Mayfair Manor

[.David Talbot.]

[ohgodshe'sback!!!!!! errrrr well i just thought it'd keep our minds off how very much we missed you.......... sweatdrop heart heart heart ....ily?]  

[Azure Halfbreed]

((Ha ha, David. your in trouble))

Felix almost wanted to object to Cyrus' statement. Felix knew how to support himself when on his own. He didn't need anyone supporting him. But as it was stated, Antha would be commanding him to stay with her. So Felix really didn't have much to say in the matter. But just because he would follow the order, doesn't mean he likes it. But just like with every order that Felix didn't like, he would bear with it.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha flashed him a little smile, sweet as sugar, enough to make any heart stop. "Oh, I'm sure we'll find some way for you to repay me." With that, the smile became everything it usually was---secretive, suggestive, sly. "But for now, I think we should join the others in the garden." She paused long enough on her way to the door to take Kain's hand, leading him out with her into the snow. "I'm well aware of the consequences that could come from breeding with another Mayfair, Seth," were her first words when she was out the door, releasing Kain and taking a seat in Courtland's lap, "As Atticus mentioned, I've seen them. I know about the one my mother bore before me, and the several my father has managed to spawn. It's hardly a secret within the family." Keeping it a secret would have been rude, and Antha did not tolerate bad manners, so the information was rather generously shared, albeit in whispers.
After a moment or two, her gaze strayed to the horizon where the first faint traces of light were glowing. "We'll need to be heading home soon," she murmured, glancing at Felix and Kain in turn, "Daylight is approaching, and I for one have had a very trying night."

 

[.David Talbot.]

Courtland wrapped his arms around her waist when she came to him and rested his chin on her shoulder. "I'm staying with you tonight too," he mentioned in passing.
Atticus was silent as he watched Antha and Courtland. They really did make a lovely couple. If it weren't for the mutated Mayfair babies he thought they would be a good match.
"I should be heading to my crypts now," Khayman said as he rose from his seat. "But it has been a pleasure as always. I do hope to see you again soon." He bowed to them and stopped to kiss Antha's hand. Before he vanished he even patted her head and stoked her hair once. No one could mistake the fatherly affection in his eyes just then.
Atticus followed after him at a human pace. "I as well. I will see you on the morrow." He vanished outside of the gates.
Cyrus waved halfheartedly and finally rose from his chair. "They have the right idea. We could all use some sleep now. Vittorio? Dolly Jean?" He waited for them to follow.
Courtland sighed and hugged his cousin a little more tightly to himself. "I'll drive," he offered as he buried his face in her neck. Courtland became very affectionate when he was tired.

 

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The girl let herself rest back against her cousin's chest, giving only a vague "Mmm," of reply as her eyes slid closed. Vikteren had vanished somewhere, and she imagined it would feel lonely without him. Courtland could rid her of that problem. "We should be going, then," she sighed, taking Courtland's hand and returning to her feet, "Come along Kain, Felix."
Dolly Jean and Vittorio said their quick farewells to their cousins and company before following Cyrus into the house and vanishing to their respective rooms.
Antha's replies were weary, drenched in the settling fatigue from her long night. "Make sure to come see us again soon, Seth," she said to the remaining vampire, flashing him one brief, tired smile and then making her way back to her car, dragging Courtland along beside her.

 

[Azure Halfbreed]

Felix followed behind Antha, obediently. He still didn't like the fact that he had to allow someone else to shelter him. Maybe later, he could break off, and shelter himself. Only time would tell. But for now, he was just going to follow orders. as trained.

((Sorry my posts are short. It's kinda hard to think of extensions when it's three in the morning))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

((I'm just going to assume Kain comes along quietly. To Satis House, if you please.))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

To say that Julien was horrified with Antha would be a gross understatement indeed. He sat now beside the ancient Stefan's bed, Suzette across his weak body from him, thinking this. They had all almost been exterminated this night, thanks to her, but instead their lives had been hitched to Nicolae's. He knew this from Jack, who had caved under the mildest forms of torture, and now sat in the parlor waiting for Antha's divine retribution.
The house was alive this night, brimming over with Mayfair aunts and uncles and cousins, the old and the young, tables overrun with the food they had brought, humming with chatter. The rain had stopped briefly, and they even milled around the gardens, plucking at the flowers that had miraculously survived the cold. It was not strange for them, waiting for death to come and claim the old man. They had seen too many of their kin pass in their lifetimes, even the youngest of the children present, and they accepted it now calmly.
It was Antha they feared for, as the car squealed into the driveway and she popped out, taking Nicolae's hand, and entered the mansion. They fell silent at her arrival, reverently so, all eyes flickering in her direction as the path to the stairs cleared for her and Malakai met them at the door, taking her other hand and glancing to meet his twin's eyes.
It was a strange kind of power, bringing the three children of the past Designee together, a triumvirate, akin to the holy trinity within the Mayfair family. This was made no less clear by the sight of Nicolae, the son most had thought dead for some years now.
"Come along," Antha whispered to her brothers, releasing their hands and mounting the stairs, moving silently to Stefan's room. The twins followed her with a broken sort of unity, as if once upon a time they had moved as perfect mirror images of one another and yet something---Nicolae's transformation, presumably---had thrown them off.
"There's my girl," Stefan whispered as the flash of red appeared in his doorway, lingering, watching him with eyes that showed nothing but quiet pain. "Leave us now, I would like a word with my niece and nephews," he said to Julien and Suzette, trying to wave them away with a wrinkled, bony hand, varicose veins pushing against his fragile skin. The adults did as he asked of them, Suzette rising with her shawl and pausing only to brush Antha's hair lovingly behind her ear, smiling at her. Julien, who was not old and did not understand the peace of death, could not pull off the smile he tried to flash at her, laying a hand on her shoulder and a kiss on her brow.
Downstairs, the other cousins had not arrived to the same silent reverence as the siblings. Rather, all eyes swept over them and landed squarely upon Cian, spurring new chatter with a renewed vigor. "Stay close," Vittorio murmured to him, going to his shoulder as Lawrence and Dolly Jean vanished into the crowd and Jack appeared at his other shoulder, watching the family with the same suspicious eyes.
But it was too late. 'The aunts', as they were referred to as a group, had spotted the orphan boy and converged upon him like hawks, their bejeweled hands loosening him from the company of Vittorio and Jack and drawing him into the dining room, against his will or not. "Poor, sweet thing," Claire-Marie was cooing, briefly petting his curls, as Madison smoothed the cuffs of his shirt and Kirsten put food in his hands, urging him to eat with comments about his skinny form.
"Abort!" Jack was shouting from across the crowd, unseen, "Plan B, search and rescue! Courtland---!"
"I'm looking!" the other cousin shouted from the kitchen, "I---cant---get---DAMN IT, SOMEBODY GET OUT OF THE WAY! MAINSTREAM ON A MISSION HERE!"  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren climbed out of the car, after Antha; he could not help but find himself amused at how carelessly she directed him about--could not help wonder whether she really could care less whether he came or not. He was somewhat less amused at how easy he found it to obey those directions. His sire had once, petting his hair, addressed him as 'my loyal dog, and about as intelligent as one.' Antha was certainly a better master than Cyrus, though. He touched his hand, briefly, to his breast pocket, where he still carried Antha's locket. A sight better than Cyrus.
Vikteren had not had time to clean and shower as had Antha and Nicolae, and he was still monstrously filthy. While Antha dashed into Mayfair Manor, Nicolae in flank, her vampire chose wisely to remain outside. He wasn't much of a house pet, anyways, he thought.

Cian, towed in with Dolly Jean somewhat desperately in hand, found himself suddenly abandoned. Nearly simultaneously, he was engulfed by a group of chattering red-haired women. They must have been Mayfairs, because without warning he found himself teleported to the dining room, and a plate piled high with various foods pressed into his hands. He looked about, bewildered and cringing under the multitude of fingers that stroked and petted at his curls, The aunts, Cian had to admit, were all quite attractive. The famed Mayfair genes at work again, he supposed. If only they would stop treating him like a damned lap-dog--where the hell was Vittorio?
His stomach, traitorous as it was, was not as easily distracted from the plate of steaming food as Cian was. It did not so much growl as roar, and he realized, somewhat belatedly, that he had not eaten since yesterday's lunch. Well, as long as he was here...  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Found him!" This shout came from Courtland, ducking and grabbing Cian around the waist to drag him back.
Jack, charging to the spot no matter how many people got thrown out of his way, was the one to distract the aunts, groaning, "Mom! He doesn't need fattening up! NO, I DON'T WANT ANY CREPES! Courtland, now! This is a goddamn rescue mission now move your a**!" With the aunts distracted, Courtland did as he was told and maneuvered Cian through the crowd of Mayfairs, who were so used to the antics of Antha's generation that they hardly paid any attention, while Jack struggled out of his elderly mother's hold and ran after them. They were just in time to run headlong into Julien, who had waited a short while outside of Stefan's door and then descended the stairs, a deep crease on his brow as he observed the boys.
Before he could say a word, Courtland and Jack had both taken one of Cian's arms and shouted, "Flee!" before running with him into the living room. "Made it," Courtland gasped as Vittorio joined them, eying first one cousin and then the other, "Don't look at us like that, the aunts had him!" Though Vittorio said nothing, this seemed to clear up any confusion.
It was some moments later that Antha and her brothers exited Stefan's room, and Suzette noted instantly how shaken she was, as if everything she had ever known and believed had just crumbled around her. "Go fetch him," she mumbled to Nicolae---in a voice too soft to sound like her own---who vanished down the stairs. And then to Suzette, who had caught her eye, "He was mistaken. He must be. There's no possible way---"
"There is no mistake, child," the old woman responded softly, going to brush her scarlet ringlets with her fingers and arrange them around the black ribbon in her hair, to adjust the bow tied just under her ear, "When you are on death's threshold, you do not make mistakes about matters of life."
It was then that Nicolae appeared with Cian at the landing, guiding him to Stefan's room. Antha diverted her eyes a little less than tactfully, the tip of her black painted nail caught nervously between her teeth. It had been years since she had bitten her nails, this Jack and Courtland noticed as they followed their new playmate, and it made them visibly nervous. "Do not be afraid," Suzette said kindly to Cian, taking custody of him from Nicolae and ushering him into the room, "Here we are. Stefan?"
"I'm not dead yet, my worrisome cousin," he responded in a croak, which ended in a series of coughs. Like magic Antha was there beside him, bringing the glass of water beside his bed to his lips and propping him up against his pillows. "Thank you, my darling girl," he whispered at her, smiling at patting her hand weakly, "Now, let me talk to him."
For once---or at least, it would appear that way to Cian---Antha did what she was told immediately, turning on her heel and sweeping out the door with her gaze glued to the floor. It was when she shut the door behind her that Stefan held his pale, shriveled hand out to the boy, the eyes that stared out of his wrinkled face bright and clear. "I thought I should be the one to ask you into our family," he said quietly, "As you must if you are to save yourself from our curse. It does not take well to the abandonment of those under it's influence." Briefly, his eyes flitted to look at the door, to where Antha stood unseen in the hallway beyond the door, whispering rapidly with her cousins. "You need to take care of her. She is a handful, I know, I have had the greatest hand in her upbringing for the past decade. But you have made it your responsibility now." And then, after a brief moment of contemplative silence, "She did not mean to bring you into this, I am certain of that much. She had given up hope entirely, so she did not think such a thing to happen. Even now she does not have hope, does not believe this shall end well, but I trust in her power."  

[Okimiyage]

Cian approached the bed slowly. So this was the man who all the fuss was being made over. He looked--tired. Instinctively Cian held out his hand, wanting to take away the pain, replace it with some quiet bit of serenity. Cian had a child's fear of the elderly, but--was there no other telempath amongst the Mayfairs, to take away his pain? His brows knit together with worry. Surely his gift was not so uncommon as that.
In his voice there were deep pools, and forest glades and the scent of honeysuckle. It was like being shown Cian's deep retreat--shown, but not allowed to enter, not allowed to touch. He said, Sir--
Cian felt blood rush to his cheeks, and glanced away.
Sir, I promise you this; I love Antha Mayfair. I would never let harm come to her, in any shape or form. I know I'm not much of a knight in shining armor--I'm not much of a help at all, in a fight or otherwise--but I would gladly give up my life for her. She stirs something up inside of me like--like having hot coals inside your chest. I want to protect her, sir, even if it costs everything I hold dear to do so.
When he was done, Cian found that his hand at his side had made a fist, and he was breathing hard. He wasn't used to getting so--passionate over girls. If he could speak, he would have been shouting at the top of his lungs. Immediately he shrank back, averting his gaze to the floor. The entirety of his body spoke of shame and apology.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Gently, and quite surprisingly given his worn face and the shortness of his breath, Stefan laughed. "Dear boy, I do not expect you to go charging into battle for her. What I need you to give her is some peace of mind. She will be dead before these next five months are up, you do know that, oui? She has accepted this, no matter how frightened she is, but I am afraid even on this deathbed of mine my powers have unsettled her about this fact again, after all these years." Pausing, he patted the empty space of bed beside him, willing Cian to sit. He did not like not being on the same level as someone when they spoke. "What I need you to do for her---for all of us, because this is very greatly a family matter and you are family now, whether anyone likes it or not, and I especially need this reassurance before I die---is to take responsibility for your child." His eyes flickered again to the door, to the low hum of her voice as she and Nicolae argued in rapid whispers. "She is very, very frightened. All the pressure of the family is upon her again, they need her to come through for them, and she does not believe she can. 'Five months is simply not enough time,' she says, 'And not even we can play God to such an extent.' She fears to hope, and I believe you are the only one who can help her to. Would you do this for me? For us?"  

[Okimiyage]

Cian's breath caught. He had not thought about this, had avoided the thought like dread murder because he did not dare to hope. But hearing Stefan speak of it somehow engraved the possibility into reality. He sat down on the bed, slowly, moving dream-like to hold Stefan's shaking hand within the clasp of his own. I love her. he repeated, simply enough. For our child--yes, you need not fear of that. I will be a father for it. For her-- Cian simply shrugged. He had made his thoughts on that matter clear enough. For Antha, anything. That was the way of things.
He could not help but feel his heart leap at the thought, though. A child. Are you sure that it--took? he asked, worriedly. Antha must have longer than that. She is so very young yet. And the most powerful witch in Osiris City. If anyone could ward off death for longer, it would be her.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Five months," he repeated, in a hushed and solemn tone, "It may be any day now, but it will be sometime in the next five months. As she says, the dawn of her twentieth birthday will not see her living. Something is coming for her, something too powerful for anything else in this world to stand against, and when it arrives, it will kill her."
He shook his head slightly, as much as he dared to, and all at once the weight of his many decades upon the earth seemed to show in his eyes. "As I said, she had given up all hope. She could not carry Nicolae's child to term, nor the two that she and Courtland tried so hard for. They were...monsters. Horribly, horribly deformed things. We only recently realized it was the blood, that hers could not take any more interbreeding, and she decided then that it was too late. She did not mean for this, and did not dare to think of it. But there is something about having a breath of death within your body. You can sense life, no matter how new, how faint, and there is the life of another within her suddenly. And she knows what it will take to keep the child alive when she dies---if it is any time soon, there will be no hope and our family will be at an abrupt end---how difficult it will be to take the child from her body and keep it alive long enough to fully develop. But I have faith. Faith in the power of our blood, the miracles of modern medicine, and that oldest source of power---money, which is no object to us." A brittle smile passed over his lips, his blue eyes hazing over briefly, "You have saved them, you must know that,and what it means to. The cousins I grew up with, bonded to like pieces of my own soul, my grandchildren and great-grandson, my nieces and nephews I saw born into this world...it is thanks to you, child, that they may yet see another generation born to our name, you must know that..." His eyelashes fluttered uncertainly as he leaned a little more back into his pillows and his voice grew extremely faint and indistinct, his breath very short, and he muttered beneath it, "I am glad to have seen us freed from Sleet...the living should not be tied to vampires...but little Antha, still tied to Khayman...yes, Louis told me, he knew all along, knew how her power became so immense..." As his words became gradually more nonsensical, his eyes glazed and began to close, as if he were merely whispering in his sleep, and then finally was very, very still and silent. Immediately the thunder roared in the dark clouds above, the lightning that followed cracking and bathing the entire house in a flash of brilliant light, and all at once the rain rammed the windows of Mayfair Manor, like a single powerful entity bent on entering the house.
It was this that brought Antha running in, her eyes wide and frightened as she threw the old wooden door open, her brothers and two cousins scrambling at her heels, Julien and Suzette behind them. But within the room, at Stefan's bedside, the panic and frenzy died down and became something still and silent, the rest of the family downstairs or else down the hall gone mute, for several moments before a cry erupted violently from Antha, her hands pressed up against the tears rolling down her cheeks, and she abruptly dropped. It took both Malakai and Julien to keep her from hitting the floor, Malakai holding tight to her arm while Julien pulled his arms around her waist, drawing her into his arms, and she was fargone enough into mourning that she let him do it, let him hug her and kiss her hair as his own tears began to flow, a split second later than the others all throughout the house.
No one bothered to check his pulse. They did not need to feel for it to know that his heart had stopped, that his life had simply faded out of existence. Courtland did sit beside him though, across his fresh corpse from Cian, and lay his hand oh-so-gently across the man's closed eyes. "You were the closest thing to a father I ever knew," he murmured, choking back the sobs in his throat, and at these words Antha cried all the more hysterically, her nails embedding themselves unnoticed into Julien's chest and shoulder.
The other cousins had entered by now---Lawrence and Dolly Jean and Vittorio and all the ones Cian had not met yet, some with tears rolling rapidly down their faces in silence and all the others sobbing violently. "Grandpère..." Dolly Jean choked, holding tight to Cyrus' arm, as Lawrence went to the body, his eyes bloodshot, and folded his hands over his chest. It was as he did this that Antha seemed to fall back in touch with reality, to push Julien away from her and back into the wall, sliding down to the floor and drawing her legs in against her chest, hiding her face against her knees.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian sat still and silent, watching the old man's breath leave his body, and holding his hand even as the pulse within it fell silent. Stefan had said that he had 'saved' the Mayfairs, at least for another generation. But sitting next to a dead man, a rapidly cooling corpse, Cian didn't feel much of a rescuer. Oddly enough, even though he had known Stefan but for the span of a few minutes, he felt--sorrow at his passing, more than he ought for a stranger. And even as Antha burst into the room, he remained at Stefan's side, their hands clasped together--silent, unmoving, as the room filled with Mayfairs, and the thunder resounded throughout the house, and the rain fell in blinding brilliance all over the Mayfair Manor;
Finally he looked up at Antha, and was surprised to find that tears had flooded his eyes, and when he blinked they dropped, glittering, to his lap. I'm sorry for your loss, he said--and there was this to be said for mind-to-mind speech, his voice never quavered in the slightest. It felt--wrong, that he had been the only one in the room when Stefan died. That his last words had been some nonsense about a Louis, and Khayman's tie to Antha--but surely it had to be nonsense. Cian shook his head. He didn't know anymore. He didn't know anything about this family, he realized. They'd always been so very careful not to draw attention to themselves, to remain as reclusive as possible. Rynn had been so strict about that. Finally he prised Stefan's cold fingers free from his grasp, and knelt beside Antha, where she had curled up upon herself. Very carefully, he reached out and took her hand; he could say nothing to assuage her grief, and he knew it. But through their touch, a warmth might be found to ebb from spine to toes; a relief, an exhaustion, gentle relief at the touch of a good friend.