My Familiar Stranger (18 page)

October 6 entry, Monq’s file on Elora Laiken:
The subject’s emotional and psychological adjustment seems to be almost as remarkable as was her physical recovery. This is due, in part, to the fact that she has social interaction with Engel Storm and the other members of B Team with whom she seems comfortable. But, even so, she demonstrates an extraordinary degree of resiliency and buoyancy considering the body of traumatic experience.

She has agreed to work with the knights and trainees, teaching a style of weaponless martial art that is clearly more sophisticated than that currently endorsed. Her contribution will undoubtedly be advantageous to the organization. Moreover, there is no doubt that she will benefit emotionally from a sense of purpose and belonging.

As predicted, the meeting with Sol was short. Since B Team’s reintroduction to duty had been postponed, so had the immediate necessity for making a decision about Lan’s replacement. Sol said he was temporarily relieving the extra duty stress by bringing a team up from Brazil, but urged the three to settle on their selection of a fourth so that the replacement would be ready to go in six weeks.

As soon as Ram got back to his apartment he called the media center and told them to send someone up with a copy of the recording of Elora’s hearing. They asked, “Which one?”

“There was more than one?”

“Yeah. A short one on October 1st, long one on October 2nd.”

“Bring them both.”

The recordings arrived twenty minutes later. Ram popped the first in and sat down to watch. The airbot, programmed by one of the media geeks, hovered chest high, recording Elora’s entrance into the Chamber with Storm on one side and a big, no neck bruiser of an orderly on the other. Ram thought, "Yeah. Like that would have slowed her down if she had decided to run."

Within seconds she was holding Monq by the front of his shirt, keening pain and betrayal. Ram felt adrenaline shoot into his body as he sat helplessly watching the reenactment of his mate in anguish. His fists clenched so hard he drove the ends of his short, blunt nails into the flesh and felt his stomach roil. He let the recording play through the discussion that took place after Elora left the Chamber.

The video record of the second day was a treasure trove of information. Certainly he wished he had known that she had a lifetime of martial arts training before he agreed to spar with her. Like all those who had been present that day, he was captivated by the story: her background, her relationship with Monq’s counterpart, the tragedy that befell her family, and the circumstances of her transportation to this reality.

One thing he brought away from seeing the hearings was that Elora Laiken deserved a mate who would treat her as gently as a piece of fragile art glass and never deny her anything she needed to be happy.

They tested Elora for speed late on a cool Autumn night with a bright moon. She was clocked at just under thirty miles per hour which exceeded the record by nearly four mph.

***

The days began to shape into a routine. In the mornings she visited Blackie, her pet name for the big Alsatian in the basement, and made progress with him daily. After lunch, she spent the early part of the afternoon working with the knights and trainees. Sol told them that participation in the program was entirely by choice, but that they opt out at their own peril. Only one knight refused.

Two or three days a week she spent some time practicing in the archaic weaponry wing. Not because she anticipated a need to fight by sword or archery, but because she had devoted too much of her life to these accomplishments to let them go rusty.

Of course everything had to be relearned to some extent. All the skills that had long ago been committed to “muscle memory” had to be recalibrated to match the amount of pressure her new strength brought to each activity. When she was recovering she had thought it was a natural part of being rehabilitated to such a drastic extent and didn't realize the implications. Everything from holding a fork to opening a door required adjustment. The first time she played guitar, she popped a string so hard that it flew up and split her top lip.

In the archaic weapons section, the knights also trained with modified wooden stakes since it turned out that vampire really do succumb, permanently, to wood driven directly into the heart.

One day, when no one else was around, she picked up a stake and twirled it around a couple of times to get the feel of the weight and shape. For grins, she threw it at a straw target. Although she didn’t pierce the heart the first time, she did propel the stake clear through the dummy exploding out the other side. After a few tries she came closer to the target area and discovered that, if she eased back on force, she could embed the stake rather than turning it into a missile. But, of course, the target was stationary. She made up her mind to try again with the simulator whenever she found herself alone and unobserved.

She had fallen into the habit of spending the late afternoons watching movies with Ram which proved to be an accelerated course in the culture of this world. He had little else to do these days and she felt entirely responsible for that. Not that his company was hard to endure.

They took turns choosing films. Ram had a penchant for crude and immature humor with endless references to mammary glands, female genitalia, male genitalia, blow jobs, toilet mishaps, bestiality and non-committed couplings. The fact that she was frequently appalled by the horrendous things he found funny served only to amuse him all the more.

Elora liked romances with beautiful clothes and happy endings. Ram called these movies “talkies” because there was too much dialogue to suit him. She chose to believe he was just pretending to be bored to adhere to some sort of macho image preservation ritual. Neither one of them liked horror or excessive violence. Too close to home.

Music was something they had in common. He filled her audio library with music he thought she would like. They talked about the differences in the musical histories of their respective realities and the differences in popular music. Elora was shy about playing for Ram, but he never had to be asked twice. Heavy metal shredding wasn’t her favorite expression of guitar, but she appreciated his skill, that it was a very fine form of male exhibitionism, and she loved watching his strong hands alternately manipulate and massage six strings.

Ram confessed to having watched the recordings of her hearings saying he wanted her to know that he knew what had been said. When she responded by looking at the floor, he took that as a sign that she would prefer another subject. But he was satisfied that he’d opened a door should she ever want to discuss it. Any of it.

One day he brought her a soft cover, paper copy of a book saying he had reason to believe that she was interested in the subject. The title read
Every Thing You Always Wanted To Know About Elves, But Were Afraid To Ask
. Elora raised an eyebrow at Ram and gave him a crooked smile.

“What makes you think I’m afraid to ask?” she said.

He gave her one of his more sardonic smiles and shrugged, “Just in case.”

She didn’t ask questions based on the book he gave her, but did ask about his home and his family. He described his part of the world as magical and beautiful. She learned that he had an older brother and a younger sister, that, in addition to music, he loved horses and liked to spend time at a tiny, family owned hunting lodge located in the middle of a forest and wild life preserve. When she asked why he had joined The Order he said, “Wild child, I suppose. They promised I would have adventures my brother could no’ imagine and that was exactly what I wanted to hear.”

Ram was just as curious about her. She told him there wasn’t as much to tell as he might expect, that palace life had been restricting and suffocating and that, in many ways, she had more freedom as a prisoner of Black Swan. Ram’s face tightened when she said the word prisoner. He started to protest, but stopped himself when he realized he couldn’t really argue with that.

In the evenings after dinner, Storm spent time teaching Elora such civilized pursuits as billiards and five card stud. If Storm stopped by the apartment during the daytime, he always seemed irritated to find Ram there. One day, as Ram was leaving, he opened the door to see Storm standing with his hand in the air about to knock. Without pretense of ambivalence Storm asked, “Don’t you have a place of your own?”

As Ram stepped past Storm into the hallway he flashed a devilish smile in open challenge. “I like it
here
.”

In an uncharacteristic display of temper, Storm was just about to throttle Ram when he caught Elora standing at the doorway in his peripheral vision and decided to take a more conciliatory attitude. Truthfully, Ram wasn’t overjoyed about turning back to see Storm disappear into his mate’s personal quarters. Everything about that felt very, very wrong.

“It does seem like he’s here a lot,” Storm grumbled.

“We take turns choosing movies. He despises my choices. I eschew his.”

“Yeah. I can imagine.” Storm was still pouting, but seemed somewhat relieved.

Sometimes she had dinner at B Team’s table. One night, instead of dessert, she got a cupcake with a candle in it. Storm brought out a lighter, lit the candle, and said, “Happy Birthday.” After blowing out the candle, she cut the cupcake into quarters and insisted that each of them have a piece before asking Storm how he knew. He said he had looked for her counterpart’s birthday and figured it would be the same. When Elora told Storm how touched she was that he’d gone to so much trouble, Storm soaked up her praise and then gloated at Ram.

Sometimes she ate with people she knew from the infirmary, such as Elsbeth, who was the closest thing Elora had ever had to a friend who was not also a relative.

At one such dinner, Elsbeth broached the subject of Elora’s relationship with B Team, which, apparently, was an item of constant gossip within the general population of Jefferson Unit. Elsbeth regaled her with stories of the exploits of the widely celebrated Bad Company saying their prowess was unequalled and what a tragedy it had been when Sir Rathbone Landsdown had died in the line of duty.

She described Storm as team leader, even though Black Swan does not officially recognize leadership in the field, and described Ram and Kay as opposites who balance each other out. Kay was the anchor, the walking embodiment of reason and calm under fire while Ram was thought to be a short fuse hothead.

Elsbeth went on to say that Ram was also the quintessential ladies’ man; that the standing joke was that his nickname, Ram, was appropriate since he was a notorious womanizer and that women are drawn to him like a magnet for reasons that transcend his beauty. She knew that to be true because a lot of the knights were gifted with looks and allure that dripped charisma without inspiring riots.

“Riots?”

“Well, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. He’s the sex version of fast food drive-through. It looks so good. It smells so good. It tastes so good. And you can get it quick. But, afterward you feel yucky and are sorry you did it.”

Elora had never had fast food or been through a drive through, but Ram’s movies were full of drive through situations so she grasped the idea.

While Elora let that sink in, Elsbeth shifted the conversation to Elora’s training project. Elora couldn’t be sure, but she thought that Elsbeth had gone into detail about Ram’s reputation as a sex dripping satyr for her benefit, as a kindness. The question of Ram’s appeal was indisputable and Elora was as susceptible as anyone else, but no one is irresistible. She made a pact with herself that she would not end up a number on a pile of used and discarded lovers. He could just keep his sexy elf trouble to himself.

As they were leaving dinner Elora couldn’t hold the question that was eating away at her any longer. They stopped in the middle of the hub before going their separate ways. “Look, I know this question might be off limits, so you don’t have to answer, but, if you don’t mind me asking, have you had experience with Ram, uh, personally?”

When Elsbeth’s smile reached her eyes they sparked a little. “No admonitions about ‘kiss and tell’ in your world? No matter. The answer is no.” She leaned in conspiratorily and lowered his voice. “Not because of purity. There’s a reason why I know that drive-through sex feels bad afterward.” She looked around to be sure she wasn’t overheard. “I guess I’m not his type. Oh, well.” She sighed dramatically.

Elora didn’t want to feel relieved about that because she didn’t want to have to examine the implications too closely.

Occasionally she was invited to dine with Monq in his quarters in lieu of a session. One such night the conversation turned to the little manual Monq had given her. “I’m curious about one thing regarding vampire and that’s why this phenomenon would still be classified as paranormal. A hundred years ago that would have made sense, but now that it’s been explained scientifically…”

“Yes. A good point.” He offered to refresh her brandy. “The thing is that science and the paranormal, whether you call it that or magic or mystic or mystery, have been on a trajectory course for centuries and perhaps the intersection isn’t too far into the future. I’m certain that someday all mysteries will have scientific explanations.