NOCTIVAGUS CRUDESCO

Birdie can tear an arm from its socket with little effort, wrench doors clean off their hinges. But this? It's like the weight cuts through muscle and into her soul, weighing everything it touches down. Getting her hear from the pocket of nowhere she'd scraped her up from had been a feat.

Nsilo is heaped on a table after a handful of attendants hurriedly clear it off following a squawk from the belabored vampire carrying her along. Birdie, for her part, steps back giving space, palm mashing to her face in consternation and fear. How long had it been? How long did they have? The gnarled injuries remind her of the gashes and cuts Lara had suffered, but where Lara's sat, locked in time through magic, Nsilo's fester and boil. She's never felt heat on a vampire before, or the cold clam of sweat.

The only indication that Castillon is still even a factor is the fact her skin's not ashy stone. Birdie rakes fingers through her scalp. She's sent for help, but the faces she's barked orders to tell her that there's little and less to be done here. She picks Castillon's hand up. "Wake up," she commands, for the ump-teenth time, as if she's ever held any real imperative here. There's a stir, then, and she can't tell if it's life or her imagination, but she lowers herself to Nisolo, as if to hear a whisper or a breath, all-but knowing both are futile.

Somebody peeks through the door, and Birdie shouts at them, "Blood, now. Bring somebody in from the floor!"

She doesn't care about the ethics of it.

There's nothing to be done; she'd seen the damage as much as she felt it now. The wolf gets to have its victory, even whilst rotting on the other side of a veil she's destined to cross.

It would be Birdie to bark whilst Nsilo tries to rest her eyes; eyelids shut. Hiding away the gnarly reality that one of them is in the belly of a foul beast. long dead. It's undignified and messy. Limbs that are lost to numbness, and others so lost to pain that she'd like to tear them the rest of the way out of their sockets — just for a moment of relief.

Reaching up to the woman who has come so far is a shredded, bony arm with only three fingers; one is gone entirely, another is torn at the bend.

But she can't feel the other arm. (Probably for the best.)

"Bir—" There's a cough where ash blocks her throat. And a bloodstained hand finds the cool of a cheek. A woman who has clawed her way from the bottom rung to something more than. A far cry from the shambling creature that had walked into Anemoia with a vendetta for a weasel who had a bounty on his head. She's more than wrath, and more than what someone else had made her into.

Castillon's voice stays quiet and raspy — prideful, where none of her is now. "You're going to do fine."

She, Lara, Kanemaru. The chaotic rebellion Castillon aided in sixty-five years ago; it made a world for those who preferred liberation over confinement. Freedom over regulation. Nsilo's only regret might be that she did not get to witness the inevitable fall of the Lomidze.

It makes her chest ache when she tries to laugh.

She glimpses through bruised sockets as the fingertips against Birdie's face crumble. It hurts, the same way a burn does. She wishes it would be quicker; the beastly venom, and the fall of her from the top of their small empire.

She'd loved to have seen the phoenix that is Birdie Templeton rise from the ashes, she'd like to see what she's yet to become, another century from now.

"Take care of —"

She doesn't get to finish the words before her tongue is ashen, too. She does not get to verbally pass the torch, or the fire that is the heart of Kanemaru.

Blood drenched the earth beneath them as two beasts tore into each other with the hatred of mortal enemies, each intent on ending the other at the cost of their own lives. A massive paw slammed down on her delicate neck, crushing hard against a windpipe that no longer needed breath, small bones snapping beneath the weight.

Her hand lashed out, trying to wrench his starving jaws aside only to be caught between sharp ivories. Like throwing a dog a treat. But it wasn't enough. There was a throat without a pulse with his name written on it. He wanted to leave his mark, and so did she. Fur was torn from his chest and his back, clutched in desperate fingers. Her agony braided with his, where a share scream echoed through the woods like a symphony of death.

Death.

He could feel it brushing along his neck, and his pointed ears, down to the tips of his paws. Death was in the grip of a manicured hand.

The wolf yelped, as if struck down. This was where it all ended, wasn’t it? The curse and the war (inside him and out), and all the rage. Maybe peace would find him at last. But there was no light, only the sound of his own blood slamming in his ears like a hammer. His vision blurred, as if he was sinking and trying to see underwater. Claws shrank back into phalanges. The fire went out of his eyes like smoke—no longer amber, but pale. Human skin crept over him where fur had kept him warm. He was human again, bare and alone, and he would die as one.

There is no surviving this.

Even when she tears it from within the wolf and holds it up towards the moon, glistening in its ripeness. There is no victory in rolling winning dice. Just a strangled laugh, that's more pain than amusement that this is where it finishes.

A body shoved to the side, whilst her own lies flat on the stony edge of a cliff, broken bones, and open wounds bleeding her dry; a victim of her own desire. Agony comes when she turns her head to see the yellowing pus trickling down the length of her arm, from a shoulder torn open by beastly, ugly teeth.

The heart plops to the ground beside her, discarded like any other. It comes at the same moment her hand falls back down to her chest. A weakness in bone that she thinks is not decay, but ashen in its origin. It is slow and rotted. A bitterness in her mouth that a wolf has landed the final blow, even after its demise.

At the edge of everything, she wonders what will become of Kanemaru. Those who she has known from its origin and formation, until now. If her body heals, there's nothing to be done about the poison that has found a home within her.

It could as easily be hallucination as much as truth when crackles of twigs in the distance draw an eye. Nsilo's groans are as violent as the earth quaking beneath the memory of a blood-laden battle. But she sits up, hunched over, strands of dark hair torn at the scalp, a shoulder with an arm attached by only a tendon, a chest with ribs protruding in jagged, gnarly shapes. A mosaic of skin, with a heart sat at the side of her. The body of a man-wolf on her other.

The moon is the only thing whole, unmoving. She imagines it'll either watch her fade to ash, or the sun will come and do the heavy lifting.

A shadow in the treeline says Castillon will not survive another bout of warfare if the wolf runs in a pack. A maddened, crazed beast with friends that would come to reap retribution for the life taken.

Matteo often thought about the couple in the woods, those campers. They’d pitched their tent and lit their fire, probably thought themselves safe. First, he’d ripped the man’s ribcage open, guts spilling out like wet ribbons. Then he’d eaten his heart, as though it were a ripe peach.

The woman had run until her ankle snapped, sending her tumbling down the hill. A slow death. She’d begged for mercy from the bloody maw of a creature that had never learned what mercy was.

This one was clever, he’d give her that. Maybe because she was a creature of the night. His senses were full of her; decay and perfume. But even the winding paths she chose couldn’t keep her from him for long. His paws tore into the mud as he leapt over trees, and rocks, and the broken ribs of the forest floor, until they met a rocky end. A cliff’s edge, where water roared below.

There was no going back. The vampire’s only choices were his claws or the rocks waiting beneath.

Matteo emerged from the treeline, all fur and fury, the ghost of a man buried beneath the wrath. For a moment, their eyes met. Beast and maker. She was his curse. She created the monster he'd turned into. He saw her stillness and mistook it for courage, but it was something else.

She did not plan for a fight, but she's silently preparing for one.

Castillon begins to taste musk, salting her lips.

She stops with the suddenness of brakes on asphalt, bare heels burrowing into the ground; she'd almost met nothing but air as she recognises a vicious edge, marking its hunger as stone walls crumble beneath her feet.

Shock grips her, like a vice squeezing unneeded air from her lungs, first. A mind that cannot gamble on odds she hasn't determined. It's a blind bet, and she doesn't take those types of risks. She refuses to allow a man-beast of all things to force her hand.

Below, between the mud and stone walls of a cavernous decline is a steep drop three times the height of Tamanawa Falls, it's split by a rapid river gushing down the embankment below. Nsilo has not thought about how she could have remained in Seattle until now. A quiet, delirious laugh passes between reddened, dry lips. She curses the wolf with the luck of something that has outmanoeuvred the house.

She turns slowly, with her back to the cliff edge. She looks the wolf in its beady, frenzied eyes for all its damn worth. Nsilo will watch the amber lights go out, she swears it. Even if it is the last thing she does, with ash on her tongue.

There's an agonised scream when the first claw digs and strikes bone. It echoes with the beast's manic growl, suffocating her pain behind its rage. Talons slice through flesh like a knife in butter from a shoulder to a navel. Once, twice. Again, and again —sharp, choked cries burst from protesting lips as fingers grapple with a gnashing jaw, dripping poison and thick saliva. Trembling arms, shredded raw as a wolf digs into a body like it is burrowing a hole in the ground; digging a grave at speed. Ribbons of flesh spray as Castillon peels fur from leather-like skin.

Sounds of a broken orchestra; strings out of tune, squealing from holed out lungs. The rumble of chests unable to drum the beat of every stolen breath. Bodies that scratch and burrow at the precipice of a steep fall.

Nsilo remains on her back, hair tumbling over the edge, matted. Blood obscures her vision as hands twist, twist a neck away from where it desires to devour.

Both fury and ferocity meet in growls and hisses; death has never sat on a chest so close, stealing undeath in such a grotesque, sacriligious display. She blinks away the red-tinged flashes of knowing an end; how every decision she made for a century put her here, in the path of a single wolf.

But his blood was poison, running black through thinning veins, rotting him from the inside out. And all he knew, all he felt, was that this was her fault.

Her doing.

He had found her at last, between the ghosts of his wife and his daughter, she stood — the woman responsible for it all. His undoing. His end, and his beginning. He had been born of the blood she had corrupted, and now he would die from it.

But he wasn’t going to die alone.

Not tonight.

He saw red. Claws burst through his nailbeds, tearing skin as blood dripped down hands already vanishing beneath fur. His mouth split open, wolf fangs pushing through torn flesh, pearly white and starving for dead meat. Now he understood what his father had felt all those years, letting the curse devour him. Now he knew what power truly was. What the hunger for destruction felt like once you stopped fighting it.

Fear does not suit her, so she stuffs it down in favour of calculation.

They're baring fangs, as though one pair isn't more deadly than the other.

She takes too long, watching the man turn beast. A sick fascination in listening to the snap, crack — crunch of ivory shattering, reshaping beneath the skin. A smirk equal parts unease. She wonders how quickly she might move against a creature on all fours. There's a bet she doesn't put money on when feet carry her in the opposite direction, one step, two.

A wolf's howl, in which Nsilo knows she will not outpace. Not at this starting distance.

Fuck it.

Come on then, wolf.

Shoes slide off, bare feet sink into the mud of the forest floor.

New odds; she isn't arrogant enough to believe she can outrun a wolf on the straight path. But she can try if she takes short, sudden routes. The wolf can skid left and right, changing direction all he likes. Knock over a tree on its head, whilst he's at it. Castillon will watch and laugh at the animal losing its bearings.

But she detects a desire, then, to move the subject to something less stilted and clinical, so she shrugs.

"Uh, we're moving her out of her shoebox," she says, with a teasing grin, both hands wrapping around the hot cup of tea in front of her. "And I've been getting back into art again. Everything looks like shit, but it's nice to be making things again. Not sure what to do with it, or really how to indulge beyond that. Sorta like... starting over."

Lara recognizes the shift from business talk to more personal talk, and still she isn't sure what indulging means anymore. It used to be mean speaking with her body, controlling people and situations with a carefully spread leg or a raise of an eyebrow. The idea of moving from talk of a theatre to personal lives leaves her a little squirmy.

She tries for a smile. "Yeah. Moving. We got a nice place up north with a great view. I guess I'm looking into getting back into dance, trying something new - sculpting."

To hear that they’re moving is news — and Castillon reads between the lines (whether she’s supposed to, doesn’t concern her); Birdie says hers. Claiming. Possessive. No — devoted. Not entirely coupling, not until this instance of cohabiting, apparently. She’s lost touch, in amongst their affairs of late. Nsilo’s last brush with buying potential art for Anemoia had ended with her losing an asset, and solidifying an enemy. It might be a better source to decorate the walls with Kanemaru work; keep the flow of money, and status in house.

“I’d love to see, perhaps the teahouse can commission you for some decorative pieces.” Somehow, she’s still mixing business and pleasure, like a bad habit she cannot kick. Eyes travel to Lara with the same, admirable smile, “— Why not yours? Make it so, with all this artistic flair between the two of you.”

‘Maru has budding talent crawling out of all the woodwork.

A light laugh, because Castillon’s indulgences are gratifying in more complex ways; a boardroom she can control; a power play she can take advantage of; a testimony she can pick apart. All just to know she can. To see a rise of status, and those who would see her — and hers fail, are to rot in a shallow grave. Somewhere that lets the vultures pick them clean to the bone.

Nsilo muses, to the pair of them. Wry, and deflective so she might not bloody the mood. “Is that not indulgence in itself?”

There is nothing wrong with a good tea, and a winning hand. Castillon has a nature of keeping her cards close to her chest.

He couldn’t remember if she was a witch. If it had been her magic that blackened his blood, if killing her might somehow heal him. Was it all her fault? Or was she only a mercenary? Perhaps the hand that struck, while behind her loomed a larger shadow. A puppeteer.

There was a strange scent on her, one that perhaps only a beast without its soul, rabid and starving could follow. A stench of decay. It made his belly growl, not with an appetizing pull, but still his claws threatened to split the skin on his nailbeds, and the sharp of a wolf fang nearly poked through an aching gum.

Boots crunched over branches and leaves, and with each step, the presence that had only lingered at first languidly like a deformed shape at the edge of vision, or a word he knew but couldn’t quite recall, grew sharper, larger. Before he even saw her, he felt her — the cold brush of a breath, the hush of a sound behind a window no one dared look through.

Steps grew louder and faster and faster. And then there she was — red riding hood standing alone in the green. He didn’t look his best, not like the big bad wolf was meant to. Matteo had long since lost his battle with life. But before death claimed him, he would know her.

"I think it's you, I'm supposed to be looking for."

She supposes that she is its company, for now.

(And without considering, she is also alone, with him as her company, too)

Nsilo doesn't roll the dice and take any steps closer. But she does keep a wide berth when he turns to spot her. Senses equally as keen so that rotted mould of something split open and bleeding permeates the space between them.

It is a wrongness — a worser kind of decay than the body she had not long ago allowed the earth to reclaim. A thumb and forefinger ghost over the pads thoughtfully, glossed fingernails coated in ruby and flecked with soil.

"That would be quite a search you've pursued. Out here." It would not be somewhere her enemies might have followed her, typically.

Castillon does not like to dirty her hands even at the best times. The forest is not her element, nor a comfort. It is a means to an end. Coincidence? A wolf driven off the edge, more likely. Eyes survey his features and assess the tick on his lips, the amber light that devours the iris; speculation of how close they are to becoming bad odds. Hm. She considers the bet; a spin of the roulette wheel, gambling on whether this will get messy, or if she would be better off leaving a wolf to its madness for tonight.

"Haven't followed up - normie or a witch from what I've heard but I haven't gone to confirm. I'll get on it."

Birdie haunts Port Leiry now. Skinner's dead, but he's left a film on this city. Humans and Vampires to whom he'd promised their own tiny slivers of pie once he'd usurped the woman sitting across from she and Lara. A vampire's life is predation upon the blood of humans, and while she may not have the qualms with that she once had, there are still ethical sources for human blood that don't come out of a clinic bag.

And besides, maybe one lingering effect of her emotionless binge is that she'd come to enjoy the feel of skin under her fangs when it's somebody who really had it coming. "Do you want us to see if it's something we can weasel in on somehow, or just let it lie?" If only to prevent something like Reardon or Lomidze from sinking claws into fresh meat.

Lara leans forward, on her elbows, onto the table the three of them share. Birdie shifts - uncomfortable - and she reaches out a comforting hand to her knee, rubbing it just once before lifting her hand back to rests her chin in. She doesn't have much by way in information but she has some.

"Witch, I think. Connections to.." She hums, "Not sure which coven, but if there are ties to be found, we'll hear. Or Birdie will look for us." She smiles, soft and pliable here. She's at beck and call, and doesn't mind aiming her lover like a weapon if needed.

"If we do want to reach out to show the new owner where exactly the theatre sits - I'm sure we could use more money to funnel into our own businesses. A trade would be nice."

Perhaps if they were to procure it from said witch or mortal. Even draft a deal that works in all their favours as Lara suggests. At the very least, they could hike the cost for any Lomidze wanting to step inside. But they would have to be cultured to be able to do that.

Castillon holds her smile and enjoys the company, despite the shift in earlier pleasantries to business.

Us, Lara says. Dutifully spoken like a unit at the helm of war.

Castillon addresses the pair of them: "Perhaps express curiosity." If they do not know this witch, they may be sparking a match they don't need to. "If we let it lie, there is no telling who else might desire to get a piece. I have no qualm with a trade." If anything, it works better so they don't lose ground or have competition. Nsilo will be spiteful to consider that she simply doesn't want certain hands to touch it. She waves a hand, casual, relaxed: "But whoever has moved into the theatre, I have no doubt that somewhere along the line we share the same pleasures."

If not blood, then the arts. The thrill. The awe. The gambit.

Chalks it down to: "We don't need it. But it would be an asset if we had a thumb in it." Nsilo will reconsider her interest in civility with The Titan if this witch doesn't want to understand what court they're playing on. Then, an opening because 'Maru is not a dictatorship: "But please, do speak your thoughts." then, with an even more provocative smirk: "And tell me all about your own indulgences."

Matteo’s little brother had turned into a guard dog. He left his side only to eat, or to use the bathroom. In all their lives, Matteo couldn’t remember a time they’d shared more than a tedious family dinner together, and even those had been brief. Now it felt like César was trying to make up for every moment they’d lost, haunted by his own regrets. Maybe, Matteo thought, they should have done this sooner. Maybe César could have come home earlier. Did they always have to meet at funerals? If Matteo even had the mercy of a proper burial. His father never did. Maybe that was why César never came home that day.

Exhausted, Matteo let his eyes rest for a moment, and by his side César finally did the same. Matteo had been saving his strength for this, for the moment he would face the woman responsible for his family’s century of misery. His gaze lingered on his brother’s still frame, as if memorizing it, as if this might be the last time he saw him.

Any day could be his last. Death might come today, or tomorrow, but it was coming, and neither he nor César could stop it. He felt like a heavy chain fastening around his brother’s throat, dragging him down.

Was this what César wanted for the rest of his life? To serve as his older brother’s caretaker? That wasn’t right.

He had only ever traced the edges of the woods on four paws, running where scent pulled him, but now grass crunched beneath human boots. It was only him, and silence. The kind of silence that carried weight. Un-loneliness, like sitting in an empty room and knowing it wasn’t truly empty. She was waiting for him, out there, where the light bled away behind the trees.

Needless. She'd have given them the world, in exchange for loyalty.

But she knows that such traits cannot be bought. Thus, she has a new opening for a pinnacle of a position at the casino and teahouse. Gloves brush dirt from between leathered fingertips, a permeance in the soil that's now bathed in deep red. Regrets in how she had not created an immortal of them; they're easier to dispose of, as ash.

Mortals are bones, gristle and leave irritating trails. Kanemaru is all about finding the enjoyment in immortality, in showing up the other clans for their rules and regulations. All business doesn't mean there has to be no pleasure in the mix. But as she slips through the forest in an out-of-place burgundy suit, she finds that black suede shoes pause on autumn leaves.

There's something else in the woods with her.

More than moss and pine. And something other than the stale lingering of rainwater yet to sink into the mud. It moves between pillars of wood, a shadowy force that spurs Castillon to move faster. A new shadow, stalking the figure in the distance. First north, then west. Every vantage point that might give her a warning as to who might be wandering this far out into the wilderness without company. More fool them to believe they are alone in the night.

Perhaps she will indulge in this. A well-deserved gorging after some grafting, she thinks.

         but the envy stays buried, as deep as the embarrassment had. their brow quirks in interest as they listen, taking apart the pieces of what nsilo says. it’s far less than what they want to learn, but their ambition, their desire always stretches far ahead of them, leashed, as vera takes cautious, controlled steps towards goals. tonight, they want to learn, and they want nsilo alive. vera hears that she’s not worried. or that if she is, vera doesn’t get to know. fine. 

Ask me then, V. Nsilo knows they want to. They have something on the edge of their tongue that they aren't saying. The cardshark cannot read minds, but she can read lips at the best of times; Vera's twitch, awkward, calculated. Everything's always done so stiffly with them, but Castillon has to assume, as ever, they aren't without their indulgences. Why desire to play chess with the representative if not?

Castillon murmurs a hmph before a tongue wets red lips.

The line of fire? Isn't she already, just by standing amongst three thousand, hackles raised and steeling a titanium backbone? Vera, look around. There's blood to be spilt in every direction; it matters not whether one desires it to be. She's callous with them, because she wants it to be clear cut:

"What a waste of a position to say nothing. They said nothing in '63 and they were trampled on. We've come farther than that, V." By '66 there was real change, and now, no matter who, they can sit and speak with equal animosity as the one to their left, or their right. Nsilo only has one person at the table she desires not to allow get beneath her skin, and it won't stop her voicing Kanemaru thoughts.

She smiles a bit, keeping it careful enough to not pull at scars. "Kanoute's done a lot of talking and performing in my general vicinity. Word travels fast about strip clubs." She makes a slight snirk sound into her glass, and takes a sip.

It is tasty, but it's lost it's luster. She wants her apartment, her bed, stupid fucking Bridgerton on the TV.

Castillon then teases: "And how were they, up to your standard?" She wraps amusement around words as easily as raising a class is; she takes long sips, wondering if Lara has her eye on that, or their dear Bridget.

Nsilo doesn't say it, but she almost airs to Rivkin that she's quite familiar with lack of commitment. Those eras are not atypical. In a room like this, it's simpler to poke fun than it is to dig deep into the well of something else.

"Clans, casinos, cabaret's — I think there's another C word of which I'd cut off the next person that tries to offer me a friendly word of advice," Deadpan. Because the echoing sound of arrogance delivered without flair is nothing more than misplaced ego. She'd say to their faces in the meeting, too, given half a chance. "I wasn't aware the chutzpah could get worse with time."

"Because I’m not."

Maybe it was the sting of her own self-hatred bruising her skin — a reminder she alone owned the guilt for that night. The vampire still lived, not because she'd spared her but because for once, Anika couldn't bury the guilt on someone else.

Her eyes flicked to the water where the siren’s call drowned. And she took that vendetta down with her, burying it in the sand at the bottom of the lake.

"A bad bet." words landed on her tongue, echoing Castillon’s admission, as though they’d passed through both their mouths. A shared taste of regret. They’d been here before— sharing a taste, where Nsilo had dared cross a line, that nearly got her head put on a spike.

Who said the hunter wasn't merciful?

"We had an agreement— and you broke it." Anika would’ve been a fool to expect anything else. Still, the offer she dangled like a mouse before a cat had been too good to refuse. Skinner's head. "You admit you've been fucking useless in our little deal?" The hunter had his head, and his eyes, and his purple tongue without Nsilo lifting a goddamn finger. She still didn’t know what part she was meant to play in Birdie’s game, or how close the two bloodsuckers really were. But now that the job was done, now that the blood had dried — Anika didn’t give a fuck.

"All you did was fucking complicate things for me, Castillon."

"Unknown to most, but I do make those, sometimes." A gambler is not a name for no reason. If she won every bet, she would be labelled lucky. A gambler understands the act of loss too; chasing a burning hole in the pocket. She's a shark, hunting for a meal, but she doesn't plan to make one of Anika Booker, if she can help it. A waste of potential and beauty.

Their agreement voided upon Skinner's well-deserved demise.

The breakage of any terms is to be decided.

Do you think Birdie operated alone? Castillon isn't airing names to prove an innocence or a better verdict. She knows what part she played, and what more she could have done, had there been a little more of the kinks ironed out. She understands she was late to the mark on improving Anika's condition upon her capture by one, Le Blanc and wife. Useless? Nsilo's mouth turns up, puffing out a small laugh, eyes that slip away from the hunter and settle on the evening horizon, just for a moment, before she finds herself back at the woman without sentiment.

"If that is what you believe." No need to explain herself to a judge who has already made their conviction.

I supplied the resources you needed, hunter. He was handed to you on a platter in the trunk of a car, was he not?

Does it matter the path it took to get him there? That Rivkin and Templeton paid heavily in their own way, whilst Castillon oversaw. She could have done more. There's always more; that is the way of the dead. Hungry, never satisfied. Never satiated. She wonders if Anika notices the similarities between herself to the very creatures she hunts.

"The complexity will only come if you unsheathe your weapon." a beat, "The house always wins, hunter. You got what you wanted, and yet you're still hungry for more?"