Wild for to hold 1/3 Disclaimer The usual disclaimers apply. The characters and ideas of Forever Knight are not mine. They belong to Messrs Parriott and Cohen and Sony/Tristar. No infringement of their rights is intended. This story is mine and I assert copyright hereto. Archive permission is given to Mel for the fkfanfic site and to Cousin Mary if she wants it. Anyone else who wants it is welcome, but please ask first, out of courtesy. Constructive feedback is welcome at blot30@hotmail.com but flames will be ignored. I would rate this one as PG-13 as there is some mild innuendo. This is the next story in my series which began with "Lucifer in Starlight." This one follows "The Listeners." It might make more sense if you read the others first. They are archived at Cousin Mary's Cerk Perk website. The series contains spoilers for "Ashes to Ashes." There isn't a whole lot of action, it's more people thinking. Wild for to hold 1/3 By Spike Shovelton Tracy looked up from her preparation for class. The phone was ringing and she picked it up. "If you're my anonymous silent caller then go away." She snapped. She was seriously annoyed about these calls. "I am not anonymous." The voice was amused. It was female and faintly foreign. "My name is Janette. Miklos intimated that you are considering a change of scene." Tracy paused, Janette from the Raven? This was more and more interesting. Miklos had said that he would contact someone and that she would hear. She had almost given up on hearing from anyone. "Sorry about that, I think someone is after me." "Pas de problem." Janette smiled. "I am quite intrigued. I understand that mon pere is interested in your joining us." "I think so." Tracy said quickly. "I just don't think I can trust him so much. I know he'd have power over me. I have a control freak father, I don't want another." Janette considered the issue. "I think it would be better if we get to know one another then if you are of the same opinion in a few months we can make an arrangement." "Okay." Tracy said quickly. "Do you have email?" "Of course." Janette smiled quickly. "Tell me about this anonymous caller." Tracy complied and the French vampire frowned. She did not like the sound of this at all. She would have a word with Miklos and get the community to solve the problem. Not something she normally did for mortals but anyone who could intrigue Lacroix so much deserved a vote of thanks from the community. Lacroix studied the dead mortal on the floor. The mortal shouldn't have done that. Tracy was under his protection. It had been very easy for him to find this man, one who had been arrested by Sonny Vetter and who had sworn vengeance on him. Lacroix had found him with no difficulties, using his influence on Thomas Constantine to locate the individual involved. The police were pathetic. It had taken him so little time to find this stalker. The stalker had been intending to frighten her severely and then kill her. Lacroix wiped his mouth and arranged the crime scene to resemble an accidental death. Not very much style in that, but then being stylish would only draw attention to him. It was a pity, there were so many more amusing ways of dealing with someone of that kind, but this was not the time or place for anything too obvious. Tracy would owe him now. That thought did please him. It would serve her right for not having told him about her problem. Still he did like her spirit and intellect. He would enjoy spending a few centuries travelling with her, arguing about crime and punishment and showing her eternity. She had a nicely shaped body too. He could think of several other things he would enjoy doing with her. Three weeks later Tracy sighed as she walked up the path towards the front door. She had got to know Janette through email and telephone communication. Now they had decided to meet up for a face to face conversation. Tracy had gone to Montreal to see the vampire. She just hoped it would be okay. She did not know many female vampires so she was not certain whether they would get along face to face. They seemed to get on well in emails. This could be quite interesting. She knocked at the door and waited. There was a long pause before the door opened. She stepped through and looked at the figure in the hall. Tracy sighed, the other woman was stunningly poised with a sculptured beauty that made Tracy feel gawky and plain. "Janette?" She asked, extending one hand. "Oui." Janette studied the other woman. "How was your journey?" "Not bad. I brought you some flowers." Tracy handed the other woman a bouquet of velvety lilies. Janette smiled and motioned for Tracy to enter. "Do you want something to drink?" Janette asked quickly. "I believe you like coffee." "Yeah." Tracy tried to remember if she'd mentioned that. "Does everyone in the community know all about me?" "Non." Janette smiled. "But you do have a certain notoriety. It is not every woman can captivate an elder." She looked at Tracy, such a delicate little thing to have such power. "I am most impressed." She walked into the kitchen and Tracy heard the kettle go on to boil. Janette returned, cradling a glass of wine. She settled down and began to sip the red liquid. "So what do you want to know?" "How do you manage not to get lipstick on the glass?" Tracy asked suddenly, her gaze fixed on the glass before looking at the red lips of the other woman. Not one iota of the red lipstick stained the goblet. Tracy had never managed that. Every time the mortal put lipstick on it wound up all over the glass or plate or man in question. "Years of practice." Janette said and Tracy sighed enviously. Janette chuckled softly, a warming sound. "How is Nicolas?" "Fine. He's happy for once." Tracy smirked. "Walks around with the most annoyingly smug expression on his face, actually does the paperwork and I heard him singing in the car." "What was he singing?" Janette asked. "Cream." Tracy grinned. "It was one of the funniest things. Nick was so unaware anyone was able to hear him he was singing "I feel free" loudly. I'll bet he was fun in the seventies." "Oui." Janette smiled. "Did you have fun?" Tracy asked and Janette chuckled. "I did go to some interesting parties. I have a photograph of Lacroix and I at one of the infamous rock and roll parties." Janette sighed softly. "Lacroix was wearing an imperial purple toga and nothing else. Mais, he could look good in anything." "Mmm." Tracy said appreciatively, remembering the old vampire's casual grace. "I'd like to see him in colours. He always wears black." "It suits him." Janette said and smiled. "What were you doing at the party?" Tracy was curious now. "Looking for Nicolas as usual. We heard that he might have been at the party so we decided to attend." Janette smiled and walked to a cupboard. She pulled out a photo album and returned. She opened it gently and smiled. "Look." Tracy whistled softly. Lacroix looked gorgeous in a toga. The indigo fabric clung to his pale, muscular form. He looked regal, a true emperor, old, powerful and dangerous. She felt a fluttering of desire run through her. Janette stood beside him, dressed in a black silk maxi-dress that clung to every curve and was more seductive than anything revealing could have been. Then there was another picture, Janette standing with a man in a red shirt. Tracy flicked through the photo album, seeing pictures of Janette flirting with a man who looked a lot like Mick Jagger, Lacroix with a Sex Pistol and Lacroix again eyeing a woman with long dyed red hair. The photograph had caught him studying her neck intently. "He looks gorgeous." Tracy said, her eyes returning to the togate form. "He looks like he stepped out of a fresco." The skin was pale and seemed to glow in the faded photograph. "So Roman. He really hasn't changed." "I am glad you see that." Tracy did not quite understand that comment. Janette sighed and tried to explain. "Many women find Lacroix attractive, that is normal. A great many wish to change him, to make of him something else." Her voice became even quieter. "Lacroix is many things but he can only be what it is in him to be." "No kidding." Tracy said and Janette returned her smile. "I know that. I mean the first time I saw him he tried to whammy me, after that at the evening class I listened to a detailed description of his crucifixion of an enemy spy." A shiver slid through her form. "I checked my old school notebooks after that. Our Religious Studies teacher told us about crucifixion in nauseating detail. It could take up to three days for death to come, slow agonising death by suffocation, nails through the wrists and ankles. In statues and some books it's the hands but that's a mistranslation. The hands would tear away so nails always went through the wrists and ankles." Tracy shivered. "Gave me nightmares at the time and sometimes when I see him I can only think of the spy and the crosses. I told him I would try to get over it but sometimes I wonder." "I know." Janette sighed. "Lacroix was raised in a different society. His reaction to a situation, to a moral point may be different from mine, and certainly will be different from yours." She touched Tracy gently on the arm. "It was a little easier for me. My time was closer to his. As a child my father took me to see an execution. The man was convicted a traitor and broken on the wheel. Pour encourager les autres as Voltaire would say." She shrugged elegantly. "It was not unusual." "I read about that." Tracy sighed. "What can I do? I mean accepting that he's a vampire, that I can live with. Accepting what he was, is hard. It's odd but it is easier to accept Nick. Lacroix doesn't try to apologise or excuse what he did. That is the frightening thing." "Understandable." Janette sighed. "He is not an easy man to love. He has changed over 2000 years, who could not? He is not General Lucius any more, but neither is he the same as a man of this era and you cannot make him so." "No." Tracy saw Lacroix in her mind, helping her, letting Nick go in a game of chance, paying for his cleaner's son to fulfil his potential. Then came the sharp mental image of herself as Xena holding power of life and death over her Roman captive, the even sharper image of the Roman soldier in the shadow of the cross, a Syrian peasant gasping for breath and dying by inches above him. For a long moment all she could do was swim in the ocean of images. Tracy broke the silence with a question. "Do you trust him?" Tracy asked. "Lacroix? Bien sur." Janette said and paused for a moment. "My mortal life was bad. I was nothing. Lacroix gave me life and asked nothing in return, nothing more than I could give. I didn't believe it that he would not want my body." Her shrug was not quite as casual as it seemed. "Non, I could not believe that he would not demand it." "Did he?" Tracy asked and Janette shook her head. "No, but that did not stop me thinking he would." Janette said eventually. "I was born in an age where human life had very little value, women were worthless, property. A man would no more befriend a woman than he would a slave, or a goat or a dining table." Her voice was soft. "I did not esteem human life, including my own, as being of much worth. It is why I was more ready to hunt than Nicolas. I did not kill children or whores but apart from that I accepted the cost." She looked at the other woman. "I was glad when bottled wine became a safe alternative." The two women sat in silence a while longer as Tracy sought for something to say. "Do you still hunt?" "Parfois." Janette murmured. "Sometimes I see those who remind me of my pimp, my abusers and it makes me feel powerful to deal with them, to know that they will hurt no more women." Her eyes gleamed. "We are rather inclined to use our own justice." "I know." Tracy shivered as she remembered the body they had discovered, the man who had tried to burn her flat down. She had known that Lacroix had done it and the mixture of disgust and delight that she had felt shocked her. She had not mentioned it and neither had Lacroix but she had known without a word who had done it, even though it had been staged well to pass for an accident. "This guy tried to kill me, burnt my flat and when my colleagues went to question him they found him dead, very dead." "Lacroix?" Janette asked Tracy nodded. "I think so, I didn't ask him because I don't know that I really want to know. Actually I know the answer." "It bothers you?" The French voice was soft, almost sultry. "What worries me is that a part of me was glad. A part of me felt pleased that he wouldn't come after me again. I shouldn't feel like that." Tracy sighed. "Nick thinks I'm this little blonde innocent who needs protecting. Sometimes I'm more afraid of my own darkness than anything else." "We all have darker sides, it is simply necessary to accept them." Janette responded. "Nicolas has problems with his. He cannot accept that someone flawed should be happy." Janette sighed and studied the blonde. "He was raised in a belief that wants to suffer, that believes that joy and pleasure are things that he does not deserve." Janette smiled suddenly. "A sense of guilt is a difficult thing to overcome, non?" "Yeah." The women fell silent again. It was a comfortable silence, companionable. Tracy felt that she could get used to having this one for a sire. Accepting and becoming comfortable with her relationship with Lacroix was a harder thing. She had the feeling that she ought not to want a relationship. Yet she did. For all that the old vampire alarmed and sometimes scared her, he was also undeniably attractive, funny and intelligent. Tracy enjoyed their conversations, the appreciation in his glance and the way he made her feel special. End Part One Wild for to hold 2/3 By Spike Shovelton See Part One for disclaimer "I still say $50 that it's next month." Alma said to Miklos as they sat at the bar. "She can't hold him off much longer." "He is a most patient man." Aristotle argued, smiling at his sister. Miklos looked at them. Nobody would have taken the seductive Alma and the pedantic Aristotle for siblings but they were close. Aristotle was the oldest childe of an ancient, sired twelve centuries ago and Alma was one of the youngest, barely a score of years old. As their sire was out of town, Aristotle protected his baby sister. They had very little in common but seemed to get on surprisingly well. "He will be well able to wait for the appropriate moment. I have never known the General to strike before the time is right." "You haven't seen the look on his face of late, sheer sexual frustration." Alma smiled. "Speaking of betting pools, how's the one on when Nick will find out?" "Going well." Miklos wondered how Tracy was getting on with Janette. Perhaps he should have introduced her to Alma, but Alma was not good at bringing people across. He looked up to see the crowds by the door to the Raven parting suddenly. Normally it took Lacroix to have that effect and he knew for a fact that Lacroix was in a meeting most of the night. He looked up and saw a tall man with white hair and pale skin step forward. The man was dressed in a grey suit and an expensive shirt. He walked towards the bar and smiled. "What can I get?" Miklos asked and the man turned to him. Miklos looked at him, seeing pale pink eyes set into a bleached white face, paler even than Lacroix. His hair was long, falling to mid back and clipped at the nape of the neck with an embossed clasp. On many other people it would have looked effeminate but on him it seemed fitting. The long white mane was not the silvered colour of hair turned grey through age, but pure white, seeming never to have known another colour. "Something non alcoholic." The man said quickly, his voice having a faintly lilting accent. "Sanguinello?" Miklos suggested. That was blood orange juice, grapefruit juice and lime, mixed with blood. The albino vampire nodded. His face was striking and he exuded the same sense of age and leashed power as Lacroix. "You're new in town." "Passing through merely, isn't it, Miklos." The man responded and smiled. "I understand you have a betting pool on, with regard to Lacroix and a certain mortal police officer. The pool will be closed by the end of this week. Today is Monday and by Friday she will be changed." "Is that right?" Alma asked and the other smiled at her. Miklos saw the sexy vampire shiver for a moment under the intensity and cloaked cruelty in that smile. Aristotle growled softly in his throat and moved to flank his sister.Then the smile faded and the stranger looked almost benevolent, kindly. "Sorry." She murmured and tried to back away. "Do not worry." The other smiled and this time it was a gentler smile, pale lips curving upwards. "Say hello to Lacroix from me." "What name shall I give him?" Miklos asked. "You don't think the description suffices?" The stranger said with a note of irony. "Tell him Iestyn Ap Daffyd called in." He turned and left, the crowd parting for his departure. "So you think we can get along?" Tracy asked the older vampire and Janette nodded. "I think you will make an interesting fledgling." Janette said finally. "Lacroix will not be happy but he would not be the right sire for you." "Have you made many children?" Tracy asked and Janette shrugged. "I want someone who can do it right." "I once told Nicolas that I had not made any children as I was too greedy. That was a lie. I am selective. I have only made a few children, all women. It is not something I undertake lightly. I have brought across five women in 1000 years of life, all of whom are still alive." Janette looked at her. "It will also do Lacroix good not to get everything he wants." Janette sobered. "Although I do have to warn you." "Okay." Tracy said calmly. "I adore mon pere. If you cause him any unhappiness I will cut out your heart." Janette's eyes were roseate chips before the red faded. "I understand." Tracy sighed. "I don't want to hurt him. I just don't know what kind of relationship we can make. I mean I think we need to talk a lot, and there is a trust issue." "But." Janette said, amused by this. "But I know that I want a relationship. I don't think I should, but I do find him attractive." Tracy sighed heavily. "I guess once I have eternity we'll have time to work the issues out." "Bien." Janette smiled. "At least you admit to your confusion." Janette nodded finally and stood up. "You do not have too many ridiculous ideas, and you accept the situation enough, yes I think you will do quite well." "Are you sure you wouldn't mind if anything happened? I mean you were involved with him, right?" Tracy asked. "Non cherie." Janette laughed softly. "Seven centuries ago I might have objected but not now." She saw Tracy look confused. "In our lifetimes passion fades. Two or three centuries and the romance goes, the first desire burns out. If one is fortunate then the love will remain. I will love Lacroix all my existence but he is no longer my beloved." Janette responded. "You are welcome to enjoy him as much as you wish." Her face became impish. "In fact I think you will enjoy him very much." Tracy giggled softly and the mood lightened. "He's that good?" Tracy asked and Janette nodded. "Come on, details and some gossip on Nick too." Janette studied the other before giving in to the impulse. "Lacroix is very appealing, seductive. He has ways of making it impossible to resist, he can cause ecstasy with a single touch, or even the sound of his voice. No other can compare to two thousand years of experience." Janette's eyes had flecked with gold and Tracy caught a glimpse of one white fang. "Not even Nick?" Tracy asked, more than a little intrigued. "Non. Nicolas was very inexperienced, unskilled and passionate. With him I was the teacher. I commanded and that was good." Janette licked her lips, a very animalistic gesture. "When I had done, there was nothing Nicolas did not know. He was my slave and I had the control." Her voice became softer. "I needed to control, to have the advantage." "Yes, that's the problem with a male sire. I don't want to give him the advantage." Tracy sighed. "What should I tell Lacroix?" "It does not matter. He will not like it, whatever you tell him will displease him. In fact he will be very angry." Janette looked at the other woman. Lacroix was none too happy at that moment. "You are certain?" He said to Miklos and the bartender nodded. "Who is he?" Miklos had never seen anyone remotely resembling the pale vampire. "Iestyn Ap Daffyd is a senior enforcer. He has quite the reputation. He was a warrior in the dark ages. He is younger than I am, but incredibly strong." Lacroix smiled sadly. "It would seem that the community has spoken. Now I must locate Ms Vetter. I imagine she will be at work." Miklos fidgeted and tried not to draw attention to himself. Lacroix studied the other vampire. Miklos was customarily graceful, even by vampire standards. For him to fidget indicated something was amiss. There was a long pause as Lacroix fixed the much younger vampire with his gaze. "Miklos." Lacroix said, in a soft, dangerous voice. "Is there something you are hiding from me?" "Yes Lacroix." Miklos looked away, glad that vampires couldn't wet themselves. Lacroix always managed to make him feel three years old. "That would be?" Lacroix waited, wondering what was going on. "Tracy asked me about talking to a female vampire." Miklos said finally. "She was trying to learn about the community and wanted to talk to another woman. So I put her in touch with Janette." "I see." Lacroix studied the other vampire. "She is with Janette now?" Miklos nodded but realised that Lacroix had gone. As soon as he was sure he was alone he rushed to the telephone. Janette hung up and swore richly in French, German and Cantonese. "Lacroix is on his way. It seems the enforcers have set the pips on you." "Oh." Tracy looked at the other vampire. "Is this going to get violent? I left my stakes at home." Janette chuckled. "You carry stakes?" "Since I learnt about enforcers." Tracy responded. "I didn't bring them tonight as a gesture of trust." "Thank you." Janette said dryly. She began gathering up the ornaments on the mantelpiece. "Could you fetch the Lalique bowl?" Tracy looked around. "The Lalique, it's the large bowl, glass tinged with blue and shaped." Tracy picked it up and followed Janette. "What are you doing?" "Lacroix throws things. I prefer not to lose my favourite ornaments." Janette sighed. "It is necessary to duck. I will try to remind him that you are currently only mortal." "Thanks." Tracy looked at the other. "Tactics?" "Let me explain, then he will shout and possibly throw things. Once he has stopped throwing things he will storm out." Janette sighed. "Then we wait and he comes back for reasoned discussion." End Part Two Wild for to hold 3/3 By Spike Shovelton See Part One for disclaimer The situation was one of the most uncomfortable, painful and awkward that Tracy had ever felt. Lacroix was incandescent with fury to learn that she did not want him to sire her. She had tried to explain but Janette had forestalled her, beginning to talk with him in swift, incomprehensible words. Tracy watched as Lacroix and Janette argued. Tracy had studied French most of her life. In Canada it was a necessary part of life, not particularly in Toronto but generally. She was actually quite good at it. However even after all her years of studies she could hardly pick out one word in ten of the fast, angry conversation between the two vampires. Finally Lacroix turned and flew out of the closed window. Tracy studied the Lacroix shaped hole in the glass and burst into giggles. "You find it amusing?" Janette asked softly and laughed incredulously. "It just reminds me of a spoof movie." Tracy said softly. "I couldn't follow half of it. What was said?" "We argued. He wished to bring you across. I informed him that you refused. He was not pleased." Janette chuckled. "At least he did not throw anything." "No." Tracy looked at the other woman. "I'm sorry if I am making trouble for you." "Non." Janette smiled. "You have the right to a free choice of sire and to control your destiny. Lacroix has not the right to interfere." She smiled. "You and he have both very strong wills, I think you would come to hate his control over you and cause misery to each other." "I think so." Tracy looked at her. "Did he agree?" "No, but when he has considered the issue he will return in a calmer frame of mind, or not." Janette sighed. "I do not think he will force you to accept him. He may not speak to you if you do not." Tracy considered this. "I understand. I just know that if I do let him bring me across, we will probably wind up as badly off as he and Nick." "You may be right." Janette examined one manicured fingernail with studied concentration. "I do not know." They sat in silence for a while. Lucien Lacroix studied the two women. Tracy was asleep on the settee. She moved uneasily in slumber and seemed restless. Janette sat still in an armchair, cradling a glass of wine in one hand and looking into the fire. She turned to him. "You are as usual quite right." Lacroix sounded old, and somehow incredibly tired. "Mon pere." Janette walked over to him. "I am sorry. For most other women this problem would not arise." "Tracy is not most women." Both vampires spoke very softly so as not to awaken the sleeping mortal. Their voices were almost inaudible to mortal voices. "She is different. I do not wish to repeat my struggle with Nicholas. My upbringing would tell me that the appropriate solution is to beat the rebellion out of her with a strong whip, but I find myself reluctant to do so." Lacroix looked at her and for a moment neither spoke. Finally he rolled up his sleeve and extended his wrist. Janette brought it to her lips and inhaled. She could smell the unique scent of her only true master. For all that Nicolas had brought her back across she was and would always consider herself to be a childe of Lacroix. She had never been able to find words to define the scent of his blood, fruit and spice and so clean. After her time as a whore she had come to value cleanliness. There were heady undertones of power and age. Finally she could delay no longer, exquisite anticipation became too much. She sank her fangs into his wrist and shivered as the link between sire and childe flared up. Letting him set the pace she received his images, listening as he showed her exactly what he wanted to happen. Once the bloodlink was dissolved Lacroix looked grave. "Do you understand?" "Oui." Janette said and looked at him. "I will obey." "Then there remains nothing to be said." Lacroix leaned over and kissed his daughter gently on the lips, a butterfly kiss. Turning to study the still sleeping Tracy he sighed. "I think I had better not remain." As he left the door banged behind him and Tracy blinked into wakefulness. "What? Did I miss something?" Tracy asked quickly. Lucien Lacroix realised as he flew back to Toronto alone that he was almost afraid. He had hoped that the bonds of sire and childe would keep her with him for eternity, or at least until he worked out why she intrigued him. Now he had absolutely no claim on her. She could do as she pleased and he had no power over her. Now all he could do was wait and see if she came back. If not then he would come for her in the end. "Lacroix said what?" Tracy asked, trying to wake up. "He agreed to let you bring me across?" "He said that he would tolerate the situation. He was not happy." Janette sighed. "I had to agree that once you were adequately well trained you would return to Toronto." "Anything else?" Tracy did not trust this scenario. It was unlike Lacroix to give in so easily. "A few things, that I will ensure that you can hunt, that I will ensure that no other vampire touches you." Janette heard the other woman snort. "He is a little territorial. He made a few other demands but nothing of importance." That was a slight understatement but it did not matter. The rest was between herself and her sire. "I can't believe I slept through it all." Tracy sighed. "I missed all the good parts." "Yes." Janette smiled wickedly. She had ensured that Tracy slept through it through a little sleeping drug. "You would only have roused his passions." "So what now?" Tracy asked, her voice a little uncertain. "Now I suggest you rest and then enjoy a final day of mortality." Janette smiled at the other woman. "After that the fun begins." Tracy studied her for a moment, trying to work out whether this was a good thing. No it was her decision. She had known the price for a long time. Now she would have to pay up. A more pleasant thought struck her. As a vampire she would have eternity and possibly Lacroix. She could live with that. After all she really didn't have a whole lot of choice. The End 1) The title of this story comes from a poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt. The poem is entitled "Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind" and it deals with the pursuit of the unobtainable. The poet describes a deer which belongs to Caesar and is accordingly out of bounds to all others. Wyatt is believed to have been describing his own love for Anne Boleyn, the wife of Henry VIII. It just seemed fitting for the piece. "There is written, her fair neck round about Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am And wild for to hold, though I seem tame." 2) The phrase "pour encourager les autres" comes from Candide by Voltaire. It means "to encourage the others." One of the functions of execution as public spectacle was the idea of discouraging others from following suit. 3) Lalique glassware is extremely expensive. Rene Lalique designed a special glazing process which gave the glassware a blue tinge. He told nobody how this was done and since his death it has been impossible to recreate. Accordingly modern Lalique is clear and less valuable than the original Lalique. 4) I have taken the view that Janette has managed to bring people across but just didn't want to say so to Nick. I refuse to believe that someone of her age would be unable to bring anyone across.