The Roman decided to answer me. “Yes, he was the first one I brought over successfully. The others I tried to bring over—they died.”
“Could we please leave my bedroom and go into the living room?” I said. “This is not the right place to receive visitors.” See? I was trying to be polite.
“Yes, I suppose,” said the older vampire. “Alexei? Where do you suppose the living room is?”
Alexei half turned and pointed in the right direction.
“Then that’s where we’ll go, dearest,” Ocella said, and Alexei led the way.
I had a moment to look up at Eric, and I knew my face was asking, “What the hell is going on here?” But he looked stunned, and helpless. Eric. Helpless. My head was whirling.
When I had a second to think about it, I was pretty nauseated, because Alexei was a child and I was fairly sure that Ocella had a sexual relationship with the boy, as he’d had with Eric. But I wasn’t foolish enough to think that I could stop it, or that any protest I made would make the slightest difference. In fact, I was far from sure Alexei himself would thank me for intervening, when I remembered Eric telling me about his desperate attachment to his maker during the first years of his new life as a vampire.
Alexei had been with Ocella for a long time now, at least in human terms. I couldn’t remember exactly when the Romanov family had been executed, but I thought it was sometime around 1918, and apparently it had been Ocella who’d saved the boy from final death. So whatever constituted their relationship, it had been ongoing for more than eighty years.
All these thoughts flickered through my head, one after another, as we followed the two visitors. Ocella had said he could have entered without warning. It would have been nice if Eric had told me about that. I could see how he might have hoped that Ocella would never visit, so I was willing to give Eric a pass. but I couldn’t help thinking that instead of his lecture on the ways vampires had sliced up my country according to their own convenience, it would have been more practical to let me know his maker could appear in my bedroom.
“Please, have a seat,” I said, after Ocella and Alexei had settled on the couch.
“So much sarcasm,” said Ocella. “Will you not offer us hospitality?” His gaze ran up and down me, and though the color of his eyes was rich and brown, they were utterly cold.
I had a second to realize how glad I was that I’d put a robe on. I would have rather eaten Alpo than been naked in front of these two. “I’m not happy with your popping up outside my bedroom window,” I said. “You could have come to the door and knocked, like people with good manners do.” I wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know; vampires are good at reading people, and the oldest vampires are usually better than humans at telling what humans are feeling.
“Yes, but then I wouldn’t have seen such a charming sight.” Ocella let his gaze brush Eric’s shirtless body almost tangibly. Alexei, for the first time, showed an emotion. He looked scared. Was he afraid Ocella would reject him, throw him out onto the mercy of the world? Or was he afraid that Ocella would keep him?
I pitied Alexei from the bottom of my heart, and I feared him just as much.
He was as helpless as Eric.
Ocella had been looking at Alexei with an attention that was almost frightening. “He’s already much better,” Ocella murmured. “Eric, your presence is doing him so much good.”
I’d kind of figured things couldn’t get more awkward, but a peremptory knock at the back door followed by a “Sookie, you here?” told me that actually the night could get worse.
My brother, Jason, came in without waiting for me to answer. “Sookie, I saw your light on when I pulled up, so I figured you were awake,” he said, and then he stopped abruptly when he realized how much company I had. And what they were.
“Sorry to interrupt, Sook,” he said slowly. “Eric, how you doing?”
Eric said, “Jason, this is my. This is Appius Livius Ocella, my maker, and his other son Alexei.” Eric said it properly, “AP-pi-us Li-WEE-us Oh-KEL-ah.”
Jason nodded at both of the newcomers, but he avoided looking directly at the older vampire. Good instinct. “Good evening, O’Kelly. Hey, Alexei. So you’re Eric’s little brother, huh? Are you a Viking like Eric?”
“No,” said the boy faintly. “I am Russian.” Alexei’s accent was much lighter than the Roman’s. He looked at Jason with interest. I hoped he wasn’t thinking about biting my brother. The thing about Jason, and what made him so attractive to people (particularly women), was that he practically radiated life. He just seemed to have an extra helping of vigor and vitality, and it was returning with a boom now that the misery of his wife’s death was fading. This was his manifestation of the fairy blood in his veins.
“Well, good to meet you-all,” Jason said. Then he quit paying attention to the visitors. “Sookie, I came to get that little side table from up in the attic. I came by here once before to pick it up, but you were gone and I didn’t have my key with me.” Jason kept a key to my house for emergencies, just as I kept a key to his.
I’d forgotten his asking me for the table when we’d had dinner together. At this point, he could have asked me for my bedroom set, and I would have agreed just to get him out of danger. I said, “Sure, I don’t need it. Go on up. I don’t think it’s very far inside the door.”
Jason excused himself, and everyone’s eyes followed him as he bounded up the stairs. Eric was probably just trying to keep his eyes busy while he thought, but Ocella watched my brother with frank appraisal, and Alexei with a kind of yearning.
“Would you like some TrueBlood?” I asked the vampires, through clenched teeth.
“I suppose, if you won’t offer yourself or your brother,” the ancient Roman said.
“I won’t.”
I turned to go to the kitchen.
“I feel your anger,” Ocella said.
“I don’t care,” I said, without turning to face him. I heard Jason coming downstairs, a little more slowly now that he was carrying the table. “Jason, you want to come with me?” I said over my shoulder.
He was more than glad to leave the room. Though he was civil to Eric because he knew I loved him, Jason was not happy in the company of vamps. He put the table down in a corner of the kitchen.
“Sook, what’s going on here?”
“Come into my room for a second,” I said after I’d gotten the bottles out of my refrigerator. I’d feel a lot better if I had more clothes on. Jason trailed after me. I shut the door once we were inside my bedroom.
“Watch the door. I don’t trust that old one,” I said, and Jason obligingly turned his back and watched the door while I pulled off the robe, getting into my clothes as fast as I’ve ever dressed in my life.
“Whoa,” Jason said, and I jumped. I turned to see that Alexei had opened the door and would have entered if Jason hadn’t been holding it.
“I’m sorry,” Alexei said. His voice was a ghost of a voice, a voice that once had been. “I apologize to you, Sookie, and you, Jason.”
“Jason, you can let him in. What are you sorry for, Alexei?” I asked. “Come on, let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll warm up the TrueBlood.” We trailed into the kitchen. We were a little farther from the living room, and there was a chance Eric and Ocella wouldn’t hear us.
“My master is not always like this. His age, it turns him.”
“Turns him into what? A total jerk? A sadist? A child molester?”
A faint smile crossed the boy’s face. “At times, all of those,” he said succinctly. “But truthfully, I haven’t been well myself. That’s why we’re here.”
Jason began to look angry. He likes kids, always has. Even though Alexei could have killed Jason in a second, Jason thought of Alexei as a child. My brother was building up a big mad, actually thinking of charging into the living room to confront Appius Livius Ocella.