Satis House

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Perhaps it was the sudden silence that made the car ride seem infinite. Maybe it was the dark miasma of emotion that hung in the air. Nicolae didn't know, but he wished for it to be over. This was why he didn't slow when he passed the city walls and turned onto the winding dirt road that cut through the swamp like some great serpent, why he pressed the gas to dangerous limits until they came to an abrupt halt outside of Satis House.
And how strange it seemed to him, staring at the dilapidated, rotting wooden firetrap, that of Antha's house and Rynn's house, it was Rynn's that had burned that evening. "I hate these swamps," he murmured as he cut the engine, feeling around in the glove compartment until he pulled out a battered old pack of cigarettes, putting one to his lips and lighting it before he held the pack over his shoulder, offering it to Rynn and Cian, "I hate the reptiles that live in it, the bugs, the inexplicable things you see when you wander out into it. Why my mother wanted a nearly condemned house out here I'll never understand, nor why Antha shuts herself away out here." He paused to shake his head, sighing in a haze of smoke, and in the next blink of an eye was opening the back door, hauling Rynn out and dragging him towards the front door. "I'm going to trust you to walk on your own," he called to Cian as he kicked the door open and pulled Rynn into the living room, throwing him down on one of the scattered victorian couches that emitted a cloud of dust at the slightest touch. "No power," he murmured, flicking the little light switch up and down over and over, "Lovely, Antha, lovely."

"No," Antha half murmured and half sighed, following his instructions, her arms brought around his neck, and in his ear she whispered that awful truth, "We knew he was lying, Nicolae and I that is. We knew something horrible was going on, but we went along with it anyways." There came the faint stir of her breath, something that was just short of a sigh. "It was a game to us. Or at least it was for a while." Like her brother, she shook her head as if to clear her thoughts away, to start over with a fresh slate. "Dawn is catching up to us."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn didn't like being separated from Cian; he kicked and tore at the vampire's sleeve, but his brother was preoccupied with the pack of cigarettes and was of no help, and the boy himself could do nothing to be rid of Nicolae. When he hit the couch, he scrambled back to his feet again, and his brows knit angrily. "You could try treating me like I had two feet with which to walk instead of flinging me about by the scruff of my neck like I'm a kitten you're about to drown, Mayfair." He called his witchlights to hand; they circled his head like a halo, the little green chrysanthemums casting an unsettling glow on his face, long shadows flickering about the room. Cian fumbled a cigarette out of the pack, called flame to it, and hovered at the edge of the porch, the cherry burning scarlet in the dim morning light.

Vikteren brushed the curls from her brow with a hand as cool as winter frost and said, simply, "Patience. We will be in shelter soon enough." He caught her legs up and about him, and with Antha clinging to him he descended the cliff, as easily as one might climb down a ladder. It was at times like these that one might be made aware of the inhuman grace that Vikteren possessed but all too rarely called attention to. There was something predatory in it, something that set the human survival instinct on edge--raised the hairs on the back of one's neck, set one's teeth to clenching, et cetera. Something serpentine; something uncanny.
"What happened in there, Antha?"
They were nearly to Satis House when he chose to ask the question; although it did not matter where he chose to ask it, only that it was asked at all. She still might refuse him an answer; he could not say he would have protested, for it was her right to do refuse him any question he might pose.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"It's Nicolae," he said simply as he leaned his back against the door frame, as if Rynn weren't hissing at him like an angry beast, "And you can't expect me to trust you to do anything for yourself when you're throwing tantrums at every turn."
Antha did not answer Vikteren at first. She kept the words, the horror of what the Calais children had planned, locked away behind her barriers. Because she knew if she let any of it slip, the floodgates would open and everything would spill out. It wasn't until they were at Satis House that she finally murmured, "They wanted to die. They planned it. But we still brought Rynn and Cian back with us, kicking and screaming, while the others died." And then she squirmed out of his hold, hopped down to the ground and walked around the house to the front door herself. She said nothing to Cian as she reclaimed her pack of cigarettes, slid one out and put it to her lips, and made a point of not looking directly at him. It was only when she had inhaled the first stinging breath of smoke and released it again in a long bluish ribbon that she glanced at him, ignoring the commotion inside. The question anyone else might ask lingered in her eyes, the various inquiries after his health and well being, but she didn't speak them. Instead she said, "You're all idiots."
Then Nicolae was in the doorway, looking between them. "I'm out," he said flatly, "That kid is too much for me to handle. Anyways, the sun is coming up. Think Petyr would mind if I bunked in the basement?"
"It's my house, not Petyr's," Antha hissed, giving a vague wave of dismissal as she swept by him into the house.
Nicolae's eyes trailed momentarily after her, and then turned to Cian before he asked what his sister would not. "You okay?"  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn glared. He felt, rather, that he had a right to throw tantrums. This was Nicolae's punishment for rescuing him. His witchlights hovered overhead as he flopped back down onto the couch, suddenly exhausted, and pulled his feet up after him. "Nicolae," he repeated; the vowels were archaic--ugly gargoyles of syllables. When Nicolae left the room, Rynn trailed grimly after him, and set his arms about Cian's hips once again.
Cian had not spoken since he had set foot outside of the house. He felt rather that if he did, he would scream. Might never stop screaming. The noises that he used to make, in his sleep--'noises fit to shame a banshee', Liesse had called them. So to Nicolae's inquiry, he only nodded mutely, and set his cigarette steadfastly against his lips.

Vikteren could still feel the silk of Antha's gown against his hands as she left his arms. He followed the Mayfair girl into the house, brushing past Nicolae with not even the grace to avoid his gaze. Inside, leaning against the doorjamb, he listened to the creak and whistle of the wind tearing around inside the house. Someone had left a window open.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Nicolae sighed, putting thumb and forefinger to his temples and squeezing his eyes briefly shut. And then he trailed Antha into the house, almost politely setting the other vampire aside and drawing her by her wrist into the living room, shutting the door behind them. It was all show of course, Vikteren could hear them if he just listened, and the Calais boys on the porch could hear if they just tried, but still he whispered as if they could keep their secrets. "Tell me you have some sort of plan in mind," he whispered to her, throwing the remains of his cigarette in the fireplace. It didn't do much for him to begin with.
"Not in the slightest," she replied, turning on her heel and going to look through the frosted windows to the flickering lights of Osiris City across the vast darkness of the swamp, "Leave it alone, big brother, please. It's just not the time."
He sighed, running his hands through the tangled mass of his golden curls. "We're just begging for trouble," he murmured, going to Antha and touching a hand to her shoulder, laying a kiss on the top of her head, "And God knows if there's trouble to be had, it's going to find you."
Antha smiled once at that, wryly, before turning back around and going to the front door. "You're going to catch colds," she told the Calais boys simply, taking each by a hand and leading them inside, down the long hall and up the creaking stairs, down another long hall and finally to the library. Nicolae followed after a moment, detouring briefly to gather her bandages and antiseptics and all the other things injured mortals needed. He came upon them just as she unlocked the library doors, as the fireplace crackled into life as if unbidden and Amadeo showed himself as a small black streak gunning for the chair nearest the fire. "Sit, both of you," Antha instructed, gathering Amadeo up in her arms and motioning to the chairs near the fire. And then, as if she had only just rediscovered her manners, "Please."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn said derisively, "A witch with black cats. Typical."
But he had followed her inside of her house, and stalked into the room now like he owned it. Cian, with a pitiful sigh, had been forced to stub the rest of his cigarette ash out, and he tracked his little brother by the mud on his shoes up the hallways of Satis House.
He hung back, by the doorway, with his spine hunched, head a little bowed. His eyes were red-rimmed as Rynn's, though he had not cried like his little brother, had in fact proven himself remarkably well-behaved if bizarrely sober. But when Antha commanded him to sit, he did so--Rynn took the chair closest to the window, and sat on the arm of the chair with his feet propped up from across him. But when his brother took a seat across from him, Rynn got up, and went to Cian instead. He wanted to be as close as physically possible to his brother suddenly, his last remaining blood. When Nicolae insomuch as looked at the two of them, bandages in hand, Rynn shot him his fiercest glower.

Vikteren followed the troupe of them like a shadow, silent and inauspicious. The first thing he did, upon entering the room, was go to the windows--making sure of the latches on them before loosing the thick curtains down and about. Vikteren could stay up after the sun rose, but it had to be in a room completely free of natural light; he had a feeling that he was going to want to stay up for this, whatever it was, however long it took. The second thing he did was go to Antha, and--he resisted the urge to cast long looks at Nicolae from across the room, because he frankly did not care for the childishness of the act. Antha used them both, he knew, for their own abilities and for her own purposes. Vikteren nearly had to admire her for it--the ingenuity of her mind, her absolute carelessness, was fascinating to him. He found that he rather liked her for it. He had no idea, he had to admit, what good he was to Antha--he supposed she found some sort of amusement from his presence, though.
He sat down against the wall. Although he was awake, he felt some sort of bone-numbing weariness creeping into his body. A little taste of death, he thought of his nightly 'sleep'...  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It was made very clear very quickly that neither of the Mayfair siblings appreciated Rynn's comment. Antha showed it by the sharp glare she directed at him as Amadeo climbed along her arm, laying himself across her shoulder. Nicolae showed it by the angry set of his eyebrows and the way he growled, "The cat was a present, back when we were little."
"Best present I ever got," Antha said matter-of-factly, taking the antiseptic and cotton swabs from him.
Nicolae bothered with a small smile, setting the bandages on the table nearest him. "It was the first smile you ever gave anyone."
Antha made no comment to this, not with outsiders so near at hand, but instead set Amadeo on his feet and went to Cian, dabbing a cotton swab in the clear antiseptic. "This is going to sting a bit," she warned him as Amadeo hopped cautiously into his lap, looking up at the boy's face as if trying to make sense of him. Antha took his chin in hand, bringing the little bit of cotton gently against his split lip, and then left him alone, turning instead to his brother with a faint sigh. Was it worth helping Rynn if he didn't want her help? In the end she decided it was, cleaning the cut on his cheek as she had his brother's lip and taping a strip of bandage across it. All in all, it had taken less than a minute, as if she had wanted to get it over before he started fighting her about it.
It was while she did this that Nicolae went to the window, too close to Vikteren for it not to be on purpose, and whispered so quietly that mortal ears could not pick up his words, "Our bodies won't last much longer like this, with the sun up. It may be in everyone's best interests if we settle down for the night. We'll want to be prepared for whatever nightfall brings." He avoided saying anything in particular, as if talking about some malevolent force was a curse in itself that would bring it to the door of Satis House.
It was Antha, listening with ears that were not physical, that popped the bubble of tension Nicolae was building around himself, appearing at his shoulder to look at the two vampires. "He's not going to just show up at the door and spirit me away when night falls," she told him, shaking her head and moving away towards one of the cabinets, from which she removed a bottle of brandy, "Sleet has a great deal of pride. We wounded that pride when he attacked and he was thwarted, forced to flee back to his crypts without me in hand. He'll be planning the perfect abduction, some grand show so that everyone knows he's taken me prisoner." The glass of brandy she had poured went to Cian, wordlessly, the next was set on the table beside Rynn, and the third she held in her hands with no intention of drinking it. She only liked to watch it swirl around, catching the light of the fire. It was comforting, in it's own way. "Again," she added after a moment, sighing. "At any rate, you two should settle down for the night. We'll be fine."  

[Okimiyage]

Cian let her do what she wanted to him--it did sting, but he didn't flinch, and neither did Rynn. What Rynn did was slightly less--polite. "You don't need to be all over us like a bad suit, pretending that you care, Antha Mayfair." he told her, in a breathless hiss. "You don't give a rat's a** whether my brother or I live or die, the only reason you pulled me from those tunnels was pure and common spite." Rynn sat back, and looked at her with eyes as glassy as a doll's. He looked like he was waiting for her to slap him, like he wouldn't have cared if she had.
Vikteren said, "Yes. That would--" He stopped; something wary flickered in the shadows of his eyes--he was not prepared for any hospitality offered to him by Nicolae. "Thank you." He moved to the door, touched a hand to the frame, and glanced over his shoulders, awaiting Nicolae.
Cian had picked up his brandy, and emptied the glass in one fell swig. Rynn, who was a lightweight, picked up his drink as Antha had done, but did not sip from it. "Who is Sleet?" Rynn demanded. "Another one of your vampire friends?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It was not Antha who came very close to striking Rynn. It was Nicolae, inching towards him with that dark anger in his eyes, who was a threat to his health before Antha touched his arm, shaking her head. "Fighting isn't going to help anything," she murmured, turning him back around towards the door, "Besides, wouldn't you be angry if it was you?"
The vampire made a low growl deep in his throat, glaring at Rynn and finally stalking through the library doors, motioning for Vikteren to follow him down the stairs and through the mirror room, down the secret hatch in the floor and into the basement. It was solid concrete, not a crack or window to be found, and the only door latched from the inside. The only thing one had to worry about in Antha's basement was the altar on the far wall, the centerpiece of which was a full stack of human bones from foot to skull, and the dark stains across the pentagram carved into the floor. "I don't trust them as far as I can throw this whole damn house," he hissed when they were safely locked away and out of earshot, "Even less since the vault, since they provoked us, threatened us. If we're going to be dead to the world, I want to be locked up under a yard of concrete."
Antha had watched them leave quietly, solemnly, while Rynn's last question rolled around in her mind. How did one explain the complex relationship between the witch girl and the coven master, the constant game of capture and torture, escape and revenge, that was slowly spiraling towards certain death? How did one describe his hatred of and obsession with witches, with Antha in particular, and the pure, malicious way he loved to make things bleed and scream? "Sleet is one of the three coven masters of the city," she said vaguely, "A vampire, yes. But to call him a friend..." She paused just long enough to smile darkly to herself, some distant and best forgotten memory flashing in her eyes, "Sleet's greatest, most ardent desire is to paint his crypt with my blood, to draw from me every last ounce of agony possible, every physical torture and mental trauma, before he finally picks apart my flesh and nails my heart to his door."
Her eyes diverted finally from the warm swirling liquid in her glass as she came back to herself, taking up the bottle of brandy and setting it in Cian's hands. "It wasn't spite that kept you alive tonight," she said finally, her gaze settling now on the flames as it had her glass, "I don't know what it was, but it wasn't spite. It was more that I didn't want you to die, that I would rather you were alive." She turned in a quick motion, a rustle of gray skirts and crimson curls, and seated herself gracefully in the chair facing the fire. Amadeo rose briefly, as if he would go to her and demand her attention, but seemed to think better of it and settled quietly on Cian's knee. "You can accuse me of being selfish if you like," she stated simply, laying her arms listlessly along the armrests, "You're probably right. But it's done, c'est fini."  

[Okimiyage]

Rynn heard Nicolae's frustration in the sound he made at the door, and it made him laugh--the first thing to provoke such a response from him in what seemed like years, years, years..."I don't think your brother likes me much," he told Antha. As well Nicolae deserved not to, but Rynn could appreciate him for showing it, at least. For being honest.

Vikteren seemed less concerned by the stacks of human remains than he was intrigued by the pentagram etched upon the floor in--well, the only material suiting it, really. The vampire did not touch it, but he knelt beside it, and looked at it for a long while, until Nicolae had closed and locked the only door out, and the room was draped in darkness and silence. "The whole house has the scent of her, of course, but this room--what happened in this room?" Standing, Vikteren's eyes flickered about the corners of the room. There was something other in the room, some past deed whose occasion the natural world refused to forget. Lingering...

Cian had been instantly inducted into the worshipful cult of Amadeo. He was beautiful. He was delighted enough by the cat that he nearly forgot all about the brandy.
(Nearly.)
Rynn said, "This Sleet person sounds interesting. Make a lot of enemies, Antha...?" He didn't really bother waiting for the response, knowing already what it was. But instead--unexpectedly--neither did he go for her throat. Instead, Rynn leaned back into the padded cushioning of his seat and blinked at Antha. "You know, I've always thought that the one right you had, in this world, if you have any real 'rights'--is the right to be hurt, and demand to be hurt, because by god the world will do it to you even if you don't do anything to deserve it or want it in the slightest. I thought that was not too much to ask for." Unexpectedly, Rynn found that his eyelashes brimmed over with tears--he swallowed them, hard, and tried not to blink so that at least they would not spill out onto his cheek. "Liesse was like that. She--didn't deserve to be saddled with me, the bright one, the 'talent'...all she wanted to do was live a quiet, simple life and grow ********> roses." He had to laugh at himself for that, because of that. "I remember those things biting me so many times, tearing the hell out of my hands and arms every chance they could. Roses are like dragons, I think, if they have personalities they would be the most monstrously unpleasant bitches. But they're beautiful. They're beautiful and so we forgive them their thorns, although we never should. You should have gotten Liesse. She was--much more amenable than I ever was." Cian's hands stopped where they scritched behind Amadeo's ears, and he bent to whisper something to the cat. His hurt was offensive even to himself. He and his brother had not been particularly close, no members of the family had been except for perhaps Liesse and Rynn--and Rynn had treated her like a doll for the most part, or a small child--to dress and adore and make beautiful, but never really speak to as an equal on any sort of level. She had known that--it had torn her apart with the knowing, he thought, and so many times she would sweep off to her gardens and her shears and every time she came back with more needle-thin scratches up and down her forearms she would smile and say prettily, "The roses, brother, the roses--" and fetch her skirts up and dash up the stairs to her room before he could question her further. But he could not help that he had been the one who had been taken instead of Liesse, and Rynn's--eccentric behavior, and false affections--they unnerved him more than any cold-blooded rejection ever could. Liesse had been dear to them all, but he did not dare show his grief; only bowed his head over the witch's cat, ringlets of cinnamon falling into his eyes, and played out, mutely, his unhappiness.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The vampire almost did not hear the question that was posed, or perhaps it was more that it didn't register at first. Either way, when he finally responded it was half-hearted, distracted. "Nothing of great consequence. This is where we deal out Sleet's punishments when he falls into our hands." He motioned vaguely to the chains that hung from the walls, one in each of the four corners, and then to the altar. "And Antha comes every once in a while to invoke Petyr by means of his remains." He shrugged briefly, dropping to the floor in the corner.
"Nicolae doesn't really like most people outside of the family," Antha sighed, settling back in her chair as if exhaustion had just begun to creep over her, "Most Mayfairs don't. When you have so many people with your same name and blood, people who bear the burden of your same family secrets, there is no need for outsiders. This seems to be the general consensus amongst my kin." She made no mention of how much worse it had become in the last decade, and how it was really her fault. The slavish sort of devotion she had demanded from her cousins, the chains that bound them which she had knit so closely together, these things were best left unsaid.
It was when the tears began that Antha sat silent, refusing to look at anyone. It was only Amadeo's soft, sweet meow which drew her attention, forced her to look at Cian, and finally brought her to her feet again. It was beside Rynn's chair that she stood, facing away as if to not see his tears, her hand laid gently against his head, tangled in his hair. "I'm sorry," she murmured for the first time. It was not an apology for saving Rynn or Cian, that was made clear by the tone of her voice, for she didn't regret that. It was the words people offered to people in mourning, that quiet admission that they realized it was painful and they wished it were not a necessary evil of the world that people must die.
Beyond those two small words, she said nothing. Not a word about how it was merely chance that had saved Rynn and Cian rather than any of their siblings, the fact that they were the only ones the Mayfairs had been able to grab in time. Nothing about how death didn't care which of them was more deserving of it's embrace. She simply stood in silence, watching the fire, before she turned and went to the window, drawing the drapes aside so that the feeble golden light of dawn spilled over the room. "It's a new day," she said simply, without turning to look at them, and then fell back into silence.
In Cian's lap, Amadeo watched his mistress quietly, and then as if he had picked up on something, as if he had realized they were supposed to be comforting the Calais brothers, a deep purr began to roll through his tiny body as he leaned up, rubbing his fluffy cheeks against Cian's. It's an odd thing, the intelligence of a cat. They're too keen of observers, too ready to help remedy things they don't understand. Amadeo had no concept of death and grief, but his chartreuse eyes looked upon these things with an odd sense of sympathy.  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren said nothing, although the air was cloying with unspoken words, but took up a place of repose at the immediately left of the altar, and did not seem to find the lack of a mattress a hindrance, for he dropped off almost immediately, the bright emerald flame of his mind going dim and muddied, only the barest coals visible. He had not felt, not until just now, how deep his exhaustion was, and it drove itself like a knife into his bones until he drifted off, at last, to sleep.


Rynn was listening brightly. He'd wiped at his face as soon as Antha turned her head, and now sat, his narrow cheeks white with the the crying and rosy from the wiping, but dry, and that sufficed his vanity.
Even if she had not meant the 'I'm sorry' in a way that Rynn would've wanted her to, Rynn took it like one. "Well," he said, and pressed a hand against his bandaged cheek, "You should be. But we forgive you--don't we, Cian?" he glanced to his brother, who was being worshipful of the cat, and enticed a mute nod out of him. Rynn sighed, then stretched. "That's good. Of course we may not be friends again, but an apology is a good start to begin--certain kinds of relationships with, after all." Rynn went over to Cian--absently, his brother lifted Amadeo up as Rynn arranged himself in his lap, then set him down again upon his younger brother's knees. "What do you intend to do with us, Miss Mayfair?" he asked, and there was a hollow teasing note in it, as if this was the voice CIan would have had if he had spoken now. It was strange, hearing Cian's voice from a body not his own, and apparently it struck Rynn with sudden horror, for he turned his face from Antha and buried in the crisp white collar of his brother's shirt.
Cian looked up at Antha, not perturbed, only anguished by his desire to be near the cat, who had leapt from his lap as Rynn had gone to his brother, and now it would be probably horrible trials all over getting the little beautiful fluffy jewel-eyed creature to trust him and let him half-tame him. Cian suddenly felt a terrible need for something half-tamed. That had been Liesse's beauty, amidst all of them, that she had been able to go on attending to her roses, and living inside the great house, waiting up nights wondering what sibling would come home tonight, if any, or none. She had always been there to get them into bed after their drunken escapades, longing for her brother, whispering bright-eyed into their ears as they fell asleep, "Did you see Rynn today?" That had been less than a year ago; as soon as Rynn was old enough to get a driver's permit he went everywhere he could find in the city. He wanted to feel it out, get an idea of the local bloodlines for himself, et cetera, of course--but more than business, he wanted to possess the city, to walk along the peculiar wandering paths between buildings and along the river's edge, to know where one was by the feel of the streets of the city beneath his feet--he wanted the great wide open world, and Liesse--Liesse sat at home with her needlework, quiet, dutiful, always pleasant, always charming...But Cian had seen it, that little pull of her mouth to express the breaking of her heart, the whisper that clung to the doorframe as he escaped their mansion for the tenth, hundreth time...help me.
But nobody ever did, although they all escaped the manor at their own times and left through that door and had to hear her sigh, had to walk past their sister 'seeing them off'. She adored them all enormously, and they all knew that, but none of them would ever answer her pleas.
Rynn always left through a side door.