Mayfair Manor

[Okimiyage]

Drowsily, Rynn murmured. "Sacrifice, judgement, torture--sounds like our kind of place." Him and Antha both, the little red-headed nuisance. He couldn't be bothered to think up any stronger word for it than that. And besides, she was a nuisance; sending all manner of people and vampire into the night after him. As if she were concerned. As if they were friends. It was the sheer cheek of it that annoyed Rynn the most.
Through his eyelashes, he could see Sirius holed up in his corner. He wanted to be over there with him, out of the center of attention and off of Antha Mayfair's bed, somewhere quiet where he could sleep. He wanted to lose consciousness more than anything in the world at that moment, to be nothing and no-one for a blessed eight hours.
Cian was quietly listening to the conversation, methodically working his way through the plate of food that Courtland had provided him. He was starting to realize the advantages of having a large family. He couldn't imagine being related to so many people--the concept of a 'family reunion' was totally foreign to him. Aleric had told him once that they had extended family in France, but it had always seemed far too tiresome to seek them out. If he'd known about family reunions--and more importantly, if his extended family cooked like the Mayfairs... Reaching out to touch Vittorio's arm, he asked, What is the ceremony?  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The cousins exchanged a brief series of glances between themselves, all ending with Antha, who watched quietly for a moment before going to Cian, touching her fingers briefly to his arm. The touch carried a series of images, the hallway first, then up the stairs to the dusty, cluttered attic, and to a large chest with the Mayfair name worked in iron on the surface. The viewpoint proceeded to go to the lock, a complex weaving of metal hooks on the inside of the lid which required no keyhole, which unlatched as if by themselves---a witch's lock, which could only be worked by the very powerful and those who knew how to use that power well---and hands on the lid, opening it to reveal an assortment of aged, rustic dolls laid out in neat little rows. They were grotesque things really, brown with age with little mops of wiry hair and crudely painted faces, black clothes made from old scraps of lace or satin. It was only when one looked very closely, beneath the frightening way they had been dressed up, that the dolls could be identified as bone.
Antha withdrew her hand abruptly, turning and pacing idly across the room. "Deborah Mayfair, the second of the Mayfair witches, she was rather...well, demented. She cut her mother's hand off when she died and made a doll of it, to pretend Suzanne was still there. Through her, it became worked into our curse---with the bones come the spirit, and when a Mayfair dies we have to make a doll of their bones."
"We take turns of it," Courtland said, watching Antha move with an equal idleness, "The preparations, the grave robbing, the ritual..all of the mainstream Mayfair children have to do it. To ignore our duty to our ancestors is a sin, supposedly."
"Not 'supposedly'," Antha snapped, rounding on him, "When you come from a family like ours, anything considered sacred demands to be observed. If it isn't, it turns on you, snaps and howls and tries to drag you into the darkness like some vicious beast."
"The point," Lawrence interrupted, unsettled by the chatter going on around him, "Is that a doll needs to be made for Stefan. What happens if we don't is irrelevant, because we will, it is tradition, and Mayfairs do not take tradition lightly."
"Amen," Courtland muttered, sighing beneath his breath, "Anyways, that's not until tomorrow night. We have plenty of time for the preparations. And as far as Cian participating, he doesn't know how to do it. It's easier to leave it to us, right?"
"Among other things," Antha agreed solemnly. She paused then, looking around her searchingly, before suddenly asking, "Has anyone seen Armand? And for that matter, where in the hell is Dorian?"
"Armand was here earlier, I think," Lawrence said, mimicking her and looking around, "I know he talked to Stefan for a moment, at least, maybe he ran off after that. But Dorian..."
"Dorian's the same place he always is," Courtland cut in, a little less than happily, "Drunk and tacked to a cheap mattress somewhere in the seediest part of the city, whispering pretty words to a pretty girl. Somehow, I don't think the death of the head of the family is too high on his list of priorities right now. But give it another month, he might show up for an hour or two."  

[Okimiyage]

Cian nodded, understandingly. Like a reliquary. It wasn't horrible if the Catholic Church got away with it for hundreds of years. A bit morbid, yes, but that was part of its charm. Cian glanced up at Antha, blinked at her for a moment. Why do you look so shocked? I'm not Catholic, but I spent enough time confessing to the priests of Osiris City. Mostly because I just wanted to shock them, and--well, taunt them a little on what they were missing out on. He paused, tapping the tines of his fork against his chin thoughtfully. I did make up some stuff, I will admit.
Looking back towards the cousins, he asked Antha, Who is this 'Dorian' person? Is he important...necessary, I mean, for the ritual? He felt as though he had an entire history of the Mayfairs to learn, everything to make up for not being a natural member of their family. He suspected that some of the Mayfairs would never truly accept him, but he was damned if he wasn't going to do his best to--well, to keep up with Antha, for starters. And that meant learning about these rituals.

In the library above, the vampire stirred. He felt like a dead man. That wasn't surprising; he was a dead man. But the look Antha had given him, as she left the library, had hurt like--well, like a dog getting kicked by its master. And he didn't understand why.
His laughter was hollow, ringing through the high ceilings of the room, and only held a tinge of hysteria. How Cyrus would mock him. How you've grown, he would croon, How you've matured over the years. You are a fine vintage, my starshine, my sweetness of cream.
Vikteren let his head drop, over the elaborately carved wood back of the chair, and stared at the ceiling. He could almost hear his sire's voice.
No, he could hear his sire's voice.
Very goooood. You caught on. You haven't been crediting your own imagination with dreaming up my dulcet tones, have you?--don't be ridiculous, pet.
Vikteren sat straight up, his wards flaring at full force. Something like a net of light spangled beneath his skin; the walls about his mind grew to be miles thick, so high that the Tower of Babel would have been hard put to compare. The vampire stood, unsteadily, and walked to the window, unlatching it with trembling fingers that left stains of blood on the wood frame. The storm was still raging outside, but he climbed out none the less, conscientiously shutting the window behind him. Vikteren couldn't stay here. What do you want, he said, his voice a dry whisper.
Oh, why do I have to want anything? Perhaps--perhaps I just miss you, darling. The emphasis on the endearment was accompanied by the mental equivalent of having hot knives stabbed into one's eardrums, and Vikteren fell to his knees, slipping on the rooftiles, and rolled, writhing in head-splitting pain, to the edge of the roof, and fell--
The drop would likely not have killed him even if he had been mortal, but Vikteren felt his bones re-knit as he lay on the wet and filthy ground. He listened, unbreathing. There was silence.
Was Cyrus gone? For the moment, at least?--it sounded like one of his sire's filthy cat-and-mouse games. Saints and angels, why now?
Staggering to his feet, Vikteren limped off in the direction of the city. First things were first; he needed to get home.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Dorian is a cousin," Antha said simply, as if she wanted the words to be over and done with, "Just a cousin. But never you mind him, we never see him. He's not the most concerned with his duties as a Mayfair. But we don't need him---the ritual needs only the three involved, and in this case that's me, Courtland, and Armand."
"He's right, though," Courtland pointed out, laying back on his elbows and watching everyone, like a cat that has nothing better to do, "He should know something about the Mayfair family."
Still pacing the room, Antha paused and looked at Cian, the knife appearing in her hands like magic from the folds of her skirt. "We could always give him a crash course," she said, mockingly sweet, closing her hand gently around the blade as the eyes around her went wide. If the truth was to be told, some part of Antha wanted to test him. She wasn't very good with trusting people, never had been, and the amount of trust she was about to place in this stranger...she wanted to try to drive him away. To frighten him, appall him, make him run screaming, and if he didn't, then at least she could feel better about trusting him with her child. "What do you say, Cian? Blood to blood, the grotesque history of the Mayfair family in a split second."
"It's bonding, Antha," Lawrence interrupted, looking between her and Cian, "Mayfair blood infiltrating his blood. He'd have our curse, our sins, our responsibilities---"
Jack and Courtland, whispering fervently in unison, "Do it, do it, do it!" were interrupted by a sharp glance from Lawrence.
"Which is why I'm giving him the choice," Antha shot back, clearly irritated with the interruption, just before a loud 'thump!' sounded from outside and she ran to the window. But there was only darkness to the mortal eye and so she looked with other eyes, ones that found Vikteren and drew her down the stairs, through the kitchen and out into the backyard and the pouring rain, calling his name, but the silvery fall of water was too thick for her to see him, to know in which direction to run, and so she merely screamed for him. Something was very wrong, she was certain of that much, she just didn't know what.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn sat upright, baring his teeth and hissing from the moment he did so, "Don't you dare, Cian. It's enough that you're ******** her, have some respect for your MURDERED FAMILY." The last two words were a shout.
Afterwards, silence hung as fragile as a spider's web, as dangerous as broken shards of glass between them all.
Cian cleared his throat, although for what purpose he himself didn't know. He certainly didn't need it to make his mind known. Going to the window, he looked out into the dark night; seeking whatever had alarmed Antha so. What had that noise been?--a falling tree limb, certainly, but he had not thought that property damage would alarm Antha so. No, it had to be something else.
He should go after her.
He got to the door before Rynn sat up, his cheeks flushed, and called after him, "Don't!--don't, you stupid a**. You'll only get soaked and miserable and--" --and I'll hate you forever if you leave me alone in this house with these people.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It had been a while since things had been this bad, Antha couldn't help but think, and they showed no signs of getting better any time soon. It reminded her of uncle Louis' death, standing before his mausoleum in the Mayfair Clock, feeling like an orphan for the first time in her entire life, not understanding what the point of it all was anymore. That time, she had jumped into the pool and held herself under until Malakai arms had broken the water's surface and pulled her back out into the rain. This time she stood beside the pool, staring at the splashing surface, longing for it.
Instead she walked out into the garden---to which her cousins all breathed a collective sigh of relief---and began picking at the flowers. It didn't matter that the rain was hard and cold, her skin numbed by it, or that the roses pricked her fingers. She was angry, and it helped.
"Should we restrain him?" Jack asked, looking between Lawrence and Courtland and pointing a thumb at Rynn. The other boys shrugged, glancing briefly at Cian. Antha wasn't there to give orders after all, and Rynn was his brother.
This train of thought was interrupted by Julien, who swept through the door to a sudden surge of cold hostility. "There you are," he said softly, giving that plastic smile as his eyes settled on Cian, "My apologies, I meant to introduce myself earlier. You know how it is. I am Julien Mayfair." He held his hand out to Cian, as Courtland's voice whispered coldly through the boy's mind, Antha's father, and mine.
Looking at him, Julien cut a very impressive figure. He looked very much like Nicolae would have in another decade if he had been left mortal, his features only slightly more refined, something about his high cheekbones and smooth jawline. He dressed like a gentleman, all blue and white silk, a simple cravat at his throat and silver cufflinks gleaming at his wrists. It might be understandable looking at him why the Mayfairs would want him as one of the faces of the family, all straight white teeth and bright blue eyes, fair skin and golden hair. It was only when one got to know him, his past in particular, that he began to seem like someone the world would be much better without. "Everyone is quite anxious to meet you," he continued, his voice as smooth as silk, "Father of the potential Designee to the Legacy and all. I was going to accuse Antha of keeping you all to herself, but..." He trailed off, glancing around as if to emphasize that she wasn't present.
"Cut the political niceties, Oncle Julien," Courtland hissed, glaring at him, "What do you want with Cian?"
The man smiled at his 'nephew', the suspiciously friendly smile plastered to his face. "You expect too little of me, mon petit neveu."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn flung his legs over the side of the bed, his movements stiff and tight. "I'm not an escaped circus elephant, I don't need restraining." He gave Jack a withering look. "And the next time you think to make a suggestion like that, please remember that your quarry is in the room, and I am not deaf." He shuffled to the door, stepping around Julien with a once-over. Getting sized up by a sixteen-year-old was probably a first-time experience for him. "Thought you were supposed to be dead."
His brother was the one who distracted them, as Rynn slipped out the door.
Cian took Julien's hand unhesitantly, masking the sudden anxiety that the words Antha's father triggered with utter nonchalance. Pleased to meet you, he said; and smiled crookedly. Cian knew that he didn't have much to recommend him; he was from a family who was reputedly as cursed as the Mayfairs, his little brother was hell-bent on infuriating everyone he came into contact with, and he was a mute. Even if none of that had applied, he had always avoided 'going home to meet the folks'. When a girl started talking about meeting her dad, that was a good sign that it was time to cut and run.

Rynn pounded down the stairs, determined to get as far as he could from his keepers. The kitchen was full of red-haired, beautiful people who only stared at him--like cattle, he thought scornfully, as a flash of lightning illuminated the grounds through the window.
There was a distant figure in the gardens, wearing a black and white party frock. Rynn grimaced. Ah. His dear friend Antha. So that was where she had run off to. Worming his way through the crowd with surprising competence for a half-inebriated kid, he let himself out onto the porch and made it halfway down the steps before his legs slipped out from under him. "********!" he yelped, and latched onto the railing for dear life.
His heart beating a little more rapidly now, he made his way slowly down the remainder of the steps and began crossing the yard to where Antha stood. Her red hair was dark and heavy with water, and her white dress was plastered to her legs--but she showed no sign of discomfort, or of moving towards the house again, and that was what caught Rynn's attention.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Come to tell me off, Rynn?" Antha called over the heavy fall of rain, the pitter-patter and splish-splash against the grass, "Or were you going to just continue seething a little less than silently?" She turned, her wet skirts swaying around her hips, and merely looked at him. "Either way, I'm not in the mood for it."
She turned again, stepping into the circle of the orchard. There was no fruit at this time of year, only leaves that were curiously still green upon the dark trees that stood only slightly taller than Antha herself. In the center stood the white marble figure of Suzanne Mayfair, streaked with over a century of corroding rain, and it was here that she went, standing before her ancestor and looking into the blank, smooth surfaces of her eyes. "Poor Suzanne," she murmured mistily, "The peasant girl abducted and driven mad by Sleet, raped by the local aristocrat's son, stricken dead younger than seemed fair." And she laughed, hollowly, to think what had become of her descendants. Suzanne had never wanted this, the inbred Mayfair witches, and had probably never dreamed her name would be associated with a vast fortune and a place of great power in the city.
"I won't stop you this time," she called at length, not bothering to look at Rynn but still staring at Suzanne and her cracked white skirts, "If you are so desperate for death, I shall not keep you from it. It is a pity, though---I thought to save you from yourself until you were thinking clearly, and I shall be sorry to see you die. But as they say, life must go on." Finally she did look at him, a passing glance over her shoulder as she brushed the wet tendrils of hair from her eyes, murmuring, "It is a shame there will be nothing left of you. I would like to have something of you to smother in the earth I think, beneath the roses with the other damned corpses."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn sighed, shutting his eyes for a moment and raising his voice to be heard over the rain. "Well, I'm not in the mood for bandying thinly-veiled insults back and forth between the two of us, especially not in this downpour. So we can both be miserable out here and I'll give you the satisfaction of seeing me drown if you tell me what sent you dashing madly out of your house and into a thunderstorm." Rynn's mouth shut into a thin, disgruntled line; with a groan, he wormed his way out of his coat and offered it, at arm's length, to Antha. "I'd say you'd catch your death, but I hear it's already been corralled. Until then, though, you can at least be slightly less damp." The coat, when Rynn stepped forward and slung it about her shoulders, was still warm from his body head, and smelled, beneath the scent of cigarettes from the bar he'd been in, faintly of lavender. Witch or murderess or Designee, Antha was still a girl, and Rynn would have felt like an a** standing there watching her catch pneumonia.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Antha remained silent for a moment, pulling the coat around her faintly trembling form. An act of kindness from Rynn seemed at the moment like receiving an articulate lecture from Amadeo. "I still don't know what to make of you," she whispered, her gaze finding Suzanne again, "I can't tell if you're bipolar or if I'm meeting multiple personalities." But she shook her head as if she didn't care, drifting on through the plum trees and into the rambling chaos beyond, a field of hundreds of flowers that would be thousands in the summer, the single path of flagstones blazing palely through them. "Vikteren has run off somewhere," she explained finally, watching her steps as she ambled along, like a child, "I can't be sure where---his shields are up like iron, and I couldn't see him through the rain, but something is wrong, terribly wrong, I'm certain of it."
She had come now to that old childhood retreat, a series of dark wooden planks nailed into the side of a great, twisted oak tree, leading up to the small covered platform set in the mangled limbs. It was where she had run from Julien when she was very young, trusting that he thought himself too refined to go climbing trees, and where her grandmother had gone to watch the birds build their nests long before her mother had been born. She climbed it again now, testing the rustic ladder under her weight now that she was an adult, and crawling into her little wooden gazebo, picking at the flowering vines twined around the supports. "Coming up?" she asked Rynn, leaning over the edge to look down at him, "It fit five of us when we were children, I imagine it can fit you now." In the distance, through the rain and the swaying tree limbs, she could just make out the hazy lights of Mayfair Manor, the shadows moving through them, and it was so lovely to be removed from them for a while, out in the wonderland of her childhood.  

[Okimiyage]

"I don't need to be made anything of," he said, softly. "We're best left alone. You have your own curse to deal with, you don't need ours." Liesse used to say--and he rarely listened--that kindness should be given wherever it is possible, regardless of personal involvement. There was too little of it in the world.
He followed her down the stone walkway that split the flower-beds in half; like Antha, he watched his feet, but only to avoid puddles and cracked flagstones. Couldn't be breaking his mother's back, even at his age.
"But why are you worried about him?" he persisted. "He's not part of the family, is he?"
Climbing up after Antha, he was surprised that the wooden ladder held his weight. But whoever had constructed it had done so well; the tree-house was plain, but sturdy enough. Still, Rynn found himself holding his breath as he climbed until he was safely upon the platform. Calling up his witchlights, the chrysanthemums went to nest amongst the twining vines that covered the tree-house entirely. Their light cast odd shadows, turned the world fey and strange. "Are you sure you're comfortable being up here with me alone?" he said; his voice sounded odd, but he had his head tucked into his chest, and the shadows made his expression impossible to see. "What if I tried to kill you again?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"He's important to me," she answered simply, blinking her great eyes at him, "Of course I'm worried about him. I suppose you wouldn't understand it, but even the Mayfairs realize that there is a world beyond the confines of family. You cannot help but to become close with the people outside of your own blood when you're exposed to them."
She withdrew then from the edge of the platform, sitting on her heels with her arms folded on the latticework, the dripping hem of her dress marking a circle around her. "Would you?" she asked in response to his last question, glancing briefly over her shoulder, "I can't say I see much point in it, killing me now. Or do you hate me that much?" She didn't mention that she was powerful enough to fend him off if she needed, and the legion of Mayfairs inside that would come running if they sensed any stirring of danger. "I think it's rather twisted, you know," she admitted quietly, turning back to stare at the swirling clouds hovering low over the city, "You try to trick me and sacrifice me and then somehow you end up being the one to hate me. Or maybe that's perfectly normal and I'm the twisted one because I don't hate you. What do you think?" She laughed once following this, and in her head was the echo of half a dozen other laughs, shadows of sunny days past spent running around the oak trees, wading through the flowers, the young Mayfair children chasing after one another, rolling around in the grass together, drawing pictures in the mud. It was terrible, the way time shifted. The Mayfairs had grown up and the carefree days of youth were well behind them, making way for something darker and endlessly more complicated.  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn stirred, raising his head slightly and staring at his knees, folded up to his chest, as though fascinated by them. "I hate you," he said, "because you and your brother saved me, and my brothers and sisters are dead, and Cian and I should be buried in that vault along with them. We don't have any business being alive anymore. The Calais family is--finished. Destroyed. Even if you carry Cian's child, it will be of Mayfair blood, not Calais." Oddly enough, Rynn spoke these words--which should have incensed him--in a monotone, his voice low, as though reciting the reasons to himself. He snorted to himself in quiet appreciation of some amusing thought, and then looked up at Antha, and spoke: "It is rather funny when you look at it that way, isn't it? I lured you there to be eaten, but the Mayfairs swallowed my family all but whole instead."
"I don't think I would kill you, Antha. You're right--you're no use to anyone dead now. And besides-- Liesse--she wouldn't like it."
His words hung in the dead air between them, as the world went--muted, somehow, like a curtain had dropped between the boundaries of the tree-house and the rainy night outside. Rynn puffed up his cheeks, blowing air out in an exhausted sigh. He felt like he hadn't said so much to anyone since--well, since the mansion was burned down. Since Liesse died. He used to confess to her at night, his ambitions and fears laid bare before her, before they fell asleep together, limbs tangled like vines beneath the covers.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Quietly, Antha said, "I couldn't bear to watch you die." Even to herself, it sounded like a terrible excuse. Endlessly selfish, irresponsible, cruel. But it was the truth, and she spoke it as such. "You still have the option, going to the ruins of Llyr's Court and burning yourself alive, but as long as you're within my reach I won't let it happen. It's why I dragged you out of the vault, and why I sent Sirius to look after you tonight." There was something dark and wild in her eyes as she spoke, turning to face Rynn, drawing close enough that the white mist of her breath almost reached him. "Makes you rethink things, doesn't it? Knowing that as long as I'm alive I'm not going to let you die?" She laughed then, briefly, but with a world of dark amusement. "It would be so easy, don't you think? Throwing me down to the ground so that my bones shatter and dragging me to the pool, holding me under until I give that last gasp and my lungs fill with chlorinated water? I think you hate me enough to do it."
If someone were to ask Antha what she was doing, what she was saying, she wouldn't know what to tell them. It wasn't really that she wanted to die there, in the cold, wet garden, by Rynn's hand. It was...well, she really had no idea what it was. Insanity, perhaps---that old careless way she treated her life, like a toy she was bored with. "Don't you, Rynn?"  

[Okimiyage]

His witchlights began flickering suddenly, like candle-flames in a wind that wasn't there. Slowly, Rynn raised his head up to look Antha directly in the eye, and his expression was terrible to behold. "Yes," he whispered, in a silence that was suddenly complete. Lightning flashed outside the tree-house, and thunder rolled, but it was not heard within the confines of those posts. Not even the rain on the roof, with it's reassuring pitter-patter, could be heard. "I hate you enough to kill you." She had drawn him close; like friends, like lovers, and suddenly his weight was on her, pressing her down, a gentle descent to the floor, where he put his hands on either side of her head and leaned close, cheek-to-cheek, to whisper in her ear. "I want to know how easily this milk-white flesh of yours would tear open. Are you that delicate child that you appear? Or are you made of something--a little more substantial than porcelain and cream? I would kill you so tenderly, Antha--so sweetly, you would hardly notice, I swear." A ghost of a chuckle, there, breathless, tickling her ear, and Rynn's nails scraping against her wrists as his hands closed around her fragile bones, hard.

And then Rynn drew back, and away, and pulled her up by her wrists as he retreated. "But Liesse wouldn't like it," he said, with a sigh. "She would never forgive me."