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Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 10:30 am
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Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 3:39 pm
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Antha's voice.
Before he could turn, before he could seek out the source of the scream, he was moving.
His body instinctively knew where she was.
He didn't remember taking the stairs to the second floor. He didn't remember moving. He remembered, for a fleeting instant, seeing Antha, on the floor, rising on bruised arms.
But something in him put that aside. Said, not important, knew that should he focus too long on her that the cold rage within him would subside. The predator within him did not want that to subside.
It was useful, after all.
It was the predator that said, Mine. The predator that snarled, a terrifying, inhuman sound, the predator that closed the distance between Sleet and himself too fast for human eyes to comprehend, that lunged for Sleet regardless of the man with the gun, regardless of the human on the stairs that moved--and the small part of Vikteren right now, the part of him that watched impassively, wanted to say, 'Are you mad? 'Sneaking up' on a vampire? By the time he hears you hit the ground, he could turn around, skewer you, and turn back before you had time to sit up.'--through the air, to a vampire's eyes, in practically slow-motion.
It was the predator that wanted this intruder's heart in his hand; his blood on the floor.
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.David Talbot. Vice Captain
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Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 4:06 pm
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Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2008 4:20 pm
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The sight of Vikteren brought a new fear to Antha's panic-stricken eyes. Felix wasn't really hers yet, and she had no ties to Kain. She really didn't want to see them harmed, true, but it was only Vikteren that she feared for. Vikteren was hers, after all, and it would be worth killing Sleet to see him unharmed. She didn't scream when Sleet returned or when he grabbed her up so violently that her bones threatened to start breaking, but the moment she was against the wall, when she saw that look in his eyes, she screamed bloody murder. His fangs made a pain far sharper than any other torture that he could have inflicted upon her, made all the worse by his carelessness. It brought black spots to her vision, as if he were truly eating up her sight rather than her blood. She was losing the feeling of her nails biting into the wall, of the blood spattering in dark spots on the collar of her shirt, of the cold winter air hitting her fevered skin. Just the pain was left, the strings and nets of bruises and her fractured bone, the dull throbbing of her head and the incisions his teeth had made in her neck. Antha had been born weak, fragile, and the first nine years of her life had made her permanently more so. That was why, a few moments after she couldn't seem to get enough air, when Sleet was threatening things that she didn't even want to think about and she was clawing uselessly at his hand with her newly freed one, Antha went entirely limp, passing out with only Sleet to keep her from crashing back down to the floor.
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XCandy and LunacyX Captain
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 1:20 am
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 9:00 am
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The predator wasn't done with so easily. The predator wanted the damn trespasser out of his territory, and anything short of blood wasn't going to sate it. The smell of Antha's, spilling across her pale skin, did not serve to calm the vampire. Because however dimly, the predator recognized Antha as part of his territory, too. There were stories of vampires who conceived the bloodlust within them--who went into a frenzy, tearing apart anything they could get their hands on, foe, ally--and finally, when there was nothing else to savage, themselves. The predator wasn't at that stage, yet. But there was something in the aggressive stance, the way he bared his fangs, that signaled that he was getting close. The words fought their way up through his mind, catching onto Sleet's like a hook, like the hand of a desperate man on a cliff's edge. For an instant, with the message, there came a glimpse into Vikteren's mind at the moment--and it was nearly wrong to call it that. It was neither Vikteren's, nor a coherent mind--a snarled miasma of instinct and blood and memories that perhaps were not memories, but what the predator planned to do to Sleet, the core of it all a seething knot of anger, anger that became power in his hands. The message was Get out. The message was the destruction of his coven, his followers, his place of rest, all the trappings of power. The message was the thick gobbets of blood on his hands, reaching through another of Sleet's guards' chests, ripping their heart from their body. Sleet should know that he could do it.
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.David Talbot. Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 1:19 pm
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 5:47 pm
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When consciousness began returning to Antha, however dimly, she was already on the floor like a broken doll, discarded, neglected, and Sleet was just vanishing into the attic. Her vision was vague, giving her outlines of things but no real details. But she knew Vikteren when she saw him and it calmed her down seeing Sleet gone and him still moving. It seemed strange to Antha when she began to remember that her original purpose for keeping him around was because she knew Sleet would come after her, because he would be more reluctant with Vikteren around and he could help protect her. Just those few days ago, the actual person had been irrelevant, and now she would rather have Sleet dead than Vikteren. She didn't care if every Mayfair dropped dead, just so long as he was safe. Her dim, unfocused eyes closed quickly, straining against the light, and she let herself lay there drifting on the edge of consciousness, trying to ignore the aches and pains all along her body. And somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew what needed to be done when she had the strength to move. She needed vampire blood. Perhaps it was that small part of her mind that was calling out before she really realized it, trying to draw forth the one vampire she knew would give her all the immortal blood she needed to repair the damage.
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XCandy and LunacyX Captain
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 10:15 pm
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 10:30 pm
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.David Talbot. Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2008 11:54 pm
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 10:12 am
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Posted: Sat Nov 29, 2008 7:19 pm
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The trespasser was gone, and the little red-haired magic-user disappeared down the hall with her vampire, the one whose blood had the same tang as hers.
Kin, the predator thought.
The vampire followed the trespasser's trail upstairs, to the attic--dimly familiar, but unimportant. The room was drowning in the trespasser's--Sleet's, a quiet voice supplied--scent. It had to be gotten rid of. The broken glass dug deep into his palms as he leaned hard on the windowsill, dark, old blood spilling out of the cut--coloring the glass rich crimson. With it came the madness, the predator, seething over the old boards of the house, whispering protections, words that had been too long forgotten for the human tongue to recognize. In his blood came the ward, and the reminder. Get out. The ward was too volatile to last more than a few nights at most; like all wards, it would wear as people passed into and out of Satis House. But it might keep Sleet away for the night. It might keep the girl--Antha, Vikteren wearily supplied--safe. Why it was important that she remain unharmed, the predator did not know. But the working had drained much of the rage from him--enough that Vikteren could remember himself now, enough that the knot of rage in his mind was allowed to simmer away, and enough that the predator was allowed to withdraw into some dark corner of his mind.
Vikteren drew his hands back from the bloody glass, clasping them together behind his back, where the blood made his palms slick. His gait a little more stilted than usual, he descended the stairs, sought out Antha's trail over the scent of his own blood. And--Nicolai? Ah. She'd called on her brother.
He found her in her room, with the other vampire at her side like the most attentive of nurses. Protocol dictated that he remain at the threshold until invited within. Vikteren wasn't up to following protocol right now.
He entered, went to the foot of Antha's bed, spoke quietly to Nicolae, voice hoarsened and low. "Is she...?" The words didn't come. Stable? Alright? He wanted to be at her side, to slip his hand into hers, to brush the curls back from her face, but he couldn't. Nicolae was family, Antha his best-beloved; he did not want to come between them now.
Vikteren understood the bonds between brother and sister.
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 8:32 am
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XCandy and LunacyX Captain
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.David Talbot. Vice Captain
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Posted: Sun Nov 30, 2008 5:09 pm
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