bourbon street vampire hunters.

Lukas

The pack calls itself the Bourbon Street Vampire Hunters.

Just figuring this much out takes the better part of a week. There's a lot of debate over a suitably badass name. For a long time Lukas flatly refused to have 'Vampire Hunters' in the name. So obvious, so kitschy, he said, until Hana pointed out that the founding notion of the pack was the hunt vampires in New Orleans. Then for a while Benny wanted to call the pack something-something Vampire Slayers, which both Hana and Lukas flatly nixed, saying something about Buffy. After that there was a big debate over Bourbon Street vs Canal Street. They live on Canal Street - in a big, rundown loft at the shitty end of the street - but they do most of their hunting on Bourbon Street. In the end, sheer aesthetics swing the balance toward Bourbon. It just sounds better.

After that there's the business of getting in touch with the Sept, which turns out to be a ragtag, loose group of Urrah. Mostly Gnawers. Some Walkers. A few Garou of other tribes. The Sept gathers in an old warehouse-turned YMCA-turned defunct building, where a dusty basketball court and its bleachers serve as an assembly area, a lunchtable-lined square in the cafeteria a challenge circle.

There's no Caern. The Grand Elder changes all the damn time, depending on who felt like baring his teeth this week and who wins the subsequent fight. Most the shots get called by the Warder. The Butcher of Nawlins, he's called, because he was a butcher before he changed. And also because his Rite of Passage was built on the broken backs of more Spirals than most people knew were even in the area. These days he's mellowed out some, though. Gotten older, gotten wiser. Spends most his time cooking in the cafeteria - Cajun recipes passed down from his grandmother, he says. Isn't above throwing a potful of boiling gumbo in the faces of his enemies, others say.

I'll remember not to piss him off, Benny says.

The fact that the Hunters are all Shadow Lords raises a few eyebrows, but they're probably in the only city in the country where Lords are preferable to Fangs. There's some bad history there, which Benny learns one night drinking moonshine with the stinking bum, homeless and toothless, that serves as the Talesinger of the Sept:

something about the Fangs that used to own a Caern around these parts, and how they came with shining ideals and noble words, and how other Garou once willingly bent the knee to them. Over the years, those ideals were gradually corroded and perverted over the years as the land grew rich on cotton. By the time of the Civil War, the Fangs owned sprawling plantations; they hoarded their wealth; they kept slaves, some of them kin to other tribes. And most unforgivably, they left after the War devastated their wealth - fled north, or back to their ancestral homes across the sea. Left in their wake, the Caern was leaderless, stripped of most its strength, and within a handful of years slipped into obscurity.

And that's why we ain't got no Caern 'round here, Benny quoted to the pack later, imitating the Talesinger's cadence and tone so perfectly they could all but smell the stench. Ain't need no Caern neither. Got everything we need in each other, and without a Caern drawin' the big dogs in, there's more left over for us little guys. You kids do good, you might earn yourselves a few ranks and a position 'r two in a couple years.

"Well," Lukas said in response to that, "let's get started."

And they do work hard. The next few weeks, Rolf visits the plantation sometimes to talk to the Gentlemen, and to play with Yelizavieta. Apart from that, the pack doesn't really drop by. It's too far, and they're too busy. They hunt by night, preying on predators: loitering on the streets, watching the clubs and pubs and bars they were too young to get into. Watching for men and women who never get drunk no matter how many pubs they crawl through. Who went home with a different human every night, usually tourists in the French Quarter, sometimes returning mere hours later to hunt again. Who never smoked or ate or drank, whose skin was pale and perfect even in this sweltering southern clime.

And sometimes they execute by night, trailing their quarry through wet alleys and back streets, getting down and dirty, ripping off their human facades to roar into monsters. Sometimes they execute by day, kicking in doors of dusty sunless basements, pounding down the stairs with molotov cocktails and aerosol-can flamethrowers, claws and teeth. It rains all the time in New Orleans. Bloodstains don't last long; they get washed down the drain, washed out to sea.

There's no Wyrmpole at the Sept. There's a scoreboard, though, where Spirals and fomori and leeches and "etcetera" are tallied up in chalk, wiped clean every season. By the end of April, the column reading BSVH has eleven scratches under Leeches. One under Etcetera: a ghoul, faithful to the bitter end.

April 26th, and it's getting so warm in New Orleans. It's raining again. The streets glisten. The French Quarter is full of people, Bourbon Street full of the happy and drunk. There's a club here, and the bass is thudding through the walls, and groups of progressively giddier girls are filing in, and

there are three men in there that just aren't right.

Rolf's up on the roof, keeping an eye on the back door in case anyone slips out that way. Benny's down the street, ready to play damage control if the Veil rips. Hana's inside, slithering past security with her Ragabash wiles. And Lukas -- well, Lukas is in line to get in, a fake ID in his pocket.

Danicka

On the plantation, which used to be a sugar plantation, which used to span 300,000 acres but has grown smaller as the land was sold back off, Danicka spends a lot of time on the veranda, staring out into space.

The bedrooms used by the Cliaths have been cleaned, linens stored, furniture covered again with dropcloths. She had a few maids come by to help. She resisted the urge to take the sheet from Lukas's bed and keep it, filled with his scent, and simply had it sent to be washed with the rest. She gave Hana one of her tops, a pretty handmade thing in blue floral calico that buttons up the front and has little cap sleeves. Hana filled it out better, she said, looks better in it, blue is more her color anyway. Rolf had asked if he could come back, and Danicka said any of them were welcome to come back, any time. She didn't look at Lukas when she said so, but it was said for his benefit, too. Only Rolf does, though.

It makes Lizzy happy. She's easier to deal with after visits from the Theurge, Danicka's noticed. Calmer. Rolf understands what it's like to hear and see things other people can't. Rolf also has questions. He sits on the floor with Lizzy, their backs against the girl's footboard, and they talk. Danicka has questions of him, too. He confirms: if Lizzy screams and pitches a fit when anyone walks down to the waterline where the cemetary used to be, listen to her. Christian and Rick and Giselle and Danicka begin listening to Lizzy more. This, too, makes her calmer. Happier. Better, in a deeper sense that Danicka does not quite understand, because she has never understood Yelizaveta.

She asks him, every time, how the pack is doing. She wants to ask him to tell her about Lukas. Is he sad. Is he angry. Is he well. Does he flirt with girls he meets in the city. Does he miss her. Does he want her to talk to him. But she doesn't. She has more self-control than she gives herself credit for, and if she would only stand up for herself, she'd see she's got more strength than she gives herself credit for, too. She holds her tongue. She just asks how they all are, a general question. She doesn't really want the answers to the questions she refuses to let herself ask, anyway.

But one time, mid-april, he comes to that old garden she goes to. The spirits there are not bound, not guardians, but they simply exist. He is not surprised to find Danicka there, and he recognizes her communion with the place. The spirits that stir at his approach, curious and wary, seem to consider Danicka merely one of them, a part of the growth, but different in that she can move from place to place, is not rooted. For that, they pity her.

Why don't you frighten me? are the first words she says to him, quietly, when he comes over and sits with her on the grass and the fallen leaves of the largest magnolia tree, which the other two call Mother. He asks her why he should be something that frightens her, finding the question strange. Eventually, after a long silence, she tells him: My brother is a Theurge, too.

When Rolf returns to New Orleans that night, ready to hunt with his brothers and sister, he looks troubled. Asked what's wrong, he can only shake his head and tell them: It is not for me to say.

Danicka spends a lot of time in that garden. A lot of time sitting on the veranda on a bench, watching the grounds. She texts Hana sometime around the turning of the moon from full to gibbous if she wants to meet in New Orleans to go shopping with her. Giselle is staying with Yelizaveta, of course. So Hana meets Danicka on the Riverwalk, and Danicka isn't shopping for jeans or t-shirts. She tries on dress after dress, and she's not satisfied looking at clothes on herself and asking what Hana thinks, Hana has to try on clothes, too. She resists, demands to know why this is necessary, and Danicka's answer is: Because you're hot, dumbass, just because you live with three boys doesn't mean you have to be one. You don't have to worry about any of them falling for you, either, so you can look however you want. Don't you realize how awesome that is?

Hana did not realize how awesome that was. She comes homes with bags. Danicka wanted to buy stuff for her. She insisted, actually, even more than Hana insisted that she couldn't let her, but Danicka -- carrying a bag with shoes, carrying a bag with her purple-and-black dress in it, carrying some new underwear and a new clutch -- handed over her card to the cashier and told Hana it was for her birthday. And name day. So there.

So there, in Hana's possession, a couple of knee-high black boots with a heel low enough to run in if necessary, and a belted black skirt, and a sleeveless blue-gray top with a bit of lace. Right along the neckline. Where her boobies are. She nearly burns it all when Benny points this particular feature out, moritified, but... it was a gift. And: when they start having her slip into the clubs rather than hanging out outside waiting for people, it... actually helps to look like a pretty blonde girl wanting to charm her way in and dance.

Saturday the 26th, the moon overhead is exactly the same as it was the night Danicka was born. She, like her brother, like Rolf, was born under a crescent moon. Right now it's waning, a sliver in the sky in a city where no stars can be seen and the reflection off of that sickle-like moon is all they have overhead to remind them that their world is spinning through space, that they are always, ever connected to something larger than themselves. A cab pulls up and a group of girls pours out, five of them, all in short skirts and dresses and heels and laughing, laughing. Danicka and Giselle are in that group, Danicka in fluttering layers of purple and a black sash, suede black heels, Giselle in sparkling pale pink, little gold bows on the toes of her shoes. People look, because Giselle's presence makes them think they must be celebrities, but no, they'd be in a limo, wouldn't they?

They pass by the line, outside the rope, going right up to the bouncer, and that's when Danicka -- as eager as the rest of them to get out of the rain, all of them shrieking and giggling -- turns her head by chance and sees Lukas. She grabs him, all but yanks him out of the line, and hauls him with her. One tall, blue-eyed young man amidst a flock of gorgeous girls in expensive clothes. "He's with me," she tells the bouncer, who is parting the velvet rope like magic for these girls, smiling and nodding to Giselle as she passes. Danicka's arm is wound around Lukas's, her skin dampened by rain but warm underneath it. The bouncer flicks his eyes up and down Lukas, then gives a sour-faced nod, waving them in with a cocked thumb.

"Thank you!" Danicka calls to him, gleeful. "It's my birthday!"

And the darkness of the club engulfs them. She's already lost Giselle and the others. She hasn't let go of Lukas's arm yet, even walking past the coat check, up the narrow, crowded stairs, the walls trembling with bass.

Lukas

It drives Lukas a little crazy when he recognizes Danicka in that group of girls. On several levels: it drives him crazy because there's one or more vampires inside, because she has no idea, because she's so beautiful, because she's here when he's been losing himself in his work to try to forget her. He tries not to stare at her, tries not to even notice her, but then she notices him and she's dragging him along.

The bouncer just nods them in. He's pretty sure she's not twenty-one either. In fact he knows she's not. It doesn't seem to matter; pretty girls are always welcome at a place like this. She's clinging to his arm and her skin is wet from the rain and he wonders what her mouth tastes like in the rain, which doesn't fall in drenching sheets tonight. Just a fine, mistlike drizzle, light but constant, washing everything.

Sometimes Lukas watches the rain at night. Their flat has a balcony; actally it's just a section of the roof below that isn't walled in. He goes out on it late at night, though, when the streets are a little emptier and the city a little quieter. Sometimes he imagines that the rain washes all things clean. Takes even the memories. Leaves nothing but pristine blankness, a fresh start.

He wonders what would have happened if she hadn't stopped for him that night. If she walked on, would he have ached for her still? Longed for something he never even knew?

But now she's here. And the bass is pounding through his bones, and she's close to his side, and it's too noisy to talk in here but he's glad of that. He doesn't know what he'd say. Last time he saw her they were awkward, and then there was that terrible conversation, and then she was frightened, and then she was crying. And he left. And they barely spoke after that, and two days later he was gone.

A month later now. It feels strange not to write her regularly the way he did. She doesn't know what he's been up to; doesn't know what he's up to right now, so

just before they're on the dance floor he stops, becomes an anchor holding her in place against the inward human tide. He bends to her ear. Even in the last month, he seems to have grown again.

"Is it really your birthday?" he shout-asks.

Danicka

Danicka isn't stopping. She's walking into the throng, up the stairs to the main dancefloor, and it's a little bit easier to yell-talk in the stairwell but not by much. Lukas stops just short of the true entrance, lights flashing through the darkness and dancers standing on pedestals inside, leaning down to 'talk' to her.

"What?" she yells back, and he repeats it, and she nods. "Yeah!" As though he didn't know what a nod meant. She's let go of his arm now, is standing part in front of him and part next to him, letting a few more people pass by. "Look! You don't have to hang out with me! I just thought I'd help you get in since you were waiting!"

What? he has to yell, so she says it again, pretty much the same, a touch louder, and he catches the words he missed.

Lukas

The main dancefloor is a chaos of bodies and lights. Her friends are gone in a heartbeat, lost in the crowd. They probably still think she's with them, though when they discover different a little later they might just think she saw someone, went to meet someone, went off somewhere with someone to pop a pill and fuck all night. Or something.

Lukas would never expect that from her. He still doesn't know. He doesn't even know what she told Rolf once, which wasn't even really a story, just a shadow of a suspicion: fear, her brother. Rolf didn't talk about it, anyway. Lukas is still wondering, but it's in the back of his mind now. More important things to deal with.

"I'm not here to hang out!" he yells, but she starts saying what? again and he grabs her hand, tugs her through the throng toward the so-called VIP room, where it's a little bit quieter and clubbers are getting to know one another for the express purpose of evaluating one another's fuckability tonight.

It's a bit easier to see in here, too. The lights are low - mood lighting - but constant, without the strobe and sweep of the main dancefloor. There are low couches and lower tables set out, drink-studded; there are three people making out against the wall nearby. A girl looks up from one of the couches, glances at Lukas and Danicka carelessly. She assumes they're here to get it on, too,

and for a moment it seems like they might be: he bends down to her, they're close enough that he could be kissing her neck. He's speaking in her ear, though, trying to keep it down, because,

"I'm not here to hang out. I'm hunting vampires,"

isn't something you want to yell in a nightclub, no matter what the ambient noise level is.

Lukas

[delete: "which wasn't even a story ... her brother."!]

Danicka

Lukas grabs her hand and she gives a faint, unheard gasp, dragged along with him. She tells him he doesn't have to stay with her and he doesn't storm off, doesn't give her one of those dark looks that only remind her how badly she can hurt him and leave, but grabs her hand and goes into the dancefloor. And drags her straight to a place where people aren't dancing, aren't shout-talking, but have begun to wind their night down, have chosen someone who is a viable candidate for spending their Saturday night with and kicking out of bed before breakfast on Sunday morning. Danicka is stunned.

And thrilled. And not for a moment does it occur to her that he said he wouldn't push, that he's totally fucking everything up. All that occurs to her is that he's going to kiss her. He's going to wrap his arms around her and lift her against him, maul her face and press her to him til she can feel him through his jeans, hard and warm and eager.

When Lukas bends to her, he can smell that there is already alcohol on her breath, sweat from dancing, other clubs, the smells of the places she's been tonight, the smell of her rich and familiar through her skin. And he can see how her face turns slightly toward his when he bends, and how she goes stock-still when he goes to her ear instead. Embarrassment slams into her like a mallet to the middle of her spine and she wants to cringe, but she doesn't. She draws back.

Is looking at him, just looking for a moment, then gives a couple of quick, sharp nods. "Oh! Okay," she says, less loud than out there, still loud enough to be heard. And wheels around, walking away from him and out of that room in a hurry, straight for the bar. Not the one right by the VIP room, there for the convenience of bottle service waitresses and clientele, but across the dancefloor to one of the other ones.

Lukas

"Wait,"

as soon as she turns around, and maybe she thinks he's going to give her some Very Official Garou Warning about not staying here where there's official business to be done. Go somewhere safe. Hide yourself away. Be a good little kin, precious and protected and out of the way,

but. No. She turns around and --

see. He saw. The way she looked at him, the way her face turned a little because she thought he was going to kiss her; saw the look in her eyes, smelled the sweat on her skin, the her on her skin. Saw and smelled and felt and could all but taste her, wants to taste her, so

-- he's right there in front of her, he's putting his hands on her face and; oh, kissing her.

Danicka

If he's not here to hang out, he is most certainly not here to kiss her. He is here on Very Important Official Garou Business. His pack's name includes the words 'vampire hunters'. That's why he's here, and what he's doing. Hunting vampires. His packmates are out there waiting for him to flush out quarry, Hana is out there sniffing the crowd for the leeches, and he's their Ahroun. They're all hunters, all fighters, but he's their Alpha. He's their warrior, their warleader, and he is not here to make out with pretty girls or grind up against them on the dancefloor. He's not here to drink, even. He's not here for the reason even the vampires are here, which is to have a good time.

Danicka knows that now. He wasn't just out to spend an evening with a fake ID gotten from some Walker with connections, dance a bit, drink, find a girl -- which is what she thought when she got him inside. She still got him inside. Least she could do. She wouldn't leave him standing out there half-under an awning, splattered by rain, after seeing him. That's all.

When he tells her to wait, she doesn't hear him. When he walks after her, she doesn't even notice him at first, the club too loud and her mind already too stirred by alcohol from dinner, the bar, the other club they've already been to. She startles when he's suddenly in front of her, convinced that yes, this is him giving her the warning, telling her to go, there are vampires here or he thinks there are, she needs to go be safe, get Giselle, fuck the other girls, get out, go home. He doesn't care if it's her birthday, go find somewhere else to be.

But that thought is there and gone in a flash, because his hands are on her face, this time when he bends to her he is kissing her. He can feel and hear her intake of breath, even as she kisses him back, her eyes closing. He can feel how instantly she surrenders to that kiss, to what's between them. All she can think of is how it's been almost a year since they kissed. The last time was so soft and slow, and her arms were around him, he didn't want to let her go but they had to. When she walked away, she was glowing, and Lukas felt like she was his. She's wanted to kiss him since she saw him on the porch a month ago, standing in the sun and staring at her. She wanted to kiss him every night he stayed at the plantation. She wanted him to kiss her in that garden.

They didn't kiss in that garden. Certainly not like this, touching each other's faces, her clutch dangling heavily from one wrist but her palms soft on his skin, eyes closed and bodies close together, eating at one another's mouths like they're hungry for it, aching, seeking some kind of relief. This kind of kiss can only spiral downward, out of control, take them inevitably to closeness so deep it's almost painful, to ecstatic relief, to peace, everything, and she thinks if she kisses him and if he takes her away from here and if she goes with him and she slips out of her dress and pulls him out of his shirt it's going to be just like it was the first time. And that will be a covenant between them, unspoken and esoteric,

one she's already broken once.

Danicka has been kissing him for seven seconds. Eight. She breathes in suddenly, pulling away, taking her hands off of him, looking at him as she moves out of his grasp. Stares for one second, her eyes stricken. Then: "...You don't have to do that either," she shout-says, because she knows. He saw what she thought when he first bent to her, he came after her when she was embarrassed. He hasn't spoken to her in three and a half weeks. He made it pretty clear before then he didn't really want to hang out with her.

"I should go find Giselle!" she says, and this time, waits to make sure he's not going to come after her again before she tries to go.

Lukas

Danicka draws back long before Lukas is ready. When she does, he's staring at her, his eyes are feral and black-amidst-blue; he's staring at her like not a single one of her words manages to compute. She should go find Giselle, she says, and she's waiting, and he's wondering if she even knows how long it's been.

Of course she knows. It's been nearly a year. Ten and a half months. She knows because she was there the last time, and the other girl in the middle, the one in the club, she didn't slake his thirst at all. He's dying for her, and when she's done talking he puts his hands on her, and it's her body this time, her waist between his hands, god she feels so good, he remembers the way her breast felt but he has the presence of mind, at least, not to feel her up right here.

He just kisses her again. Like he didn't hear a word she said, like he's forgotten the vampire(s) even now zeroing in on prey; like his pack isn't out there waiting for him to call the target, make the first move. If she puts her hand to his chest she can feel his heart hammering, she can feel the vibration of a moan - or a growl - through his lungs as he eats at her mouth.

Danicka

God, she knows how long it's been. And in ten and a half months she was with a dozen or more others. Men and women. She doesn't think much about it. She thinks that this makes her a pretty bad person, that she can fuck and not care, that she'd rather have the freedom to fuck and not care than be with the one she does care about. The one who is different. The one who looks at her the way he does, and stirs something inside of her til it ignites, filling her until her skin feels like it's caught fire, too. She doesn't even have the excuse that he was her first so of course she's hung up on him.

She does know she was a different person ten and a half months ago. She doesn't know if she can tell him that, if she wants him to know that. Because whatever she still feels for him, he certainly won't feel the same about her. And if she has sex with him he'll know. She won't even have to say anything, he'll just know how different she is when he's inside of her, and she's terrified.

But he's kissing her, putting his hands on her body and moaning -- or growling -- as he does so, making her heart beat against her ribs like an eagle flapping its wings against the bars of a cage. She thinks those slender white bones are going to break from every impact. Danicka does put her hands on his chest. Not to feel him, though god she can feel him, feel how hot he is, how firm, but to push him away, shaken.

This time she doesn't say anything, she doesn't wait, she just goes.

Lukas

This, too, is beyond his comprehension. She wants it - wants him. He could feel it, the way she responded, the way her heart thudded so hard against her ribs that he could feel it all the way down where his hands where, at the very lowermost arc of those bones. She wants him, but when she puts her hands on him, kissing him, she doesn't pull him closer. Her fingers don't twist into his shirt, pull him hard against her; her palms press against him instead. She pushes him away, and for a second he isn't even budging, he doesn't get it, and then

they break apart. Her eyes are wild. He thinks of a deer - no; a fox, something fiercely intelligent and wary. She just goes. She can hear him calling after her, or maybe that's just some trick of the music. He thinks of following her, but

he doesn't.

Her friends are on the dance floor. They want to know where she's been. It's so awesome here, oh my god I love this song!

His pack is waiting for his go. He finds Hana on the dance floor, and she's dancing with one of the marks, and she meets his eyes over the man's shoulder and her voice is in his mind, questioning:

have trouble with the bouncer or something?

and he just shakes his head. She looks at him a moment longer. She can tell something's up. She doesn't ask, because then he says:

Is he?

And she says: Yes.

And he says: Okay then. Let's do this.

Danicka

Her friends are on the dancefloor, wanting to know where she's been, dancing together, but Danicka doesn't answer. She walks into their midst and takes Bethany's face in her hands and kisses her, deep and unrelenting, the sheer suddenness of it enough to make people near by nudge each other and stare. It's the sensuality of it that makes Bethany go weak in the knees, shocked at the kiss itself, shocked at how her mouth seems to have a direct line to the sudden heat between her legs, and she doesn't know what on earth to do and sincerely hopes that Danicka does, because god. She gives a soft, thin moan that no one hears, kissing Danicka back, and the other girls are just stunned, Giselle is stunned and wary.

Danicka tastes dust. She swallows when she pulls away, looking at Bethany. Bethany's eyes are glazed. She's aroused, and she's confused, and one of the girls -- Yvette -- yells: "Oh god, Dani!" with a bit of a squeal, and the look Danicka gives her makes her think she's next, and her mouth and eyes are wide open, and Giselle trills something in French, shaking her head, taking Danicka and saying she needs another drink, clearly, silly thing!

"I think she's had enough!" yells Maria, cackling.

Halfway to the bar, Giselle is still holding tight to Danicka's arm, yelling in her ear. Her lips purse on every oo, every w, her throat rolling the r. "What is wrong with you?"

"I saw Lukas!" Danicka says back, the tone of her voice necessitated by the noise in the club removing so much meaning, so much feeling. Giselle doesn't need it, though. She frowns, and slips her hand down to hold Danicka's, and elsewhere the plan is going forward, the pack is luring the vampire to the door, to the alley, to wherever they need him to be. Near the edge of the crowded dancefloor, Giselle is putting her arms around Danicka, who puts her head on the other girl's shoulder in dejection. Because she is a horrible, horrible human being, and she ruins everything she touches. Everyone.

Giselle pats her back, gives it a gentle rub. "We go!" she says, decisively, pulling Danicka away and nodding at her. "Go to some small, nice place -- not so loud! You need different kind of celebration now. Just close friend, yes?"

Danicka stares at her. It's the first time Giselle's called her a friend and Danicka's believed it. Much less a close friend. "What about --"

"Ditch the bitches!" Giselle says, throwing up her hands. "They are not our kind. They will be fine. Come." She grabs Danicka's hand again, and walks her toward the door, utterly enlivened by the alcohol she's had, the freedom she's experienced, the debauchery that's led to caution instead of fear, the closeness she feels to the one and only woman she's ever been with, or will ever be with. She is not afraid of Frisbees anymore, either. She is a badass Silver Fang bitch, she thinks to herself, delighted. She pities the hero her aunt finds for her to mate with! He will not know what to do with her! She will throw a Frisbee at his head when he tries to yell at her!

They burst back out into the rain, not fifteen minutes since they went inside. Not ten minutes since Hana found her mark and let the pack know.

Lukas

And out in the rain, there's a war going on.

The club's back door opens onto a quieter street. And off that street there's an alley, and in that alley there are barely-restrained snarls. Bodies thumping against walls. A dumpster goes flying, hits the wall and knocks bricks loose, crashes down with mindboggling noise. It's raining harder now; makes it harder to see the details, and anyway it's dark, the lights out, but

there are seven in the alley, one at the mouth of it keeping watch; seven are embroiled in mortal combat, and three of them are not human, and four of them are monsters. One is living shadow - a shadow lord in truth. Another is twisted and hideous, a creature of naked bone and contorted flesh. The rest are human-seeming, but they move so fast, hit so hard. One of them threw the dumpster. The other can barely be seen; he's a blur. The three wolf-beasts on them, tearing at them, twisted in the shadows, seem natural by comparison.

The sentry at the alleymouth sees Giselle and Danicka. He's hulking and huge; it takes a moment to recognize him as Benny. Laughing, wise-guy Benny, who looks like a beast right now, his teeth jutting from his lips, fur bearding his face.

"Company!" he shouts. "Kin!"

It's the second word that makes one of the wolves, the largest and blackest, whip suddenly about. It's an instant's distraction, no more. It's enough: the bony monstrosity seizes him, twists him, bones crack, throws him - the hispo-wolf hits the wall a foot from Danicka, crumples down in a heap. Any other animal would be dead, beyond dead.

This one starts getting up again, bones fusing, joints popping back into place. He just seems angrier.

Danicka

In New Orleans, you do not investigate slamming dumpsters and noises in alleyways. Danicka would not do this on any normal night. Tonight, she knows what it is when she hears the first half-snarl, a certain kind of breathing in the dark. Lukas said they were hunting vampires. She does not need to feel their fangs in her jugular twice in her lifetime to know to run. They can't run, not in heels that are three or four inches high. But the alleyway isn't so far that they aren't seen, too, Benny calling out that they're there. Danicka isn't watching to see the black hispo get distracted; she grabs hold of Giselle and starts to move away, yelling out: "RICK!"

Because she knows he's there. He has to be there. She wouldn't have obeyed but Giselle still would, has told Rick via text each location they were going to while they were en route. So Rick is somewhere near this club, waiting to be called, just in case. Just as Christian is on the belvedere of the mansion, all in black, with binoculars and a sniper rifle, watching over the grounds while Yelizaveta lies asleep in her room. They are always there. Just in case. They -- both barely-bred kinfolk, both unfit as true mates, both already fathers of bastards who have not bred true -- are expendable. The daughters of Fangs and the sister of a Theurge -- who gave them both the willies when they met him -- are not.

The wall shudders where a body hits it, and Danicka lets out a shriek in shock. She yanks Giselle back, making the other girl almost stumble. The black thing gets up, snarling, and Danicka plows forward again, almost running into Rick, Rick who is carrying a very large handgun in his right, pushing the car keys at Danicka with his left. "Across the street. Go."

She knows better than to ask where. In fact, she knows exactly what to do, and moves quickly, because

she and Giselle are eighteen and nineteen. She and Giselle are future mothers of Garou. She and Giselle are not fighters, cannot run, have no weapons but the taser in Danicka's bag, and they have been over this a hundred thousand times with the two Fianna kinsmen. And frankly, the Fianna kinsman knows exactly what his job is. He stays out of the way. He stays, as best as possible, out of sight of the vampires. He remains outside the alleyway. He has the cellphone to call the kinswomen who have his car and its ample trunk space and trash bags and hatchet. He has the gun to defend himself, and to pick off stragglers if they bolt. His job here is not to fight with -- much less for -- the pack of Cliaths unless, by some miracle, they begin to flag. His job is to make sure those vampires don't go after the two sweet-smelling, hot-blooded females, or at very least slow them down.

So Rick gives a quick upward nod to Benny: Sup, it seems to say, while he stands outside the alley's bend, firearm at the ready. Inside the club, the bass is thumping. Across the street, Danicka is getting into the car with Giselle and throwing her shoes off, shoving the key in the ignition, wondering which one was Lukas. And which was one was Hana. And whether or not that one that fell at her feet was poor Rolf or --

she stops thinking. Drives.

Lukas

RICK, Danicka shouts, and like magic the kinsman is there. He was always there; that's his job. Not to lounge around the plantation and keep Lizzy compnay, not to have lunch with the Cliaths, not to fuck the girls when they were feeling horny, but to protect them all. That's his job, and that's his nature.

The gun in his hand is huge. It catches the streetlight dully. He gives his keys to Danicka without taking his eyes from the alleyway, and

when he takes up his post there, Benny looks across the alley's mouth at his new and unexpected ally. Benny looks so serious right now, so focused and intense, that he's barely recognizable. At the end of the day, no matter his class-clown mannerisms, no matter his youth and his scrawny frame, he is not a Bone Gnawer, not a Child of Gaia, none of those lesser tribes. He is a Shadow Lord, and he is here to get shit done.

And with someone else taking up sentry duty, he knows what his role is. He gives Rick a nod, and then the curly-haired Galliard is wholly unrecognizable, warping in an instant into something inhuman. There's a rush of hot fur, wild-animal musk. He gives a short, sharp snarl to signal his approach to his packmates, and then he leaps into the fray.

Four on four are not good odds for vampires. The bloodsuckers are masters of the night, masters of intrigue and the strings that move behind the scenes. Though there are hotblooded, warlike ones amongst their numbers, that is not their strength, and those vampires rarely live to gain true power. In open combat against werewolves, the vampires are at a severe disadvantage. As young as these werewolves are, as recently graduated to Cliathhood, their very claws and teeth shred undead flesh like paper.

One of the vampires is already dead, a desiccated husk on the ground, aging eighty years in the time it took for him to crumple. Another one is backed into a corner, Rolf and Hana snarling at him, and a third, who was going to help his cornered friend, turns now to face the new threat Benny poses.

The fourth is the twisted monstrosity that hurled Lukas out of the alley. When he sees the Ahroun picking himself back up, shaking his bones back into place - when he sees the Ahroun's glaring eyes and bared teeth, counts the numbers stacked against him, he makes a decision.

A Sabbat pack is nothing like a werewolf pack. There's no true loyalty there, and the fleshtwister's cold heart feels no remorse, no contrition, as he abandons his companions. No guilt, either, as he seizes his friend's arm on his way out -

and the other vampire is turning, Kartal, thank fuckin god, help me out man

-- and screaming as his flesh warps, his bones splinter through his skin, grows into a twisted organic tangle that snares Hana, snares Rolf. The entangled werewolves are snarling, snapping. The vampire is screaming. Benny skids to a stop beside them, horrified, immediately starts chewing on the mess. Lukas is there a second later, but Hana barks at him:

Go, we got this!

So Lukas leaps over the mess, hits the ground running.

The fleshcrafter is running too. As he goes his bone spurs retract, his flesh remolds, his face reforms out of the grimacing gape of his mouth. By the time he hits the street he looks human again. This is when Danicka's car comes skidding around the corner, and without a second's pause the vampire leaps, crosses the gap with impossible speed and alacrity, slams onto the rear bumper and starts punching through the rear window.

Danicka

In the amount of time it takes Danicka and Giselle to get out of the way and across the street, into the car and the engine turned over, so much has happened in the alleyway they just left behind. Dead vampires, twisted vampires, and one running. The Garou pile three on one -- in a matter of speaking. And Rick, not understanding the snaps and snarls of the wolves, much less through the screams of the fleshcrafted undead, does not know what is going on until he looks down into the dark and sees that four have become three, and he doesn't see enough leech bodies. At least he swears in a different language before taking off on foot.

And that's the truth of it: no, he's not there to provide backup for the Garou, ultimately. The whole point of standing sentry was to keep them from running, catch them as they left. But there's another entrance on the other side. Of course there is.

Danicka's car is not skidding until that vampire launches himself onto it. She drives quickly, but they're in the middle of the city, Saturday night. Traffic is not so easy and clear -- and Danicka is not so great a driver, nor even remotely sober -- that she can go like a bat out of hell, or the Transporter or whatever. There is no reason to draw attention to herself, particularly when she's inebriated. There's no reason to drive like she's running away from something. The vampires didn't even know about her and Giselle.

Maybe it's just bad luck that makes him go for that car. Maybe he smells her. But Danicka lets out a shriek when the car jerks from the weight of the leech, and she does not know what to do. She hopes someone sees. She hopes they run to help her, but she knows that just means more people are going to die. This is not what she's used to. Loud, angry vampires doing inhuman things. They survive in this city -- rule this city -- by blending into it. Taking their prey quietly. This is not a situation she's ever been in before, perhaps will never be in again.

Giselle is screaming. Danicka stomps on the brakes, and the Toyota behind Rick's Volvo crashes into the rear bumper, sandwiching the fleshcrafter's leg, pushing the Volvo forward, exploding the airbags. Rick hears -- a girl screaming, and glass breaking, and people yelling. He's running down the sidewalk, gun held low, pushing through people.

Lukas

The noise that comes out of the vampire's mouth when his leg is crushed isn't a sound that can come out of a human throat. It's rough as a stone, serrated as a knife - it's not so much a scream as a roar, a promise of horrible things to come.

The back window webs. He is unthinkably strong. On the next punch his fist goes through, glass lacerates him but he doesn't seem to feel it, Danicka can't see it but his leg is simply regrowing itself so that it's not caught anymore. It's all fueled by blood, blood, stolen blood.

Rick is twenty feet away when he sees the bloodsucker's fist - the one that's punched through the back window of Rick's car - change shape. It's not the literally mystical shapeshifting of Garou, when things just happen, matter appears out of nothing. This is crafting, molding, flesh running molten like wax, bones restructuring. His arm becomes a lance, growing forward fast as a thrust, fast as a shot. Giselle is looking back at him and screaming so she does what she does best and cowers, so that first thrust misses her by a hair.

The second time the fleshcrafter's bone lance strikes, he doesn't miss. It nails Danicka right in the shoulder, pierces her through and through. People are screaming outside, and then they're screaming - somewhere far back in the saturday night traffic that's already piled up from the accident, piled up from panicking citizens - somewhere back there cars are getting batted, shoved, thrown aside like toys.

"Drive, meat," snarls the vampire, pulling himself free of the wreckage, clawing the window apart, crawling in, "or I'll make your heart crawl out your throat."

Danicka

There is pale dust filling the interior of the Volvo from the airbag deployment. The car has stopped and the airbags are already beginning to deflate, but Danicka is unzipping her clutch and grabbing something inside while Rick is running toward them, while the vampire behind them is re-crafting his arm and Giselle is shrieking, waiting to be told what to do. Danicka is shaking, then Giselle gives a shriek and the people outside give a horrified cry. Danicka looks up, trying to ask what, but Giselle crumples and something shoots by Danicka's face, piercing the dash. Danicka's eyes go wide.

And then the waxen-looking lance jerks back and Danicka whips her head around. She sees it coming, but it's a fraction of a second away. She flicks something with her thumb and the lance runs through her shoulder. The scream she lets out is not one of fear but agony, her mind blowing apart with pain, adrenaline kicking in a second later, roaring through her body to try and hold it together.

She presses the taser held in her left hand against the vampire's flesh and unloads fifty thousand volts. She knows on a normal person it would override their nervous system, take away muscular control, but she has no idea if it will affect the vampire. If it will even hurt him.

From the sidewalk roughly ten feet away, Rick lets off three sudden rounds between the leech's shoulderblades.

Lukas

Most girls would be okay with pepper spray. Most pretty, blonde, clubgoing girls with enough sense to think of self-protection at all would be okay packing a little vial of blinding, choking aerosol. Not Danicka, oh no. She pulls something out of her purse and the vampire is leering at her, his mouth is growing in horrible ways, stretching open at both sides entirely too far to reveal entirely too many sharp teeth, he's asking her what have you got there, little girl? and

she lets him have it. Even the dead have nerves. Even cadavers jerk when electricity hits muscles the right way. Fifty thousand volts slam into the vampire and he loses control of his body. The bone lance jerks horribly in Danicka's shoulder before it's just gone, retracted - bone spurs are popping out and disappearing at random, flesh is contorting.

And then blowing outward in clammy, cold chunks as Rick fires. He can't tell where the shoulderblades are, but he hopes he hit something good. The vampire slumps, sprawled across the trunk of the Volvo.

Rick moves in for the proverbial double-tap, though that little proverb hasn't been coined yet in 2003, and like a bad horror movie monster the leech lurches up, explodes into fullblown monster form that the kinfolk might think of as Crinos, that the Tzimisce's own people would call Zulo. It screeches, mandibles dropping open to unleash the noise. With one swipe of a massive, ropey arm he sends Rick flying back. Limps after the kinsman, twitching, dragging a leg, half-dead but clearly pissed the fuck off, going in for a double-tap of his own.

Danicka

Pepper spray had been on the table. At least, when they first got here. Danicka refused to be confined to the plantation and did not want a constant escort, so that was her option. Pepper spray. Mace. Something for the assholes who want to hurt her because, in their minds, all men secretly do it and all women secretly want it. That was when Christian and Rick made a moment of eye contact, having worked together for so long that they didn't need to verbalize what they were thinking. A few days later, Rick put the five-ounce handheld device on the table -- it's actually quite sleek, really -- and sat there until Danicka's curiosity overwhelmed her and she asked what it was, picked it up, turned it over. Within the hour they were practicing with it.

This is not the first time Danicka has used it. She's familiar enough with it to use her left hand to turn off the safety and activate it, and her face is contorted with pain and anger when she does. She enjoys seeing that it has an effect, that it hurts the fucker, enough to make him lose control, enough to make him jerk away. That's the point. She shrieks again as the lance leaves her shoulder, her body soaring over yet another cliff of horrible sensation. What she knows she needs to do is get out of the car with Giselle and run, or drive, but her right arm is useless at her side and she's not sure if he severed something, something important, but she can't feel her right hand anymore, which is terrifying and she hopes it's just shock, just panic, please, oh god --

Rick stands his ground when the vampire slumps. He knows better than to risk moving closer, so he readies to fire again, glad that for once there are going to be werewolves who might actually help them repair the goddamn Veil. The thing jerks up, regaining control of its muscular functions faster than any human could after a shock like the one Danicka gave him, and ...changes.

"Fuck," Rick says, and turns to run. It isn't fear. It is far from cowardice. The point of firing was to get its attention on him and not the girls. The point of running is to get it to follow him, get him away from the girls. He takes two steps before that arm sends him flying. Rick knows how to take some brutal hits, twisting, but he slams into the side of a car with is left side, briefly stunned. Not stunned enough to keep from preparing to fire again, but he's going to wait this time, wait for the point-blank, wait for the head.

Giselle wants to get out, is tugging on Danicka, wants her to drive, something, but Danicka sways, her taser in her lap. Giselle flaps her hands, then digs around in the back as the airbags deflate, grabbing a small blanket and wrapping it around Danicka's shoulder, pushing her back against the driver's seat, holding her hands down until she feels blood seeping -- quickly -- through several layers of the thick fabric, sticky and warm against her palm as they it presses to the literal hole through Danicka's body. She's shaking, but she gets the taser from Danicka's lap, holding it in her right hand, just in case. Just in case.

"Still not my worst birthday," Danicka quips, closing her eyes.

Lukas

And this is when Lukas heaves one last car aside, leapfrogs one last van, is suddenly there. The vampire is strong, is terrible, is making inhuman noises as it drags itself toward the goddamn meat-with-a-gun. But it's on its last legs, it's making its last stand, it's trying to take one more human screaming down to hell with it. A full-grown Ahroun could tear it apart in an eyeblink; it would barely slow him. And that's what he should do. Leap over there, pull its head off, call his pack in and deal with the screaming humans, the potential veil breaches left and right.

That's not what Lukas does. He doesn't even slow down. His paws hit the ground and he blasts by Rick, passes the vampire, gets to the Volvo and surges into the Crinos form, the shape that Danicka cannot stand to look at,

tears the driver's side door off with one pull. He doesn't look at Giselle; he doesn't look back at the Tzimisce; he certainly doesn't look at Rick. He hauls Danicka out of the car and turns away.

Later there will be a conversation at the packhouse about this. It'll be Benny and Lukas, Benny broaching the topic first:

So... did you even see Rick tonight?

I saw him. He was fine.

Really. Well, did you see the vampire three feet away?

I just said I saw, and Rick was fine. He had it in the bag.

... Okay. Pretend for a minute that it wasn't you, it was one of us. And pretend for a minute it wasn't your eternal flame in the car --

Lukas whipping around, teeth bared, but Benny pressing on,

-- pretend it was just some kin you didn't care about. Like, say, Giselle. Who you just left there, by the way. And meanwhile here's this other dude, also kin, who's about one jammed gun away from being a splatter on the pavement. Pretend one of us saw that, ignored the guy, went straight for the girl, and ran away. What would you --

Benny, how about we cut the showmanship crap. What are you getting at?

I think you know exactly what I'm getting at. If any one of us did that, and it wasn't Danicka in the car, you would have ripped us a new one for it. You fucked up, Lukas.

Before the words are quite out of Benny's mouth Lukas will be on him, fur and fang, snarling. Benny shows his throat, doesn't shift, waits for Lukas to calm the fuck down. And a little later:

Lukas, I'm sorry but I gotta say this. Being able to tear my head off still doesn't make you right. It doesn't make what you did right, either.

... Yeah. I know.

All that. Later. Right now, Lukas doesn't care. He leaves Giselle, leaves Rick, leaves his packmates and the vampire, leaves everyone. He just grabs Danicka, holds on to her, and runs.

Danicka

In a perfect world, there is always a werewolf nearby to save you. An Ahroun, hopefully. One with loyalty to you or kinship, one that is honorable and knows that kin are important, especially the ones with breeding, male and female alike, your tribe or not. In a perfect world, you have more at your disposal than a .45 and a lot of brutal experience, and in a perfect world, you don't have a concussion, and in a perfect world Christian knows he was like a brother to you before you die. In a perfect world, you don't die. You know there's someone coming who will save you, and save everyone, and protect the Veil, because that's his duty.

A rush of black fur just flies past Rick, flies past the vampire, and what Rick feels isn't fear. It isn't even anger. It's something that might infuriate Lukas. Or shame him. What flies through Rick's mind when that werewolf who could end all of this for everyone right now just runs on by is disgust. And that disgust focuses him. The vampire leans in, not salivating like a live thing would but simply opening its maw, pinning Rick to the car with a lance through his gut and opening his mouth to tear Rick's head off and drink him dry straight from the hole where his neck used to be.

Three rapid-fire blasts. The gun doesn't jam. The tzimisce does die. Lukas will be right, later on: Rick had it in the bag. He is also impaled, and he isn't dead yet, but he's pretty sure he's going to be soon. He lets his head fall back to rest against the Chrysler he was slammed against, is pinned to, while the people inside scream, and scream, and scream.

Giselle is a badass Silver Fang bitch. She is quite sure of this, because she is panicked but she did not get hit with that lance, and she had the presence of mind to apply pressure to Danicka's wound, hold her taser, and stay put to wait for help. Help comes, but not for her. A crinos-formed Shadow Lord -- she is quite sure it is one of those Cliaths that stayed with them for a week, so it is Hana or Rolf or Benny or Lukas -- opens the side of the Volvo up. Giselle lets out a shriek but she gets out of the way, certain that it's going to heal Danicka, or carry them both away, but that isn't what's going to happen, especially not because

Danicka goes berserk. It isn't that she starts screaming and batting at things with her hands. She snaps the way ancient warriors used to snap, like she can't feel pain anymore, like she doesn't know there's a giant hole in her shoulder. Giselle has never seen her like this. Lukas cannot fathom why on earth she would react like this, when a moment ago she was steadily losing consciousness. Danicka is roaring, clawing at Lukas's eyes even as he grabs her. She slams her arm -- her right arm, the one whose hand is barely regaining sensation -- against Giselle, flails at her, yanking the taser out of her hand

and pushing it into Lukas's throat,

screaming in his face, wordless and wild.

Danicka

[50,000v at your service]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6) ( success x 1 )

Lukas

With that sudden motion of Danicka's right arm comes a fresh spurt of blood. Danicka can't feel it, but Lukas can smell it, and it drives him out of his mind with outrage, with fear. He's trying to haul her out of the car but she's screaming like a madwoman, she's grabbing a taser and the only thing he can think is maybe she doesn't know it's him, maybe she doesn't recognize him and thinks he's a Dancer, something in league with the vampires -

and then the taser goes off, and fifty thousand volts crack like a whip across his nerves, forces a strangled involuntary snarl out of his throat, loosens his claws, jolts his limbs. It's over in an instant and he's recovering faster than the vampire did, faster than he himself did, even, when his spine was twisted apart, his ribs cracked against a wall. He's reaching for her again and his mind is wheeling, he still can't understand why -

seems that's the running theme with her. He doesn't understand why. He never understands why.

- she's acting like this. He's in Glabro now, downshifting to give her a chance of recognizing him, knowing if she shocks him again like this he'll take it a hell of a lot worse, grabbing her arm and trying to pull her out of the car again while he's saying -- shouting, actually -- over and over:

"It's me. It's me. Danicka, it's me."

The other Cliaths have caught up. Rolf and Hana look a little ragged around the edges. Benny is running ahead, bursting into Crinos to send the screaming pedestrians into a true panic, scattering them. He's looking this way and that, and he can't see Lukas immediately but he sees the kin leaning against the Chrysler. He sees the remains of the vampire. It wasn't old enough to turn into a desiccated husk upon death, and Benny can see enough to tell at a glance that it wasn't claws and teeth that did this one in.

He drops to all fours by Rick. He's leaner and smaller than Lukas, than Rolf, and his eyes are a warm brown. He still looks like a monster. He grinds a few words out:

"Where -- Lukas?"

And then Rolf is there. The Theurge slams a heavy paw down on Rick, not bothering to aim, and crushes a gourd to dust between his handpaw and the kinsman's body.

Danicka

Where -- Lukas? asks Benny, and Rick's eyes are wheeling, at the sky and at the stars and Benny's head. He opens his mouth to answer and blood coughs, rolls out of his lips, his head wavering. He's still holding his .45, laid against his thigh like he's just resting his arm a second. That's when Rolf skids to a stop and crushes the gourd onto the kinsman, yanking the crumbling lance-arm out of his stomach. Water trickles down his rain-and-sweat-and-blood-soaked front, and trickles into the open wound, and begins rebuilding bone, reknitting muscle. Rick spits to the side, and it hits his arm, blood dribbling down with saliva. "The girls," he says, and this is both answer to Benny and plea to them both while he heals.

He's rolling to his side, putting his left hand down to start getting up, his skin not yet fully re-formed over the hole that was left. Hopefully he doesn't have to even say this, hopefully they're already on their way after the Ahroun, but: "Go'on," he coughs, spitting again, feeling stronger by the second, waving them forward with his gun.

Danicka can only press the taser against Lukas's neck for a few seconds before she's just hitting him with it, which won't do much good, as it weighs roughly half a pound, if that. But she does it anyway, trying to tear herself away, resorting to fists and fingernails, trying to kick him, her elbow hitting the horn of the Volvo, Giselle yelling with Lukas, trying to calm her down, stop, Danicka, stop! Lukas is shifting, holding onto her, trying to pull her away, telling her it's him, but she's pale as a ghost.

"No it's not!" she yells back, scrambling back towards Giselle, but that burst of strange, panicked energy is gone, and Lukas is pulling, and so she

is going.

Lukas

Lukas doesn't even know how to respond to that. He stares for a minute, blank. Then he just hauls her out of the car, hauls her up into his arms and there's just a second when he's squeezing her, assuring himself she's okay, she's alive. Turning the next instant to get the fuck out of there when he realizes -

it's over. It's done, the last vampire is taken care of, his packmates are there. Humans are shrieking and running, leaving their cars behind. The Veil isn't so much mended as it's had a giant bandage slapped over it, containing the damage without really repairing it. The Sept will have to be notified, Lukas realizes. Remains need to be disposed of. The wounded need to be healed.

This is when it really registers for the first time that Rick is, in fact, wounded. Badly. Was, at least. He's healing now because of Rolf. He's alive now because of his own trigger finger - no thanks to Lukas at all. And his packmates are gathering around him, looking at him with uncertain, wary eyes, and this is when he realizes he's still holding a half-panicked kin.

He lets Danicka down. He's awkward for a second. Already he knows what he did wasn't right. It doesn't keep him from doing what he does next, though.

"Hana and Rolf, clean up what you can as quick as you can. Benny, let the Sept know they need to do damage control." He's already backing away, heading back toward the Volvo, having every intention of driving away in it. With Danicka. Without his pack, and without Rick, and if Giselle weren't already sitting in it he'd probably leave her, too. "I'll meet up with you guys later."

He can see their faces. He can see the confusion there. He can see they're disappointed in him right now, but

he doesn't really care.

Danicka

That squeeze of his arms around her makes fresh blood roll out of Danicka's shoulder. She lets out a sound that's half-moan, half scream, but she doesn't have any fight left in her. Nor does she have a lot of consciousness left. Lukas wants to feel that she's alive, holds her tightly, and it causes her pain. It makes her slump against him, still awake, still breathing and still bleeding, but on the verge of blacking out entirely as the floor of her adrenaline drops out into a void of pain.

Giselle is sitting there in the car, not sure what to do, but she starts to get out, climbing out. "Rick?" she yells. "Rick!" and starts running toward him, an awkward prance in those heels of hers, Danicka's blood on her arms and her dress where Danicka hit her.

Benny gives him a Look then, when he says 'they need to do damage' control. In fact, his whole pack is staring at him, and Rick is walking toward him, as Lukas is backing away. When it becomes clear he's leaving, Rick raises the .45 and points it at the Ahroun.

It's been said that Rick's great gift is not that he knows how to hit someone badly enough to make it hurt, choose his barstool, and win matches. His gift isn't that he is a beast with a handgun, knows it inside and out, uses it like an extension of his arm. His gift is that he has little to no self-preservation. Even a minute ago, dying on the ground, he was just sort of glad he'd managed to kill that vampire, who was pretty big and badass and dangerous. He was glad that Danicka and Giselle were alive, at least he figured they were, but, y'know, at that point he'd done his best. He accepted death without giving up his duty, and if he had been born true, he would have grown into such a hero.

So it isn't that he has no self-preservation instinct. He does. His truest, deepest gift is self-sacrifice. That's why he went to prison. That's why he could win the matches he did. That's why he shot the vampire and counted it as a victory when it chased after him. That's why, right now, he aims a very large semi-automatic at a furious, irresponsible Ahroun whose instinct tells him this is good, this is right, he is protecting his mate, she will be safe. He will protect her. And it isn't that Rick is in love with Danicka, or wants her for himself, or is concerned about Lukas's behavior as an Alpha, or any of that. In fact, he doesn't even have an 'order' to give said lovestruck Ahroun. What he has, even as he's lifting the firearm, is a question:

"'re you gonna heal 'er, then?"

Lukas

Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )

Lukas

If Danicka had indeed met Lukas when he was twenty-four years old and already settled in his position, settled in his nature, settled in the uncompromising brutality that is the way of the Tribe, he would have reacted very differently to this. Likely there would be a kinsman bleeding on the ground right now, a gun smashed to pieces against a wall. But then again, that Lukas would never have dropped everything to go to the questionable rescue of a woman that didn't even really need it. That Lukas would never have let her stand there bleeding while he - frankly - panicked inwardly.

This Lukas does all those things. And when Rick speaks, and lifts the gun, and points it at him, Lukas turns and just stares. He can't fathom this, can't rightly make sense of it, even as his instinct spikes into rage and his rage licks at the air. Before he can act - before he can make up his mind on how to act - his packmates have already reacted.

It's Rolf, of all of them, who moves first. Poor, happy, clueless Rolf, who explodes into fury when someone points a weapon at his Alpha. He snatches the gun from Rick, dashes it against the sidewalk, snarls in Rick's face even as Hana is putting a hand on his shoulder and Benny is positioning himself behind Rick. Just in case.

"Don't," Rolf grinds out. It's the only word he can come up with, he's so angry. "Just... don't."

And this is when Lukas says, sounding a little abashed - "Rolf. Rolf." When Rolf finally turns from Rick: "Can you heal her?"

He can't.

Danicka

The kinsman isn't really expecting any less. And Rolf won't know that the safety was back on, but he doesn't need to. It doesn't really matter. He could have got a shot off, even if he lost his head for it. He doesn't flip out when the pack gathers around him, puts their hands on him, or when Rolf grabs the firearm and flings it away. Nor does he take his eyes off of Lukas, and the danger in his eyes is that he is actively challenging him. Daring him, almost. Daring him to keep walking, leave them all here, lose his pack's trust, let Danicka bleed out. Daring him to drop Danicka and attack him. Daring him, essentially, to just keep being stupid.

Rolf snarls in his face. Rick looks back at him. Hana can feel how rapid Rick's pulse is through his skin, how much control he is exerting over his own instincts. Rolf is furious. Rick is submissive.

Danicka is unconscious.

Lukas

Lukas can't heal Danicka. Rolf can, but Rolf is still in Rick's face, furious, rage beating off him in waves. Lukas has to call him again, urgent -

"Rolf, I need you to help Danicka, please, now."

And Rolf turns away at last, not just his face but his body as well. He comes over, and his eyes clearing and his brow furrowing as he sees Danicka. He works quickly, and gently: crushing a gourd between his hands, patting the dust onto the unconscious girl. As the wound begin to heal, Rolf takes his hands from Danicka and looks into Lukas's face. Not quite his eyes.

"Benny and I can bring word to the Sept and help clean up," he says softly, "but Hana was injured pretty badly. Maybe you could bring her and the kin back to the plantation tonight?"

It's worded and spoken as gently as Rolf can make it. So gently, in fact, that Benny snorts audibly behind him. Lukas's face burns all the same. He's so young, so inexperienced, but even he knows better than to do what he did tonight. Even he knows that Rolf is right, that he was wrong. Even he knows that even now, Rolf was being kind; Rolf wasn't saying what everyone was thinking -

that he should be here, taking care of clean up, talking to the Sept. That he should assign the task of making sure the kin get home safely to Rolf and Hana, the two more grievously injured. But he's gone so far off what an alpha should do that even going back to the proper path feels a little like shame. He doesn't know what to do.

He doesn't look in Rolf's eyes, either, when he nods. "Why don't you come with me too, Rolf," he says, "you were beat up pretty bad, too." He knows that. He saw that - running past them to chase the last vampire. How did he forget? How did he stop caring? - he looks at his Galliard, then. "Benny..."

The words stick in his throat, thick with shame. Benny looks at Lukas, and he's angry at him, he's disappointed in him, he knows Lukas Fucked Up, but he also remembers Lukas uprooting trees in the woods, crying in the woods, because this girl right here was attacked by vampires, and he wasn't there to help her. Benny takes a deep breath and lets it out.

"No worries dude, I got it," he says lightly. "Go to Sept, tell elders, come back, clean up. Check."

Lukas's smile is rueful. His gratitude is genuine, bone-deep. "Thanks, Benny," he says.

Danicka

Giselle is still there too, of course. Bloodied. And freaked out. Some part of her burns, wanting to storm over and stomp her heel into Lukas's foot, kick him in the shins, hit him, because she's fragile and she's beautiful but she's not -- never has been -- a fucking idiot. Nor is she as quick to forgive as his packmates, because she isn't...well, his packmate. Neither is Rick. The Garou finally calming down has him shrugging Hana off of his shoulder and walking over to pick up his gun, a muscle in his jaw tight with all the things he knows better than to say aloud.

And then there's Danicka, starting to wake up. She's stirring as Rolf is speaking, as Lukas is answering. Her dress is ruined, hanging by one strap over her left shoulder, and the street is an absolute mess. The stronger-willed people are still milling around -- or returning -- and many of those who ran called 911, they think there's a guy dead, there was gunfire...

Rick keeps his distance, and Danicka is stirring against Lukas, and he looks at the Cliaths. "I'll get them home," he says. "You're all welcome there when you're done." He wasn't there when Lukas went off, tearing up trees. And right now he could not care less how the Ahroun feels about it. How much he wants to stay near Danicka.

Danicka is dazed, and her voice is thin, it's possibly only Lukas hears it, a whisper that sounds almost gentle: "Dej me dolu."

Danicka

[Czech: Put me down.]

Lukas

The very thought of being out of sight of Danicka, away from Danicka, has Lukas's teeth baring, his arms folding even more protectively around her. It's quite clear he's about to say no chance in hell! or something similarly choice when Danicka says what she does in the voice she says it in.

And Lukas's heart could break in half. He hates Rick right now, blames him for everything even though that makes no sense. He puts Danicka down, carefully but at once, and when her feet are back on the ground he takes a step back.

"I'll meet you there later on, then," he says. And Benny comes to stand beside him as the parties separate.

Danicka

The truth is that right now, Rick is speaking out of -- what else? -- duty. He thinks Lukas should go fuck himself. Rolf's got some credit for all the visits, for the difference he made in Lizzy, for healing Rick and Danicka, and Rick doesn't really blame him for snarling in his face. He did sort of point a loaded gun at his BFF. So Rolf's welcome. He's got no beef with Hana or Benny, really. But Lukas can stay the hell away til he grows up a little, as far as Rick is concerned.

Except: it's not his plantation. He does not control the spirits guarding the place. He's not a Garou. He's kin. So he tells the pack of Garou that includes Rolf, who saved his life, that they're all welcome there. This is what is right and proper.

"Keys?" he says to Giselle, and she blinks, flustered.

"In the car!" she says, and with one long last look at the pack, she turns and prances back, muttering under her breath in French.

Danicka, while this is going on, is being let gently down on her feet. She has her hands on his arms when he lets her go, for balance for a moment, and she's still bloodcovered and she's still the girl who tried to claw his eyes out, still the girl who tased him and kicked him and refused to believe that he was Lukas, but there's really nothing she can say right now to get that look out of his eyes. There are no words that could describe or explain the look that's in hers. He takes a step back, and she takes a step away, following Giselle to the car.

Rick looks at Rolf. "Thank you," he tells the Theurge, as simple as that, and follows the girls to the Volvo with its destroyed rear bumper and deflated airbags and bloodstained seats, shattered rear window. Danicka could not drive as well, navigate a piled-up street, if her life depended on it. Rick just gets in, starts the car, and maneuvers through the street as quickly as possible, heading the other direction than the sirens. In the back seat, Danicka touches the blanket Giselle used to try and staunch her bleeding. Giselle, also in the back seat, reaches over and takes that hand away from the bloody cloth, holding it.

Somewhere in the half-hour drive back to the plantation, the two other kinfolk fill her in a little, Giselle more than Rick. Rick doesn't hide the fact that he pointed a gun at Lukas. Danicka kicks the back of his seat, which makes him snap Hey! loudly enough, angrily enough, that she wilts, looking out the window, dejected.

When they get out of the car in the garage, he tells them to go inside, tell Christian to come out, and get themselves cleaned up. The blanket goes with them, their clutch purses, Danicka's taser, their shoes dangling from their fingers. Giselle keeps fluttering over Danicka, asking how she's doing. I'm fine, Danicka says. I'm healed. Inside the mansion, Lizzy is sleeping, and Christian has come down from the belvedere, having seen the shape the car was in when they drove in. He keeps on going, out of the mansion, out to the garage, while the girls pile into Danicka's en suite and begin stripping down, their skins tacky with blood, drying under their fingernails.

In the shower, Danicka tells her everything. About finding Lukas outside, yes, but not just 'I ran into Lukas'. She tells her about what he told her, and about the way he kissed her, and kissed her again. Giselle tells her what happened in the car, because Danicka only vaguely remembers what happened before she passed out. It helps it come back. She finds out she hit Giselle and covers her face with her hands. None of this would have happened if we'd just stayed in the club, she says. Giselle wraps her arms around her, holds her under the water. She murmurs to Danicka that everyone is alive. Everyone is all right. That is what matters. Danicka does not cry.

Later on, Rick and Christian come in from the garage. It takes a long time to work on the blood, the glass, to convey information, to decide whether or not they can take care of the airbag issue themselves or if they need to find a kin in town. Wasn't there a guy with an auto shop, some Walker kin? Wait, I thought he was Gnawer. Who the fuck cares, can he do it? I'll call him in the morning. Etcetera. They talk about other things, too. And so it goes.

Inside, cleaned up and dresses and blanket bagged for disposal, venting about new dresses barely worn and tossed out done, cartridge on taser replaced, Giselle and Danicka go out to the kitchen and cook. They cook because Rick and Christian should eat, and because they should eat, and because the Garou are coming and will need to eat, and because they cannot sleep. They need something to do with their hands. So soon enough the two men-at-arms do come in, and clean up, and come to eat. And Danicka and Giselle eat, all of them quiet.

And later still, Rick tells them he's going to bed. Christian will wait up until the Garou are here, at least, before he turns in. Giselle and Danicka head inside, ostensibly to go to bed. That is not where Danicka is when Benny's car turns onto the grounds of the plantation, though. Giselle is in bed, fast asleep. Rick crashed when his head hit the pillow. Lizzy flops over in her sleep, and Christian sits in the kitchen, listening for the gate, drinking a beer. Danicka sits on the veranda outside of her room, curled up on a bench in striped shorts made of thin cotton and a pale blue t-shirt, her tousled hair pulled up off her neck into a high, messy bun. Her legs are tucked up, her chin against her hand, watching the road. She has a blanket wrapped around her.

The Gentlemen rustle slowly, meditatively. Patiently.

Lukas

Lukas is burning up all the way to the ex-YMCA, all the way through Benny's official Galliard report, all the way back to Bourbon Street, all the way through cleanup. He can't sit still, can't bear to, so they give him the job of hacking up what remains of the bodies. When everything's done and the kin have been called to sweep up the media-and-police mess, when all that's left is driving the body parts somewhere to dump, the Guardian in charge of cleanup - who gets cleanup calls because without a Caern, it's not like it's life or death if the YMCA stays guarded at all hours - turns them loose because she can tell it's killing Lukas to be there.

So they drive back. They drive all the way back to the plantation Lukas hasn't been to since he left, and he drives with the pedal to the metal, speeding until Benny reminds him that if the cops pull him over he'll get there even later. Plus, they can't afford a speeding bust.

At the gates, Lukas isn't sure he needs to redo the whole ritual. Benny thinks maybe he ought to just to be safe, but Lukas can't bear the delay, so he slams the car to a stop and jumps out and runs through the door and

when he's within earshot of the Gentlemen, he drops to his knees, drops to all fours, digs a hole in the earth and whispers his secret to it the way some ancient Greek did in some myth he read when he was little, but has since forgotten. There's a girl inside, he whispers to the very earth, and my soul calls her mate even if I don't have the right to yet. She was hurt tonight, and I need to see her. Please. Please, let me in.

And then he's up on his feet, and before Benny can stop him, he's running up that long drive, running with the swiftness of youth, the sureness his Garou constitution gives him - the speed that sheer desperation alone affords.

When Benny gets to the kitchen, he's alone. He looks surprised to see Christian. They have a bit of awkward small talk, and then Benny fills in whatever details the girls and Rick missed. The battle from the Garou standpoint: a perfect ambush, a routine hunt, right up until Danicka and Giselle burst into the middle of it and Lukas just lost his head. Benny is angry and Benny is confused and even though Benny was there when Lukas sobbed in the woods Benny still doesn't understand what the hell the big deal is about Danicka. He bites back the rant that wants to burst out, though, because even angry he's loyal. He just accepts a beer if Christian offers one.

And then there's Lukas. Who does not go to the kitchen. Who runs all the way up the drive, who runs up the steps to that sprawling veranda, who skids to a stop at the door because he sees Danicka outside. He's panting, sweaty, dirt on his palms. He feels like a fool. It's way too late to pretend to be coolheaded so he doesn't even try. He looks around, finds a friendly tree, climbs up to the second story like a high school sophomore sneaking into his girlfriend's bedroom.

When he stops in front of Danicka he has to bend over with hands on knees and pant for a while.

Danicka

They don't need to re-do the rituals. They leave the car out by the gate just in case though, and they walk in, and Lukas can't stand to go to each Gentleman's grave and attend to the water and swear an oath to the heron so he just drops to his knees, his packmates coming behind him. He digs a hole in the ground, and Danicka can see him there. She sees him drops and sits up on her bench, her spine straight as an arrow suddenly, but he's digging. His pack isn't rushing to him to take care of him, he's just... kneeling. She can't see any better than that in the dark.

The Gentlemen do not understand, but neither do they mind. They do nothing to him as he runs past them, over the brick bridge, and Danicka knows he's coming for her. She sees Hana and Rolf and Benny coming, too, but they aren't running like him. They aren't acting like him.

In the kitchen, it's dim but there's a light on over the sink. Benny comes in and Christian gives him a nod. He tells him there's some food in the fridge -- simple food, hamburgers and roasted potatoes, there's buns over there, and tomatoes and stuff in the fridge door -- and beer if he wants it. Benny tells him about what happened tonight. He mentions that Lukas lost his head but he bites back the rest. Christian can sense it, and to tell the truth, he heard plenty of it from Rick. The actual ranting, that is. He can feel the Galliard's anger, but he has no advice that wouldn't automatically be rejected because of what he is. He doesn't understand, after all, what it's like to be in a pack, have an Alpha. He's heard that enough, and he's heard enough about Shadow Lords, to know he should just keep his mouth shut. So Benny gets a beer, and Christian taps the bottles together, and they drink.

Danicka stays where she is, even though she can hear Lukas breathing now, knows he's coming. She wonders if he'll come inside and up the stairs and out through one of the rooms to the veranda or if he'll just climb up the side of the house. He does the latter -- well, he climbs a tree. And he can see her watching him from the branches when he swings over, drops onto her side of the railing, and stands there, panting. She stares at him. When he lifts his head a little while later, she reaches up, tugs aside the collar of her t-shirt, and shows him the pristine skin where there used to be a bloody hole. She releases it a moment later, then looks at the empty space on the bench beside her. Looks at him.

Lukas

He doesn't need to see that. He knows she's healed. He doesn't need proof of it, her skin unblemished and untouched. He doesn't need to see what will only inflame him, rocket him back four hours to when he first saw her tonight and almost gave up everything he was supposed to do for her.

And yet - he does need to see that. He desperately needs to see that she's all right, feel it, smell it. And when proof positive is given, Lukas calms noticeably. He swipes his forearm across his hairline, skims sweat off his brow, and then drops onto the empty space beside Danicka. Quite frankly, he stinks: he smells like sweat and adrenaline and rage, exertion. He smells a little like death, the bloodsuckers he killed.

The wind moves through the trees. It stopped raining a while ago, but soon it'll start again. Lukas's voice is almost as quiet when he speaks.

"When I got that letter from you," he says softly, "that a vampire almost got his fangs in you, I almost lost my mind. I knew that you were all right. I knew that it was weeks in the past by then. But I was so angry - at the vampire, and at myself, because I wasn't there."

And that's where he trails off. He doesn't know where to go from there. Isn't sure why he's telling her in the first place. He looks at his hands, then out at the lawn and the dark trees beyond. He doesn't tell her she's why he's in Louisiana. That her experience is why his entire pack is called the Vampire Hunters; why, in a way, his pack even exists at all. He doesn't tell her because it doesn't seem fair to heap so much responsibility at her door, when he's shirked almost all responsibility tonight, himself.

Danicka

They're cleaning up, Rolf and Hana, but only barely. They are exhausted, wounded, they need to drop into a heavy sleep in non-human forms and wait for their bodies to come back together around them. Benny has a beer and he has his anger. Everyone else is so clean. Rick has washed the blood from his mouth, Christian is waiting to go to bed but doesn't want to leave Benny alone, he feels bad for the guy, he's a Fianna -- he won't leave a warrior to drink alone after a battle. Lizzy is pristine as ever, waiting to hear in the morning about Danicka's birthday, because she's almost thirteen and she does want to know, she wants to go clubbing, she wants to wear heels and makeup, if only to try them out. Giselle is clean, and sleeping in her soft bed, her cheek against her pillowcase, her lips parted just a little bit.

And Danicka smells like soap and herself and like night air. Lukas, however, is filthy. He sits beside her and she wants to extend her blanket to him, but the truth is, she's afraid of how he'll react. Every reaction is so intense, so passionate, so much. If she gives him part of her blanket will he reject it -- not because he doesn't need it but -- because he wants to give her space in some small way? If she offers to share it with him will he read too much into it, will he curl against her side, will he hate her if he is close to her and she's telling him his fixation on her scares her in a way that he, himself, never did? Is there any way to offer him comfort and tenderness that does not make or break everything they are?

She keeps the blanket around herself, and that is not a fix, that doesn't feel right, but she doesn't know what will right now. But he does sit by her, and after awhile, he tells her about how he reacted when she wrote to him about the vampire that bit her. It was awhile ago, but not long enough. She will never forget that feeling. It wasn't even the same as what happened tonight. It was so terrifyingly intimate. It was slow. She could feel her life draining out of her. There was no shock, no adrenaline surge to sour the taste of the blood for the leech. She'll never forget.

And he doesn't have to tell her why that she's the reason he's in this state. So they hunt vampires -- they're werewolves. They should be. She thinks all Garou in New Orleans do that. And they all do, though none call it their purpose, like this pack does. Danicka does know this much, though: he's here because of her. Even when she won't have him.

"I wished you were there," she says quietly, after a long silence of not knowing what to say at all. She's looking at him. "Not... right then, even. Not to kill it or protect me or whatever. But afterward, when I got back here. That's when I wanted you the most."

Lukas

Lukas doesn't say you and me both, though that's the truth. He doesn't say much at all. There's a brief, humorless laugh. He doesn't share her blanket, and he doesn't ask to share it. He doesn't even though the thought crossed her mind at all.

After a while he says, slowly, "I'm sorry if I'm... too intense. I know you want space. And I try not to think of you as mine, or mine to protect, or ... at all more important than any other kin to my blood. But you are. And I just can't help that."

Another moment goes by. He looks at her again.

"I just came to say that," he says softly, standing. "And to see you. I'll let you be now."

Danicka

"Don't," Danicka says, as soon as he stands up. "Lukas, please don't."

Her hand is holding his. She doesn't know when that happened, but he does. She took it when he moved, reached for him and captured the ends of his fingers, held on. Danicka discovers this, but she doesn't let go. "We don't have to talk if you're tired, or if you just don't want to. But please just... sit with me awhile, at least."

He can see the way her throat moves when she swallows. "All I've wanted since last summer was to be around you. And we don't have to call it anything or decide anything or it be one thing and not another, I just... want you to stay near."

Lukas

"I can't be near you without wanting to kiss you."

This comes as a hushed, rushed whisper; he doesn't even look at her. His rage is low now, but so is his will. He can barely stand to look at her, not because he doesn't like to look at her but because he's afraid he won't be able to control himself.

"Or wanting to tear your clothes off. Touch every inch of you. Fuck you."

It's the first time he's ever used that word to refer to what they did. Or what they could do. What he wanted to do, maybe, when he took her face between his hands tonight and kissed her in the club, kissed her over and over again until he was out of breath and she was pushing him away. "I'm sorry," he says. For being crass, maybe. Or for talking about it at all. Or for feeling it in the first place. He's trying to extricate his fingers, gently but insistently. "I should go."

Danicka

If he'd shown up tonight at the plantation, come looking for her after she'd danced and drank and gone home to bed, it might be different. If he'd shown up tomorrow, willing to come near her, to hold her hand, to be close to her without the whole world collapsing, it might be different. Her heart breaks when he tells her he's sorry, and he should go. Not when he tells her he wants to kiss her, touch her, fuck her. That hurts because she wants it too, and because wanting it and wanting him does not make sense, does not mesh with how scared she is of how tightly he wants to hold her. She doesn't know how to make this better.

She just wants him to be near.

Danicka gently lets go of his hand, and draws her hand back to herself, her face hot and her eyes burning. She nods, looking down. "Okay." Danicka exhales a breath. "There's food in the kitchen if you guys need to eat," she says quietly.

Lukas

Perversely, a part of him wants her to ask him to stay again. Wants to say, if you ask me to stay again I will. Don't you know that?

He knows he shouldn't, though. He knows she can't handle him being so near right now, and he can't handle not being nearer still. She lets go. Their hands separate, draw back to themselves. He opens and closes his once, then takes a breath.

In lieu of a goodnight, "Happy birthday, Danicka."

Danicka

The truth is, she can handle him near. She wants him to stay so badly, wants him to just sit with her, and be with her, and they can just be quiet. They can just be together. She wants it so much it hurts that he says he can't. But no, that's what she already knew, and she can't blame him: being around her, he wants everything. Every last drop, every inch. He wants to consume her, hold her within him, so tight so close forever and ever and have all of her, everything, always. He simply can't bear anything less. Can't stand it.

So he has to walk away. She has to understand that. Danicka brings her blanket up a little more around her and doesn't look at him. She nods. "Thanks," she whispers,

and lets him go, crying out inside for him to stay, please stay.

Danicka

It was nearly three in the morning when Lukas left Danicka on the veranda. When she silently begged him not to leave and he inwardly asked her to ask him again to stay. It's been hours since the Bourbon Street Vampire Hunters got into it with not one, not three, but four goddamn vampires. The only people hurt are the ones whose duty it is to be hurt, but they are the two weakest fighters in the pack. They are badly injured enough that when Rolf went into the blue room he slept in before, Hana stayed there with him instead of going to a room alone. Benny is still angry, finally leaving the kitchen and kicking up to the second floor to sleep. Christian falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

Out on the veranda, Danicka curls up in her blanket and watches the Gentlemen sway. They are so much larger, so much older, than the oak she grew up with. Human hands planted them in their tidy marching rows, giving them a lot of space when they were saplings. Human hands tended them until they were large enough to fend for themselves. It was the Garou -- Silver Fangs -- who Awoke them. They named themselves, hearing the word over and over to refer to stately, strong-backed males who ruled their females, their offspring, their land. The Gentlemen took that word and held onto it. They were taller and stronger. They ruled over this land, shaded the road and protected this whole place from impurity. They were connected to storms and birds alike, they were beloved by every tribe and every sort of changing creature, symbols of great power to religions old and young. Of course they were Gentlemen. Moreso than any human.

Danicka likes that she can see them from her window. Just like when she was little. From where she sits she can't see the lights in the kitchen go out, but she can hear Christian and Benny when they return to the mansion. She can see the light in Lukas's room go on as he enters, she can hear the water running as he cleans up. Doors inside open and close, and waiting for Lukas on the counter in his en suite is a set of clothes from the hated, awful Rick. They did this before the pack even arrived, not sure if they'd have their own, not sure if they'd have already cleaned up, but just in case. Rick is taller and broader of shoulder than Christian, offering up two pairs of his jeans, two shirts, for Lukas and Rolf's sake. Christian is leaner, a few inches shorter, but his clothes will still be baggy on Benny if Benny in fact needs them. And of course there was Danicka's scent on the clothes set out for Hana.

They are good Kin, every one of them. They are all stronger than they look, more dutiful than rebellious. Two would give their lives for anyone in this mansion tonight. One almost did, and will have a nightmare later of being impaled, having his head bitten off, completing his own death, processing what almost happened because in the moment, he didn't dare imagine it. Giselle, quick thinking and generous with her heart. Lizzy, who is not quite as much a little shit as she was a month ago, who appreciates the grass between her toes more now and will be thrilled to see the wolves come morning, will not understand why they won't let her go into the blue room and jump on Rolf, but

she is old enough now that Danicka will tell her, gently but plainly, that he was wounded in battle. It will be Danicka who takes her outside to the pond with its fountain and its ice-cold water and tells the little girl what Rolf told her: spirits of water can heal. Danicka, who never would have shared her spirituality with a Silver Fang kinswoman before, will be the one who teaches Lizzy we cannot heal Rolf or Hana, but we can pray for them.

Praying is for mortals.

No, it's not, she'll tell the girl, putting her hands in the freezing water, because this must be an exchange, this must have elements of sacrifice and pain, it is for Gaia. And for our friends.

They are good kin. Better than they would have been in another lifetime, another universe, but older, too. Tiny changes over time have already begun preparing them all for what is to come. Tiny changes have saved Christian a gutwrenching loss, a small hole in his heart where what could have been was ripped away. But all these changes have not stopped Danicka from coming to believe, far too young, that she is cruel. That she is incapable of the generosity, the dedication, and the purity of Giselle, Rick, and Christian's hearts. It seemed so easy for Giselle to take her hands tonight, and take her away from the girls they were partying with, because Danicka was sad. It seemed so thoughtless, so unquestioned, for Rick to come after them, get the vampire off of them, demand someone heal her even if they tore his head off for his method. It seems just like a part of who he is for Christian to protect, to listen, to share hospitality, to be a man who is both simple and good. These things seem so natural to them, as natural and powerful as the way Lukas feels about her, has surrended himself to.

As she looks out at the Gentlemen, Danicka thinks about how she feels for Lukas. And yes, she's mad at him for saying he couldn't just sit with her, couldn't sit and be quiet and together, not if he couldn't have all of her. She's mad at him for wanting everything, forever, and she knows damn well she gets only a fraction of that in return. Give up her life and her heart and her soul to him and what she will get back: pain, inevitable loss, bondage. To see how he behaved tonight, to have heard it from Giselle and Rick at least, to have seen some of it herself, why should she trust him not to put her in a tower so high that no one but him can climb it? He's a wolf. His love is deep and all-encompassing and possessive and she knows he can grow angry and put her through a wall and still love her. Oh, so very much. Adore her, healing her crushed body back to wholeness, and if she is his, what choice does she have but to forgive him?

Danicka rubs at her face, and lowers her head to her knees, covering her eyes. This is a waste. She exhales, her shoulders rounding, and gets up, going to her room.

Down the way, Lukas finds enormous white dustcloths covering everything in 'his' room. The mattress underneath is clean, though, even though a month of not being touched has left those white dropcloths... well, rather dusty. That's the point. The plantation is so very quiet but for the breeze, a strange mix of utmost luxury with a familiar wild silence he hasn't known since Stark Falls. It is safe, though, guarded by spirits and his pack alike, and he knows that Danicka is nearby, unwounded,

safe and fed and warm.

A little time passes. And on the edge of sleep, Lukas hears a tapping at the glass doors in his room that open out onto the veranda.

Lukas

Lukas is so near to sleep when that tap comes that he wakes without quite knowing why. There's a pause in which he's confused, unsure of quite where he is or how - then the tap comes again and he remembers.

The bed creaks as he gets out of it. There were clothes on the dresser when he got here, and they smelled faintly of Rick, which made Lukas feel a little bad for his uncharitable feelings toward the kinsman. The one he left to fend for himself. He hasn't touched those clothes yet. His own are rumpled beside them, and he'll wear them again in the morning. He reaches for Rick's jeans, though, pulling them on as he goes to the doors.

It is nearly four in the morning. The east has not yet begun to lighten, but dawn isn't far off and birds are stirring in the trees. Lukas is a dark warm shadow in the doorway, looking out onto the veranda.

Danicka

It's Danicka. Everyone else is already asleep, all glad that Lizzy is no longer young enough to wake up with the sun, but she will still be up at eight or so and no one will be in a state to wake up with her. It isn't quite four in the morning, but this time of year, dawn comes not long after that hour. The plantation faces south, Lukas sees Danicka against the southern horizon. Her hair is down now, and she's wrapped entirely in her blanket.

She doesn't say anything. She just reaches out past the folds of her blanket, takes his hand, and takes a step back, drawing him with her. And if he lets her, she leads him down the veranda to her own open doors, to her room, all cream and gold.

Lukas

It's Danicka. He never expected different, and yet he's still surprised. He looks at her, quizzical, to see what she wants. He knows what she wants. He doesn't resist when her hand finds his. His fingers close a little tighter around hers, and then she's drawing him out of the his room, out on the wide veranda where the night breathes.

By day she's so noticeably different from the Silver Fangs. They are frail, flimsy things; even if Rolf sort of adores little Lizzy and Giselle is a genuinely nice person, the savage side of Lukas thinks they look so pale, so wan, as though milk and water ran in their veins instead of blood. Danicka is golden in the sunlight. They look like creatures of the moon, and she looks like a creature of the sun.

Right now, she looks moontouched. She looks like a sylph, a spirit, something not quite real. The moon has already set, so in starlight, dim as it is, he sees her: her blanket makes her ghostly, her hair glows. She leads him to her room and he's never been here before, only saw it for a moment during the tour. He shouldn't be here at all, and he thinks of what he told the Gentlemen: that she is not his yet, and may never be.

He quickens his step by one stride, and he catches up to her. He tugs her around to face him in the shadows of her room, where everything is cream and gold, and his mouth is there to meet hers, his arms are there around her waist, lifting her swiftly and silently against his body. His chest is bare, his skin very warm.

Danicka

Danicka almost takes her hand from his. He tightens his grip, the way he always holds her hand so tight, the way he always wraps his arms around her and squeezes, and when he does that, she meets his eyes and moves her hand, flexing away until he gentles. Until he relaxes. She takes him with her then.

Her room is clean but lived-in, the bed rumpled, some clothes hanging over the back of a chair, papers and a laptop and books on the writing desk. There are magazines on the nightstand, and a plate and empty glass on the table by a window that should have been taken down to the kitchen some time ago. But it smells like Danicka, who has lived here since last summer. And he's in her room. Her room. Her room, her bed, her scent everywhere, her body right there, wrapped in a blanket, the starlight coming through her windows but not lighting this darkness up.

Lukas quickens and tugs on her, turning her around, and Danicka jerks away. She twists her shoulders and arms from his grasp, stepping back. There's no scowl on her face, no effort to slap him or any such thing, but her body language makes the stoppit quite clear, her expression stern. Mouth closed, brow furrowed. She doesn't say anything, but holds her blanket tighter around herself. Danicka looks at him then, that hard expression lasting only as long as it takes him to back off for a second, and points at her bed.

Lukas

He tightens his hand - and she nearly draws away. He tries to kiss her - and she jerks away, twists away, stares him down. He exhales all in a pant. She points at her bed, and he looks at her with a sort of helpless frustration on his face. He cannot fathom why she would want him on her bed when she doesn't even want to kiss him.

After a moment, though, he does what she says. He goes to the bed. He looks at it. Then he turns and sits on it, looking at her.

Danicka

"Sundej si kalhoty. Lehnout dolu. Je cas jít spát," Danicka whispers, when he sits, looking at her, wearing Rick's jeans, which she can't tell are Rick's jeans except that they're clean. She can tell how frustrated he is. She is tense, though her voice is not. It's so very soft, like they are children and it is simply time to sleep. It's far past their bedtime. But yes: she can tell how ragged he is, and it feels like it's been a lifetime since she's been around him and he's been calm, relaxed, happy in some way.

So she comes over and kneels on the bed near him, watching him, holding her blanket around herself. Maybe if she is closer, he will not be so angry.

Lukas

It doesn't make him less angry. Her words make him turn sharply away and back, a slashing motion like a snarl played out. When he's looking at her again he whispers, his voice harsh:

"Víte, jak se k tobe cítím. Chces, abych spát vedle tebe?"

Danicka

"Chci, abys mi veril," Danicka murmurs, and she's holding herself tightly together, watching him, hoping this does not all fall apart. "Chcete, aby tolik z me. Musís se dát vrátit."

Lukas

Lukas is tight too - his jaw is tight, his posture is tight, the great sweeps of muscle across his shoulders and chest are tight. He thinks for a moment. Lukas is intelligent, but he is not quick. He is deliberate, considered, methodical. It takes him time to process, time to decide.

When he has, in fact, decided, he gets up. As though he were leaving, but that's not it at all. His hands go to the button and zipper of Rick's jeans, which are unfamiliar on him, but all denims operate in essentially the same way. He pushes them down, and his boxers beneath are plain white and cotton, bright against his tan skin even in this light.

Danicka

Danicka waits for him. She's quiet again, and Lukas doesn't have anything to say to that. It doesn't make him less angry, less frustrated, less... all the boiling, jagged, rough things he is, which is not what she remembers. He is no less this young Cliath who showed up and was so different from the cub she went to bed with in New York, who held her hand on Coney Island. He's hungrier. But she waits, and does not know if what she remembers even existed or if she made it up. Or if it was there but now it's not, he's different, and she couldn't feel the way she did about him if she tried.

Her lips press together as he strips down, and she allows herself to moisten them when he sits back down. After that it's silent, move by move. She scoots back onto the bed, the blankets all tossed back, the pillows already dented. There's that pause when he looks at her, furious with her, she wants him to just lie here next to her, but he does. He lies down, finally, the air around the bed all but crackling with his frustration, and Danicka exhales. It almost sounds like a sigh.

She sheds the blanket she's been wearing, tossing it to the end of the bed. And underneath she's bare, the t-shirt and little shorts from earlier gone, her legs so long and her breasts as small and soft and high as he remembers. Danicka half-expects him to lunge up from where he lies and grab her, wrestle her down under him, open his mouth onto her body,

eat her alive,

and she's so tense, she's waiting for his hands all over her again, pawing, dragging, demanding. She wonders if this is who he is now. She can't even imagine this Cliath gasping out, asking her if he can touch her breasts, if it's okay if he takes off her panties. Danicka swallows, uncomfortable, and as she comes back beside him, she draws the sheet up, the thin quilt -- no comforter, not in Louisiana, not this time of year, and chances are she'll kick the blanket off at some point as well -- and lays alongside him. She puts her head against his chest and his arm, her own arms tucked close between her chest and his ribs, her feet warming each other next to the outside of his calf. She has situated herself in the crook of his arm, and is quite still, quite tense, for a few seconds.

After awhile, her right hand comes to rest on his chest, laying over his heart, feeling its heavy, deep, thunderous beat. What she says to him then is a whisper, her eyes on her own hand, his warmth suffusing the entire bed within moments.

"When I was very little, my mother lived with us in the house. She and my father fought once, I don't know what about, but I remember crying at the table. Then my brother grabbed me and ran with me. I looked over his shoulder and I saw her. She was... in that body. Tearing everything apart. She picked up my father and threw him through one of the dining room walls and then we were going upstairs, hiding in a closet, his hand over my mouth, holding my arms and legs down so I wouldn't thrash or try to run or make any noise. I could hear her snarling. I heard my father scream."

Lukas can feel Danicka's intake of breath against his chest. "I don't remember much else. I was only three or four. All I know now is that memory. I know my mother frenzied, and wasn't there when Papa let us out of the closet. He was wearing a robe but I could smell blood on him, but he wasn't hurt. I thought we were all dead, and I didn't want to come out and have her do to me whatever it was she did to my father. But she wasn't there anymore.

"I stopped believing that it was my mother. It was some monster that had broken into our house. My mother didn't feel like my mother anymore. We were just... her captives. I would get in so much trouble, though, because I didn't love her enough, I didn't treat her like my mother. She hated me for how afraid I was of her. So I learned how to pretend that she was my mother, and that I was not scared, and that I loved her. But she wasn't my mother," Danicka whispers, her voice still shaken by that realization. That reality. "She was that thing downstairs, and we couldn't ever get away from her. She'd hunt us down and drag us back if we tried to escape. I had to make her believe I loved her, or she'd hurt me. But no matter what, she'd never let me go."

There's a moment of utter silence then. It seems to stretch on forever.

"I feel like my mother died that night. It's why I didn't even cry when she died all those years later, because... it wasn't her. That wasn't my mother." She exhales, shakily. "And I didn't feel relief, either, because all it meant was that I belonged to my brother, then. And he --"

Danicka's jaw clenches a moment. "With my mother, it felt like she was my mother one night, then dead, and replaced by a monster. With Vladislav, it was all so slow and gradual and subtle, and now he is my brother and he is a monster, too. I love him and I am terrified of him...

"...and it is so, so much worse."

Again, silence, though something else hangs in the air now, and it isn't the dawn. It isn't the birds beginning to trill, dimly heard over the sound of her ceiling fan's rhythmic circling. Danicka finally lifts her head to look at him.

"I want be with y--," she says, and her brows tug together in pain as she cuts that word off. "I want to be with the Lukas I knew before. I have missed him so much. He didn't act like a monster. He didn't try to eat me alive. I want you to be him. I want to be with you and not be... consumed by you. I don't want you to be a monster living downstairs, wearing Lukas's face but never ever letting me escape, hating me if I ever don't make you feel enough that I love you."

She breathes. He can feel her chest against his side, pressing out, collapsing. "I want to be with you, and if I'm with you then I'm only with you, but I don't want to belong to you. I don't want to belong to anyone." Her eyes ache. "I just want to belong to myself."

Danicka

[correction: "He was wearing a robe over his clothes but I could smell blood on him."]

Lukas

Under the blanket, she's not wearing anything at all. That's the first and only thing in Lukas's mind for some time. He lies still, he lies quietly, he lies with his eyes closed so he won't reach for her, grab her, make her draw away again. So he won't lose his mind, looking at her, the shape of her breasts and the dip of her navel, the golden hair between her thighs.

Then she comes beside him. She hears him gasp softly as she touches him. They are both so very tense. Then her hand comes over his heart, and his heart is beating is hard and so fast, but he's not reaching for her, he's not turning her under and

eating her alive.

He only turn his head. He kisses her once, fiercely, his lips to her temple. Then he's just lying there. And she waits and waits, but he doesn't go mad for her again, and so after a while she starts whispering to him, telling him the saddest story he's ever heard, and gradually, gradually, he's drawn into the horror that is her past. He listens when she tells him her mother threw her father through a wall. He tries to imagine his parents doing that. He tries to imagine his sister grabbing him and running like that, holding him down so he didn't cry too loudly. He can't imagine it. It's beyond anything he can conceive of, any possibility of love and family as he understands it.

Somewhere in the midst of that he forgets to burn for her. He aches so much for her. His arm comes around her, and he holds her against his side. He listens as she tells him she wasn't my mother. I feel like my mother died that night. And when she tells him It was all so slow and gradual and subtle, and now he is my brother and he is a monster, too.

Then a silence. Then the last of it, brutal as a knife, honest as a hammer. I want to be with the Lukas I knew before, she says,

and he realizes, perhaps for the first time, that it's not just Danicka who's changed. Slowly, gradually, subtly, he's changed as well. He can't even remember what it was like to make love to her that first night. He's forgotten gasping at the very feel of her; forgotten asking her if he can take off her panties, if he can touch her breasts, if he can love her. If. Somewhere along the way, that got lost.

Afterward, after Danicka is finished, Lukas is very quiet. And time goes by, and she doesn't move away from him, and he doesn't draw away from her. In the end, he whispers:

"I can't promise you I'll never become a monster. That I'm not already becoming one. I can't see the future like that, and I can't will it into being just by saying it. I can't promise that. But I can try not to be a monster. For you, I can try to ... remember what it was like between us, last year."

Danicka

When she speaks of her brother, Danicka says very little. That her brother once protected her, in a brutal and frightening way. That her brother scares her, he's a monster, but she doesn't have the childhood luxury of convincing herself he's not really her brother. She says she loves him. But she does not tell Lukas the whole truth. Doesn't talk about the way her brother has looked at her, things he's said to her, how twisted he is, how vicious he's been. She is scared of Lukas, too. Scared he'll break something, tear the house down, if she tells him everything.

After all. She's his, or he thinks and feels that she is, and that matters more than the fact that she's lying here with him, holding him, with him. At least, it feels that way. But Danicka is still young, and does not know how to put into words this feeling she has that possessing her is, and will always be, more important to Garou than her. Knowing her. Loving her. Being with her. As long as they can own her. And she cannot think there are wolves in the world to whom that really matters, that it trumps everything else. To her, it seems a very specific disease -- a particular madness -- to the minds and souls of those who mingle human and lupine blood with a long-distant spirit world.

She is still for a moment, quiet. "It's because you might just end up a monster that I don't want to be... trapped." Danicka lays her head back down on him. "What I want more is for you to promise that if I want to go, you'll let me. I want to be with you but not... yours. Possessed. Because when you treat me like my body and everything belong to you, that you want to fuck me more than be close to me, own me completely or it's not worth even talking to me... I hate you for it."

Lukas

Lukas, frowning, turns on his side. Now he's facing her, and they're as close as lovers. The last time they lay in bed together it was much like this, only it was morning outside, and New York City, and summer.

"Is that what you think I want?" he whispers. "To just ... own you? And fuck you without being close to you? Because it's not, Danicka. I want to be close to you more than anything else. It's just been so long. It's hard to ... resist you.

"And everything's so uncertain, and sometimes it feels like I don't know how to read the signals you're sending. Sometimes it feels like all you want is to be friends. Sometimes it feels like you want to have sex and nothing else. All I know for sure is you don't want to be mine. And you don't want to be with me. Except you just told me you do. And you ask me to stay with you, or call me to your bed, or...

"Danicka, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what to make of any of this, and it makes me crazy. But it doesn't mean I want to turn you into a slave or a possession. And if you want me to promise I'll let you go if you want to go, then I promise to let you go if you want to go. But haven't I already proven that over and over again?"

Danicka

She looks so fragile right now. The sky outside is starting to get lighter by degrees, barely noticable. It seems like it's easier to see her, but they're so close in the dark, huddled together under her blankets -- maybe it's just that he's drawing every spark of light in the world closer to her to illuminate her, see her, know she's there.

Danicka can see him more clearly, too. He's so large. His face has changed. He probably can't see that when he looks in the mirror, can't tell just how vastly different he is from what he was all those months ago. But to her, it's jarring. When he showed up on the porch she wanted him to hold her, and when they embraced in the hallway she wanted him to hold her, but every time he touches her, he holds so tight.

She looks so sad, too.

"What am I suppose to feel when I just want you to spend time with me and you won't even talk to me unless you're... all over me? What am I supposed to think?" she asks back to him. "I've felt so sick all this time because you didn't want to be my friend, but you want to kiss me. You don't want to sit with me but you want to fuck me. I know it's been a long time but ... how do you think that makes me feel, Lukas? You keep freaking me out and getting angry and demanding and it's like... if I don't lie back and open my legs and let you do whatever you want first, then I can't have anything else I want. That's how I feel. Even tonight, I felt like if I didn't have sex with you the second we got to my room, you'd just... storm out."

Lukas

That makes pain flicker across his face. "I had no idea you felt like that," he says quietly. "So ... pressured. I never wanted you to feel like that. I just thought that's what you wanted. Why you came to me at all."

A small pause. Then an admission she already knows: "It's what I wanted too. I think I might be in love with you, Danicka. I don't know any other way to show it."

Danicka

"I want you," Danicka tells him then, still so quiet, and her hand on his chest that isn't pushing him away this time. Something about her eyes, or her tone, something telling him right then that she doesn't mean she wants to love him or be his girlfriend or Forever but that she means she wants him the way she did when she pushed her hand up his shirt and moaned at the feel of his body under her palms. Wants him the way she wanted him when she laid back and couldn't bear for him to touch her, stroke her, but pulled him onto her fully, holding tight to him when he lost himself inside of her.

They had sex three times. Two of those times he didn't even leave her, stayed inside of her, didn't even soften. He never asked her if she was on the pill or if she had a condom because he didn't. He didn't even think about it at that point. Couldn't think.

"I do," she whispers. "And I don't want to just have sex with you and nothing else. But right now I don't know if I want to have sex with you because you want it and I have to or you'll leave me, or if having sex with you is going to make you try make me your mate or if you'll go crazy and start growling at my friends if they hug me." She takes a breath. "I'm worried that if we get together and then later we... break up or something that you won't ever talk to me again. I keep thinking I nearly died tonight, and I don't know if that's just being overdramatic or what but... I had a really, really shitty night and everyone else kind of did, too. I don't feel like having sex tonight and I don't know when all this crap in my head about you and me is going to stop making me feel like nothing I do will be right."

Danicka sighs. "I came to you tonight because I was lying here like I have every night since I got to this place and wishing you were lying next to me. I just want to be close to you. I need... us to be okay. I need to feel like I did when we went to sleep together back in New York, because that was as good for me as all the sex was. Maybe even better.

"If you love me, show me by waiting for me to be ready," she whispers, even though she knows how trite this sounds, how manipulative it could come across, how after-school-special it feels on her tongue. "Sit with me when I'm freaked out. Let me come see you when I'm in the city. Hold me without... crushing me. Sleep with me tonight and... wait for me to be ready."

It feels insane to her. She almost feels guilty. Can't make sense of it: the willingness to sleep with people so frivilously, the refusal to just go ahead and fuck Lukas when he wants her and she wants him. She can't make sense of it or explain it. So she tells him what she wants more. What she needs:

"Just... show me you care about me and want to be around me. Show me that's enough for now."

Lukas

Strange how easily that word rolled off his tongue. Love. Granted, he cushioned it: he thinks. Might be. She, just like she would in another lifetime, sees right through it.

If you love me, she says. If you love me, wait for me.

He reaches out to her. Her hand is on his chest, and she can feel his heart beating. He puts his hand on her face, very gently, tracing her as though to see her for the first time.

"I didn't realize you were freaked out," he says softly. "I'm sorry. I guess ... I've been at Stark Falls so long sometimes I forget what it's like to be normal. To not deal with that shit day in, day out. I think I've forgotten how to have normal relationships too." He thinks a moment. "I guess it's more, I never knew in the first place."

He's getting off track. It's easy to lose his train of thought when he's touching her like this, so he draws his hand back and finds hers, holds hers against his breastbone.

"If you want me to wait, be close to you but wait ... I can do that."

Danicka

Strange how easily that word rolled off his tongue, and strange how easily she took it. No spark of terror shock in her eyes, no recoiling, nothing but a request: if it's true, this is how you show it. This is how you prove it. Not by making love. There are other ways. There are more important ways, even if they are not the same.

Danicka lets him touch her face this time, and doesn't jerk away or shudder. She closes her eyes for a moment as his fingers stroke over her, and when he covers her hand on his chest, she exhales and comes closer, laying her head on the pillow near his chest. She is very tired. She did not tear a door off its hinges --

Earlier, in the garage:

"The driver's side door is gone, we'll have to see if Jean-Paul can get a new one that matches, repaint it."

"An' mebbe Lukas can put it on, then!"

Christian, lifting his head from the damage, lifting his eyebrows at the irate Rick.

"Jus' tore 'er right off 'er hinges, man! I tell ya, I'm glad the little girl tased him, rippin' up my car like that!"

Christian stares a moment. "She tased him? And he was in crinos?"

"Thats wot Giselle said, yea."

"Shadow Lords." And he shook his head.

-- or kill any vampires or run half a block to fire a handcannon at anyone or climb up the side of a mansion. But she's tired. It was a long day, and she danced and she danced and she nearly died and she made dinner and she waited up for Lukas and she is so tired from telling him about her mother, from talking about what they are and aren't to each other. She closes her eyes as she tucks herself against him.

Truthfully, she doesn't want anyone finding them here in the morning, or finding Lukas not in his bed. She certainly doesn't want Lizzy running in and seeing them. But right now she can hardly bring herself to care. Right now, he is warm and he is here and he is promising that he won't cage her, and he'll wait for her. For now, for right now, that is all that matters to her.

Lukas

Danicka is quiet now. She's falling asleep in his arms, against his body, and he remembers the last time she did this. It was a lifetime ago. It wasn't even a year ago. He's been looking for it since: this moment, this feeling,

this certainty that she'll still be there in the morning.

She's already asleep when Lukas very carefully, very slowly pulls the sheet up to tuck them both in a little more. Dawn is less than an hour away, and he lived here long enough to know the rhythm of the plantation. He knows people will be up and about by seven, eight in the morning. He knows he should be out of her room by then, because even if the entire plantation knows that he's lovestruck with Danicka, there's a thick black line between that and actually ending up in Danicka's bed. After all, she belongs to her brother. Her brother that she won't even talk about, except to say: he is a monster.

Lukas doesn't care right now, though. He is not afraid of her brother; didn't he say that once? He's not afraid of anyone on this plantation, either. He has no reason to be. Whatever his feelings toward them, he understand they are allies. They're all on the same team here.

His thoughts are languid and meandering. He knows he's almost asleep. The last thing Lukas does is turn toward Danicka, folding his arm over her, his shin over hers. Like before. Like the first time. He closes his eyes, then, and in moments his breathing is level and peaceful, asleep.

In the morning, Rolf is among the first to rise. He and Hana shared a room last night, the Theurge in his hulking Glabro form, overfilling the small bed; the Ragabash curled up at the foot of the bed in Lupus. He is careful getting out of bed, but Hana wakes up anyway, yawning to reveal a very pink tongue before unceremoniously tucking her nose against her tail and going back to sleep. Rolf tiptoes down to the kitchen, where he makes himself some cereal.

Benny is snoring in his room. When he wakes up he'll be less angry at Lukas, but more sure that he needs to talk to him about it. And later on they'll talk - not at the packhouse after all but on the plantation, walking the grounds, exploring the blurred line between the manicured and the ancient, wild, unfettered.

Rolf will walk, too. He'll go alone, and perhaps be joined by Lizzy a little later. Maybe they'll find a creek and go fishing. Maybe they'll pick crayfish out of the rocks, come back muddy and wet, which will doubtlessly shock Giselle. Rolf likes Giselle. He likes Lizzy. He likes everyone on this plantation, and sometimes he wonders what will become of them when they all go back to ... wherever it is they came from. They are all kin, and the lives of kin are hard.

All this is still in the future. For now, and for hours yet to come, Lukas sleeps with his arms around Danicka. He is holding her. He is not crushing her, or suffocating her, or holding too tightly. He is simply holding her: warm and at ease, slumbering through the dawn.