Tuesday, April 24, 2012

She Broke the Door, and It Broke Her Nerves

Lucia's limbs went slack, it was a miracle she remained on her feet, and the Sapere Aude fell from her hands to the floor with a distinct thump that went unheard. Her eyes widened, unbelieving of the scene before her eyes, staged in what was once the master bedroom of the mansion.

Hektor was strung to the ceiling, not by chains or rope, but by wild rose vines. The same type that had sealed the door shut, only these flowers were a vibrant gold instead of baleful black. His clothing was torn through where the vines were lashed, thorns digging into his skin and letting blood drip to the floor. He looked unconscious, and Lucia had no idea how long he had been hanging there, with the vines twisting around every articulated joint, his throat, his mouth, and over his eyes. Did they do this to him as soon as they parted ways for the evening?

"H-Hektor!" she squeaked, and rushed into the room. She flinched at the pool of blood under his body and the black markings on the walls. "Oh my... shit! Shit shit shit shit! Hektor don't be dead you jerk!"

He twitched. Lucia sank to the floor in relief, her hands landing in the blood but she was too distracted to even notice anymore. He wasn't dead. It took her a moment to regain her senses, and after she struggled to her feet and over to a heavy chair. He was too high into the air for her to reach, but she needed to get him down. She couldn't tell how injured he was - if he had been human she'd have been screaming her head off since there was no way he'd still be alive.

"Hang on," she said. She climbed onto the chair and grabbed the vines, sucking in her breath sharply as they dug into her palms.

They were sturdier than the ones on the door. Casting a frantic gaze around, knowing that each moment she took Hektor had to be in excruciating pain, Lucia spotted a silver letter opener on the bureau in the room. It gave her pause, since she hadn't noticed it when she first came in and she didn't think his captors would leave a possible weapon just lying there. Unless they were using it on him?

Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Very Beginning


Lucia tripped, falling to her knees on the wet stone of the sidewalk and dropping her only camera – a 5D Mark II – so it ended up crashing into the edge of the curb. It came apart into a hundred bits of technology, as if it had been made of spun sugar. The memory card glared up at her from a shallow puddle in the street gutter. Any hope of salvaging at least her most recent work to sell vanished, but she plucked the card out of the water with an expression of quiet reservation to Murphy's Law on her lean, doll-like face. 

“Damnit,” she mumbled, too introverted to curse, even when no one was around her. It's not like her employer would think she was lying, or would be angry, but Lucia could already see the disappointment drawing lines in his sharp eyes and on angular features that reminded her of a condor.

She grimaced, trying to keep herself from breaking into tears right there as she rose to her feet. Gathering the broken camera, Lucia wondered where the money would come from to buy a new one – there was no way this mess of plastic and metal could be repaired. Could she get an advance on work she wasn't sure she'd even get? It was hard being in a pool of photographers, all eager to take any job dangled above the proverbial pit, and all with working cameras – except her.

A heavy, passive aggressive sigh escaped her lips as Lucia dropped the broken camera into her worn out messenger bag. She idly traced her finger around the Celtic tree of life that was silk-screened onto the front. She couldn't just throw out the camera – her brother bought it for her after breaking into his college fund he knew he'd never use. Lucia didn't know where Gregor was, or what he did to survive, but she liked to think he got a stable job using his hands. He had always been good with his hands.

The city street was deserted around her, and Lucia paused to admire the effect that the cast iron streetlights had on making the scene appear darker rather than brighter. It scared her, no doubt, there was an unease churning her empty stomach, but it was beautiful. Even after living in the city for five years, Lucia never ran into any muggers or been assaulted – she'd admit, though, that probably had to do more with her only going to out work and grocery shop, and less with the relative safety of the area.

It began to drizzle and Lucia shook herself out of her absentminded trance. She shivered and yanked the high collar of her raspberry pea coat up around her chin. Walking the rest of the way to her apartment was going to suck, but she set out, focusing on the click of her heels rather than the chill leaking into her extremities.

Monday, April 9, 2012

The First Encounter

"Did she send you?" he asked, leaning his shoulders against the wall behind him.

"Uh, yes," she replied. This was more than awkward for her - how was she supposed to ask this guy why he was hanging around outside the bar?

"I thought so, you don't seem the type to just approach a perfect stranger. At night. Near an alley. By yourself."

She shivered, and tugged her pea-coat around herself more tightly. Paranoia clawed up Lucia's back and made her take a reflexive step away from the weird man, only to have him catch her elbow, smirking. An elongated canine tooth slipped out from under the left side of his lip, and Lucia gasped, but couldn't bring herself to budge any part of her body. Even her eyes remained fixated on his. Had she been tricked?

"You're actually quite quick on the update," he mentioned, pulling her back toward him. "Most people swoon at the first touch, even something so light as the elbow."

"You're a vampyre," she stammered as her mouth came back under her control.

"Yes."

"You have me under a spell."

"Yes and no, your fear and shyness are doing more work than I am."

"Are you going to bite me?"

"Perhaps, do you want me to bite you?"

"No."

The vampyre blinked once, surprise etching itself into the set of his mouth. Collecting himself, he smiled more openly as he flicked his bangs out of his eyes with a shake of his head. His grip on her elbow loosened and he slid his arm around her waist, squeezing at the small of her back. Lucia's breath caught in her throat and she snapped her elbows to her side, clasping her hands over her chest. She couldn't help but notice a soothing smell of burning wood.

"You're very interesting," he said, tilting his head forward to look her in the face. "What is your name?"

"I-I'm Lucia," she mumbled. He was going to bite her anyway, so what else was she supposed to do other than not piss him off?

"It suites you, call me Hektor."

"Lucia!" Arianne's voice shot through the air, startling Lucia out of her daze. "Where are you?" In that moment, Hektor had vanished with only a cold wind to accompany the departure.

Arianne turned the corner and caught sight of Lucia and the frantic expression on her face melted to relief. Her heels were silent as she hurried over bits of trash and newspaper to Lucia, who stood alone, obviously shaken.

"I knew I shouldn't have asked you to confront him," Arianne said, guilt filling her soft eyes. "What did he do? Are you okay?"

"He was..." Lucia's voice faded away as she tried to put an adjective to the vampyre. She couldn't just come out and say what he was, Arianne would think her completely insane. The word fell from her lips before it had fully formed in her mind, "...gentlemanly."

"Really?" her friend asked. Her shoulders slumped, tension leaking out of her entire posture quickly. "I'm so glad. Angelos came back and asked where you had gone and he really gave me an earful when I told him. He was right too, it wasn't something I should've asked you to do."

"I'm fine!" Lucia insisted, waving her hands wildly in front of her chest. "Honest."

Monday, April 2, 2012

Shades of Gray - Lizzu and Maes


Stupidity. Recklessness. Arrogance. Never should these words be used to describe angels, but as she sat in a cell in one of the higher planes of Hell, shackled to the walls on leashes of chains, Lizzu knew those very words were the reason she was here. Her first solo undertaking to the mortal planes and she believed she could face off against two demonics at the same time – even with the guardianship of Twilight at her disposal, she had failed. Not only had she failed, she now felt powerless, and diseased. An imperfection was festering within her, and made every single bit of her substance ache and twinge.

The walls around her appeared to move to her eyes – any time she focused on a spot the material seemed to flow outward from where she had focused. If she stared long enough, there was the hair prickling feeling of something staring back, and so she would drop her gaze into her lap. The floor was, thankfully, not the same, and seemed to be made of a single sheet of flat, black stone.

At first she had struggled against her shackles, despite fatigue and nausea, but soon she had let her eyes close and her body slacken. At that moment, the door which she couldn't reach opened, and in stepped the more sociable of her two captors: Maes. His mortal's guise – which he commented earlier that he felt more comfortable in – appeared to be in the mid-thirties, with short, scruffy brunette hair and a some more scruff starting along his chin. The body was rather slim, though throughout the fight as clothing and skin got torn Lizzu had found that he had formed it to have lean, very toned muscles. It was much like her own, except Lizzu's had the addition of an hourglass shape and additional weight on the chest as contrary to most mortal belief, both celestials and demonics had gender. Though it was less based on how they were created and how their minds viewed themselves.