Lessons Learned [Open]

[Azraeth]

It was business as usual in the Voodoo basement. Quiet, save for the sound of casual conversation coming from all around. There was a server who was attending the different tables, bringing a variety of different types of blood to the patrons at their request. There were a couple of humans scattered around, but Azraeth knew from experience that all of them had to be vouched for by present vampiric patrons. House rules, as developed by Mortll. The quiet hum of it all had become customary to Az, who spent many of his late evenings there, just before morning. Frequently, he might see a collection of Dragomir gathered around one or two tables, with Raven seated to one side, silently brooding over the prospect of who might make for a good meal. They were, in their own way, the replacement for the family he had given up when he went off to college to get away from the repression of home life.

He found a seat, his hand having descended into a pocket before his backside hit the cushion, gaze dropping to the screen. He was expecting a text from a certain party interested in making an exchange. The problem was that he had been waiting on it for three days, and he was beginning to think he was just being jerked around. So he dropped the thing onto the table, face down, so that he didn't have to look at it. He had opted to wear a suit for once, if only to show Enzo that he had the ability to dress up when he wanted to. In fact, monochromatic black on black suits had been Az's signature look for years before he had finally been comfortable enough to wear more casual attire. Unfortunately, he did not see his sibling around, which probably meant the man was at the race track, or doing something to prepare for a venture with Dragonal. Az did not envy him. Enzo seemed to constantly be doing something to better either himself or the bloodline, and while the pair of them often worked towards the same goals, Az didn't have a head for business.

No. His world was one that existed in the shadows. Behind the real world. Underneath it. His was a world of artifacts, and lore, and the magic which laced all things together in an intricate web. Some people looked at nature and said that magic could not exist. Only the observable was real. Az looked at nature and said that it was a perfect example of the mystical world. People were so grounded in the physical, they didn't see the metaphysical going on all around them. Existing alongside them. He had thought that even before he'd been turned. So his was a world of back alley deals, of careful protection of the ancient and the arcane things.

He let one leg cross over the other as he leaned back in his seat, arms folding behind his head. His gaze swept towards the bodies in the room as if to determine if there was anyone he should talk to.

OOC NOTE: This thread was originally closed. However, in an effort to draw more attention to it, I've decided to make it open. Anyone can throw themselves in if they want, but be aware I am likely to move the plot along. Please no more than 2-3 more people join, for the sake of speed of posting. Stick to posting order. If you hold up the thread for more than 2-3 days, you will probably be skipped. <3!

[Penelope (DELETED 7534)]

Slim fingers ran over the silken sheen of the black dress, the folds of which swished tantalizingly around her legs. The material was cinched by a buckle at her belly-button and the small of her back, leaving the sides of her torso bare. If she were human she’d have been in the bathroom, re-applying her lipstick and dabbing away the sheen of oil and sweat from her face. But she was not human, and standing in front of the mirror in a crowded club bathroom would be cause for chaos.

Penelope had taken the night off. She’d spent an hour indulging, primping for a night out. And then she’d spent the rest of the night at the Necropolis, dancing with whoever would dance with her and even paying one of the pretty human blood dolls for a healthy pint of blood. Such a good idea, that one.

And the best part? The club was right next to the cybercafé – the one where her new ‘family’ hung out more often than not. Or, she found them there more often than she did Azraeth’s apartment. Strange, calling a bunch of random people family, but Penelope would admit that she felt terribly comfortable around them. At least, she didn’t fear them. But who had she feared in her life, really? Sated in both blood and revelry, Penelope shuffled out of the warmth of the club and into the fresh air. She took several deep breaths out on the street, eyes drifting skyward momentarily before she drifted into the establishment next door. Tawny eyes – bordering more on green than on brown – swept the room. With no faces that she recognised upstairs, she turned left and headed instead for the stairs down.

The mechanic descended with ease; she didn’t wear heels with her otherwise classy attire. Instead, her feet were covered by shiny black docs, the laces looser than they should be and thus her descent wasn’t as graceful as it could be. Once within the darker interior of the basement, she meandered over to the bar to order blood. Any kind, it didn’t matter. Her gaze hooked on a man she knew – one she hadn’t had much chance to get to know, yet. Azraeth. She pointed to the table, indicating to the bartender that’s where she would be; he understood. She wandered over, then, and dropped into a seat at the same table as Azraeth.

”Oh my God, it’s good to sit down,” she said. Being a vampire meant greater stamina, but it only meant she partied harder.

[Wearing]

[Azraeth]

There had been entire years when the Dragomir had not spoken to each other, when the bloodline had fallen silent. In those days, Az could go weeks without talking even to Nikolae, the person he was closest to in the world. There were those who had been part of the blood from the very beginning, who had gone on to do their own things. Mortll, who owned the Voodoo, and who had developed into a woman that took **** from nobody. She in particular had slowly gained more and more of Azraeth's respect over time. Noelle at one point had left the Dragomir, but she was slowly easing her way back closer to the Dragons. She was an independent spirit though, so nobody really knew how long that would last; a facet of her personality which Azraeth did not begrudge. Not really. What drew him to his family was that they were each their own unique soul. Different voices shaping the same story.

And with the old came the new. Fresh blood pumping into the very heart of the body that was the family. Some of them Az had turned himself, but there were others like Oakley, Quaid, Rowan, and Penelope who had been brought in by his siblings. Just as he would die to defend any Dragon, the lines between childer and 'community property' were a little bit blurred there. There was something to that old saying: 'It takes a village'. He existed to give to them. To guide them. And what they did with those things was entirely their own. Some would one day burn out in the intensity of their own flame. Others would flourish, and grow, and give back to the community which had taken a lot from Azraeth.

But that was the only way to make change. Slowly. Surely. One palm open to the sky.

He flagged down the man behind the bar. The Voodoo had turned him onto drinking predator blood. The stuff of the deep. The chilled essence of a shark. The flavor wasn't at all human, and it provided him some variety to liven up the steady stream of bloodpacks. Stored in plastic. Artificial against the back of his throat. And yet the best recourse in days when secrecy was collapsing all around them. Indeed, he had watched the steady increase of it on CrowNet. Rather than the hysteria he had expected, there was an almost eerie silence. Perhaps people had completely given up. Whatever the case, the plans he had begun to put into motion months before were going to have to come to fruition sooner than anticipated.

Just because the world was going to hell didn't mean the Dragomir needed to be in the middle of it. No. They could stay off the radar. See how events were likely to unfold. Public opinion. A dirty phrase to describe a roller coaster. Britney Spears, the sweetheart of the nation. Britney Spears, the erratic, head shaved, child endangering, overweight slab of human meat. Britney Spears, the courageous mother. 'Vampire' was already such a charged word. The tide of changing human emotion could make or break them. Billions against hundreds.

He glanced up when his drink was delivered to catch sight of a woman he'd barely had a chance to meet. Penelope. Poppy, as Enzo called her. She always seemed to be dressed in gorgeous clothing, and yet he seemed to recall a conversation where she described herself as a mechanic. Perhaps that had been Enzo. Did she live above her means or was there more to her than met the eye? Was she just good at scrounging up a deal? Most importantly: Who was she? Az found that people tended to leave flavors behind when he got to know them long enough. There had to be a certain familiarity there though. Comfort. Now was as good a time as any wasn't it?

When she sat by him, he nudged his half consumed tumbler of predator blood towards her as if offering to share. Vampires didn't have germs did they? "Long day?" He asked before dragging his phone from his pocket. There was a small speaker attached to the end, shaped like a barrel. Designed to project sound in a small area. He tapped the screen a couple of times to let a song begin to play. A little bit of background music to drown out the other hushed conversations. It didn't have to work hard to do its job.

"If I'm remembering correctly, you said you were a mechanic." He said. "Something to do with lifting engines out of a frame? Or has it been a different kind of day for you?" He asked, an elbow sliding onto the table as he half turned to get a better look at the woman.

Song

[Penelope (DELETED 7534)]

At first, Penelope wondered if Azraeth was ruder than she had thought; a phone in his hand, the blue-white light illuminating his fingers. Had she sat down with someone who was far too preoccupied with his phone to contribute to conversation? Her concerns were swept aside as the music began to play, and the phone was set aside. The music was soft, non-intrusive. The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t an artist Penny had in her repertoire. An odd choice for the man in front of her, she thought – but then, what did she know about him, really?

As he asked his questions, she both shrugged and shook her head, lips curling into a semi-devious smile.

”I wasn’t at work,” she said. She snorted as she glanced down at herself. She could only imagine trying to work in this dress. The material would get hooked on engine parts, would get torn and absolutely ruined. Not to mention, it would be a safety hazard. She shook her head at the glass offered to her, too – gesturing vaguely to the bar. Her own drink was on its way.

”I’ve been dancing for hours,” she said. ”Next door…” she added, glancing over to the wall that separated them from the nightclub she had just vacated. As tired as she was, she almost wanted to return to it – wondering if she should, before the night was out. For now, however, she was having a conversation. She turned her attention back to Azraeth and gave a short nod.

”Something like that. Yes and no? I don’t really work on cars. Motorbikes are more my specialty,” she said. When she’d been an apprentice she’d started by working on cars, and could fix a car engine if pushed. She knew the ins and outs of the mechanics, but bikes were her passion.

”Not only fixing them, but refurbishing them, too. Y’know, like that TV show that was popular a while back? American Chopper? Though I’m not American, obviously,” she said with a short laugh. It was almost as if she were drunk – but she was just high on life. This was what she was like when she’d had a good night. Hell, this was what she was like most nights, regardless of whether they were good or not. Bad nights, in Penelope’s life, were a rarity.

[Azraeth]

The Necropolis, owned and operated by Amaranthia. Az's mind briefly wandered as Penelope brought it up as a topic. There had been one point at which he'd been very close to her, to that club. Only a short distance from the Temple, it was only a brief jaunt to get there. Eilidh had been an employee. So had Azariel. There were a lot of early memories of vampirism wrapped up in that building and the checkerboard tiles on the floor. Az had met Cordelia there. He'd turned her after dancing with her. He had fallen in love with Amara. He'd watched her die at the behest of his own sire. History indeed. It was always odd to him, when people just casually mentioned it, like there was no weight to it. Just a place to hang out and have fun. Azraeth was firmly of the belief that places held power, trapped in the form of memory. A person could be haunted by the ghosts of a place or by thoughts of what had happened there. The two were inherently linked in their own way. Spirits and memory. Forever trapped in that collective consciousness that was civilization.

"That had to have been fun." He commented neutrally as he leaned back in his seat, one arm folding across his abdomen, other hand drawn across the gap between himself and the table so he could grab the blood and lift it to his lips so that he had a split second to formulate conversation that had more depth than the paint thin niceties. "You decided to head over this way looking for some of the dragons?" He finally asked, attempting to gauge her intentions. He hadn't seen very much of the woman. She seemed nice enough, but he knew very little about her. A woman mechanic who also liked to party all night long? But who was she really? At her core? What were the things that motivated her in life? What things did she really care about? Azraeth knew Enzo well enough to guess the man wouldn't have turned her if he hadn't seen the spark of something there. That was what Az wanted to see.

The song changed abruptly, and seemed for a moment as if it were transitioning to something else, but there was a buzz to accompany, saying that Az had received some sort of message. He grabbed his phone once more, even as the text tone threatened to drown out the song. His gaze flashed over the device before he tapped his screen a couple of times and dropped it back into his pocket. It seemed he had a lead on a piece that was moving into the port. He was only going to have one shot to pick it up before it was moved into a vault, and he didn't have the knowledge or patience for lock picking, so he needed to act quickly. He stood, pushing his drink towards the center of the table. He was about to tell the woman he had to go, but really, if he wanted to get to know her, why not share an evening?

They said that secrets bound people together more closely than anything else. "Would you like to accompany me for a little walk?" He asked even as he extended his arm towards her for her to hook her own into if she so desired. "There's an item I need to pick up. A little bit of business for me to take care of, and I figured you might appreciate seeing some of what your new blood does behind the scenes." Such as the arms dealing Nikolae managed. Thus far, almost nobody had ever connected the independent Canadian with dealing high quality firearms. Or Enzo's less than legal laundering of ill gotten gains. Everyone needed a hobby, didn't they? Well. Being a vampire didn't incline one to sit at home and build airplane models. Whether or not she wanted to join in on the fun and danger was entirely up to her. He offered a smile.

[Penelope (DELETED 7534)]

The Dragomirs were an entity. They were a hive, a den – something internal, its members secretive and all caught up in each other’s lives. To be introduced into the fold was an overwhelming thing; there was plenty of welcome, but it was like stepping into the middle of a play without knowing the words, without knowing the part. It was like moving from interstate to a new school and expecting to be able to fit in with the cool kids.

Penelope had never really had much trouble getting along with people, though. It wasn’t so much fitting in. She didn’t do anything to become like the crowd. She was eccentric, and she didn’t fit into other people’s moulds. But rather than push people away, her open nature and eccentricity had instead helped them to accept her. She’d been an army brat, skipping from place to place with her father. Just her father. Her mother had died when she was young. Cancer. She hadn’t hated her life; her father had taken the best care of her that he could. He was an engineer. She had tagged along.

It was ingrained in her, to know how to get along with people. To be able to open herself up to them. She drifted from social scene to social scene but was absent, sometimes, too. Smiling and laughing was easy but trust and loyalty were not so much. Penelope was loyal to her sire and, by default, she supposed that meant she was loyal to Dragomir. It took some getting used to.

But the best way to get used to it was to say yes. Always, yes. The breath was hitched in her throat, her answer halted as she gave the briefest nod of her head. Yes, she had come to find other Dragomir – that answer died on her tongue as Azraeth checked his phone, and asked a different question instead. Again, she nodded, the smile immediately brightening her features, the gleam brilliant in her hazel eyes.

”A little walk sounds great,” she said, draining the last of the blood that the bartender had brought to her. She’d been expert at draining pints of beer when she was human. ”Fresh air and all that,” she said, gulping in the air as she swallowed the last of the blood that clung to the back of her throat.

”Lead the way,” she said brightly, taking the arm that was offered.