Mayfair Manor

[Vikteren]

.David Talbot.

For a minute he traced words on the table, eyes downcast, not saying anything. When he finally spared Vikteren a glance, the surprise was earnest. "Can't you guess?" It seemed to him an impossibility that a person couldn't take one look at the prince and not realize him for what he was.
He was too weak to protect his thoughts well. When he came up with the image of the glorious brat prince he was shadowed, his features hidden except for the big sharp eyes, the smug grin, and his vast amount of golden hair. His tall, lean body was gray with shadow except for the white button-up shirt that Antha had made vivid in his mind. "I should love him most. I'm supposed to. But he's too much for me. He's too much like Antha in his wild insanity but he doesn't have her thoughtfulness or consideration. He's selfish. Vain. I want to hate him. No matter how desperately she loves him we all want to hate him. It's the idea of the way he manipulated us and his final betrayal. He abandoned us when he changed. It was his own stupid fault." He didn't want to say the name. If Vikteren couldn't see it there was no point in telling him.
He sighed deeply. "When he left Antha broke down. Everything broke down. She wanted nothing from reality. We didn't know what to do without him. We acted like he was still there but it was chaos. Everyone was condemning a different halfling. Everyone was ignoring the codes and trials and going around killing whoever they chose. Sometimes we'd go to our secret place and there'd just be gore and blood and a body or two thrown int he floor. Antha started curling up in the corner and covering her ears and humming to herself a lot. Lawrence was afraid to leave the secret place because he thought people could see his crimes on his face. Dorian started disappearing for weeks on end. Dolly Jean always complained about the blood on her face. But one day Antha and Cortland came in while we were cleaning up another mess. Antha fell down screaming words I couldn't understand and clutching at Cortland's shoulder while he tried to help her up. Finally he left her on her knees hugging herself on the floor and went to get a wooden pole from by the window. He came up and smashed it into the side of Jack's head and beat him with it when he fell to the ground. He barely left him alive. Antha stopped screaming and he dropped the pole and went and picked her up and carried her out. It came to order again after that."

"Order," he repeated, the word falling from his lips like lead. "In a society such as that--a hierarchy devoted to the death of your condemned--what does that even mean?" And more importantly, who ruled now?

The vampire half-turned from Malakai, displaying his profile as he glanced towards the stairs. Her footsteps down the stairs had been too heavy to miss, the rustle of her clothes as she slid down the wall carrying well to his vampiric senses. Did you want Antha to hear this? he asked Malakai, through the ebb and rise that was his power.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Quietly, her senses sharpening again and her mind going back into focus, she stood and finished the walk down to the kitchen. "There was order," she murmured softly, leaning against the doorpost as if she might collapse any minute despite her healthy level of energy. He expected me to come sooner. "No matter how sick and twisted, there was logic and there was purpose. We agreed who was next. We planned our attacks. We had them tried by our own set of demented guidelines. It was only when the Prince of the Red Rose left that no one cared if they had the faintest reason for dragging someone off. Without purpose, they forgot the trials and did as they pleased. When everyone started at it, it stopped being one person in a month or two months. We were lucky if only one was executed in one day. Cortland, Malakai, and I asked them to stop. We begged. I just wanted it all to be over once adn for all. But they wouldn't give up, and there was no way of knowing who was going to target someone next. The decisions were too instant. By the time I found out, it was over. That's when I broke down." With slow, deliberate movements she moved away from the wall, seating herself cautiously at the table. "It was when Eleanor had killed Jeanette---my half-sister by Julien, actually---and Cortland accompanied me to the secret place when I went to see if my sights had betrayed me. They were cleaning her and a couple of others up at the moment and when I saw it, I snapped. The only thing I remember of the next few moments, actually, is telling Cortland to stop them somehow, any way he could think of. He chose fear, and it almost killed Jack." She wanted to say that was how it ended. But that would simply be misleading, though technically accurate. And have you absorbed Malakai's description well enough? came her direct question, shielded from Malakai. Our vain, crazed prince. Malakai should have done a better job of describing him. After all, he is his other half.

 

[Vikteren]

+Rotting Lunacy+

Quietly, her senses sharpening again and her mind going back into focus, she stood and finished the walk down to the kitchen. "There was order," she murmured softly, leaning against the doorpost as if she might collapse any minute despite her healthy level of energy. He expected me to come sooner. "No matter how sick and twisted, there was logic and there was purpose. We agreed who was next. We planned our attacks. We had them tried by our own set of demented guidelines. It was only when the Prince of the Red Rose left that no one cared if they had the faintest reason for dragging someone off. Without purpose, they forgot the trials and did as they pleased. When everyone started at it, it stopped being one person in a month or two months. We were lucky if only one was executed in one day. Cortland, Malakai, and I asked them to stop. We begged. I just wanted it all to be over once adn for all. But they wouldn't give up, and there was no way of knowing who was going to target someone next. The decisions were too instant. By the time I found out, it was over. That's when I broke down." With slow, deliberate movements she moved away from the wall, seating herself cautiously at the table. "It was when Eleanor had killed Jeanette---my half-sister by Julien, actually---and Cortland accompanied me to the secret place when I went to see if my sights had betrayed me. They were cleaning her and a couple of others up at the moment and when I saw it, I snapped. The only thing I remember of the next few moments, actually, is telling Cortland to stop them somehow, any way he could think of. He chose fear, and it almost killed Jack." She wanted to say that was how it ended. But that would simply be misleading, though technically accurate. And have you absorbed Malakai's description well enough? came her direct question, shielded from Malakai. Our vain, crazed prince. Malakai should have done a better job of describing him. After all, he is his other half.

He lowered his head for a moment. Death rarely bothered him as this did; he had been too often reliant upon it, and the shock of it had become worn over years. "Then it sounds as though this organization should have collapsed beneath the weight of it's own disorder. How then does it continue to exist?"
His other half?  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Oh, how I wish I knew." Her corresponding smile was so grim, so desolate, that the umbra swayed and wept all about her. "All I know is that it does." Then, shaking her head as if to remark what a shame it was, she plucked another cigarette out of her pack. The person who was once the same being as Malakai. They were one once, so each is a part of the other. She watched him across the table for a very long moment, taking a drag of the cigarette. It seemed to her, he being as clever as she had divined, that he should have no trouble whatsoever guessing. Why, after all that was said before she fell into her frenzy and left Satis House, it was near to amusing.
"If I died," she mused suddenly, flicking her ashes onto the crudely illustrated paper, "Lawrence would be left in charge. But Lawrence would crumble under the burden, and everything would fall so far out of place that it could never be reconstructed. An attractive idea, don't you think?"

 

[Vikteren]

+Rotting Lunacy+

"Oh, how I wish I knew." Her corresponding smile was so grim, so desolate, that the umbra swayed and wept all about her. "All I know is that it does." Then, shaking her head as if to remark what a shame it was, she plucked another cigarette out of her pack. The person who was once the same being as Malakai. They were one once, so each is a part of the other. She watched him across the table for a very long moment, taking a drag of the cigarette. It seemed to her, he being as clever as she had divined, that he should have no trouble whatsoever guessing. Why, after all that was said before she fell into her frenzy and left Satis House, it was near to amusing.
"If I died," she mused suddenly, flicking her ashes onto the crudely illustrated paper, "Lawrence would be left in charge. But Lawrence would crumble under the burden, and everything would fall so far out of place that it could never be reconstructed. An attractive idea, don't you think?"

Vikteren looked at her for one long, silent moment, then kicked a chair out from beneath the kitchen table and sat down, in one swift economical movement. He put his elbows on the table, and leaned his face into his hands.
Don't say things like that. he said, and the voice in her head was very quiet, and hard as granite. And the word don't echoed around his head, like a half-mantra, before he closed his mind to her again. His shoulders were tense, square and sharp beneath the white dress shirt he wore.
Then, with a quick one-handed gesture to Malakai, almost as though he were throwing his open hand towards the man, he asked aloud, "How does he survive without his--missing half? His brother, if I may use the term loosely."
As much as a sibling as one could be in the bloody Mayfair family, he supposed.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

There was a sliver of shock in her expression as she watched him, listening to his command in her head. Her eyes surveyed him carefully, but in the end she just shrugged without a care, her eyes closing as she took another long drag of the clove she had pulled out. She switched between cloves and regular cigarettes often, sometimes tiring of the intensity of cloves but too entranced by the taste of sugar and the faint perfume of their smoke and even the feeble crackling as it burned. "Malakai always loved him---he had to---but, like virtually everyone else within the Mayfair family, he didn't quite like him. He was too much to deal with. Too wild, too hyper...didn't give a damn about rules. I learned a lot from him." She didn't laugh, though her smirk suggested she did in her own head while nostalgia caught her off guard. "I think I was the only one who ever really and truly liked Nicolae. You've met him---you can see why, I'm sure."
Why does it bother you? she asked at last, having reflected for several moments on his quiet, disturbed response to her words. That was...unnatural. I should think you'd be used to my irrelevant musings by now.

 

[Vikteren]

+Rotting Lunacy+

There was a sliver of shock in her expression as she watched him, listening to his command in her head. Her eyes surveyed him carefully, but in the end she just shrugged without a care, her eyes closing as she took another long drag of the clove she had pulled out. She switched between cloves and regular cigarettes often, sometimes tiring of the intensity of cloves but too entranced by the taste of sugar and the faint perfume of their smoke and even the feeble crackling as it burned. "Malakai always loved him---he had to---but, like virtually everyone else within the Mayfair family, he didn't quite like him. He was too much to deal with. Too wild, too hyper...didn't give a damn about rules. I learned a lot from him." She didn't laugh, though her smirk suggested she did in her own head while nostalgia caught her off guard. "I think I was the only one who ever really and truly liked Nicolae. You've met him---you can see why, I'm sure."
Why does it bother you? she asked at last, having reflected for several moments on his quiet, disturbed response to her words. That was...unnatural. I should think you'd be used to my irrelevant musings by now.

The vampire didn't move, for a long time. Then his shoulder untensed a fraction, and he looked up at her over his hands. "He loved you, didn't he? More than mere family..." he lowered his hands, shook his head as though trying to free his thoughts from a tangle of briars. "And still does. Do you even want your prince back, Antha? Would that make it any better?"
It bothers me because you already remind me too much of those who have died. he answered flatly, the words a gash of emerald splayed across her mind for an instant. She was strong enough to keep her life, but it was taken from her. It should not have been that way. And you should not wish such in idleness.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha thought his words over for a moment, her expression turning quickly into something bitter. "Yes, he loved me---loves me, perhaps. And before the complications of being a Mayfair---the Designee of the Legacy in particular---set in, I loved him too." Her eyebrows knitted momentarily, her lips pressing angrily together, and then all at once the tension faded from her expression. "I still have Nicolae. He may not be my constant shadow any longer, but he's still mine and I do love him, though not as once I did. If he wished to reign over the Red Crayon Aristocrats again, I would relinquish to him all control. But the prince I would sooner have tied from the rafters by his neck. The prince, you see, is the little spark of anger and true, complete insanity within him. When that part takes over, every other essence that is Nicolae vanishes from existence." She had thought herself finished, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly as she crushed out the clove, but she found herself compelled to add just one more statement, something she had never bothered telling anyone before. "Nicolae was the first person I ever slept with, you know," she whispered quite gently, the faintest rush of blood coloring her cheeks. Only a vampire's eyes could really see it. "But that was a very long time ago...back when things like that still had some meaning to them---any at all."
She gave no reply to the other statements made, choosing instead to let him make what he would of her silence.

 

[Vikteren]

He raised his head, met her eyes. The vampire's lurid green stare was back. Silence was the kindest answer to that statement, the most respectful, the most--impersonal.
He spoke despite it.
"And they no longer do?"
The subcurrent of thought, though not openly directed at her, flashed to the surface for a moment. Sympathy--or perhaps it was pity--and anger, at what had caused her to lose her faith in that simple act of love--and a dozen unnameable others, his curiousity and--"They spoke of vampires, here." he said abruptly. "What is the book that the boy upstairs was searching for?" He tilted the keen edge of his gaze in the direction of the staircase. "He smelled like fear. Was it the prince that he is afraid of?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Carefully she shifted in her seat, leaning back and gazing off wistfully. "No. I wish it wasn't so, but...well, to be the Designee of the Legacy means a number of specific responsibilities. When I was pressed to help win over our enemies, they cried out wordlessly how it must be done. When they spoke of the next Designee, the child that I must bear, they guided me again without saying a word. Of course I had been with two men when it began, but it was of love and it was...sacred in a way, I suppose. But to do what they wanted of me, I had to convince myself that it meant nothing. I had to believe that not even so much as a kiss was important. Over time, I did." She gave a long, frustrated sigh. "Ideas like that are even harder to be removed than placed."
The next question was what brought her sharply into reality, sitting up straight in her chair with her eyes on full alert. "Armand is paranoid. He's one of the few who still feel they need the Red Crayon Aristocrats." She paused briefly, wondering what rules she would break by telling him, but a little weary smile flashed across her face as she decided abruptly that she simply did not care. Who would punish the duchess, standing in as Princess of the Red Rose since the prince had fled? "Do you remember the book I took from Sleet's chambers that night we met? Well, we left a certain page from one of our own manuscripts in it." Her fingers danced along the old paper on the table as she spoke, tracing lines and words. "A temporary page harboring a list of titles and a few rules. Just something that Sleet could use against us if he so chose. For that Armand, fearing Sleet has indeed seen it and intends to lash out at us, wants to have him punished. But we drew up very specific rules for vampires and people lacking Mayfair blood. The book Armand seeks has the papers specifying which vampires and non-Mayfairs can be tried. Better yet, it has the rules of what makes someone a Mayfair. Given that our blood comes partially from him, Armand hopes we can count him as a Mayfair and therefor he has less complications in having him tried." At that she sighed, wistful to a degree, and her eyes began to wander. "Not that it'll do him any good. If we are to live, Sleet must live. If we lost control---and the court never fails to produce that effect upon us---Sleet would not survive and every last one of us would fall dead within a month at most, beginning with me."

 

[Vikteren]

+Rotting Lunacy+

Carefully she shifted in her seat, leaning back and gazing off wistfully. "No. I wish it wasn't so, but...well, to be the Designee of the Legacy means a number of specific responsibilities. When I was pressed to help win over our enemies, they cried out wordlessly how it must be done. When they spoke of the next Designee, the child that I must bear, they guided me again without saying a word. Of course I had been with two men when it began, but it was of love and it was...sacred in a way, I suppose. But to do what they wanted of me, I had to convince myself that it meant nothing. I had to believe that not even so much as a kiss was important. Over time, I did." She gave a long, frustrated sigh. "Ideas like that are even harder to be removed than placed."
The next question was what brought her sharply into reality, sitting up straight in her chair with her eyes on full alert. "Armand is paranoid. He's one of the few who still feel they need the Red Crayon Aristocrats." She paused briefly, wondering what rules she would break by telling him, but a little weary smile flashed across her face as she decided abruptly that she simply did not care. Who would punish the duchess, standing in as Princess of the Red Rose since the prince had fled? "Do you remember the book I took from Sleet's chambers that night we met? Well, we left a certain page from one of our own manuscripts in it." Her fingers danced along the old paper on the table as she spoke, tracing lines and words. "A temporary page harboring a list of titles and a few rules. Just something that Sleet could use against us if he so chose. For that Armand, fearing Sleet has indeed seen it and intends to lash out at us, wants to have him punished. But we drew up very specific rules for vampires and people lacking Mayfair blood. The book Armand seeks has the papers specifying which vampires and non-Mayfairs can be tried. Better yet, it has the rules of what makes someone a Mayfair. Given that our blood comes partially from him, Armand hopes we can count him as a Mayfair and therefor he has less complications in having him tried." At that she sighed, wistful to a degree, and her eyes began to wander. "Not that it'll do him any good. If we are to live, Sleet must live. If we lost control---and the court never fails to produce that effect upon us---Sleet would not survive and every last one of us would fall dead within a month at most, beginning with me."

"Why does it exist, then?" he asked, staring at her. The rationality of such a court was lost upon him, though in truth the scheming, conspiratorial court of past ages was likely little better. "The prince, your leader, has left you. Your aristocrats have fallen prey to the burden of judgement, of their own mock-trials. What purpose it once had is lost to even your leaders. Certainly all this--" And he drew a hiss of breath, something not quite totally a sigh, too alien. An inhuman sound. "--unrest could be turned to a better use, could it not? What is the profit in thinning out your numbers, princess?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her eyes diverting and fingers lacing together in her lap. It was not just clear that she was uncomfortable speaking of such a weakness in herself and her cousins---she practically screamed it. "Honestly?" she asked, leaning over the table towards him and casting one long, hazy glance in his direction, "We can't help it. We were hooked the minute it started. Like young vampires can't help but kill and drink, every time we try to keep our distance, it hurts." At last she became so very uneasy that she could not sit, but rather she turned in her chair and stood hastily, pacing a few feet across the floor to the backdoor overlooking the garden. "Because there are certain spirits inhabiting that place, vile, angry spirits that cling to us as hard as they can, influencing us when we step into the court and then growing angrier and angrier the longer we are away and their hold is weakened. And we have tried to stay away long enough to break their hold before," as she spoke, she turned on her heel and paced the other way across the kitchen, nervously rubbing the backs of her arms, "But it's never enough. We're not nearly strong enough to withstand that sort of pressure, and we always draw back."

 

[Vikteren]

+Rotting Lunacy+

Antha shifted uncomfortably in her seat, her eyes diverting and fingers lacing together in her lap. It was not just clear that she was uncomfortable speaking of such a weakness in herself and her cousins---she practically screamed it. "Honestly?" she asked, leaning over the table towards him and casting one long, hazy glance in his direction, "We can't help it. We were hooked the minute it started. Like young vampires can't help but kill and drink, every time we try to keep our distance, it hurts." At last she became so very uneasy that she could not sit, but rather she turned in her chair and stood hastily, pacing a few feet across the floor to the backdoor overlooking the garden. "Because there are certain spirits inhabiting that place, vile, angry spirits that cling to us as hard as they can, influencing us when we step into the court and then growing angrier and angrier the longer we are away and their hold is weakened. And we have tried to stay away long enough to break their hold before," as she spoke, she turned on her heel and paced the other way across the kitchen, nervously rubbing the backs of her arms, "But it's never enough. We're not nearly strong enough to withstand that sort of pressure, and we always draw back."

He rose from the chair and crossed to stand behind her, linking his arms loosely across her stomach and tucking his chin against her neck in an uncharacteristic gesture of--familiarity--and affection. There was not--exactly--a heartbeat, but there was something beneath his skin, his chest against her spine, a faint ambulatory buzz of life. He was silent for a moment, almost too long, and when he spoke, the faint stirring of air--only enough to form the words--stirred her red curls. "Your court holds many of the most powerful witches of Osiris City. If you cannot break their hold..." He raised his head, glancing sideways into her eyes. "You exorcised the boy's...the Calais...of a spirit while at the Talamasca's headquarters. Is a similar ritual not possible in these circumstances?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The sudden gesture caught her off guard, and for a moment she stood petrified, shocked. But it only took a moment for her to calm, the fear gripping her gone back to the attic and through the door to the courtroom. "Our thoughts followed a similar action. We tried it the day after Jeanette was...punished. It did seem logical, but..." Her mind sped back to that day, the barriers collapsing to allow him in if he so wished. Meanwhile her eyes slid closed uneasily, her body tensing faintly and then leaning back to press herself more against Vikteren. It was a very acute, paranoid brand of stress the memory laid on her mind, remembering the retaliation of the spirits, knocking them all unconscious. She could still taste the blood that had poured from her lips when she had awoken, Vittorio shaking her fully conscious with one hand while the other clutched at the massacred side of his face. Everyone who had been there---the entirety of the court, every last aristocrat from Lawrence the Duke to Pierce the Poor---either lay fainted with wounds appearing every so often in their flesh or staggered up and tried to fight against that which they could not see or touch. It took a month of working magic through their bodies and laying down on surgeons' tables to make them all right again. All of them still had scars, like the pale white crescent mark along the ridge of her left shoulder blade.
The memory ended abruptly, her mind sealing itself up again, and for a while she was silent. "Vikteren?" she began finally, pronouncing his name carefully as her eyes slid open heavily and turned to look at him. "Tell me something. When I am turned, whenever that may be, what will you do? Would you escape me?" The hurt infusing her voice, mingling with the little rivulet of accent, made her seem childish. Like the child who had been abandoned by so many that she had tried to keep close to her.

 

[Vikteren]

+Rotting Lunacy+

The sudden gesture caught her off guard, and for a moment she stood petrified, shocked. But it only took a moment for her to calm, the fear gripping her gone back to the attic and through the door to the courtroom. "Our thoughts followed a similar action. We tried it the day after Jeanette was...punished. It did seem logical, but..." Her mind sped back to that day, the barriers collapsing to allow him in if he so wished. Meanwhile her eyes slid closed uneasily, her body tensing faintly and then leaning back to press herself more against Vikteren. It was a very acute, paranoid brand of stress the memory laid on her mind, remembering the retaliation of the spirits, knocking them all unconscious. She could still taste the blood that had poured from her lips when she had awoken, Vittorio shaking her fully conscious with one hand while the other clutched at the massacred side of his face. Everyone who had been there---the entirety of the court, every last aristocrat from Lawrence the Duke to Pierce the Poor---either lay fainted with wounds appearing every so often in their flesh or staggered up and tried to fight against that which they could not see or touch. It took a month of working magic through their bodies and laying down on surgeons' tables to make them all right again. All of them still had scars, like the pale white crescent mark along the ridge of her left shoulder blade.
The memory ended abruptly, her mind sealing itself up again, and for a while she was silent. "Vikteren?" she began finally, pronouncing his name carefully as her eyes slid open heavily and turned to look at him. "Tell me something. When I am turned, whenever that may be, what will you do? Would you escape me?" The hurt infusing her voice, mingling with the little rivulet of accent, made her seem childish. Like the child who had been abandoned by so many that she had tried to keep close to her.

He closed his eyes. The question had surprised him, but no one would have been able to tell, had they been watching. Only Antha, his chest to her back, might have noticed--for a fraction of a second--how he had tensed. There was something about Antha--and not merely her resemblance to old acquaintances--that made him wish to protect her, to stay by her. At first that had been the sole reason--her red hair, quick temper and smile, so similar to...
If he truly remained merely to settle a debt, he would have asked how to satisfactorily repay her and be gone by now. But he was not.
And he was not entirely certain why.
He sighed, an old human habit the vampire had never completely rid himself of.
"No. It depends on what you become--the change does not completely rid one of one's old personality, but the experiences that come with it may...alter it somewhat--but I believe that...no matter what it does to you...I would not wish to escape you. Even should you become a monster worthy of my sire, I would stay with you--as long as you would wish it of me. Through this life and whatever may follow it."