The Magnanimous

Alec grumbled and fussed the whole time he was getting settled into the passenger seat of his car. Now that he had gotten over the initial excitement of their argument, the drunken stupor had taken hold, making him sluggish and grouchy. Evaine made sure he was seated and belted in properly, despite him protesting about being treated like a baby, before starting up the car and pulling onto the main road.

"Can't trust him..." Alec mumbled at her, his words starting to slur. He was definitely going to pass out once he got home, and not a minute sooner if Evaine had any say in it. It was only a few minutes away, but she kept her speed just a little over the limit as there was almost no traffic on the road. "Never trust a vampire."

"That vampire's given me plenty of reasons to trust him," Evaine shot right back at him.

"Bah, you just think he's pretty," he said, spitting out the last word. "You don't know...ya' just don't know any better."

She took the left turn past Jericho plaza a little sharp, letting Alec jostle into the door since he didn't have the sense to brace himself.

"You know what, I don't know any better," she said, every ounce of her tone scolding him. "I didn't know anything about monsters or hunters until two days ago, and Jesse, the man who saved my life, has been the only person giving me any real answers. In case you haven't noticed, I'm in way over my head here and I'm terrified of whatever horrible thing is waiting for me around the next corner, so I'm going to go ahead and trust the guy who's keeping me safe. Alec, if there's more that I should know about all this, I want you to teach me. I need you, but I need you sober. If you want me to listen, start acting like a rational person who deserves to be listened to."

Alec fell silent, a cloud of misery overtaking his expression. He kicked down at the footrest where a few empty glass bottles rolled around—evidence of his earlier tantrum.

"It wa'just easier if iw's him," Alec admitted, letting his words bleed together into an almost incoherent mess. "Kill'em and done. Justice. This...doesn't feel better."

"No easy target for your anger anymore," Evaine surmised, filling in the blanks to make sense out of his rambling. "I'm sorry, Alec. I really am. Justice should be easier than this...and Maggie shouldn't be dead."

"No, she shouldn't," he said, not slurring those three words in the slightest.

Evaine turned onto the neighborhood street where Alec lived. His house was shabbier than most, a blemish sitting along a row of proud lawns. His grass was trimmed and green, but any bushes or extra plant life had been pulled out, leaving the area looking plain and unloved. The only amount of décor he had on display were the items he had received as gifts, such as the bamboo wind chimes her mother had given him for his birthday a few years ago, or the ugly little birdhouse Evaine made for him in her eighth-grade shop class.

Evaine shut off the car and unbuckled both hers and Alec's seat belts before getting out. As she walked around the car to help him to his feet, Jesse's rental car pulled up to the curb, and she realized how odd this sight would seem should any of the neighbors decide to look out their windows. Alec, who lived alone and kept to himself, being carried into his own home by a teenager and the mysterious newcomer from the monster house. Luckily, it was fairly late at night, so being spied on was unlikely.

"Need any help?" Jesse asked with a smirk as Alec struggled to right himself.

"Keep yer hands t'erself," Alec answered, waving the offer away with his hand.

"I've got it," Evaine said to make up for the politeness Alec was currently lacking.

She gripped the older man by the arm and half carried, half dragged him up to the front door of his house, stopping to wait while he fumbled with his mess of keys. When he finally found the right one, he made a show of attempting to aim it at the lock with little success.

"Ah, hell. Ya mind?" he asked, holding the key up for her.

With a little roll of her eyes, Evaine took the key and unlocked the door without issue. She waved her hand to indicate that the path was clear for Alec to enter, but he suddenly grew twice as heavy and seemed unable to take those last few steps.

"He's waiting to see if you can walk in uninvited," Jesse piped up when the struggle persisted.

Evaine paused when that sentence didn't immediately make sense to her, and when it sank in, she shot Alec a haughty look. "Are you kidding me? I'm not a vampire!"

"It's not a vampire-specific trait," Jesse informed her, watching the exchange with dry amusement.

Alec quirked an eyebrow, and Evaine was suddenly suspicious that he was exaggerating his helplessness. Shaking her head, she dropped his arm and marched past the door and right into the house without a hitch. She turned around to face him, holding up her hands to show that his fears were irrational.

"Can't be too sure," Alec said with a shrug, walking in to follow her with heavy, but very stable steps. "You did blow some mighty strange breath at me earlier."

"Goodnight, Alec," Evaine said, shoving the keys back into his hands. She walked out, slamming the front door behind her as she left.

"Don't be too mad about that," Jesse advised her as they began walking back toward his car. "A hunter would be remiss to overlook the possibility of your no longer being human. No matter how long he's known you, no matter how long he's trusted you, there is always a possibility that you've been changed."

"I guess you can never really know a person," Evaine mused a little bitterly. They reached the car and Jesse opened the passenger door for her, but she was too lost in thought to properly thank him. As he settled into his own seat, she asked, "If I had changed, if you had decided to turn me instead of save me, what would have happened back there? Would I really not be able to walk in without an invitation?"

"That's the idea," Jesse answered as he started up the car. "It's some of the oldest magic in existence, older than any on record. It keeps human homes safe from supernatural creatures, but keeps balance through the exception of invitation. It's the same kind of magic that makes me weak to sunlight, or keeps other species bound by their own laws and limitations. If you had been changed, stepping through that door frame could have killed you."

"For real? Just one step and...dead?" Evaine asked, shivering with empathetic repulsion at the thought.

"Not quite," Jesse said, glancing over at her out of the corner of his eye. He drove slowly, taking his time cruising through the town. "If it was as simple as that, any one of us could die by tripping over a doormat. It's more like the instinct that stops you from driving off the road while you imagine how easy it would be. Everything just freezes, and suddenly there's no choice about it, and it feels like even if I could convince myself to move forward, the magic would just drag me back."

He paused for a moment, his lips parted as he thought over what to say next, then a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth, barely visible in the darkness of the car.

"I once went to a show for a vampire daredevil, Alistair the Magnanimous," Jesse said, taking one hand off the wheel to frame the name as if he were imagining it on a decadent title card. "He was a truly ancient creature, a living wealth of knowledge and history, and his performances were to die for. For the one I attended, he was going to overcome the magic protecting a human home. Hundreds showed up to bear witness to a man taking a single step over a threshold, but it was more revolutionary than electricity to my people.

"We gathered at midnight, then all the necessary tests were given to prove that it wasn't a trick. Alistair the Magnanimous gave one of his world-renowned introductory speeches, took his stance, and we waited. It was the most excruciating anticipation, watching him staring at that open doorway for well over an hour. Taking the step itself lasted a good forty-five minutes from doormat to foyer. In the end, though, he made it through. No one had ever seen anything like it. We were amazed, and just as he was turning to take a bow for his audience, his brain exploded."

Evaine let out a surprised laugh at the unceremonious end to his story, but it comforted something in her that she hadn't realized she was afraid of. After this past handful of days filled with such stress, facing drastic changes to her whole reality, the monsters and magic, it was nice to believe that she would be safe if she could just stay inside her own home.

"Is it like that with sunlight, too?" she asked, wanting to keep him talking about these things she was so curious to know. "Louis told me earlier that he's the only person he knows who can...what did he call it? Daywalk?"

"You catch on fast," Jesse noted with barely hidden humor in his voice. "Louis' daywalking is a reborn talent. It's rare, but it happens sometimes; vampires will rise with excess strength or magic. He didn't even know that he had it until many years after he was turned. As for the rest of us, sun death is a slow, excruciating process, and the only times I've heard of vampires dying that way are when hunters trap them in sunlit execution chambers."

Evaine made a small noise of shock—or horror, as she was constantly torn between the two of late—and turned to look out the window. She didn't want to think about creatures like Jesse, capable of such humanity and kindness, being forced into torturous death. She really didn't want to think that Alec, a hunter, might have partaken in such things.

They pulled up to her house sooner than either of them really cared for, and Jesse parked the car on the curb, turned off the headlights, and let silence fill the space between them. The light of the waxing moon lit the space between them just enough that Evaine could see Jesse watching her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her to speak.

"Jesse, why did you become a vampire?" she finally asked when she had summoned enough courage to breach such a personal subject. "It doesn't sound like a very fair trade for immortality; the blood, no sunlight, being hunted...is it really worth it?"

"That's not...it's complicated."

Evaine thought she could see a flicker of some kind of deep pain cross Jesse's face, but he reigned it in and turned it into a dark grimace.

"For a long time after I was turned, I hated this unholy thing I had become," he said quietly, his eyes gone still and faraway. "I used to love working in the sun...I loved food, and people, and I loved my religion. Now, I'm an immortal. I'm stronger and faster than any human ever will be, I have senses for hunting better than any animal, and I live in a world of magic like I never could have dreamed of. But it wasn't worth losing my family, losing everything I ever cared for. I never had a choice, Evaine, and that's a fact. If I had, if things could have been different...I really don't know."

Evaine hadn't considered that part of Jesse's past whenever she had thought about him over the weekend. She had always been focused on the fact that he was a vampire, wondering what that meant and what powers came with it. She had never considered the cost. Slowly, this shadowy figure of a man was becoming a real person to her, more than the savior who had left her completely starstruck.

"Don't worry yourself; it's not all bad," he said, suddenly lightening the mood as if he took her silence to be a somber one. He gave her a mischievous little sideways smile, a playful glint in his eye. "The man I used to be is long gone. The man I am now finds much to be thankful for."

He removed his seatbelt and got out of the car. Before Evaine had even finished unbuckling herself, he was at her door, opening it to offer his hand to her.

"Eternal night isn't so bad once you get used to it," he said, continuing his line of thought as he assisted Evaine to her feet. With the car door shut behind her, he led a slow walk toward the door of her house. "Now, I can't imagine anything more beautiful than moonlight. I even have an appreciation for the hunters and their world, although I should credit that to having known Maggie."

"And the blood?" Evaine asked. They had reached her front door, but she wasn't quite ready to say goodnight to him. She turned away from the threshold that he wouldn't be able to touch so she could look at him, a pale statue cast in that beautiful moonlight of his, and she suddenly found that she was nervous. "How can you ever get used to something like that?"

"The blood..." he began, the words catching in his throat. His dark eyes narrowed slightly as if he was surprised by how affected he was by her query. Whether he was aware of it or not, he took a step toward her. "It would be easier to ask a drowning man how he felt about water. It's a necessity, I would go mad with hunger and wither away to nothing without it. But beyond that, it is a need, a toxic kind of passion, the source of all my joy when I have it and all my suffering when I'm without it."

He took another step forward, one that Evaine was sure was deliberate this time. She instinctively backed away from the intensity of him as he bore down on her, but her back touched the door of her house and she was trapped. As if he was aware of that thought, as if he agreed with it, Jesse reached out to brace one hand against the door, locking her in, while the other hand raised up and gently touched the junction between her jaw and her throat.

"Even now, I can feel it," he said, his voice so tense that it barely escaped him. "The warmth of your skin...I can hear it rushing in your veins and pumping in your heart." He dropped his hands, as if finally remembering himself, and he gave Evaine space enough to breathe. "No, I don't think anyone can really get used to it. We just learn to live with the pain this reality brings."

"I'm sorry," Evaine choked out, because that was all she could think to say while her mind and body were still braced, waiting for him to pounce. Whether she feared it or craved it, she couldn't be sure. She couldn't make much sense of anything while he was still standing so close.

"Don't be," he said, taking another step back. He seemed to be coming to his senses and was ready to return to normalcy. "I should go. Goodnight, Miss Dawson."

He turned and walked away before Evaine could reply, knowing that if he stayed a moment longer, he would snap. As he headed back toward his car, he could still hear the fearful thumping of her heartbeat, and he felt ashamed for forgetting himself like that. It was just their conversation, he reasoned, talking of blood while being so close to her, enveloped in her scent and her voice and her attention. She made it far too easy to forget that she was still a human, still very young as Alec had been so right to point out, and still struggling to understand the world she had accidentally stepped into.

Of course she was scared of him. Every time they had been together had been a near brush with death for her part, and instead of bringing her comfort and allowing her to feel safe with him, he had gotten so wrapped up in his own hunger that she had nearly seen his fangs. But he was no stranger to hunger, and the pangs usually passed the second he had a moment to think clearly, so why was he still clenching his teeth as if he would turn around and bite her at any moment?

He was just reaching for the door of the car when he heard her sigh, probably thinking he was well out of earshot. It wasn't a sound of relief, or of relaxing fear as he had suspected. It was a sound that was just as tight and frustrated as he himself felt, and knowing that she was of the same mind broke his last thread of resolve.

He turned around and marched right back up the way he came.

"You asked if it was worth it," he said when he was close enough. He hated how emotional his voice sounded, like he was desperate. He couldn't pretend that it wasn't the truth, but hearing it in his voice only served to further break him down.

Evaine looked up at him, surprise displayed all over the smooth, curved features of her face. She had her own keys in her hand, as if she had just been about to open the door.

"The answer is yes. This is worth it."

He took the last few steps to close the distance between them, grasped her by the back of the neck, and planted his lips firmly on hers. There was no trace of fear in her as one of her hands locked around his wrist, not to pull him away, but simply to hold onto him. Her lips parted in a small gasp, but rather that pull away for air, she stepped into him, the hand with her keys coming up to brace against his chest.

Encouraged by this, Jesse wrapped his other arm around her waist, pulling her closer until the heat of her body was all he could feel. He drank in every sweet ounce of her, breathing only to revel in her scent of sunshine and earth and wildflowers. Her tongue dared to reach out and brush his fangs, and in that moment, he died a little with her.