seat next to Ram.

Elora moved around to the other side of the table and sat. Turning to Ram she studied him for a moment, then lifted her right hand toward his hair and said, “May I?”

He nodded, looking completely intrigued. Gently she ran the backs of her first two fingers underneath the hair covering his left ear.
Feels like corn silk. Looks like spun gold.

While Ram did his best to suppress a shiver, she lifted his hair up and out of the way until his entire ear was revealed; a beautiful, and, to her, quite magical, pointed ear lay close to his head. And it was her turn to gasp.

She thought she saw a firefly of silver dance across eyes gone dark blue, but dismissed it as a trick of the light. She touched the tip ever so slightly, looked from his ear to his eyes and back again, then suddenly grinned at him like he had just performed the most incredibly marvelous feat. It was the first time Storm had seen her smile turned up to the full power of radiance squared. The effect was breathtaking. She lit up the room.

Elora reluctantly pulled her hand away from Ram’s hair, but continued to look at him like he was a bona fide miracle. “In your world, do you not have a collection of stories called fairy tales?”

Ram shook his head and drew his brows together slightly. “Sounds most disturbin’.”

She smiled. “Well, there are some that are rather unpleasant, but most are magical and charming. These stories feature mythical creatures that do not exist in my world. Creatures like fairies, elves, dragons and ogres.” She continued to stare for another minute, then looking around the table she said, “Do you also have dragons and ogres?”

All three men looked at each other simultaneously shaking their head and murmuring no’s like they were disappointed to not be able to offer more.

Then Ram asked, “What’s an ogre?”

She gave a brief summary after which Ram said, “Well, then we may have been wrong. Sounds very much like a description of Sol.”

Laughing softly, without looking up from the salt and pepper he had been arranging and rearranging, Kay said, “It does raise an interesting question though.” Everyone turned to Kay who stopped fiddling with the condiments and lifted his eyes to Elora. “If there are no elves in your world, then how do you know about elves?”

At that, trays arrived with the main course which gave everyone time to consider the implications of the question. Elora stayed in Kay’s chair neither requesting nor offering to switch back. In the infirmary she had eaten what she was served without caring to ask for dish names or ingredients. Now she was more interested in the subject. She inquired about the nuts used in the chicken breast topping. Storm asked for a bite which she fed him from her fork not realizing that the simple act, initiated innocently, can imply the sensuality of foreplay. He hummed approval and confirmed that the crust was laden with pecans.

After asking about every other entre on the table and sampling each, she turned to Kay and said, “Are you thinking that elves lived in my dimension in our prehistoric past? That’s what it would have to be since there is no pictorial or linguistic record. Or, are you thinking that there was an elfin visit to my dimension and it caused enough of a stir to become part of the race consciousness?”

“Something like that. When did elves first appear in your literature?”

“I’m not an authority on the subject, but I’m thinking between three and five hundred years ago?”

“Sounds like a visit, accidental or otherwise.”

“Like in
Accidental Tourist
?“

Kay nodded. Every time Elora discovered a parallel between her world and this she relaxed a little more.

She continued with no discernible segue. “Ummm. What’s a berserker?”

All three of the men were amused by the abrupt change of subject. Storm explained that the berserker gene, which causes rage behavior, is triggered by battle circumstances or threat of violence and that the rampage fever, once engaged, is almost impossible to subjugate until the berserker perceives the threat is neutralized. They went on to explain that berserkers weren’t usually candidates for Black Swan, but that Kay had more tolerance than usual for situations of extreme stress. Storm said with a tone of pride that Kay had mastered his demon.

“So you’re saying berserkers go out of control?”

Ram barked out a laugh, “Out of control? Wacked up insane mother fuckers is what they are.”

Elora stared at Ram, not so much because she was offended by the language, but because Ram made even the word “fucker” sound appealing somehow. Storm and Kay joined her in staring at Ram, but for different reasons.

“What?” Ram asked innocently.

“Where I am from,” Elora interceded, letting him off the hook, “your accent would be typical in a place called Ireland. Is there such a place here?”

Ram looked delighted by the question. “Aye. ‘Tis my home. We have had a truce with fairies for two hundred years. We do no’ go to Scotia uninvited and they do no’ cross the borders of Ireland or Wales. Except on preapproved business.”

Elora nodded thoughtfully.

Ram took another bite, then, as an afterthought asked, “Do you like my accent?”

Her eyes slid sideways, pleased that he cared to ask. “Sure,” she smiled and gave a beguiling little shake of her head. “Musical.”

“I would like to hear these fairy tales,” he said ‘fairy’ like it created a bad taste in his mouth, “but would like them all the more should they be called elf tales.”

Elora laughed out loud. The joy of the sound was contagious. All three men were affected, but, after Storm had witnessed every step of this woman’s metamorphosis from blob of quivering gore to the stunning creature now sitting across the table, he felt his heart swell with a longing to hear it again.

Two more times during dinner she reached over and carefully pulled Ram’s hair back from his ear. Storm was starting to wonder how anyone could possibly be attracted to a pair of ugly, misshapen ears. Couldn't she see that's why he kept them covered with hair that couldn't decide what color to be or which way to go?

Throughout dinner several of the knights came by to be introduced to Elora and Storm did the honors. She shook hands and repeated every name back in hopes that she might remember. The knights were not all as tall as Storm and Kay, but every one of them looked like athletes, well-proportioned with hard bodies and flat, muscular stomachs. Storm was trying to be patient, admonishing himself that he would be curious, too, but, the table was starting to feel like a receiving line. It was impossible for Storm to tell whether others were fascinated because she was an extra-dimensional alien or because she was extraordinary when held up to any lens. Of course there was always the chance they were just going out of their way to make her feel welcome because of chivalry, but he wouldn’t bet on it.

When the dessert course, which was Black Forest cake with raspberry sauce, was set in front of Elora, she expressed uncertainty about the look of it. She didn’t think dark brownish black was an appetizing color for sweets. That prompted a question about chocolate in general which led to an admission that chocolate did not exist in her reality, so far as she knew. In the infirmary, she had heard about it on TV, but had never seen it personally.

With all three dinner companions insisting that she give it a try, she eventually acquiesced, picked up her Wallace silver fork and took a bite. As soon as the mixture came in contact with her taste buds, her eyelids slid closed, and she began moaning. She didn’t stop moaning until every crumb of the cake was completely gone from her dessert plate. Storm and Ram both watched transfixed with parted lips, responding to the sensual sounds of approval in ways that made them shift in their seats, repeatedly, and breathe deeper.

Kay, who had just spent a very satisfying three months never far away from the bed of his wife-to-be, observed the reactions with amusement, resting his elbow on the table with hand over his mouth, barely suppressing outright laughter.

Elora finished her piece of cake that had been portioned to satisfy a rugby player after game, and looked at the empty saucer as if she was struggling to keep from licking the plate. Her eyes then came to rest on Storm’s untouched dessert. Without a word he shoved it across the table. She beamed, politely asked, “Are you sure?” and then dived in before he had a chance to rethink the offer. In minutes the second dessert saucer was empty.

Still mesmerized, Ram asked if she would like his, too while thinking, "Great Mother of Paddy, let her say yes!" She was eyeing it longingly when she realized Storm and Kay were both chuckling. Looking around the table she got the distinct impression that she may have been overly demonstrative in showing her newfound appreciation for chocolate. Feeling her face heat and hoping she wasn’t blushing visibly, she decided a new subject was in order.

As they rose from the dinner table, Storm invited Elora to join them in the lounge for a drink. She declined on the excuse of having already experienced a long and eventful day and being eager to finish unpacking.

Storm said he would see her back to her apartment and then join his friends, but Elora insisted that she find her way alone. He said he would like very much to give her a complete tour of the building the next day and help her finish settling in with such things as groceries. He would come by at ten and their first stop would be for coffee and muffins. When they reached the lounge, Elora said good night and continued to the elevator bank.

Ram watched her walk away thinking he must certainly be the mother and father of all idiots, scolding himself silently. "Shit, Ram. You almost killed your own mate." That funny feeling he had in his stomach in the Chamber that day three months ago hadn’t been a harbinger of danger. Those bells and whistles clanging against his intuition and tweaking his cock had been trying to signal that the one and only had arrived to change his life forever. How was he to guess that she would show up as a pile of goo that was unrecognizable as homo sapiens?

He misread the instinct and fucked up majorly this time. He left to go play for three months while Storm stuck around and spent every damn day becoming her anchor to this world. If that wasn’t bad enough, it looked like he had abandoned the scene and allowed one of his two best friends in the world to fall in love with the one female who was destined to be his. What a cluster! He was more than a moron. He was self-saboteur to a degree that any masochist would envy.

But he couldn’t be too concerned with that right now. He was too elated about having just met his future and finding out that she far exceeded any fantasy. She had to be the most potent wet dream ever conjured. The fates had seen fit to give him a beauty beyond compare even if she was human; that hair that defied color description, those turquoise eyes, that gorgeous smile. And when he had leaned close to her to apologize he had smelled wild jasmine in bloom.

It was not completely unheard of for elves to mate with humans, but it was rare and not without its problems since elves mate for life and are naturally monogamous while humans seem to struggle with fidelity. If she was elf, he could simply walk up to her, tell her she was his mate, and that would be that. This, on the other hand, would require some finesse, not one of Ram’s primary attributes.