Destiny of a Drop [closed]

[Lucyfer]

Felicity Lux was told she had all the beauty of her mother, but all the dignity of her father. It was in her bodily mannerisms. She never slouched, and she never avoided eye contact. She was a perfect diplomat in many respects for her calm and collected confidence, and so her father had started to use her as one in his dealings with the humans who evaded capture and abuse by the vampires.


He was an outspoken supporter of change, something he couldn’t hide. The strawberry blonde woman was his first dhampir child, but it was curious that for as old as he was, he also had few vampire children. Even his wife, Bethany Lux, had not been made into a vampire. It was not something she ever wanted.


It meant her death half a century ago.


Felicity Lux would never have that option. Dhampir could not be vampires. People had tried, of course. Dhampir were reviled and envied by all sides, and vampires in particular envied the dhampir ability to walk in the sun.


Which was presently what she was doing, although she was decked out with a wide-brimmed hat and a leather coat to keep as much of the sun off of her as possible. ‘I do not see the fascination.’ Felicity thought. The dhampir suffered under the sun as well, although it would not kill her. It couldn’t kill her.


The meeting place was a farm house that had been abandoned years and years ago. It was a bright red spot when Felicity cleared the trees, and she groaned at the lack of shade. However, she kept walking. She was expecting a familiar face, but as she drew closer, the scent that she was inhaling didn’t match her typical contact. She frowned a bit, but kept on walking.


Her confidence would never let her show that she was a bit paranoid about a trap.


~***~


“Father.”


A head of tousled brown curls turned itself so the hazel eyes could latch onto the face of one of the purebloods. Valentine was the last name he’d taken for himself, clearly preferring his mother to the man he called father.


Unfortunately, that woman had passed years ago. She hadn’t been one of the originals, but a made vampire. He wasn’t sure exactly what that made the Victorian man in front of him so far as blood divisions, but then again, Daniel didn’t really care about those things. “Are you going to get up for the council meeting, or am I going to have to represent you again?” He spoke with disgust, as if he had any right to that tone.


“What’s the topic of the night?”


The blond folded his arms over his chest and glared down at Daniel, “The trouble with the rebels to the east.”


“Ah.” Daniel turned his head away so he was looking at the ceiling. “Yes, I’ll go, I’ll go,” he rolled over and threw his legs over the edge, “Come here,” there was a reason he let the snob stay.


The vampire didn’t even question it. He pulled at his tie as he approached and let it fall to the floor, before he undid the top two buttons of his own shirt and pulled it aside as he took a seat on the bed. Daniel put both of his hands on the vampire’s shoulders, rolling more of the shirt away, before he dug his fangs into the neck.


Daniel was addicted to the taste of blood that those of Cain bore—which meant his progeny tended to have it in their veins. It was the only blood that satisfied him, even if it was diluted.


He drank deeply, but never enough to make the Victorian Darin terribly weak. Darin accepted it, every time, tilting his neck back and enjoying the feeling. Not only did it feel good, Darin humored that he was gaining power over Daniel by letting him drink the addictive blood, which was his end goal, of course.


Power.


Daniel pushed him away when done, when he’d licked the wound closed, and Darin collapsed easily back onto the bed. He didn’t waste his energy sitting up, but watched as Daniel moved about the room to dress himself for the day, and then leave for the council.


Whenever it concerned rebels, Daniel went. He wasn’t as outspoken as the infamous Lux, but he was a strong supporter of Lux’s stance all the same. His presence was often enough to make that clear.

 

[Ercalas]

The dhampir was on time, which pleasantly surprised Chace, the dark haired man had expected to be kept waiting at least half an hour, just because this was a lot more of a diplomatical matter than the usual things he dealt with. Diplomacy, for all he knew, was doing a lot for show, to stress how important you were and how much you valued your own time and more importantly that of others. Chace wasn’t used to tiptoeing around and much less to direct (civil) contact with the likes of vampires or dhampirs. He was a lot more nervous than he’d like to be.


When the dhampir entered the farm house via the backdoor he immediately stood up from the wooden - quite uncomfortable- chair he’d previously been sitting on. He felt his jaw muscles tighten at the sight of the creature, as they always did. You could always tell a supernatural creature from a human, always. ‘Miss Lux, I know I’m not who you were expecting, but I can assure you I’ve come here unarmed, just as miss Matthews, Chloë, always was.’ To assure the woman of the truth of his words he raised his hands, baring his empty belt.


The gesture was empty ofcourse, weapons could be hid in so many other places, but nevertheless showed his goodwill. His green eyes locked with dhampir’s blue ones. ‘Chloë’s dead.’ He told her, failing to soften the blow, as he’d previously planned on. Chloë’s death affected him and the way he’d been handling things the last couple of days more than he wanted.


-------------


The dark haired woman sat extremely upright, like there was a ruler strapped to her lower back. Alice had never been good at letting tension flow out of her body, into the ground, as she was often advised. However, this tension never bothered her, how could it, her muscles never ached, she never got tensionheadaches, as she heard humans got, the only thing it did for her was make her a tad thirstier than the usual vampire. That had never been a problem for her.


‘He’s late.’ She observed. The full council was present, except for, as usual, Daniel. She was wearing a black pencil skirt, combined with a satin deep dark red blouse. The blouse had a label that made her neck itch, she noted, not for the first time, but just like every other time, she’d probably forget it as soon as she took the thing off. Cynthia, a terribly frigid pureblood cleared her throat, ‘Maybe we should start without her?’ Alice was almost inclined to plead against her proposition just to spite the woman, however this proved unnecessary as Trevor, ever so solemnly shook his head. ‘The council will not go into session until all members are present or have been declared indisposed for the day.’ The dark man said in his deep voice. Trevor was one of the most patient members of the council, a Lilith original who always pleaded for caution, no matter the subject of the conversation.


Alice absentmindedly scratched her neck and let her gaze wander around in the all too familiar room, all council members sat around a huge oaken round table, the walls of the rooms were lined with bookcases at her back, two wooden doors at her front, and huge bookcases on either of her sides. This was the small council room, for the ‘usual’ meetings, here the day to day meetings were held. ‘I could do with a drink.’ She said, to no-one in particular, while tapping her carefully manicured nails on the table.

 

[Lucyfer]

This was not Chloë. Felicity paused shortly after entering and after taking off her hat, to observe the figure without the shadow of the brim in her eyes. Before Felicity could inquire about the change, the human before her began to speak.


Her muscles slowly began to relax under the sound of his voice, because he was calm and had it together. He wasn’t panicking. She didn’t detect any insincerity. He said the blunt fact of Chloë being dead, and the dhampir lost a bit of her composure. “How?” She didn’t introduce herself, didn’t explain that she was also unarmed, for this seemed more important. This caught her by surprise.


There was a bit of a tremble in that one syllable.


Fear was reasonable. Vampires were usually the cause of these things, and she lived among vampires. Her ties to her father were enough to make her seem a good hostage, or even just a good person to strike at to lower the morale of vampires overall.


~***~


Daniel swaggered down the street, rather than hail a cab or anything like that. The place of meeting was not far from where he lived. He was an Original, after all, he could claim whatever place he wanted, and he wanted to be near the action.


The doors were opened for him, and he briefly adjusted his collar when he stepped through the doors, and was pointed towards the meeting room.


There, too, the door was opened before he so much as had to reach out his hand, and he walked in and smiled at the gathered, “Sorry I’m late,” he wasn’t sorry at all, and it showed as he sunk into a chair near, but not quite next to, Mr. Lux and Alice. They were all of the same mind, more or less, “Darin held me up,” he offered as an excuse, and then saw one of the waiters was bringing over blood to Alice.


The scent of it didn’t entice him at all. In fact, he wrinkled his nose at it. “So, what did I miss?”

 

[Ercalas]

***


Chace couldn't suppress a bitter smile, rather a grimace than anything else. 'How do you think?' He then shook his head, immediately annoyed at his own lack of control, 'I apologize,' he added stiffly. 'Losing her has been hard on us.' He slowly sat down again and gestured for the dhampir to do the same.


'She was ambushed,' he hated how he couldn't fully mask the frustration and anger from his voice, the loss was still fresh and raw. 'She was returning from a diplomatic mission, treating with a group of vampires who wanted to cohabitate with humans and...- it doesn't even matter anymore.' Chance ran his hand through his dark curls, 'a group of fanatics bombed the place, almost everyone who attended the meeting was killed. It's triggered reactions amongst both the humans and vampires and none of them peaceful. Anyway, you're going to have to deal with me from now on.' After relaying the story he suddenly felt so, so tired. The last couple of days had been hell, he couldn't even remember the last time he'd slept.


***


As usual, Daniel made quite the entrance. Alice almost smiled before taking a sip from her glass, colder than she'd like it and worse, human. She had some difficulty swallowing, but managed to, in the end. In the meantime Trevor had presented the subjects of the meeting, starting with some of the subjects which she could care less about like the education of young made vampires, some matters about dhampir rights, which were always changing anyway. Finally they arrived at the main concern of the evening.


'The rebels in the east, they need to be stopped, innocent vampires are dying!' Shrieked Cynthia. Who's idea was it to put her on the council anyway? Alice took another forceful swallow of the blood just to refrain from speaking, or rather growling at the other vampire. Innocent vampires dying meant innocent humans dying as well and on top of that a lot of those 'innocent' vampires who were involved, weren't that innocent. There had been a vampire attack on peaceful negotiations between vampires and humans, starting the fighting all over again.

 

[Lucyfer]

It was evident by the stranger’s reaction that it had been hard. He was snappy, and Felicity did not hold it against him, even if his question jarred her and caused a glare to form.


With a thought, she forced herself to smooth her expression. She crossed her arms over her chest as she listened to his story about what had happened to Chloë. Fanatics. He didn’t specify if they were vampire fanatics, or human fanatics, but she supposed it truly didn’t matter. They were enemies to them both, either way. “I’m sorry,” Felicity said when he was finished and let her know that it was he, that she would now be dealing with, “and I appreciate that you have still come to treat with me.”


She let her arms fall to her side, took one step forward and hesitated to go any further. A sigh parted her lip, a few words in Latin escaped and she shook her head, clearly a bit at a loss for how to go forward with this, “You know already I am Felicity Lux, dhampir,” at least she hoped he knew all of that since he had called her ‘Miss Lux’, “Do you know of my plans with Chloë?”


~***~


Daniel drummed his fingers along the table as he listened to the various topics, none of them interesting until it got to the end. The shrill-voiced harpy, Cynthia, decided to introduce it. Daniel visibly rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. He was tempted to kick up his feet, but instead just stretched them out before him.


“Do we know which group of rebels it is?” Daniel asked in a bored tone.


Rosa, a pureblood, dared to ask, “What does it matter what kind they are?”


Daniel let his head roll to the left so he could see her, “Some of’em we can treat and negotiate with, others of’em we can’t. Better to reserve our weapon stores for the ones we can’t,” he reasoned. Rosa’s nose wrinkled and disgust painted her pale blue eyes, but Daniel expected that. Rosa was one of the extremists, just on the other side of things.

 

[Ercalas]

The dhampir seemed more affected by the loss than Chace had expected, and as she expressed her apology and was taken aback for a moment, he could feel a bit of sympathy growing for the woman. After she regained herself and looked up again he nodded, ‘I know so much less than I wish I did.’ He admitted, while standing up again to make up for his admittance of his lack of knowledge, it made him uncomfortable expressing that he knew little and less about the relationship between Chloë and the dhampir.


‘I know that you and Chloë were working on a project to gain more understanding of both the vampire world and the role humans play in that and that it was more or less designed to gather intel on anything and everything but for the all the details I’m at a loss. There was a very clear divide between mine and Chloë’s workload, we trusted each other in that and kept it that way for security reasons. If anybody captured either of us at least they didn’t know all the details about all our operations…’ That was the moment he broke eye contact, against his usual habit. His gaze wandered to the window, to the forest outside. ‘But it seemed our master plan was slightly flawed in the part that we didn’t count on either of us dying in the near future. Only one of us did.’ Snapping back to the present he looked at Felicity again, ‘so please, enlighten me.’ Once again he couldn’t fully filter the emotion from his voice.


***


‘That remains a mystery,’ Trevor answered Daniel’s question, ignoring Rosa’s remark. ‘The reports coming back from the area all contradict each other and one seems even more unlikely than the other.’ ‘You mean that they’re your typical post-trauma reports?’ Alice asked, barely masking the annoyance from her voice. ‘What news is there from any originals situated near there, purebloods if necessary.’


Trevor, ever so patient droned on, ‘There are at the moment no originals in the area and no purebloods involved in politics.’ At times like these Alice was painfully reminded of the fact that the whole political system had only so recently been instated, sometimes it showed flaws which were anything but acceptable. ‘Well, then the solution to our information problem seems fairly simple to me.’ She replied. ‘We need to send someone trust worthy to the east, as soon as possible.’

 

[Lucyfer]

Felicity bit the inside of her cheek, careful not to utilize the fangs in doing so. How was she to explain the situation to Chace? No doubt he wouldn’t go along with it, and Felicity wouldn’t blame him for it. She and Chloë trusted each other. Chloë knew that Felicity would ensure nothing terrible happened to her when he was taken into the Lux family as a servant.


Chace wouldn’t feel the same security.


Besides, he likely hadn’t made the same arrangements that Chloë would have made to ensure the group continued on without her constant input and presence. “Chloë and I were planning to bring her into my world, in the guise of a servant,” the more accurate term was slave, but she despised that word. “Chloë would gather intel that I would never be privy to by mingling with the other humans, and she would learn what I take for granted by living within vampire society. She would see what I would never think to see. However, with Chloë dead and you uninformed, I suspect this plan at best needs to be pushed back, and at worst scrapped completely. I cannot ask you to come along with it and expect you to say yes right now.”


~***~


Daniel chuckled at Alice’s remark about how the reports were ‘typical’. That much was accurate, though sometimes a name slipped through the crack, like ‘Chloë’. Chloë could be negotiated with. Others, like Aden, could not be treated with. His group was a group of insane pyromaniacs who seemed to have no regard for life—vampire or otherwise.


Someone trustworthy had to go. Daniel had no intention of going, so he gestured towards the imposing, and curiously silent, Mr. Lux, “How about you? You’ve been wanting a change of scenery, haven’t you?” He’d miss him, but he doubted this would be permanent. Lux was too important a figure.


No one would dare to leave him alone in an area for long. His influence would grow too fast if he wasn’t kept in check. ‘Then again, that might be good.’ Lux and Daniel were of one mind on many things. He, Alice, and Lux could have power-played things as a triumvirate. Daniel just knew his position would be Crassus, and he didn't want to be Crassus. He also wasn't sure whether Alice or Lux would be Caesar.