𝕶𝖓𝖊𝖊𝖑

“You look pretty with blood all over your face.”

Mun | Navigation | Pinterest | Playlist | Threads | Work Hours

Closed rp starter for: @not-a-vamp-wayne

The rain came down wrong.

That was the first thing Ilya understood when consciousness returned to him in pieces: not pain, location, or the shape of the street beneath his hand, but rain. It struck the brim of his hat in cold, uneven taps and slid down the back of his glove where his palm braced against soot-dark brick. It carried no chemical bite from asphalt, no oil-slick bloom from modern streets, no hot-metal ghost of engines idling at intersections. It smelled older. Dirtier. Horse sweat and coal smoke, wet wood and human waste, lamp oil thinning in puddles, the sour rot of a harbor city breathing through clogged lungs.

He remained still.

The alley around him was narrow, pressed between brick walls furred with damp. Somewhere overhead, a gutter choked and spilled in a steady, silver sheet onto broken crates below. His fingers flexed once against the wall. No wound, silver burn, or stake lodged between the ribs. Whatever had thrown him here had not left a mark his body cared to acknowledge, though his bones still held the fading memory of pressure, as if some great invisible hand had clenched around him and dragged him sideways through the dark.

Ilya lifted his head. Beyond the alley mouth, Gotham moved beneath gaslight. Not his Gotham. Not any city of his century.

The street was mud and cobblestone, rutted deep by wheels, shining black beneath the rain. Carriages rocked past with lanterns swinging from their sides, horses snorting steam into the cold as iron shoes struck sparks from stone. Men hurried beneath dark umbrellas or with collars raised against the weather, their coats cut too long, their hats too stiff, their boots carrying street filth up their hems. A woman in a bonnet stepped around a puddle and gathered her skirts with one gloved hand. A newsboy stood under an awning with damp papers hugged to his chest, his voice cracking as he shouted headlines into the wet evening.

Ilya listened, eyes half-lidded beneath the shadow of his hat. There were no engines. No electric hum buried in walls. No sirens folding through traffic. No aircraft above the cloud cover. The city made its noise with hooves, wheels, bells, shouting mouths, rainwater, and the creak of wood under strain. Every sound arrived naked, lacking the constant mechanical veil of the world he knew. It should have been quieter. It was not. It was merely honest about its filth.

A carriage passed close enough for the horse to toss its head toward the alley. The animal saw him before the driver did. Its ears went back. The whites of its eyes flashed in the dim light, and the driver cursed as the beast shied sideways, wheels slipping hard against the wet curb. Ilya did not move. He watched the horse fight the reins, watched the driver’s anger collapse into unease when his gaze found the pale, motionless man standing in the dark between buildings.

Some instincts survived domestication. Good.

He stepped out of the alley as if he had meant to be there all along. Rain struck his shoulders, beading along the dark wool of his overcoat. His suit beneath was not period-correct, though close enough in the right light: dark pinstripes, waistcoat, white shirt, polished shoes, a pocket watch chain that belonged to no present century he had ever trusted. The tailoring was too clean, too exact, too modern in the line of the shoulder, but wealth excused many sins. So did confidence. Men looked at him and then looked away, allowing their own minds to supply explanations. Foreigner. Aristocrat. Criminal. Mourner. Something with money enough not to be questioned.

Ilya crossed the street without waiting for permission from traffic. Another horse balked. Its driver spat a curse, then swallowed the rest when Ilya turned his head. The man’s face paled beneath his cap. His hand tightened on the reins until leather creaked.

The corner building drew Ilya’s attention because it wanted to. Three stories of dark brick and narrow windows, warm light pressed against rain-streaked glass, a painted sign swinging above the entrance in the wind. The Gilded Lily Hotel & Saloon. The lettering was gilded but chipped, trying for refinement and failing just enough to be useful. Men with money would enter through the front. Men without it would circle around to the back. Secrets would climb the stairs. Debts would settle in private rooms. Blood had been spilled there before; he could smell the old iron under the newer layers of smoke and perfume.

He went in. Heat rolled over him with the door’s opening, thick and unpleasant after the rain. The saloon was a crowded little furnace of bodies and wants. Gas lamps trembled inside glass globes along the walls, turning the smoke into amber fog. Cigar ash drifted beneath the pressed-tin ceiling. Wet wool steamed from men packed shoulder to shoulder at tables. Whiskey soured the air. Cheap perfume clung to women leaning too close to men pretending they were not lonely. A piano clattered in the corner, a bright, brittle tune that did nothing to soften the hunger in the room.

Conversation thinned when he crossed the threshold. It did not stop. Humans rarely admitted fear with such honesty. But it caught, snagging table by table as faces turned and then pretended not to. A card player forgot to draw. A woman’s laugh faded into the rim of her glass. The bartender’s hand paused midway through wiping down the counter. Ilya removed his hat and shook rain from the brim with one controlled motion, dark hair damp at the edges, pale face made colder by the warm gaslight.

The room told him what it was before any mouth opened.

Three exits. One staircase. A door behind the bar. Two armed men pretending to drink. One revolver under a gambler’s coat, poorly concealed. Knife in the boot of the man nearest the piano. A priest’s medal under the bartender’s shirt, warmed by skin but untouched by faith. Laudanum on the breath of the woman in green. Split knuckles at the far table. A broken tooth somewhere beneath the floorboards, not fresh. Blood dried into old wood near the stairs. Old fear in the walls.

Closed Starter for: @blood-soaked-innocence

Rain moved against the tall windows of Ilya’s office in thin, silver lines, turning the city beyond into a smear of red taillights and blurred gold. The room was otherwise still. Polished wood. Old leather. Tobacco smoke. The faint iron-cold scent that clung to Ilya’s skin, no matter how expensive the wool of his suit or how carefully human the room attempted to appear. A cigarette burned between his fingers, untouched long enough for the ash to lengthen and bend under its own weight. When it finally fell, it landed soundlessly in the tray.

Two of his men stood across from the desk. Both vampires. Both were old enough to understand that Ilya’s silence was not an invitation to relax. One had his hands folded behind his back. The other kept his gaze lowered, fixed somewhere near the edge of the rug. Neither breathed unless they needed to speak.

Ilya did not look up from the closed file beneath his hand.

“He has a mouth on him,” he said at last.

The words were almost mild. That made them worse.

The taller vampire shifted very slightly, leather sole whispering against the floor. “He bites.”

“I assumed.”

“He has taken teeth before.”

Ilya’s gaze lifted then, dark and flat enough to make the man’s next breath die before he committed to it. For a moment, there was only rain against glass and the distant pulse of traffic far below. Then Ilya leaned back in his chair, the leather giving a soft, expensive creak beneath him.

“Then use a muzzle.”

He said it without heat, without flourish, as if discussing weather precautions or shipping instructions. That was how Ilya gave orders when he expected exact obedience. No raised voice. No dramatic threat. Just fact placed into the room with surgical care.

“Reinforced leather,” he continued. “No silver unless he forces the question. He is not fully turned, and I am not interested in discovering what silver poisoning does to something unfinished before I have had the chance to speak with him. Do not break the jaw. Do not damage the throat. Do not remove the teeth, however tempting he makes it.”

The second vampire’s mouth twitched faintly, there and gone before it could become anything so foolish as a smile.

Ilya noticed anyway.

His eyes moved to him. The amusement disappeared.

“Alive,” Ilya said. “Restrained. Conscious, if possible. If not, breathing will suffice.”

One of them nodded. “Where do you want him taken?”

“Here.”

The answer landed heavily. Not the public club. Not one of the warehouses. Not a feeding room, not a punishment room, not any of the places where rumor could grow legs and crawl into the wrong ears. Here meant the lower level beneath Radek’s city property, the old wine cellar renovated into something colder and more useful. Stone walls. Iron-reinforced door. No windows. A room designed for conversations no one else was meant to hear.

“He sleeps in sunlight,” Ilya added, fingers idly turning the cigarette. “Or so he claims.”

“That is what we were told.”

“Then take him after sunset, before he has settled fully into whatever hole he uses to feel clever. He will expect arrogance. He will expect a vampire to arrive hungry, offended, and careless.” A faint trail of smoke curled from his mouth as he exhaled. “Give him none of those things.”

His men understood then, or understood enough. No spectacle. No feeding. No games. Dane Nimmerfroh was not to be hunted like prey for sport. He was to be collected like evidence.

After they left, Ilya remained seated for several minutes, one pale hand resting on the file. The city continued beyond the glass, ignorant and bright, full of warm-blooded lives moving under umbrellas and awnings and streetlamps. He opened the folder again and looked at the photograph clipped inside. Young face. Tired eyes. Anger held too tightly beneath the skin. A fragile, furious thing keeping itself alive on refusal and spite.

Ilya had known many men who wanted to die and called it purpose. Some wrapped it in flags, God, revenge and told themselves the knife in their hand was mercy. Dane had dressed his death wish in righteousness and vampire blood. It was almost elegant in its self-deception. Almost.

“Hybrid,” Ilya murmured. The word did not sound like an insult in his mouth. Not yet. It sounded like a diagnosis.

Dane was taken three nights later in the service alley behind a closed pharmacy, three blocks from the place he had been using as shelter. The alley smelled of wet cardboard, old grease, rainwater, and the sour chemical tang of garbage beginning to rot inside black plastic bags. A security light buzzed above the back door, flickering weakly, turning the puddles silver for half a second at a time. The city was loud on the main street, but back there the noise arrived muffled, filtered through brick and rain and distance.

гэтая кава - дзярмо

What concern is it to you?