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

[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."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

Well that was unexpected because he expected her to fight him. His eyes danced among the shadows and then back at her. Back to the shadows and back to her. For a moment he had no idea what to do. Eyes locked on hers he looked feral as he paced in place simply shifting his weight from one hip to the other. A amused laugh erupted from a tight throat. He nodded softly, lips pressed together in consideration. "Impressive." Goddammit Selene.

And then he lunged at her, tackling her at the waist and sending them sprawling over her desk before the momentum slid them across it and down to the ground in a heavy thud. He flipped her on her back and pinned her wrists over her head before moving them to her shoulders and giving them a soft jolt into the floor. The desk offered a momentary screen to the shadows who were moving to peek past it.

"What the hell are you thinking?" He hissed out. "FIGHT me." With another shake of her shoulders, he barked out, " Fight me!" With caution, he looked behind his shoulder to see where they were. Those errant beings...

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

She grunted, a hiss of air forcefully pushed past her lips as they crashed hard to the ground. Her small body took the brunt of the fall and was trapped by his weight.

Selene shook her head as he shook her shoulders, this time the tears spilling from her dark eyes. "I watched you die once." She wiggled under him, making an attempt to get away, not fight. "Then again when I betrayed you. I will not do it again." Looking him in the eyes she was serious. There was no doubt. "Just do it already! Kill me!"

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

"R'aaaaaah!" He yelled out in rage, his fist drawing back and punching the ground next to her head in frustration. The floor cracked in tiny lines, fracturing the marble like fate had fractured their life lines, their hearts. Lothoro's hand sunk into her hair, finding the back of her head and cupping it as he pulled it up to his ear. Fangs grazed her neck as his breath steamed against her pale throat. It was almost easy to taste her skin through its soft scent. A show, yes. This was a show. But it was becoming dangerous for both of them.

Don't be foolish now. He gave her a little jolt. "Not the Selene I knew. FIght me." Then lowering his head he whispered into her ear, lips brushing against her lobe. After all, even whispers could be overheard. "Should you not wish to watch me die than you'd had better fight. Shadows know nothing of mercy and the killer in me seems to have only that to spare right now."

With a growl, he lifted them up, grabbing her by the lapel of her shirt and sending her across the room. "Fight me, Selene. It's only fair." Lothoro had to pull out all the cards. She had to get angry enough. He grinned toothily. "After all...I did kill your father."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

The Selene he knew didn't deserve his mercy. She deserved his wrath. Not only had she betrayed him, she had put him directly in Tristan's path.

When he threw her her body took out vases and other collectibles in the room, landing with a thud against the wall that cracked the sheet rock. Pushing her body off of the floor she growled, wiping blood from her lips.

"Liar!" She bellowed at him, anger and hurt rising from her chest like bile to form the single word. He couldn't have. They were like brothers....her heart felt frozen, she was certain it had stopped beating. But for only a moment.

A hard kick sent onf of the chairs skittering across the room. With a furious growl she flipped the coffee table away. So this is how they would end. Really, truly end. Angry as she was Selene couldn't stop the occasional tear from rolling down her cheek. "How dare you...." She wasn't sure how to finish that sentence.

Instead she lunged at him, teeth bared, eyes glowing.

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

Lothoro ducked as the coffee table was sent into the air, the edge as sharp in it's flight like a guillotine. It crashed behind him against a shadow that felt no pain. That would be nice, wouldn't it? As it were, their unlives had been little else but that. Oh, not to be melodramatic for sure, but if you fought Lycans for a living, if you know of the coven's history, than clearly, you knew of pain.

Like the type written over Selene's face, masked by a glowing anger. Yes.

"Oh. Hm." He started lazily. "Did you not know that it was I whom pulled the trigger?" It wasn't that simple. It had never been. But in a way it was. It was exactly what had happened and in his mind, little else mattered. The 'why' of it, the 'reason' got lost in the throbbing soundless echo of the guilt. Even that guilt grow hollow and numb with time...and the monster's taunting of him if indeed it was a monster and not his own mind.

The force of her lunge sent him spiraling back down again with her on top this time. His teeth rattled in his mouth as his head hit the ground.

Good. Yes, good. "I dared. I only wish I had done it sooner." He grunted out through clenched teeth. Twisting to his side, he brought his elbow back and then sent it flying against the side of her face to throw her off-balance.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

Before she could strike him she took the blow to her face, whipping her head to the side. Snapping her head back, long dark hair hiding most of her face and the quickly fading mark he had left on her alabaster skin she glared at him. Selene was never one to hide how she felt, especially from him. There was nothing but the worst sort of pain and anger in her eyes.

Was this how he had felt the night she told him about Tristan? Selene had never felt so betrayed. Her hands were around his neck, she gave his head a hard shake smacking it into the floor before she started to apply pressure to strangle him. A sob welled up in her chest and tears fell but she didn't let go. "You dared to stand in his tomb and mourn...." Her voice was shaking as her hands got tighter. "H---how could you have taken him from me? He was all I had left!" Yes, she knew it was Matayas that had killed her mother, but she did not know why. He was still her father and without Lothoro, she had been left very much alone.

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

The jolt made his vision blur. He could almost feel the fracture along the back of his skull but it healed fast enough--thanks to her. Ironic considering that she was trying to kill him now, exactly what he needed. Her surprise, however, took him by surprise. He was certain that he was riling her up by mentioning Matayas, but he had thought she would have known. He had been sure that she would have inquired into their deaths. Lothoro's brow furrowed. So the knights had told her nothing. Nothing.

They told her nothing of demons. Nothing of Amelia's demise or Matayas'? Why? To protect him of course. The oldest order within an order. It learned to survive by protecting one another. Somewhere guilt nibbled away and was pushed to the pit of darkness churning within his soul. Where had he been when they were left alone? Forsaken them. All of them.

He wanted to shake her. Wanted to tell her everything that happened that unholy night. No, those months previous. When Amelia and Matayas had lied to them. When they had gambled on winning only to lose everything.

But that would not have served his purpose.

"Well...it would seem that you are not very good at keeping paternal figures around." That was below the belt and he knew it. Threading his arms to the inside of hers he whipped his head forward into a headbutt. "However, if you miss him so much, why don't you join him in hell?" The knife came out of his waist band and cut across air toward her.

If she couldn't act the part of fighting than he would make her angry enough to fight.

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

Selene was shocked by what he was saying to her. This was not the man she knew and loved. The man that had protected her from the shadows when she was too meager to do it herself. He had killed her father and was hell bent on sending her to see him.

She felt the knick of the blade as it touched her neck. Reached a hand to her throat. None of the horrible things he wanted to yell at him came out of her mouth, just a gurgle of blood as it spilled from her lips and poured over the hand clutching her throat.

Through one final breath she whispered that she loved him, then collapsed in a heap against his chest, blood pouring quickly from the 'Italian smile' he had given her. At least she died with a smile, she thought as the world went black and her body fell limp, dead, against him.

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

He had to still his heart with heavy breaths in order to carry the part he played. A murderer. A traitor. His throat with tight with his actions. The warm blood--Selene's warm blood--flowed over his hand. It was hot with accusation.

But her words might as well have killed him even though he was the one still breathing. Lothoro had to keep his lips pressed together for a moment to keep them from trembling. This woman...

Blood coated everything. His heart pounded faster in his chest as hers slowed down. To the shadows he only looked like a killer. A man doing his job--reserved, collected, cold. Nothing was further from the truth.

But he left the blade there, in the flesh, pressing down to keep the wound from healing until he heard nothing. It was only when the blade rattled against the floor that the shadows were satisfied.

Picking up her body, her limp arm fell down, the shadows watched as he placed it across her chest. They scattered into the nights so quickly that Selene's home seemed to be filled with sunlight.

But she could not stay here. A murdered mayor would draw too much human attention.

It was some time later that he set her limp body on an old leather settee in front of a lit fireplace. The apartment seemed distinctively his own yet without that feeling that he planned on staying very long.

Setting her down, he pushed tendrils of hair out of her face.

Biting into the rivers in his wrist, he watched the blood well up and then dripped a few drops onto Selene's pale wrist.

Lothoro wasn't much for praying, but he sure as hell invoked every deity on high for this one.

"Selene." He had no clue what he wanted to say next, what she could possibly want to hear from him now. "I never stopped loving you." He muttered as he lightly stroked her cheek. It did not really matter, did it? After all, with who he was now...

and what he did.

"come back. You are the last one of us left. Come back."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

For what seemed like years she flitted in and out of shadow and light. The memories of her life and those that had passed by her lips flickered through her mind. She wasn't aware that she had been moved. Or that she was even still alive.

Death had reached for her and she had willingly given up her hand to be lead, finally, into the after life. There was a voice, a soft, wonderful voice she had dreamt of since she could remember.

"It is not your time child. Wake up. Wake up." And there she was, seven years old, in the barn of the man who raised her. The pale, beautiful woman holding her hand telling her to be strong. If her heart were beating it would have floundered feeling as close as she felt to her mother just then.

Hours later her eyes began to move and flutter behind closed lashes. A voice that was barely above a whisper cracked the still air. A hand grabbing her lost loves hand. "We are the last. We. And I have never stopped---loving you."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

He nodded in reply with emotion rolling behind a tempestuous dark sea in the pools of his eyes. She would be alright. She would live enough for them both. "I do...apologize for hurting you. Had I known it was you they were after I would not have been so quick to take the offer. But once it was done...they had to think you dead. It gives us...time."

It was easier to talk of business. Anything else was confused and muddled in his mind. Still, he knelt before the couch so that he could comfort her while her wound healed even though there was some rigidity in the movements. She knew the truth of his heart now. And he wasn't even sure that it mattered.

He pulled a blanket over her and rose to sit next to her. "Rest now. We are safe here for a while."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

She laughed softly. A gravelly, painful sound. But it reached her dark eyes. "We have always had time. And we have always found each other through time."

Her fingers reached out to find his face, her dark eyes blinking as she drug the tips against his stubbled jaw.

"Forgive me?" Selene looked up at him. "It has been so long and all I have wished for was to look upon you and see the man you were before I broke you. Come back to me, my love, please."

There was no man she would beg for. No man that could put her on her knees or get her to risk her life for other than him. In her long life of mistakes he had been the one thing that had been right. "I need blood, my love."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

Again he nodded. "Yes." Time was...irrelevant to the vampire. For the most part. Of course, it became more relevant when one needed it, like space, to heal from a discourse of a long life and its follies. "You did not...break me." But death had twisted him. Just like La Magra had stained her.

He felt like his heart was being wrung out. "I forgive you." Lothoro was not stupid, he understood immortality in its most intimate lessons. No one heart truly could belong to another for eternity unless it beat to another drum for a while. One never had to stop loving...but love knew no boundaries either. Yet, somehow, his pride had been deeply wounded, his honor, bled. That all seemed such a trifle matter now. But like she said, so much time had passed and so much had happened.

"I..." He began uncertainly. "I am not sure that I know the way back, Selene." After all, he had done so much wrong. "Or whether I should even be shown a path back." They were so different. She was still Selene and he was...not even more of the man she used to know. No, he was what she was in the eyes of the coven, after she killed Viktor.

She snapped him out of his thoughts. He softly propped her up on his lap as he sat back into the settee. His arm snaked around her so that his wrist was close to her lips. "Then take it. It's always been yours." His eyes grew dark. "I will try my best to hold back the endless parade of lifetimes that swim through it. Drink Selene."

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

"You cannot lie to the woman who has loved you the most." She smiled however briefly at him. "I broke you, something sacred within you, your pride, your honor." Selene's eyes flickered closed and she pulled his hand to her lips.

Hearing him say that he forgived her was....god, she had no words for how that felt. She could have died just then and been happy with the outcome. He had forgiven her.

"We do not need a path backward but a path forward." Amelia had told her best, 'all there is for it is time' and how right she had been.

Taking his wrist she sighed and closed her eyes. "Keep nothing from me and I shall keep nothing from you."

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

Backward, forward? What did it matter when their lives were cyclic? In some manner of speaking it was all the same as they came full circle back to the beginning from an end that came too soon. History, as it is said, was meant to be repeated. How many times have they repeated theirs already? And maybe that was why he had so dramatically changed his own fate. He would not go back to live through what they had already experienced countless times. Lothoro mused on this a moment before nodding and closing his eyes to at least give her a coherent stream of his memories.

He wasn't ashamed of the monster he became but his memories would be naked before her, all the the-the bad and the awful.

Everything from that night onward. For a moment he thought of picking out a few things and then decided not to...

[dealing-death.livejournal.com]

Sitting in his lap as she was it felt as if no time had passed between them, and yet it felt as if it had been an eternity since they had been so close.

Taking his arm in trembling hands she kissed the inside of his wrist. Then a little higher. Further and further until she had turned in his lap and could face him. "What of my heart? You must give them my heart."

The fight at her penthouse had bought them time. Eventually he would have to provide them what they required. It was but a fleeting thought as she was close enough to smell him. As her lips brushed his neck she could feel his pulse. Selene bit his neck, her hand tangling in his hair as the other curled around his upper arm. She closed her eyes and let the memories flood her mind as the blood flooded her mouth.

[lothoro.livejournal.com]

"Don't worry I'll ta-ah,"He ended early with a little groan of pleasure as her fangs broke skin and anchored into his vein. The tug and pull of the blood away from him made him dizzy or maybe it was simply her. For decades it seems that such closeness to her would never truly come to pass in the waning century. He held the back of her head, pressing it against him.

But he had to focus. And as best he could, with the many stories of his unlife without her, he tried to organize it all into something that would not give her a headache--at the least. It was there, in the shuffling of thoughts, that the story (from his perspective only, of course) flipped through his mind. Amelia had been infected. She had asked Matayas to take her to the stone church where they had been married. And the last thing he knew, the moment the world changed, was when that treacherous bastard killed his own wife. Lothoro rushed in, saw, and killed Matayas who almost seemed to expect it. The memory he wished to hold back, for Selene's sake, was the aftermath. Matayas was dead to the world, yes. But not to the Underworld. Not in the least bit. Actually, he was very much a part of it. Lothoro tried to hold back just how much. A seemingly insignificant picture of a sword--his--clanging on the ground as he let it drop from his fingers, stood crisp against the haze. The cascade of memories after that were of a man who tried to reconcile the past in the monasteries of Nepal, failed, and chose a path of murder, scorn and contempt while still searching for answers on how to stop Matayas from doing what he was...and those images, that plan, he leased so close to him that she would have to rip it out from his heart to get to. Of course she would know that there were missing pieces...but he could live with that.