Dark Entries. [Surprise!RP for Dealing Death]

[lothoro]

Budapest, 2084


Of what dreams do we wait
Of what silent....

Oh, please. What a load of crap, I thought, shifting through the papers on the desk. I did not often enjoy rifling through my victims things. I cared to know as little as possible about who they were as people...or monsters. I was given a name, sometimes a picture and a location. Sometimes, I was given a time. Like a shadow I would would appear, kill, and vanish into the folds of life whether it be day or night. Their curse is not my own. It makes me sigh to think that, to realize that 'they' have been dead and gone for centuries. Who is left from either Ordoghaz or The New World Coven? I do not know. I have not seen any evidence of their survival since the death of our Monarchs. One at my hand. Whatever knights that were left had either been hunted, exiled or killed in the ensuing wars of the Underworld. Rest their souls. After all I had done....seen, I took my leave of their world and ambled on in the torturous world, living too long to be happy and yet, too proud to take my own life. After all, there comes a time after countless centuries that life loses it's luster. There's only so much wonder in seeing the seasons change over and over again. I am the world's cynic. I am there. You just aren't likely to see me as I am a ghost whose memory is stuck in another time entirely. Unless, of course, it is time to swallow your last breath. Then I will ead you to the underworld.

Yes, I. I am now a man for hire when you need something...or rather, someone, taken care of. No questions. No honor. Not anymore. I am like any other animal. I feed, I fuck, I survive. I search through people's papers (paper? Who uses paper anymore?) when I am waiting for them to come to their high security homes so that I could kill them. I hear their footsteps before I hear the electronic lock open.

Welcome home. Those who are about to die, I salute you. 

Comments

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

Seventy years later many of the mistakes of her past had grown old and died, or moved on to bigger and better things. The world was a much different place, changing yet again. Yet she stayed very much the same, even the clutter of paper on her desk.

Yes, paper.

It took time but Selene settled in quite comfortably as the small Coven's elder. Though she never could bring herself to create more vampires and replenish their numbers. Those that remained were well protected and hidden in the shadows. Ziodex had grown and was now a household name, keeping those last few souls of Ordoghaz quite comfortable.

When her public face did not age Selene had to fade away as well, assuming a new name and identity once again. Though those closest to her still called her by her born name. The name her parents had given her on the moonlit night she came into the world. They were on her mind as she pressed the code into the key pad of the electronic door and waited for it to open.

Thoughts of the past quickly left her when the door opened and she could hear the slow and steady breathing of someone else in her home. Her hand did not reach for the lights but the gun at her back. The click of the hammer cocking back was loud in the deafing silence of the room.

"Who's there?" Under her breath she muttered, as she stepped to the side to put the wall at her back, "I do hate surprises."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

Well, not entirely expected but a pleasant surprise, he thought dryly while his eyes followed the sound of the gun being cocked. There was a ring in the voice he recognized. Something so distant now that his mind whispered the name of ageless one with only the faintest of breath. It was familiar, yes. But it was a whisper, only a whisper since the impossibility of what it said was unfathomable.

There was something elegant and soft in the confident voice. A women. He just sank back into the shadows. That would have bothered him---once. Women weren't to be made into targets. Ah well. That was once. Just as drinking blood was...once abhorrent to him. One does what they require to survive. Not drinking it had been an experiment he was not one to repeat.

Calm yellow-orange eyes tracked across the hall to the sound through a crack in a wisp of wild hair that was tied half back. Right as rain he walked through the corridors, moving soundlessly accept through the beating of his heart and his breath. He liked knowing that his quarry knew that he was here. It gave them a shot to turn around and run. They never ran fast enough though he thought sadly.

A room. Walking into it he spied something familiar. A small intricate box lying on top of a cabinet. The blood drained momentarily out of his face. It was the pattern on it that looked--changed, yes--but somehow familiar to him. It was something modern curled into something very old. Very. His brows crested between his eyes in a wave of consideration tinged with surprise.

The coven. No. No. He scolded himself. It was...impossible. Inner voice uncertain, it blew out 'improbable but not necessarily impossible'.

It was easy to discard the thoughts and focus on the task at hand. He smirked. Walking through the room he intentionally bumped a chair out of the way as he vanished deeper into the house.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

A cat and mouse would have made more noise than Selene, or her 'company'. She heard not one floor board creek or groan. Nothing rustled or moved. It was just the sound of a steady beating heart that lead her.

For a moment her eyes closed and she could think of nothing but her ear pressed to a warm, solid chest. A deep laugh like thunder when she said something ridiculous that no one but the one she laid with would ever hear. She heard that heart beat and felt a twinge of pain, a pain she wished she could forget.

Then she heard the chair shift and immediately her eyes opened, all thoughts of the past gone with it.

She was being baited.

Which only brought a smile to her lips as a ghost of a memory danced behind her dark eyes. Shadows chasing each other through the forest, dark leaves on the ground and then finally someone stepped on a twig and the chase was over.

For a moment her heart raced then fell back to its slow steady pace.

As he retreated she followed. Baited by a distant memory and the thrill of the hunt. There was a flash of yellow eyes in the darkness and she swore her heart stopped. Then she reached for the lights and flipped all the switches.

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

When the the lights flicked on, he wasn't there. No. Instead, the steady heartbeat was now behind Selene. But even from the back, he could tell that it was her. If she had turned around, her head would have lain perfectly, as once it did, in the shallow hollow between his shoulder and chest. That memory was quickly shuffled away as his brow twisted like snakes between his forehead again. Like something that wasn't there and then was, his hand quickly grabbed the gun and pulled it sideways in case she fired off rounds. He liked this leather jacket. Fixing her in his gaze he demanded, "What are you doing here?"

His mind answered him before she even could which weighed his lips down as if they were being dragged down by anchors.

She was either hunting the same target. Or she was the target.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

She didn't expect the attack to come from behind. Startled she jerked against a strength equal her own but didn't fire. When he whipped her around like a bull on the dance floor her heart hit her feet.

Life had always found a way of seperating them. For hundreds of years they had been torn apart, yet always brought together again. Her eyes squinted sharply as her brows crashed together in a pile. He was surprised to see her. Why would he be surprised? This was her home.

"This is my home."

She growled as she struggled to free herself from a grasp that had been the only one who had ever frightened her. Selene recalled the night on the balcony and how he yelled and shook her. Anger was something she knew all to well and she knew it boiled harder under the golden surface of his skin then most others.

He had changed so much. She barely recognized his eyes.

"H--how did you find me?"

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

"This.Is.Your...Home." He repeated dryly. "Hmmm." Well, that's a problem. Eyes still considered the situation as they assessed her, reading her face, the tone of her voice and stature. A soft chuckle twisted by annoyance curled the right side of his lip up. She was not lying and now the archaic box he saw made sense.

This was her home and she was his target. Christ. It made him wonder who his current employer was and whom Selene had obviously offended so caustically as to put a hit out on her. It did not settle in him well. It stirred anger in him that she might interpret as directed against her.

Yet, the hit was not entirely surprising, he thought before scolding himself. After all, he was lost in thought if only because it allowed him the luxury to wonder what the hell he was going to do without actually consciously thinking it.

To kill an Elder? Again. He suddenly couldn't swallow. To target Selene? Could he even dare? Their past was sorted but the years took the edge off his hurt like stone polished in the water. But a stone was hard regardless of its edges, he reminded himself. Especially if it was required to do a job. Something he had not felt in a long while stirred against him. The echoes of a man who had to adapt another persona and shed one that had nothing wrong with it. A man whose sole concern was to protect those under the coven's roof. Once. He chided himself.

Selene. She was changed. No, not changed. He was not subtle as he looked her over. Not at all. His neck craned slowly to one side in consideration as his unsettling smirk turned into a grin. Not changed. But...

unto herself.

Finally.

Something within her emanated the part of an elder. It was different but then he was surprised how she reminded him of her mother. His fingers reached out to curl the ends of her hair around his fingers. There was a woman last week, if one wanted to call her a woman...

He had curled his fingers around her hair, too. It was easier to hold her down that way before he dispatched of her head. That was the proof his contact wanted. Those same fingers gently pushed those tendrils of hair away behind her ear so that he could see her face better.

One hand cupped her face. His expression was odd. He looked into her face, tilting it slightly this way and that as if trying to reacquaint himself with every line of her jaw and the curve of her cheek. "Mmm." He had a far away look in his eyes. Maybe he checked out or maybe he was recalling some memory.

"Someone told me where to find you." He focused his gaze on her again. "Well," He drawled out deeply, "they told me where to find Emiliya Petrova." Emiliya. Amelia. Ah.

The air hung thick like oil around them.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

He reached for her, curling her hair in his fingers and though she wanted to flinch she refused to let her body react in such a way. Selene refused to let him see the way he could affect her, even now. With a placid look she let him tilt and turn her face, let him see what he needed to see to be assured that what he saw was real.

Her head was held much higher then she had ever carried it before. Eyes harder and colder then they once were. Yet still Selene.

With a breath she took a step back pulling her face from his hands. Outwordly she looked cold, inside she churned like the tide against rocky coastal shores.

"Who told you that name?"

It stung. She was not ready for the twinge of pain that came from realizing he was not here to find her, Selene, but was here for a name she hid behind.

"Why would you be looking for her, hm?"

She still had the gun in her hand though as she kept her gaze, hard as steel on him, she flipped her thumb and put the saftey on.

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

"A shadow." She could laugh if she wanted to. It sounded strange enough, that is, if she believed that he wasn't simply being cryptic. But strange things were part of his world and he hardly blinked when saying that. What manner of course has his life taken that things that can't be explained seemed common-place? Shadows ran orders for their even more elusive masters, a vampire could no more be simply defined by that one word but several. If one had to ask, than, clearly, they had no understanding of the true Underworld and it's vastness.

He glanced around the lit room, not really caring to see the objects in it as the feel for it. Was it a home? A refuge? Simply a set of rooms? A happy distraction?

"Ah. Yes. That is the question," he muttered lowly. He glanced at her, a appraising air about it as he let out an even nonchalant sigh.

"Well...I am simply meant to kill her." Lothoro held Selene's hard eyes within the depths of his soul. "Which presents a bit of a problem now, doesn't it, Emiliya?

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

It may seem out of place for her boisterous laughter but when he tells her why he is there she can not help it. She covers her mouth to stifle the sound. He was sent there to kill her.

"You are muscle for hire, hm?" Her laughter faded and she gave him a hard glare. "You left your family, threw away your nobel knightly honor, to be a paid killer?"

Honor. Loyalty. Duty. Where had he lost that? Selene had done things over hundreds of years that had left a stain on her she could never wash off and she never really tried. She was who she was, that was that. But Lothoro was defined in her mind by such simple words that to know he was here to kill her, likely paid to do so, made her angry.

"Whatever it is they are paying you I will double it and you will forget you ever saw my face."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

Lothoro started out with a smirk and nod as if he was agreeing with her despite the bemused glimmer of stone set in his eyes that burned like embers of a fire.

But her words now made him laugh in turn. It was dry and cynical and sounded like sand grating against glass. "Family." The word was so brazenly twisted with irony on his tongue as he nearly spit it out. Only the lite clench of his fist which quickly unfurled told of the significance of the deep wounds that lay buried. They had all been hurt. Badly. But he had taken it personally. And had personally held them all responsible for their failures.

"Family." The laugh changed into a dark chuckle. He needn't remind her that he had killed the closest of his. They had all failed in his eyes.

"There is no honor in murder." Cynical and misthropic. "So there might as well be a price." Duality dotted his words like poetry. He understood them perfectly. With a scoff he huffed at her, attitude dripping through him like his anger.

"Might you not wonder as to why a price has been placed on your head?" He did not know. "And, if I might add, such a high proof of your death?"

He walked paces away, eying the box the he had seen with what looked like passing interest. "Clearly," He said looking back at her over his shoulder with a smirk before his eyes brushed across the room, "you have angered someone or something quite deeply."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

"Yes, family." She nearly growled but kept her temper in check. Selene knew Amelia would have been hurt deeply to see her beloved friend so far from the man she knew as a girl. When Selene had committed her greatest mistake against him, it was then that she learned how dearly her mother loved him. They were not blood, it went deeper then that. Or so Selene had always believed.

She sighed and found her way to a comfortable black leather chair that had a matching one sitting across from it. Her eyes watched him, noticed when his gazed wandered toward the box. It nearly made her jump up to go for it. To snatch it away before he could see what she had hidden inside. To do that would give away how much it meant to her. So she stayed where she was, even reaching down to release her feet from her shoes and get more comfortable.

While she could run in a five inch heel, this was no mere vampire sent to kill her. She'd be better off flat footed if he made a move. The gun was set down on the small table that sat between the two chairs.

"Everyone has to make a living I suppose." She nodded toward the chair. "Don't keep me in suspense love, what is the proof your employer requires?"

There were a great many things she could have done to anger someone to this point. She'd committed every sin there was along the way, stepped on toes, outbid many, many big businesses on very lucrative deals. It didn't surprise her someone wanted her dead. Only that Lothoro was the one sent to do it. She was intrigued though.

"Now that you mention it I am curious to know what I may have done. Sit, have a drink, tell me a story."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

He eyed the chair she motioned to, taking notice of it long enough to forget the box for now. Indeed, he sat, steepling his fingers in front of him as if he was considering the facts or weighting the options.

"Your heart." He shrugged and rolled his eyes. "A bit too melodramatic for me. But I ask no questions." His gruff voice added. It would have been done without a single afterthought. Who was he to question what the whims of those who hired him were? It mattered very little to him at the end of the day. Except that this wasn't just anyone, now was it?

"I would not know. I know only my target. I don't inquire into the specifics." Lothoro peered out at her inquisitively. "It was one of my more...personal requests. Most of the time they simply want irrevocable proof that the person is dead as a doornail. I'll leave your imagination to discern what that could be....but a heart? Mmmm." He smirked, "that sounds personal.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

She leaned back casually, her head resting on the back of the chair. For a moment she closed her eyes as he explained what they wanted.

"My heart." Selene said flatly. That was personal, he was right. It wasn't her head, they didn't want visual proof that it was really her. "That will be a bit of a problem then, won't it?"

Lifting her head from the back of the chair she met his golden eyes and sighed. "You have always had my heart."

And for the wrongs she had done to him he could take it. She'd fight. But Selene knew in the end she didn't have the will to kill him and would lose the fight. Surely she had enough training and stregth to survive but she did not have the heart to kill the last remnant of her family.

"It does sound personal. What will we do about it?"

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

"Mmmmm." He started to say but it got stuck in his throat by the words that followed. And although he felt like he couldn't breathe, he did not tear his eyes away from her. No, he did not even move. His lips twisted down and the corners twitched a little as if the many differing sentences were as diverse as his thoughts and one couldn't fight its way to the surface.

"Perhaps, then, you are in want of it back? Although, should what you say be true, I am unlikely to give it back. You see, I had always selfishly thought, Lady, that it belonged to me."

For a moment he paused. "And here, again, another wants it." There was no bitterness to his voice or anger. Indeed, his voice was matter of fact. Even though through some small crack he allowed what he felt to escape, it was hard to read into it with the way he had spoken.

All the while, his eyes had been on her.

"Is there no one you could think of who would wish you harm and command the will of...supernatural things?" His head lolled back for a moment as he massaged his neck. Getting up, he paced to the window.

"You should vanish, Selene. I will get him Emiliya's heart."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

His eyes never left hers, hers never left his. Even though there was a moment when she wished he would leave so she might cry her eyes out.

"I have no need for it, I haven't since the day we met." She swallowed thickly, closing her eyes and looking away for the first time. "You take better care of it then I ever have." Her voice was low and remorse.

Regrets. She had few. What she had done to him had haunted her for more nights then she cared for. Selene always thought it would pass, fade....that she would forget the look in his eyes when he learned of her betrayal. But she never had. "Fate has placed it in your hands and there, good Knight, it shall remain."

There were many who would see her dead. Men along the way who she had used in some way or another. Men who laid claim to her only to learn they had no place and meant nothing. Being at the top meant there were many below you chopping at the rungs of the ladder to knock you down.

"Command supernatural things?"

Now she was more curious. Was this the work of the Ventrue prince? Or worse?

"Vanish?" She chuckled. "You of all men should know I will do no such thing."

Selene rose from her chair and came up behind him. Her fingers were laid across his shoulders lightly, barely a touch as she was still frightened of how he might react to her touch. "I saw you look at the box. Do you wish to see what is inside?"

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

His silence was the better choice. Words would fail him. Nothing muddled his mind more than their history, his anger and something that pounded through his heart and made it course more than the blood running through it. He was was not sure that there was anything to say, really, that would have any effect. They both had their regrets. But when she knight, he was reminded of his and through the tightening in his jaw he visibly cringed, only hiding enough of it as not appear affected.

"Hm. I was not being metaphorical when I said shadows. The servant that called upon me on behalf of his master was, quite literally, a shade."

A quick billow of a chuckle erupted in his throat and stayed there. "No, I thought not, indeed. However, that presents a problem now, doesn't it? After all, should he learn of my...failure, I am certain that he will not stop until you are dead. And I am also sure, that you have more pressing thing to attend to than the burying of bodies of those sent to kill you."

He eyed the box again. "Could be tedious." His voice was now lazy, calm and only his body lightly coiled beneath her fingers. Once it would be because it was her--for better or worse. Through love and hate. No, not hate. Hurt.

Now it was because he allowed no one to get close to him--occupation hazard. He looked down at her sleek nimble fingers but made no move to remove them or move away. Again, he considered the box. It made him nervous. He had no clue what was inside and despite every part of him wanting to examine it and its contents, another part screamed for him to resist.

"Hmmmm." The low guttural sound was full of consideration. "It's ornate. The cravings remind me of the coven's crest...but different." Perhaps that is why he could bare to look inside. What secrets she might keep? What trinkets or memories?

"I-I don't know." Yes. No. Both. It was a very honest answer that spoke of potentially knowing, not what was inside, but what it could relate to. And that confused him enough since he did not know what he would do.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

"Then it would seem I need to find out who the master is you serve. And kill him before he can kill me." Selene remained where she was standing behind him. It had been so long since they had been this close and he hadn't moved away from her.

It reminded her of times much more simple. A time when she had love and family. "Shadows. Can you find out more about them? My offer stands, I will pay you double whatever they are offering. Help me find who wants me dead."

Because she was a creature of survival. She would not go down so easily, he was right, there would be a pile of bodies to clean up.

The box in question sat on display along side several ancient Hungarian texts and an ornate vase filled with dark flowers. Inside were peices of the life she had lived. Of the loves she had lost. The mother and father she buried. A ring. A brooch. A lock of hair. Scrap of leather. A note so old the paper was falling apart. When she missed them most she could be found sitting in one of the leather chairs, box in her lap, peering through the items, lovingly letting her fingers touch each of them as if feeling them would make it real. Would make her life feel like less of a dream.

Just like feeling the muscles of his arms tighten and watching the light in his eyes was doing. He was not a dream, not imagery she conjured up in her head, he was real.

She let her hands move from his arms to sneak under them and wrap around his chest. Her face pressed against his back and she took in a breath. "You are real. And not lost to this world. I'd lock you in that box if it were bigger."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

He did not react to those words. Over the years he had served many masters, each who could provide what he needed at the time that he needed it. Money wasn't the only comfort he sought, most likely the least of interest in actuality. But those with the power to keep him invisible to the world and beyond? They bartered a price he would not refuse. He was strategic in his contracts, accepting those that provided the most secrecy--his and theirs. After all, in hell, they could even hear whispers.

He knew about the shadows. All too well. They belonged to a clan. But that did not mean they were commanded by them. Like others...like him, they took contract work as well or were ordered to. After all, shadows make the best spies.

"Keep your money. I did not barter for that." No. But for a ritual item that would finally seal the door that was ripped open to the Otherworlds? Yes. He did. And to keep Selene alive would mean that he would not get it. That last piece of the puzzle that would put an end into a nearly century old conflict that he had kept to himself once that it was thought to be over. The Historian was a keeper of history, of voices. However, one of those voices was not his own. It whispered. Plotted. Threatened and cajoled. It was a shadow too...for now.

His reflection look sullen in the window he peered out of. Help her?

The sigh strained his throat. He slid a finger along the mouth of the box but did not open it. Instead, he struggled to understand what was happening. She had pulled her arms around him. It was unexpected to him although he did not move away. It felt familiar and comforting in one way. In a way that was bad for someone trying to annex anything to do with the coven or fami--members.

But it felt like family. The last strand of something that was never forgotten. He wrapped his arm over her hand and gave it a little squeeze. It felt slightly mechanical but it was an effort well worth battling through.

His billowy laugh rang amused and hollow through the room. "I suppose that is another way of telling someone that'd you would like to see them in their coffin." He was joking. "And look where that sort of thinking got William." A memory so old that it was a mere page in his mind. Turning, his hands reached out to hold her shoulders and gently rubbed them under the pads of his thumbs.

It was a bittersweet moment. A moment where an burying of the past was announced without saying a word. But what that really meant to a man who had willingly given up humanity? Only time knew.

"I am to meet my contact upon the third night after the full moon if I were to succeed. There are ways to capture shadows...the problem is...they obviously don't talk." He thought on that a moment. "At least not to me."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

"What is the price? I have contacts, you should know my hand can reach very far. If you have need, perhaps I can fill it."

While he struggled to understand her actions or what was happening here, she did not. Selene had dreamt a day would come when the anger between them faded enough that he would not recoil at her touch. Nothing had ever hurt her more then when he moved from her like she was a viper ready to strike him.

That made her laugh. A big smile on her face she chuckled at him and shook her head. "Not a coffin, love, just some place for safe keeping. So you might not get so far from me again."

Me. Not us. Not the Coven. But me she had said it, there was no taking it back.

"Who do they speak to?"

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

"An item. A very old ritual item. Not within the reaches of mortal men. And hardly within the understanding of most immortals." He had a faraway look in his eye as he thought of it. Only decades of research brought him even a trifle of information on the matter and a few more finally cracked the veil of a world that had once ensnared them. Once you look through the looking glass, it looks back.

He wanted an end to it all.

Even if it meant admitting that he had lost Matayas and Amelia to their fates. Entwined in a endless battle on opposite sides. Never to reunite. Never to find peace.

He grunted and managed a short chuckle. Head nodding he patted her hand.

"I was never really far...at least not in thought." He muttered so matter-of-fact that the revelation almost seemed a trifle matter. And maybe it was now that so much time had passed and men change into monsters.

Lothoro's hands slid down her shoulders to her hands. "Mmm." He nodded. Good question. "To the ones that can hear them. Their blood masters. Probably the one who hired me to kill you, actually."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

When his hands came to find her she laced them delicately together. Hers were so small in his, she had always marveled at how strong she knew herself to be, yet he made her feel dainty. Not meek, or meager, just very delicate.

"What might I do to keep you closer for good?"

Yes, someone wanted her dead. Had sent the great love of her life to kill her even. Yet her mind was filled with dread over him leaving, not trying to fulfill her contract.

"How might we remedy this situation?" Her eyes were serious as she looked up at him. "What is this ritual item for? I am strong enough, Lothoro, tell me. Losing you, losing them.....it was more then I ever thought I could bear yet stregthened my spine and gave me purpose. You can tell me....tell me anything."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

His eyes looked at from hooded lids and slightly parted lips that curled into a smile. "How do you know that you truly care to?" After all, she hadn't the faintest idea of who he had become, what he done or undone. Her memory of him was of a man...once. Her memory was of a knight. Someone who still believed in honor and hiding in the shadows from a mortal world that had since felt his fangs and then his cold hands. After all, why create more monsters?

"How do you know that you are not yourself speaking to a shade of someone you once knew?"

Within his throat a deep resonating sound of though echoed throughout.

We. We. Was that a path that he wanted to travel again? To work with her this time. But it did have a certain appeal. After all, was it mere coincidence that he was sent to kill her or did his employer craft this meeting with some intention he was not aware of?

Brow raised he looked over her, seriously considering what he would tell her. To lie seemed a better option. Instead a toothy grin brought out a spark in his eye. "To finally close the doors to the Underworld. Be be rid of that vagrants voice once and for all." He said, his words slightly twisted in his mouth like rusted metal left in a fire to burn. Whether she would believe him or think him lying was another matter. And, he decided, he doubted she would realize what that meant.

It might, he rationalized, put them on opposite sides of the fight. Which, he thought, might actually work considering what he had to do.

"Remedy? Remedy." He said darkly, fingers clasped within hers tightly almost in a battle of wills. In his eyes shone an old emotion as he tried to convey a message. Shadows lurked everywhere. In his eyes was the look of a man who had once playfully sparred with her in the woods a very long time ago. That look was disguised with a hard veneer of duty. Not to the coven. To his contract.

He pushed her back, a threat of a fight to come.

Remedy. There was only one way to fool shadows. Give them what they want...or make them think they were getting what they wanted. His heart thumped faster in his chest.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

"We are the rings of a tree trunk. So far engrained and part of each other that I would know if you were not the man I knew, the man I love."

After all, she had been taken captive by a God and he had stood fast and seen that under it all she was there. If he was but a shade of the man he was, fine, all she needed was to shine the light upon him and reveal what she knew was there.

Selene had seen enough in the last dying memories of her mother to have an idea of what he may be speaking of. An idea. Not truth. That she needed from his lips. Her eyes closed and she fought tears she wished not to fall. "My father. You wish to confine him to...." Hell. She couldn't say it. But she knew enough. From memories that were not hers and horrible nightmares that plauged her still. "To where he rests.....

Why?"

That was the part she did not understand. Though there was the dream. The one she had so often of Amelia hanging from a noose in the woods and Matayas being the monster hidden in the trees. What was he not telling her?

"Please. I beg you. Do not be coy. Tell me what I do not know....but feel. Make it make sense."

She couldn't hear the sound of his heart thudding over the sound of her own. Selene did not want to fight him. Knew if anyone could kill her it was Lothoro. She stumbled back when he pushed her away and reached for the knife at her back. "I suppose we have chatted enough then....."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

"Because if I do not. None of us will ever rest when our final repose catches up to us." Lothoro looked pointedly at her as if to try to make her understand. "Matayas' destiny began when he died not when he lived. But he is...not the man that served your mother. He is not a man at'all. But a demon. Of the highest rung. And it is with each of our deaths that he orchestras that he wins a new solider in the battle against heaven. Against humanity. I cannot allow...I will not allow that to pass. I failed him in life." He added tightly. "I will not fail him in death."

They were so still. Both at the ready. But Lothoro was watching the shadows as they milled about. Shadows that belonged to his employer, perhaps? Perhaps. Shadows that could inform on his progress?

But how to fool them, he wondered? Without either of them dying. Of course, he couldn't half wonder to think that this was somehow Matayas' doing. But would someone like Matayas be stupid enough to think that he would kill Selene?

Regardless, he lunged at her. No weapon. The feel of her skin jolted him. It had been so long that he had touched her. Sometimes you did not need a weapon to kill someone. Even though he twisted her arm uncomfortably around she that she twirled around so that her back was insufferably pressed against him, the pad of his thumb still brushed softly over her wrist as he held it.

With her ear so close he could whisper, "do you see them?" He had no idea if she could...or if they were really there.

Before she could reply, he shoved her forward, making ready for her attack.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

"Then you will let me help you." He always was so angry with her when she walked away, because Selene always did. She had walked away from him far too quickly. But this time, she wouldn't. "He is my father Lothoro." Selene hissed as she was spun around and hauled against his chest. "But I will do what I must to protect us, you must....

See them? Selene's dark eyes darted around in the dark. In the shadows she saw quick movements. Strange slithering forms. Jesus.

All she could do was nod. Nod and try not to cry. One of them had to die this night. It would not be Lothoro. Selene would not hold him once again as he died.

Stumbling forward she caught herself and turned on him, eyes closed. Ready. She looked calm as if she had been waiting for this moment all her life. "Do as you must, I will not fight you."