Feebus blinked, the past and present colliding as he remembered a young boy with dirt streaked cheeks and a temper to boot. “What’d you do?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.
Milo flopped down on one of the chairs nearby, crossing one leg over the other and placing his hands on the arms. He sat in repose, his body loose and unencumbered. It wasn’t often anymore that he felt comfortable in his own skin. Hazel’s used to bring that relief but in recent months even that succor had been whisked away. “You know, eventually you are going to need to understand that every time I show up here doesn’t mean that I fucked up in some way.”
Malcolm Albright was dead.
It was a funny thing to say, really, especially once he realized he was Malcolm Albright. It was a whisper he had heard for as long as he could remember. Some rejoiced at his demise. Others felt such deep sorrow. And some, sought him out. He remembered in the early days how there were spirits that would greet him but when he only stared at them with a blankness and a memory that had crumpled somewhere in another world's ether, they had begun to leave him alone.
“What did you do.” It did not fall from her lips as a question. Accusations rarely did. And while Belladonna had always been someone who had left almost everyone to their own paths, something about tonight had settled against her in a way that left her silence to be nearly impossible.
Hazel looked at her, trying to find the bravado she had held so tight earlier. That was before she had nearly bled herself dry and let the spirits of the dead wander through her like a revolving door.
Belladonna rolled her eyes at the formality before nodding towards the paraphernalia he saw fit to scatter across her workspace. “Would you care to give me an explanation?”
“You are expected to read this material before your first Baron meeting near the full moon. There will be no quiz but I do suggest an effort to at least know the rules before engaging in any sort of political conversation with the others. Upon arriving, you will be sworn in, which usually is a blood right, but the Book Baron has suggested that perhaps that is not what should be done for a vampire so recently gorged on blood. So it will be more symbolic than an actual swearing in.”
Belladonna stared at him, amusement curling at the corner of her lips. “Do I get an honorary plaque that makes me a part of the Big Boys club?”
Setting aside the dirty rag, Gabriel looked upwards at the semicircle of thrones that sat before him. Nine of them. The monthly Baron meeting came on the heels of Kavatti’s demise so her chair remained empty. So did the Gatekeepers, like usual. Along with the Dockmaster’s since Reese never came to the meeting in order to keep up the ruse that he was dead for Elias. But, it seemed as if today, most of the Barons did not seem to deem it necessary to attend their meeting. The Baron of the Deep only had a conch shell in her place, having called in from the depths of her castle instead of making her way to the surface today. Odin was irritated at his inability to get back to the Nine Realms like he initially thought he would so easily do, so his other raven, Huginn/Julien, Gabriel didn’t know which he wished to go by, was sitting surly in his place.
In fact, the only true Barons attending today seemed to be Elias. Perhaps, Lady Chrysanthemum.
Blood splattered across the floor in one long streak, a scream falling short in a wet cough. Belladonna tipped her head to the side, a bit of a frown marring her crimson lips. You couldn’t see the carnage on the black flooring. She loved obsidian but it didn’t do well for setting such an example.
Looking at her “guards”, and oh how she hated calling them that, she waved her hand. “Next.” They came forward, dragging away the decapitated form of some low life vampire trying to still lick Kavatti’s boots long after her demise. At the same time, another was pushed forward. “State your grievance.”
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