The Airship

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren went quite still at the sound of the the scratchy voice, coming over the airship's outdated speaker system. He was still holding the doll, so tightly that the little porcelain arms cut sharp into his palm, and he fixed his eyes on Antha and her cousin. They were the color of jade, and as hard as the stone whose hue they borrowed. "I've become nothing more than a toy to you, haven't I?--" he said, softly. "Is that what you brought me hear to realize? Be satisfied. It is done." He stopped, cast a glance at Courtland. "I regret that you must witness this. I expect that it should not matter so much--it seems I am intended to die already, and it is pointless to worry about what people think about you once--" he stopped, finishing the sentence in his head. once one has gone to their final rest. He had tried to avoid considering that. It was a somewhat touchy subject with the undead. At one point in his un-life he had thought to become religious, in the hopes that he would learn what lay beyond. It had never stuck. And now--playing a game that he didn't know the rules of, gambling for his life with the scions of a house that made betrayal into a sport. His life was most certainly forfeit. He'd always been touch-and-go; he'd stayed too long, this time, he'd gotten in too deep. Made the wrong friends. Hung out with a bad crowd. The vampire had to laugh--his ego could almost be interchangeable with that of a scolding mother's.
He tossed the doll to to the floor, where it skittered across the tile to clatter to a stop at Antha's feet. "I think this was meant for you, Antha." he said, and paused. He seemed to give his words a great deal of thought before he spoke aloud them next. "I remember...before we met, I knew who you were. I had been warned. I thought myself above the gossip. Now--I question that. I suppose I was prideful in those days. It is hard not to be, when you live long enough. You think yourself beyond it all--all the ephemeral things. Humans, for instance. It is hard to believe that one might ever become important to you." His eyes--he would not let her see them, the way they had softened. He was being a fool. Nothing that a toy said to her could possibly mean anything to her now--she would only think he was pleading for his life, acting out of desperation. Such a hideous thing, desperation...his eyes were the color of green leaves in a spring rain, seen through the fog of a glass window. He would not look at her. Antha, I will not betray you. If I am destined to die tonight, let me go to my death with a clean conscience. I made a vow to you, once. We have a bond. If it will repay my debt to you--if it will ease your mind--I will end my existence. This game is cruel--vile, but I can't hate you for it--though--If I could go back to them, our other games, harmless and naive--
He raised his head, unthinkingly, and met her stare. "I know--that it hurts. I am sorry; I was trying to protect you. There are some skeletons best left in their closets--there are some dead that should stay buried. I didn't want those people near you." He laughed, emptily. "I think the term I used to convince myself was 'corrupting you'."

Dorian did not turn so much as spring about, because the smell of his cousin's presence was unmistakeable, and when he saw his his blood relative there, a pale imitation of his usual self--
the blood drained from his face. Dorian could tell. Lawrence's haggard appearance said it all. Behind him, the tapestries parted. "Oh, damn you," he whispered.
The wall was a curtain. Behind, a stage. Four mechanical horses--all made of silver and yet so tarnished that the intricate gilt designs upon their backs could barely be made out, the saddle's twisting curlicues could hardly be distinguished--rose from the floorboards, atop four identical cranks. The gears visible at their haunches creaked, and groaned protest as they were forced into motion. There was organ music playing in the distance, the sort of repetitive groaning march that could hardly be identified as cover of a cheery circus theme--one had to wonder who composed these things--
"I know. Lawrence--the rest of them know, too. What did you give them for us? What did you sell us for, Judas?--it can't have been silver, it wouldn't look good on you at all--" he was starting towards his cousin as he spoke, moving slowly, as if towards a skittish horse. But suddenly Dorian sprang, and snatched Lawrence's collar into his hands--"You little fool," he hissed, "Why? Why, why why--" He wanted to strike him, he wanted to strike out at anything, and he only let go of his cousin because it was either the wall or his face, and the horses on the stage rose and fell, their mechanical limbs pawing the air, and raised their necks in imitation of life--"You realize you've signed your death warrant," he said. "Lawrence, you can't--you are most certainly going to die if you go back in there." The damn horses were making it hard to think-- Dorian pressed a hand to his head despairingly, and hissed air between his teeth. "Lawrence, I ought to strangle you here and now. How could you? How could you be so damn--"
He broke off. Berating his cousin wasn't going to help either of them.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a while, Antha only stared at the vampire. The expression on her face, centered in her darkened eyes, was unfathomable to Courtland, a strange mix of things. For his part, the boy stared between the two, waiting, but after a minute or two of that heavy silence he said quietly, "You're not turning him over to his sire after all, are you?" There was no disappointment in his voice, but neither was there any joy, any relief. Only realization and a sort of wonder.
Antha, who like Courtland seemed to be momentarily free from the maddening grasp of the umbra that seethed all about them, glanced at him but gave no definite answer and when she finally did speak, it was to Vikteren. "What you fail to realize is that I was never any safer without you," she said in a quiet to match Courtland's, her tone uncharacteristically even, "He's still here, Vikteren, and I have still made my web. Do you think any big, bad vampire ever comes to town without making some attempt upon my life? I rose too far, too fast, and I hold too many strings to ever be safe. I take the things that I want---everything that I want---and it tends to place a number of targets upon my head. But you never thought of these things, and you wouldn't have listened had I tried to explain them to you. Worst of all, you didn't trust me to be able to protect myself from your demons. That is why we've come to this point."
Courtland touched her shoulder hesitantly, as if he were frightened both of and for her at the moment, but she turned to face him and his hand dropped hastily at his side. A look passed between them then, from Antha to Courtland, and it said a world of things that outsiders would never understand. Then, abruptly, she turned on her heel and vanished down the dark corridor.
Beginning to come back into that dark and manic mindset of the airship, Courtland called after her, "Watch out for Laurie~!" He turned to the vampire then, with a sigh of resignation on his lips, and after a moment he finally said, "Two years ago, I stole Lestan Mayfair's journal from Mayfair Manor. I'm not really sure why, it seemed the thing to do at the time, but I did and it upset everyone. They were frantic, and seething with outrage, and they never figured out it was me." Another sigh as he gave a careless shrug of his shoulders, blinking innocently at the vampire. "If you have any qualms about turning me in, don't. I care so very little that I'm turning myself in, too. For other crimes, though. And anyways, I am a fifth or sixth responsible for you being here. I seconded Dorian's vote to make you our gegor, you know." A brief laugh then, the light kind that the boy gave to relieve tension when it began to mount, and then another shrug as he turned and went to go dissolve into the darkness after Antha. When he paused at the door, it was only long enough to murmur, "It really is best for you to try and win. Even if you don't care at this point, other people might. Not me, not really, but..." And then he left.

It was another ten minutes before the speakers announced the end of the game and summoned them to the altar, before Lawrence laughed and scowled all at once. "Do whatever you want to me when this is over," he hissed to Dorian, "I deserve it---less than the rest of you, but I do, too. But then, who will give a damn about me when the truth comes out? When as always, Antha so completely eclipses me that I am all but irrelevant? I didn't go to the Talamasca for nothing, Dorian, I hate them too much, and I only paid them in the missing puzzle pieces that I needed." A smile flashed briefly across his face, a dark and pained twisting of the lips, before he turned and answered the summons, arriving pale and drawn at the altar with his other cousins. He was nearly the last one there.
When all of them had gathered, taking up their various posts upon the rickety structure and around the room with the tribute box at their center, a core about which they all orbited, it began. Jack was first, tossing his trinket into the box as he told them how Vittorio had been seeking out women pregnant with half-Mayfair children for years and making them disappear. Vittorio was next, offering up his box of matches and revealing that Jack had been the one to set their aunt Julia's house on fire, with her in it. On and on it went, the dirty little secrets that made the atmosphere more and more tense with every moment, that made the targets flinch and the others look on grimly, waiting.
Courtland, who had managed to escape the targets up until that point, sauntered up to the box where the others had shuffled and dragged their feet, dropping a little bag of soil into the box. "Savannah never knew what we were doing," he said simply, watching Lawrence with steady eyes as his jaw set in a tense line and the color rose angrily in his cheeks, "She was frustrating, but she never had anything on us. Antha and I grew annoyed with her, so we made up the story about her so we could put her on trial." Antha never flinched, and indeed didn't seem to mind one bit as eyes popped open and the look of realization dawned on various faces. Instead she waited, patiently, until there were only Lawrence and herself left.
There was silence for at least a minute as the two stared one another down from across the room, Lawrence by the door and Antha perched upon the middle tier of the altar. No one whispered or snickered, shuffled their feet or toyed idly with some trinket or another, only stood still and silent as death until Lawrence stepped forward, until he drew out the little vial of Antha's blood that he had taken when he'd cut her leg and dropped it into the box. "Mary Beth never simply lost her mind," he said, his voice never wavering, never betraying the heavy knot in his stomach, "She drank so much vampire blood that she drove herself crazy. She chose to sacrifice herself to reinvigorate our bloodlines, our family." For a fraction of a moment, he became angry. "Didn't any of you wonder why Antha never seems to be affected by draining a vampire down to their last drop?" The girl's eyes narrowed, but she showed no surprise. "Because her mother kidnapped Khayman and drained him of his blood. Repeatedly. Blood meant to pass into her unborn child, as it did. To break her ties to Sleet and make her something never heard of before, a second generation witch born of a witch."
Somehow, the silence had thickened. All eyes had settled upon Antha with varying mixtures of terror, confusion, outrage, and dumbfounded awe. But she paid them no mind, only kept her eyes fixed steadily on Lawrence, waiting. "Khayman broke into that attic ten years ago," he whispered furiously, as if to force the girl to admit to it, "His blood that resided in you called to him and he let you out. He helped you murder Leon, or else did it himself. And now you take every measure to keep him in power, to protect him, because your life is tied directly to his."
There were whispers now, passing frantically from person to person, but they lasted only until Antha slid down to the first tier and then the floor, until she stepped up to the box and pulled from her pocket Illium's severed tongue, wrapped up tight with a length of string, and dropped it in. "You knew," she stated simply, with the forced sort of calm that was far more terrifying than any form of anger, "You came into Satis house fifteen years ago and Leon told you exactly who I was. I heard him with my own ears, watched you walk out through the boards on the window. You knew who I was and that I was locked in there, and for five years you never told a soul. You left me there to die."
Finally, as Lawrence's eyes popped open with shock and the color drained from his face, all of the mixed feelings around the room melted away into pure outrage and the aristocrats were left waiting, not sure how long they could contain themselves or what was going to happen next. The only one who seemed very sure of anything was Antha, who knew that her secret had been nothing to Lawrence's and was able to step gracefully back out of the spotlight, leaving him alone in it.
What had he really expected, trying to bring down Antha Evelyn Mayfair? They just never learned.  

[Okimiyage]

XCandy and LunacyX

For a while, Antha only stared at the vampire. The expression on her face, centered in her darkened eyes, was unfathomable to Courtland, a strange mix of things. For his part, the boy stared between the two, waiting, but after a minute or two of that heavy silence he said quietly, "You're not turning him over to his sire after all, are you?" There was no disappointment in his voice, but neither was there any joy, any relief. Only realization and a sort of wonder.
Antha, who like Courtland seemed to be momentarily free from the maddening grasp of the umbra that seethed all about them, glanced at him but gave no definite answer and when she finally did speak, it was to Vikteren. "What you fail to realize is that I was never any safer without you," she said in a quiet to match Courtland's, her tone uncharacteristically even, "He's still here, Vikteren, and I have still made my web. Do you think any big, bad vampire ever comes to town without making some attempt upon my life? I rose too far, too fast, and I hold too many strings to ever be safe. I take the things that I want---everything that I want---and it tends to place a number of targets upon my head. But you never thought of these things, and you wouldn't have listened had I tried to explain them to you. Worst of all, you didn't trust me to be able to protect myself from your demons. That is why we've come to this point."
Courtland touched her shoulder hesitantly, as if he were frightened both of and for her at the moment, but she turned to face him and his hand dropped hastily at his side. A look passed between them then, from Antha to Courtland, and it said a world of things that outsiders would never understand. Then, abruptly, she turned on her heel and vanished down the dark corridor.
Beginning to come back into that dark and manic mindset of the airship, Courtland called after her, "Watch out for Laurie~!" He turned to the vampire then, with a sigh of resignation on his lips, and after a moment he finally said, "Two years ago, I stole Lestan Mayfair's journal from Mayfair Manor. I'm not really sure why, it seemed the thing to do at the time, but I did and it upset everyone. They were frantic, and seething with outrage, and they never figured out it was me." Another sigh as he gave a careless shrug of his shoulders, blinking innocently at the vampire. "If you have any qualms about turning me in, don't. I care so very little that I'm turning myself in, too. For other crimes, though. And anyways, I am a fifth or sixth responsible for you being here. I seconded Dorian's vote to make you our gegor, you know." A brief laugh then, the light kind that the boy gave to relieve tension when it began to mount, and then another shrug as he turned and went to go dissolve into the darkness after Antha. When he paused at the door, it was only long enough to murmur, "It really is best for you to try and win. Even if you don't care at this point, other people might. Not me, not really, but..." And then he left.

It was another ten minutes before the speakers announced the end of the game and summoned them to the altar, before Lawrence laughed and scowled all at once. "Do whatever you want to me when this is over," he hissed to Dorian, "I deserve it---less than the rest of you, but I do, too. But then, who will give a damn about me when the truth comes out? When as always, Antha so completely eclipses me that I am all but irrelevant? I didn't go to the Talamasca for nothing, Dorian, I hate them too much, and I only paid them in the missing puzzle pieces that I needed." A smile flashed briefly across his face, a dark and pained twisting of the lips, before he turned and answered the summons, arriving pale and drawn at the altar with his other cousins. He was nearly the last one there.
When all of them had gathered, taking up their various posts upon the rickety structure and around the room with the tribute box at their center, a core about which they all orbited, it began. Jack was first, tossing his trinket into the box as he told them how Vittorio had been seeking out women pregnant with half-Mayfair children for years and making them disappear. Vittorio was next, offering up his box of matches and revealing that Jack had been the one to set their aunt Julia's house on fire, with her in it. On and on it went, the dirty little secrets that made the atmosphere more and more tense with every moment, that made the targets flinch and the others look on grimly, waiting.
Courtland, who had managed to escape the targets up until that point, sauntered up to the box where the others had shuffled and dragged their feet, dropping a little bag of soil into the box. "Savannah never knew what we were doing," he said simply, watching Lawrence with steady eyes as his jaw set in a tense line and the color rose angrily in his cheeks, "She was frustrating, but she never had anything on us. Antha and I grew annoyed with her, so we made up the story about her so we could put her on trial." Antha never flinched, and indeed didn't seem to mind one bit as eyes popped open and the look of realization dawned on various faces. Instead she waited, patiently, until there were only Lawrence and herself left.
There was silence for at least a minute as the two stared one another down from across the room, Lawrence by the door and Antha perched upon the middle tier of the altar. No one whispered or snickered, shuffled their feet or toyed idly with some trinket or another, only stood still and silent as death until Lawrence stepped forward, until he drew out the little vial of Antha's blood that he had taken when he'd cut her leg and dropped it into the box. "Mary Beth never simply lost her mind," he said, his voice never wavering, never betraying the heavy knot in his stomach, "She drank so much vampire blood that she drove herself crazy. She chose to sacrifice herself to reinvigorate our bloodlines, our family." For a fraction of a moment, he became angry. "Didn't any of you wonder why Antha never seems to be affected by draining a vampire down to their last drop?" The girl's eyes narrowed, but she showed no surprise. "Because her mother kidnapped Khayman and drained him of his blood. Repeatedly. Blood meant to pass into her unborn child, as it did. To break her ties to Sleet and make her something never heard of before, a second generation witch born of a witch."
Somehow, the silence had thickened. All eyes had settled upon Antha with varying mixtures of terror, confusion, outrage, and dumbfounded awe. But she paid them no mind, only kept her eyes fixed steadily on Lawrence, waiting. "Khayman broke into that attic ten years ago," he whispered furiously, as if to force the girl to admit to it, "His blood that resided in you called to him and he let you out. He helped you murder Leon, or else did it himself. And now you take every measure to keep him in power, to protect him, because your life is tied directly to his."
There were whispers now, passing frantically from person to person, but they lasted only until Antha slid down to the first tier and then the floor, until she stepped up to the box and pulled from her pocket Illium's severed tongue, wrapped up tight with a length of string, and dropped it in. "You knew," she stated simply, with the forced sort of calm that was far more terrifying than any form of anger, "You came into Satis house fifteen years ago and Leon told you exactly who I was. I heard him with my own ears, watched you walk out through the boards on the window. You knew who I was and that I was locked in there, and for five years you never told a soul. You left me there to die."
Finally, as Lawrence's eyes popped open with shock and the color drained from his face, all of the mixed feelings around the room melted away into pure outrage and the aristocrats were left waiting, not sure how long they could contain themselves or what was going to happen next. The only one who seemed very sure of anything was Antha, who knew that her secret had been nothing to Lawrence's and was able to step gracefully back out of the spotlight, leaving him alone in it.
What had he really expected, trying to bring down Antha Evelyn Mayfair? They just never learned.

For a brief moment, the ever-so-tight leash Vikteren kept on his emotions--just for a moment--slipped--
The vampire nearly choked on his words, so filled with a blistering and incoherent rage were they that they might have burned a mortal tongue: "Do you really think that I am the type of man who would force another to shoulder his burdens? Not only his burdens, but that which--" the vampire's head dropped, and his tone changed. The vampire's voice lowered, forced through a jaw so tightly clenched that his lengthened canines cut his gums and made his mouth red. "--that which he himself has feared to confront for centuries, that who he would not dare turn and fight against--no, but would leave to another to defend him against?"
Vikteren's hands, which had made fists without his awareness, were shaking. It was that, that inconstant movement, which drew his attention back to them--he realized what he had done, and forced himself to relax them once again. He took a deep breath--he made himself look up, meet her eyes, her cousin's gaze--"I thought he would follow me. He has, in the past. I suppose I've never stayed in one city for this long. I suppose he thought that meant I'd made--connections." His hollow laughter was suffering to listen to. "He was right. I'm sorry I involved you, Antha, you must know--I never meant to trouble you. Isn't that any man's dream? To see the woman he loves--live as untroubled as possible?" In Antha's case, of course, the threshold for 'as untroubled as possible' was somewhat warped. 'Possible' meant entirely different things for Antha than for the average girl.
He must have realized that he was making a fool out of himself, rambling on about such things.
When he looked up again, the green in his eyes flickered madly--
Antha was gone, and her cousin--
The vampire listened, and frowned, and said nothing--nearly said nothing--but half-whispered instead, as the boy vanished about the corner. "They value so little their life. They value so little--" And he caught his words, and reeled them back with a hitch in his breath. Perhaps that was the result of being raised amongst excess. Certainly, it affected how one perceived 'value'.
Vikteren's shoulders fell, alone in the room, as the light above began to flicker. He could sense the air becoming cold; it was quite clear that his welcome in this room had worn thin.

He slipped out into the hallways. The door, as he shut it behind him, clicked--the tumblers fell beautifully into place, and it locked.
Vikteren found the doors to the altar chamber just as the game ended; it seems the airship had led him there specifically so.
The vampire slipped into the room silently, and took up position against the back wall, crossing his arms and levelling the room with a look of quiet determination. He heard all the accusations, the secrets spilled--and the audience was all tearless, at the revelation of their cousin's murder, he could not help but note, not a reaction amongst them. He could hear their hearts pounding in anticipation. A multitude of racing pulses, like the beat of distant drums. Each of them alive in the dread that they might die in the next moment. He could not help but despair. What kind of family bred such dark things within itself, like a curse written into their name when they were born?
Dorian was late but, by some miracle, had arrived without alerting the family, at the very moment that Lawrence stepped forth. He listened breathlessly, his fingers at the doorjamb to prevent the sound of its echoing shut from sounding out in the utter stillness. Finally, as Antha revealed her play--like a good magician, he thought as she receded from the spotlight, like a stage actor retiring from an encore--he allowed himself to guide the bolt into place. It shut noiselessly. He was successful. He nearly allowed himself some amount of pleasure in his successful sneak attempt roll, but then he took stock of the situation at hand. The room was--alive with murderous intent. If they'd been a kennel of dogs, all hackles would have been up. And yet, no one moved.
When had this family become so ******** up?--and they wondered why he never came home. He'd been grateful to get away from the Mayfairs--it'd felt like heaven, living without the dreadful weight of all their family's dark little skellington-secrets pressing in on him all the time, from every timber of their ancestral homes. In the city, there was nothing to cling to him, no past to taint his name. The Mayfairs guarded their reputation well, after all. All the bourgeois knew was the flash of his new-money watch and the glamour of his old-money surname--and he'd loved it. Some days he'd even been able to pass for normal.
He felt his heart surge with dread. He'd never live it down if they called him a coward, but Dorian suddenly wanted to whisper, as if they were children once again on the playground, "I don't like this game. I don't want to play with you anymore." But who could you threaten to run to, who was to play governess and administer punishment, when there was no bigger bully than your own playmates...?
Maybe that was when one began to realize
that they'd gotten in too deep.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

If any of the cousins had been forced to guess, they would have said that Courtland would be the first of them to lose it entirely. The boy, his cheeks flushed scarlet and his eyes wild, glazed with anger, was indeed the one to finally explode, dashing forward so that his fist could crash into the side of Lawrence's face, knocking him flat on the floor. "You knew?!" he screamed at him, bringing the sole of his shoe down squarely upon Lawrence's chest as he tried to rise, "You could have saved her five years in that place and you didn't say anything?!" Jack's breath had quickened, his pulse racing and fingers twitching as if he were waiting for a turn. "You could have spared us five years of waiting for the family curse to claim our lives?! Five years of terror and uncertainty and that sick feeling that it all ended with us?!" There were downcast eyes at this, fleeting looks of discomfort from the cousins who were old enough to remember those terrible days when they Mayfairs had no heir.
"I was afraid!" Lawrence screamed finally in his own defense, "I didn't know what was going to happen if I told! I was a teenager, I---" Courtland punched him a second time, bringing a light spray of blood from his lips, and he made no attempt to speak again.
It was when Courtland drew his fist back a third time, his face a mask of utmost fury and murderous intent, that Antha called firmly, "Stop." Eyes glanced at her in shock, studied the solemn, thoughtful expression upon her face, and then looked away. "This has gone far enough. All of it. Our games were always too sick and twisted for words, but to turn on one another like this?" She shook her head, sweeping her curls back from her face so that Eleanor could clearly see the look Antha shot her. "I let it go on because it had to," she whispered finally, "Because the secrets we keep from one another are the most poisonous of all, but this is the end of it. They are all said and done and it is over now." Courtland's lips parted, made a growl of protest, but the girl stopped it with a gesture, waving him aside and taking Lawrence's hand, leaning over him as he rose to whisper, "I wanted you to know that I've always known." Briefly, her eyes were poisonously green. "That I forgave you your most terrible secret without so much as a word about it. I wanted you to remember that we are blood and we must coexist no matter what passes between us." She let him stand then, his gaze cast on the floor with painful concentration, as if he couldn't bear to look at her, or anyone else, and Antha raised her voice to address everyone. "All of this ends tonight, do you all understand me? Everything that was said is over with, it's done, and you are all going to let go of it. We are family, damn it, the same blood runs through all of our veins! We are all in this grand mess together for better or worse, until we take our last breaths. And anyways, there is too much happening around us to bother with the past." Her eyes flickered meaningfully at Vikteren before she gave a dismissive gesture of her hand, letting her cousins file out into the attic quietly and scatter to their rooms. For a girl with absolutely no sense of shame, Antha was frighteningly impressive at instilling it into others.
Courtland and Lawrence stayed behind, neither looking at anyone but clearly waiting as Antha turned to Vikteren. "The magic on that door will not let you pass through without my permission," she informed him quietly, "But I'm willing to let you pass without winning the game. If, that is, you will give me your word that you will not leave again, no matter who dwells in the shadows or how much you cannot bear my cruelty. Otherwise, I'll leave you in here."
"Antha..." Courtland began hesitantly, glancing up at her, but the look she shot him brought him to immediate silence.
"I'm not giving you the chance to run away again. I don't care what you think you're accomplishing by leaving, how you think it would be better for anyone, or how terrifying your demons are. And if nothing else---" Her eyes sharpened, became something a little crueler, darker, "---remember that your demon is in this city and has only ill intentions for me, and it's because of you. I would think if you ever loved me and if you had any sort of pride, you wouldn't leave me to preoccupy him while you run away."  

[Okimiyage]

Dorian was only barely able to make it out of the attic. The hallway spun before his eyes; it was only his feet's memory of those countlessly treaded runners that guided him hastily past his--cousins--through the corridors, to the second floor bathroom, where clutched the side of the sink to keep standing and heaved and choked on a terror that he had not ever known before.
He had just enough presence of mind to lock the door.
The family was falling apart. He'd seen it in the airship, on the faces of his--the words 'cousins' implied a sympathy of relation that he presently could not stand. The family was falling apart, and Antha--their dear, brilliant, mad ringleader--was the only power capable of keeping it in shape.
Cruel thing that she was, she was having just as much fun breaking the family as repairing it. Who suggested such games, after all, who first twisted curiosity into perversity--? Dorian bit his lip, hard, struggling to maintain composure. Such thoughts were treacherous. He watched a drop of blood appear quite sudddenly upon the pure white china beneath him.
It was frightening to think that the only person keeping the cousin's from one another's throats was the same person who had incited their aggression. It was frightening to think, furthermore, that they had been trained since an early age to tear one another's throats out by this person. Like dogs--a kennel of purebred dogs. And furthermore, that this person was what bound them together, like broken bits of pottery restored. Dorian could not decide whether he was grateful or affronted. Nobody else dared toy with the Mayfairs, but they might as well have been pawns in a chess game for all that Antha was concerned.
Dorian had the the acute and unmistakeable premonition that, very soon, everything was going to fall apart. Everything was going to go to hell. He was afraid that when it did, Antha was going to take immense satisfaction in a job well done.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Several moments passed before Courtland, glancing quietly between his cousin and the vampire as a child would, fearful and waiting, turned and went running out the door after Dorian. Lawrence was next, taking pains to keep some sad and desperate bit of dignity about himself. Antha turned silently on her heel a moment later and followed him out the door, her fingers grasping that ragged, splintered wooden edge and pulling it after her so that it slammed shut at her back. She could hear Lawrence's footsteps on the stairs, how they grew a little more hurried when he was out of sight of Courtland, perched on the top stair and staring unblinkingly, unseeing. The latter made her pause at his side, twining her fingers gently in his fair hair, stroking it back from his forehead, and he bothered to look up at her and whisper, "I thought we told each other everything, Evie?" Antha said nothing, only smiled and smoothed his hair back into place before she continued down the stairs and across the hall.
The lock on the bathroom door clicked as she neared it, but she didn't reach for the knob as habit dictated. Instead she knocked once on the door, softly, calling Dorian's name. "It would not have been such a shock to you if you had been here, I imagine," she said quietly through the door, "Things have been uneasy for a while now. We're not as close as we used to be, and it causes tension between some of our cousins. It doesn't help that slowly we're all having to face the fact that we're growing up, that the elder generation is dying off and soon they'll be taking their places. And with the end of my days so near at hand...well, we were never any good at coping, were we?" Her sigh was gentle as she glanced out the window, through the leaves and to the city beyond the garden. "I don't expect you to understand what happened just now. How could you when you weren't caught up in everything before it? That prelude of tension when you watch someone who knows all of the secrets that can destroy you grow distant. I didn't intend for it to go this way, exactly, but the truth was going to come out one way or another and now at least it is left in that dark and secluded place. It was better this way than any other."
Needing no response, no comment upon how she went about things, Antha left silently for Julien's study, locking herself away long enough to deal with the business at hand---Courtland, listening to everything from the stairs, heard David Talbot's name more than once, as well as Aaron Lightner's and Khayman's---before summoning Jacob by way of the intercom to ask him to find Monsieur Calais for her. She needed to speak with him, she said, and the boy wasted no time in starting through the house in search of Cian.
When the phone was placed on the receiver, Courtland, not particularly interested in what Antha wanted Cian for, tromped down the stairs with slow, heavy steps along the same path she had taken, to the door behind which Dorian was tucked away, and like Antha he didn't enter. But unlike her he didn't speak, did not offer his cousin any words of comfort for he had none, but rather turned and rested his head with a light thump against the door, sliding down along it to sit on the floor, legs splayed out and hands resting idly in his lap. He was not angry anymore---if Antha had forgiven Lawrence what he had done than surely Courtland himself, the less wronged of the two, could forgive him as well, and Antha's crime...well, it made too much sense when he thought about it to truly be angry. Of course she wouldn't dare to utter the words aloud for fear of what prying ears might hear them, and of course she knew it would only terrify and upset her cousins if they knew---but he felt rather drained and oddly upset. It was disturbing to him to think that some thread of Antha's blood was not Mayfair blood, that they did not share it, and that in all the time she had been warring with Sleet her life had not truly been on the line as theirs had, that she could have killed him and survived. Everything came together when he thought about that long feud knowing that Antha was tied to Khayman. Sleet had loved having the great Mayfair family tied to him, their blood running with his, it was only natural he should be enraged when the new Designee was free of him, that her blood could free the family of him over generations.
But more than anything, Courtland was afraid. There had always been great witches here and there in history, ones that seemed in their legendary tales to be on a level equal with Antha, but they had always simply been second-generation witches, or on the rare occasion third. But Antha...Antha was a second-generation witch born of a witch, and by the blood of a vampire a great deal more powerful than usual. The strong ones never made that mistake, letting humans get their hands on enough of their blood to contaminate them. It was all very unheard of, and he found himself wondering with growing terror how much of her power Antha kept herself from unleashing in order to keep her secret safe.  

[Okimiyage]

The vampire took his time responding to Antha's question. He did not move, or speak, for a long time. The only way it was certain that he was even still conscious was by the twitching of his pupil as it pulsed, contracting subtly in the dim light. He waited until Courtland had left the room, and they were alone in the airship. The air felt heavy between them, as though filled with condensation, as though at any moment beads of water would catch like pearls in her thick red hair, and she would shake her head to fling them off--
Vikteren found himself starting towards her unconsciously, despite his best efforts to remain still. No, he thought, not while--but the words were distant, fumbling and clumsy things, and who could resist the white-hot temptation of instinct in comparison?
Time seemed to be behaving strangely. He felt himself moving, but too slowly, and with directions all at odds to him--his hands struck metal, the corrugated surface of a rusty door, and the vampire realized that he was alone in the airship.
The vampire could not help but feel fear. He bit his lip--felt his lip sink and part under the blade of his fang, and filthy black blood wet his tongue. There was something else in his mind.
he remembered how the doll, in the darkness of his clutched fist, had jerked and bucked as though alive--and how it had stank of magic, so old that the thumb-print of its maker was hardly recognizable--
"Cyrus," he whispered. The noise he made was neither scream nor laughter, but a choking hybrid of one desperate to do both. "My dear sire."
And the dark, closing in on him, seemed to have claws...

Dorian, in the bathroom, could hardly listen to his cousin. It was true, what she'd said. He'd grown accustomed to thinking of his family as how they had once been, before he'd started--before they'd all started--to change. Before innocent games turned deadly, and before the Mayfair spawn lost whatever precious human sense differentiated between the two. Today, watching them all, he'd become aware of just how wrong that idea was.
He felt like a little boy again, reminding himself of one of the countless times he'd locked himself in the dumbwaiter to hide from an overbearing adult or aggrieving situation. Dorian didn't like the feeling, and it was that shame in his own cowardice that at last forced him out of hiding. He almost tripped over Courtland. There was an awkward silence between the two of them before Dorian pushed past it. "Strange day, huh?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Courtland sat still as the door opened behind him and revealed Dorian like a bad magic trick, now you see him and all that. "She's right, you know," he muttered, half to himself, "I never really thought about it. I didn't want to." He stared for a moment at his hands in his lap, the flexing of his fingers. "It was always kind of funny to me, the skeletons in our closets. I liked being scandalous, having the city fear us. I didn't even think about how those secrets would affect us." A laugh escaped quietly from his lips as he shook his head, rising to his feet and running a hand idly through his hair. "One day horrifyingly soon, we're really going to be adults. And it's better not to have these secrets hanging over us, isn't it? Like a blank, stained slate."
"More like a piece of paper with all the words scratched out." Lawrence stepped into the hallway with the attitude of one expecting to get punched, his head down and eyes cast the opposite direction of Courtland, inching quietly towards his cousins. He stopped several feet shy of Courtland, resuming his usual aristocratic demeanor, back straight and chin high, so that the two boys could stare one another down.
"I'm not going to apologize," Courtland said shortly, his gaze passing over his cousin's split lip and rapidly blackening eye, "You deserved it."
Another, more brief moment passed in silence. "I know I did." Lawrence turned then, as if he thought nothing more needed to be said, and went to the closed door of the study. "Antha," he called, knocking once on the door, "You have an appointment. Vittorio said he will be waiting for you at the hospital."
The door opened in a flurry as Antha stalked through it, her gaze focusing on the grandfather clock at the end of the hall. "Damn it, I completely forgot." Lawrence and Courtland watched her as she vanished into Malakai's room, replacing the shoes she had left in the airship and grabbing a coat. "Dorian, darling, could you please find Cian for me? I don't know where he's run off to, but I need to speak with him when I get back and Jacob has a million other things to do. It's important." She stopped, motioning for Lawrence to go on ahead of her as she settled her gaze on Dorian. "And try to be nice, alright?" she asked softly, pleadingly, before she hurried after Lawrence down the stairs, still calling directions, "And if I'm not back in an hour, will someone please check on Vikteren?"
Courtland, who had also been staring at Dorian, nodding his head teasingly along with Antha's words, stopped abruptly to shout, "Wait a minute, Evie, where's my kiss?!" before he went running down the stairs after her and finally ended up climbing in the car with them.
When they returned two hours later the other cousins had drifted back out of their rooms, having recovered from the scene in the airship, and the moment they walked through the door all eyes were anxiously upon Antha, peering down the stairs and through doorways, waiting for some news on their heir-to-be.
At best, the girl looked tired. At worst, there seemed to be some strain on her that worried those who watched her. Lawrence, taking her coat and hanging it on the rack beside the door, was no help at all, merely his usual stoic self. It was Courtland who gave them a ray of hope, bouncing around Antha as if he would burst at the seams any moment, and it was he that Antha finally glanced at, sighing in defeat and giving a permissive wave of her hand.
"Well?!" This from Jack, standing by the banister and waiting anxiously for the news.
He was the one Courtland went to, slinging his arm around his neck as he announced, pointing with his free hand at Antha's stomach, "It's twins. She's having twins."
Abruptly, the house became thunderous with jubilant outcries. Even ancient Suzette, watching from the second floor, clapped her hands together and murmured her delight. It was only Antha, still reeling from the news, who said nothing about it, merely turned to seek out Cian.  

[Okimiyage]

Vikteren had a bad sense of time. It had probably come from the occasions on which he'd buried himself for decades. It was impossible for him to tell at the present moment whether it was minutes or hours that passed, in the airship, in the dark. He sat in the center of the room, back straight, head a little bowed, the emerald slits of his eyes broken up by strands of the dark hair which shaded his face. He was trying not to look at the cracks of dim, dim light which leaked from around the door-jamb of the airship's exit.
Gradually, by dint of the rustling and chittering that emerged from shadows, the vampire was coming to realize that he was not alone. If the manner of noises in which his companion made were anything to go by, as well, it was most likely not human. Possibly not even alive in the same sense, if Vikteren called to mind the toy which he had picked up in the dollhouse room (...which had writhed in his hand like a snake, although the waking eye could detect no movement...).
The rustling, the chittering. The squeaking of articulated porcelain joints. It had been drawing closer, over time. Whereas once he had only heard it in the corners of the room, it was nearer now. Circling, like a vulture.
Vikteren wondered how long it would take for whatever geas that drove the little thing to end him. The doll had been meant for Antha, it was her resemblance and scent that had made the trinket remarkable to him, something he thought might amuse her or divert her from her present hell-bent games. But with Antha gone, the focus of the doll's enchantment had shifted to the next best thing.
He supposed he must still smell like her.
He supposed that-which-binds must still consider them bound.
The change of focus had confused the spell--whoever made it had an antique manner of casting, and Vikteren would have called it crude except for that that, when he had touched it, he had felt something of the madness which it contained. Even the four-hundred-year-old vampire could not recall when the last time it was when his mind had borne that sudden rush of entropic power. All that meant was Vikteren still couldn't shake the nagging feeling that all of this was his sire's way of ******** with him still.

He made the mistake of seeking the doll out, the next time he heard the drag of its movement along the floor. It had become a grotesque mockery of the girl it was meant to resemble. A long crack split its head, from chin to glass green eye, and the white gown was white no longer. Filth had accumulated on the pale skin, from being pulled about--for it did not walk so much as it flung itself, not even upright, about the space like a maddened hunting dog trying to catch scent of its prey. He hated it, suddenly, whereas previously it had only inspired insipid dread.
Catching the doll hurt. Whoever had made it had wanted Antha to suffer terribly. But he was not Antha, and that helped--the parts about hemorrhaging wombs, for example, did not apply. But there was enough in the doll that his head split, and he saw in green fire and the hand which held the fetish burned as though it held a fragment of the sun's fire, and he thought he saw it wither and blacken and crumble away and Vikteren could only know that he held fast by the pain. It was a strange scene that whichever pitiable cousin chosen to check on the Designee's former companion would walk in upon. The vampire held the filthy doll like a treasured child. It was still recognizable by the strands of red hair that seeped between his fingers, but its face had been completely crushed in, and whatever leaked out had stained his palms scarlet.  

[Okimiyage]

Cian awoke to find his new bride gone, the sheets at his side cold from her absence. There, on the carpet, lay their discarded regalia; her wedding dress, rearranged into a veritable mountain of lace, and his own well-tailored suit. Yawning, he sat up, rubbing a hand through his hair to prise the curls out of their disarray. Antha had, no doubt, already risen and fed and would be awaiting him downstairs; such were the thoughts that wafted drowsily through his head. Married life! Who would have thought it would ever become him? But if there was anything that last night had proven, it was that he had made the right choice. He'd fallen asleep beside many a woman in his own time, but never had he slept so deeply or awoken so rested. Even the memory of his brother's appearance at the ceremony could not darken Cian's mood, not this morning. He was not expecting what could.

In the airship, Vikteren came to consciousness. It was the sound which drew him out of the darkness. He had grown accustomed to the noises of the airship by now: the squeals and groans of metal expanding and contracting throughout the structure, the faint scritching of spiders slowly knitting their webs. This was something new. This was--chittering. The whispers--more than that, the laughter--of something that swam inside the walls, coming closer and then receding, and words all but on the edge of hearing. Vikteren knew his senses had not dulled. He could have picked out the syllables of a whisper from a crowded bar away, but this was a noise made by no material creature. The vampire had grown well-accustomed to the reek of his sire's magic. So overpowering was it that he nearly did not notice the draft of fresh air that penetrated this space. Nearly.
Vikteren extracted a cobweb from the crease of his elbow, and stood. Someone had entered the airship. No, that wasn't right--he knew exactly who had entered the airship. If he had any doubts, the intruder called out his name, and her voice confirmed his suspicions. The immortal moved out into the corridor, too quick for human eyes to reckon him anything more than a shadow fluttering across the wall.
He appeared like a ghost in the corridor where Antha stood. One second, there was no-one and nothing at the end of the hall, save a dim and cracked gas-light. The next, the vampire that Antha had abandoned in this plane stood there.
Vikteren's eyes were two pin-pricks, needle-points of green light in the deepest jade irises he had ever worn. Fixed on Antha, they flicked once to the bruise at her throat, left by Cian's mouth, and once to the ornate ring upon her third finger, left hand.
"How long has it been?" he asked, quietly. His voice was hoarse, the edges roughened like a knife too long unused, gone rusted. "How long did you intend, Antha?"
Too much like a game his master played once, long ago. For months--perhaps longer--he had burned daily in a sky-lit cell, until his will was broken to agree with that of his master's. Because he had refused Cyrus then, he had been punished beyond what he thought even immortals could stand. He had already gone through that once--never again. Did she know how closely she mirrored the actions of his hated sire? Had she done so with intention?

He could not fathom such cruelty.
That's what he wanted to say. But in truth, had that not been the point of bringing him here? To show him what cruelty she was capable of, had been capable of since childhood? Was that what that gem sparkling on her finger was yet more evidence of?
He wasn't thinking rationally; his mind was a maelstrom. He would not let her read it, would reveal nothing of his mental state more than its frenzy. The vampire was becoming aware, to his own faint chagrin, that he was angry.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

For a fleeting moment, Antha stood waiting for the responding anger to well within her, to lash out through her tongue and her magic against him. But curiously, it did not. Instead she merely leaned her head back against the door with her back, fingers still splayed across her abdomen. "A few days," she murmured listlessly, eyes closed, "It was more than I meant it to be.I was, however, quite...distracted." Her eyes opened a fraction, glanced to the glimmer of her ring, and then cast her gaze elsewhere. "Did you not feel it?" came the next whisper, "Just now. That...shift, or whatever you will call it. Every other vampire the world over did, and myself. He's awake now, you know. I saw the flutter of his eyes, felt that acute hunger from so many centuries buried beneath the ground. It won't be long now. My dream, that nightmare that had me screaming in your arms...it isn't far off at all now." Again there was that tiny stirring, that flutter within her body, and Antha was suddenly quite aware that her son was listening. He was more powerful than his sister, enormously so, and that bit of magic that she had reached out to him with, spoken to him with, had ignited something in his unborn body, made him aware that he was no vague spirit in the darkness, that he had a body and a tie to the world of solid matter, and he was taking that world in now.
"You need to feed," Antha said shortly, giving a vague shake of her head to clear her thoughts as she pushed away from the rough door that scratched her palm, "I will not release you into the world this way." Her hand, skittering away from the stomach that was just slightly swollen, not enough for strangers to know but more than it should have been, pulled at her hair, moved it to cover Cian's mark upon her neck and leave the other side clear, a smooth expanse of pale skin interrupted only by the throbbing of blood, that gentle pulse of her artery. "Drink. Please."

After the events of the previous night, the party that was less for the bride and groom being celebrated than it was for the family that had been waiting for it, Cian was the only one conscious in the house that had just become his home. The other Mayfairs slept off their long night, some of them together---behind their locked door, Jack was crawling back into bed from where Courtland had knocked him into the floor, shoving him drowsily into the wall where he had room to curl up beneath the warm sheets beside him---and some of them in the oddest places---Thorne, the bottle of whiskey still clutched tight in his hand, had his head upon his arms that were folded on the stair, his body stretched down the length of some other half dozen stairs, one shoe on his foot and the other discarded some three stairs lower in the floor of the atrium.
It was, therefore, not a member of the living family that took note of Cian's awakening. It was Marguerite Mayfair, barefoot in her tattered and sullied dress from a past age, her long black hair tangled down her back like Spanish moss, that paced the new couple's bedroom, appearing for all the world as one of the living except for the light that did not strike her quite right and the flow of air that did not rustle her skirts. "I am so glad to know my research has lasted through these long years of death," she sighed in a whisper, the voice not quite sounding from her dry, cracked lips, "My family never did approve of it. Mad, they called me, monstrous. But see how it has paid off? My research has saved this family. Darling little Antha, daughter of my daughter's daughter, that mad nymph that is ten times the witch I ever was, that is a hundred-fold more powerful than any standard witch in these modern ages, that recoiled from my work when she discovered it a decade ago, is my legacy." The apparition, looking terribly solid as her filthy toes nudged the shimmering white circle of Antha's dress, moved it but never dirtied it, glanced briefly to the new Mayfair, that wild glimmer in her eyes that Claire Leonelli could never hope to match, that would never come so naturally and easily to his untainted genes. "She did not like it, at first. She refused, insisted that she would let nature take it's course. But she realized so quickly, as I have known all along, that nature is to be tampered with. Nature is slow, unreliable, and our kind---my family and yours---are above things such as nature.Her children---your children---my family's only ray of hope, did not have the time nature tried to demand of them. Antha did not---does not---have that time. She knows she will join me all too soon, when that nuisance Nero gets his skeletal little fingers on her. He is awake already, she knows this, the vampires all across the world know it, even if the younger ones do not know it so precisely as the ancient ones. One cannot grow so great as Antha has without someone coming to chop you down. But her children, Vanessa our unborn heir and Sebastien our unborn king, should not pay for their mother's power. She loves them, as mammals do. They listen to her from her own body, move their undeveloped limbs through her own blood and flesh, whisper their own magic with hers. She sees them as clearly as I, who does not view time as the living do in a straight line, a present, a past, and a future. She sees her children, with your brown hair and her green eyes, her necklace upon her daughter's neck and her quick wit upon her son's lips, and she will do anything to have them survive. That is how she finally came to see reason. We have our magic for a reason, though my family called me mad to believe it so, and that magic, my books, my laboratory, is what will allow your children to live. It has them twice as grown as they should be, will have them here two, three times as fast. It will allow her to feel their tiny hands wrapped around her finger, her lips on the crowns of their little heads, before she is gone. Really, how is that so mad? How is that so dark, so dangerous, such a crime against nature, which humans hold so sacred?"
"Marquerite," a voice sighed from nowhere in particular, moments before a man stood languidly in the closed doorway, his back pressed against the frame and a long, golden cigarette holder pressed between his lips, blowing smoke that carried the vaguest smell. "You give nature no credit, and you betray your darling descendant."
"The boy is a witch," Marguerite replied hastily, defending herself with a little 'hmph'.
The man, not quite as opaque as his relative, took a moment to check his fine velvet smoking jacket, the gleam of his highly polished shoes, and finally to comb his hands through his long black curls. "We were witches too, cherie. We were Mayfairs. It made us no less understanding of your wicked ways. Stealing babies from slaves to mutate them, luring men into this house to kill them and reanimate them with new spirits, hacking vampires apart to see what they were made of. And now you have your magic worked on one of our own. Was that not always the rule, Maggie? You do not touch a creature of our blood?"
"I did not," Marquerite hissed, her little hands pressed to her hips where her skirts were gathered and began to flare, "Antha did. No one dares to impose such rules on her. Or they do and she does not listen."
"There is little to be done with one such as Antha," the second ghost murmured thoughtfully, puffing on his cigarette as his quick green eyes took in the room around him, "With power such as hers, she does not have to bend her will to that of others. Your son will be the same, you know. His power may never be the same as his mother's---in fact, it most certainly will not---but it will be enough, and his will shall bend to no one. No one but his sister, of course. We Mayfair men do have a certain weakness for the will of our sweet little sisters."
"You have forgotten your manners completely, mon cher oncle."
"One does not need manners when one is dead," he breathed through his smoke rings, "And at any rate, I could tell the boy that I am Lestan Mayfair, and the name would mean nothing to him. He has not been within the family long enough to know me, and my name is all but forgotten outside of our blood. I know your name, though. Ah, oui. The Calais family was not always the great secret they became. To be terribly frank, I am surprised it has taken so long for our blood to merge. It is the most horrendous idea, mixing our tainted genes together, our curses, and yet so completely inevitable. There were bound to be two such as you and Antha one day, two mad creatures that saw in one another kindred spirits, whose blood called to one another, craved to become one and the same. But, to be frank...well, I thought it would be your brother. Through and through, he and Antha are alarmingly matched. Do you not agree, Maggie?"
"His manners are absolutely atrocious, our curse would never allow him to survive past the contribution of his genes. And at any rate, our little brat princess cannot and will not co-exist with one such as him. He has done her a great dishonor, trying to sacrifice her and all."
"And let us not forget," Lestan added in a thoughtful purr, glancing sidelong at figure of his niece, "He harmed Nicolae. One does not harm beloved Nicolae and escape the great extremes of Antha's wrath. For that boy above all, Antha will shake heaven and earth and wrap hell around the perpetrator. Mark my words, she is not done with him. She has not even begun."  

[Okimiyage]

A hiss of air escaped the vampire's lips, as the witch drew away a curtain of red hair to expose her throat. Vikteren's eyes fixed on the dark bruise at her throat, the blood pooling dead beneath her skin. A thought flickered along the unreadable surface of his mind like a silver fin flashing in murky swamps; she forgot. He didn't know whether that was worse than if she had intended his exile. There was astonishment, and hurt--and astonishment at the hurt, as the vampire had thought that such an emotion was a long ways off. But he showed none of it; if anything, his face grew even more set, the notch between his brows and the shadows in his eyes becoming deeper.
The pattering of her heartbeat changed like a drum taking on a new beat, and the vampire's head tilted, very slowly. There was something different about Antha, something inside her that he did not recognize the scent of, and it sounded as though her pulse was--echoing. "I felt something," he said; in the shadows where the vampire stood, presence-less, the whisper was dry and dead. "But I did not know what it sought." He extended his hand slowly, palm outwards and gently curved. In one instant, he stood approximately twenty paces away, illuminated by the dim and distant glow of gas lamps. In the next, he was within arm's reach of her, and his hand hovered within a scant inch of the bodice of her dress; directly over where, in her womb, the infant children grew now. The vampire's attention was raised from her torso, where he took up her own steady emerald gaze with his. "You have two lives that grow within you; you should not offer up your strength so readily. They need it more than I." He took her hand, removing it from her throat, and studying the mark that it disguised. Vikteren offered no comment, but his eyes dropped away after a moment, and he turned from her to hide the mask of his face. "I will feed when we leave this place." He paused, and then added, "If my time here is done, that is." Antha had yet to say anything of release, after all.

((OOC: I'ma make Cian's response outside of the Airship, I have to jet to class so it'll probably be sometime tonight after work.))  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"I did not forget," Antha snapped quickly, defensively, pouting angrily at the vampire as if she were offended, "The timing was not right. Put aside the matter of my wedding and my pregnancy and there is still Rynn haunting these streets, on the end of some mysterious puppet strings. There is a great deal I'm willing to wager that your sire is the one tugging on those strings. I would rather it was, actually...it would only be one more irritant if there was someone else waiting in the wings, lashing out at me through Rynn, and I'm already loathed to be dealing with the two known problems at the moment. Particularly now that my executioner is awake, prowling the earth to restore himself from his long slumber and making his way towards me."
In the instant it took Vikteren to near her, his fingers stretched towards her stomach, Antha's magic flared as never before. It was not a conscious decision---as a matter of fact, she tried to stop it, to hold it back---but every small bit of her power, that which she used to strike terror into her enemies and a portion of that power that she kept locked away, hidden, to keep the secret of what she truly was, came writhing around her suddenly. It was a primal instinct, her body's response to something dangerous coming so close with no warning to what she must protect unquestioningly with her life. "Funny, how these things happen," she murmured as she struggled to reel it back in and lock it up tight, glancing off towards the dark windows, the clouds floating by outside through the grime and cobwebs, "I never took myself for the maternal type. My mother certainly never was, and it always seemed more to me like some irritating task I must do for my family. But they..." She paused, taking the smallest sigh as if she were at a loss, and again she felt that terribly tiny movement, that vague shift of budding power within her, that whisper of unformed thought. "They're everything. In the span of days, everything I ever cared about---my power, my legacy, my endless conquests...they mean nothing to me anymore. The only thing in the world that matters is to keep my children safe, to deliver them safely into this world, and to---please, God!---see them before I am gone. I would trade this entire empire that I have built just to hold their tiny hands, to kiss the curly crowns of their little heads. And I have done everything I could for that, beyond even my low, twisted morals, to keep the kingdom that I already know my son will rule, because he will be too terribly like me for anyone to be safe." Briefly, the girl smiled. "I can only hope he takes a lesson from the web I have wrought, which has caught me utterly and will tear me apart before he ever knows me."
Finally, that dark and terrible fear flashing in her eyes, too close to remorse for comfort, Antha shook her head and combed her fingers through her red curls, setting that familiar gaze back upon Vikteren as if the previous conversation had never taken place. "I am not telling you to drain me dry, ducky. I will be fine with a little blood loss, it will be back before I have time to feel it's absence. But you need to feed before you ever step foot out of here. You will be moving between dimensions, from alternate to reality, and you cannot do it if you are weak." Once again she took her hair in hand, pulling it out of the way, and this time she produced the small knife that seemed to appear and disappear oddly from her person, pressing the tip lightly to the side of her neck, just enough to bring the first drops of blood welling to the surface, rolling down the pale, smooth expanse of her neck. "Just drink it, Vikteren. If you don't, it's simply a waste."
When it was done, Antha ventured to take his hand, her fingers wrapping carefully around his own, and led him back to the door, turning the knob so that they did not enter the altar but rather the dusty, neglected room in the back of the Mayfair Manor attic, the single window boarded over and the old wooden crates piled high in the very back. "The sun has only just risen, I'm afraid. It should hit you in a moment, when your body adjusts to the change in physics. I shall come back to collect you by nightfall, we have more than a few things to discuss. And if you should choose to attempt to run before then, I will find you and I will drag you back into the airship and I shall leave you there for good. If you truly wish to be free of me, you shall simply have to wait until our common problem is dealt with. Am I understood?" The girl waited for no answer, rather she turned on her heel and slipped through the door, careful not to let the feeble light of dawn spill through the doorway and into the small, dark room.
It's about damn time. Descending the stairs and running into her room to change into something more appropriate for the long day at hand, Antha gave the equivalent of a mental swat at Courtland's voice, the grin she could feel from him as he sat at the table downstairs, head pressed into the back of his chair and bloody mary in hand. We've been idle too long. They're trying to take our city from us, and now they need to learn just how stupid it is to ******** with us.
They're about to learn, darling, came the responding whisper as Antha descended the stairs, done up in one of her nicer fitted lace and satin frocks with the low, square neckline that framed the Mayfair emerald and the full skirts that flared out from her waist down almost to her knees, And they're about to quite sorely regret it.  

[Okimiyage]

The vampire was not ready to accept her blood, to draw sustenance from the same font that supplied those infant heartbeats. Not until she pricked herself, and drew out that haunting fragrance from beneath the shell of her skin. Then, Vikteren hissed and drew close--but slowly, with all the languid grace of a great pitch-black panther. He was now aware of her defenses, after all. Very motherly of her--a trait that hardly would have been expected from the princess of Mayfairs. Funny that family should suddenly mean so much to her now, when it had seemed to matter so little before. Blood of her particular ilk was defensive of its passage. Still, he could remember--faintly--traces of thought from days long since passed, when he had once thought to sire a lineage of his own. His heart wanted to harden, to fend off those memories, but he silenced its protests. To bear heirs was a natural urge for any aristocrat; a Mayfair was hardly any different, though their land possessed no titles. It had been denied him, but that did not mean he should resent another's achievement. It would be foul manners to do so.
It had been foul manners to lock him in this damn basement. If either of her children treated the other in any semblance of their mother's tradition, they would be dead before adolescence.
His expression betrayed no trace of his bitter thoughts; Vikteren smiled at her, in fact, before leaning in close. The kiss that he laid upon her throat was perhaps less sweet than in the past. She felt the sting of his bite, he was sure, and he--he tried not to think about her blood as it sang in his veins. The vampire felt suddenly--and with a dreadful certainty--that he would only drink her blood a few more times before its source was depleted. There was nothing else in the world that was comparable; even knowing all the potency of Antha's blood, Vikteren himself had underestimated the value of the privilege he'd been given.
When he was done, the vampire's mouth left a lip-print of blood upon her throat. He put his eyes--gleaming emerald slits, in the dim light--past her, upon the doors and darkness beyond, and said, his voice rough but admirably controlled in light of his emotions: "It will be seen to, I expect. There are many who will have an interest in their upbringing on account of their mother's actions."
Vikteren followed her through the narrow, spider-webbed halls, out of the filthy and ancient dimension. The vampire had often wondered, in his brief time amongst the airship halls, whether Antha had created the place herself, or only discovered it. He did not care enough to ask; there were other matters on his mind.

In the attic, he felt day break. Compared to the endless night of the airship, it was a sensation the vampire had never expected to welcome. But he did. He closed his eyes and opened his palms and tried not to think about the thin layer of rafter and shingle that separated him from the sky.
Before she left him, Vikteren put out a hand, and caught hers; his fingers were icy cold, like blades of frost against her skin. But his words, when he spoke, bore no aggression; merely wonder, and a grim sorrow.

"Are you not afraid for them, Antha? Your children will reap what you have sown in this life; there are many you have angered, to whom death is nothing to account for your actions. What will halt their vengeance when your power will protect them no longer?"