The Talamasca Motherhouse

[Rynn Calais]

With a sigh, Rynn turned away and gave in to the impulse that had been nagging at him for a good half hour, putting his fingers to his throbbing temples and dropping his head. He ran a tentative mental finger along the thread that bound him to his twin, searching for the thorns and kinks that had left it snarled and impassable to him before.
And there were obstacles, to be certain. Her mind still barred to him--and yet there was a crack, a familiar light seeping between the cracks, where before there had been only darkness.
He breathed a sigh of relief.
"It'll take a while, I think," he said, turning back and letting his hand drop. The corners of his lips curved upwards in a slightly sad smile. "But all I needed was the possibility. Thank you."
Rynn looked at Singe. "I was taught enough that I know what you offered of yourself in that ritual. I don't...I'm not certain how to repay you."  

[.David Talbot.]

Singe just shrugged. "Thank Antha." He put a cigarette to his lips as he struggled for a way to explain it right. "I'm one of those people that just won't live without Antha. No dice. When she decided to use herself I signed up too. If she goes down I'm right there beside her." But there was still the fact that he wanted to help Rynn. He didn't like expressing those kinds of things in words so he just let the feeling pass from his mind to Rynn's. "Yo, Atticus!" he called as he spun on his heel. "You alright man?"
Atticus gave a feeble thumbs up in mockery of Singe's attitude and laid his head back on the floor. The clarity in his eye again was strange and the process was draining.

 

[Rynn Calais]

.David Talbot.

Singe just shrugged. "Thank Antha." He put a cigarette to his lips as he struggled for a way to explain it right. "I'm one of those people that just won't live without Antha. No dice. When she decided to use herself I signed up too. If she goes down I'm right there beside her." But there was still the fact that he wanted to help Rynn. He didn't like expressing those kinds of things in words so he just let the feeling pass from his mind to Rynn's. "Yo, Atticus!" he called as he spun on his heel. "You alright man?"
Atticus gave a feeble thumbs up in mockery of Singe's attitude and laid his head back on the floor. The clarity in his eye again was strange and the process was draining.

Rynn pushed a hand back through his hair. "It isn't enough, but you'll always be welcome in my home. The same goes for your companion--"
Rynn's head turned, seeking out Atticus, and his eyes widened as he noticed Atticus. "Oh! I'm sorry--only it's such a relief, I'm completely forgetting my manners, aren't I?" He went to Atticus and knelt, hesitantly reaching out his hand. "Can I help you up?"  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

The first question was, naturally, what Stefan could possibly have said. "He said something about Antha being tied to Khayman," Lawrence murmured, sitting across the great oak desk from Aaron Lightner, "And how Louis told him of it, how her power became so immense."
"You think these things unrelated?" he questioned, and Lawrence hadn't the slightest doubt that the man was highly uncomfortable. Good.
"If I thought them unrelated, why in the name of God would I be here?" he snapped, coolly, "I think it safe to assume that Stefan was babbling along a single train of thought. But as you can imagine, Antha will give me no explanation. If anything, that is a confirmation. It is no secret to her, though she seems set on keeping it that way, and so it must be important."
"And you'll just die if you don't know," Aaron assumed quietly, to the silence of Lawrence's steely glare.
The boy---he was not really a boy, Aaron reminded himself, he was quite the man, but he was younger than Aaron himself and there was something so childlike about Antha and her cousins as a whole---had folded his hands upon his knee after nervously adjusting the knot of his tie, which had been perfection to begin with. "I have...not really a theory, but a sort of idea. Something that might prove to be a lead, if we could back it up. This is why I need you, and your infinite vaults of otherwise useless knowledge."
As the Talamascan sat back in his office chair, his feet propped up on the corner of the desk, his brows and eventually his long, rather sensual mouth puckered. He would not begin the old argument, no matter how Lawrence tried to provoke him, that knowledge was a purpose in and of itself and they needed no reason to collect it, they were scholars after all. "I take it that if you cannot refer to your own family, it must be information regarding Khayman rather than Antha?"
"Yes." It was so difficult for him, poor, proud Lawrence who hated the Talamasca with all his being. His family's secrets were sacred to him, and he wasn't sure what kind of secret he was about to hand to them. But it must be dismally important, mustn't it? "I need to know if there was a time in the past two decades that Khayman went missing, if only for a couple of days and most importantly, when."
"I think that can be arranged," Aaron consented thoughtfully, reaching across his desk to press down the little button on his intercom, calling for any records of such relevance. The first of these were brought within ten minutes, and the two men---Mayfair and Talamascan, it still boggled Aaron's mind---began to pour over them all at once, studiously. He was glad that Lawrence himself was quite a bookish creature, and as a lawyer watched for those small details. The rest of the files, and there were dozens upon dozens, piled up between them for the next hour as they read and read and read until, finally, "Here, look at this!" Aaron exclaimed all at once, jabbing his finger with a small degree of excitement, and certainly relief, at a relatively new document typed up by one of the investigators who watched the vampires of their city. " '---are in nearly a riot, for their coven master, Khayman, has been gone nearly a week following his dispute with a rogue---Name: Horace---who has been after his position.' "
"I can't imagine that to be any help to us," Lawrence mumbled, coming to look over Aaron's shoulder, "A dispute with another vampire is hardly related to Antha. Not a decade ago, at any rate."
"Shut up and listen," Aaron snapped, reading again, "The vampires worry for their coven master has not left them without any word of his whereabouts in some ten years." It was when he read the date that followed this, Khayman's first disappearance, that the men both went silent. They were not willing to convey to one another what they knew about this small space of time, and yet they realized that the other had made the connection. Aaron knew it by the way Lawrence went rigidly still and contemplative in something like rational fright. Lawrence knew it by the way Aaron sorted through the other files and found one with that particular date. A file that claimed Khayman had been missing for three days in that instance, apparently against his will though he would admit to no such thing.
It was then that Aaron, nervously, fingers trembling, turned to the shelf directly behind his desk which bore the Mayfair files. He pulled two leather-bound volumes from the mass of them, one labeled 'Mary Beth' across the front and the other labeled 'Antha Evelyn'. As he did so that Lawrence took note of the date of Khayman's second disappearance. It was at least as shocking as the other, if not greatly more so, but Aaron hadn't seemed to notice it and Lawrence was most certainly not going to bring it to his attention.
"It's foolishness," Lawrence declared in a whisper, even as Aaron cracked the books open and began his hunt through them for those few missing puzzle pieces and the boy watched intently over his shoulder.
"Call it what you may," Aaron mumbled, sitting back again in his leather office chair and thumping his finger against a certain page, "But do the math---it fits disturbingly well."
"Antha would kill you to hear such things hinted at," Lawrence said in a very solid threat.
"And so it fits even better," Aaron responded gravely, "If it is true, of course she wouldn't tell you and all your cousins. Of course she might confide it to Louis as a child and then never whisper a word of it again. Of course she would guard the knowledge jealously and deny it fiercely when you confronted her with information that might lead to it. This is not the sort of thing that either of them would want to be known. This information, if it is true---and let's be honest here, Mr. Mayfair, it really must be---it is more dangerous to Antha Mayfair than anything else in the entire world."
Lawrence, unable to deny the Talamascan's words, had dropped back into his chair across the desk from him, his head clasped wearily in his hands, as he whispered a well-deserved "<********>."
Antha was going to kill him.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

David Talbot could not completely deny that he was nervous. It was too apparent by the way his eyes were fixed on his desk, how his hands and feet fidgeted, the touch of perspiration at his temple. But to be fair, he had a perfectly good excuse. Antha Mayfair and Rynn Calais were sitting across from him, Antha settled demurely in the leather chair, every bit the self-assured little queen, and when the two most terrifying witches in the city were alone in a room with someone, it was ill-advised not to be worried.
"Sarah tells me you have some business to discuss with me, Antha?" he began finally, and his voice wavered very slightly. He still could not look at her.
Antha smiled at him, all sharp edges and dangerous gleams, and he knew from experience that she was pissed. "Oh, I would say so. A few things, actually."
David glanced as far up as her arms, one folded over the other atop the leather armrest, and noted the slight twist to her waist as it settled against the chair, the precise manner in which her long, pale legs were crossed. Very few people in the world realized that the way Antha crossed her legs indicated her mood, and David was one of them. Very prim but relaxed, slightly self-aware. Whatever she wanted, she was in no mood for nonsense, and she was just looking for an excuse to crucify him. "I can't say I have any idea what it could be, but I'm sure we could---"
A slight sound came from Antha, the gentle rush of air from between her lips as she held a finger gently to them, shushing him, her eyes like glass. "Hush, David. I'm speaking right now." David shrank, casting her a nervous glance, but said nothing more and so she continued in a falsely serene tone. "You took something from me, David. You and the rest of the spying little thieves and stalkers in this organization. It was the most precious thing in all the world to me, and you claimed it for your own." Her eyes narrowed, her lips curling into an unforgiving smile. "You had no right, David."
He wanted to protest, to swear that he had no idea what she was talking about, but he didn't dare to speak so he showed it with his eyes, gazing helplessly at her. She only continued to smile before she spoke again. "I'm sure you had no idea of it, at the time. It's hardly an excuse, but I'm willing to acknowledge that. And I haven't come to claim it since because, to be quite honest, it would cause more problems than it would solve. So you've held onto it for nineteen years, and I haven't said a word, but now, David...now you're going to return it to me, or the consequences are going to be quite disastrous for the lot of you."
David stared at her for another moment in silence, confounded, the gears of his mind grinding visibly in his eyes before, all at once, enlightenment hit him like a sack of bricks and his face blanched, a hectic light going off in his eyes. "Antha, I'm not sure I'm at liberty to---" Behind him, the great wall of glass panes made a muted symphony of screeches, hairline cracks sliding easily along the panes, and David clamped his mouth fearfully shut. She had delivered the warning, next would be the punishment. His finger hesitantly hit the button on the intercom, his voice murmuring uneasily, "Sarah, I need you to ring Aaron and ask him to fetch..." He paused, glancing off and counting in his head, and then continued, "Mayfair artifact X: 17 and bring it to my office for me."
Antha smiled at him as if she would praise him for being a good boy, but instead continued. "One more thing, David. You can consider it payment for all the years you have kept my treasure from me." David glanced at her hesitantly, not entirely certain he wanted to know what else she wanted, but the girl laughed lightly as if to reassure him. "You are aware of the vampire Cassian, no doubt? Ah, of course, he is something of a legend, non? I want everything you have on Cassian, and the legend of Nero, every little scrap. In particular, I want Nero's shroud. I know you have it, don't even try to deny it."
"Antha!" he protested in alarm, groaning in distress, "I cannot simply---" With a great whumph! of air, the thousands of books that lined the walls of David's immense office contracted on the room, sliding from their shelves, and after a brief moment of suspension, dropped with a deafening clatter to the ground, breaking an antique globe in the process, shattering it all over the floor.
"I won't ask again, David."
David did as he was told, because he was terribly aware of how easily Antha could destroy the many centuries of work and irreplaceable artifacts housed in the motherhouse, she was only reminding him, so he made the call for the things she asked and the three waited then for just short of twenty minutes in utter silence before a knock sounded on the door and the items were delivered. "This should be everything," he murmured, "The texts are only copies, the originals are too delicate to be removed. I hope you can understand."
But Antha was not paying attention to David anymore, she had risen from her seat and gone to the box set on David's desk, a thing of metal and wires roughly a foot by a foot and a half large, ripped straight from the pages of a science-fiction novel, and had laid her fingers hesitantly, lovingly, across the top of it. It was cold, but that was to be expected. "You can take the rest to the car," she murmured simply, glancing fleetingly over the items to make sure everything was in order, and with a nod from David the nameless Talamascan did just that, leaving only the rectangular box behind. "Ah." She bothered to tear her gaze away from the box long enough to focus it on David, fumbling just beneath the neckline of her dress. "But as a show of goodwill, I have something for you." At length, she removed a spherical pendant strung around her neck that, at her prodding, began to emit a low, fiery glow. "Here," she offered, pulling it from around her neck and tossing it errantly at mesmerized David, "The immortal, disembodied soul of a phoenix. You can have that as your reward for being right about their existence. I have no need for it anyways, it's more trouble than it's worth, and I haven't the time to study it at all." With that she took up the handles of the box, lifting it delicately from David's desk, and held her hand out to take Rynn's. "We should be going now. So much to do, so little time. But don't worry, I'll introduce you when this is all done with."
Hesitantly, very carefully choosing his words, David murmured after her, "I'd like that." And then she was gone.
Outside, in the picturesque bend of the winding gravel driveway, Antha paused beside her car, glancing up to one of the great, crooked towers and narrowing her eyes. Darkness had just fallen, and she met Atticus's dark gaze with one of open contempt, the accusation of betrayal, and then slid silently behind the wheel, turning to gently place the box in the backseat, buckling it up, and departed.