Nichole Vielsiti was sat comfortably in her private dinning room chair, taking sculpted yet generous sips of a wine glass that was full to the brim with dark red blood, when the host came to find her.
"Mademoiselle Vielsiti...?" The hosts prescence in itself was enough to pique the cannibal's interest, and to stay her hand in punishing him for his distrubance.
"Oui, monsieur?" "My most humble of apologies for interrupting you, mademoiselle," the moustached figure snivelled
"but there's a gentleman in the resteraunt who is rather insistant on seeing you." Nichole placed one hand on her stomach, noting its flatness.
"It would be rude of me not to entertain our guest. Send him up." Obviously, this conversation meant that Cain's original plan was not going to work. He should have recognized that the waitress' hints towards her boss' behavior meant that it might be more difficult than just asking to see them to actually have them come out. He should have, but he didn't, not at that moment. The easy solution seemed so elegant, so effective, so much more appealing than the potentially messy alternatives he was faced with now.
He still hoped that he could make this go smoothly but there was one benefit of privacy that couldn't be ignored: If everything went south, at least it would be relatively 'discreet'.
Or so he hoped as the dining room door closed behind him and he found himself opposite a woman with a glass of wine - or another red liquied - in hand and her behind resting on a comfortable-looking chair. Something about her immediately evoked repugnance in Cain, though he couldn't tell what it was yet; perhaps the strange way she licked her lips after taking a sip or the way she smiled at him with reddened teeth as she stood up to greet him.
The private detective hid it well, though.
"I'm terribly sorry to disturb you, Miss", he said with a respectful bow of his head,
"but I just had to come up and talk to you after hearing what happened."Nichole carefully eyed the figure up and down, drinking in his toned yet ageing appearance, and the silvery grey lines in his short black hair.
"Salutations, Monsieur," she said, gently resting her wine glass on the table
"please, sit, that we might discuss what it is which warranted this disturbance." He stretched out one delicate hand, extending her fingers into the air, and softly motioning for Cain to sit with the lazy flick of her wrist.
"I trust your meal was to your utmost satisfaction?" "It was, thank you", Cain replied and sat in the chair on his side of the table. He heard the French accent but he also heard how some of the words missed it. Either she was French and had acclimated herself so much to Santa Somabra that she was starting to sound like a local... or - the option he leaned towards - she was faking it to sound more refined and sophisticated and perhaps to hide humbler beginnings than she would like to admit to.
Francis found himself reminded of the first time he'd met Concetto Nyctari. A battle of wills from the start, albeit one fought with words, contracts, obscure and minute technicalities, open and hidden threats and many bluffs on both sides. He had an incling that he was sitting in the lion's den right now and the fake cosmopolitan lioness gave him that same taxing,
hungry look the vampires had given him back then.
"I'm actually not here to file a complaint with you - not after enjoying a meal of such refined balance", he smiled appreciatively.
"If anything, I'm here to apologize for a friend of mine, Lily Madison."The woman's mimic didn't change - Cain would have been surprised if it did, given the name he had just made up.
"Ah, I happen to have a picture of her with me."He casually reached into his inside pocket and held out the picture to her at an angle that made it difficult for her to see the image without taking the picture and falling under the spells, however weak they were.
"Miss Madison, was it?" Nichole pondered aloud, her painted features frozen in place as she carefully eyed the photograph
"Quite the little noise-maker I'm told." The bloody red eyes of the vampress gave the photo one last lingering look, before ever-so-slowly rising to meet the gaze of the detective.
"A deplorable mage, also; who couldn't tell when she was in the presence of one infinitely more powerful and better dressed than she. Yet, even the strongest of magi forget how useful more practical weaponry can be." From beneath the large oak table, Nichole cocked the hammer of her revolver, pointing the barrel towards Cain's lower torso.
"Such is the folly of those who believe themselves to be Daedalus, when they're really Icarus; flying high on melting wings, and moments from being swallowed up by the dark below." "Better dressed, you say?"Cain retracted the picture and looked at it with curiosity, his facial expressions as relaxed as if there was no gun pointed at him.
"Well, the picture doesn't really give away much about her taste, but since you dress like shit, missy, I think you might be mistaken."His hands sank to his knees and a wicked smile curled his lips as he met her eyes again, his own as blue and cold as ice.
"Really makes you wonder what else you might be wrong about..."Then, multiple things happened at once: Cain's eyes flared up to an angry, bright orange as the table between them and the chair under Nicole's ass combusted, her analogy hitting a lot closer to home than she could have possibly imagined. But the private detective didn't sit idle while his innate magic took effect - his hands had shot up and flipped the table, obstructing her view, giving her a physical, burning item in her face (along with under her butt) to deal with while he threw himself off his chair, out of the line of fire. All he needed to do was evade the first bullet, the gun she had pointed directly at him, survive her first offensive move.
Once that was taken care of, he'd make sure it was her last.
Out of the long list of garlic, running water, and other superstitious mumbo-jumbo, there are three things that can really, truly hurt a vampire. One is a steak to the heart; a quick and efficient way for turning any bloodsucker into a pile of ash. Another is holy water, but given that every inch of Santa Somabra is drowning in blood and semen, you might struggle to find anything blessed by the Lord on these scummy streets. The third is
fire, which is lethal to homo nocturnus for the same reason the suns rays melt them into so much pale goo; they burn very fucking easily.
So as Francis Cain cast the chair of Madame Nichole Vielsiti in a quick burst of cleansing fire, she was in no position to retaliate.
Nichole dropped to the floor, her revolver falling from her hands, and a good portion of her flesh and clothes singed into flaky black paper.
"E-en garde, Monsiuer...." she rasped, as she lay spread out across the carpet.
He rose from the floor and loomed over her, kicking the revolver out of her reach, his ember eyes staring at her uncaringly.
"You got the roles all mixed up. You are Icarus. And I..."Fire seemed to blaze up around him, covering him as if he was on fire and forming a tight ring around the two of them. Doing this was dangerous and only pyromancers of innate talent and complete mastery of their art could hope to unleash their powers like this without burning up themselves or turning into an Ifrit, a fire djinn, an avatar of flame consumed by the need to destroy everything around him. Even now, a single lapse in concentration was all it would take for him to lose himself to the wonderful, treacherous power overwhelming that surged through his body and were his to command.
Thus was the risk and price of brushing with godhood.
"I am the almighty Sun and I am not satisfied with just melting your wings." His voice was positively vibrating with arcane energy.
"You are going to tell me everything - everything - you know about the woman on the picture or I will melt you, skin, flesh and bone.""Heh-heh-heeh..." Nichole chuckled weakily, coughing fat drops of blood up through her shaking jaw
"very impressive, Monsiuer. Now let us not do anything too hasty. Nichole erupted into a raspy spluttered of strained coughs, before she managed to muster up the strength to keep talking.
"Miss Celestina was here on behalf of that waste-of-blood street trash who parade around their vamprism like a fashion trend. The Mieamangeur Cabal is a bit iffy about eating other vampires...but that voice and that stupid sneer just reminded me too much of her dear daddy...I couldn't help myself." Nichole started to laugh, but it soon degraded into a fit of gasping, choking, and gulping up air.
"She's in the pantry...minus an arm. I can't imagine that daddy dearest will be too happy...but I'm not the one who has to take her back to him, or let him know that other people know about his little a hundred year old accident." "No, you're not indeed", Cain agreed and a terrible smile split his face.
"And you make a lousy manager, from what I hear. In fact... You're fired."Bad one-liners like that only sounded good in movies. In reality, they made everything more painful and he could see how her confusion and internal cringing at his words were replaced by utter horror when realization washed over her. She opened her mouth to scream, perhaps even beg, but the temperature around her rose to a thousand degrees in an instant and with her next breath, she was burning up inside and out, evaporating rather than melting as he had suggested. It was merciful, compared to what else he could have done to her - her nerves were cauterized so quickly by the intense heat that she barely felt anything while she died.
Meanwhile, however, this display of power had set some of the cloth in the room on fire and the wood panels were lighting up too. It wouldn't be long until the entire upper floor was beyond saving, but she had feeble pointed in a direction when she spoke of the 'pantry' and he walked towards a set of doors in long, languid strides through the flames, seemingly unaffected by the inferno he had called forth, every step of his spreading it more. He could have put it out, if he wanted to, but he simply didn't. While Vigilance's fire was entirely magic in nature, his was not - only its origin was. The difference was subtle but it made a world of difference when it came to arcane investigations: It was the difference between making something look like an accident and being put behind bars because the fire could be linked back to him. And in this case, Cain found the idea of the place burning to the ground and destroying any evidence that he, Concetto Nyctari's daughter or her butcher had ever been here comforting.
With a slam, he threw open a dark room that smelled of blood, death and sterilizing agent, like a bad mix of a slaughterhouse and a surgical ward, complete with an operating table of sorts, with walls of plate metal and floors covered in drain grates, a room designed to be turned into an absolute mess and cleaned up thoroughly afterwards. In a corner, he saw two small holding cells and in one of them, the woman from the picture, her face covered in cuts and bruises, her clothes intact but their entire left side splattered with dried blood, a bandaged stump just below her left shoulder. The room would have been pitchblack if not for Cain's halo, but she didn't react, didn't move at all, so the detective surmised that she was unconscious rather than dead; perhaps she had been drugged up to keep her docile, since he doubted that this cage could have held her or any vampire if she had been at her full strength. It didn't matter - he didn't need her to be awake or find out what had happened now.
He put his hands around the steel bars and the cell door melted like it had turned into water. The old man picked up the lithe vampire effortlessly, her form unaffected by the heat he was capable of emanating. He was beginning to feel the strain on his concentration now, the stress it put on his body and mind to maintain perfect control over powers that should have been beyond the whims of a mortal. Yet he didn't hurry but carefully carried her out of the room, both it and the corridor behind him catching fire as he strode back to the dining room, Nichole Vielsiti reduced to ash and smoke.
Except not everything was. Where she had lain, something sat in the fire, calling out to him from the insignificant pile that had been its owner: A key, gleaming in an ethereal light, sparkling invitingly. Cain was drawn to it, despite his reservations, and when he knelt down to pick it up, it was cool to the touch, despite the terrible heat it was exposed to, but that didn't surprise him. He knew what it was, knew what it was for - he just didn't know how this woman could have gotten ahold of it.
It was then, in the middle of a burning room and his entire form surrounded by flame that the girl decided to wake up and looked at him weakly.
Celestina Nyctari's eyes fluttered limply open, as she inclined her head ever-so-slightly towards Cain. Up close, her features were hard like marble, but the strength was slowly ebbing out of them. Her body was soft and almost weightless, the fight having gone out of her long ago.
"I don't know who you are," she said simply, without fear or anger, her remaining hand clutching at the stump of her arm
"but please...just get me out of here." He gave her a silent nod and looked at her with eyes that were more like that of a fire demon than a human but none of the wickedness or anger of before was left in them.
"What's your name?""Celestina", she murmured.
"That's a very pretty name", he whispered back in a soft tone. Cain was demigod still but not a malevolent one. He held no wrath for her.
Somewhere, a fire alarm started wailing, just as Cain opened the door through which he had entered the dining room only a few minutes ago. He left it open, giving the flames a breathing hole and a way to expand. As soon as he was a few feet away from it, his burning halo and eyes disappeared with a soft sigh, making him as unsuspicious as he could possibly look. Down a flight of stairs, he found the restaurant in disarray as people left the building as quickly as possible. The chaos and panic of the kitchen personnel and few guests made it easy to retrieve his coat and hat and cover the vampire girl in it so nobody would see the mutilation, but of course also to protect her from the sunlight. It was only thanks to how small she was, compared to him, that this was possible; that and the heavily overcast sky turned his coat into just barely enough of a sunblock to secure her survival even though it was still early in the afternoon.
Five minutes later, he sat in the back of a cab, the girl leaning against him and clutching the arm he had put around her. Not that he blamed her - after what she must have been through, anything but seeking comfort would have been a surprise.
"I'm going to bring you home."Cain felt his cellphone vibrate in his pocket and without disturbing Celestina, fished it out and looked at it:
A message from Valorie, a picture that spoke volumes about how her meeting with Kurtz had turned out and then more that said something else... A soft smile parted his lips and he was glad that the girl didn't lay in his lap where the necromancer's nudes worked their magic.
Deep down he felt a tug, like a fishhook in his intestines, a suspicion, a worry that she was lying. What she spoke of sounded like her but the alternative was... Could he trust her, after only a few days, to not return to her old ways? Yet the simple truth of the matter was that he was too busy to worry about her and he
wanted to believe her, or at least believe that she wouldn't do anything too stupid.
He texted her back:
I'll be very lonely after looking at these.
Don't get in trouble, Valorie, and don't overdo it.
Remember: I'll be waiting for you.Then, he wrote another message, this one to the man he had waded into this cesspool for.
It's done. Where and when?