The city lies low, sinking in it's own fog and funk, decaying in the sticky heat. Reviled and adored, it is a field sown with debauchery, but a fertile field from which springs so many rare and resplendent blooms - Poet Harding Luiz of Orleans III
Orleans III (trois, not three), they call her on the maps and in the Corporation Literature. Olintra or Lady O to most everyone else. There's been a whole long line of cities before her, her mothers and her grand mothers who were wild and debauched like she is, but Lady O is the wildest fruit on that ancient vine as well as the youngest. When Mother Earth finally spewed the human race free from her ravaged body, they followed all their old prejudices and divisions out into space. Europe, aged matriarch of the supposedly civillised west, divested her clutch of intellectually superior, culturally advanced and morally impoverished offspring onto the moon of Europa. The dispossessed and disaffected from the Americas joined them there, already looking askance at the influence of the Corporation on their leaders and looking for a taste of the freedoms deemed unhealthy by those leaders. Libertines and liberals all. Orleans III was founded by an artists collective and a group of libertarian politicians and it grew on a diet of movies, music, art and tourism. Sex and drug tourism as much as cultural tourism. Then Europa went bust and the Sim Sun went out and millions migrated to Titan and the worker colonies on Mars. Orleans III became Lady O, who grew up in the darkness. People began to drift in, attracted to this dark lady. Her broken economy spawned corruption and crime through all levels of her libertarian soul, turning her from a gentle, though amorous, peace loving lady into a violent, aggressive, thrill seeking bitch. There ain't no Police to speak of in Lady O, just men working girls have to pay for security, or the drug dealers keep for protection or the army of hired goons that belong to the Movie Industry. They watch their own affairs, everyone in Olintra watches their own damn affairs.
Except, of course, the Corporation gets pissed off by our dark lady and her children and they intervene with "Calming Measures". The city, renegade to the bottom of her very twisted soul, fights back. Europa had it's own technologies before the Corporation broke it's economy, including bio tech that was sometimes hereditary, the dark path that the Righteous Corporation had sworn it would never go down. Lady O seemed to draw all that to herself, as skills that were barely legal, persecuted or picked up for Corporation study were welcomed and valued on her streets. That helped to even the odds a little, although every time Lady O would get beat right down. She never died though, just got back up slowly and carefully and prepared herself for the next fight.
People all over the Solar System, in spite of the Corporation's best efforts, love what she has to give. Her movies aren't the clean, relentlessly heroic fare trucking out of Enceladus studios, nor are they the testosterone fuelled gangster war films of Titan's heavily criminally subsidised Industry. There's a velvet lushness to Olintra's films, blood don't splatter, it blooms. Sex and death are never hurried, the camera lingers long on the beautiful and the beastly alike. The men are as captivating as the women, the women as merciless as the men.
Lady O's writers work the big themes, sex, death, betrayal and love. Moralising is rare, normally non-existent, pages are drenched in intoxicants and bodily fluids. How the upstanding citizens of Enceladus and Titan are disgusted by the works and lives of Lady O's scribes and poets.
"They shrink back from the path that is sign posted down the road of excess, " Poet Harding Luiz wrote in a bitter attack on the city's critics published shortly before his death, "They are frightened by those of us that use madness and profanity as muses. They call us mad and think the laughter we repay them with is because of our obvious insanity. But we laugh because they are locked inside their own insanity, and don't even see it,"
The madness Luiz speaks of shows itself most of all in the city's music. Musicians live the shortest lives, shorter even than poets. They live most intensely, burning creativity in short years of alcohol, sex and drugs, sampling most deeply from that mixed lifeblood of Lady O. Every form that music can take slinks around the streets, but it all gets distorted in the gloom and filtered through twisted minds. Where ever it first arrived from, when ever a form of music makes it's way into Olintra it gets respawned back into the solar system, stripped of anything clean and given savage new life far more extreme than the original.
Europa isn't as lacking in light as Titan. It basks in Sol's reflected glare on the massive surface of Jupiter. Lights litter the city of Olintra, but they are dimmed during the deep red day, then raised bright and cold blue in the black night.
Jax and Kobal
When I walk into the dressing room Jax is standing in front of the dressing room mirror, leaning forward with both hands on the dressing table. Kobal is perched on his shoulder, his wings open but not stretched out and his blind eye turned towards the mirror as if it could see something, somehow. Jax is wearing that black leather jacket of his, with a part undone white shirt underneath it pulling his dagger pendant to one side with a button to point the tip of it at his heart. His silver hair is tumbling forward into his eyes, which are catching an ethereal glow from the dozens of red and white candles that illuminate the room. He's breathing hard, looking burned with that familiar fever haunting those dark rimmed eyes. He's staring deep into his own reflection, right into his own soul through the glass it seems, and it's hell he's seeing down there in those depths. Yes, he's burning badly, he poured everything he had into tonight's performance again, but he's got a whole menagerie of other demon's setting fire to his soul in there too.
How are the Born ever supposed to resist the lure of drugs when all they do to us is add layers and textures to the what we experience when we use our powers? How, when they also insinuate themselves so well into the rituals of sex and blood we use to replenish that power? Secretly, of course, we realise that it is sleep that replenishes us best, but we let sleep come after the sex and blood have delivered us to it's doorstep.
Jax is such a fragile beauty in this moment, Kobal seeming so much the protective spirit guarding him in his time of weakness, it is such a perfect moment, a summation of what Jax is becoming without the need for sordid or salacious details that I need to pull out my camera and capture it before it is lost forever. Before, perhaps, Jax is lost forever. I ask him in a whisper if I can take a picture.
"Take it, go ahead. Marlon might not let you fucking keep them though," He replies in a shattered whisper of his own.
I take the pictures quickly, as unobtrusively as I can. Some I take in stark black and white, trying to catch the darkness surrounding Jax. Some I take in colour, cathedral tones washing through them because of the candle light. Colour or not, Jax himself remains entirely monochrome, with Kobal's blue eye touching the illusion off with it's bright spark of colour. As I work, Kobal keeps watching me with that blind eye turned to the mirror, rasping softly at me.
" Kobal sees," the bird tells me, astonishing me again with the way he too can whisper. The bird can bark and shout, but he respects the softness needed right now for Jax. What will Kobal do if Jax doesn't survive? If I ever dared to ask the bird that, would he have an answer for me?
When I walk into the dressing room Jax is standing in front of the dressing room mirror, leaning forward with both hands on the dressing table. Kobal is perched on his shoulder, his wings open but not stretched out and his blind eye turned towards the mirror as if it could see something, somehow. Jax is wearing that black leather jacket of his, with a part undone white shirt underneath it pulling his dagger pendant to one side with a button to point the tip of it at his heart. His silver hair is tumbling forward into his eyes, which are catching an ethereal glow from the dozens of red and white candles that illuminate the room. He's breathing hard, looking burned with that familiar fever haunting those dark rimmed eyes. He's staring deep into his own reflection, right into his own soul through the glass it seems, and it's hell he's seeing down there in those depths. Yes, he's burning badly, he poured everything he had into tonight's performance again, but he's got a whole menagerie of other demon's setting fire to his soul in there too.
How are the Born ever supposed to resist the lure of drugs when all they do to us is add layers and textures to the what we experience when we use our powers? How, when they also insinuate themselves so well into the rituals of sex and blood we use to replenish that power? Secretly, of course, we realise that it is sleep that replenishes us best, but we let sleep come after the sex and blood have delivered us to it's doorstep.
Jax is such a fragile beauty in this moment, Kobal seeming so much the protective spirit guarding him in his time of weakness, it is such a perfect moment, a summation of what Jax is becoming without the need for sordid or salacious details that I need to pull out my camera and capture it before it is lost forever. Before, perhaps, Jax is lost forever. I ask him in a whisper if I can take a picture.
"Take it, go ahead. Marlon might not let you fucking keep them though," He replies in a shattered whisper of his own.
I take the pictures quickly, as unobtrusively as I can. Some I take in stark black and white, trying to catch the darkness surrounding Jax. Some I take in colour, cathedral tones washing through them because of the candle light. Colour or not, Jax himself remains entirely monochrome, with Kobal's blue eye touching the illusion off with it's bright spark of colour. As I work, Kobal keeps watching me with that blind eye turned to the mirror, rasping softly at me.
" Kobal sees," the bird tells me, astonishing me again with the way he too can whisper. The bird can bark and shout, but he respects the softness needed right now for Jax. What will Kobal do if Jax doesn't survive? If I ever dared to ask the bird that, would he have an answer for me?
"Tighe," the pale Angel speaks, my name tumbling from him on a broken breath, "I am so very, fucking tired," He looks up into my reflected image, into my eyes as I glance up from my camera as he speaks. I walk towards him. slowly and with an eye on Kobal because I can feel the bird's apprehension. I put the camera down among the candles and bottles on the dressing table.
"Kobal, go to sleep now," he turns and murmurs to the Raven. Kobal gives me one last look, ducks his head in seeming approval and launches himself with a single flap of his huge span of wings at perch by the door. Jax watches him fly, then looks back at me as I reach tentatively for that dagger perndant. I know from experience how sharp it is, we've used it together once before. I'd sworn never to do it again, Jax is so fragile it almost breaks my heart to touch him. Right now I know he needs what I can give. The road to hell is so very lonely towards the end, so I will share it with him for a while.
Leo and Sol
Set has stolen my camera again and currently he is pestering Jax with it. I'm curled up with Marta and Chica on the huge plush sofa that the venue owners have naively provided for us, expecting, I guess, for it to survive the night intact. Chica is rolling one on my hip while I have my head in Marta's lap. Jax is sprawling on the floor at our feet, propped up by the base of the sofa, and swearing and kicking at Set who is leaning over him with the camera right in his face. Set is demanding answers to an increasingly banal set of questions in mockery of the Corporation Media that hounded us all into the hotel tonight. Their camera's and questions were all trained on Jax because of the frenzy that Marlon's film has plunged our silver angel into. Bound are all ready on their way to hypnotising the Solar Masses anyway, with Blood Dawn snapping at their heels as they share duel billing on this tour of Titan. Tonight we're in Sector 2's Black Dragon/Kuro Ryo, the coolest yakuza joint on Titan. The Black Dragon brotherhood are behind Urban Titan Studios where they made the infamously bloody Black Street Samurai films. The studios are still dogged by allegations that some of the long, drawn out, detailed scenes of execution were not acted or faked at all.
Leo ambles in, stripped down to just his jeans now, his blonde hair wet from a shower already and dripping trickles of water down on his skin. Everyone pauses to look at him in appreciation, he's pale gold in flesh, his skin tinted by genetics, his eyes coloured by choice and his hair only breaking the theme because dampness has darkened it. He's followed a second later by Sol, who pads into the room just as Jax lashes a wild cuff at Set. It's done playfully, but there's an edge to it too because Jax is just starting to get pissed off at Set. Sol goes suddenly still, his every muscle tensed beneath that velvet layer of fur that is as pale gold as Leo, while his pupils swallow those near colourless irises before he pounces on Set, clearing the ten feet between cat and witch boy in a single, graceful arc. He rolls with his victim in a tangle of black hair and gold fur, long limbs both feline and human, velvet and leather bound, dark and light. Sol pins Set to the floor and sets to licking him with great enthusiasm while Set shrieks with laughter. Leo wanders over to join our tangle on the sofa, laughing at Sol and Set.
"Cat fight," Kobal caws out loudly from his perch by the door, beating his wings and watching the proceedings keenly with his good eye. Jax lifts his arm, glass of sake clutched in his gloved hand. With a jump and a couple of lazy flaps Kobal lands on Jax's hand and shuffles his way up to Jax's shoulder, still watching Sol licking and chewing affectionately on Set who is still clutching my camera and trying to wriggle free from under the powerful cat. Meanwhile, Chica is cursing in hispanic, scolding Leo for making her rescue her spliff as he slides underneath me between her and Marta.
"You weren't focused hard enough on making the fucking thing or I would have known it was there," he tells her with a smile, settling one arm around my stomach and the other round Marta's shoulders. I draws my knees up so I am curled almost entirely on his lap now, and I snuggle back towards him, seeking that unique warmth of his that radiates out from his soul.
"Are you cold tonight Tighe?" he asks me, leaning forward to whisper the question tentatively, suggestively into my ear. I wasn't feeling cold until the tone in his voice suggested he might like to be the one to warm me up.
"A little bit," I confess with a smile, knowing that he doesn't need to see it to know what I mean.
Tighe on Blood Bonds
Blood bonds. Blood bonds are so fucking complicated. Every bond you make to someone new is different from any other bond you ever had, as different as the colours and textures of anybody's power.
My powers, my empathy, telepathy, my mesmer, they slide together into a powerful groove that let's people open their hearts to me. When I bond, I share feelings, love, lust, happiness, sadness, darkness and pain. No bond caused me more pain than those I made with Jax. His broken soul broke mine, but I gave him that, knowing no-one else could.
Losing David while his blood was still inside me was another agony. As his blood cried out in my veins, he didn't answer, hitting me with full force that he was gone, dead and beyond reprieve. There is no feeling that can prepare you for that kind of soul destroying pain, no innoculation against it.
Other men I've bonded to have all been different again. Set leaves you full of energy and madness, Cain gives you thirst and the will to keep going beyond your limits, Leo fills you full of warmth and sharpens up your psychic senses. There have been others not worth mentioning because I have always been the stronger one with them and they leave me with nothing.
Alastor. That part of me that for so very long I called Samantha never let go of him. In all her innocence she knew better than all of my acquired wisdom. Hindsight is 20/20, we know this, and I see with it now that our bond never really died. How? I'm not sure, maybe it wasn't the blood. The feelings remained beyond the bond life, beyond the death of his blood in my veins.
When I was with Jax, I would lose myself in him. All that pain
Set, Kali and Blood Bonds
I found Set alone in the empty auditorium, sitting on one of the amps. clutching a bottle in one hand, his bow in the other hand and his fiddle in his open case in front of him. Cain had been bitching at him all day because he had dropped Scramblers for brekfast this morning and tonight's gig was a big one. Cain should have apologised already, Set was the devil himself on stage again tonight, tearing the best out of his brother and the rest of his band. Kali has her white tail curled around his neck and is fiddling with those black locks of his and then darting her little leathery hand forward to snatch a sugar cube from a silver dish on the amp next to them before Set could gather himself to react. He bats the air where she has just been, his entire movement sluggish with drink.
"Set," I call out to him, taking a step out onto the darkened stage, but keeping my distance still. He looks around slowly, Kali mimicking him and giving me startled eyes that are bright little flames compared to that dull look of recognition in Set's eyes. He's drunk a lot more than usual, and he's done at least his usual array of drugs today on top of those Scramblers. Set always copes better when he is not drinking.
"Hey Tighe, come join us," he slurs at me, beckoning with the bottle to me. It's a bottle of Athenian Absinthe, bright blue and fucking deadly. I approach with caution.
"How come you're partying out here with Kali and not in there with everyone else?" I ask him. He counters my question with one of his own.
"How come you're out here and not in Alastor's room, partying?"
"Helena," I say with a shrug.
"Oh yeah, forgot she was here," he replies, then, seemingly as consolation, he hands me the Absinthe. I take it and have a long burning swallow, savouring the sweet taste of aniseed that comes with the burn. It won't affect me like it's affecting Set yet, I've still got a lot of power left to burn tonight. I can feel as I sit next to him that Set doesn't have very much left at all tonight.
"Why does my brother have to be such an annoying prick, Tighe?" he asks me. Kali makes a chattering sound with her teeth as if she disapproves, and he clumsily brushes her from his shoulder. She scampers off up over the stacks that haven't been moved because Blood Dawn are playing another two nights here. She leaps with a crash onto one of Iker's cymbals, and clings onto it, watching us. I'll only see one more night of them before I have to head back to Europa. My mind touches very briefly on the issue of Roman the Hunter that is waiting for me, but since I still don't have a fucking clue what to do about that, my mind doesn't linger on it. I turn my mind instead to the question and the brothers it concerns.
Set and Cain are identical twins, but they are pretty easy to tell apart. While they are both just under six foot tall, and both have straight black hair, Set keeps his to where it will cover his eyes if he wants to hide behind it, Cain lets his grow until it pisses him off too much to keep. Of course there is the Tear Drop, which is currently pulsing through a full rainbow of colours, but the other marked difference is that Set is thinner and more fragile than Cain. Cain has always been the big brother of the two of them, but now that Cain has Laurie, Set is beginning to resent Cain for it. Especially when Cain "knows better".
"Yeah, I know, Cain's bitching fucking sucks," I say, because Cain pissed me off with it too today.
There's a long moment's silence, a little tension rises between us because I am beginning to feel the pull his burning is exerting on my empathic senses.
"When are you heading home again, Tighe?" he asks me suddenly.
"Day after tomorrow. Got to be ready when it's festival time," I say. Two weeks until the Athena Film Festival and I have a film of the Bound/Blood Dawn Double Headline tour of Titan to showcase. I'm still not happy with how it's cut, so I've got a rush to edit it again before the start of the festival.
"Jax will be at the festival. Seems like fucking years since that tour,"
It's been less than six months, but what a crazy jumble of months they've been. The music magazines were still in raptures over this new sound coming from Lady O when Marlon's film with Jax in it's starring role came out. He played a young man who was lured into a demon worshipping coven. There were back flips over it's scenes of homosexual sex and drug taking, especially when it turned out that Jax hadn't been 18 when the most controversial scenes had been shot. There were no laws preventing that in Lady O, but that didn't matter in the corporate press. Kowalski had a responsibility to his wider audience, apparently. In Corporation Space, 18 is the age of consent and anything younger constitutes rape.
"Everything's changed. Shit, Set, is this life even real any more?" I say, having another slug of absinthe. Set reaches for the bottle, his hand closing on mine and I get a jolt of just of how much he is burning. He's right on the edge of going under. I look up into his eyes. They are still that flashing green, but they look so very hollow right now. He's done Catalyst as well as Scramblers today, along with his usual assortment of weed, uppers and hallucinogens.
"You need sleep Set," I say.
"Or blood," he replies, not letting go of my hand. The Tear Drop has turned the same green as his eyes, which are taking me in and gently pleading with me. Through the touch of his hand I push my sense towards him, fighting off the fog of drugs and alcohol to look underneath and see just what hurt is lurking there under the party animal exterior. I'm surprised by just how much he is missing Jax, and by how much he is missing his old closeness with Cain, how jealous and resentful he is of Laurie, and just how ever so fucking lonely he's becoming. I get that last feeling.
I reach for the dagger on my belt, letting him take that bottle of absinthe back. When I go to make the cut, he stops me, waving two small glasses at me and begins to mix up proper shots of that blue demon drink. I watch the flames burn brightly on the alcohol soaked sugar cubes, then he drops them into the glasses and they begin to melt away. He holds out a still burning glass to me and smiles,
"Get it while it's hot, "
Blue Absinthe has powerful hallucinogenic qualities that are brought out by the flame and the sugar. It was engineered like that back in Europa's hey day as a free libertine paradise, before the Corporation bought the moon out from underneath itself. You drink it straight, you'll get hellish drunk pretty quickly, you drink it like this and you still get hellish drunk, but you don't notice that much because you have been transported into a world of heightened physical senses and sensuality where everything sparkles and echoes softly. It only works though if you drink it burning, it only works if you get that bite of pain first.
I slash the knife across my wrist, my blood trickles in crimson lines over my sunkissed skin and I hold the wound out to him. He puts that burning glass to my mouth as he lifts my wrist to his. There should be pain when that burning liquid touches my lips and slides down my throat, well there is pain, but I can't feel it. Instead I feel that dizzying sense of separation as my blood begins to invade his body. The flame is quenched as the syrup the absinthe has become sticks to the inside of my mouth and begins to melt. Those companions in my blood, these miniscule machines that give me my powers and heal my body, and now Set's body, for me, they go into a frenzy of replication to cope with both the outflowing of my blood and the healing of my burned mouth. The alcohol hits me in a euphoric wave, I have no defence against it currently. I close my eyes and pour into him. I can feel the way my blood is healing him, how it slakes his burning, how it soothes him, how it opens him up to me. Now what he wants, needs and craves is the touch of my skin on his, because every inch of touching flesh brings us closer to quelling that loneliness. It takes so much will power to lean back and make that cut on his lean chest, just above that new tattoo, that black raven silhouette with it's wings spread above his heart. There is a moment of incredible tension as I lift that glass of absinthe to his lips, tip it up while feeling that new fire inside him, that vortex of energy that he becomes when he plays that fiddle of his, then I lunge at that wound, catching a trickle of the blood leaking from it with my thumb and licking that clean before sealing my mouth against it. He pours into me, blood and awareness, and I am craving him just as he craves me. My blood replenishes his, my power balancing his so that he can begin to function normally again, his blood fires mine, demanding action from me so that it can survive and the bond can survive. Self-control must be sacrificed in the face of this demand, evolutionary need has precedence. There is an addictive quality to this uncontrolled rush of blood and sex that has built the backbone of the whole, incestuous, debauched Lady O scene. When you throw away the restraints of the Born traditions of blood bonds, and in place of that you have a drug and alcohol fuelled culture of free exchanging blood, then you get incredible highs of experience. We all know there is a price to be paid though, we're just putting off payment for as long as we can. That's why we prefer blood and sex to sleep.
Interview with Jax Hollow during Athena Film festival 3067
Jax is alone in a hotel room after the Premier for my Movie, 'Bound and Bloody on Titan'. Blood Dawn have made it in for the night and are still doing interviews next door. Jax is sprawling in front of a huge screen with Marlon's remake of The Misfits playing with the sound turned off. Adilene Mortensen is utterly stunning in Marlon's ridiculously promiscuous version of the ancient film. Kobal is perched above Jax on the back of the couch, good eye on the screen. Jax doesn't spot me until I am well into the room. He looks at my multi-cam as I'm clutching it in my hand and sighs.
"Last of tonight's vultures? Really Tighe?" He asks me in accusing tones, flopping back onto the couch and sighing again. It's been a long, dull day for Jax, answering inane questions about things he plainly doesn't give a shit about. He closes his eyes as if he can pretend I'm not here if he doesn't look at me.
"I'm not here to peck at your corpse. I'm here just to talk and I'm recording it because you know fine well that's what I do," I tell him, feeling defensive because it's been a long day for me too.
"What if I just want to bitch and moan?" he asks me, opening just one violet-grey eye to look at me.
"Then bitch and moan. I've been under the microscope today too, honey. I don't want to hear another soul ask me what I think the aim of 'our movement' is, because if I do someone will have to die. I swear they don't know what they are fucking talking about any more than I do," I say.
"You're recording already though. You're still fucking working even though it's passed 1 in the morning," he says, sounding disgusted. I've watched him work longer into the night when Bound are in the studio, or on stage, or filming something. He's just annoyed at the nature of my work.
"So are the guys next door. Anyway, Jax, someone has to present you in your own words,"
"I think that's why Marlon hates you. He thinks we should all be in love with this fame he's given us and he thinks you undermine him because you just want us to be honest," he tells me, sounding like he's repeating something often argued between him and the great Marlon Kowalski.
"Marlon is entitled to his opinion,"
"Would you fuck him?" Jax is in one of his twisty moods again tonight. Media circus days always get him like that.
"Are you interviewing me now?" I retort.
He laughs, I sit down opposite him and take pictures. He stops laughing. He's wearing black jeans and boots and a white shirt, his usual attire minus the black leather jacket. His shirt is undone at the cuffs and down the front, his dagger pendant is on stark display against that milk white skin. There's a new tattoo over his heart, a violin. I focus on that , take snaps that also show the scowl that's crept onto that perfect face while he smokes and waits for me to finish.
"Scowling doesn't stop you being pretty," I tell him. He snarls, I take several quick pictures. Snarling possibly makes him prettier.
"Scowling doesn't stop you being pretty," I tell him. He snarls, I take several quick pictures. Snarling possibly makes him prettier.
"Maybe I should scar up this face a bit then," he says, picking up that dagger idly in his long, slender fingers.
"Might work if you could scar. You're stuck being pretty until you grow old,"
"Then take pictures of me slashing it up then," he says, joking but with a hint of teasing fire in his eyes.
"You might still look pretty, honey," I tell him, and stop taking pictures. He stares at me silently while I pull a bottle of my own from my coat pocket, "Talk or don't. You decide," I tell him as I unscrew the cap.
"You kept the stuff Set filmed. Marlon fucking hated that," Jax says after a few long silent moments where I'm drinking and he's smoking.
"Yeah, I saw his big speech to camera afterwards," He'd been stopped by an SNN reporter and her camera crew on his way with Set and a number of his flunkies in tow. He monopolised the poor woman for ten minutes to rant about my intrusion into the privacy of his bands and the amateur quality of my work. He criticised my decision to keep footage shot by Set in it then.
"I'm glad you left it in though. I miss the crazy shit Set does," Jax tells me, lighting another cigarette off the end of the one he was smoking when I came in.
"He'll be here soon, " I tell Jax. Set and Cain have developed an effective strategy for getting rid of journalists. They simply keep plying them with intoxicants until they fold, which is always long before the Twins.
"And so will Marlon. It's going to be a fucking riot of a party," Jax tells me dryly. I take a long drink and find myself looking at an empty bottle. Jax waves around the room. There's bottles on every surface in preparation for the Post-premier party. Jax has clearly planned ahead with the twins in mind. I grab something that means I don't have to get up and feel the alcohol I have already consumed rush to my head. There is a sound, a howling shriek of laughter that could have come from Marta, and Kobal whips his head round to peer at the adjoining wall as if he could look through it.
"Helena is here with Alastor, " I say, adding that to our happy list of tensions for the night. All my worst enemies in the room on top of the tangle that exists between Marlon, Set and Jax for which I take the blame from Marlon because I am the one he has no hold over. If he knew about the mess between me, Alastor and Helena too he'd probably hire someone in to get rid of me. He is trying his best to ignore what is happening between the object of his obsession and one of his other major business assets, but in truth he's failing, I don't need to bring his suppressed wrath onto me any more than I already have it.
Bio for David
He's about 5'10", dark wavy hair that is chin length, brown eyes, typically Europan pale skin. He's slim and lean built, Born but not really powerful, at least until he had Tighe working as a catalyst for him in using his powers for performance. He was born in Lady O, but was sent in his early teens to study classical guitar in Athena. He played in the Athena Philharmonic before finally deciding he'd rather be part of the Lady O scene. He started working as a guitarista in the city's Hispanic bars. He's been back in the city for 6 months and is building quite a following of his own when Tighe sees him play.
He's more than happy to let Tighe lead in the band, she is so astounded by his talent with his guitar that she builds everything around him anyway. He has spent a lot of time developing his own sound, not the guitarista music he plays for money but something he works on in his spare time. The resulting sound is amplified, distorted and distinctly savage, but remains true to his Hispanic and Classical guitar training.
The relationship between David and Tighe grows closer and more monogamous over the course of the year that their band exists. As a creative partnership they are prolific and dynamic, as a couple they are glamorous and prone to excess, on stage they are powerful and full of vitality. Through all of it David was happy to take Tighe's lead. He loves her, she loves him but I think they are both aware that there is something missing for Tighe in their relationship, which is why they never commit beyond maintaining a strong blood bond.
During the whole of this year Tighe's ex has been sending him death threats, he's phoned or even tried to talk to Tighe face to face during the tour. He has been stalking them , but Tighe believes the way to handle it is to ignore it.
David is murdered by Tighe's ex when they return to her place after the homecoming gig.
David Del Rosa
I've never walked into a room and zeroed in on one person quite like I do when I meet David del Rosa for the first time. My heels are burning tonight, I've come here to cool them after a turbulent few hours in my life. The party, as I enter, is still beneath the boil and waiting for a spark or the tipping point of some threshold among the guests to bring it on. I've barely registered a single face in the room, even the familiar ones, when I see him sit down on a stool in the middle of the floor, clutching a well worn and scratched classical guitar. His dark hair falls in loose, messy waves to his jawline which he sweeps away from his face distractedly as he fiddles for a second with the tuning of his guitar. He's got deep brown eyes which have a spark of wisdom and a light of recklessness in them. He lights himself a cigarette and looks over a room that hasn't entirely noticed him yet with keenness, sizing everyone up and then finally seeing me staring at him. His eyebrows raise a little, such stark, thin lines, like the slender line of hair that traces along his jaw, emphasising the slightly arrogant cant to his obvious beauty. The corners of his mouth quirk at me and I move a little closer. He's wearing a black silk shirt, only half done up and revealing a black inked bleeding heart there above the beat of his own heart, His black jeans are skin tight, his long legs ending with low black, simple, boots. He's a hired performer, a guitarista, not a guest. He's young for the trade though, maybe twenty three, and this is an exclusive party so he must be a talent. Unless he's here because of those beautiful looks of his, which is entirely possible knowing the debauched nature bubbling beneath the surface of this seemingly civilised gathering as I do. Any doubt I might have at his talent is dispelled very quickly.
"This is for you, Senorita, since you at least have noticed me," he says before he starts to play.
Softly, slowly at first, the building in speed and complexity while dancing around the same basic theme. Then, just as he seems to be about to pick up to full speed, a crashing chord, a heartbeat of a stop then he rebuilds it quickly. His fingers are blurring up and down and all over the fret board of that battered looking guitar. Everyone has turned to listen by now. There is something eldritch about his skill, something beyond human. There's no wires, no circuit boards and no cables on that guitar, but there is something altogether electric about that sound.
Blade and Alastor
I can feel Helena's eyes on me as Alastor hugs me. I clench my teeth against his embrace, the euphoria of the gig we just played not enough, or perhaps too much, to steal me against the ache for his body and blood that envelops me with his arms. I catch an echo of the same war going on inside him. Oh the fucked up irony that I'm not alone in this. He let's go, more abruptly than either of us want and he steps away from me. There's a stab and a twist of pain at the separation, I feel Samantha's sobs inside me. Someone hands him a bottle, he turns one look on me that tries to say everything and fails. We need more time than Helena's gaze will ever afford. Blade sleeks passed Alastor then, winding that huge black body around me, rubbing his head against me and licking at my hand with that rough cat's tongue. His tail curls around Alastor's arm, encircling the snakes as they coil lazily there, as if he'll pull us back into an embrace. Alastor resists the call of that suggestion while I force my attention into Blade's pale green eyes. I run my hands over his soft, fine fur, feeling the powerful muscle underneath and knotting my fingers into them in a way that always drags a satisfied growl from the big cat. It does the same to the man when it's his muscles beneath my fingers too. I look up then, my eyes meeting Helena's and seeing such hatred and fury. Blade won't let her touch him. I am one of only three who he ever allows this close, one of only two he ever seeks out for affection. Somehow this piques her jealousy more than anything else. I don't quail under her look. All her hatred changes nothing. She remains the one who will leave tonight with Alastor, not me, no matter how Blade tries to wind us together with his long body. David approaches, hovering a respectful distance from the cat and us. Alastor speaks to him, hugs him and then calls to Blade in a soft voice. As they walk away together it is the cat, not the man, who is throwing a reluctant glances over his shoulder back at me. David closes the gap to give me a bottle of my own and wrap his arms around me. It will be his blood and his body that I will have tonight to regain what I lost to the crowd, and for a while I will lose sight of that part of me that only Alastor ever reaches.
David's blood, and David's body.
We are tumbling back in the door of the mansion, speaking rapidly, happily together in Hispanic as we always do. David's all over me, hands, mouth, body, and I am purring happily in his arms, the bottle of Blue Absinthe that Set gave me in my fist. Try not to think about the hollow eyes and haunted expression he handed it over to me with. Try not to remember Jax with the same face.
As if in response to my thought about Jax, Kobal suddenly launches himself into the air, cawing loudly and causing gusts in the humid night air with his wings. He circles and lands on the roof of the porch, and turns his good eye to the night. He's agitated, but I can't tell what is bothering him since he hasn't spoken since Jax died. That breaks my heart in so many ways.
David claims my attention again with his lips on my throat. Gods, you are beautiful, my Guitarista. I see you in the ethereal blue light of the Europan night, your dark hair gleaming, those deep brown eyes glinting, that pale skin luminous. The way you look up at me. With my arm snaked round you so I can draw you with me, I reach out to thumb the lock, then I lay my fingers along your jaw, bring your lips up to mine, close my eyes and let our blood bond fill me. You are beginning to burn now, so am I. We both had just enough left to get us through the buzz of the after gig party. Alastor's face flits briefly through my mind, fuck, he never quite leaves me, but then you swallow up my attention again with soft promises whispered across my throat. I push the door open behind me, pull you with me into the darkness of the hallway, my fingers tangling in your dark hair, my mouth making demands of it's own from you.
"Hunter!" Kobal's voice drags me from David, gasping for air in shock as much as lust. There is a muffled thud, a horrendous hiss from Jax's beloved raven, and I see him tumble across the open doorway, falling from the porch, wings spread wide but useless, a glint of steel peeking from the glossy black plumage that shines in the blue night, his good eye as dead to sight as his blue one. Slow motion, the world crawls to a shuddering halt with echoes of my own cry fracturing the air. A shadow fills the doorway, moving fast and flashing a blade I know well. It's Roman's Scorpion, the long slender knife with the small curved hook in it's tip. It rarely carries poison, but it is deadly, so deadly, in his hands. David turns, looking to see what it is I am staring at, he turns and shows his throat to the Hunter.
My Angel,
I'd watched you from the periphery of the crowd tonight, risked the very briefest of embraces to congratulate you on an awesome show, and when I tried to leave Blade intervened because he knows my mind better than I do. I knew Helena was watching, but fuck it, that wasn't enough to make me stop wanting to give in to the need I always feel for you. It was the sight of David winding his way through the party towards us that stopped me. I stepped back, gave way to him because you are doing so much better with him.
All the way back to our place, with Helena's cloud of unspoken anger hanging over my head, all I can think of is you. I ain't no clairvoyant, I ain't confessing to ominous feelings of visions, hell, I wouldn't feel quite so sick with myself right now if that had been the case. No, all I could think about was how you had looked, how you had sounded just how much being even this close to you still affects me. I was still being taunted by memories of you when the phone rang, unable to sleep after the inevitable fight with Helena that came when we got home. It never happens in the tense silence of the car, only once the front door swings shut on our unhappy home. I let her scream and rage at me, and when Blade hissed at her I sent him outside into the damp because I deserve that bitter anger. How can I keep on defending the indefensible to her? I am fucking guilty of all the shit she accuses me of as she gets her anger at you and me out of her system again. Once she had vented that rage, I took her to bed, sent her happy into sleep and stared into the darkness remembering what it had been like to share blood and bed with you. I could feel how much I had fucked up, how I'd run out of chances with you. I realised that I knew we were finished then, that's what I had felt when David wrapped his arms around you and I said good bye.
The phone rings in the darkness, trapped somewhere in a pocket of my jeans scattered on the invisible floor. I'm up and stumbling in the darkness, swearing softly under my breath, hoping Helena doesn't wake. The ring tone is one I set for you, Helena won't stay asleep for long with the sound of Fell from Heaven coming from my phone. The song I wrote about you. After a tense stretch of moments, I find the phone. My reeling brain kicks into a new gear, an automatic one, as soon as I hear your broken voice on the other end. Fuck, now I know the sound of devastation.
"Tighe, Angel, slow down," I beg you, trying to break through your hysteria as quietly as I can for fear of waking Helena, but she stirs fully awake with a shudder of fury.
"What the fuck is that bitch doing calling here?" She screeches, a hag in her jealousy. Underneath that I can hear you falling apart, I can hear you beseeching me with utter anguish, even though I can't make out a single word you are saying. I can't fucking do this any more, I can't be caught between the two of you any more. One of you has to go, so I do what I swore I never would again, I compel Helena to silence with the virgin bond. Something really serious is happening here, I have to make her quiet because I can hear the pain you're in. I can only make out two words of what you are saying, but they chill me anyway. David's name stands out as a sob of pain, and Roman's with such agonised rage that it sets all of my senses on edge.
"Angel, listen to me, I need you to breathe baby. I can't understand what you're trying to tell me," that makes me ache for a blood bond with you, just speaking softly, whispering your name. That ache dies when you finally manage to string together the awful words fighting each other to escape you.
"David's dead. I've-" you nearly lose it, but the strength to keep it together is there, "I've got his blood everywhere, all over me. Roman was fucking waiting for us," I close my eyes. The Hunter would have been too quick, he would have used his blade. Oh Gods, the agony you must be feeling.
"Have you called anyone else?" I ask, hoping you can still hear my voice because it's broken to a whisper.
"No, couldn't," You don't manage any more. You can't. I turn to Helena and do it again, I use the bond to compel her. I cover the phone just to spare you even hearing this shit I have to tell her.
"Get your phone and call up the record company security staff. Tell them to go out to Tighe's place because David has been stabbed. Tell them Tighe says he's dead and make abso-fuckin-lutely sure they know Roman the Hunter was involved. Do it now," I tell her firmly, leaving her no space in her mind to argue with me. It would be very fucking bad for everyone if she argues with me about Tighe right now. Helena gets up to go and find her phone, that part of me that's always aware of her keeps me closely informed, while the rest of me, the part of me that is always somehow aware of you, keeps talking softly to you while I'm dragging my clothes on.
"I'm coming Angel, hold it together, I'm coming as fast as I can," which, I curse inwardly, isn't fucking fast enough. This retreat I've bought out here is two hours from the city. It seemed too close still until tonight.
