Perilous Partnership by Ariel Tachna Page B

vampire and the strength of the wizard? You and Jean are another perfect example of that.”
    “It‟s certainly something we can investigate,” Raymond agreed, making a note on his pad. “What else?”
    “How often can a vampire feed from his partner without weakening the wizard?” Jean asked immediately. “Alain and Orlando don‟t count because the Aveu de Sang protects Alain, but I shouldn‟t have been able to feed as often as I did during the war, and yet I did without any harm to you.”
    “I noticed the same thing,” Sebastien said. “I don‟t feed as often now as I did then, but I don‟t ever get the sense that I‟m weakening Thierry by taking what I need.”
    “Nor do I feel weakened by his feeding,” Thierry confirmed.
    “Got it,” Raymond said.
     
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    Ariel Tachna
     
    “On a purely practical level, we know that a vampire feeding from his partner helps maintain the magical equilibrium, but how widespread is that effect?” Thierry asked. “Does Sebastien feeding from me here help address an imbalance in Tahiti, or do we need partnerships scattered throughout the world for it to be an effective way to address the issue?”
    “We don‟t need them at all now that the war is over and we can do our jobs again, but certainly the job of maintaining balance has grown easier over the past year,” Raymond replied. “I‟ve noted that as well.”
    “Obviously this isn‟t an issue for us at this point, but can the partnerships function on a blood level without having to spill over to a sexual level?” Alain asked. “We didn‟t know what we were getting into, and I wouldn‟t change things between Orlando and myself, but that‟s asking a lot of a wizard or a vampire to take on a lover as well as a partner. It was a lot during the war, but we had the necessity of winning the war as a reason to accept a lot of things we might have otherwise questioned.”
    “Which begs the question of whether the personal side of the relationship affects the magical side,” Raymond added. “Would a partnership predicated purely on an exchange of blood have the same power as one that has a more personal component? My guess is that while it might be possible, the more complete the relationship, the more powerful the bond, and the more powerful the effects. We saw that when we first realized that the exchange of blood could affect the magical balance. It worked when it was just feeding, but it worked even better when the couple started having sex too.”
    No one asked who the couple was. It did not matter, and some things were best left private.
    “So what else?”
    “You mentioned geography in terms of the magical equilibrium, but what about in terms of finding partners in the first place?” Thierry asked. “Most of us found our partners here in Paris, and even those who didn‟t found their partners nearby, like Magali and Luc in Amiens. At the time, I was too thrilled to have the help against Serrier to question it, but does it seem a little simplistic to you?”
    “What are you suggesting? That we have different partners somewhere else who we won‟t ever meet?” Orlando scoffed. “I don‟t buy that.”
    “You probably don‟t,” Thierry allowed, thinking about how far Orlando had come since the early days of the alliance, “except think about how unlikely it was for you to trust Alain the way you did. I‟m not saying you misjudged him, because you obviously didn‟t. But everyone commented on it at the time.
    You‟d gone from being almost a complete loner to having an Avoué in a matter of days. Hell, almost a matter of hours.”
     
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    “It‟s not unheard of for a vampire to form an attachment that quickly,”
    Sebastien said, thinking of his own Avoué, dead nearly four hundred years, “because we can sense so much about a person from the blood we drink. Yes, Orlando had more reason than most to be distrustful, but that doesn‟t change the fact that he could