Ihíio, Itlátol (2nd generation Acheron Turnings)

[Noemi Michaux]

Minutes passed, though it seemed hours as Noemi stood still, quiet, listening to the faint dripping of water and her own breathing. Her softly rounded chin remained steadfastly up, her air of authority so much a part of her she wouldn't be able to turn it off if she wanted to. Supplications were reserved for those worthy of her devotion, and until last eve she thought never to see such.

she didn't know why she understood her place with him. she was also smart enough not to question it. Noemi knew also the difference between making someone wait to put them in their place, and waiting for a right moment. She wasn't sure what the man was, her mind had played out so many different variables while she was supposed to be asleep, but she was sure he was no game player. He radiated purpose and she could feel he would obtain his goals in as few steps as needed. without distraction.

She admired that. It was how Noemi herself made her way though life.

Seconds continued to pass by, her breath floating like smoke from her parted lips as the nights chill deepened. still she didn't move. Instead, the indomitable woman began to focus. feeling out the environment around her, taking stock of the subtle variations, scents, vibrations. Her eyes the only part of her that moved as she looked about the ever easier to see in darkness. Adjusting her sight as she focused.

There... the faint rustling deep in the building... something was stirring and taking flight. A bat perhaps, she wouldn't blame the little mammal for taking residence here, and didn't mind the thought as she had no phobias she was aware of. Focusing now on the sound, her eyes widened slightly as the dark figure flying toward her was far to large to be a bat, far to graceful as well...

A screech played out from the animal and something landed at her feet.

The owl swooped effortlessly over her to perch in the rafters over her head, settling immediately even as it looked down upon her, beautiful and perfectly white. At her feet lay the still body of a black furred cat. The owl had gifted her with one of its greatest foes and competitors, that's all she could figure as the action stunned even her.

Silent still she watched the blood seep from the dead feline, pooling at the toes of her boots, surrounding her with the rich scent of copper... filling her nostrils and then the soft folds of her mouth...

Noemi tossed her head back and smiled.

[Ambrose Acheron]

Having drawn what he wanted from her mind the cat was the only missing link. As it completed the chain of events he decided. She would die. Human, Mortal. The altar below them deep within the earth would feel her warm blood spreading over its porous surface. It would taste her essence as it spurted out from her still beating heart, jettisoned forth in spurts as the muscle contracted in it's frantic, sickly and dying rhythm in his fist. He focuses his eyes on his prey and then the harbinger of death, Mictlantecuhtli's favored servant, the owl enters the picture. The death of the cat, furrows the elder vampire's brow. It is the first motion made since the woman doctor walked in. The owl changed everything.

As her green eyes watched the blood pool around the animal laying at her feet, discarded by the nocturnal bird of prey which now watched the scene in silence Tizoc moves. There is no rush, she is here voluntarily. She is willing. He has all the patience and time in the world.

Into her mind flow his words, "You are not native to this land. You are not of this land. Your people came and ravaged the animals, people, the earth even. They did it for power, control over the physical world. What has brought you here is power, control over the Realm of Shadows. What makes you different than them?"

He comes into view now, standing in full Aztec regalia.

"Finally his words are emitted in a low tone, a deep voice, steady and measured. "Tell me why I should deliver death into your hands instead of you into his."

[Noemi Michaux]

His voice though low, melodious and deep shot through her, the very real danger of her situation not lost but stamped down. She herself knew as a predator that fear was delicious, but intoxicating.

Noemi formed her words with care, unwittingly showing her tendency to reveal little and never say things she couldn't back up.

"These... things in my mind... these beautiful terrible things that you show me..." she began, her voice steady as her gaze lifted from the dead cat to the owl above her, searing itself into her brain, forever to be equated as her own truth, her own symbol of self. She knew it approved as it stared back at her, she knew she was becoming what it wanted of her.

She knew then that she had a calling. It almost brought her to her knees the realization, this man, this monster here with her... she was to give him everything that she was. She knew from the feelings welling up inside her soul from the owls grace, and the images he gifted her that her lineage, her heritage, everything about who she was and where she was from was on purpose. For him.

Noemi softened the corners of her lips, her smile losing the subtle cruelty so common to her lips, becoming a tender thing of sorts. She looked toward the darkened alcove where the voice had come and finished the thoughts she knew were not only hers alone...

"They make me understand strength, endurance, these things you have overcome. I do not know how it is you are here in this time with me, but I know it is truth." the ebony haired woman took a step forward and bent to pick up the dead animal, pulling it to her breast, cradling the offering with reverence. She heard the owl click in approval and took another step toward him.

"I am of these things you remember, and I am also nothing of these things. I would have this gift of death through you so that I may serve my master. So that my master may have what he was denied so long ago by my forebears. I shall help right this wrong. I am terrified only that I can not make you see this."

and with that, Noemi lowered herself to her knees, bowing her head down over the cat toward the floor, the Duchess become servant.

Death was a glorious master.

[Ambrose Acheron]

Tizoc took a breath, usually these were relegated for speaking, this time it was solely to steel his own resolve. The woman before him was not Nahuatl, she was not of those born to the land. This situation he found himself in was of his own making. Personal responsibility was something the teachings of Eztli had encompassed. The foreigner seemed to understand the urgency he felt and did not show. She seemed to understand the sins of her forebears. It was up to him to give her the chance to rectify them of to see another pale face dismantle that which his own predecessors had worked so hard for.

He stopped some twenty yard away, at the end of the hallway leading into the shadowy depths of the factory and tilted his head slightly as if in doubt. He was.

"I am no master. I am a guide. When you need my knowledge you will seek it. When I am otherwise detained you will decide. You will act in the interests of the Blood first, your experiments second. You will be Acheron first, Noemi Michaux Dangeau of Angouleme second. You will aid the cause as you can. You will bring honor upon your true Bloodline and eradicate the sins you carry in your blood."

He hesitates, the feelings not showing on features which may as well be planted on Mt. Rushmore. His stony faced measuring of the woman doesn't waver, if anything growing more intent and intense.

He motions to the three stains on the floor of the concrete haven sprawling out before him. Vega, Kika and Machk all faced a fate the same as what Noemi has to look forward to in these very spots.

"I plan to eviscerate you. To rip your heart still-beating from your body and to damn you to a form of immortality your Christian God will hate you for. Would you still make the same claim? That you are ready to die? Be reborn by the powers of a god your people long consider dead or irrelevant? To become one with death and shadows?"

As he speaks an obsidian dagger slips into his hand from behind his back. He doesn't hide it, letting the razor-sharp instrument of death come into plain view to allow the girl the knowledge of the gravity of the situation.

"I am not your master. I am his hand. Your master is the night sky, illusion, trickery and treachery. He is your reflection and the truth behind it, I am but his earthly representation."

[Noemi Michaux]

Words from him seemed to move over her, washing her in centuries of bloodshed and a deep inconsolable ache. Noemi had to squeeze her fingers into the fur of the dead cat to keep from reaching out... to offer comfort for the first time in her life. She knew with certainty it would not be welcome, much like if offered to her and that was when she knew she had only one choice to take. Inhaling the elixir of death under her chin, her reverence for such palpable and unwavering as she answered without hesitation... answered words he needed to hear, though she did not know why.

"I have no Christian God. He is nothing to me but wood and rock and suffering life." The God of her land wasn't even the God of her land, "He is nothing but an interloper on my own homeland, stripping our heritage as surely as he stripped yours. I want nothing of such."

The bile in her words swore to her honesty, these things she knew... her family old and long lined as the land itself, had worshipped other things... had feared other things... fae... long before the Christians and greedy Rome. She knew deep within herself that what she was doing now, this choice, had been made before long ago and deep in her families blood... she again had no understanding how she knew this... but her blood... it seemed to want out of her skin and melt with his... primal and full of power.

the saying blood is the life was absurd... blood was the POWER... the gateway to everything unseen by the mortal realm.

"I swear my fealty unto the family, unto you and the God's that have brought me to you. I swear that I know every breath I have ever taken since birth was to bring me here and give my last unto you."

Noemi rose as his knife slid down, she would not lie and say she was unafraid, but she and Death had a long relationship... she was sure no matter the outcome, she would at last embrace it. Wed it. Love it.

"Let us do this thing so that I may become."

The snowy owl above her screeched and soared over the both of them, deep into the building and the awaiting darkness.

[Ambrose Acheron]

The vampire stalks forward, the obsidian blade in his hand glinting in dim moonlight filtering through dust disturbed by fallen footsteps as he moves forward. His posture immaculate, shoulders squared, every motion fluid and predatory. His gaze had settled, unwavering on her own and remained locked throughout his approach.

His words come out in Nahuatl to her ears, though at the same time they flow into her mind in English, a tongue they seem to share.

"I give unto you, oh Smoking Mirror, Lord of the Night Sky, this flesh. I give her to you whole as she stands, I offer you all she is, flesh, bone, spirit. I gift you this sacrifice whole and willing that you may show her the Darkness. I beg you return her, Flesh and Shadow, given your sight, tested by the gods and found worthy to carry their mantle."

He pauses for only a moment, delving into her mind to ensure she is indeed willing to die for the gift offered by blade, blood and shadow.

Sensing no doubt within her he becomes a blur, coming to an abrupt halt in front of her, blade sinking deep into the flesh beneath the ribs and quickly travelling transversely across her abdomen. His other hand moves up, grasping her hair and jerking her backward to the ground as the knife is discarded and his teeth bite deep into his own wrist, ripping away flesh in a vicious wet, ripping motion.

Fangless, Tizoc can not simply pierce flesh like many others of his kind, the act of breaking his flesh with his mouth is much more gory a sight than his brethren blessed with fangs.

The arm, now sporting a gaping hole where dark blood pools, welling up in place of missing tissue plunges into the rent in Noemi's flesh, pushing upward, tearing through the diaphragm and pushing past soft tissue, and bone alike, his blood being poured into her body as his hand searches for, and finds the rapidly beating fist sized organ his master desires.

The process is insanely quick, but for the recipient would seem to last an agonizing lifetime.

Once gripped by curling fingers the heart, still beaten is given a sharp twist and suddenly, his limb is rapidly withdrawn, leaving the wound made open and hollow.

Into Noemi's mind, Tizoc projects his thoughts, allowing her to see her own beating heart from both her own shocked perspective and his as he brings the thudding muscle to his mouth and feeds while he body begins to die in his arms.

Tezcatlipoca would claim her and Tizoc would see if she was worthy of being given back to the world or if she would be claimed by the underworld.

[Noemi Michaux]

Silence had invaded the building as the owl took flight and vanished into the darkness, as if guiding her toward something.. her gaze intent upon the animal, her arms releasing the carcass to slip gently down to the ground, she almost missed the sudden air change and blur of motion rocketing toward her.

She barely had a chance to gasp before the Dauphin was upon her. Inside her. The blade was sharp enough that she felt nothing but an impact pressure against her lower chest, right below her ribs, her breath forced from her before she could register what was happening. By the time her brain figured out what was happening to her body, it was far too late. It was then that time began to slow...

Pools of emerald, a gift of ancient germanic ancestors to the franks, brilliant as she began the steps toward death, widened in shock, locking with the intense gaze of her killer. Obsidian seemed to part her organs with ease, not quite a tearing inside, but rather it felt as if she were imploding. As the three seconds it took to kill her passed, Dauphin was not incorrect in his musings, it seemed she aged, grew old, lived her life until softly laying down to death at some decrepit age... until the agony registered into her outraged brain.

The surgeon she was understood what was happening to her, the collapse of bone, muscle and tissue, the rending and massive internal bleeding, she could see the burst of crimson reflected in his eyes... but the woman she was almost buckled into childs fear, barely holding onto her screams behind clenched teeth. Her jaw locked so tight she was unsure if the blood she felt filling her mouth was from her tongue or the organs being destroyed inside her.

Every twitch of his fingers was enough to throw her deep into merciful darkness, her terror enough to lock the door but such was not her fate as he spread his hand inside her chest and in one movement so gentle it seemed another tactic of torture, grasped the muscle against his palm. She could see it...

He was somehow pushing this moment into her thoughts, behind her quickly dimming stare. She gasped again, finally as the pain overcame her stoicism, she fought so hard to contain the screams, harder than she had ever fought for anything in her entire life... she would show NO weakness to Death, she could not... not and hope to master it in this life... and Dauphin was Deaths agent, his messenger and deliverer. Her hand reached up, her fingers star like as they spread, his own hand pulling from her chest cavity, the heart still beating at an impossible speed... it should have exploded it was so fast pumping...

His gaze never wavered from hers, his hands sure and steady as he ripped her heart from her belly, her back arched up toward him as if he were a lover bringing her to climax, hissing a breath between her grinding teeth as she watched what he watched... and her hand made it to his jaw...

Caressing it even as he brought her life to his lips and began to eat...

and finally the world shrunk to gray... as if another world was superimposed over this one... no mercy from the pain, it just receded a little... her hand never leaving its tender motion even as her fingers slicked through her own gore...

"Noemi."

"NOEMI" boomed a voice that was not a voice... coming from somewhere in the great darkness above her killer, her saviour...

"You who have sought me so tirelessly... but know that it was I who put all into motion. Death created Life... this life of yours. Through ages of time molding your kin.. manipulating thus unto now.. Shall you bend knee to your master and become my harbinger, my owl... or shall you pass beside me and become my rabbit?"

Blood bubbled up against her lips as she worked her jaw, her lungs unable to draw the breath required to speak, Ambrose watching her even more intently now though she knew her eyes were closed and was seeing him through Deaths eyeless sight. Struggling she turned then to what Ambrose had done, and pushed her thoughts forward toward her God.

"I will be your Harbinger, Great One."

The world snapped back, her eyes flew open even as they glazed over, and she again fought the war of her life to keep focused on Ambrose...

"I am the Harbinger. I am Owl."

and then there was nothing.

[Ambrose Acheron]

Standing over the mutilated flesh before him Tizoc watched in silence as the life slipped from Noemi's body, the woman joining the cat in death on the concrete floor of the factory. Her blood flows slowly down his chest from the gory mess that exploded over his lips and chiseled chin as his teeth fought their way through the tough tissue of her heart. The meal consumed he drops the organ on the floor unceremoniously and waits quietly as her spirit fades away and is claimed by his god.

Tizoc is not new to the process which takes a living, breathing human and sends them into the realm of the Shadow only to cast their spirit back into their desecrated flesh tainted and forever changed by the touch of the Smoking Mirror. He has performed this same ceremony several times now.The difference is in the result, once Shadow is bound to flesh, how does the dead creature react when the false semblance of life is forced back into still-cooling limbs?

This is what he waits to see. Vega had come willingly, Machk and Kika less so. Their reactions had been polar opposites. Kika had fled out into the night, Machk tearing off after her. Wakiza had accepted his fate stoically, but Ambrose had been unable to make the bond stick and he had fallen into the Shadow, lost to the grip of Tezcatlipoca forever. This one though... what would this one do?

[Noemi Michaux]

Sensation began to emerge, starting with the feel of concrete beneath her. It was like her body was there, but numb outside of knowing she was on the hard ground. Her mind however... that was racing with thought as the darkness spoke secret things... monstrous things... POWERFUL things...

there was no light in her as the words formed in her spirit, just endless black, inky and thick... she knew that to try and move through it now that she had made her choice would be impossible. So she remained still... absorbing the beginnings of her path as it was given.

When the voice, liquid and cold, finished, speaking an incantation so horrible, so diabolic that her spirit felt caught in a wave of filth, struggling to reemerge from the depths of depravity, a magnificent stag appeared, standing upon nothing, alone in the darkness...
And the filth fell away, the ritual complete... she knew to follow the light... and as this realization became, the stag turned and began the journey back to her husk.

the journey back to pain.

She felt slammed back down onto that hard ground, her entire being jarred and outraged. Before she could even register that shock, the next wave of pain hit, forcing her to her side, vomitting, curled into a fetal position, the hurt so bad it felt her soul was being gutted.

As her body finished dying, then began knitting itself into its knew form, the time seemed to have no end for Noemi, rolling onto her stomach, pressing her forehead against the concrete. She lay thus for an eternity she suspected, not moving now, just... being. Finally she was able to open her eyes, looking to the side she witnessed her sire not a foot from her.

pushing herself up, her arms steadier than she would have thought them, she almost threw herself backward as the usual pressure she would have used was far too much now and sent her reeling.

Stumbling, she reached behind her to brace against a metal beam, grabbing it to steady herself.

He allowed her that time, still watching her in silence...

and she took it, reaching up to wipe the drying blood from her mouth, her face, warily watching him the whole of it until she felt she could speak. "Mon Dauphin. My Sire." was all she said, Death kept secrets after all, silent and cold... but one truth was apparant. Noemi had come back exactly what Ambrose had needed.

"I am hungry." she finished... 'I love you, will honour you, follow you.' she left unsaid, instead raising her gaze so that he could just see the truth for himself. Before her expression shuttered again and there was nothing left of it but the coldest... cruelest of beauty.

She was his.