Graveyard

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Khayman and Nicolae did indeed use Vikteren's sudden attacks to their advantage, both striking at Garland from different angles, but this vampire's specialty happened to be his agility and grace. The hits they landed upon him were not as intended, merely scraping his skin before healing. His job was not to fight them---he knew he would die if he tried such a thing, for Khayman was more powerful than him and he was outnumbered---but to hold them off. "I regret that she has to die," he said, rather blandly, as he moved this way and that, "Truly. But I do not owe my allegiance to the Designee of the Legacy any longer. The master of my coven commands me, and for better or worse I have thrown my lot in with Sleet's."
This was enough, at least, to stop Nicolae for a split second, long enough to scream, "Traitor!" at the top of his lungs. They had been family once, these two vampires, bound by common blood and history and love, and yet the old man had deceived them. After years of teaching them, as the old ones always did, that family was everything, he had turned his back on them in a heartbeat and then proceeded years later to take Nicolae away from them. He would be damned if Garland took Antha away, too.
Somewhere along the way, down the twisting halls behind Garland, a scream bounced off the stone walls, high and panicked, followed by another, and then a third before silence fell. It was enough that Nicolae tackled the older vampire, bringing his fist hard against his face. Khayman took hold of his arms then, bone crunching under his fingers, while Garland thrashed beneath them, rather like a wild beast. Nicolae was still bashing his fists against him, pressing his weight down against Garland's torso to keep him down, but they were losing control of him.  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren knew this scene, though the players and scenery had changed altogether since the last time. He could have played his part blindfolded; as it was, he didn't have to. It was the work of an instant to slip amongst the three of them--Khayman, Nicolae and Garland--under him, the vampire bucked wildly--to unbutton his shirt, to pierce the flesh with his fingers--up and under the breastbone, he could hear his sire's whisper in his ear even now--
The contents of Garland's ribcage were slick, and cold as ice; Vikteren had enough experience, though, that the conditions didn't matter. It wouldn't have mattered if Garland had a live snake instead of an upper intestine. At this point, there was very little that mattered. Certainly not one more body trampled under their feet, as this creature would soon become. The vampire pressed his cheek against the marble-pale ribs of their prey, and tore the black heart of Garland Mayfair free from its nest of decay.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Garland did not seem wholly surprised that the third vampire had, with the help of the other two, gotten the best of him. It was expected, being outnumbered when your opponents were as strong or, in Khayman's case, stronger than you. "Louis would be vastly disappointed in you," he said quietly to Nicolae, when he felt his blood beginning to pool around him and he knew it was the end, "He would brand you a kin slayer and never forgive you."
"You are a ******** blood traitor," Nicolae snarled at him, and his satisfaction that Garland was about to die was greatly apparent in everything from his tone to his eyes, "Do not talk to me about uncle Louis, if he were still alive he would have burned you to ashes a long time ago, declared himself ashamed to be your brother. You gave up the family, so ******** with the Designee merits death."
Garland would, as usual, have said something to this, some quiet, sober retort, but Nicolae wasn't in the mood for it. He was determined that he should have the last word, and to that end he brought the heel of his boot down on the side of the man's head with all of a vampire's power. And then, dislodging it, continued on down the hall, following the scent of freshly spilled mortal blood.
If he hadn't remembered the door to Sleet's chamber, or hadn't realized the carved marble monstrosity of a door marked it, he would have known Sleet's room by the screams that came from it, the crackle of fire and rattle of chains. He was silent at first, nearing it, because there were words being exchanged in hisses on the other side, but when he realized he had no hope of distinguishing them he screamed his sister's name, beating his fist against the worn carvings, and she screamed his own name back at him as the commotion within grew louder, more frenzied, and then she was just screaming.
"It takes ten vampires to open and close this door when Sleet wants to pass through it," Khayman pointed out, putting a hand to the fist Nicolae was banging against the door until his bones began cracking, "First things first, let us test the magic you have neglected. There is a lock on the other side, and we cannot risk having Antha's magic open it."
"Just try to move it!" Nicolae screamed, even as he closed his eyes and flattened his hands against the door, trying to see the lock, to call the spirits that hadn't been loyal to him in years and use them.
Dully, the latch slid open on the other side.  

[Okimiyage]

Garland's heart was an ill-made, ugly thing, clotted and heavy with the blood of his victims. It separated in his hand, ventricles and organs and arteries, all that which worked so well together and had not been used in years, coming apart at last. Vikteren wondered, briefly, if his own form housed such a repulsive organ as well. He imagined that if anyone should open his chest, they would find it dry as a desert inside, his heart resembling some withered and strange fruit upon the vine.
Vikteren let the pieces of Garland's heart slip through his fingers and fall, with sickening plops, to the floor.
He could smell Antha's blood from here, he realized. It was faint, under the miasma of carnage that they themselves were responsible for, but it meant that she was close. Vikteren darted out of the chamber on Khayman's heels--Antha's screams echoed down the hallway as they folllowed Nicolae, Nicolae who was mad with his sister's pain, and this was going to be one hell of a reunion.
Vikteren had been inside Sleet's chambers before--the last time that he had visited the catacombs. Yes--there was where he had rested his hands, there was the rust-colored stain they had left upon the marble. "I opened this door once before, on my own strength," he said to Khayman, stepping past and setting his palms against the worn carvings, feeling the stone chill his skin. "I can do it again." The vampire did not wait for Khayman to command him; the stone doors, under his hands, began to scrape against their sill, and they parted, like a curtain, to reveal the tableau that awaited them.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Nicolae was beating his fists against the door again, screaming and growling, his eyes promising murder. Khayman had decided to leave him alone, choosing instead to push against the door with Vikteren. It budged at first, enough that Antha's screams grew the slightest bit louder and one could distinguish Sleet's snarls beneath them. Then, finally, it began to give more and more, so that the flash of fire moved their shadows around.
The very moment the crack was large enough, Nicolae slid his lean form through it and came out on the other side swinging. Khayman followed, going the opposite way as Nicolae as he swung at Sleet and then dodged, lunged and then jumped back, over and over again like a dance. He went to Antha, who had pressed herself into the corner, between the wall and the marble coffin she was chained to. But she was not quite willing to let anyone near to her at that moment, this she showed with the flame that shot up between them as he drew near. "Help him," she screamed instead, motioning with her bound hands---her wrists were bruised and bloody, the skin rubbed off in places---towards Nicolae.
Khayman did as instructed, slinking up behind Sleet and attacking. But Sleet was not like Garland, new and inexperienced in combat, he was a master. He deflected them well enough, twisting through them and inching away until Antha noticed his direction and the fire lashed at him, drove him back away from her.
"What the hell do you want us to do, Evie?" Nicolae screamed at her, lashing out and then diving to the side as nails scratched at his ear, "If we can't kill him---"
"Don't you get it?" she yelled in return, peeking over the coffin at them. Instantly Sleet growled, lunged for her before Khayman tackled him to the ground and they rolled briefly on the floor, neither one able to overpower the other, and then they were back on their feet with Khayman guarding Antha. "The Calais family, Nicolae, didn't you get it?" she screamed again as Sleet tried to rush Khayman, to get to her again and shut her up.
"What am I supposed to be getting?" he screamed back, his fingers closing on the back of Sleet's shirt before he yanked away.
"Eat him!" she screamed, as if she were infinitely frustrated that he hadn't made the connection, "The blood, the heart, the brain---everything that connects him to us, eat them!"  

[Okimiyage]

Into the room after Nicolae, and Antha against the far wall, huddled behind Sleet's coffin, finally--alive, alive, and he could feel something inside his chest that had been...all knotted up and clenched tight...relax finally.
But the fight was not over yet, and he could not afford to let his guard down. Even if Antha was screaming--especially if Antha was screaming. Her voice was so raw that he nearly could not decipher the words, but he saw the shape of her hear mouth close around the syllables eat them. And suddenly, in a moment of blinding realization, Vikteren became aware of what she had orchestrated here. Of all the brilliant, altruistic ways to put yourself in peril, Antha...
The vampire lunged into combat just as Sleet was tearing himself free from Nicolae's grasp, and it was the force of between them that sent both men skidding onto their backs, and such was the force of their contact that had they been human, one of them would have surely overbalanced and ended up on their back. But instead they seized upon one another, bared their fangs and snarled and Vikteren felt the bones of his arm shatter under his enemy's grasp--ah, he had forgotten the sensation of agony once again--and responded, growling, by digging the talons of his left hand deep into Sleet's flesh and pulling away; his fingers left five long, gaping field-rows of gashed flesh from fore-arm to wrist, and Vikteren skipped back out of his grasp with another one of those strange vampire noises--a growl that rose out of his chest, uuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrr, and went straight for the hindbrain, and all the instincts contained within, via the ears. In plain and simple terms, it could have been translated as 'fight me until one of us is dead.'  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a moment, Nicolae almost didn't understand what Antha said to him. Or perhaps he just didn't want to. "Of all the people to get ideas from," he hissed, standing just back from the fight, just out of the line of fire.
This could be done because Sleet had backed away from them, his eyes switching frantically between Antha and Nicolae, and fighting didn't seem to interest him all of a sudden. Like most creatures outnumbered and overpowered, he seemed to think talking was the only way out of his predicament. "It's because of me that you live," he hissed at the Mayfairs, jabbing a sharp-nailed finger at them in turn, "Suzanne's madness, Deborah's power, these things never would have been if it weren't for me! The Mayfair witches would not exist, only the very human peasants that they were when I came across Suzanne!"
But Nicolae and Antha were not paying attention to him. They were staring at each other, with eyes that said more than words, as the thoughts passed between them. And then, without warning, they both lunged at Sleet, Nicolae using his brute strength while Antha used her magic to wrestle him to the ground, and it was his turn to kick and scream suddenly.
It all became a blur after that, a wild struggle between the three of them that even Khayman did not dare to interfere in, until Nicolae finally had his hands around the older vampire's throat, bashing his head back against the stone floor again and again until the blood splattered over the siblings, who looked at each other and then back to Sleet, who had gone very still beneath them. "Now!" Antha yelled at him, motioning with her still bound hands to the body, "It's too late to go back now, we have to see this through. Quickly!"
Such things were much more easily said than done, this was truer than ever as Nicolae waded through bone and cold flesh, pulling organs from what was now the corpse of Sleet and devouring them with as little fuss and chewing as possible. He stopped every so often, clamping a bloody hand to his mouth as his body tried to dispel the solid things it could not digest as it used to. "It's alright," Antha whispered as his body convulsed, when the heart and the brain and all of Sleet's cold blood rested in Nicolae's stomach, "It's how it should be, the well being of our family dependent upon your life."
Khayman had long since quitted the chamber, gone to stand in the hall because he couldn't watch, couldn't bear it. It was too monstrous, the siblings splattered with blood, ripping a corpse apart, eating the things Sleet had used to live. And she had planned it, that was the worst thing, what made it all the more horrifying, that Antha had known it would come to this.  

[Okimiyage]

Over. It was over.
Whatever had been holding Vikteren upright until that point vanished, as Sleet twitched and thrashed beneath Nicolae and was slowly, painstakingly torn apart, and Vikteren--he went to the marble coffin, and sat down on top of the lid, and watched as the vampire known as Sleet came to the end of his existence.
If anyone deserved a death like that, though, it was him. Vikteren did not judge Antha for her---orchestrations of these events, this evening, even if she had put her life in peril to achieve her goals. If it was to be said that she had used Khayman and Nicolae and himself, at least she had used them efficiently. At least some good had been accomplished amidst the massacre that had gone on tonight.
Vikteren closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, his dirty hands leaving dark, oily smears across his cheekbones. He was--hungry. He couldn't remember when he had last fed.
When at last the grisly feast was over with, and Nicolae sated, and Antha's revenge well had, he said, "There will be consequences for our actions here tonight." One didn't destroy the coven of a master vampire in a single evening without expecting some sort of rapid and exciting rebalancing of the city power structure. No doubt the Mayfairs would still be at the top of the heap, untouchable as ever, but Vikteren was not familiar enough with the politics of the local clans to know what events the end of Sleet's existence heralded.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"Dire," Khayman added, from the hall, "Dire consequences."
Nicolae, still sitting atop Sleet's shredded and lifeless form, his sister petting his hair now that he had snapped the chains that bound her---he was not like Cian, he enjoyed that small touch, the token of affection, it was soothing---tried to make some sound, form words, but abruptly turned and hid himself away in the corner, some gelatinous bloody pieces of Sleet falling from his lips. When he thought his stomach settled enough, at least for the moment, he glanced over his shoulder and muttered, "I'll be damned if I take his place."
"Persephone will absorb them, then," Antha warned, quietly, "His real coven, wherever they've hidden themselves away at, since apparently Garland was the only one with the nerve to face you." She paused, her eyes darkening as they turned from the floor to Nicolae, and then, "Is he dead?"
The vampire nodded briefly, turning back to the corner, braced against the wall. Khayman inched his way back into the room as they spoke, observing them quietly and doing whatever he could not to look at the corpse. "It would be myself and her then, and the power of this city was not meant to be distributed that way. Without a third, the two warring covens will tear each other apart."
"I said no!" Nicolae roared, before the scarlet bile worked it's way back up his throat and hit the floor with wet, splattering sounds that seemed deafening in the stillness.
Khayman, silenced by the outburst, shook his head and turned after several moments to Antha to ask her opinion. But the girl had gone to lean against the wall, a hand to her head, and then dropped abruptly to the floor, unconscious. Khayman went immediately to her side of course, checking her dull pulse and turning her head ever so slightly to inspect the black bruises strung along her neck, all of which he now discovered circled the p***k of fangs, at least a half dozen of them. "Get her home," he instructed, the coldest whisper he had ever uttered in all of Nicolae's recollection.
He went immediately to her, gathering her tiny frame in his arms and turning towards the door. He stopped only briefly to look at Vikteren, nodding his head pointedly towards Sleet's tattered remains as he asked, "I don't suppose you want the job, do you?" He laughed then, and was gone, back the way they'd come through the carnage and solid layer of blood upon the floor, up the stairs and out of the graveyard that, for the first time in over a century, was the territory of the Mayfair family again.
Khayman remained below, cursing beneath his breath and taking the punctured wrists of Sleet to drag him to where they had left Garland, piling them up together and setting fire to their remains.  

[Okimiyage]

Their bodies roared into flame, and the acrid stench of burning flesh filled the catacombs. Vikteren stood up, glancing around the room for a final time--murals painted upon the walls in varying shades of red, the ceiling scorched and blackened, the floor slippery with blood and bile. It was hard to believe that this had been considered hallowed ground, once. He wondered how long ago it had been consecrated, what words had been said over it, what grieving relatives had prayed for the souls entombed here. Obviously, whatever the priests had done to sanctify the land, it hadn't been enough to keep it free from the filthy hands of the damned.
Vikteren's own hands were crusted with blood, eyelashes and hair matted with it, and the dark stains his fingers had left upon his face were lurid against his white skin. He looked like a nightmare beast, something a child would dream hungered for them beneath their bed or within the shadows of their closet. Moreover, he felt like a nightmare beast.
Vikteren thought about Nicolae's parting shot. He could not have been serious--Vikteren was an outsider, practically an unknown. To propose that such a person be responsible for the third controlling faction of Osiris City was...well, there was a reason Nicolae had laughed when he said it. He supposed that, now that Antha was rescued, he would once again be considered her brother's barely-tolerable rival.

The vampire drew breath that he did not need, and let it out in a sigh. He said to Khayman, "We should not tarry here." Not if they didn't want company. Sleet's followers wouldn't want--evidence, after all. If what Antha had said was accurate, his real coven would have felt Sleet fall--wherever they were--and they would most likely be along before the night was over to investigate.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"He makes it sound so simple," Khayman hissed, hoisting bodies and dumping them into the fire, "He refuses the position, Persephone take in the entire coven and that will be that. But it's not." His traveling cloak caught flame at the hem, and he quickly shed it from his shoulders and stomped the glowing menace out. "Someone else will come in," he whispered, half to himself and half to Vikteren, "Someone with ideals like Sleet, an aim that will satisfy his followers, to fill the void. But this vampire will be stronger than Sleet---will have to be, to take his place---and the war will spike suddenly, rage as it did in the days of Rosso, before Deborah Mayfair killed him and Sleet was set in his place."
He stopped, his cloak clutched in his fingers, and glanced around the catacombs. His own had been bound to those walls before, centuries ago, when the war between the covens was just that. "The boy is selfish," he hissed, shaking his head, "Endlessly so. He has the attitude of one who has never been denied anything in his life, who has always had his way. That is the trouble with the beautiful, charismatic ones---their wills are unbendable, and they will do as they damn well please with little to no regard for what is the kind, just way of things."  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren raised his head, his eyes flat, verdant pools in the flame. In Khayman's words was the reminder of their shared, monstrous nature. "It is easy to forget," he said quietly, "that those beautiful, charismatic ones are still monsters. For all our human seeming, we cannot deny what we are. Perhaps he has a right to be selfish. He has a family; whatever the Mayfairs have done, he belongs to them. They belong to him. Are they not already his coven, in a way?" He stretched his hands out to the fire, the acrid smoke that rose from the bodies. "It must always be so, when power changes hands. All that we can hope is that what occurred here tonight will be worth whatever it costs us."
Vikteren let his hands drop to his side once more--he felt the weight of the blood upon them become too much to hold, suddenly--and looked away from the fire. "Would it even matter if a vampire allied to us replaced him as master? A war will be made out of our actions here tonight; all we can do is choose our enemy." He did not like the way Khayman spoke, almost prophetically, of the one who would replace Sleet.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Khayman only laughed, though it was a terrible, hollow sound that echoed through the empty halls. "You would find, if you had known Nicolae Mayfair in life, that being the undead has changed him very little. Perhaps he is less spirited, less pleased with his existence, but he is no more and no less selfish, no less concerned solely with himself." He sighed shortly, glancing wearily about the chamber, and then looked to Vikteren and admitted quietly, "I might never have taken him in if Antha had not begged me. He was such a miserable creature when he found himself turned, wallowing in misery so deep you would think him the only creature to ever find himself in such a predicament. I was content to let him remain that way, but then she came to me, sobbing, begging me to take him into my coven. I could not refuse that sad, pitiful girl anything."
Eventually, after watching the black smoke billow from the last of the charred remains, he turned and began down the halls. He didn't want to be in this crypt anymore, covered in the blood of the young whose only crime had been that the wrong vampire had brought them into his circle.  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren followed in silence, his steps without echo in those cold, hollow chambers. He had mixed feelings on the subject of Sleet's replacement. On one hand--
How Cyrus would laugh, Vikteren thought ruefully, if he could see me now. Even considering such a possibility, when he had--
they circled each other like mad panthers, snapping and biting and darting forward to tear strips from one another's flesh with the speed of striking snakes. 'I will not be like you!' he roared 'I will never be like you, puppeteer, murderer!'
But that was so long ago. He had been so young then, scarcely lived but a century, and half-mad within the prison of his own head. When one is alone for that long, they begin to think themselves terribly wise. His sin, perhaps, was pride, or vanity. Could he not be forgiven this--
Suddenly, Vikteren grew wary of his own thoughts. He could almost hear Cyrus's cold sneer in the words that drifted alluringly through his head.
Directing his attention ahead as he walked in stride behind the coven-master Khayman.
As they passed through the catacombs, Vikteren quickened his pace until he walked at Khayman's side, and he spoke, "To replace Sleet as a third coven-master of this city--what would have to be done? What task would we require of such an individual?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"He would have to be powerful," Khayman murmured, as if the question had been presented by his own mind, like he didn't have to wonder why such things were being asked, just give an answer, "Ruthless. It has to be someone to take hold of the wayward vampires of this city and keep control of them. And clever, for fighting with the other covens---Persephone and myself---requires a certain amount of finesse, and if Persephone could outmaneuver the new coven master, destroy him and take control of his followers, that would be the end of my coven." He paused, sighed. "The surest way to set a vampire up as a coven master is for that vampire to be the death of the previous coven master, which is why Nicolae is our best bet. Otherwise...the Mayfairs have proved themselves capable of setting a new master up in the fallen's place in the past, or else the fledglings will be the making of the new master, either by choosing him or being taken over by him. Any way you look at it, it is a somewhat delicate situation."