The Guillotine Hums

[Azraeth]

[Backdated: 12|11|16] • •

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The Libra star sign was one which supposedly held paradoxical views. They appreciated harmony and cooperation, but disliked conformity for the sake of conformity. In essence, your average Libra was meant to place a high value on individual freedom and yet prized strong group dynamics. Azraeth was, in many respects, a classic version of his star sign. He had an independent streak that ran deeper than a well, and yet he simultaneously craved the emotional stability which came from making bonds with family. To that end, it pleased him that he rarely had to go item hunting on his own. Ritual ingredients practically flowed into his coffers from the Dragomir. Licones had been especially helpful in getting him pieces for the home bound ritual, and Cordelia was always leaving him things he might need. And yet Az found himself in the muck and grime of the catacombs with his blade slicing cleanly through the components of a Greater Mooncalf so that he could dismantle it the way one might Ikea furniture just before a move.

The thing fell apart and left Az with a bone that he plucked up to put into his backpack. He wore a pair of black harem pants with a drop crotch. The material was thick cotton, which made them double as sweats, and they were tight from the mid-thigh down through the ankle, a little long, which made the fabric bunch in on itself so the mystic could wear light boots. Really they were there for ease of movement rather than warmth or comfort. He wore no shirt underneath his deft fencer's jacket, which he wore because it was an enchanted object that seemed to improve his acuity and evasion. But why was he in the catacombs, when he didn't need to be? There were many types of meditation, and Azraeth employed them all. The Shadow Realm was where he went for silence, to drink up the power of the darkness and feel it still him. Yoga was for clearing his mind when he needed to tackle something in the real world. But what he needed when he wanted to look inward was the same repetitive task. In the past, he'd translated texts to get that effect. For years, he'd collected his own ritual ingredients though, so there was a familiarity to the splatter of blood and the feel of flesh breaking under his blade.

So what was Azraeth looking into his own mind about? There were always fragments of the minds he shattered and the lives he destroyed left behind when he took a new body. Back when he'd killed Celestine Carter, the fusion of their personalities had crafted Superbia. It was no different when he'd taken back his masculine name, only instead of personality, all that had been left to him were fuzzy memories which replayed in his brain when he dreamed. Normally this was no problem, but Azraeth often found signs without meaning to. Omens liked to crop up in his daily life, and he'd learned that repetition was like the voice of something greater than himself trying to get his attention. And he kept seeing the same face when he closed his eyes. Again. And again. And again.

No amount of introspection was revealing what he needed to know.

He returned home, and showered.

As he was in the process of laying out some clothing for himself, he realized his phone was on the nightstand, buzzing. So he plucked it up to go through his messages.

From: Siremania
To: Az
Message: Raeth, I've found a pirate at the local fish market! I want to get close enough to acquire his booty, but this market appears to be warded by some kind of evil magical fish odor.

Attached was an image of a man with a hipster beard eating what looked like battered fish. Az stared at the image for a second, trying to place it. There were nets on the walls, and fake harpoons and...was that a fast food fish place?

There were about twenty more messages with variations of 'Raeth, ready the ship!' Or 'Bring help immediately.' Or 'Come do something magic.'

Az was in the process of shrugging his sweater on when he finally shot back a response.

From: Az
To: Siremania
Message: Be there in a few. Hold onto your toast!

From there, it took little more than a simple location spell and Az was suddenly out of his apartment, appearing beside his sire. Except they weren't inside of a Long John Silvers or wherever the father of dragons had been. Nikolae was seated beside a round table at an outdoor bistro. Azraeth had landed on the table itself and he slipped down onto the ground so he could drop into a seat near the other man.

"I take it the pirate got away?" He asked.

But Nikolae was looking through a spyglass into a building across the street from them.

Sure enough, there was the bearded man inside of what looked like a hobby shop. The variety of which sold everything from paints, to sketch pads, to picture frames, to drones. A hand lifted for Az to scratch behind one ear, and he slumped into his seat, legs stretched out, heels digging into the ground, arms folded loosely across his lap.

[Nikolae]

Nikolae didn’t always know precisely why some humans drew his attention while others were utterly ignored nuisances. The world was literally full of the living, breathing, stinky creatures and their yowling spawn. And yet once in a blue moon one would catch his eye and become a bit of an obsession for the Dragon. Raeth had been the first such former-cockroach that this had happened with, and as a result Nikolae had relentlessly stalked the once-shy male across the city in a cat-and-mouse pursuit that had ended predictably. Enzo, too, had fallen to Nik’s instant obsession, though luckily the suave vagabond hadn’t been nearly as difficult to acquire. And then there was his more recent acquisition… Nik was pretty sure his beloved Raeth still didn’t know about that one. A devious part of the Dragon delighted in bringing home his new creations and presenting them to his first borne like lost puppies he had saved. In a way, they really were.

“Raeth. I like him.” Nikolae spoke. That he knew absolutely nothing about the mortal he’d been stalking since first seeing the man earlier that evening didn’t really factor into the statement. He folded down his spyglass and tucked it into an inner pocket of his usual leather jacket with a firm nod that said he’d already made up his mind about the humanl.

“He looks…” Nik struggled for a moment, squinting golden serpent eyes as he sought out the proper word. “Familiar.” He finally settled on with a curious expression. In many instances, Nikolae Dragomir could school his features to absolute blankness. It was the sort of tactic he used in business dealings, whether with his fellow criminals working in the black market or deranged and manipulative vampires drifting round the city. Nikolae did not like to show his hand. But here, with his most treasured possession and trusted confidante, he let his emotions cross his features openly.

The Dragon turned slightly in his seat to face his childe, though his gaze was still on the mortal moving about in the shop across the way.

“Did you bring the net?” He demanded expectantly. Had he told his beloved Raeth that he expected the man to bring a net for catching a pirate? If it worked on fish it must work on pirates. They both swam after all. Nik cocked his head to one side and finally swung his gaze briefly to his first borne with a slow deliberate blink of those golden orbs.

[Santino (DELETED 9077)]

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There was a certain sort of a ringing in Santino Moreau's ear when he woke up this morning. The kind that didn't really exist but the more he paid attention to it, the louder it seemed to get until it was impossible to ignore and overtook all his thoughts. Tinnitus, he knew such a phenomenon to be called, a sort of phantom humming like that of a tiny bell lodged into the ear cavity. He also knew that such a phenomenon could potentially be dangerous, something to certainly be wary of, as it could be a sign of tumors in the brain, or a stroke, or possibly oncoming hearing loss. The latter was likely the most favourable of the options. More often than not though, tinnitus was nothing spectacular. Sometimes it was just waxy buildup creating a blockage in the ear and thus amplifying the vibrations from the eardrum. Nothing at all to be concerned about. The human body was a strange thing in that way, he'd learned. Warning signs could point to something that should be immediately looked at to something that didn't even register as a blip on the danger radar.

He'd never been too good with his own health. Mainly because he'd learned about these false alarms and knew, in that logical part of his brain, that 90% of the time, a spry young adult (such as he) had not a lot to worry about as far as health was concerned. There were the odd cases here and there of teenagers who had heart attacks at seventeen and there really was no age restrictions to demons like cancer, but a lot of that was hereditary and people that genealogical history of such afflictions knew to look out for them. Santino's family, for the most part, had been fit. They were, in fact, fit beyond physical health.

The Moreau family had been in Harper Rock for generations. Mrs. Moreau, a slim and slight Catalonian woman, was a nurse and it was visits to her workplace from a young age that had gotten Santino interested in medicine and life sciences. Mr. Moreau was French, straight from the banks of the Seine. In fact, he would often talk about how, as a child, he'd often wake up to the rank smell of sewage from the river on days it would flood. He was a hefty man, the sort that, with a little white hairspray and a red suit, made a spot-on Santa Claus at Christmas events. Together, Mr. and Mrs. Moreau had created a happy home for their two sons. One in which they taught the boys that family was important and being kind to people was important. The Moreaus had wanted nothing more than their children's happiness.

But all of the lessons, the tales, the Aesop's fables were something of a smudge on his periphery now. Not because he didn't care for them or shunned the teachings. This sort of a neglect wasn't something that was borne of choice at all. Even now, as he walked down the street (a street that should have been easily recognizable) with the chiming in his ears, there were flickers of familiar feelings that bounced around the inside of his wrecked skull. Feelings that he couldn't quite decipher or understand, nor did he really want to. A sort of a hollow pang that craved for something more. The extent of his knowledge was that it was just another consequence of his mishap year ago. Many things were. Like the ringing in his ear.

It went largely ignored.

He was on a mission. It had started off as another one of those flickers and had come about around the same time the humming had. His fingers were itching to do something and there was a distinct feeling of nostalgia that came with it. It was hopeless though because there was no guessing what he was looking for; it could've been one in a million things. He had no clues, no hints. Just a feeling and not even a concrete one. It wasn't until he passed by a hobby shop where, from the corner of his muddy brown eyes, he spotted a model pickup truck on display that he even paused.

And now he was inside that shop. And had been for the past forty-five minutes.

"Are you sure you don't have one in red?" he asked the scrawny teenager behind the counter for the umpteenth time. He was sure he'd seen a red one just like truck on display somewhere before.

"Dude. Yes, I'm sure." The ginger was getting irate, slumping on the stool he was sitting on. "That's the only model we carry."

Unbeknownst to the youngster there had been a red model but it had been discontinued a little over a decade ago when Santino was still in elementary school.

"Can you check your system again?"

Forty-six minutes passed.