Graveyard

[Okimiyage]

"What of Sleet's real coven?" Vikteren asked. "Are their ambitions mercenary?" Doubtless there would be one among them--a second in command, of sorts, who would rise to take their place. Another unknown factor to consider.
The vampire stopped. They'd come to the end of the halls, to the steps that rose to the surface world above, and the doors that marked the end of this night's miserable events.
Vikteren sighed. Suddenly he felt--exhausted, weary to the bone. He had not fed in too long, and it was beginning to take its toll on him. "I'll head back to Satis House for now; I want to see Antha. Later--we ought convene, to further discuss these matters. I'm sure that the Mayfairs have a say in all this as well."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

"They are plotting the way they always do---among themselves," he assured him quietly, mounting the stairs mortally slow, "Do you not know by now that the Mayfairs hold all the strings in this city? There may be puppets who rail against them, but their strings are spun of diamond. The Mayfairs will be the ones to decide this matter in the end---there is no great shift in power without their approval---and in the end it will serve their interests best, before any others. Sleet came to power because Deborah Mayfair willed it, because his genetic material had seeped into her mother's blood and she had been born with it. I came to power on my own, but it was Antha who cemented it. If the succession of the wolf packs was not decided by birthright, they would have a say in that too."
But finally he was at the great stone door, and turning to Vikteren he simply sighed and said, "Send Nicolae home when you reach Satis House, will you? We are in great need of a little chat, that foolish, pigheaded boy and I." And then he was gone, vanished into the night, to his own graveyard and the residence that marked his coven's home.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

It was the darnedest thing, Nicolae thought as he paced the halls of his crypt, his coven settling into their nooks and crannies and coffins for the daytime death. He knew Vikteren had been in the crypt the night before, Khayman had brought him there while Nicolae escorted Antha home, but when Nicolae had woken the next evening...no Vikteren. He had spent the night looking for him in all the usual places---which consisted of Satis House and anywhere he thought an old-fashioned stiff like Vikteren might haunt, because he suddenly remembered that he didn't know the other vampire very well---but no luck. Something just didn't feel right about it.
The other members of his coven insisted he had probably just left, what with his sire finally dead and all that, and Antha married off to some other guy (they had regretted the mention of that instantly for the look Nicolae had shot the lot of them, and his raging temper following it) but Nicolae wasn't so sure. True, he had left before, but at least he had told them. It didn't seem like Vikteren to just vanish of his own free will, without a word, not even some stiffly sappy note.
He hadn't wanted to involve Khayman, really he hadn't, he was too set on doing things on his own, proving he could lead his own coven because he was Nicolae Mayfair, goddamn it, he was above running to daddy when he was having trouble. But with the next sunrise he had no choice but to relent, opening the telepathic floodgates, and the answer had come simply and calmly.
Tomorrow.
He would be damned if he was going to involve Antha, she would kill him for losing Vikteren, and then she'd work herself up into a frenzy turning the city upside-down looking for him. It was too much trouble for everyone involved, it just wasn't safe.
Eventually, sighing with irritation, Nicolae settled himself into his coffin---what had once been Sleet's coffin, and that still made him laugh---and uneasily fell to the daytime death.  

[Okimiyage]

Vampires did not often dream, but Vikteren did now.
In the dream, he traveled about the city. His senses were enhanced a thousand-fold; humans moved through time around him like sloths in comparison. The heart of the city beat, pounding pulses all in unison, steps on pavement and the incessant hammering of engines, metal on metal. He could hear all of it, could smell their flesh as it decayed beneath their skin--could hear thoughts, if he bothered to pay attention, a consistent stream of dull whispering, white noise in the background. He was all at once within and without his body. He could see through his eyes, but seemed to have very little control over his body. His instincts were what led him through soot-stained alleyways, over roof-tops and fire escapes and all with such a speed that he very nearly blurred. It felt like a fever-dream, like one of those ravaging plagues which had incapacitated half the countryside in his early childhood. At one point he remembered opening his eyes to discover that he had come to the very pinnacle, the spire of a great steel skyscraper, and had no idea how he'd managed it. Whatever trifling thought came to mind, he had but to wish it and the world around him changed to suit his whims. 'Go there' or 'fetch that'...
In his mind's eye he could still see that dark and deathly-still garden, but the basin at its center now overflowed into an oily black pool. If he didn't hold fast to the waking world, he could feel that pool threatening to drown him, the shore beneath him slipping steadily.
At one point he opened his eyes to find himself illuminated by the greasy red lights of a bar downtown. He didn't know the name--it was an utter dive--but across the table from him was a girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen. She was thin--her elbows stuck out beneath her skin like badly-hammered nails--and had long blonde hair, stick-straight, and too much makeup. There were already track-marks in her arm, but she sat forward, pushing together cleavage she didn't have, and her eyes were bright with expectation--if Vikteren listened, he could hear the slurred ghetto-rat narrative in her head. She thought he was handsome. posh shirt, too--if you play your cards right, 'kay, maybe he'll even take you home-- and there fell in her memories of the movie Pretty Woman and how glad she was that at least this john wasn't forty-plus with a paunch, didn't remind her of Dad at all in fact. He hadn't even tried to touch her yet, not so much as a hand on the knee. The other girls that hung around this bar had warned her to be wary of guys like these--if an offer seemed too good to be true, they were usually into some pretty sick fetish s**t--but she was too young and stupid to take their advice.
Through his eyes, like windows, he watched himself chat up the girl, and lead her outside, steadying her when she was too drunk to walk--she threw up on the pavement--and then around the back of the bar. She expected him to have sex with her-- was already hiking up her skirt when he turned around. She was surprised by his mouth on hers--he could smell the bile in the back of her throat, lingering scent of stomach acid--and then on her neck, where he opened her jugular and the girl went rigid like someone who'd never been prey before. The stink of fear washed over her as he began to drain the blood from her veins.
It was all that Vikteren could do to tear his body away from hers. His hands didn't want to let go; he could hear her howl with pain as no, no, NO!--with a final snarl of defiance, the vampire took control of himself again. Her throat was bleeding. There were enormous scratches on either side of her arms, where he had tore off from and his nails had not quite wholly released her. He could hear her terrified stream of ohgodohgodohgod as she scraped her spine against the brick wall dead end, whimpering and clawing inside her purse for her cellphone.
The entity from the garden felt nothing but contempt for this display of mercy. It was all Vikteren could do to make it out of the alley-way--walking like a drunk, and in no small part because the girl's blood toxicity had been the vampire equivalent of a vodka cocktail--the other part was because the entity, the fever-dream, whatever it was, was fighting to take control. And some part of Vikteren wanted to allow this--knew it would be easiest to sink back into the warm haze, the fluffy fever-dream-cloud, than fight to save the life of some petty mortal teenage whore.
But he insisted, never-the-less.
He remembered clambering over rooftops, the spires of an architecturally baroque church in the downtown section build to look like an old medieval cathedral. The bells rang as he sat on the corroded green tile, watching the city as protectively as one of the many gargoyles. The comparison to one of the twisted stone demons was pretty much perfect, actually--they both had the same inhuman glint of the eye, if anyone had been around to observe.
No one was.
When Vikteren woke up, he was inside of a cold stone sarcophagus. The carved rock was rough against his cheek; his entire body felt stiff. Ordinarily, the vampire was immune to discomforts of the flesh, so all of this was rather a novel experience for Vikteren. He groaned, twisting his shoulders awkwardly back in a stretch that made his bones crack, and then pushed back the lid. The gloomy halls of the crypts stretched out before him in either direction, and it was all Vikteren could do to keep himself from moaning with despair. Who knew how deeply he'd hidden himself away down in the catacombs? Supposedly these tunnels ran for miles, all over the city. He remembered reading that in a tourist's guidebook once. Who knew where he'd crop up next?
At least his senses seemed to have retained their agility from the dream, so he didn't have to worry about being permanently lost. As he stepped outside of his casket, he could smell a current of fresh air wafting through the right arm of the hall.  

[Okimiyage]

In the shadows of the cemetery, something twitched, and withdrew behind a crumbling mausoleum. There was no sound in the graveyard tonight—no crickets, no rustle of wind in the leaves. Even the sound of the intruder’s own footsteps seemed, somehow, dimmed.

The body that was once Vikteren’s inhaled. There was a familiar scent in the graveyard. Something important flickered fire-like around the edge of memory, just beyond recognition.
It was the first night.
In the crypts, amongst yellowing bones, red hair, curls bouncing around slender shoulders—
there was a name, but he could no longer utter it. Not with this tongue, he would not show her that disrespect—
The Witch’s lips were red, and her smile dazzled like a sun he had not seen in centuries

With a growl, the demon inside him snatched the memory away. She was a jealous sort—she would tolerate no mistress other than herself, not in this body. She found his devotion to be nothing short of insulting.
Had she not been good to this host? She had fed it, found it a stronghold in which to sleep during daylight hours. But no matter how she coaxed, the mangled soul inside this body would not acquiesce to her. She could feel it shudder when she fed. The few times—the rare times—that she had let control slip, it would struggle up from the crypts, flinging itself into sunlight in a vain attempt at self-immolation—or, when they hunted, cry out to the prey she had lured away: Run, run, you fool! I am your death!

It rarely spoke to her at all, these days. Its resistance did not matter, of course, although compliance would have made things easier. She found this host puzzling. Cyrus had spoken so fondly of this fledgling, his ‘best and brightest’. And certainly it was not lacking in power, despite the regime it had imposed upon itself for centuries, maintaining a state of near-starvation with all the zeal of a cloistered monk.
No longer. The vampire’s pallid skin had become pink with the flush of blood, after these days of feasting on the inhabitants of the city. The body was strong. And she had discovered powers within it that the pitiful creature had not even known itself to possess, runes that had long been lost to the world etched upon memories it had buried and suppressed for centuries. She had experimented with a few of them, and had the corpses below to prove it.

The creature which had been Vikteren moved closer, watching Alistair and Nicolae proceed through the rows of tombstones. In motion, he was hardly more than a gust of smoke, too lightning-quick for the human eye to register. The body remembered this one, the vampire, and supplied a name: Nicolae. The other, the younger—red hair, like Hers—was also there, hazier, with less attachment.
She did not like the emotion that surged inside of this host’s chest at the sight of the two of them. What was the word for it?—oh yes.

Hope.

The host closed its eyes. At last he had been granted deliverance.
It had been a long time since he had prayed to any god, but trapped inside his own body as he was, there was little else to occupy his mind. If there were any in this city who could free him, it would be these two. If nothing else, they would see to it that his body—and the thing cohabiting it—was destroyed.
Yet, mingling with that hope, there was also dread. Because if they did not, if they could not, then they would die. And while drinking of the mortals of the city had restored some of his strength—glory, insisted the b***h—he did not like to think what she would do with the strength siphoned of a witch.

She dug the host's nails, claws sharp as razors, into his own arms, and coated the fingers with fresh blood. The marker that she crouched behind received one of the runes she had plucked from his mind.
There was evidently little point in hiding, evidently-- the creature which had been Vikteren raised itself up from behind the gravestones when Alistair beckoned.

To say the vampire looked different would be an understatement. It was easy to imagine how, centuries ago, the coven-master had been so taken with him. The hollows were gone from his cheeks, and his eyes--the eyes of the man were alive with green fire, glittering like the Mayfair emerald. Around him, shadows writhed at his feet, long tendrils of darkness cast from no apparent source, snaking out through the grass like roots that reached to ensnare these presumptuous intruders.

They made a ring around Nicolae and Alistair, and seemed prepared to surge forth had the vampire not held up his hand, still red with fresh blood, and bid them cease. When he spoke, his voice echoed with the whispers of many others.

"Intruder. You risk your life, coming here."

She could sense the shape of their intent, and it made her curl Vikteren's mouth into a smile, exposing sharp fangs.

"Is the fate of this vessel so crucial to your plans, mortal?"

He looked only at Alistair, although Nicolae surely would be considered the larger threat to any that were aware of his reputation. But in the smaller boy, she could sense a latent threat--something at once similar and dissimilar to her own power, her own pact. But she consumed her host, she held the reins, while this...other...had been somehow tamed, bound. It was like seeing a wolf made into a household pet. It had been the same in Cyrus's stronghold, when the little witch had came and dealt the deathblow of his clan. She did not like it--she had never seen the like, before the Mayfair clan--and although she would never have admitted it, witnessing such an oddity sent a ripple of fear through her ancient intellect.

Inside, Vikteren stirred at the emotion, sensing opportunity.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Nicolae was looking at Vikteren before he ever revealed himself, with a vampire's keen sense of perception. The new coven master might have technically been a newborn as far as the rest of his race were concerned, but that had little reflection on his strength. He'd been second in power only to Antha as a mortal witch, transformed by the power of ancient, potent blood, and had since been perpetually gorged on it from various sources, his sister's especially. He could fool even the oldest vampires that did not know him into believing he was centuries or even a millennium old by the merit of his power.
Alistair had likewise noticed, but was polite enough to pretend he hadn't until the dual-spirited body presented itself and then only with the calm turn of his gaze, as if his interest had only slightly been piqued. He was quick enough to divert his attention back to his brother, with a little pleased smile and the passing comment, "I told Evie it wouldn't take long. She worries too much."
"You think there's maybe a better time to gloat, Alistair?" Nicolae murmured, not taking his eyes off of the Vikteren/demon thing.
But the boy ignored his brother, turning those calm, bright eyes back to Vikteren. "She's terribly protective of me, you see," he continued easily, smiling just a bit with affection, "She wants me to live happily in the sun to make up for all of those years in the dark, not set out on the same warpaths she does. But she doesn't quite get it, you know?" He smiled, as charming and easygoing as if they were merely having a little chat in a cafe. "I know what it's like, being trapped. Being forced into the darkness---helpless, powerless, with no escape, your body somewhere in the world beyond your control."
The change was so quick that even Nicolae, watching with his sharp vampire eyes, didn't see it happen. One moment Alistair was his usual self, sunshine and sugar and rainbows, as calm and easy in a dangerous situation as if he were impervious to harm. In the next moment, his eyes were as sharp as blades, his smile thin and threatening, a menacing fury rolling off of him like a storm system shirking itself of rain. "I warned you to give him back." His tone was so like Antha's that their brother fought not to shudder, a low purr of crystal clear threats. "That word you used...intruder. Funny thing, that. You came into our territory, uninvited and unwanted, and you took something from us----our friend, our ally---and yet...ha, now you've gone and called us the intruders. Curious, the way your mind works. But it's often this way with parasites, tailoring everything until it fits your view. You probably think you have a right to Vikteren, or worse, you think you've done him a service."
He moved with his usual easy grace, turning and pacing a few feet, lifting his hand and inspecting his palm until, without warning, brilliant tongues of blinding light began to unfold like some heavenly flower, wrapping around one another until he held a miniature of the sun in his hands. "I told you to leave my city, and not to take Vikteren with you." The orb dimmed, much to Nicolae's relief, and moments later her upturned his hand and let the light drop onto the ground. Instantly the light was flame, a shallow wave that overtook the entire clearing before Nicolae could even react, eating up the grass and weeds. It curled around the feet of the three bodies present, close enough that the vampire felt suffocated by the heat. Then the grass was gone, the ground scorched, and still the fire crackled with life. "I gave you a chance. I really want you to remember that. You could have gone elsewhere and found other hosts and left my friend alone, but you didn't. So now I have to make sure you never bother him again." The air rustled briefly, almost like a breeze, and the fire swirled and gathered itself together again, slurping up into the ground beneath Alistair's feet. That much seemed to restore the boy to his usual cheery countenance, as if now that he had toyed with his power, exercised it, his irritation was more manageable.
Somehow, that made it worse. With his bright, kind eyes and chipper smile, his easygoing demeanor, the words that came from his lips in such a sweet tone and careful pronunciation seemed somehow all the more terrifying. "I will rip you. I will shred you. I will burn you and strangle you and when it's all done, I will drag you deep, deep down into the darkest, most excruciating pit of hell and then...then I will erase you." The boy flashed a smile, as bright and reassuring as ever. "It might kill Vikteren, I realize that. I really hope we can work around that. But one way or another, you’re done with him.”
Beside the boy, sighing, Nicolae discarded his jacket, automatically rolling up his sleeves. “You really are Antha’s twin. Always talk, talk, talking, like we’re not in the middle of battle. You promised me my second-in-command back, can we get to work on that? At the very least we have to avenge him. Otherwise Evie’s going to take the matter into her own hands, and I don't think she knows the meaning of 'restraint' these days.”
“You worry too much,” Alistair amended from earlier, “There’s a reason she left this to me. Have a little patience, Nikki.”  

[Okimiyage]

The body had memories that the spirit now plunged into, like a greedy child ripping open the wrapping-paper of a present. She tore the knowledge from its grasp, no matter how desperately Vikteren attempted to withdraw from her. His own tenuous connection to sanity was feeble as paper—he was fortunate she did not sever it completely. But no—that would have been too much of a mercy.
With eyes that were suddenly cold, devoid of even the pitiful amusement derived from play-acting at courtesy, she surveyed her prey. In an instant, moving at a speed that even a vampire would find alarming, the black ‘roots’ wrapped around the feet of her host, bore her upwards, twining around the legs & back of the body until it made a twisted sort of throne upon which to perch. The seat rose high over the flames that scorched the ground, carrying her host well out of harm’s way. Leaning forward, Vikteren cupped his chin in the palm of a still-bloody hand.
“We might have given you that which you sought,” he murmured, and although the words were softly spoken, they carried well throughout the cemetery. The susurrus of the black tendrils, moving amongst themselves like a nest of snakes rising from winter sleep, accompanied the many whispers in his voice.

“But you came here in arrogance. You came here to demand, to subdue, as though we were your subject to command, as though your victory was already assured.”
His lips twisted, white fang gleamed. There was genuine venom in the voice when it hissed:
“Your pride is disgusting to behold, little prince.”
And then the emotion drained away, leaving the noble face as placid as that of the many stone angels which stood sentinel over the graves. The voice was calm when it continued.

“And for that, you shall have nothing.”

There was chittering in the roots, bright eyes blinking out from between the throne’s intertwining arms. The scratching of tiny claws could be discerned by Nicolae’s keen ears—and if the power within the red-haired boy was anything like her own, he could not possibly remain ignorant of the creatures which now gathered within the supporting pillar of the black throne.
It was a game she had played many times before.
The first time, she had occupied the body of a sorcerer, a Slavic man with a broad chest, strong hands, and eyes like jet. When he had died, she refused to allow his body rest. She had killed his children and drank their blood to give her strength, and withdrew into the mountains high above his home. The village people prayed for an end to her plague of death for weeks, scratched crosses on their gates and door-frames, drove their mad and their midwives—anyone who might have been held suspect— out into the snow, and burned their frozen corpses.
They’d finally discovered the man’s body while she slept, surrounded by the bones of her prey and bloated with blood. When they dragged the living corpse out into the snow, she had awoken to find herself burning, and she had thrust herself out from the host and into the nearest living creature—a grey-faced buzzard, circling high overhead. The villagers had returned to the village in a celebratory mood, whooping their triumph, congratulating one another on their cleverness, and drank themselves into a stupor.
During the darkest hours, while they laughed and danced and told tales in their brightly-lit homes, she flew to the house of the strongest man in the village, and crept like a nightmare into his dreamless sleep.
For all the indignity she had suffered, they suffered twice over. She left no survivors to share the tale of her malice, no man, woman or child, not even the dogs escaped death. Not even the name of the village was exempt from her massacre; to this day, no history book recalled its existence.
And there were so many creatures in the graveyard for her to beckon forth—rats, insects, maggots and worms—even the spare song-bird, bleary with sleep--and if all else failed, the corpses that rested below the ground in their caskets. She would have a wonderful selection of hosts to choose from, when this body burned.
The thought made her laugh, a ripe cackle bursting from the vampire’s chest.
“I will light up this pyre myself, little prince. You may have your Vikteren back, then, or what remains of him. He has long desired death. Is it not fitting that his friends, his beloved Mayfairs, ought to bring him that which he seeks?”
The body leaned forward, her poisonous gaze seeping into Alistair’s.
For a moment, just a moment, she allowed the host to speak. It was her idea of a good joke, this sort of cruelty.
His pupils dilated to pin-pricks, and he drew a ragged gasp. Feeling flooded his numbed nerves, agony sparking in his head, like being crushed by the pressure of an ocean above. His voice was coarse with the pain. Without the thousand whispers echoing around the words, they sounded thin, empty and desperate.
“Please. Please.
D—deliver me.”
There was more that he would say, but he had not the time to utter it, nor the strength to demand more.
The words sounded foolish, even to himself. But it was perhaps the last time he would be capable of speaking--at least, wholly as himself--and he had spent so much of his life in foolishness, that now it seemed only natural to commit his final moments by indulging the obsession.
In the last moment of ebbing consciousness, he flung the thought at Alistair, through the blood-bond she had once bestowed upon him, a faint sigh that rang out inside the boy’s skull with all the force of a battle-cry.
Tell her I loved her.
A good joke, indeed.  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Nicolae hissed in a long and rattling breath. His eyes sharpened, muscles all tensing in preparation, just watching.
Beside him, in the face of the serious matter going on around him, Alistair beamed delightedly. “Wait, wait, wait,” he demanded in excitement, gesturing for everyone to stop, “I’ve always wanted to say this, like in the movies.” The boy cleared his throat, laying one hand against his heart and holding the other up in a determined fist, adopting his best serious expression as he looked at Vikteren and proclaimed gravely, “You can tell her yourself.” Immediately he was in peals of laughter, though they only lasted a moment. “How did I do?” he asked, grinning, “I’m going to be in theater class soon, I thought I should practice. Think I could land the lead in the big school play?”
Beside him, Nicolae snapped in irritation, “Airi! Will you be serious?”
The boy glanced at his brother with concern, brows knitted and a slight pout to his lips. “I’m utterly serious. I would make a fantastic Hamlet.”
“Alistair[/i!”
“Oh, fine,” the boy sighed, shaking his head, “I don’t understand why this has to be so grim, but whatever. You want business---” The boy gave a single sweeping gesture outwards, one movement of his arm and the flicker of his fingers, and the entire world around them followed suit. It vanished in one sweep, all the trees and dirt and decrepit tombstones, and behind it came a rolling fog that settled into a haze around them, though not between them. As it happened, Nicolae shuddered, briefly choking, briefly certain that he had been set on fire, and then…nothing. He felt weightless, limitless, nothing and everything. “---you got business.”
A ragged breath spilled through Nicolae’s lips, peculiarly like it was nothing. Not air, not actually coming from him, more like a thought. “What did you…”
“The advantage here,” Alistair began, in a quite matter-of-fact tone, “Was that this demon was a spirit while we were flesh and blood. We could only destroy its host, at which point it could find another. We had to be rid of that, don’t you think?” The boy smiled, pleasantly as always, throwing his arms out wide, “Welcome to the astral plane.”
The elder Mayfair glanced briefly around him, noting suddenly that the Mayfair familiar spirit lingered just at his little brother’s back, seemingly a bit more solid than usual. It thrummed eagerly, spiraling around the Mayfairs and watching the figures across the arena of space from them, Vikteren and his possessing demon, waiting.
“It’s much better this way,” Alistair said, as if he was stating the obvious, “There’s no tricks here. Just one spirit against another.” His hand came up, fingers twirling until he was in possession of another dazzling orb of light, and through it all he just smiled as sweetly as ever. “Should we begin?”  

[Okimiyage]

The fog spilled out over their battlefield, sweeping through tombstones, mausoleums, the very earth beneath them, leaving nothing in its wake but its own grey cloak.
Vikteren’s body, for a moment, was entirely obscured by the mist.
When it cleared away, the demon’s true form was visible, perched upon his shoulders.
Its skin was black, withered and wrinkled by age, stretched tight over tendons and muscles rather than flesh. The demon’s face was consumed by eyes; some human, some not. The elongated pupils of a cat blinked from one pair; a goat’s from another, the dead stare of a fish from a third. Some were illuminated from within; others blinked back chartreuse, or scarlet, or black from lid-to-lid.
The form was clearly that of a woman; her breasts were as hollow sacks, entirely milk-less, but present nonetheless, and long strands of her hair, ink-black as her skin, were threaded around the limbs and throat of her host, like the strings of a puppet.
Her fingers were long and spindly, and possessed claws that were twice their length, sunk so deeply into the flesh of Vikteren’s shoulders that they had all but skewered him.
When she realized that she was under scrutiny, she looked up—all the eyes, at once, focusing, narrowing in disgust—and growled. The air around them quivered with the sound.
Vikteren, for his part, manifested on the astral plane much as he had in human form. But whereas his eyes had been blinding twin emeralds in the darkness of the graveyard, now—their hue was subdued, the green of forests and fresh blades of grass—clear for the first time and weeks, and possessing a peculiar sharpness.
He took a deep breath—the first movement that he had successfully commanded of his body in weeks—and directed his gaze towards Alistair. A grateful nod ensued.
Then, the strands of her hair went taut, and Vikteren’s right arm jerked ******** words were barely comprehensible beneath the many-toned rasp of her voice.
“Well. You have better sense than I thought, taking us here. It’s not a poor tactic, as they go, all too rarely attempted.
I anticipate a good fight, little prince. Now that you’ve gotten my hopes up, you had best not disappoint.”
She reaffixed her grip into Vikteren’s flesh; he winced with pain as her sharp claws dug into him once more, like a predatory bird upon its perch. Fresh blood made red tracks through the crevices of his stiff, stained shirt.
“If you do…I’ll gobble you up, without a second thought.”
Her eyes gleamed, and for the first time they saw the demon smile.
Her mouth was full of razor-blades and nails. Iron teeth, layered like a shark’s—the jaws of a merciless machine, which had chewed up and spit out many souls before this.
Without warning, the host body burst into blindingly quick motion. The fog around them tore apart, spurting fountain-like into mist. The host sped towards Nicolae.
All of a sudden, without his consent, Vikteren felt his nails lengthen into rapiers. The weight of the woman on his back was like a hot iron anvil, he could almost hear the flesh of his body sizzling under her. She swiped with one of her own arms, his moving in tandem, although he could not say at first whether it connected. All of the sensory nerves in his skin seemed to have shut down, except for that searing pain on his back and shoulders, where her claws anchored her into his body.
They skidded past the pair, although in this friction-less plane, Vikteren was not entirely sure how their path was slowed. The demon seemed to have a better understanding of navigation than he did.
He wrested back his hand, struggling against her, and the demon hissed in outrage at the display of disobedience.
If anything, the strands of her hair only wrapped tighter around his wrist, cutting into the skin like bladed wire, and she jerked his hands back into place, scare-crow-like.
After a moment, her thin lips twisted into an expression of pleasure, and she threw out her hand, then drew it inwards. Vikteren's arm followed in imitation, and he gasped as he felt his own nails sink into the flesh of his breast. More pain, more blood. He tried to remind himself that this was 'just' his astral form, that the pain wasn't real...but it felt real. And Vikteren had no experience with the astral planes; for all he knew, it was all real.
"Try that again," he heard the demon hiss into his ear, "And I'll carve your heart out with your own hands."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

Despite himself---despite the situation, the surroundings, and the grotesque scene before them that made Nicolae grim and sharp-eyed---Alistair, as he always did, smiled. “It’s a bit of a comfort, I think, to finally see you.” The boy’s brother spared him not the slightest glance. He was eagle-eyed, ready…the battle was upon them and by god, Nicolae was always ready for battle. “I suspected you were a creature of darkness. There was very little chance to the contrary actually, but it is good to see. Because if there is any advantage to be had now…” Another smile, one hand tucked demurely behind his back and the other reaching up, twirling until another ball of light sparked to life in his palm. Not flame this time, but true light---warm, white, gentle light. “I have it.”
Nicolae twitched but did not flinch, did not move. It wasn’t sunlight, and anyways his physical body was not present, but it brought a prickling to his skin that made him uncomfortable and he had the very distinct feeling that if Alistair unleashed it upon him, he would be ash in the physical world before he could blink. “Careful with that thing, Airi,” he murmured, eyes still on Vikteren and the creature on his shoulder.
“Oh, no worries, big brother.” The boy gave a half-laugh behind his closed lips. “It’s a part of me. You know, Antha and I were conceived and cultivated so very carefully, equal and opposite, a perfect pair, right down to the very fiber of our souls. Evie’s power was in darkness, to control it, manipulate it, use it as a weapon. But me…my power has always been in light. For almost two decades in the darkness without a body, anchored to this world through my twin, it was the light that kept me from disintegrating into a mad shell of myself.” His eyes sharpened, glancing from the orb of light that he had been watching so lovingly to narrow his gaze at the demon of shadow, his voice going low and serious. “I am the light, down to the marrow of my bones. A creature of darkness will never overcome me, no matter how hard it tries. It may take a while, it may not be easy, but the light always washes darkness into oblivion. It only takes a little persistence, and I have that in spades.”
In the following moments, the ground around his feet began to warp, prickling with low points of light that surrounded himself and his brother. A veritable minefield, waiting for something to try and cross it. Nicolae spoke meanwhile, infinitely more serious than his brother, seemingly more aware of the situation at hand. “You’re certain you don’t want to leave him out of this?” He gestured fleetingly at Vikteren, eyes narrowed to pinpricks. “Think carefully. Once he’s destroyed, you’re out of a host. As much as I’d like you at that disadvantage, I’d rather spare him.”
“Oh yes,” Alistair agreed sincerely, glancing between his brother and the other vampire, “I’m going to be very angry if I have to resort to that. And it’s rude of you anyways, practically barbaric. I don’t see why we can’t at least be civil about this.”
“Alistair---”
“What?” The boy narrowed his eyes, idly toying with his orb of light so that it pulsed and shifted, ready to…well, to do something. “You know you just don’t think like Evie and I do. Battle turns you into a savage beast; we play it like a game of chess.”
“Fine,” Nicolae said finally, flat, his muscles tensing like he was preparing for something. “I’ll be the muscle and you can be the brains. Just tell me when it’s our turn.”
The boy smiled at that, pleased. “It’s simple…we move when they do.” His gaze turned again to their opponents, narrowing again as his smile turned suddenly chilling. “Your move. And don’t make the wrong one.”  

[Okimiyage]

The creature which perched upon Vikteren’s back gave Alistair a long, calculating stare. She blinked, which was unnerving to see, her many eyes winking shut at once, briefly. She was not smiling any longer.
She had walked amongst the humans for centuries, she reminded herself of that. She, too, had cultivated their growth, like a botanist cultivates a rare orchid of a certain hue. To those whom had displayed rare talent in her garden, she had lent her power. She had given them all that they craved—wealth, strength, charisma, the obedience and respect of their peers.
She reminded herself that this was all this boy was. A particularly well-hewn puppet, one whose strings had been cut and was now—somehow—permitted to run carelessly amuck. As she had made her own puppets, she could unmake this one, too.
Very few had ever been so ungrateful as to reject her gifts, nor so willful as to struggle against her commands. So many had entered into this Faustian bargain with her of their own choice, that she had almost forgotten what it was like to be refused. And now, remembering the sensation, she found herself filled with anger. How dare they.
She reaffixed her grip upon Vikteren’s shoulders, like nothing so much as a bird of prey reaffixed its grip upon a perch. And then came the thought:
“Well, why not?”
She whispered it aloud, the sibilant hiss of her voice echoing across their battlefield. The many eyes regarded first Nicolae, then Alistair in turn.
Yes. Either one would do nicely.
They were not her puppets, but that had never stopped her before. There was something about their earnest intentions which she found charming, as well—like a dragon, who admires the chivalry of a knight charging forth to defend his lady before it roasts both of them to a crisp.
With a sound like metal against metal, she slid her grip out of the vampire’s body. As she did so, his eyes shut, mouth opened, wordlessly choking on a scream of pain that he would not give her the pleasure of hearing. Her claws, at their inhuman length, clicked impatiently against his collarbone.
She seemed to hesitate for a moment, before she sprung forth into the ‘sky’, the unending visage of gray mist. For a moment, high above them, the silhouette of her long, spindly body disappeared into the fog.
For a moment, Vikteren heard her whisper in his ear—a single voice, a single woman’s voice, kind as she could manage.

He begged me to take you, that night. He knew it was the end. He wanted you to have my power, to live on with my strength.
He loved you best, you know. He always thought of you as his heir.

That was enough. Vikteren couldn’t hold it back any longer. The force of his scream sent her filthy blood spurting from his quickly closing wounds:
“Get out of my head!”
He stood there, swaying, for a moment longer. The words echoed into space, with no reply.
If the vampire’s heart had beat, it would have been pounding in his chest. He felt light-headed, freed from a weight that he had borne so long that it had nearly become part of him. He felt on the verge of collapse.
But just when the vampire was prepared to sink to his knees, the darkness fell upon them.
It started out as a slow bloom overhead, like ink spreading through clear water, but spread rapidly. The grey fog churned around them, and then the roiling mists disappeared. A curtain of utter blackness fell around them.
In the real world, she would have been incorporeal without a host. Here, she didn’t have to bother with such trifling accoutrements.
After a moment, she opened her eyes, and Alistair and Nicolae found themselves the center of attention. The multitude which had been in her head were now spread all around them, in the distance, resembling nothing so much as the lights of a broad city skyline.
Vikteren gave out a low groan. Just when he had thought it was over.
What was the phrase that humans used?—“Out of the frying pan, into the fire.”
Say what you wanted about the b***h, her ‘harvests’ over the past few weeks had restored him to the full strength that a centuries-old vampire possessed. There was only a fleeting warning, more of an impulse—move—and he felt his body sprint across the battlefield, closing the distance between himself, Nicolae, and Alistair at a speed that would have impressed even kindred. Behind him, a low growl stirred the hairs on the nape of his neck, as a black thorn of smoke impaled itself upon the ground in the very spot that he had occupied milliseconds before.
He found himself seizing Alistair’s shoulders, wincing at the glow of the little ball of light beneath him. Urgency colored his voice, lending emotion to the vampire’s normally impassive tone: “Now. We have to get out of here, now. She needs a host in the waking realm, but without a vessel, she’s trapped here. She wants you, or Nicolae. She'll settle.” He glanced over his shoulder, where the multitude of glowing eyes swarmed around them, closing the distance as they winked out and reappeared. They couldn’t fight her here. While she had been inside of Vikteren’s head, he had also been, at least partially, inside of hers. She didn’t remember the last time that she’d ever been wounded.
“While we’re here, we’re at her mercy. This is her natural environment. She controls the playing field.” He turned back to Alistair, squinting against the light which emanated from the magic which encircled the boy’s hands. If they planned to play her game here, they better be damn sure of their strategy. Should she get her claws into Alistair, there was no knowing what the b***h would be capable of.
"I do not often beg," he said, his voice low. "But I do now; for the sake of all you love, we must make haste."  

[XCandy and LunacyX]

At first, Alistair just sighed. His usual smile was gone, replaced with a vague, conflicted look of intense consideration. It was only for a second---his mind worked like his twin’s, a massive, agitated beehive and every bee had its own brain considering some other element---before he looked at Vikteren and returned almost to normal, murmuring softly with a vague smile, “Your confidence in me is less than flattering…”
Impatiently, Nicolae gave a hiss of a tsk, cutting his eyes at his little brother. “No chances, Alistair. We have what we wanted and we’re not ready for this. Bring us back.”
"Et tu, frater?” The boy laughed softly, the sound mixing with a heavy sigh, his head tilting back as he considered it. And then, as if he’d made up his mind, he looked straight ahead again, at the inky black demon of too many eyes, blowing a dramatic kiss. “I’ll be back. Of that you can be more certain than anything else in the world.”
And then, taking Nicolae and Vikteren’s hand each in one of his own, something yanked at each of them from the core, the dark world around them turning into a muddled haze of everything and nothing. Then they were in their own skins again, without much fuss, standing very still in the dark, quiet graveyard. Nicolae reacted first, patting himself down before giving a sigh of relief and glancing to his companions. Alistair, who was very certain the demon had not followed them back, went up to Vikteren with his usual inexplicable smile, for a moment just looking at the vampire.
“You’re not as gaunt as Evie remembered you,” he said with a tone of finality, as cheerily as ever, not hesitating to pinch Vikteren’s cheeks as if testing them. “No, no, this won’t do…how ever will you properly brood when you’re so radiantly well-fed? It’ll take months to reverse this damage she’s done to you.”
“Alistair,” Nicolae sighed, all of the strength sapped out of him, and then couldn’t find the words to continue.
Unrepentant, Alistair laughed and clasped his hands safely behind his back. “I’m only teasing. You can’t take me seriously, I’m utterly harmless. Well, to you two, anyway.”
Finally only to dismiss the boy, Nicolae sighed anew and tried to change the subject. “At any rate, Vikteren, I don’t think you’ve been properly introduced. This is Alistair, Antha’s dead twin.”
At that, the boy’s eyes opened wide, looking over his shoulder at his brother to exclaim in mild offense, “Not anymore. That’s a fairly important distinction, Nikki. I was dead, but I’m not anymore, not one little bit.” Turning back to Vikteren, the smile came back to his lips, slight and secretive. “But I know you. I know everything Evie ever knew until I was reborn. I was with her every moment.”
“Yes, Airi, it’s all very mysterious and creepy. But can we please continue this elsewhere?” The vampire’s eyes glanced around the graveyard, meticulously noting even the smallest of movements. “I’d like to be in a more secure environment. And by that I mean right ******** now.”
“Of course,” Alistair relented, turning back to his brother with a nod of agreement, “You two should go to Satis House. That thing can’t get through there, it’s secure. Antha would prefer both of you---but particularly you, Vikteren---to stay there until this is dealt with.”
“That would probably be for the best,” Nicolae agreed, nodding slowly.
Smiling with pleasure at the compliance, Alistair nodded and continued, “I should go see how her business of the night has turned out now. There’s so very much to be done. But we’ll be by Satis House first thing tomorrow night, Antha and I. She’s terribly eager to see you, Vikteren.” Though for the moment, it was enough to see it though Alistair, to be assured that he was safe. For now.
Nicolae watched him leave, a little bounce in his step, whistling a tune like he didn’t have the slightest care in the world. “He’s at least as strange as Antha,” he sighed when he was out of earshot, shaking his head, “At least. Maybe more. I’m not sure I can tell anymore. But anyway…” He glanced at Vikteren and then away, murmuring begrudgingly but honestly, “It’s good to have you back.” If one didn't know any better, they could think Nicolae had actually taken Vikteren as a friend, one of very few and hardly none outside of the family.