Edyta Machackova

Thu 11:41PM
Silence reigned like an ominous matriarch over the collapse of shadows that concealed her presence, half caught in the gaping maw of the apartment’s balcony alcove. As if in reverence for the cloak of darkness that prevailed, her cigarette was turned up and under in the shallow cup of her palm to keep the tell-tale signature flare of the cherry concealed as she drew the toxic fumes deeply into craven lungs. Nicotine washed through her blood stream, seeped through the lining of her lungs, and penetrated to dark coil of her brain with the obligatory buzz of the legal drug. Glacial eyes settled on the rank rainwater gathered in desolate puddles along the concrete of the pavement and that made the asphalt slick under the passing tires of several cars heading out, the occupants caught up in night-out fever.

It had rained today, a slow desolate drip that had seeped through her clothing, matted her hair, and had been the main motivation to avoid human contact - - it was weather she enjoyed and people always found ways to ruin her enjoyment of the smaller (but sometimes just as important) things in life.. Now the rain had halted, but the stars were still obscured by the clouds that were as grey as old tin, the only break in the bleakness the faint glow of the moon, it's pale wash of light still strong enough to seep through the cloud cover.

The cigarette, smoked to the filter drops from her fingers into the ashtray, the cherry sparking and shattering into ashes. Left there to cool. Her hand reached up and ran through her hair, a slow pull of knots and locks as her head cants, slightly. With the other hand she reached out, curling fingers around the back of the one of the chairs left out but dry enough, and dragged it closer. The wood scraped along the tiling, the noise raising hackles like nails over a chalkboard. She folded her lithe black satin-clad figure into it, facing off with the world in silence for a spread of long minutes before she leaning back, so casually at ease, and steeping her fingers under her chin.

She continued to look upon the scurrying world from the balcony with the faint kiss of a smile on her lips, as if somewhat bemused by something that would only tickle her fancy and leave others screaming in the throws of insanity (because some thoughts… are best kept to yourself).

She finally slid a hand inside the confines of the leather jacket dropped haphazardly over the back of one of the chairs, removing pack of cigarettes that have seen better days. The flint of the Zippo extracted from another pocket rasps before sparking alight with a miniature flame that she touches to the end of a slightly bent cigarette. A deep inhalation, filling her lungs with the miasma of toxicity.

Cancer sometimes seems like a blessing compared to her Family.

The cigarette, the length of it glowing a deep orange, cast a hellish red that spread strange shadows across her olive complexion as she sat in the darkness; the balcony’s light never having been lit even after the sun had set along the horizon. The ghoulish contrast drowns her eyes in shadowed hollows in her skull, but still, her eyes stared out at the world with a curiosity that seemed to be bordering on homicidal intent. Death stared out at the world and for once, it was perhaps a blessing that It was in an apathetically good mood.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 12:04AM
- pop -

Her cigarette goes out, extinguished by the sudden, explosive displacement of air away from a space under the balcony awning, six feet up from the ground. It was empty half an instant ago, but now it's filled with tumultous roiling changing falling black.

A shadow.
...Lord.

Whumpf. He lands in a coiled crouched, on all fours, the impression of fur and massive body resolving into leather and corduroy. Konrad raises his head. There's a slash of red across his cheek. He smells like blood, and it's not all his own.

Rising: his full height unfolding from the muscular coil of limbs. A crisp snap of his lapels straightens his coat, sent into disarray by the 6-foot plummet (and if that was unexpected, he reacted to it like a mountain cat) and, before that, the claw and tooth climb up gleaming steel webs to this, the umpteenth story in a nameless gleaming dark apartment building. His hair still hangs past his brow, into his eyes.

A step forward. Streetlight far below glows softly off swarthy skin, dark hair. Gleams off slick-cut black leather.

Burns, refracted and intensified, in his gaze.

Half moon in the sky. Hunter's moon. And her in his eyes: a poisonous butterfly locked in amber. A snap of his chin up tosses his hair out of his eyes. It's a proud, unconscious gesture, somehow savage. The studiedly casual, civilized, cultivated way he runs his hand through his hair to smooth it down afterwards doesn't fool anybody. Then he holds his hand out to her. Faint scratches there, as well.

"Come on. We're going for a ride."


Edyta Machackova

Fri 12:17AM
She had moved the placement of her feet that moment the –pop- came and her hand was on the gun that laid open on the small ‘garden’ table to her left by the time he hit the ground, lifted and pointed at his head as soon as he was standing, flipping that hair out of his face. It took a few more moments before her finger slipped back past the trigger guard, no longer ready to shoot first and ask questions later (or more like never). The heartbeats pass for a little longer, few extra pulses, before the gun was lowered, no longer pointed right in her ‘mates’ face: never point a gun at something that you aren’t prepared to shoot.

And she didn’t intend to shoot him.

Yet.

She rolled the barely started cigarette back between fore-finger and thumb of her other hand, flicking it over the railing to die a wet, miserable death as just another piece of litter on the lawn and sidewalk. She could stand on her own accord, but he’d offered his hand and there was no particular need to goad the (Scratched) Beast, so she gave him her hand, smaller by far and not as strong, although she had her own myriad of small faint scars from (knife) cuts across the olive skin. She rose up of her own momentum with the liquid grace of a feline on the prowl, looking her ‘beloved mate’ over in that seemingly perpetual silence.

A bare inclination of the head in reply to his statement, then “I need to change.” Before just turning away from the miserable scene of the Life Around and her mate’s presence, sliding open the glass door leading into the living room and disappearing into the bleak darkness within (lights off inside also).

After all, going out in a satin robe was a little too casual wear for the street (or a car ride).


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 12:23AM
As she brushes past, he doesn't turn to keep her in his gaze. But nor does he release her hand. She gets to the door and no further. His grasp on her wrist stops her in her tracks, unless she cares to make the extended - and ultimately futile, no doubt - attempt to escape.

A quiet, ominous as that before a storm. It's the rage wreathing around him, raw as a bare nerve tonight. It's the electric flash in his eyes as he turns to look at her: she who would point a gun in his face.

He doesn't believe for a moment that she couldn't assimilate his features quick enough.

But after an endless stillness all he says is, "Bring your camera."

And he lets her go.


Edyta Machackova

Fri 12:33AM
Her passage barred by his catch of her wrist without release, she just stopped rather than trying to continue forward (which would be futile, yes?). Then he speaks before dropping her hand. No answer to the order, because it was just that: an order.

She stepped into the room beyond the balcony and padded across the starkly furnished living room floor in the dark, unlashing the satin belt from around her waist as she walked and dropping it to the wayside without thought, leaving it like a long black snake slithering across wooden floor boards. To be picked up later (or not, as the care may be). The robe was equally left as a puddle of darkness in the gloomy room, the folds of the material falling across the floor like spilled oil.

Beyond a door and into another room.

She didn’t take as long as some females normally would getting changed, but perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she forewent make-up and kept to a general style of fashion (no humming and hahhing over what to wear), each article of clothing working with each other in one way or another. She emerged from the bedroom in black tailored slacks with several cargo pockets and a clinging t-shirt that was so dark red that it looked close enough to black to not matter. She had a gun at her lower back, on her belt by a hip holster, since she didn’t feel inclined to root through her things and find a left handers shoulder holster that wouldn’t irritate her right shoulder. She also had one of her professional cameras in one hand.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 12:43AM
By the time she emerges, a few lights are dimly on, the rheostats turned down. Her robe has been picked up off the floor - though only to be cast on the coffee table in a similar pool of slick black. He gives her a long glance over before he nods, approving.

God forbid his women look penniless or cheap.

Holding the door open for her, he pulls it shut behind himself and then goes over to call the elevator while she locks up. Down they go, and around the block to where he's parked at a meter. He disarms the alarm and opens the passenger's side door for her before going around to climb in himself. A brush of the back of his hand across the scabbing cut on his cheek, leaving a small smear of blood that he glances at distastefully, and then he starts the engine. The sound system kicks in: something low, heavy bassline, a touch of jazzy horns.

They pull out onto the road, headed for I-26. He isn't in a talkative mood tonight. Preoccupied, he seems much more distant than the few inches between, his thoughts elsewhere. He doesn't say a word to her. His attention remains fixed on the road, the glow of the dashboard lighting his hard features from below. 90mph, the BMW sliding like a bullet down the fast lane, and the road is almost empty. No glare, no traffic, dark and smooth and long. Glorious driving conditions.


Edyta Machackova

Fri 12:51AM
Silence.

Well, it’s not like that hadn’t been through this scenario before.

She just sat, adjusted in a manner to allow the seat belt strap to not rub across her shoulder to sharply and irritate the stitches. She had grabbed a tailored jacket (it’s kind of hard to pick up appropriate jackets ‘off the rack’ to conceal half the things she does beneath) on her way out and it had been pulled on during the elevator ride and walk to the car parked out back. She had the camera in her lap and an extra roll of film concealed on her person more than like.

Her eyes trailed over the passing scenery, head turned to the side slightly to look out of the passenger window rather than the windscreen and after enough time had passed, sitting in the Rage engulfed metal capsule that is normally a car (but not normally this tense) she finally spoken, “What happened your face, Konrad?”

No, it didn’t sound like some mewling concern and pitiful feminine woes over her ‘beloved’ being injured. She never ‘gushed’ - - just a straight forward question, her usual tone, and he could choose to answer it or not.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 12:59AM
No reaction. His eyes don't even move from the road. For the space of a minute - of a mile and a half on a dark highway - it seems he's content to ignore her. Then the corner of his mouth curves up. He glances at her, his smile fond, amused.

She'd be a fool to believe it.

He reaches down and flips the faceplate down on the stereo. Then he hits the eject button. A CD slides out of the slot and he removes it with an economical turn of his wrist. Then he holds it up for her.

"Put this away, please. There's a holder in the glove compartment. Pick something else out if you like. There's quite a selection in there."

He returns his right hand to the gearshift, the knob easily cradled in his calloused palm. Another mile or two before he adds, "A tussle over a small misunderstanding." Abrupt, the glance he shoots her, and piercingly cynical. "So concerned, love."


Edyta Machackova

Fri 01:05AM
She took the CD without comment, opening the glove box and finding the holder and sliding it into it’s respective place before she finds something classical to replace in the CD player. Another section of silence, the road merely zipping past as they travelled along it before she replied to his last comment.

“I was merely wondering whether I would have to hurt someone,” she replied back with that same blank tone, “For marring your pretty face.” And the before I get the chance to quivered unspoken in the air, like a tease, although whether the tease was serious or not with indiscernible.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 01:24AM
"You?" A private amusement makes him laugh. "No, kočka. There is no need to trouble yourself."

Chopin's Nocturnes unwind into the air. The complete set, first to last, twenty-one pieces in all. The work of a lifetime condensed into two plastic discs, which only fill a third of the CD player's changer capacity.

That's what genius and hard work is worth in this world. Is it any wonder there are those who seek shortcuts?

Konrad reaches down and skips the first disc altogether. Then he presses the fast-forward until the thirteenth nocturne comes on track. Then he dials up the volume on the piece: minor key, melancholy as all Chopin minors tend to be, but moody as well. There's a surprising, dark power behind it; an astounding complicity of notes and harmonies that sound far too difficult for two mortal hands to create.

"This one is my favorite," says Konrad, as he takes the junction onto I-95. Now they're going north more or less along the coastline, the ocean black and endless in the distance.


Edyta Machackova

Fri 01:32AM
Most people would be questioning by now: ‘Where are we going?’, ‘What are we going to do?’, “What’s at the destination?’, ‘Are we there yet?’ - - anything to satisfy their curiosity, that bleak place of being painted into a corner of not knowing what was going on or why. The need to know what that point of the entire drive was (because everything had a point, however much it didn’t seem like it or how stupid it was).

She, however, just sat there in the gloomy interior of the sleek black BMW, close enough to feel the storm of Rage that sweated through the metal capsule surrounding like a suffocating blanket (yet someone ignorable for her, at least outwardly). She looked down at the camera in her lap once, checking something on the side of it, before she slipped a hand down to the side of her seat and the upper half went back a degree or two. Her glacial eyes slipped half-lidded as she listened to the music.

She merely settled in.

Comfortable in silence.

Because, really, what did they ultimately have in common?

Other than the fact that they would probably be the Death of each other, at some point.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 01:42AM
20, 30, maybe 40 miles north on I-95. Then they take an exit. It's a two-lane highway running along the seashore. There are no streetlights. The halfmoon casts a silvery glow on the beach, and the shrubbery.

Another few miles on that. Another turn, right, toward the ocean, onto a road that has no visible streetplate. The land juts out into the sea here - a peninsula which the road leads onto. At the very end of the peninsula is a house, all the lights off, the sea beating at its feet.

Presently they come to a locked gate with a keypad. Konrad lowers his window and the salty wet air whips in, freezing cold. A distant lighthouse casts an alternating light over their heads, sifting down through sea-fog to dimly and transiently illuminate his face. His eyes, grim and full of purpose.

"May I borrow your gun."
Spoken as an order.


Edyta Machackova

Fri 01:46AM
And who is she, a Shadow Lord Kin trained to obey, to go against an Order?

She undoes her seatbelt and leans forward, pushing back her coat and unclipping the catch on the belt holster, sliding out the pistol, without holding it out to him she keeps it in one hand as she reaches into another pocket and pulls out a silencer, which she screws on deftly before the whole lot is extended towards him, grip first.

She’d never known Konrad to know how to use a gun, but there was a first for everything, and if a ‘freelance photographer’ could know how to use them there is no reason why an Ahroun wouldn’t be just as proficient.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 01:53AM
He takes the gun by the grip. Lifts it from her hand, his tawny eyes glimmering in the darkness of a beam swept past. He takes in the shape of the gun; the form so perfectly reflecting its function.

(A shiver slices down his back. He can see why she likes these things...)

...and then he uncurls her fingers and fits the gun back into her grip. He grasps her hand by the wrist. Gently, if you would believe it - but firmly. And he pulls, until she must climb up on the seats, and then across the gearbox onto his. Until the gun is point-blank to the keypad, and her arm is stretched straight and true across him.

Konrad drops a single hot kiss on the inside of her elbow. His hand wraps around hers wraps around the trigger of the gun. The barrel is jammed against the keypad. It's impossible to miss.

"Pull," he instructs.

( - teach me to destroy - )
...as you do.


Edyta Machackova

Fri 02:04AM
It wasn’t the most comfortable positions to be in, perched in his lap with her arm extended out with the gun gripped in her hand with his wrapped around hers. When he dropped the hot kiss against the inside of her elbow she paused for a moment with her finger slipped from trigger guard to trigger and turned her head slightly to one side. Glacial cold blue eyes roamed to catch a corner of his features in the gloom and flash of illumination as the lighthouse beam flickers over the area in the distance.

She watched him with that sidelong look for a tense moment, the muscles along her back strained by the position, a faint jumping twitch of one knotted one near her shoulder, but her arm remained ever steady, although holding up a gun one handed and straight armed wasn’t something that a person could keep for very long.

He’d instructed her to pull the trigger and as her eyes move back to the keypad outside the window, to which the gun was pretty much point blank against, her finger gently squeezed (not jarred) the trigger.

Cliii-iick

Contrary to some beliefs, a silencer doesn’t completely remove the sound of a gunshot, merely dampening it so that it wasn’t heard for blocks and further. It made the use of the weapon a little more subtle.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 02:11AM
And contrary to intuition, the dampening of sound does nothing to dampen the force of recoil. The gun jumps in her hand; her hand jumps in his. The bullet explodes into the box and ricochets, tears out the back, takes a goodsized chunk of steel, plastic and wires with it.

Electric buzz, sparks guttering. Konrad laughs, a rumble low in his chest.

"Amusing. No wonder you enjoy these little toys." And he releases her arm, sliding out of the car from under her. This time, he doesn't bother to let her out. She can get out herself. He goes to the gate, now effectively lobotomized, and grasps the center bars. Strains against it. Grunts, strips his coat off, tosses it atop the hood of the car, and tries again. Muscles bunch and stand out across his shoulders and back. Inch by inch, faster and faster, the gate begins to open until he can release it with a resounding crash.

So much for stealth. The flagstone driveway winds down the peninsula, treelined (you don't want to ask how much it costs to maintain trees on a sandy outcropping of beach.), the house rising out of the distance like an apparition.

"Let's go."


Edyta Machackova

Fri 02:19AM
Ahrouns? Stealthy? Hehehehe… Funny man.

Apparently he can sneak up on her in her home by gallivanting through the Umbral scape, popping into existence either in front or behind her without warning (apparently doors and knocking are so Last Season), but getting through a set of electronic gates is beyond his ken when it comes to the Stealthy routine.

She disentangles herself out of his seat (he isn’t small and there was much shifting to do when he slid out from under her - - mainly cause of the item called the steering wheel) and exits, shrugging her shoulder beneath the tailored jacket set around her lean torso, but she keeps the gun in hand, concealed at her side along dark pants that rival the black of the weapon.

She also brought the camera, since he’d insisted that she do so at the beginning of this odd journey. Perhaps she wouldn’t need the gun again, but it never hurt to be prepared.

I may be a Monster, but I can’t turn into a War Machine…

Maybe he could take a slug to the gut and shrug it off, his bodies regenerative abilities making his life all that more easy to survive the detrimental effects of injury, but she was human (or as human as Kinfolk were) and she preferred to be armed rather than not.

Paranoid?

Of course, she was a Shadow Lord…
…and then some.

She followed behind, long pale hair slithering back and forth over the back of the jacket down the length of her back, longer than it had been 9 or so months ago when they’d last been around each other for an extended period of time. Her eyes surveyed the surroundings with pinpoint accuracy, her foot steps light.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 02:28AM
He's walking ahead of her, so she can't see the smirk he can't quite stop from creeping across his face. Edyta Machackova and her guns. So ready to peel leather and lay down the bullets.

Fallen leaves crunch under his feet. He makes absolutely no attempt to disguise his approach. It might occur to her that had there been hostile creature in the area, they were in the worst possible place. A long road, trees obscuring either side, and nowhere to go but backwards or forward. A seawall beyond the trees, keeping the tide out - and them in.

Maybe he was leading her into an ambush. Maybe it's a test of trust. Or apathy. Is there a difference?

The road finally broadens out into a circular drive, a fountain set in the middle. The water is still, but not yet stagnant. Konrad circles around it, his shirt sleeveless tonight, his swarthy arms bare and corded, the hairs standing up from the cold.

Up the front stairs -
CRACK.
- kicking in the door with a short, smoothly powerful piston of the foot.

Then he turns to her and bows from the waist, curiously and mockingly dapper. "After you, madam."


Edyta Machackova

Fri 02:34AM
“Betters before women,” she replied, with a curious expression flickering across her normally placid features as that could have been something like a smile, and although her tone was hardly sardonic, there was a faint hint of sarcasm tapering around the edges like a ghost, a hint of something.

Maybe it was about Trust. Maybe it was about Apathy. Maybe it was an Ambush.

But whatever it was, whether there was dangerous or not, she’d let the walking, breathing Monster Shield who could take a decent shot to the chest without much of a flinch, go first. But of course, veiled as it should be: Betters always go before their Servants.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 02:43AM
And he rises like a cobra from the basket.

And regards her, gold-eyed silence. Then, "What, Edyta." Smile, slight. Never faint. "Afraid? Do you think I would do away with you so easily? I've yet to have my fill.

"Go ahead, little kočka. Nothing to fear. Upstairs. Third door on your left." A step toward her. "I'll be right behind you."


Edyta Machackova

Fri 02:51AM
She didn’t reply to the question of whether she was afraid - - she was less afraid than most people would be in a situation like this (can we say Slasher Flick scenario?), but she also wasn’t as blindly naïve or trusting as the average individuals.

’Do you think I would do away with you so easily?’ he’d asked and the only correlating thought that came to mind reflected her lack of empathic connection to the world around her: My life is Death and I would kill you without hesitation is needed

It would be a pity to have to kill him (and rather detrimental (permanent endings) to her social life if he killed her) because some sick and twisted little part deep down under the onion layers of the glacial façade might have actually liked the young Ahroun in her own way. But she’d said it once, it would be said again as need be: Emotions were Messy. A person shouldn’t let themselves get bogged down by such sentimental attachments.

And sometimes the best remedy was to give someone a steel kiss that wept red from ear to ear…

”What, Konrad,” she replied with a smile that matched his, although it never quite reached her eyes as usual, “Afraid? Do you think I would shoot you in the back that easily? I’ve yet to have my fill…”

A mimic of his own words, twisted to fit her own perspective.

Such a trusting and loving couple, weren’t they?

She stepped in through the kicked in door without another comment and followed his directions: up the stairs, third door on the left.


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 03:04AM
The front hall is opulent. Even in the dimness she can see it. But there is a sense of abandonment in the place, though there is no dust (...yet); a sense that whatever life had once inhabited it is gone, and irrevocably so. Years ago, people would have called this place haunted.

The stairs do not creak, though. The banisters do not wobble. Her footsteps are silent on the thick rug spilling down the steps like a rich crimson waterfall -- like blood.

At the head of the stairs is a massive gilt mirror. In it she can see the dim contours of the front rooms; the destroyed front doors; the Ahroun right behind her, no weapon in his hands, no expression on his face when he locks. eyes. with. her. in the reflected world of shadows.

Then she moves past the mirror. The hall upstairs echoes the lower one, though it is set at right angles to it. It's also dark, also laced with a sense of abandonment. But as she proceeds down the hall, things begin to change.

The paintings are askew on the wall. Then they're simply knocked down, torn apart. Claw marks deeply gouge the wainscotting and the carpet. Whole chunks of wall are missing in places, ripped down. The third door on the left is closed, but even through it she can smell blood.

Cold blood.
Old blood.

The doorknob is sticky with it.

Softly, "Open it."


Edyta Machackova

Fri 03:11AM
Her glacial eyes survey her surroundings without a word (it seemed both pointless and out of place to make mindless commentary about the opulence of the place that then bled into clawed up disarray…) until she came upon the door, his presence against her back.

Blood scent in her sinuses.
Rage pulse against her back.

Maybe she should have been worried.
Perhaps even a little paranoid given the disarray.
Hell, how about scared cause of the stench of blood
- - (cattle don’t like blood all that much, and what were Kin but human-shaped brood mares?)

But Blood had never turned her stomach, the smell of it strong and coppery was almost an aphrodisiac. It meant something had bled. Something had hurt and quite possibly have died. //Killer Instinct//

Was it any wonder that she required a Handler? When you become so immune to the depravity of such thoughts the Wyrmlings were going to come and start knocking on your door with wide Jehovah Witness Smiles and the Book of the Wyrm in the other hand, promising all the glory of the ‘Dark Side’ if only you’d just do them a tiny favor.

And once you’re in, you’re there for good.

She put her hand to the doorhandle and turned it, pushing it open as he bade her to do so.

Just another mouth of Hell…


Konrad Vrdoljiak

Fri 03:43AM
Cree-ee-eeak. This one squeals because there is blood in the hinges.

First, the smells. The stench of blood and bodily fluids, shit and piss released in the final agony. And on top of that - the acrid, choking scent of gasoline. Gallons of it.

And somewhere.
Somehow.
She has to know, already, what she'll see when the door.

swings.
open.

Revealed, the tableau of chaos: Curtains torn halfway down, and halfway to shreds. Billowing, because the window was broken and the sea air is flooding in. There is blood smeared on the windowframe as though someone had tried to crawl out, and been dragged back.

The mantle is cracked nearly in half. The portrait over it has been ripped off the wall and thrust into the fireplace, scorched and black. But the fireplace is cold now, the logs scattered across the room, leaving streaks of charcoal and burn circles in the rug, and the hardwood floor beneath. There's blood on the floor, soaked deep. The wood is dark with it, and soggy.

The wood is dark with it, and soggy, because there is a body in front of the fireplace, its hands bound behind it, and then to the lograck. The ropes are tight enough that even in death, the body does not slump. Even decapitated (...because it is, and in one clean executioner's stroke of a greatsword - if she knows the look.), the body does not slump. Blood has congealed - but not yet dried - in sheets pouring down from the gaping wound of a neck to pool in an ever-increasing circle around it. The shoulders look odd; bulging at strange angles; dislocated. The fingers, if she goes behind to see, are all broken. Every finger. Every joint. Pried backwards until joints popped and bone splinters pierced the skin. One by one. By one.

But that's not the centerpiece of the little show.

Driven into the center of the floor is a poker from the mantle, thrust into the floor handle-first. The handle is round. Imagine the strength necessary, the speed(, the fury), to accomplish such a task without even cracking the floorboards. There is simply a hole there where the poker went in. And it would take strong men to drag it back out.

Impaled on the spiked end of the poker is a head.

Konrad strides into the room. Grasps the head by the hair. And turns it around on its pivot, poker scraping unpleasantly against broken skull-bone, until it faces her.

It's Lukas Crushing-Dragon's-Jaw.
Eyes open, mouth open.
Dead.
It's a warning.
He had needed a Rite of Cleansing after the deed.
Don't fuck with me.
And -
"It's our ten month anniversary," smirking, "Sona."
It's a gift.

"Take a picture, love." He releases the hair, flicking out a handkerchief to wipe blood streaks from his hand. When he's finished, there's still blood on his palms. He doesn't care. He wads the handkerchief up and tosses it at the base of the poker where it wilts like a crimson-streaked flower. "Send it to your family with my kindest regards. And tell them you are no longer their concern.

"I'll wait for you in the car. Burn the place before you leave."


Edyta Machackova

Fri 04:08AM
However did he get him here?

The answer, undoubtedly: Pride. Ego. Vanity. It was bound to be one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Lords never let anything go - - they always got the last word in, the last jab at an opponent, they would ruthlessly pursue their adversaries until they were buried. And Gaia help anyone that stood in their way.

A Lord always pays his debts.

This wasn’t a scene of a jealousy-based quarrel being settled (…to the Death). No, Jealousy had nothing to do with this. This was something else entirely, fuelled by another type of mind set that didn’t allow anything as base of a jealous emotion taking precedence over the situation.

This was possession.

A statement (Don’t fuck with me.) in the boldest terms possible. To get the point across and to bring finality to a situation that had been, in his mind and statements, a ‘misunderstanding’. To him her Family had no rights to use her as a pawn piece in their age-old game of politics and manipulations: she belonged to him. In his eyes, at least.

And after the photos were taken and developed, possibly in her family’s eyes as well. After all, he’d proven the more devious of the two, the most ruthless. The strongest. The survivor.

The Winner.
(…And the world (and Gods) so does like its Winners)

Gee, no one had ever given her such a nice gift in her life. The head of her husband (who was also a Garou - - yeah, Rite of Cleansing was a real good choice to take) all… bloody and head stuck on a poker like the head on city wall spikes of ages long gone. The stench of blood and faeces was strong enough to bring bile to the back of the throat, the bodies automatic reaction to exposure to such a putrid odour.

She holstered the gun under the jacket and her head canted ever so slightly to one side as her eyes took in the surroundings - - She didn’t faint. She didn’t scream. She didn’t blink much beyond the slight sting that the accumulation of odours and chemicals caused. The camera was still on hand and no doubt, with her skills (being a professional and all) the resulting images would be quite detailed, gory and get the point across much as his was desire.

If and when he turned to leave, passing her by eventually given her closer stance towards the blood coated door, a hand (seemingly of it’s own volition since no other part of her body moved) reached out and finger tips brushed and wrapped across his wrist. At the contact of skin, sticky in bloodied patches, she turned her head to regard the Ahroun with cool blue eyes.

Pupils flared, the black spilled like slick oil across a roiling ocean, she watched her mate (every decision came with it’s drawbacks: welcome to the life of a Handler, Konrad) with a slow exhalation of breath through her nose, breath taken in through the mouth to avoid the cloying smell that threatened to exist in her sinuses for some days to come if she wasn’t careful and breathed in too deep.

A fluid /liquid/ step up to his taller stature, lifting the other hand to wrap an arm up around his shoulders – the camera sat cold against the back of his neck with wrist flesh warm against the side of his neck – and pulled his head down enough to rise up on her toes to cover the distance. She pressed her lips to the side of his mouth, just broaching on the lips (…for a ‘couple’ of ten months they’d never actually kissed) before she stepped back slightly.

”Our tenth anniversary,” she replied, “Konrad.”
A gift.