An Ancient Roman General on a Plane
(OR A Snake on the Red-Eye to  Chicago)
By LastScorpion
For neverbeen2spain's Snakes on a Plane  Challenge
(This story goes along with "After the End" -- 
_http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1734618/1/_
(http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1734618/1/) )
Disclaimer:  "Forever Knight" and all its characters belong to Sony
or CBS or Columbia/TriStar or somebody, not me. James Parriott will
have my eternal gratitude for having made them up. This is just for
fun.  Okay to  archive.

LaCroix had never been one of those vampires who haunted one
location forever. Native earth meant next to nothing to the Roman
Legions, and he would  be a General of the Legions forever (not
"until the day he died"; LaCroix was  not going to die.) 

Since Toronto, though, he had been more restless, more aimless, than
ever before. He chose to blame it on his own near-death experience,
rather than on anything else whatsoever. It had been quite a surprise
to find that being staked  through the heart and set on fire was not,
in fact, fatal to LaCroix these days.  He wondered if anything was.
The question might have been answered if Nicholas  hadn't been so
distracted. The boy had been a warrior, after all --beheading 
certainly should have been the next step. LaCroix had always had
great respect  for Nicholas's skill with a sword. 

And why exactly was he brooding about Nick again? Dead is dead.

LaCroix slid up the little window shade and looked down upon the
earth. The moon painted the clouds below in shades of gray. Tiny
glittering lights of human  habitation studded the dark black land
between them. The sun wouldn't rise for  hours. Not that it would
matter much if it did.

He'd traveled all over the world, these last ten years. He kept in
touch with Janette, even though she was not precisely one of his
anymore. He told himself that he was merely reasserting control over
someone who should never  have been cut loose from him, but he knew
that wasn't it. She knew it, too. It didn't matter. 

There was plenty of time for them to work it out, whatever it was.
More  time than he'd ever anticipated, in fact -- what with one thing
and another,  he'd been caught out in full sunlight twice in those
ten years. That was foolish almost to the point of suicidal. Although
not anymore, apparently. He'd been fine. His skin had barely even
blistered. 

It was a little disquieting, if he thought too much about it. As a
Roman,  he believed in the depths of his being that suicide was
always an option, if life could not be borne. That had always been
part and parcel of the taking of slaves -- anyone who could not stand
it was always free to kill himself. Janette  had been a slave all her
days; he was a better master than any other she'd ever  had. She'd be
fine; she always would be fine. Oh, she might fall in love with a 
virile firefighter and let him impregnate her, thereby regaining her
mortality  -- it was well-understood, at least by LaCroix, and
nothing to worry about. Even  that had ended in blood and death, and
a reinstatement of order, of the status  quo -- the way things were,
the way things should be.

Nicholas, though, had never been able to see suicide as the
honorable, reasonable, obvious path. LaCroix had been fooled, had
misunderstood for many centuries -- the Crusader's weird, cross-based
religion was imbedded in him bone-deep, a poison for all time. Even
at the end, when he saw that he could not continue as he was, he
needed LaCroix to....

Not. Thinking. About. Nick. Looking out the window.

Or watching the sudden drama unfolding in the center aisle. The
stewardess screamed her second scream. The unshaved man grasping her
to himself gestured violently again, with -- was that a serpent he
was holding in his hand? Yes. It  rattled angrily, and the woman
screamed until the man struck her in the temple  and rocked her head
back on her graceful, swan-like neck.

"Now that I got your attention," shouted the man, in an uncouth,
backwoods sort of an accent, "y'all gotta listen to me! Anybody makes
a false move, and blondie here gets it!" The stewardess -- flight
attendant these days, LaCroix supposed -- looked as if she were about
to try another scream, and the man put  the snake's head right into
her thick hair. "I wouldn't," he told her, rough and  low. She didn't.

The yokel went on and on about something. He seemed to object to the
current manner of his country's governance, but LaCroix couldn't be
bothered to  pay attention to all the nitwit's words. The scent of
fear that arose from the other passengers was delightful; LaCroix
leaned back and savored it until he realized this unwashed barbarian
meant to force the pilots to crash the plane. 

Newfound immunity to flame and sunlight notwithstanding, that would
be damnably inconvenient. LaCroix sighed, removed his seat belt, and
stood up. He focused in on the zealot's heartbeat.

"Put down the snake and we'll talk," LaCroix lied.

Mmm. The hijacker wavered. LaCroix didn't think he was a Resister,
just  dumb and driven. He insinuated himself smoothly out into the
aisle. "Come now. I know exactly what you need. Why won't you let me
help you?"

There it was. Perfect heartbeat. This would work fine. LaCroix tuned
in on every other heartbeat onboard. "Listen to me. Look at me," he
commanded. Every living soul complied. He had them all. "Put down the
snake," LaCroix repeated.

"Put. Daown. Thuh. Snek." Backwoods Billy put his rattler down. It
darted for the safety of the shadows, but LaCroix was faster than a
rattlesnake. He stepped on its head, and the slow reptilian heartbeat
ceased. The blonde flight attendant and every single passenger had
wide round eyes fastened immovably on  LaCroix. They were in his
hands. He could do whatever he liked.

LaCroix let his fangs out and grabbed the idiot. He drank him down
to the last drop, and moaned with the goodness of it. His victim had
lived a stupid life full of dumb rage and frustration, true, but he
was so young and full of physical vitality! 

People were barely beginning to shake themselves free of the
vampire's control as LaCroix finished. He had them back again in a
twinkling. "This man  was killed by a bite from his own snake," he
told them all. "The serpent was killed when its master fell upon it."
He dropped the empty corpse onto the reptile's body, to add
verisimilitude to the tale.

One hundred and fifteen heads nodded in unison. Good.

LaCroix resumed his seat, and the flight proceeded uneventfully.

_lastscorpion2@aol.com_ (mailto:lastscorpion2@aol.com) Last of the
Scorpions