Claudia put down our drinks and then excused herself from the room again, leaving us alone in a slightly tense atmosphere.
“Does anyone need anything else?” Alessia asks to which everyone at the table shakes their heads. “Okay.” She put her glass against her lips and took a little sip before continuing. “Has Viktor ever told you about your shadow?” Alessia put her glass back down and looked at me.
“I think I vaguely remember something about that, but he didn’t go into the specifics.”
Alessia nodded. “Epiphania was yours. She was tasked to observe you and to keep you out of trouble. It’s standard practice for new vampires because we really don’t want bad things to happen...”
“I understand that, but why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because you might change your mannerisms if you know you are being watched.” Epiphania curtly stated.
“I suppose that’s fair… so, at the gymnasium, that was also you?”
“Gymnasium?” Ria tilted her head.
“Em wanted to test my physical abilities.”
“The way you said that sounds pretty lewd, Rora.”
“No! Not like that!” My face flushed red, which made Ria giggle. Em was also blushing a little.
“Yes, that was me as well. I had to hold in a sneeze and accidentally bumped into an object… The place I’d been hiding in before was a bit dustier than I expected.”
“Those were clothing racks you bumped into.” Em stated proudly. “I knew that they’d been moved.”
“Yeah, yeah, good job, Em.”
“But I do have to apologize to you and your partners. If I didn’t get held up…”
“You’re talking about what happened at the park?”
“Yes.”
“I think it would’ve come to a fight nonetheless.”
“But if I was earlier…” She looked over to Ria with a sad look on her face.
Ria just replied to her with a smile. “But I am fine now!”
I agreed with Ria’s sentiment. “It wasn’t your fault those shitheads decided to be… shitheads.”
“Auro, you need to work on your insult game.”
“Shut up, Em.” I laughed.
“Are they really girlfriends?” Epiphania asked our hostess who was sitting next to her for this little discussion.
Alessia smiled. “Apparently so. But that aside, the past is the past, what happened, happened and everything turned out just fine in the end.”
“About that, I… we still want to know what exactly is going on with Ria as well.”
“We will get to that when the others get here, which shouldn’t take that long.” Alessia got up from her temporary seat and sat down at the head of the table, right when the door opened and Viktor walked in. He was conversing with a couple of other people who followed him inside. Including himself, the group that walked in consisted of eight people.
“I brought the others, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, perfect timing, actually.”
I quickly switched to the other side of the table to give Viktor a spot next to Ria, as we had discussed earlier with Alessia. All under the observing gazes of the other vampires who’d gone quiet the moment they’d seen our little group, although most of them were staring at me and my mantle in particular. It was more than a little intimidating, so I clenched my new cane tight in my fist.
“Stop staring, friends, you are making the girls uncomfortable.” Viktor tried to get the others to sit down while glancing nervously at the cane I was holding.
Once everyone got seated and received their drinks from Claudia and her staff, Alessia took the word again. “Hello everyone, as you all already know, today we welcome the newest additions to the Conclave in our midst. Aurora Beaumont and her partners Corelia Du Bellay and Emma Meier.”
Ria happily waved at the others at the table and even got a couple of waves back, mostly from the other women, while Emma and I sat back, being a bit more wary of all the new faces.
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“I know all these new faces must be pretty intimidating for all of you, so let me start by introducing the rest of the members one by one.” Alessia continued and looked at an older gentleman, around his 60s if I had to guess, who was sitting immediately next to Viktor. With his white hair, he looked very professor-like. “That lovely gentleman is Luis Fernandez, our resident professor who has been doing research about vampirism for quite a few centuries now.”
-Ah… so he actually IS a professor…-
“Four hundred and fifty-seven years, to be exact.” He stood up and bowed towards us.
“He’ll give you more information about you and yours condition later on.”
I nodded as Alessia moved on to Epiphania who was sitting next to me.
“You already met Epiphania, she’s our foremost stealth expert, and she hails from the early days of the Byzantine Empire.”
“I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot.” She apologized.
“It’s okay, sorry for being so aggressive.”
“I understand you just want to protect your partners.”
“Awh, how cute.” The woman next to Epiphania commented. She appeared to be in her early thirties and had her brown hair tied up in a bun.
“The lady sitting next to her is Alex Williams, or Alexandra Fedorov, depending on the time and place. She’s also one of our stealth experts, and before you was the youngest member of the conclave.”
“And she can also be a major pain in the ass.” Viktor commented, to which he got quite the glare from Alex. “I think you two will get along just fine.”
Viktor apparently had a knack for annoying women, not that that was any news for me.
“Viktor and Alex have been messing with each other since they met, so this is quite normal.”
“Wait, what kind of messing are we talking about?” Em asked, to which Vik and Alexandra suddenly got very quiet.
“You can ask them yourself after the conclave if you would like to know that.” Alessia grinned. “Anyhow. Let’s continue. Next to the professor is Erica Wagner, she has a knack for everything financial and is therefore also the conclave’s treasurer. She doesn't talk a lot, but she’s always very helpful if you want to know what you want to invest in and things like that. She also hires most of our contractors.”
The short haired blonde got up from her chair, waved at our group with a friendly smile, and then sat down again without saying a thing. We all waved back. She quite reminded me of Karin.
“Next to her, we have our unbreakable diplomatic duo, Nils Bjorklund and Mikael Järvinnen. They met each other around the beginning of the Kalmar Union, when we have business with the other conclaves, we often send them to represent us if they don’t require the leaders present.”
Nils and Mikael both got up from their seats and clearly showed they were by far the tallest people in the entire room, even though Mikael with his short brown hair was a couple of centimeters smaller than Nils who had somewhat longer dark blonde hair. “It is very nice to meet you.” Mikael took the word.
“We look forward to working more closely with you in the future.” Nils continued.
“I haven’t exactly told her about that yet. We’ll get to that point.” Alessia replied.
“Wait, about what?” I looked at our host, who just motioned that I’d have to wait for a reply.
In the meantime, Ria had been leaning over the table and was looking at the two tall men who were standing up. “Are you two married?”
“Ria, that’s a bit too direct, isn’t it?” Em quickly jumped in.
Mikael’s rumbling laughter filled the room. “Yes we are, for 103 years, actually. Of course, not officially, but that doesn’t really matter to us.” He put his arm around his husband’s shoulder.
“Oh no! We missed the jubilee!”
“There will definitely be more to come.” Nils smiled and they both sat down again.
“Okay, for our last two members we have our engineer and general handyman Marko Matić. If you ever need something fixed, need some specialised tools or other blacksmithery, Marko is your guy. He’s also been looking at our IT, but that’s been a bit harder.”
“Iron is way easier to handle than programming.” Marko ran his hand through his short, messy brown hair. I could tell from his hands, he’d been working with charcoal not that long ago.
“I definitely know what you mean, programming is fucked up.” I agreed with him.
He nodded back.
“And, last but not least, Aileen MacInally. She has been fighting as a member or leader of mercenary bands since the battle of Clitheroe. She’s now our security expert, as being immortal in this day and age is getting harder and harder with social media. Aileen was also our main strategist during the conflict I told you about earlier.”
“Aye.” Aileen nodded, her long red hair tied up in a braid. She was the only other woman in this room who was wearing a leather jacket. She also had a pair of aviator sunglasses laying in front of her on the table.
“When was that battle?” I asked out of curiosity, my Scottish history wasn’t that up to date.
“Summer of 1138.” She replied and turned the other side of her face to me, revealing a pretty long scar on her cheek. “It’s where I got this beauty.”
“You get scars?”
“When I get hit hard enough, aye. Why?”
“Well…”
The professor looked at me with a curious look on his face. “What did you get hit by, lady Aurora?”
“Uh… A 20mm anti-material rifle…”
“Really?” Aileen looked very impressed, the rest of the table was looking rather surprised instead.
“You got hit by what!?” Em poked her elbow into my side. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because I was fine…?”
Em stared at me like I was the biggest idiot on earth. I will neither confirm nor deny the possibility of that being true. Ria just looked at me with a concerned look on her face.
-I will probably have to have a talk with them about this later, won’t I…-
Meanwhile, Epiphania continued the conversation. “I can confirm I did find a rifle like that at the scene of battle and it was pretty clear on the security footage too.”
“Hmm, we already knew our newest addition was a bit special, this only serves to confirm that.” Alessia got up from her chair and by doing so silenced the room. “But now that everyone is properly introduced, let us start with the first point on the agenda… The case concerning the bodily status of Corelia Du Bellay, Emma Meier and by extension Aurora Beaumont.”
-W-wait, Emma too?-