the temptation.

Or maybe he's just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It doesn't matter, Çaska thinks, as she sinks teeth into his wrist - sucking out draught after draught of wizened old blood, her eyes, shadowed with the stuff, casting from his pained features to the softness of her sister's, juxtaposed against the heinous nature of her words.

"Like a garland," she says, lathing blood from her lips. "You always did have the eye for decoration."

Walking away from the man, she wipes her lower lip with her thumb and traces her fingertips along the pews. "Perhaps, instead, we make sure his pulpit always has a trace of him in it." Blood seeping and soaking into the wood, gore hanging over it.

She glances up again when next Viktoria speaks, and at first, she can only nod, warmly, but quietly.

"It's been-" she stops for a second, before going again. "It's been nice."

Has it? Viktoria terrifies her in some ways, exhilarates her in others. Every moment together is weirdly dreamlike and hard to believe. That feeling persists when she leaves, waking up into the cold dark of her actual life.

"I'm glad though. You've... been really good to me."

Insane, considering. She believes what she's saying but it still comes with an inner guilt all the same.

"You certainly can't mean that."

Her thumb slides over her cheekbone, as she catches her eyes. There is one way to have her speak her mind. 'Tell me exactly what you're thinking about me. Have I been good to you, truly?'

Zakarias wondered if there had been a connection between his little cultist and the Merlot, given his sister's name from a blueing mouth. Clawed hands had battered his arms, before weakening, and succumbing to the inevitable. He'd stopped, because his sister had more of a hold on him, than the half-alive woman cared to know.

He'd caught her eyes, between them fluttering closed and her confusion. Told her to walk with him to the doors. To listen carefully to what he says, and behave for him. She does. Because she had little choice in the matter. Fickle mind, but appealing for the delight in her blood; if Viktoria had a thrall, she has maintained reasonable taste.

By the time they had reached the door, the Merlot had been unable to stand. So she had become a new bride in his grasp. Eyes closing, and chest heaving; head hanging over an elbow. Zakar addresses his sister, as if they must remember one another, across the centuries. There is a sense of completion, in her company.

"Viktoria." A smile against her cheek as he greets her all the same. The dismissive nod comes quick after, gesturing to the woman, "A pet of yours?"

If she were important, he imagines that a sister would have come running at the whispered plead of her name. She hadn't. So, he almost drops her like a sack of bricks at his sister's feet; no longer worth the minimal efforts to determine her value.

Zakarias' thumb grazes over the hair, by the girl's ear. He wonders if she might continue to entertain, if Viktoria keeps her around. Her mind malleable enough that he imagines, under compulsion, she would dance for hours, until exhaustion. He comments, with little interest in holding the girl steady much longer, "She tastes better than your last one." a beat, "You can finish her off, if that's what you were waiting for, sister."

She hadn't prepared for him to meet Sadie.

The tiniest slip of his grip on her, and she takes the slowly fading body from him, cradling the woman close to her chest. "You've missed much while we've taken up residence in Port Liery. Let me fill you in after I get her to bed."

They can play with her later. She wants time with her family. Turning, she heads back into the mansion, and takes Sadie up to the bedroom they share when she visits. A bit of thousand-year old blood on the human's lips, and she's back with Zakarias in an instant.

Without the body between them, she allows herself true affection in giving her brother an actual hug in greeting. It doesn't last long, but it feels good to do so again after so long. She debates, though, on whether or not to tell him of the empty coffin the basement. It is her doing, after all. She decides against it, leading him towards the lounge.

"I've started building my vault again." She starts, pride on her tongue. "Taken a lover. Took the part of representative on the city council. I've also been working on deals with Reardon."

"Yeah, love." It's not as dismissive, as it is a wistful tch between his teeth. "What's the diff between that, and devotion. Ain't it all some kind of obsession, infatuation." He's got a list of examples to give her, if she asks. Between what his cock loves, and what his mind adores — she just hasn't said which she's into, yet. Love. Poppycock, is what he thinks.

As he's pouring the next, he has to lean on the counter to stop himself from losing balance. His eyes lift to meet hers across the island: "You're hung up on all that, really?" Thousands of years. If he weighs the scale of that, in its vastness, he wonders if she's even got the same meaning as the one-lifetime lot that she's got around her.

"Certainly not as hung up as my sister, no. But I do like having a companion I can care for. It helps to pass the years, having someone to care for. It also helps to pick the ones who can be twisted into something unrecognizable." She cares about love. But it is still very much a game. Sadie is the perfect mark. Someone to show what life can truly be, someone to fall for, and someone to warp into something she can use on the day to day until the reaper comes for her.

He speaks two languages at the same time, Viktoria realizes. The words you hear, and the words he means underneath. She takes a drink, but does not let her eyes leave him.

"Your magic attempting to bring the undead back to a life of living would be a sight to see." The words.

"You couldn't handle me." The meaning.

He'd thought that forging Gods from intangibility had been an impossibility too, until recently. The cost of that, is the thing AJ's avoiding looking at, standing in the corner of the room, at Vicky's back whilst they talk about liquor, and humanity.

"What would you remember of human experience, Vicky? Give me the poetry of that." Drunken philosophy is a horrible hole to drop into. But he's got half a bloody mind to ask her if she thinks she can speak for it; to step into shoes she hasn't, for a while, to understand the gravitas of mortality, bed and hearts and the like. AJ considers power to be a subjective quality, in most. He's got it, beyond magic; he's got it in the telephone, and the status. He's got it in the banks, and the airlines. A name that he's inherited, not earned.

He laughs then, sudden and shocking. A world that spins around him, in his stupor.

There's no plans for him to offer samples, so he draws the line quietly as he drops back a mouthful of brown. There's no polite cheers, because they aren't polite and AJ's not planning to start with her.

"I remember.." shapes, feelings, grief. But no memories, they've long since been replaced. "Bits and pieces. What I do remember is love and how it feels exactly the same now that I've been dead for thousands of years." She chuckles, punctuates the thought with a sip of her own. She's talking, of course, of her love of her family. The Astor name is prominent - but she wonders if AJ cares about them the same way she cares for her siblings.

She watches her blood trickle a red dapple onto the plate, like she's dribbling sauce onto a steak. It makes her stomach curl. She can't help the flush on her cheeks when the Vampire kisses the wound, either, nor how it deepens at the second.

She eats, surprised at the flavor still. Viktoria doesn't eat, often taking to her younger sister's habits of only sustaining herself through the vein. Blood bags are even looked down on in the Lomidze household. After being alive so long, why would any of them want to take shortcuts?

She looks away, cheeks flushed, and at the recommendation, Sadie looks up, and though her expression twists at the mention of blood, its all cradled in a smile.

—

She'd felt a little odd, rummaging through a pantry as big as the one in this house. The food's all fresh though; probably thanks to the seemingly invisible staff that keep the place up and running. It's an endeavor, and she feels herself continue her bashful blushing while Viktoria tends her. Sadie makes a quick thing of lentil curry to put over rice, and some salmon patties, and then finally a set of stuffed peppers - easy things - even if the peppers take the longest; they get to bask in the smell and warmth of a kitchen doing what it does best.

Sadie soon finishes plating the food, and a lot of the food itself is not something she would have eaten as a human - too much color and spice. When she was human, only the truly wealthy could afford something with the variety of things put into this dish. She reaches out for Sadie's hand, holding it over the plate.

"Needs a final touch, my love." She presses a sharp thumbnail into the palm of Sadie's hand, dripping red over the curry, peppers, and salmon. She presses a kiss to the small wound once she's done, flicking her tongue over it like she might have done elsewhere in nights previous. Then another kiss to her knuckles.

When was the last time she'd tried real food? Hard to say.

"We're all very bored," she follows up, still flipping through the music pages. "Fran is listless, 'Sana is hungry for revenge..." Thoughts of the witch pop up then, and she rolls her eyes. "The Augury girl is her own sort of church mouse." Small, cute, easily held in the hands, extremely fragile.

"I didn't kill him, I let him go!" She protests, scandalized, shaking her head before taking a large, false breath, if only so that she might project better as she sight-reads from the hymnbook.

"All who hunger, gather gladly; Holy manna is our bread. Come from wilderness and wandering, Here, in truth, we will be fed. You that yearn for days of fullness, All around us is our food."

The last line sees her fangs stir as she grins at the priest. It's all nicely sight-read, and all nicely sung, but as that last passage echoes off the inside of the stone and glass, she looks up from the book, planting it back in the slot behind the wooden bench before her, strolling from behind the pew at their captive audience.

The ribs would be delivered to the grave-witch soon.

She keeps slowly walking towards the priest as Caska sings the hymn. She could easily just remove head from body, but she blinks past him so her sister can see him from the front. A hand rests on his shoulder as he whimpers. "I hope you find solace with your own church mouse, then. But yes, a game." She tilts her head. "So, daughter, would you like a choice cut to sup on?"

"Sure you've had a lot in your bed and your heart, love, eh? Grieved plenty." Depressing. Mood killer. Vicky didn't give him the impression when they'd looked at grisly paintings in Nouveau that she pined for a partner to hold her unbeating heart. AJ's convinced that every vamp he knows is either pining, or brooding. Fucking tragic. So he laughs, too, despite the subject. "Sounds shit."

What might be shittier, in his stupor, is the pause he makes every so often to assess if a shadow is real or a falsity. Movements that aren't human-like, nor beast like. Graceful, but damning in their suddenness. A spider that's too fast to track. Gone beneath the furniture; the snow; the streetlights.

She draws him back, standing in the threshold of the house.

Ah. Invitation. What a nuisance that bloody is.

He bets he could fabricate a spell to fix that problem for her, sometime. He's done grander things than that.

"In you come, Vick." Jacket thrown over the lounger, as he rolls up the sleeves of a dark shirt and hunts for the liquor in the kitchen. For a moment, he pauses, steadies himself on his feet when the ground looks too close, and then goes back to emptying bottles from the cupboards and onto the island. "Whatever takes your fancy, love."

There's a flash of a moment where her gaze tints AJ in a green light, and she turns her head away to shake away the jealousy. He's having his own... issues, it seems. The way his head shifts, the way his gaze locks on nothing, the sway in his step.

The invitation comes, and she steps over the threshold with a smile. She follows him towards the kitchen, light on her feet, to watch the way he moves. Perhaps not just the liquor in his system. Perhaps something more. She wants to carve his mind out and study it.

She had the conduit. The blood, the ribs; the tie between life and death. Ancient, and old. The first of its kind, or near enough.

A willing cold one and the chance to equal the playing ground for herself and her brother. "Vampyr." She mutters, beckoning the woman closer. Maja is under no impression that her languages would best an ancient, so in case she dares let Janet trick her into an incomplete ritual, she asks the Lomidze. "Translate. Be precise."

prima ossa, primus sanguis et vas inter regna, Vas primum absente luce sculpe, et lineam in tenebras iacta.

She would not get this wrong, if it is to cost her an almost life, by the end of this. Maja turns around and presses on either side of the dead creature's ribs, feeling for the lowest of them; easiest to remove, she believes. It would take a while to slice away, and even longer to hack them from the cage. Lomidze may need to break them, herself.

Maja grins, because she is not sure friend is a word they would use. The creature is the other side of death; the duller sort, but helpful in the case of sacrifice.

"Yes. I take two." Decided. She thinks it is better, to draw the runes around and soak them in the blood; she would develop the version of the spell, with her talisman in mind. She needed to call Ivar, to get him to detach his, for them to stand a real chance of transference between lives.

Maja's not sure how long she would be able to keep the channel of hers open, before it would snap itself back, and cancel out all her intended preparations, otherwise.

"The first bones. The first blood. And a vessel between kingdoms. First, sculpt the vessel in the absence of light, and cast a line into darkness."

Viktoria understands the first instruction, but not the second. She has no time to question before Maja is feeling around her waist for her ribs. With little to no reaction, she waits for the next task she needs to complete. Taking in a breath, she lifts an eyebrow in response.

Probably got Vicky to call him one of those, too. But AJ had known he'd been right — thinking the Airbnb is on this street. Port Shitly's got a hold on him, now. So much so, he's got the roads mapped. (Shocking, actually) He's not unpacked that just yet. Part of the reason it'd been so bloody easy dropping back bevy after bevy.

His hand smacks her shoulders, "Atta girl." with a drunken chuckle-slur he hop-skips over a storm drain. If he maintains contact with her, then he's reminded that she's not one of the periphery shadows he's got talking bollocks in his ear. Moving between the snow, as if it isn't there at all. Bloody creeps don't know who they're taunting.

Astor's charm's so potent, that he didn't even realise he'd said a penny to her.

"Bold, Vicky." He teases, trying to match her step (and failing) "Isn't no who."

A what, maybe.

He's a man whose made a killing with secrets. So airing them to the dead-still-walking isn't going to do him favours. AJ doesn't live in regret, he burns the scripture that gave it a name. And the hearty laugh that spills like liquid gold, is not mockery, but amusement to the audacity. Love would have been less complicated than the real thing he's drowning. "I'm not twelve, Vick. Love. Fuck." he's going to choke on his drink, if she keeps coming at him with comedy gold.

But they continue their frigid trek down to the rental, Viktoria's hands in her pockets as she remembers winters of old, of what it would have been like when she'd traveled to northern wastes to hide and feed, when the sun finally penetrated through the clouds and she'd had to hide from it. An old tune sits on her breath, lowly humming as he goes about his drunken explanation.

"Not too married to the boardgame," she says, head down, almost immediately regretting the phrasing. "I'm never any good at that kind of strategy."

She sits there, hands in Viktoria's, and she shakes her head, forcing her to look at the other woman. "I'm... boring, Vik - I like.. gardening, reading on a back porch. Stuff that's... you know... a little lonely, I suppose. Never been much for games, never really been a drinker. Most of her life has been much of what it is now - go to work, come home to do work, go to sleep. "- not to mention a little hard to do right now," she says with a tip of her head towards the cold outdoors.

A woman who prefers to stay at home, clean, cook is something that fascinates her. What about those activities makes fulfills her, what about them makes her satisfied? Sadie is right, though, she could never be in that position. She is the fun one - maybe. Viktoria would, of course, give that label over to her younger sister, but perhaps if compared to the human standing in front of her..

She offers a laugh and bends down - capturing Sadie's lips in her own. Just a quick thing. "I adore that you find joy in the slower aspects of life." Maybe once upon a time, it would have appealed to her, too. Time truly feels relative to her, at the end of the day.

Lomidze offers her insights, nonetheless and Maja — ever the intrigued, listens. "I will make your blood the conduit; you have this," Maja gestures to the mention of her riddling dilemma that had brought her to the vampyr's door to begin with: the ancient that bleeds but has not known the shores of skull and fog. Lomidze is all those things. "— you see, you are yet to know the grey realm; it is only for you to visit once." At the end of it all, there is no coming back for her once she arrives at the shore.

Reading the verse again, Maja begins to wonder if the blood is enough. If the body needs to come attached, with the realised implication that there is no quantity. Did the dead need be the conduit itself?

That complicates their potential arrangement, if it did.

Under her breath, she curses the grimoire's owner, Janet whoever, for making a puzzle of a spell, so those who did not speak nonsense languages were tracing cursive lettering as if it would transform to simplicity. She thought she'd liked Janet, at first. Now, she began to plot returning to the grave she'd thrifted the book from, and defile the remains of that entire bloodline. One ritual at a time. Her brother came first. Their linked lives were going to catch up to them, without intervention. She felt close.

But appreciation would not serve them. Intention, would. "Maybe your ribs, you still have marrow? Yes, one, two," she keeps analysing the book, murmuring to herself, mostly. "You can keep them, after."

Her one question might need to become two, if Maja needs to cut more of the old, dusty vampyr. Her library, not as dirt-ridden as Maja had first pictured; well looked after.

"Coven," That's free, she supposes. "Garnett." a beat, as she lifts her head and steps around the peering vampyr, searching the lengths of the aisles, to know if there was anything that aided; rogue trinkets, or curioso's that the Lomidze of her existence had collected. (There's always at least one thief per home) Maja glances over to Viktoria, adding with more glittering pride, it's dark: "Familie. Grimhjarta." The vampyr could drink from whatever orifice, if that's her only price. And if it is worth the cost, she could drink until Maja were no more but crumbling over to the other side, clawing through the dirt again, and alive once more.

For a spell of this risk, she would have to know how close she was to success. "Du ville lært mer i blodet mitt enn du ville gjort med ordene mine, vampyr."

Her eyebrows raise the idea of the witch taking her ribs - and giving them back. Would they grow back? Potentially. In all her years as this undead thing, she had sustained many wounds and many broken bones. Regrowing or having them taken is a new experience. It excites her, she thinks. And if she gets to keep them afterwards, then they will reattach.

An offshoot of Garnett from over the sea? Interesting. That means life energy. Healing, death, the like. Makes sense, with the way she speaks of her own magic, with the markings she barely understands in the books. She's seen a fair few here and there, and seemingly every larger coven has its signature. Grimhjarta. She will research that name later.

Just bloodied paintings and shit champagne.

Astor's more kicking at the snow, than he is stepping through it. Balenciaga's are soaked through to his socks, and ringed fingers rattle against the glass bottle with every near slip between iced hands; the gloves are off. Yet, he's still eying the movements of limbs that aren't there, made more blurry in the intoxication.

She's observant, in the way she turns back and forth to follow his wandering gaze. If heightened senses can't detect the gestures from something other, AJ's settling on ignorance for the rest of the evening; he's drowned enough of the voices, that he's only a few more shots away from silencing the shadows too.

"Is that a question, love?" Rhetorical. The dead could lie for all he cares, he'll be able to tell if she's got enough of wealthy pallet to understand what he does. He just needs to find the house he's paying for, first.

It's on this road, he's certain.

He shows her the number on the phone, and she leans forward to meet him, lest he lose his balance again. "It's not far." She says, simply, and wonders if he'll let her sample some of the other delicacies he might have hidden away.

It's not his home, she doesn't think - one of the vacation rentals of some sort. But still, she wonders if the invitation will extend. A night of drunken stupor sounds fun, in a way.

She looks at the priest, who, bereft of further self-incrimination, has begun reciting prayers, looking between the two of them.

The priest stumbles over another prayer in answer to her little sister, and Viktoria rolls her eyes.

"My churchmouse would have started praying herself. I haven't had the ability to rid her of the delusions they raised her with." Though, she does like the idea of letting her keep them and sending her further down the path of depravity. "She's too scared for our games. What of your escapades? I know your friends are in town. And that one Augury girl."

Sadie's eyes look over Viktoria's face, along Viktoria's cheek, the trace of her gaze following the trail of where the Vampire's thumb slides along her own. Viktoria asks her to stay - stay a little longer.

A wave a guilt wraps her up with the question. She'd prided herself for years on being the one who didn't do this. Who had stuck it out.

"I shouldn't-" she murmurs. She shouldn't but it's not like she doesn't have the perfectly acceptable excuse. Does Jordan suspect, she wonders? That there's anything more than a hen's friendship between her and Viktoria Lomidze?

It is the weather, surely.