scatter

Those infuriating words spoken so calmly made Kang was to reach over and wrap his hands around Andrei’s neck. The castle was designed with hope, only that it was a false sense of the word, one that worked to brainwash those who bought into it. There were many slaves who believed that they could get out by getting into a master’s good graces. So many of them becoming emotionally attached to these emotionless creatures only to be abandoned once they had served their purpose. They were the ones who had it the worst and in a way, being with Andrei in the past had dashed any of those sentiments when he entered Krovs all those years ago. It was a lesson learned and a matter of his pride at not wanting to get played by another vampire that kept him going.

“You have? You speak as though you have a conscience.” Kang took a deep breath. “Our men… No, my men were all executed and yet I was left alive. If that does not speak of you preferring to watch me suffer then I don’t know what else it would be.”

He was tired of looking into things- of looking into himself. He had always been rather linear when it came to his wants and needs. Now, though, he was starting to feel more abstract than he’d like to admit. “Take it as you will.” Whether or not Kang was right wasn’t something he wanted to entertain anymore. Not right now at least. Surely it’d come back to nag at him in due time, though. 

The other vampire had a point. Bringing his son here would have been strange. It was why Heinrich had never told Sebastian of Krovs, but unlike Andrei, Heinrich and Sebastian knew exactly where they both stood with each other. “How did you find him, as you said? How did you know he was yours and the slave’s? It seems like a child is a rather big thing to have missed seeing as the kirin has been here this whole time.”

“He found me.” Which was a little impressive given how strict and brutish his men could be. And, well, there were some technicalities about the whole thing, but he wasn’t in the mood to explain everything in detail. “He had some very bold claims about how he was.. brought into this world. Ones that I had been skeptical of while things were looked into and..” Andrei let out another sigh and reached for his pack of cigarettes. “It’s our offspring.”

Kang was silent for a long time as he mulled over Andrei’s words. The vampire was right in his assessment, but it was also the kirin who had asked in the first place. “No, I guess I wouldn’t. But I was hopeful once.” Hopeful that it was all a dream or an elaborate trick. It was a stupid one that had all but faded after two centuries, but it still followed him from the day Andrei got up from the floor and turned those cold blue eyes upon him. 

“If it is my quicker death you’d prefer, then why did you not kill me all those years ago?” 

“Hope is a useless thing in here, Kang.” Everyone that had contributed to the creation of Krovs made sure of that. Andrei fell quiet once more and looked down to where his hand laid on the table. “Why not indeed,” he mumbled, “I’ve been asking myself the same thing ever since then.” Again, whether or not he was saying the truth was up in the air, and he made sure to keep his gaze lowered to avoid any further speculation. 

That answer was entirely unexpected. Heinrich knew of the slave — the kirin — that Andrei had brought into Krovs all those years ago towards the end of the Second War. He had even congratulated the man on a job well done. It was then that he first noticed Andrei before they both became Councilmen.

“Would you bring him here?” At least within Krovs, the vampire would be able to keep an eye on his son. While there were so many questions, alarm bells even, that were going off in Heinrich’s head, but this was also Andrei he was speaking to, someone he trusted implicitly, which only made the entire situation even more bizarre.

“Mm… Always,” Matthew smiled at the vampire. He had been drawn by countless artists over the centuries but he still enjoyed seeing how different artists depicted this body he was created in. “Perhaps we could make an appointment for another day.”

There was something else the fallen angel was interested in and he wanted to get to the bottom of it. “I seem to recall the kirin as the one that you brought in. Personally,” he mused, remembering the slave’s detailed report on how he had ended up at the castle. That the man was still on Andrei’s mind, now that was curious. “He was quite a prominent figure on the other side. How did you do it?”

“Perhaps indeed.” He should’ve known that Matthew would be persistent. It was equal parts useful and irksome depending on the situation. Right now it was the latter. Andrei emptied the contents of his glass and set it down with a small sigh. “Very carefully.” A joke he had come to by the help of one of his friends. 

“Family,” Kang let out a huff of laughter. Neither of those illusions made any sense to him, especially with the spell working the way it did. Family had been something the kirin might have entertained centuries ago, Andrei would know. To think of the other man fearing it however, was almost ridiculous. Perhaps he simply hated Kang that much. 

“Those are rather… polarising visions. I would’ve thought that you were simply waiting for the right moment to end my life. But no…” There was a thought that came to him and he mulled it over. “Perhaps it’s just that you’d prefer to cage me inside this castle and wait for me die a slow death instead.” Either way, Kang was sure that the vampire would have derived some sick sort of satisfaction from his death, not fear it.

His smile grew along the other’s clear disbelief. It was still terribly flat, void of any emotions. “That wouldn’t be my greatest fear, Kang. It’s quite the opposite.” A lie. One of the biggest, longest standing lies he’s come to live with after all this time, and the other was unaware of it. Just as Kang should be. “Now you can’t say that I didn’t tell you so. I had warned you that you wouldn’t believe anything that came out of my mouth.”

Heinrich looked away from the other man at last, eyes moving to look out the window. He had been in a similar predicament before when he found out about Sebastian, about the witches who had used his blood to create and torture a young boy until the day Heinrich took him in.

“And what of his family? His other parent?” he asked, the most obvious option. Had Sebastian had family who actually cared for him, the vampire would have given the boy to them when he found him, but in a strange way, he did not mind the way things had turned out.

The younger vampire stayed silent for a long moment as he processed what the other man was saying or trying to say. Andrei was a man of few words and it had taken Heinrich himself a long time to be able to read between those lines whenever he did speak. For him to have left his son alive spoke volumes as to the state of Andrei’s mind since the man never did anything without follow-through. That he had let the boy live…

“Would you like to find out?” The ‘I could find out for you’ was left unspoken.

Andrei tilted his head upwards a fraction and let out a small breath. “No, I already know how he’s fairing. His.. location and status is being watched. I just don’t know..” The knot in his throat swelled again and he had to pause for a moment. “I just don’t know what to.. do with this- with him.”

Of course the larger master was aware of the other’s overall distaste for people, but that didn’t stop Yvrim from being who he was. He was someone that was warm and open to talking with all sorts of people, regardless of their standing, but that didn’t stop him from chuckling at the other councilman’s correction. It was sad, really, that so many vampires that were around his age were closed-off and didn’t even reach out to their fellow vampires, but he supposed that they felt as though they had to live up to the stereotype.

He was just glad he had evolved beyond that.

Withdrawing his hand, though keeping the genuine smile upon his lips, the Aswang chuckled once more. “You make it seem as though I came to the kennels to purposefully seek you out, when it is quite the opposite. As I said, I came to see that my hounds made it safe. It was only an added bonus to run into you,” he countered before he gave a small dip of his head in the other’s direction, only to let his gaze move to the kennel that the other was standing in front of. “That is certainly a beautiful bitch, though.”

Andrei arched his brows and made a show to look around them. The lush greens and flowers were all pristinely kept in the garden. Something he didn’t really take the time to appreciate, but it was certainly a better sight than the man before him. 

“Sounds like you’re jealous, babe”. Ben always enjoyed Andrei’s dry humor, it paired so well with his great humor. He would never say it out loud, but Ben really cared for Andrei. He was pretty much his only friend at this point, and boy what a friend he was.

He eyed the giant dog, and put his hand down so she could sniff it. Was that dangerous? Yes. Would he potentially lose a hand? Yeah but it would be awesome to walk around with a hook. “Only dead on the inside, as you know. It’s what the kids today do, and you know I like to be hip”.

“And I’ve been telling you that your hear’s gone bad for the last century,” he replied curtly despite the slightest upwards curl of his lips. His eyes fell down to his dog as the creature leaned in close to sniff at Ben’s fingers. Knowing Yevgeni, this mutt should’ve been trained with a tight leash and with little room for error. But time could only tell if that was true or not. “You like to be hip or take hips?”