as written by Lialore and Emperor Jester
The lanterns weren’t giving off enough light to show the silent, stony beauty of Lumiena Square at night. Emily pushed the shadows in anyway. They consumed, eating the orange glows and smothering the abandoned marketplace until pitch black reigned. But not in her kingdom, she could still see perfectly. Her figure stood motionless in a tall, damp alleyway. Waiting.
At around 2AM the door to the small trinket shop across the square from her would open in a tinkle of bells. The noise would be crisp and clear in the air that was settled, ready for sleep with the rest of Merveilleux. Then, out she would come, wearing her woollen coat, the collar turned up against the slight chill. The girl with the red hair. Emily had been fixated on her for quite a while – but it had to be perfect, and so she had waited. Tonight she would get her scarlet kiss.
It came as she expected, in that merry, metallic farewell. The girl with the red hair paused for a moment, taking in the unexpected darkness, then began fumbling with the keys. But as her tired fingers struggled without light, Emily was already on the move. She flitted through the square without a noise in inspection. She was high, then low - west, east, north, south - then very, very close... then distanced again, and stopped; her inky hair a wild tangle, it was struggling to keep up. All in the time of a few of the girl’s heartbeats – which were quicker than usual, she was already frightened.
Emily frowned. The clinking of the keys on the lock was still going on even though the girl had brought forth her phone screen. With a twist of her lips, Emily brought forth a spider. Not a large one, it would fit comfortably in her palm. Its legs crept out from the keyhole, two spindly threads of dread. Then four. Five. Six, seven, eight.
The girl with the red hair screamed as they tickled her hand. And then Emily laughed, out loud, purposefully audible, complimenting the echo of the shriek. The unnatural light from the phone screen was whirled in her direction, but completely swallowed by shadows before it could illuminate much.
“H- hello?” – the girl’s breathing was ragged, terrified, beautiful.
Emily melted away, moving backwards swiftly. She’d let the girl compose herself, lock the door, be on her way. Because playing with your food was fun.
Up above, the rooftops called to her. The moonlight offering to bathe her in power, set her veins alight and bless her task.
With a content, unnerving little sigh, Emily leapt upwards. The chase had only just begun.
____
The streets were an empty, vast network of rank odors and hopelessness, and now, the following night after leaving the Lessard mansion, Nox had finally decided to throw abandon to the rules and regulation. He'd tasted of man flesh and sanguine once more, for the first time in innumerable moons, and his desire for it was a burning, cold passion in his long dead heart. Seeming to glide along the alley ways and labyrinthine corridors of Lutetia's middle sector, nestled between the high rise mansions of old and the decrepit slums. It wasn't the easiest to hunt here without, without risk, but people also thought they were safer here.
An icy sneer with an even icier scoff would echo down the halls of the street.
Eyes floating in the darkness, two pale blue orbs, shimmering like shards of dirty, reflective light. Freezing shadows swirled around his impressive physical frame, a giant of undeath and frozen wrath, closer to seven feet tall than to six, winter seeming to follow his every step.
A breathless breath. Tasting the scents of the air. Fear. Desperation. Malice. Ill-content. Blood lust. Oddly enough...joy? It made the raven haired third boy pause for a moment, pupils narrowing to slits, eyes bulging wide. He'd latch onto the scent of fear, white leather trench billowing around his almost regal, feral, contradictory form. A single, black nail placed on the brick walls as he stalked, Nox's talon letting lose an ear retching screech, leaving a deep gouge in the stonework. Cold death was on the prowl.
____
She was up and away. Moonlight caressed her, allowing the most individual trait of House Roux to shine – quite literally. Glowing a soft blue were the veins that twisted beneath that translucent skin, streams of the dead.
Emily was in no rush. She knew where the girl with the red hair lived. And it was such a beautiful night.
Her bare feet picked their way gracefully across the mostly flat rooftops, taking their leaps from one to another when her stalk was interrupted by streets below. Tilting her head to the sky, she sighed, then twirled in her own insane delight. It had been a while since she’d been able to hunt for herself. Ms Roux was a greedy, greedy ‘woman.’ But this night was hers, all hers. Emily’s eyes, the same colour as the sky, were dancing from one star to the next – until they caught a dark shape shooting across, far above the rooftops and heading out of the city. She stopped and leaned forward, as though this helped her squinting. The figure was far but its form undeniable. Those wings; shaped exactly like a bat’s but only immense. They were Alexandre’s – she knew. Her slightly blue lips drew back from her teeth in a hiss. What was he doing that they didn’t trust her to know? It was unf-
Her torso twisted, arms held ready, expression inquisitive as she stared with a tilted head.
The noise continued, that curdling screech of two hard materials in a fight to the death.
A breeze passed by, ruffling the white fabric of her dress and pushing the sound off course some.
Her appearance darkened after she’d thought things through. Then she was off in a blur, from a concrete standstill to a flowing symphony.
It didn’t take her long to find the source.
She kept her distance, watching the figure whilst it was still a speck. By the strange, dancing darkness that surrounded them, and the chill that she could already sense – her guess was vampire. Perhaps he had already sensed her. They were getting dangerously close to her red haired girl’s house. Hers.
Defiantly, she came to a standstill and stood square. The shadows began to grow, all light being sucked out of her surroundings. Within a few seconds a sphere of black surrounded her, and then, with some effort she pushed the darkness out. It shot down the street, overwhelming everything. It bled at intersections but continued to charge. It was a while before it passed over the strange vampire, rolling out before him like deathly clouds. She doubted it would impair his vision, this was their world, after all. And that was her girl, after all.
Her position stayed the same; shoulders back, feet slightly apart with one in front of the other, stare ahead and expectant, waiting for him to turn.
____
Stealth and deception forgotten, Nox would indeed turn with an wrath filed snarl, cold and yet passionate with fury and disbelief, blue eyes wide and shining with a hate he normally reserved for his enemies. For this is what he first assumed, an interloper, a remnant of his family's purge, come to hunt down the disgraced and oft-hidden prodigal son, forever wishing to eliminate the Caer line from existence. They'd hunted him for fifty years, and another night would not be the last, no, especially now that there may be rumors about his visit out of the city...
Yet they had been so careful, him and that maggot who had led him...
Still, with glaringly bright white attire, long raven hair dancing in an unfelt breeze, Nox would indeed turn to her, wrenching his single claw from the wall, plaster and sand like grit raining down on the alley between him and his foe, or at least what he interpreted as one. "Who are you to attack me so?!" A voice filled with indignation and rage boomed out from his nearly seven foot frame.
____
She stayed motionless - too still. Her conjured darkness continued to keep them covered from any unlikely, preying, weak eyes. There wasn’t much space between them, she could reach him in a mere second if she wanted to. But she had no intentions of getting too close.
When the rubble had settled and the demanding voice’s echo had faded, she levelled her gaze on him steadily. She wasn’t intending to seem intimidating, in fact, the idea that she could seem menacing to this particular creature was laughable. It was funny how such a mundane thing as height still had its place in a mind gifted with supernatural power.
She wasn’t one for keeping up appearances, but even she was fairly certain as to who this was. The last Caer, and an apparently reasonably paranoid one too. Her head cocked to the side, intrigued. She wanted to play, but she’d already tarnished her house’s reputation enough. Mrs Roux was running out of polish.
But she had already decided that tonight was hers.
Emily seemed to purr. It was an amused noise.
“I have a message for you” she said, her slightly blue lips curling into a sardonic smirk.
____
A message? Surely this had to be a jest of some kind. While her 'attack', if it could even be called such a thing, had been aimed at him, he wasn't so blind as to not notice its obscuring effect. It was meant to block out sight, no snuff out his undead life. He could understand, it was true enough. Privacy in this city, especially with their kind, was both a necessity and a constant desire. He understood completely, right away.
Nox had not been raised a fool.
"What sort of message? If you are here as a delivery girl of sorts, then get on with it. I'm a tad peckish and was in the middle of a hunt, girl." Something struck him as off about this female, immediately. The air that had floated around Sanina wasn't present. There was no soft malice, no aura of noble arrogance and fel cunning. Sometimes the curse affected the minds, such as with his family. Arguably insane. She reminded him of his long slain sister. "Well?"
____
Emily did a bad job of trying to hide her slight start at the moment he mentioned hunting. Her gaze drifted, swooped down the street and to the next right turn off. As if on cue, the sound of distant footsteps drifted into audibility. Small heels on cobbles. The girl with the red hair.
Her impression changed from playful to protective. Emily had never been a subtle person, not even in her human life, and so, her delicacy had been further lost in the amplification of other, more dominant traits after the change. Her lips pressed together as she regarded him.
“This area is reserved. You’re out of bounds” she said smoothly, regaining some control and tossing her hair in a quite childish attempt to seem eminent.
And so, she began digging her own demise. Her lies could get her into serious trouble, but she failed to see that, yet again.
____
A menacing smile would quickly flit across his face, before vanishing just as quickly, his own ears picking up the footsteps. "I see. Well, that is a shame indeed. If only I belonged to a house that had set hunting grounds, so I'd have my own. Then I wouldn't have to step on any toes. Alas..."
An over exaggerated shrug before he'd start towards her, a callous, prideful saunter. In truth, Nox realized he should be doing more to stay hidden, stay out of sight until the Lessard woman sent for him. But his mass feeding in her cellar, their long talk, the explicit detail of it all had re-ignited his bloodlust, and worse still, his destructive pride, the one he had inherited from his long dead and still feared patriarch.
"Still...why waste a meal?" The giant would ask as his eyes once more filled with the soft, contemptuous cyan light, his stride never slowing.
____
Her somewhat rational stint over, Emily growled as he began walking towards her heedlessly. She wasn’t usually one to sense others tones - but that haughty mockery was too much to pass even her by. Her gaze grew only more aggressive.
He was going to ruin everything. All of her plans.
The darkness rushed away down the street, racing from the core – her – until it dissolved into the distance. She’d brought back the moonlight, bathing them in its ghostly shine. It illuminated her veins and resolve.
The Caer was closing the space between them, but Emily was away in a blur before he could get too near. Up along the wall to the right, as though her very centre of gravity had changed. Her hands, now clawed, grasped the ledge, and with a kick off the bricks she flipped over and landed barefoot on the rooftop. Mere seconds had passed, and after two more of careful listening, she sped off in as straight a line as she could manage with reluctant inconspicuousness towards the girl with the red hair.
The girl was almost home, where she thought she’d see spiders in every shadowy corner, but where she thought she’d be safe.
And there it was, as she landed from a leap across an alleyway, the beats thrummed within her mind. She raised a hand – an unnecessary gesture, but it was a habit – and stole the girl with the red hair’s veins. Allowing it to flow as normal, she could almost taste it already. Emily was convinced that she’d win this day, and if that meant no one savouring this blood, then, regretfully, so be it.
She’d slowed some, but was nearly there. Just one more spring and a drop to the pavement, and she’d have her.
____
Aaahh...So that was it, was it? Interesting. He'd stumbled across her prey, and the female was jealously guarding it. Nox watched with keen eyes as she flipped up and over the walls, taking an appreciative gander at the moonlight glinting off her legs. It was good to be out amongst the night again. In solitude, there was no so thing as company, particularly of the female variety.
However, his pride would always overtake his other feelings, especially now when the hunger was upon him. With lighting speed, Nox would remove his sterling, impeccably clean white coat, fold it, and sit it neatly on a stack of dry-ish, disposed boxes before taking off on the ground level. He wasn't fast, at least not as fast as the female appeared to be, but Nox had a different advantage; raw power and a hatred of subtlety.
Running along the streets would take time. Jumping to the roofs would take time. Turning to mist to travel on the wind could prove more detrimental than any other form of travel. If his claws had told him anything, the building material around him was weak.
Up on the roofs, the girl would hear a violent crash and feel a terrible tremor as Nox merely smashed through the alley wall and out the other side, like the walls were nothing but paper before his might. A cloud of dust and rubble would float upwards as he came out the other side. The screams and the dog howls began then, as the noise began to reach the ears of the living who were still about the night, and particularly those in the homes he tore through.
Another crash. And another. Nox's hand, outstretched, less than ten yards from the vibrant red hair that spoke to his hunger like a beacon.
____
Emily had dropped silently to the cobbles, prepared to linger and strike. But once again, the Caer was set to ruin everything.
The girl with the red hair had started, and her footsteps had quickened at the commotion. As the crashing drew closer, she’d ended up practically cowered. But then Emily stole her. As her opponent’s hand crashed through solid brick, her hold on the girl’s heart tightened; her blood flow slowed, her heart stuttered. She choked as blood rushed to stop her screaming. A dribble of red trickled from the corner of her mouth, scarlet on pristine paleness. This was sad. Emily’s expression seemed pained. She pulled on her hold, yanking the girl towards her like a puppeteer.
Emily wasn’t watching her. She was waiting for the other vampire to emerge. Her stare now grew more cautious. People called her crazy. But she hadn’t a death wish. The Sylvestre’s would likely be seething after this.
She should run, even she knew this. She wanted no part of the blame in the destruction that had took place tonight. But she also wanted to win. Her mind seemed sluggish as it tried it’s hardest to be reasonable as the scent of her blood perfumed the dusty air.
No, she would still win. She waited for the Caer to fully appear. They didn’t have a lot of time, she could tell by the noisy terror that blossomed around them.
____
With one final explosion of dust and debris, the Caer broke through the final wall, emerging between Emily and her prey, no, HIS prey. No one stole from the Caer, even if they had first claim. The pride of his house was at stake, and despite the fact that his house no longer stood, he could feel his father, the Patriarch Caer watching over his shoulder. "Don't let a lesser house take what you desire. It is not our way, child of mine." Kind words, but only those in their blood-kin could see the true meaning of their father's words. Win or perish. There is no room for weakness or mercy in their household.
Covered in filth, bit of rock clinging to his skin and clothes, wood splinters sticking out of his arms and tangled in his hair, the condescending mockery and pride that had filled Nox before, when they last stood near each other was no replaced with a pale, cold blue shine, hunger and havoc personified.
"She is mine!" A roar, loud enough to shatter nearby windows, kicking up dust, a puddle of water nearby freezing and shattering instantly as a cold beyond cold filled the street around them, his blazing cyan eyes fixed squarely on Emily's features.
____
Emily took a sharp, wary step backwards. He seemed manic. She was poised like a dancer, ready for a twisty escape at the slightest sign of attack.
She didn’t flinch at his thunder, but she was shaken. The cold that engulfed was enough to make her hair begin to freeze. Silver strands, iced in motion. She let out a breath that didn’t mist the glacial air.
Her head tilted, taking in the monster swallowed by instinct. Then she smiled. It was strangely sweet, and content.
“Fine.”
The hand that was still outstretched closed slowly into a fist. And then it opened again, quickly.
Like an explosion.
Blood everywhere; skin and guts splattered the Caer and their surroundings. Mostly intact bones clattered to the ground. Lone droplets seemed to freeze mid-air. The smell was overpowering, crazily tormenting. She drew it in, with a long, sensual breath. She inhaled what the girl with the red hair had left behind.
Emily was far from happy. But she was satisfied.
And then she ran.
____
Nox blinked several times, his frenzy momentarily forgotten. Covered in blood, succulent and sweet, the Caer couldn't help but take a long, slow lick from his own skin, ignoring the ashy dirty taste of the dust covering him underneath the sanguine. Delicious. Looking about, part of him wanted to chase down the girl, continue their fun. This was a joyous night.
And then he heard the sirens. The bells. The shouts. Saw the lights in the distance, quickly closing in.
Nox looked about, scanning the area rapidly. Scooping up a few select pieces, at least those that were mostly intact, he quickly slammed one down his own throat, relishing in the feeling of flesh sliding down his gullet, letting out a low soft moan. He turned to run before stopping. Something compelled Nox. Hand drenched in blood, he scrawled something on the door the red haired girl had been racing for. Something not seen in the city for fifty years. The sigil of House Caeruleum, a sickle moon inside an upside down triangle, surrounding by blood runes of the old language. Admiring his work, he knew his sire would be proud.
Ducking into the alley from whence he came, he scooped up his pristine trench coat, making sure to clean his hands first, before once more vanishing into the night...
