Bloody Truths Revealed
Contains references to.
"My star!" Ebio exclaimed, extending her arms as she moved forward across the main hall of the London home included in her letter. Gnaea let herself be folded into her sire's arms for the time in over two hundred years, closing her eyes as she basked in a feeling like coming home. Despite their disagreements, she still very much loved the woman who had plucked her from slavery.
"Hello, Mother," she murmured into her sire's ear as she held her back just as tightly.
They stayed coiled in each other's arms for quite some time until Ebio pulled away, raising her hands to cup Gnaea's face. "I have missed you so," she said softly, obvious love and affection in her dark eyes.
"And I you, Mother," Gnaea answered honestly.
Ebio then lowered her hands and glanced past her shoulder towards where Gnaea knew Pietro stood with their bags, her sire's eyes canting back towards her almost immediately. "Oh, my star," she purred with a smile. "He is impressive."
"Mother!" she exclaimed, giving the older woman a light swat to the arm. Then Gnaea turned back towards him and held out her hand, which he took as he came to stand beside her. "Mother, this is Pietro da Norsa. My love, this is Ebio, my sire."
Pietro smiled broadly and reached out to take up Ebio's hand, lifting it to his face to press a brief kiss against her knuckles. "My beloved has told me much about you, Ebio, but never that you were so lovely," he said with a rakish smile.
Gnaea smiled with delight as her sire's cheeks flushed ever so slightly, the darkening of the skin probably imperceptible to her lover but not to her. It was the same sort of rakish daring that had drawn her to her love in the first place, her affection cemented into place when he dared to kiss her in the vineyard.
Smiling, Ebio inclined her head towards him as she said, "I perhaps see what my daughter has seen in you, Pietro." As he released her hand, she touched his arm and added, "And I hope you do not fear for your safety in this home with so many of us."
"Never, dear Ebio," he replied with a broad smile.
"Good." Her mother then turned towards her and Gnaea caught a hint of concern on Ebio's face. "Your brothers should be returning anytime now."
Looking at Pietro, she explained, "Malloy, my eldest son, took our youngest out for a hunt with his child, Xiang."
Gnaea did not bother to hide her concern that went along with the statement. If her younger bloodbrother was twenty decades into his life as a vampire, he should have already been hunting on his own. That he was accompanied by not one but two older vampires...that was deeply concerning. Perhaps he was what she had briefly allowed herself to fear him to be.
She would not broach the subject now, however. Instead Gnaea smiled and asked, "Since they are still away, may we see our room, Mother?"
"Of course. Come with your things, we have a spare bedroom upstairs that I have prepared for you."
"You prepared it yourself?" Pietro asked, clear curiosity in his tone as he turned to pick up two of the small trunks that they had packed their belongings in. As he handed them off to her, Gnaea kissed him on the cheek and then smiled as he turned to pick up the other two.
Ebio laughed lightly and replied, "I am uncertain as to how much my daughter has shared with you of my mortal life, child, but I have never been afraid of hard labor. My childhood was poor and what little adult life I had before my sire found me was poorer." Holding out the hand he had kissed towards her, she spread her palm wide, so he could see the clear evidence of ancient scars and calluses that were forever enshrined upon her skin. As Pietro's eyes widened, she smiled sadly, saying, "We also, unfortunately, had to release what hired help we had some time ago. At least from the main house."
Gnaea had the terrible feeling that such a thing had been forced to happen because her younger brother had been killing the servants.
"I-I see," her lover murmured, looking nervously towards her. Gnaea started to reach out to him but stopped when her sire touched his arm.
"You are shielded by my daughter's love for you," Ebio stated quietly. "By her scent on every inch of your skin. I promised you safety here and I meant it, even if I must give you a mark of my own blood to secure it."
Pietro looked down at her, then his eyes flicked to Gnaea before they returned to Ebio. After a moment he nodded and said, "If it is required, I certainly wouldn't be opposed to having more safety."
"Good. Come then, you are now are guests in the hospitality of our home."
As they moved to follow Ebio up a nearby set of stairs, Gnaea suddenly heard two masculine voices outside boisterously laughing. By the time they reached the second floor landing, the door of the home burst open and in stumbled two bodies entangled with each other, their arms looped around each others shoulders. Peering over the railing, she recognized her brother Itztli - or Malloy, as he was now apparently calling himself. His muscular arm was wrapped around the shoulders of the taller man next to him, undoubtedly her new brother.
He was a long, wiry thing despite his broad shoulders. As his face tipped up to look at them, a grin curling up the edges of his mouth, Gnaea could still see the youth in his features. Of course, both of them were covered almost head-to-toe in blood. Behind them, her older brother's child Xiang entered with an air of exasperation on her youthful features, shutting the doors with an almost finial click.
As the two men beneath them started to scuffle like a pair of schoolboys, Malloy getting the younger vampire into a headlock, Ebio sighed. Her relaxed air that she had had since their arrival changed as with the putting on of a cloak and suddenly she stood taller, her narrow shoulders squared. Gnaea leaned her shoulder into Pietro's for comfort as her sire, the woman she had once loved, who had been gentle and kind and had saved her took on the mask that most saw her as. The cold framework of the beloved daughter of the elder Issuru, feared by hunters and vampires alike. This was the woman that she had abandoned years ago, that she could no longer love.
She and Apollus, her uncle in that he and Ebio were both Issuru's children, had both walked away that day, unable to see the woman who had saved their lives.
"Children," Ebio's voice rang out like a thunderclap, freezing the pair below. Gnaea stepped forward to peer over the edge of the landing to see the pair looking up at their sire, mischievous grins fading into looks of guilt all too quickly. Malloy had blood coating his chin, ruining the fine front of his clothing as it appeared he had not bothered with cleanly eating whoever's blood that was. Her new brother - with his feral green eyes - also had blood on his chin and front but it was also spattered across his face in wide swathes.
"Is this the aftermath of a typical hunt?" Gnaea asked quietly, pitching her voice low enough for only her sire to hear.
"More often than not," was Ebio's short reply. Then she looked down her nose at the pair, bracing her hands on the railing, and commented, "I see you both fed well."
Malloy, still holding their squirming brother in a headlock, smiled and called up, "We were quite careful, Mother, don't worry! I made sure that we left no signs to lead back to us."
"And the blood, dear ones?"
"Sisters!" her younger brother cheerfully replied. He then squirmed for a moment before apparently deciding that enough was enough and simply turned his head to bite down hard on Malloy's hand with a growl. That finally got the elder of the pair to release the headlock he was in with a snarl of pain and the younger quickly released the hand. He grinned up at them as he straightened up and added, "We showed them quite a good time in the end, Mother! They died very happy."
Gnaea stiffened at that smile, her eyes darting towards Ebio. Her sire's face was frozen into an expression of disappointment but Gnaea had known her for sixteen hundred years. She had spent longer at Ebio's side than she had currently been away and had been her almost constant companion and lover during that time, only sharing her sire with Apollus when the mood struck the two of them to be together. As such, she knew that Ebio knew what she had seen in that smile.
Her younger brother - the bloodsoaked young man below with feral eyes - was walking a dangerous line along the edge of being a Rogue. And if he ever fully became one, the blame would fall onto Ebio. Especially if he lived beyond a century, because by then she should have known what he was, should have seen the beast in her midst. Should have killed him to protect herself and their kind.
But Gnaea also knew that their mother, above all else, was sentimental despite her hard exterior.
"Your sister has arrived, my sons," Ebio called down, reaching out to touch Gnaea's shoulder. "After you have cleaned yourselves up, I shall introduce you to her and her lover who will also be staying with us. As well as our ground rules while they are here."
"Ground rules?" Malloy repeated in a curious tone. His eyes then locked with Gnaea's and, though they had never had the chance to grow close as she had largely stayed away from her family, she saw that he wasn't as irreverent about their younger brother as he might have appeared. There was keen, sharp awareness in his dark eyes and he tilted his head just slightly towards the younger vampire at his side while cradling his still bleeding hand. Are you here because of him? he asked silently and she inclined her chin slightly in confirmation.
She would no doubt need to speak to him and Xiang to get a grasp of what she was walking into.
"Yes," Ebio confirmed, "but we will speak of those later. Clean yourselves up. Oh, and thank you for looking after them, granddaughter."
Xiang, standing silently behind her sire, just inclined her head and murmured, "Of course, Grandmother." Gnaea locked eyes with her as well and saw truths in her bloodbrother's child's eyes. That she, who was a bloodthirsty mirror to her sire, was looking at her with obvious concern was all too telling.
Malloy nodded then and wrapped an arm around their younger brother's waist, pulling him away into another part of the house through the doors underneath the landing of the stairs. "Come, little brother," he heard him saying as they went, "we've already made a horrible first impression on our dear sister. Let's get cleaned up before the blood dries."
"But it's more fun to pull everything off when the blood dries," she vaguely caught her younger brother reply and closed her eyes. As soon as they were out of hearing range, Gnaea turned to look sternly at her sire.
"He is an obvious risk," she hissed, still pitching her voice low but not so low that her very mortal lover could not hear her. "This is more than teaching him manners, Mother."
To her surprise, the cold cloak that Ebio had wrapped around herself fell...and Gnaea was left with a shadow of the woman that had turned her. That had saved her. As her sire's shoulders fell, she said, "I asked for your aid for more than one reason, my start. Itztli shares a similar bloodlust to him that has kept him in check these years but that has been shown to not be enough. He needs guidance...and I need a second opinion from one of our kind that is more than a few centuries old."
Gnaea just stared at her for a long time until Pietro broke the silence by quietly saying, "You are asking if he is too dangerous to live." It was stated flatly, as fact and not a question, and she felt her heart swell with affection for her lover. For not being familiar with vampires beyond herself, he was an astute man at times. When Ebio nodded, her dark eyes lowered to the ground, Gnaea dropped the trunks in her hands and reached out to take her mother's hands.
"We must determine if he is risk enough," she said quickly. "Now. While we are here. I already was of the mind that this was what you had brought me here to ask of me but..." Gnaea trailed off because the reality was so much worse than the thought. Losing one of their own was always a tragedy, especially when they lost themselves to the hunger for blood that sang in all of their veins. "But...the decision must be made soon for what to do with him, Mother. If he lives for too long and becomes what we fear, and the Elders find out that you protected him, shielded him...there will be nothing to protect you."
Ebio nodded slowly and squeezed her hands, saying softly, "You know I would die to protect all of you."
"I know," Gnaea murmured. Then she pulled the other woman into her arms and Ebio came easily, arms wrapping around each other. It was the closest that they had been in too many long years but nothing was foreign in the embrace. It was as if the span of time between her leaving had never happened at all.
As she closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of home that came with her second mother, Gnaea whispered in her ear, "Do not sacrifice yourself to protect that which cannot be protected, Mother. I cannot lose a parent for a third time."
Ebio's hands curled into the fabric at the back of her dress and Gnaea's heart shattered at her quiet reply.
"He is my son, my star. I must do everything in my power to save him."
"Then we will save him by any means necessary," Gnaea replied. Then she looked over her sire's head at Pietro, who was watching her with a calm gaze, and added, "Sometimes death is safety, we know this. And if I must kill him in order to protect him and you, I will make that choice."
Timeframe: 1684
Location: London, England
Event: Gnaea Abella and her lover, Pietro da Norsa, arrive in England and are greeted by her sire, Ebio. Then her brothers, Darragh and Malloy, as well as Xiang return to the house and Gnaea sees what exactly it is that her mother fears in her youngest child, confirming all of the suspicions that she had when the letter arrived at her home.
Consquences: Gnaea Abella begins to craft a plan that will either save her younger brother or force her to kill him in order to save their mother.
The daughter of a Roman senator, she and her mother were forced to sell themselves into slavery after her father was killed and his reputation ruined. That was where Ebio found her, buying her and eventually turning her into her first child. Though the pair were lovers for years, they eventually grew apart due to Ebio's bloodthirsty nature. Gnaea continued to aid her sire, however, both helping to temper her younger bloodbrother and taking him in after he regained his memories.
A young man who caught the eye of Gnaea Abella when he was twenty-two, he first worked for her as a hired hand before he ever became her lover. Two years of work slowly made him aware of her rapt attention on him and he decided to take a chance, daring to kiss her one day when she was looking in on his work in her small vineyard. Rewarded with her love, Pietro stayed with her until the end of his mortal life, including travelling with her to England at the behest of Ebio. Though he loved Gnaea fiercely, he had no desire to live beyond his time and died happily as an old man in her arms.
The favorite of the Elder Issuru's children, it is known that she was born in Egypt and that she and her sister, Abana, were turned at the same time. In her life, she has garnered a brutal reputation that makes hunters usually whisper her name and has sired three children, loving them as if they were her own by birth.
The third child of the vampire Ebio, he lost his memory of who he had been when he was turned in the 1660s and became little more than a killer driven by intense bloodlust. By the 1780s, he regained his memory and has since struggled to control the aftermath of his years of bloodthirsty killing and figure out a place to belong. Taking a myriad number of jobs since then, he's spent his long life trying to make up for who he was for more than a century, including taking up the position as a consultant to the FBI that led him to moving to the town of Bigby Fork.
Once a proud warrior amongst his people, Itztli was dying in the streets of Tenochtitlan when Ebio came upon him. There he became her second child and intensely loyal to her when she helped him slaughter the Spaniards that had ruined his people. For centuries, he and his child Yen Xiang Jun remained at his sire's side until she told them to go live their lives.
The only child of Malloy, she at first feared him as the strange man stalking her in the 1570s. After confronting him, fear became desire as he wooed her, eventually leading to her giving herself to him in order to save her brothers' lives after they tried to attack him. The only time after that that she has left her lover's side was to briefly return to Ireland, where she groomed and eventually turned Daman Ó Conaill, hoping to gain another version of his brother. When he did not, she returned to her sire's side as she knew that she would ruin the sweet man that he was.
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