Fanfiction 1-2-3
I wrote some more.
I have a guilty pleasure read (one of so, so many). In this case it's Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter books. I recommend them if you like urban fantasy heteroromance with a touch of smut. They are fun, they are quick, and within the constraints of working for one of the big publishers, she tells a fantastic story. They've got the usual problems of heteroromance, but I don't read them expecting to solve the problems of the world. They pass a night well enough, and that's all I ask.
This is fanfiction for that world because there's always been one glaring problem with the world she created, and it's always jarred me, violently, every time it comes up in the books. There's a little under 30 chapters, it's already finished, and it will be going up here, on Pillowfort, Ko-fi and Ao3. Ao3 might actually get it faster than everyone else. Pillowfort will get it slower, simply because they don't have a queue and me remembering to post things is always dicey. Updates should come once a week.
Well, here we go, I guess. Please remember that reblogs give me life. The main tag is #Alyss and Jean.
Buy me a Ko-fi?
1-2-3 + 4-5 + 6-7-8-9-10 + 11-12 + 13-14 + 15-16 + 17-18-19 + 20-21 + 22-23 + 24-25 + 26-27
1
Alyss had never meant to be anyone important.
Angels, he understood, were the top creatures of the world. They were born to that privilege, they lived in that privilege. It never left their lives. No matter how low an angel might fall, and some did fall very low, they were still apex predators, apex lifeforms. A very, very old vampire might best a very young angel, but why would they risk the terrible destruction that would fall upon them if they did?
But there was wiggle room in that definition, in what was expected of an angel. And for most of his relatively short life Alyss had been of a very firm mind: he was going to be an accountant. This was not the sort of thing he told anyone. Humans were accountants. Vampires were accountants. Angels had other people do their accounting for them. And in truth, he'd learned many other skills throughout his few centuries: he was an excellent illuminator, a passable translator of multiple languages. If it had to do with books, he was good at it. If it had to do with numbers he was even better. But he didn't want to be an illuminator. He didn't want to be an archivist, or a librarian, or a historian.
He wanted. to be. an accountant.
On his second century, after the last of his teachers had given up on him in some specific fields, he'd left the Refuge and finally been allowed to openly do what he'd wanted to do all along. He'd found work in many angelic households and businesses; none that wanted him there permanently, but that was fun in its own way. He got to see so many new places, mingle with so many different people, meet so many of his kind, see how they lived, how they ruled.
Within a few years he was horrified.
Alyss understood, in theory, the process by which vampires were Made and trained. He'd never personally met any; in the Refuge they were distant satellites orbiting around the angels, or Archangels, they served. Until he'd left the Refuge the reality of vampires had been little but writing on a book: the meticulous scheduling needed to remove the build-up of toxins in an angel's body, the complex rules and regulations by which those humans who wished to undergo the vampiric awakening were measured. Hundreds of thousands applied every year. Most were turned away, found wanting or incompatible, though they were never told of the later. In exchange for the many gifts that came with becoming a vampire, they agreed to a hundred years of service to the angel whose choice gave them the chance to be Made. That century was meant to turn a feral creature into a self-willed predator, ruthlessly in control of their new instincts. It was a time for their angel to teach them what they were, who they'd become. To guide them and yes, if need be, to make them fear the ultimate authority of those who had created them, and could destroy them if they did not learn.
Alyss had seen no such teaching. He'd seen torture, lots of that. He'd seen cruelty beyond anything he'd ever imagined, for no reason other than an angel's entertainment. He'd seen the most stalwart hearts shattered, the strongest wills broken. He'd seen new vampires refused the kindness of going through their initial awakening in a medically induced coma, simply because their angel wanted to see them writhe. In Isabel's court he'd seen the angel wake a vampire from such a coma just because she wanted to hear them wail in incomprehending terror while she entertained some close friends for dinner. And that was just for starters; one hundred years was a long time to find out what harm you could do to a person to while the hours away.
It wasn't entirely unfounded, Alyss understood that. After the Cascade, when both the number of angels and archangels had beeen catastrophically low, the vampiric population had risen on a tide of mindless bloodlust. The Guild existed to hunt vampires who ran away from their contract for a good reason: too many vampires, well, ran away from their contract. And in theory the VPA was supposed to advocate for vampires, particularly those most vulnerable.
But after what he'd witnessed Alyss had begun to wonder if some of those vampires didn't run away for a good reason. He saw so much of the bad over the next century that the good seemed distant, faint, and eventually unlikely. It became shocking to him whenever he found an angelic home where the trainees were treated well.
In one of those houses he met Jean. And things kind of spiraled from there.
2
Alyss flew through the early morning light, deeply enjoying the chilly breeze coming from the sea, the sight of New England beneath him a vast landscape cloaked in every color of autumn imaginable. If he'd not been en route to a meet-n-greet he would have gone down just for the guilty pleasure of walking among the trees and kicking up clouds of gold, red and orange leaves.
But he was due at Kliman's house within the hour, and while the breeze was lovely it was also a headwind. He put his head down and pressed himself to further speed. Better to arrive on time and a little breathless than late.
The aerial picture he'd been sent of the estate didn't do it justice. Kliman oversaw New England from Maine but she was a reclusive, elderly angel; her agents did most of the legwork while she remained hidden away in a hundred acres of marsh and woodlands. The house was beautiful, a jewel nestled among wild-seeming gardens. There was a pond shaped like a crescent moon on one side of the manor, gleaming in the sunlight like silver. The autumn-touched woods went on forever, and a vast marshland glittered off to one side.
There was a helipad tucked away on the far side of the property, and a man waiting for him on it. Alyss landed as gracefully as he could while carrying his office in his frontpack, breathing hard. He’d tried traveling backpacks like those of most angels, but his wings were positioned in such a way that most laptop bags just weren’t comfortable.
"Morning wind caught you, did it," the man drawled, his Maine accent dulled not a bit by the many years he'd lived and served his angel.
"Height usually helps," Alyss admitted, wheezing. "Didn't this time."
The man laughed. He was of a height with the angel, which made him short; Alyss didn't quite reach the halfway mark to his sixth foot, though his oversized wings gave him the illusion of height. Kliman's Second was powerfully built, dark brown hair freely peppered with silver; he’d been made late in life. He was wearing comfortable, elegant clothing and two short knives on matching sheaths at his hips, the handles old and worn. His hand, when he offered it, was warm and heavily calloused. "Glad you could make it. I'm Gevaun, the lady's Second."
"Oh." Alyss faltered, as ever he did when he found a vampire that seemed content with their lot in life. Gevaun didn't just look well-adjusted but outright happy, and for a moment the angel didn't know what to do with that. Belatedly he scrabbled to take off a glove and meet the hand with his own. "Sorry. I'm still waiting for the day I won't feel the cold. A pleasure to meet you, Gevaun."
"I'll let the staff know to keep the place warm for you." Amazed, Alyss realized the vampire was teasing him. "Bring all the extra blankets out."
"What a sight I'll make, bundled up with only my eyes peeking out," he replied automatically, and felt an unexpected surge of gladness when Gevaun chuckled in response. The vampire gestured them on and they meandered towards the manor home by way of a winding stone path. "May I ask you why I'm here or should I wait until I'm speaking to Kliman?"
The vampire seemed to think on that far longer than the simple question merited. "You know she's old," he said at last.
"Very. But with the Cascade, it's said there's just no one to replace her if she goes into Sleep."
"Oh, there's plenty. There's none she trusts is the thing," Gevaun replied. "She's done a good thing here. Raphael's never had a reason to worry about New England because she knows the difference between a velvet glove and an iron fist. The others..." The vampire grimaced.
"That's not something an accountant can fix," Alyss pointed out primly.
Gevaun grinned at him. "No. But a good accountant can sniff out which of them's already cheating. She wants to clean house before she even considers looking for a replacement."
"Do you think they're cheating her?"
"Oh, absolutely. Well, barring Evie. But, you know, I'm her Second. I'm expected to be suspicious of everyone, even if I'm the only one."
"You've not met many accountants, have you."
Gevaun was still laughing at that when they reached the house. Alyss was surprised to be led to a bedroom, spacious and colorful, where a vast balcony had been seamlessly added to the wood and stone of the house's architecture; this was a room meant for an angel. He opened a door to an exceptionally modern bathroom, equally set up to accommodate someone with wings. Another door led to a walk-in closet empty except for boxes labeled "Books", "Kitchen", "Clothes" and the like. The last door led to an empty office where he dropped off his bag.
A maid, human, came to get him, peeking in not-so-discreet awe at him. That, at least, was behavior familiar to Alyss; he wasn't much of an angel to his own people, but to humans he was still one of those apex creatures. He was even passingly nice to look at, he often thought, though he knew most of it was his wings: they were amber-colored, some unknown quality of the feathers making them gleam in the right light, the rich hazel going to darkest honey at the tips.
Otherwise Alyss had always thought himself unremarkable. Short. Skinny. Rather than his mother's auburn hair he'd ended up with his father's fine brown curls, and rather than his striking green eyes he'd got his mother's brown gaze. At least he'd not inherited Maura's abundance of freckles. Or Elian's nose.
Compared to himself Kliman was exquisite, and he found himself tongue-tied the moment he saw her. The angel of New England was a porcelain figurine with flawless, pale skin and a long, rich golden braid at her back, between wings where every feather was tipped in various shades of violet and indigo, her eyes of matching hues. She wore clothing as comfortable as her Second's, dark gray slacks and a knit sweater fitted to her wings.
"Ah, the accountant." She beamed at Alyss and offered her hands, and when he would have instinctively bowed over them she instead pulled him into an unexpectedly strong hug. "None of that! Kissing knuckles, really now. This isn't the Dark Ages again, and thank goodness for that." She pulled away and stared at him. "Goodness, you're so young." She sounded a little crestfallen.
Alyss couldn't blame her. Time swam and lingered in the other angel's gaze, and for a moment he felt crushed under the burden she carried. "I assure you, ma'am, I got all my wild-oating out on my second century," he managed, breathless under what little he'd glimpsed of her age.
She burst out laughing in surprise. "Did you?"
"Terrible, I was. There's books still shelved in the wrong place at the Refuge's library. Truly I don't know a worse criminal."
Kliman laughed even more.
They sat and had hot cocoa and warm croissants, and Kliman told him much the same thing Gevaun had said. "I'm old, Alyss. I'm tired. This Cascade has left me hollow. So many dead, such terrible scars on the world. The healing will take decades, centuries. I’ve done my duty by my Archangel, but I’m tired. I don't have the strength for it anymore, I just don't." Gevaun, standing behind her, put a hand on her shoulder and she covered it with one of hers, smiling a little at her Second before facing Alyss again. "I want to Sleep. But after everything that was lost, after everything we fought for, I will not leave my people, my land, my charges, to someone less than worthy. I will see them cared for as I would care for them."
"I'm not the sort to ferret out plots or villains, ma'am," Alyss pointed out nervously. That simple gesture, that moment of unthinking, trusting intimacy between angel and vampire had got him so distracted he'd nearly forgotten what he was there for or what the older angel had just said.
"I know. But you are the sort to hunt down numbers to the last decimal. You can tell me if they're already taking advantage of their position. You can tell me how badly they're abusing the power I've given them. That's all I ask." Her smile turned so sharp that it made Alyss slick his wings back instinctively. "I'll take it from there."
3
Alyss began with Rhode Island. It was small, it was uncomplicated, and Gevaun already had a list of Andrew's pecadillos. "He's a vampire, he was never in the running, and he knew it from the beginning," Kliman's Second told Alyss. "We put him there because it was safe, in every way that matters. If you find anything beyond what we have I'll just go down there, put the fear of God back into him and see that he cuts it down to more reasonable levels." Alyss frowned and Gevaun grinned. "What were you expecting, Alyss?"
"That you'd kill him," the young angel admitted readily.
"Jesus! He's not bad, he's just lazy. Rhode Island's just about what he can handle."
"Yes, but he's cheating you. He's cheating Kliman. You already know this." At a loss for words, Alyss shrugged. "It's what anyone else would do. A few angels would make it linger but the end result's the same."
Gevaun stared at him a long time. "You've been to... a lot of angel homes, haven't you?"
"I've been to enough," the accountant admitted tightly as he set up his laptop. "Enough to know this place is the exception, not the rule."
"Raphael is not unfair. Ruthless, stern, but not unfair. He doesn't like his angels to be unfair either."
"That doesn't seem to stop them."
"Vampires are dangerous, Alyss. I'm one and I can tell you that. I don't trust half my breed half the time, and the other half I'd split fifty-fifty still. We're predators, and blood sings a helluva song. Bloodlust is a very real threat."
"Vampires are predators, yes. I know that. I've seen a great deal of them, I've met a great deal of them, in passing." Alyss put down his tablet a little more forcefully than he'd intended and turned to look at Gevaun. "But humans learned to gentle horses to saddle rather than break them. They learned not to uses whips or fire or hooks on animals for entertainment. You'd think we angels could do better than them with a sentient creature. Except we don't." He drew and let out a deep breath, and realized he was an inch away from blowing up at his employer's Second. He went so profoundly red he felt it like radiant heat, and flailed with his equipment. "Rhode Island first then, got it. On it. Right away."
Gevaun's brows, unseen, went up minutely. So, there was steel to the little goldfinch. Interesting. "Leave you to it," he drawled and walked away, closing the door to the little office soundlessly.
Alyss waited until he was sure he was alone to collapse on his keyboard with a pathetic sound. Ah, yes, just the sort of first impression that got him recommended to others. Well, nothing to it now, he'd just have to let his work impress instead.
If not because Kliman insisted that he take dinner with the household, Alyss would have lost all track of time buried in his work. Ever since he’d been little, when he’d first realized that what went on in his head did not have a spoken form, he’d realized he would have to be his own translator for the rest of his life. Numbers ruled his mind, his dreams, shaped and defined his world. When he was at work numbers danced in his mind's eye, falling into serried, organized rows and columns, order that he brought about. It was a very small sliver of the world, but one he controlled, one he knew, one that did exactly what he told it to do. It was hard to peel himself away and accept that he belonged to a very different reality, but for the angel of New England he did, every night, even as he spend his days working.
The first thing he noticed was that Gevaun was keeping a very good watch on Andrew.
The second was that Kliman's own accounts were not what they should be.
After confirming a fourth time, he threw himself out of the office and onto the balcony, gliding down to one of the paths likely to take him into the woods. He needed air, he needed space, he needed his thoughts to stop harassing him. He hadn't been brought in to audit his boss, for the love of prime numbers! Well, technically he had been, but!
The woods welcomed him with whispering breezes and unexpected torrents of leaves, and Alyss' mood changed almost immediately. He spread his wings and shook them, laughing a little when he realized he couldn't fully dislodge the leaves caught in his feathers. He dragged his shoes through piles of gold and brown, red and orange, gleeful as a child. He found a few wild rose-hips and left a tiny offering of blood on the rose thorns when he picked them and ate them, sweet and tart like little pieces of sunlight made solid.
The thwack of the ax splitting wood nearly made him jump out of his skin. He froze, eyes wide, sucking on his bloody fingertips. When the sound came again he flinched, but it was also reassuring proof that he wasn't hearing things. The third time he straightened up and began to earnestly follow the sound deeper into the woods.
The sound was coming from a clearing where a falling tree had dragged two more of its brethren down with it. It had happened long enough ago that all three trees were dry and dead, prime pickings for firewood. Kliman's manor ran on solar power, but it did have a number of fireplaces that were probably very cozy when they were going. The trees had been cleared of branches, which had been cut into kindling and neatly bundled up on the bed of a small wagon attached to a muddy ATV. The logs had been split into sections at some point, the chips from the chainsaw's work littering the ground beneath them.
There was a man splitting those sections with an ax, and Alyss immediately felt as if he were intruding into someone's privacy.
The man was nothing but muscle. He'd stripped off his jacket and shirt, which were hung on the side slates of the wagon. He was tall, swarthy, what Alyss' mother would have called 'sun-kissed' with an appreciative purr. The thought only served to make Alyss flush, flustered. His hair was short and wavy and very, very dark, and his shoulders were exactly the sort one would expect of someone splitting wood as if it were butter under a hot knife.
Alyss suddenly choked; what he'd thought to be dappled light falling on the man's skin wasn't. It was moving when he moved. It was scar tissue. The lumberjack's back and arms were covered in it, thin lines spread out with sickening regularity and creating a very precise grid all over him.
The man whipped around at the tiny sound, the ax held up like a weapon. Alyss scrabbled back and away, arms coming up to appease. Before he could say anything one of his wings slammed into the tree behind it, and the other ran right into a mass of brambles. "Wait, no, I don't mean -" The rest of whatever excuse he'd been about to offer went out of him in a startled cry of pain.
"Don't move!" The stranger barked, tossing aside the ax and putting his gloved hands out as if to calm a frightened animal. "Don't move, don't move your wings."
Alyss was finding some small measure of reassurance in the ax not being brandished at him, but it was about the only part of the current situation that wasn't worth some panic. "Oh, it hurts!"
"You're caught in a greenbrier. Don't move." The man repeated, his tone low and slow. He had an accent Alyss couldn't place. His face was carved stone, his features stark, lean and austere; there were very dark shadows under his bright green eyes, and he looked starved but calm. He put his hands up. "I'll get you loose but I need my knife."
The silence grew between them. "Alright?" Alyss said uncertainly, not sure why he'd have to be informed of such an obvious thing.
The stranger gave him an unreadable look. He stepped back to the wagon, chucking off one of his heavy gloves, and grabbed a plain leather sheath from one of the jacket's pockets. Slowly, carefully, he approached Alyss and then moved around him, to the tangled-up wing. "You can fold the other one," he said.
His voice was low, the accent giving it a pleasant sort of music that under better circumstances Alyss would have appreciated as much as the man’s looks. "I'm afraid they get on the buddy system when I'm stressed," he admitted. From up close the scars were even more obvious in their methodical, almost mechanical pattern. The man was sweat-sheened, he smelled of his work, of wood and forest... and of the faint, alluring scent of a particular predator.
A vampire.
"Fair."
Alyss saw him gingerly grab something, felt the tug of it against his feathers, and stiffened in anticipation of pain. It didn't come. "What is it? What did you call it?"
"Greenbrier. Tangly sort of vine." The pressure eased in part of Alyss' wing, and the vampire showed him the culprit, a thin green vine covered in spines nothing really ought to need for anything but a nefarious purpose.
"I don't think I needed to see that," Alyss admitted breathlessly, his whole body tightening up again. "But it's good to know what to avoid in the future, I guess."
"If you're in the habit of not staying to the path, that might be wise," the vampire said mildly as he carefully, so carefully, cut the greenbrier off in bits and pieces. Of all the things he'd expected, to find an angel in the middle of the woods hadn't been part of the schedule. He'd planned to spend the day alone, working on the firewood. The silence and the solitude were balm he sorely needed. Instead he was cutting greenbriers off of one of the most delicate-looking angels he'd ever seen, and that included Kliman. The thorns of the greenbrier had ruffled some of the amber-colored feathers, had twisted a few, and the sight wounded him. It had to hurt, but the angel was doing as he'd been told, holding perfectly still, even if by angelic standards the vampire was practically groping him. "You're the accountant."
"Yes. I'm Alyss."
"Hn." The vampire threw aside a massive loop of the spiny vine. "Jean."
"John?"
"Jean," he corrected, grunting when the greenbrier, unsurprisingly, punched right through his glove. He got a better grip and cut another section off the wing.
"Oh, Jean." The angel huffed shakily. "Well, I'm glad to meet you."
"Are you," Jean paused to stare dubiously at him.
"Yes. Very glad actually. Otherwise I'd be stuck here with no one to help me."
"If I wasn't here you wouldn't have had a reason to come looking. Why'd you come, anyway?"
"I heard the ax, I couldn't tell what was going on."
"You've never heard someone chopping wood?"
"Not for a century or so."
"Fair," the vampire admitted after a moment. "Alright, move. Slow. I can't tell if I got it all from this angle."
"So... get behind me?" Alyss suggested blankly.
Jean had to pause and digest that suggestion, so innocently, so trustingly put out there for him. "Would, but there's a tree in the way. It's gonna win whatever fight I start." Alyss made a nervous sound and the vampire leaned back. "Hey. Look at me." When those sweet brown eyes met his gaze he spoke as calmly as he could. "You're alright. Just move slow. If something tightens up, stop."
Alyss closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and let it out very, very slowly. He tried to fold his wings -
"Stop." Next to him, Jean dropped to his knees and slipped beneath the wings. Some more greenbrier began to fly off in pieces.
"Thank you for being careful,” Alyss murmured, even though a flush of embarrassment was slowly but surely creeping over his face. “I am not a libertine, I'd like to point out," the accountant said primly, wrapping his arms around himself.
The comment was so outlandish, so out of nowhere, and such a complete betrayal of the angel's current state of mind as well as his efforts to ease it, that Jean barked out a laugh before he realized what he'd done. He had to stop and pull away, leaning back on his knees to look up at that fine-boned face. He could feel the ghost of a grin trying to break free. "Too much action for you?" Jean watched crimson spread over the fair skin, and the angel could only offer a high-pitched, wordless sound in response, covering his face with one hand. "I won't tell, I promise."
"I'm not a virgin, either!" Alyss declared staunchly from behind his hand. Somehow it seemed very important that he declare that, and yet as soon as the words were out he couldn't believe he'd said them.
"Duly noted," was all the vampire said in response. "Alright, try now. Slow." When Alyss managed to pull both wings tight to his back, Jean further instructed, "Lift your wings up. Alright, now step forward, three steps. Ought to put you clear of the greenbriers." When the angel obeyed and was finally both safe and free, Jean rolled smoothly to his feet and moved to the wagon to clean his knife.
"Oh, it itches, it itches, it all itches. Thank you, Jean, but it itches. Please, excuse me."
"Excuse wh-" Before he could finish, Alyss had sprung up. The vampire jerked away and crouched down instinctively; such a take-off was usually a maneuver only seasoned angelic warriors learned or mastered. But Alyss, Jean realized, had an unexpected advantage: his wings were big for his size, larger than those of most angels the vampire had ever seen. He leapt and cupped them and they caught the breeze, effectively parachuting him up and away. Just like that, the accountant was gone. "Anytime," Jean told the empty clearing, and went back to chopping wood.
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