In a grand chateau, a long established balance of power was being overturned by the regulated movement of small pieces of plastic. A small plastic horse dangled above a black tower, then descended upon it. Mercilessly knocked over sideways, the tower rolled across the board uselessly before being snatched up gleefully by slim fingers.

“White Knight to Black Rook. Checkmate.” A smirk and triumphant toss of the head accompanied Ivy's announcement. Looking at her, it would have been hard to imagine that she was once an abandoned fledgling left to fend for herself. In the months since she'd been scooped up off the streets, her appearance had changed a great deal. She had once been a slim, pale little wretch, now she was a slightly more full figured young woman with clear skin and dark mischievous eyes. In spite of her newest chosen past time, she did not look like a typical chess player. She wore a tight t-shirt over a striped thermal top and a dark denim skirt that brushed the top of her knees. Her hair, once dull and frizzy, had been styled to sit close around her head and colored with streaks of blue against a silky black backdrop. A few strands of her longer fringe framed her face, giving her a more impish appearance than ever.

Blaze made a snort of irritation, sat forward with his forearms resting on his knees and brushed a few strands of his long blonde hair out of his eyes. Unlike Ivy, he had not changed in the slightest. He was still the same tall, imposing vampire he had always been. As usual he was overdressed for the occasion in a dark tailored suit. He hadn't even so much as removed the jacket that gave him the perpetual appearance of formality. “Ridiculous,” he insisted, scanning the board for an open move. 

Sitting back and folding her arms across her chest with the utmost satisfaction, Ivy grinned. “Let me know when you've submitted to your inevitable defeat.”

The ancient vampire's head snapped up suddenly at the mention of the word 'submit'. She'd chosen it purposefully to needle him. Blaze was of the old school, he believed in hierarchy and order. He believed that he was owed both respect and obedience and he had no qualms about ensuring he received both. Ivy, on the other hand, was not of the old school. She probably wouldn't have known the old school if it had walked up to her and boxed her ears. “Yet again, you try my patience, fledgling,” Blaze snapped, his tone becoming crisp and curt as it always did when he felt the need to demonstrate his relative seniority.

Too wrapped up in her victory to be concerned, Ivy's smile grew all the wider. “Yet again you loose at a game you've had hundreds of years to master. How terribly embarrassing for you.”

With the utmost dignity, Blaze rose from the board, making a gesture that would have served to wrap a cape around his body with an impressive swirl, had he been wearing one. There was no cape however so the movement translated into a dramatic swatting motion. “You edge ever closer,” he threatened her direly.

“Yeah? Well you edge ever loser,” Ivy replied pertly, not dissuaded by the fact that her sentence made no sense at all.

“He does not beat you enough,” Blaze sighed, slipping his pale, strong hands into the pockets of his tailored pants and moving out of striking range of the fledgling who, in his often shared estimation, needed a beating more than anyone else on the planet. 

“You are far too concerned with my behavior,” Ivy replied, shifting on the plush couch so that her backside was planted firmly on the back of the couch, her feet on the cushions. Blaze's look of horror at her casual position was almost enough to set off mischievous giggles. She enjoyed tweaking Blaze, perhaps a little too much.

Blaze's pale eyes belied a hint of humor. “That is because your behavior is so deeply disturbing. You treat the furniture as if it were some kind of post modern playground for you to clamber over.”

 

“Half vampire, half monkey, that's me,” Ivy agreed, tumbling backwards off the couch in a move that she'd intended to be a graceful dismount, but which didn't quite work out. She tumbled heels over head and went crashing into the sideboard, dislodging an old duck shaped ceramic turine. It hurtled through the air and was seconds away from an untimely demise when Blaze caught it.

“Half vampire, half incoherent, uncoordinated brat,” he corrected her, placing the turine in a safer location.

“What is going on?” Jon walked into the room briskly. He was a well built vampire, more broad in the chest than his brother, but not quite as tall. He looked as if he had been disturbed in the act of reading something boring. His dark hair flopped into his eyes and the sleeves of his dark woolen sweater had been rolled up, revealing well muscled forearms. He peered at Ivy over a pair of reading spectacles that sat low on his nose. It was an affectation, he didn't need reading glasses to read, but it was a carry over from his life as a mortal, albeit an incongruous one given his penchant for facial piercings. His dark brown eyes were warm, but wary, and for good reason. It was never safe to leave Blaze and Ivy alone for too long together. For all of his warnings, Ivy never seemed to quite grasp that Blaze was as vicious and dangerous a vampire as had ever walked the face of the earth. “I've been giving Blaze a sound spanking in chess,” she declared gleefully. “That's why he's standing.”

“Control your wench, brother, before I am forced to do it myself,” Blaze said in bored tones.

“Control your brother, Jon, before I am forced to do it myself,” Ivy echoed Blaze childishly. Her triumph had gone straight to her head and she was being even more mischievous than usual.

“Ivy, enough,” Jon growled. Suffice to say, her behavior did not please the vampire who had taken her as his own, both as a lover and as a fledgling in need of guidance.

“I actually think she's behaving worse than ever,” Blaze noted with something of a sidelong look at Ivy. “Have you been keeping up her discipline? Would you like me to give you some pointers?”

“He doesn't need pointers from you,” Ivy said, her tone dripping with snark, her lip curling with derision at the very idea of Blaze having any input as to how she was treated. Knowing him he'd probably have her whipped from sunrise to sunset.

Jon sighed and ran a hand through his hair, looking from Blaze to Ivy and back again with a long suffering expression on his handsome features. “Some days I think it would be best just to let you two have at each other and let the chips fall where they may.”

It was Blaze's turn to smile broadly. “A capital idea,” he purred, meeting Ivy's somewhat panicked gaze.

“No!” she gasped.

Blaze took a deliberate step towards her that saw her pushing back towards the sideboard, thoroughly dismayed that there was nowhere else to go. “Why not, little vampire? You're not afraid are you?”

“Please Blaze,” Jon shook his head at his older blood brother. “Resist the urge to toy with her.”

Blaze's expression was one of pure devilry. “One of these days, little brother, I will get my hands on her, and I will enjoy it immensely.”

“You're not allowed. I'm not yours, I'm his,” Ivy pointed out quickly in an effort to dissuade Blaze from taking that dangerous line of thinking any further.

“Technically, you belong to us all,” Jon informed her, as he had done many times before. “Any one of your elders is in a position to mete out punishment as they see fit.”

“That's stupid,” Ivy wrinkled her nose as she picked herself up off the floor and wished she was taller. Standing near Jon and Blaze made her feel dwarfed.

“It takes a clan to raise a fledgling,” Blaze intoned.

“Ugh,” Ivy said, waving her arms in disgust. “I'm a grown ass woman. I don't need to be raised. You all really need to get over your obsession with raising things. Get a puppy or something.”

“A puppy would be slightly less generally destructive than you,” Jon teased her.

“But you can paper train puppies. Can we paper train her?” Blaze spoke over her head. To Ivy's immense chagrin, Jon's lips crinkled in amusement.

“Crate training might be a better option. That way she can be kept out of trouble when there's no-one to keep an eye on her.”

“Goddammit!” Ivy stomped her foot. “I don't need to be kept an eye on. I am perfectly capable of entertaining myself without burning the house down.”

Jon and Blaze exchanged humorous looks. “I like the crate idea,” Blaze said, smiling.

“I will kick you if you keep talking about me like I am a dog,” Ivy declared.

“Will you now?” Blaze turned to her, an expression of anticipation establishing itself on his pale features. “Please do.”

“Are you really going to just let him hit me?” Ivy demanded, looking towards Jon.

“Perhaps it would teach you that you have to show respect to everyone,” Jon said quite seriously.

“Oh for...” Ivy threw her hands up in the air. “I am better at chess than him! What is it going to take to get some respect around here?”

“You want respect?” Jon's brow raised at her.

“Yes!”

“Try showing some.”

Rolling her eyes, Ivy stamped out of the room in a high temper. The triumph she'd felt in besting Blaze  had all but completely evaporated. It seemed that no matter what she did, they would see her as a lesser creature, someone to be patronized and threatened with spankings. “Ivy.” Jon was quick on her heels. He caught her by the elbow and spun her to face him. “What is with the childish attitude?”

“I don't have a childish attitude. You are treating me like a child,” Ivy pointed out. “You even got fucking Blaze of all people to baby sit me!”

“Don't swear at me, Ivy.” Jon's usually mild expression was growing grim quickly.

“Why? Will you wash my mouth out with soap and water? Send me to bed without any dinner?” In spite of her protestations that her treatment was unfair, Ivy's behavior was quickly devolving into puerile taunts.

“No,” Jon shook his head at her. “I will take your pants down and give you a damned good thrashing.”

Ivy blushed to the roots of her hair. They were in a common hallway and anybody could have heard Jon's embarrassing threat. His reassurance that spanking was a normal way of life in the coven had yet to properly reassure her. “And what's going to happen to Blaze? Nothing! He can do whatever he wants.”

“Yes, he can, he has earned that right. He is also not behaving like a little brat.” Jon's expression was growing more severe with every word that passed his lips. “I have work to do Ivy, important work. I can't be pulled away every fifteen minutes because you've decided to throw yourself into the furniture.”

It was Ivy's turn to narrow her eyes. “Well if you don't have time for me, don't worry about me. I'm fine on my own.”

“You are not.” Jon sighed deeply. “Ivy, please, be reasonable,” he said, trying to appeal to her better nature.

 Ivy was all out of better nature. “Leave me alone!” She shouted at the top of her lungs. “You always take his side!” With another shriek of rage, she took off at high speed into the depths of the coven's stately home, leaving Jon standing in the hallway, a tic starting to play in his jaw.

“Five minutes and a switch,” Blaze's irritatingly calm tones came from the doorway. “Maybe ten.”

“You can't just beat good behavior into someone,” Jon shook his head, swiping the useless glasses off his face.

“Sure you can,” Blaze disagreed. “I do it all the time.”

“And how long do any of your relationships last?” Jon snapped the question at his older brother, knowing full well that Blaze had never been able to maintain a relationship beyond a few years.

“That was a little below the belt,” Blaze noted, smiling as if he were not at all disturbed by Jon's snark. His eyes hard hardened however, and the smile did not reach them.

Jon shrugged. “It was the truth, Blaze, you can't just beat someone into submission every time they irritate you. Eventually you get tired of them or they get tired of you.”

“You're wrong,” Blaze stated arrogantly. “The relative short livedness of my intimate relationships has nothing to do with my approach to discipline and everything to do with the fact that I have all eternity to play with and I do not intend to spend it with one person.” His speech had become stiff and formal, just as it always did whenever someone came close to a nerve.

“You speak as if you have no idea what it is to love.”

Blaze's pale eyes glowed. “Love is a human emotion. It is designed to keep the little meat creatures pair bonded long enough to reproduce. We have no need for love, Jon. Those of us who imagine they do are deluded and clinging to shreds of a humanity they will never regain. You're trying to play happily ever after with Ivy as if she's some stray waif of a human. She's not human, she's a vampire and one day she will tire of you and she will leave you for someone capable of knowing her for what she is.”

“And who might that someone be?” Jon asked, his eyes narrowing at Blaze. “You, perhaps?”

The suggestion was waved away with a foppish hand. “Don't flatter yourself. I don't want your leavings.”

“I need to finish my taxes,” Jon sighed, tired of arguing.

Blaze snorted with total derision. “Love. Taxes. Next you'll be concerned with death. Stop living in a delusion, little brother. You are not a human, and neither is she.”

Whilst the brothers argued the finer points of eternal love or lack thereof, Ivy had retreated to her favorite sanctum. Nobody had told her that she wasn’t allowed there, but she had a feeling that she probably wasn't meant to be. Weeks ago she'd found a quiet passage that lead to a series of rooms that didn't seem to be used very often at all. Unlike the rest of the mansion, which had been updated with the passing years, these rooms were full of antique furniture that dated back beyond the histories Ivy had read at school and seemed to have come straight from the Middle Ages.

She ran her fingers over the cool arm of a chair that was not held together by glue or by nails, but by interlocking wedges of wood. Other pieces were carved with ornate Latin style symbols that escaped her entirely. These rooms were heavy with the weight of history, and Ivy found herself marveling at the sheer number of years that had passed prior to her own birth and subsequent death. The stillness of the place, combined with the tall vaulted ceilings reminded her of a roped off section of a museum.

“Hello.”

Ivy jumped and whirled around to see the slim figure of a noble woman standing in a far doorway. It was Madeline, the matriarch of the line Ivy had joined when Jon had taken her in. “Sorry,” she apologized pre-emptively. Madeline was ancient, but beautiful, with wide eyes that had seen much more than Ivy could imagine.

“No need to apologize,” Madeline replied graciously, approaching with a smile. Ivy had not had many opportunities to speak with Madeline, but she was the maker of both Blaze and Jon and as such, she had to be very old indeed, though her appearance was entirely timeless. She always wore the most elegant dresses Ivy had ever seen. At that moment she was wearing a classic cream beaded dress after the popular fashions of the 1920's. The slim fitting creation with its fringes and beads complimented her figure perfectly. All that was missing from her outfit was a cigarette in a cigarette holder and a pair of gloves.

Ivy had always liked Madeline. Unlike Blaze who felt the need to remind her of his seniority at every turn, Madeline never seemed to need to remind anyone of who she was. She had a quiet grace and elegant strength that everyone respected, even Ivy, who made a point of not respecting much at all.

“I..er.. wasn't doing anything,” Ivy spoke quickly, lifting her hands to show that she hadn't been touching anything she wasn't supposed to.

Madeline's cheeks dimpled with amusement. “I am sure you weren't.”

Letting out a sigh of relief as she realized that she was not in trouble, Ivy explained herself. “It's just usually people don't want me to be places, or they say I'm doing something bad.”

“That must be tedious,” Madeline commiserated.

“It is tedious,” Ivy agreed.

Madeline regarded the younger vampire for a long moment, then smiled. “I feel like going for a walk. Care to come with me?”

“I don't think I'm allowed,” Ivy said sadly.

“I think you'll be allowed with me,” Madeline winked.

It would have been rude to refuse her, Ivy reasoned to herself, so the two vampiresses left the Chateau and began walking in the extensive gardens. “I love this place,” Madeline said conversationally, stopping to caress the petals of a rose.

“It's nice,” Ivy agreed somewhat half-heartedly. She was feeling very ill at ease, not because of Madeline's presence, but because of Jon's irritation. He was so keen to keep her under control and so quick to become annoyed when she did not respond to being locked down like a prisoner. “Thank you for letting me stay here,” she said, remembering her manners.

“You are quite welcome,” Madeline replied. “Are you happy?”

The direct question caught Ivy off guard. She looked into Madeline's eyes with a rueful smile. “Most of the time,” she said honestly.

“Good, that is all anyone can hope for.”

Madeline was more than nice, she was a straight talker. Ivy liked that. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” Madeline inclined her head and waited.

Ivy paused for a moment, trying to formulate the question diplomatically. Jon would probably kill her if she angered Madeline. “Did you really make Blaze and Jon? They're so different.”

“Yes,” Madeline nodded. “Though I chose Blaze several centuries before Jon. It was a different time and different skills were needed. The world has become a much softer place in recent years. Blaze I chose for his strength and intelligent ruthlessness, Jon for his ability to understand the world as it was at the turn of the century.”

“So Blaze is hundreds of years older? That's why he is so arrogant then,” Ivy mused aloud. She blushed when she caught Madeline's eye and realized that she may have unintentionally insulted her. “Sorry. I didn't mean all older vampires are arrogant, it's just Blaze is always on at Jon.”

“You think they're bad these days?” Madeline smiled. “They did not always get on as well as they do now,” she reminisced. “When I first made Jon he worshiped Blaze, but as he grew stronger and desired to go his own way they began to fight. For a time it was necessary to separate them entirely.”

“Why? Did they hurt each other?”

Madeline paused for a moment, as if she were looking for a tactful way of putting things. “Blaze has always been fond of Jon, but he's never had any qualms about enforcing his rule of law.”

“Well that hasn't changed,” Ivy said emphatically, making Madeline smile in amusement.

“No, but Jon has. I am very proud of what he has become. He has strength but also compassion.”

“And Blaze?”

“Blaze is what he is. He has always carved his own path” Madeline said diplomatically.

Ivy processed that information silently. So Blaze had come first but had clearly been overshadowed in his maker's eyes by Jon. No wonder Blaze spent so much time patronizingly telling Jon how wrong he was about everything. He was trying to make up for what they both knew, that Jon was the favorite and he was a relic of a world long gone by. For the first time since she laid eyes on Blaze, Ivy felt some empathy for the arrogant vampire. “He's not so bad,” she blurted, blushing slightly for a reason she could not explain.

“He certainly has his charms,” Madeline agreed knowingly.

“He always threatens to hit me though,” Ivy confided.

The matriarch cocked her head to the side. “Why might that be, do you think?”

Ivy shrugged. “Maybe it's his whole need to establish dominance thing?”

“Maybe it's the fact that there is a half wild fledgling crashing about the place,” Madeline winked.

Ivy blushed deeply. So her behavior had been noted even at the highest levels. No wonder Jon was so mad. She wasn't just being bad, she was making him look bad by default. The revelation was followed by a silence that bordered on the uncomfortable for a moment or two, then the conversation abruptly turned to other things, the pleasantness of the roses, the uncommon clemency of the weather, the general niceness of all the things that were. Ivy was barely paying attention anyhow. As they made meaningless small talk, her mind was whirring between two targets, the warmth and strength of Jon, and the wild abandon that was Blaze.