Chapter 487) Hit The Road …

Life has a way of changing around you, sometimes, when it doesn’t immediately affect you or maybe you are too busy with your own life that you may not even realize the world is becoming a different place until it reaches a point of undeniability.

Anyway, I believe this part of my story started with me sitting with Bianca and me having a girl’s weekend together, and over several bottles of fine Tartosian wine she had brought back from her most recent visit there, which loosened my tongue, I finally told her about Jack. Not a soul knew about him thus far. But now my best friend learned how I was totally obsessed with him, despite how different we were. I told her that when I last went to see him, I had asked him how he felt about me and when I finally got an answer out of him, he basically told me he thought I hung the moon – whatever the heck that even meant – but saw no future for us.
After a single laugh she was pretty cut and dry with her opinion.

“Oh AG, gurrrrl! Your rebound cowboy is right. Can you even imagine having that hillbilly horsewrangler as your plus one at one of the 1%er matinees or the socials at the country clubs? Oh gawd no! And you don’t wanna go live in some backwoods outdoor toilet hicktown chipping up your mani-pedi from tossing hay bales at bucking horses or whatever, I mean you used to live in the much more refined HOB countryside in a dang castle and that was too backwoods for you, so Cowboy Jack’s cabin is completely out of the question! He’s an itch to be scratched, Mr. Right Now, not Mr. Right!

I say, if you are THAT much into him, go to him and scratch that itch, have him screw your brains out several times until you can’t take anymore, then get in your car, put that pedal to the metal and never look back. Leave that country simple life dream in the dust, it’s a nightmare waiting to happen and most def not for you. That way he and you both got something good out of it, you got him out of your system, and you get a clear head again. For longer term you need a real man. One that fits in with our crowd, the type with a yacht, a private plane and a life you want. You and I are not made for the simple life. We were born and raised as socialites, not cowgirls, Little House on the Prairie style!”

Eeesh! Need an opinion? Go to Bianca, she got plenty and is not afraid to share freely!

Well, since I evidently lack better judgement these days, I actually did exactly what Bianca recommended. I went to Jack, told him I wanted an affair, no strings attached and somehow, he even went for it. No more dancing around the obvious sexual tension, we went for it. As a lover, Jack was the same way he was in life, no nonsense, raw, but sweet, courteous, protective, leaving you with a smile for a while. We had a good time the entire weekend I spent with him. He even took me out dancing, we sang karaoke together, obviously I was at an unfair advantage with my trained voice and long lineage of career musicians in my family, but we had so much fun.

He even took me to some annual country horsey haybale whatever something rather festival, really not the type of thing I would normally even consider going to, but I’ll admit, I had a blast with Jack there. Like a mini vacation in a different world, now that the constant waiting for the other to make a move was over.

Until the weekend fun came to a screeching halt when Monday morning over the delicious breakfast he made for me Jack mentioned he might have found buyers for the two foals he had not promised to me. I nearly choked on my bite before flipping my shit at Jack something fierce. Somehow, I always assumed he was keeping all of them, I mean, I stuck my hands into Sorrel to help bring them into this world, to which he said in his cool as a cucumber way

“Look around Aria, I can’t afford keeping 5 horses. They need food, there will be vet bills and all that jazz. If I kept them just because they are cute and you got attached to them, I’d be steering all of us into rough times, sooner or later. If you can’t afford a vet, you better be a good shot, so your horse won’t have to suffer. Horses do get sick and trust me, they will at the worst times and it always ends up expensive. I don’t want to sell any horses, but I wanna have to shoot them even less!”

Shoot horses?! WTF?! Let’s just say I left on bad terms and not even because he STILL refused to call me by my proper name, and sobbed all the way home to Del Sol Valley.

Ha, little did I know that the biggest bomb was about to drop yet. The fight with Jack was nothing compared to what was already looming over my head, unbeknownst to me.

Finally home, I walked into my parents looking grim, I could tell by looking at mom she had been crying, her makeup was never anything less than perfect. Luckily, they immediately told me it wasn’t about Nick or my kids.

Sooooooo, how to explain something briefly that took them literal hours to tell me, something that apparently had been building up over many years? I must have been so wrapped up in my own life that I missed it all. Plus, I am not very political, it all just bores me to tears so if and when any of that came up, I probably zoned out. Until I couldn’t anymore. Like right now. My parents sat me down and explained the next dystopian disaster to me.

So here is my VERY simplified summary. Pardon me should I forget important details.
Evidently, I had been living under my personal-problems-rock so much that I completely missed that has there been a lot of discord among the occult, meaning vampires, werewolves and witches. They were at war with each other, but when their clashes cost a significant number of human lives, just collateral damage mostly, it caused a serious rift between the occult and the mortals. They started disliking each other, which eventually turned to general hate, few exceptions of course. The mortals called for a proper solution from their politicians, eventually the mortal government met with the leaders of the occults and gave them an ultimatum to make severe changes or face the dire consequences. They had occult hunters on their payroll already. Plenty of them. Skilled and lethal. Don’t ask me where those came from but it sure as hell was convincing enough for all the occult enough to take the deal.

A VERY long story short: the vampires, witches and werewolves had no choice but to oblige. There were so many rules and regulations implemented, too many to remember, let alone list. Damage was done already anyway, distrust on all sides, most humans hated any occults now, who now kept their real identity secret again and generally avoided mortals, kept to themselves in tight-knit communities, and all were forced to reduce their numbers drastically by any means necessary. That was the biggest hit for all of them.
This is also where it becomes relevant to all of us.
My parents suddenly were on a list of mandatory unturns.
So many people I knew were on it, because the call for volunteers didn’t have a good enough turn out. Very few were on a special considerations list, sorted by rank, among them my grandfather Blaine, their fate would be decided once they had run out of other options, and it was clear if the numbers set by the mortal government had been reached. Needless to say that being married to the vampire leader’s daughter helped save grandpa, at least for now, hopefully permanently, as I didn’t even want to think about the alternative. He was old, as a mortal would be at least in his late 80s, if not early 90s and my brother Nick was so close with grandpa, as was I, so … well, you can guess my thoughts on that.

The mandatory unturns had started with the youngest, children who hadn’t reached puberty yet, as they hadn’t manifested as occult yet. Then came the teens, then recent turns. Then certain handpicked naturally born vampires, usually younger ones.

And then the letter came. Not just A letter, THE letter. Shit was about to get real for us.

As much as I had always hated my parents being vamps, now it scared me to think of them being just regular mortals again. They would age. At first drastically in a sort of time-lapse over the next year or so to the age they should be at now, in their 60s. So, not THAT old, both were very fit, barring unforeseen circumstances they should have several more decades of life ahead. Yet, for the life of me I could not imagine my mom with wrinkles. She’ll probably get surgeries until they run out of skin to tuck and stretch. She and dad have been dying their hair since I was a teen anyway. Hell, dad might even get Botox and all. We’ll see.

Anyway, now the letter had made it imminent, summoning mom and dad to the castle for a few weeks to become mortals again. If they even survived this, so far everyone had, even the naturally born vampires who had volunteered, so there was no real reason why they shouldn’t. Still made me uneasy. I worried we would end up being the exception confirming the rule here.

I couldn’t deal with it, the worry, the pressure. I couldn’t sit at home alone, knowing my parents were in Forgotten Hollow going through whatever it takes to un-vampire someone, but whatever it was, it probably didn’t feel like a day at the spa.
I rushed to Bianca, who was a mortal, but her children and now her husband weren’t and had gotten their letters too. By now, the kids were already done and doing great, currently staying with family, as Bianca was about to leave with her husband Gavin who evidently was in the same batch of unturns as my parents. He too had volunteered since his wife and children were mortal.

She refused to let him go through it alone, was worried sick about him, so she went along even though for her it would be weeks of boredom at Castello di Vannucci while Gavin would be laying in a sealed coffin regrowing organs or whatever. Sorry, macabre, I know, but isn’t all of this?

So, I moved on to my cousin Connor and Keira’s, both had already been unturned, Keira in the mandatory batch, so Connor had volunteered for it, he had always hated being a vamp and been in Cesare’s ear about getting unturned since he was a teen. Both survived it extremely well and were chipper about it. Connor was tan as can be, poor alabaster-complected Keira never had managed anything deeper than a barely light beige even before she was turned, during and even now, all she could resort to was self-tanner.

Unlike originally planned they didn’t move to Brindleton Bay, but instead had their dreamhouse built in Newcrest, right by their parents, literally across the street in both directions. Then again, I was living with mine at 30, so I can’t judge here.

They were seriously hardcore planning their wedding now, obviously postponed to a date in the future to make sure all family could be there and none of the invitees were still laying around Cesare’s basement waiting for the cure to finish its ‘magic’ so they could re-emerge as mortals.
Unfortunately for Keira and Connor did being mortal come at a price; Keira remembered the feeling from before she was turned, but it was very new to born-as-vampire Connor; getting tired and exhausted a lot easier than with fangs.

Connor’s long and stressful hospital shifts often took the wind out of him, and Keira was about to be a guest at some famous painter’s vernissage, so she asked me to help her with the wedding preparations by scouting some potential locations, since I had no job, being basically a socialite.

So I went, fully appreciating the irony of the recent divorcee looking at romantic wedding lots. From Sulani all the way to Mount Komorebi, I have probably been there. Eventually my wedding venue hunting trip led me to Tartosa, a place I was very familiar with, thanks to my older brother Nick, who as a teen fell in love with a Tartosian girl and we spent almost every vacation here. While he met his future wife then, I met my best friend in the whole world, Bianca, so I guess it was meant to be for all of us. Old photo incoming. Yeah, this is Bi and I as teens. Bi, is obviously short for Bianca and pronounced like the insect, not the sexual orientation.

Well, Tartosa is also where I met him.

Mauro.

A.k.a. the un-Jack. The anti-Jack. The Jack-opposite. At least in my head he was.

Mauro was a very wealthy heir of old money, his family owned the largest and most famous vineyard in Tartosa, where I was looking at a potential wedding locale for Keira and Connor.

He gave me the tour and while following him around the property while he eloquently explained all the features I could tell instantly that there was something between him and me, aside from the fact that he looked absolutely delicious.

After the tour he asked me to dinner. I had nothing better to do, so I accepted and had a great time. He was clearly well-educated, well-traveled and so charming.

Did I mention how handsome he was? And that date was how I always imagined dates to be. Fancy, romantic, luxurious, great food, great wine, great, soft music, wonderful conversation.

More dates followed and since he wasn’t really bound by schedules, he went with me to some of the other locations on Keira’s list. It was infinitely more fun not doing this alone, even though most wedding event coordinators assumed we were looking for our own wedding.

Mauro had a yacht, a private jet, he knew how to ski, how to play tennis and golf, he was good on horseback, and yes, we started an affair.

Just something casual, neither one of us was really ready to jump into a relationship this this point. No, this is very much unlike me, judge me all day long, but I needed distraction.

Let’s see where all this takes us, the world changing around us and all of us forced to change to.