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Quincey sat on the swing. He’d been there for over an hour, his body just swaying back and forth as if he had not a care in the world. He supposed in a way he didn’t. Life, he’d come to realize, was a bit too much for him, and he was ready to face his immortality full on. When the swing took a violent twist, he looked at the man sitting beside him.

“Did you know that if you sit here long enough and quietly enough, all manner of things come out to play?” He said nothing as they moved the swing back and forth no faster than a breeze might do. “I heard that you’ve been avenging the death of a great many people. How does that set with you?”

“I have had enough.” The swing moved again. The same motion that he’d felt with his own sanity of late, highs and lows. “Did you come here to tell me that I am to die? If you would grant me a single request, I shall go with you quietly. Without any trouble.”

“Nay, I have come to talk to an old friend.” Quincey nodded. “What if I told you that what you have done of late has been with the approval of the council? That no one cares one way or the other how they have died, only that they have?”

Quincey said nothing but continued to swing with his friend. He’d been instrumental in a great many endings the last few days. Most of them had been at his command, others just a word here or there.

“Trina would never have survived without her husband. Jacob would have given in to his daughter-in-law’s demands and either had Jake killed or destroyed. He got all that he deserved.” He thought of Jenna and her death hurt him badly. “Had I to do it over again, I don’t think I would have changed a thing. Only the death of my dearest friend, which I would have prevented had I known.”

“You would have been hurt too.” Quincey told him that he was already. “Yes, I can see that. Feel it as well. But it was what was needed. A good woman; she was the best, but her death has made a great many things move in the right direction.”

Quincey saw the young tiger in the woods. Then he saw Jake, naked, running in the opposite direction. There was no fear between them, no anger in their hearts. Just two lovers having a grand time despite the sorrow in their hearts. He wished that he could be so carefree.

“Jenna left them everything. She told me that it was the way that it should be. I have her things, her paintings and her books. It was more than I thought I deserved from her.” He thought of the conversation that he’d had with young Jake about them. “He told me that she would have wanted me to have them, assured me that she loved me as much as I did her.”

“Yet you did not tell her. Or him, did you?” Quincey said that it wasn’t the time. “Nay, not any longer. I wish for you to do me a favor. It will not cause you any hardship, and you may say no if you do not want to do it. As I said, it is only a favor.”

“I wish to end this life, you know that. It’s why you are here. But if this favor you ask of me is to not do that, then you are wasting your breath. I have better things to do than to chase after small things for you to keep me alive.” Quincey looked at the man he’d known longer than trees on this ground had been here. Longer than the lake that now ran along the property was anything but a small trickle from the stones above. “To come here, when I have been to the grave of my only child, is cruel even for you.”

“Jenna came to me. Weeks ago, and asked me to care for you. I told her that you were a grown man, a man with strange ideas and even stranger ways. She assured me that if anyone could do this for her, it would be me.” He looked over at him and Quincey felt his heart hurt for his lost child. “She knew, I think, that I was your sire. The man that made you what you have come to hate.”

“I have never hated what I am. Only what I could not do.” He looked out beyond the field and wondered at the men there. At his great-grandson that might well carry a part of him. “Jake has a part of me inside of him. It will only take a touch to give him all that I have.”

“Yet here you sit like a man who has nothing left.” They both looked beyond the trees to the men there, enjoying themselves as they should. “The child of his father, Jake’s father, will be like you should she live. The blood of the great-grandfather runs almost pure in the child.”

“You think I don’t know that? What would you have me do? Steal the child away? Raise it in darkness such as I live? I cannot take a child any more than.... Is this your favor? That I have myself a child?” He shook his head and looked to the trees again. Quincey did as well. “Bring it here?”

“It is a girl child, this child of the man. She will be born soon, in a fortnight, and when she is, there will be no one to take her in. She will be just different enough that she will never know love. Not happiness, nor will she be cared for in a manner that she should be.” He turned in his seat and spoke low. “This child will need her brother. He will help her in ways that neither of us can. I wish…my favor of you is to ask them to take this child and care for her. If they should do this, I will grant them a gift of riches.”

“They’ll not want it. They’ll say they have enough. That they need no more. These men, they are much like Jenna. One of blood, the other of love.” He nodded at him. “You will offer them the gift of life. Immortality. The daughter will have it, they should as well.”

“Agreed. And you will talk to them for me? Then retrieve the child before harm comes to her?” He said that he would. “I owe you, Quincey. More now than before.”

“You are a sly man; I wish I had never met you.” When he threw back his head and laughed, Quincey joined him. He was a good friend, after all. “I shall talk to them in the morning. They are having entirely too much fun at the moment for me to talk such seriousness now.”

“I will leave it to you. But the child, she doesn’t have much longer. There are forces that even now come for her.” He nodded. Quincey had no idea what they were, but he knew if this man said so, then it was true. “I will talk to you after you speak with them. It will be then that I give you the information to save her.”

Quincey sat there for a long while after his sire left him. He thought of the child that would need these men, and wondered if they would take her. Jake might be hesitant about it, but he thought Forrest would be the hardest to convince. He would know, too, that the child was a vampire. Quincey would also have to remove the spell on young Jake soon.

“What am I to do, Jenna? They will hate me for what I have kept from even you.” He wondered too what she’d say if she had any idea that he’d been her father. That her mother had been the love of his life, and he’d not known about their child. “I should have told you. It was my plan to, but by the time I found you, you were too set in your ways to allow me to change you. I should have anyway.”

When the couple came out of the woods, their bodies slick with sweat, he smiled as he pulled the shadows around him. He loved these men, like a man would a son, he supposed. As they got closer to the house, he listened to their words, their body language telling him more than their simple statements did. They were in love. The two of them were deeply in love.

“The office is going to be closed for the rest of the week. I thought we’d take a trip.” Quincey wondered if he could guide them to the child, perhaps. But before he could suggest that to them, Forrest continued. “And I think you’re right about the house. Selling it would be the best thing. Too many bad memories. I like your idea about Jenna’s house.”

“She left it to us both.” Quincey had known that as well, and wondered if she’d told them that he lived in the sublevels. When Jake paused and looked right at him, he wondered if the man was already shedding his magic. “Do you feel that?”

Forrest stood next to Jake, protecting him as they both looked around. Quincey assured them with a touch of his mind to theirs that things were all right, to go in the house. When they did as he suggested, he made his way to his home.

Life for the two of them was about to get very busy. And for the first time in a while, Quincey knew that this was just what he needed. Smiling, he made his way to the lower levels and wondered what his life was going to be like as well.