11 Chapter Eleven- Ally
"Who are you?" Igor asked a very dark figure lurking in the shadows. Igor stared at a crimson cloak hooded figure, crouching towards the ground of the alleyway, whom he had noticed minutes before.
He was paranoid that Jack or his accomplices had followed him out of the mansion due to the nature of what had happened the night before. He was on his way to look for more literature and or research about the Genalucards at Ophelia's Books, and was within distance of Mistress Maisie and her brother, Dash.
He told Maisie he needed to check something outside in which she agreed that it would be okay because that was part of his job as their servant.
The figure pulled their hood down with long, skinny, sharp nails; revealing a very familiar, but also unfamiliar face to Igor. He could not for the life of him remember who this man was.
He had striking red irises; blood colored even, similar to Igor's and messy, wavy, curly, ebony hair. His smile was devilish, stricken with sharp teeth, but also the smile a father might have. A memory inducing scent of orange, rosemary and cedar, hit Igor's nose, just for a second he saw a blink of it.
The man had grinned from ear to ear, the type when one sees a comforting, familiar face. What tore Igor was that this man had no wings visible but looked very much like a Genalucard.
"I cannot reveal myself to you, but I want you to be aware of my presence. I have been watching you for a very long time. I've been watching in the shadows in case there was any need for me." His accent was thick, as if from a European country.
The man smiled again. " If there's any need for me use this little bell. I can be of service in any situation and in due time I will reveal who I am and what my goals are." Igor raised an eyebrow.
The man pulled out a miniature calling bell similar to one that Maisie used but was red and didn't seem to make any sound. This was before Igor could reject or even answer, without any warning, a gust of wind blew Igor's hat into a puddle behind them and as soon as he turned around the man had vanished and the bell was sitting neatly on the asphalt in the alleyway.
Igor quickly grabbed the bell and hid it in his pockets as to not bring on any suspicion. He wanted to tell Mistress Maisie about it but not anyone else, it wasn't for her brother to know, hurriedly, he went back to his post at the front of the stairway, leading up to the antique bookstore, the last of it's kind due to the digital age. He didn't go in as he thought he was out of time to search for any favored books.
----
Igor stared into the distance at the clouds. He had worked in the coal mines most of his life be he didn't remember his own childhood or lack thereof, before that. It was as if, someone wiped his memory clean, but due to circumstances, he couldn't change that. He wondered who the man was who wanted to lend his aid to him and what kind of help he could offer.
-----
"Look Igor, look what I got!" Maisie was happy with her finds of 'Through the Looking Glass', by Lewis Carroll, 'Mary Poppins' by P.L. Travers, and 'Howl's Moving Castle' by Dianna Wynne Jones. The condition of the books was 'fair' but Igor could tell she spent a lot of money on them, but that's normal for a rich family's child, and only daughter.
Dash, her younger brother laughed and moved his hand through his dark wavy hair.
"Why should Igor care?" He rolled his eyes.
Maisie rolled her eyes back.
"Well I don't know, jeez, take the wind out of my sails why don't you?" She grabbed her younger brother by his jacket's cuff.
"Hey this is a new jacket!" He said, annoyed. The jacket was that of faux red leather as real leather had become an illegal item due to new laws.
"Let's just get going." She looked to Igor to bring the car around. He was interested in those books as well and had hoped she read them with him. He never got many chances to hear new stories. As per law, it wouldn't do for the slave class to actually be educated. That is, to keep them uneducated as to make them not realize the need to become organized.
The truth was that the Alucards didn't have any of their own groups like the 'National Woman's Party' or 'The Black Panthers' like in the time past. The problem was that they weren't even considered human, despite their merged genetics. They were considered a humanoid, that is, a sub human. They lacked very many advocates that favored them, and even advocates like the 'White Angels' weren't even there for the Alucards, just on paper.
Igor had to walk to get their family's electric Cadillac Escalade, which was considered an antique car, purely for city driving through the parts of Seattle that hadn't been updated with the times, like the antique bookstore or an ancient pizza parlor like the North Lake Tavern or the Delancey.
Seattle kept with the times for the most part, adding electric car chargers and hydrogen fuel stations at every convenient corner as the state banned the sale of pure gasoline cars in 2035. The only thing was that there was a ban on flying cars anywhere near the airspace, and limited those to outside city parking at an airfield near by in the in between city Sea-Tac.
The city did provide buses and shuttles from the airfield, and one could take the Sounder to the city, but the Lennox family always opted to take their cozy car.
The city's landscape largely remained the same, incredibly high hills leading to the west side by Elliot bay where the Space Needle, Pike's Place Market and Ferris Wheel were or the Pudget Sound to the north or on the east side where one could take the renewed (for the 6th time) World War II amphibious landing craft, duck tour boats on Lake Washington.
--
From the parking garage on 34th Street Igor brought the Caddy to Lennox siblings, one who was bored and impatient, the other ambitiously reading Howl's Moving Castle.
"Took you long enough, Igor." Dash rolled his emerald eyes. Igor just nodded.
"Well you could of just played on your smart glasses, brother."
"I left them at home!" Dash sulked, looking to the side, holding his face with his left arm. He could be a very spoiled teenager, never knowing how to advocate for himself for something to do.
"Well why did you even come with me if you didn't want to get a book?" Maisie smiled at him.
"I just wanted to go out for once.... Mother and father only stay in the house all day or dad goes off to a meeting on occasion. I was bored!" Dash pulled his wavy blonde bangs out of his face.
"Why didn't you just take one of your girlfriends?"
"They've teamed the whole school up against me for being a womanizer! I've been basically banned from being with any of the gorgeous girls!" Dash sulked some more.
Maisie scoffed. She didn't have that kind of popularity in high school, she merely had her friends Genevieve and Leslie.
"You'll be okay, sometimes the largest treasures are overlooked." She glanced over at Igor who was opening the car door for them. He is a gem, she thought.
"Girls are treasures? I never thought of them that way." Dash pondered.
"We'll talk about it at lunch, we should get in before traffic starts to honk." Maisie noticed a few cars struggling to get around.
----
"Where would you like to have lunch Mistress?"
"What about the pizza place, Dash?" Maisie didn't really dare to ask Igor where he wanted to eat despite wanting to. As a servant on the town, he was given a meal out of the house.
"My favorite is the Delancey. Their thin crust is to die for." One of the two remaining historical restaurants in Seattle, Delancey makes wood fired pizza using their long fermented dough. Igor always enjoyed going there with the Lennox family, because of the smell of fresh pizza right out of the oven, comprising of the scents of mozzarella, tomatoes and pepperoni.
On occasion, something would smell of garlic which he could not stand, not surprisingly.
On the way to the Delancey, Igor became suspicious that there was a vehicle tailing their car. The reason he found it 'suspicious' was that it was a car that was at the book store before, and despite being a ten minute drive to a different part of town the vehicle was still following them. He still pulled over to park at the Delancey as to not be still on the road if anything were to happen.
