you see me, then you don't - -

[MARGOT BAUDIN,]

TAG: open

How many did you bring me?

“Two,” Margot replied, leaning against the frame of the door. The man in front of her pushed his way past into the ornate room, a childish, giddy smile adorning his face. “Twins - they’re plumper than the usual fare, actually.” She turned as she heard him pad over the soft rug to the lounge chair she’d put the children on and the rustle of his hands stroking their clothes. “Erik, you need to get your own food every once in awhile.”

But why should I? That’s why I have you. And you have such good taste - perhaps I could use these bodies for something when I’m done feeding?

Margot rolled her eyes as Erik grinned at her. She walked over and slapped his fingers as they trailed along the lace edging of one of the girls’ dresses. “You’re going to throw them out. Did your mother never teach you not to play with your food?” Erik sighed, patted Margot’s knee.

My dear, my mother doesn’t care much to know about my perversions.

For that matter, neither did she.

She left the room as Erik sunk his teeth into the forearm of the girl leaning against the armrest of the lounge chair and the slurping started. There wasn’t much to do now but wait (because everyone and their uncle knew that once Erik finished feeding, he took off, pretending to be void of any knowledge about procedure or basic common sense). It was times like these where she figured it’d be better to go and live in Russia, or someplace where Moderates weren’t everyone’s nannies.

(She hated her position. Her Matriarchs knew she hated her position. Her Elders knew she hated her position. She’d advanced so quickly with Meaulnes in her first fifteen years, and they’d kept her in the same place for... she’d stopped keeping track. Margot forced herself not to be upset about it, though, even as she realized how easy it would be to just kill someone and take their place. She still had some morals.)

She paced up and down the hallway as Erik took his time, occasionally stopping to clean the dust off a frame or adjust her dress in the reflection of a spotted mirror. Finally, after an hour or so, she went back to the room she’d left Erik in to find only one of the girls left, her arm draped over the side of the couch, dripping red onto the floor beneath her.

“That bastard.”

She walked briskly over to the body, holding the arm up to stop it spilling. It baffled her that he was still allowed at Meaulnes with this kind of behavior. God knew what the hell he was going to use the other body for, and she hoped he’d finished that one off. The last thing the coven needed right now was more newborns, especially after that fiasco at the Notre Dame.

Carefully, Margot lifted the girl’s arm to her mouth, and slowly began to suck. She’d need to do something to cleanse herself after this - nothing was more disgusting than having to finish off someone else’s fare.

[/blockquote]

[ACHILLES DE PROVENCE]

His coven really, truly hated it when he wandered, but Achilles simply couldn't help himself. In all his one-hundred and eighty years as a vampire, he'd been allowed virtually every liberty there was, and it was devilishly hard to try and abandon his old habits. Besides; he was quite strong enough and smart enough to defend himself, so why the need to be constantly flanked by sour-looking bodyguards? They were as likely to turn on him and try and rip his head from his body as anyone else.

Achilles wondered if he had chosen to go off on his own just to annoy his coven. They were taking to his new duties - lording over them all, butting into their affairs, etc. - a heck of a lot worse than he was, and although he knew it was playing with fire, he enjoyed antagonizing them. In a playful way, though. Everything he did had to be playful.

Otherwise they'd just be shit scared of him.

He grinned at the thought as he padded through the woods, silently, so as not to disturb whatever wildlife might be in the immediate vicinity. He'd always had a healthy respect for animals; his father had taken him hunting several times, back when Achilles had been human, and he had come to admire the clean lines of deer, the intelligent eyes of foxes, the wariness of pheasants.

Achilles didn't come to the forest often, for it was impossible to tell what kind of hostile creatures roamed through these parts. But he had been feeling adventurous today...well, actually, he had been feeling bored out of his mind - strange, considering he bore roughly 50% of the responsibility over every single soul in his coven - but, not wanting to give the others reason to send even more vicious glares his way - which they thought he hadn't noticed, but he really had, and thought it was hilarious - Achilles had just told them that he'd wanted something exciting. They would have let him go anyway, since he was at the top position in the coven, but Achilles liked to keep them as happy as possible, keeping in mind the circumstances (i.e. him being, as he liked to put it, the 'Boss Man').

He hadn't even been thinking about his own well-being when a vampire - not one of his own - darted out from behind the Fontainbleau Castle. Funny. He hadn't even seen the castle coming. Achilles' sharp eyes trailed after the vampire as he made a swift getaway, a human girl - either food or a toy, though most probably the latter - over his shoulder.

Interested, although feeling lazy enough not to pursue the vampire, Achilles headed towards the castle, where the vampire had come from. Was there a reason why the vampire had chosen not to use his prey there? Achilles soon reached the front door of the castle - secret entrances be damned - and nudged it open. He peered inside, checking for any immediate danger. Finally deciding there was none, Achilles strolled inside, heading down a corridor at random.

Eventually, he became aware of a sound, coming from one of the rooms. It wasn't anything particularly intriguing, like muttering or crying, but it was noise. In a castle that should, for all intents and purposes, be empty. It wasn't long before he had located the source of the noise, and he held his ear against the door for several moments before pushing it open.

It was a female vampire, not one of his own, either. She was feeding, which wasn't strange, but she wasn't sucking up the blood like someone who hadn't eaten in years. She wasn't treating the blood like it was nectar from the heavens. In fact, she didn't seem to be liking it all that much. He cocked his head, interested, as he craned his neck to get a closer look at her face. He doubted she was of incredibly high standing in her coven - if she even had one, that is - seeing as he had never met her, but that also meant that she had probably never heard of him. Or, at least, not heard of Coven Elder Achilles, who had only existed for three little weeks, making him still shiny and obscure. Plenty of people had heard of Patriarch Achilles. Normally heard accompanied by muffled sniggers or snarky comments, but that was entirely not the point.

"You know," he began, leaning against the doorframe, "A pretty thing like you deserves food she actually enjoys."

[MARGOT BAUDIN,]

You know, a pretty thing like you deserves food she actually enjoys.

The blood caught in Margot’s throat and her teeth sunk deeper into the girl’s arm as she heard the voice. She coughed several times (but to no avail, because her teeth were still anchored quite firmly in the flesh), and the blood filled her mouth. She knitted her eyebrows together, closed her eyes as she pulled her fangs out of the girl, the remaining blood in her mouth pittering to the hardwood floor.

It was a disgusting way to present herself, she knew. Her thin fingers reached up to her slick mouth, wiping some of the blood off her bottom lip. “Duty predicates over want,” she said, taking a handkerchief out of her sleeve, “I’m simply doing what’s asked of me.”

He sounded somewhat overconfident, she noted. Everything about him was done with a practiced and slightly forced ease, as though he had picked up his habits to prove some sort of point. It was easy to tell he was a vampire (all in the eyes, see - that kind of glassiness didn’t manifest itself in humans). Covering two fingers with her handkerchief, she continued to clean her face of the blood that had gotten, well, everywhere.

Margot looked him over for several moments more, afterward turning on her heel to inspect the little girl’s body. She didn’t recognize the man, although that wasn’t exactly surprising. Most other officials she only knew by name, and as a low-ranking vampire in a small Coven, it was rare she saw the high ranks outside territorial negotiation.

She pressed her ear to the girl’s chest, checking for a heartbeat. “So, if you don’t mind telling me who the hell you are, I’ll be less inclined to report you,” she said, hoping that he wasn’t some sort of official. “And if you want a conversation,” Margot continued, opening the girl’s eyelids for any appearing redness in her irises, “it’ll have to be quick,” she ran her thumb over the girl’s incisors for sharpness, “because if this girl is dead,” her fingernail slashed the girl’s palm, “I’ll have to dispose of her.” The cut didn’t heal. She looked up at the man, cocked her head to the said. “And we all know how bad she’ll smell if she’s not underground soon.”

ooc: i’m sorry this post is so short and suckish.[/size]

[ACHILLES DE PROVENCE]

Achilles raised an eyebrow calmly as the girl spoke her first words. She was being asked to feed? And she didn't want to? Strange. Very much so. Or perhaps he had missed something. She had pretty much just stated that she was of relatively low rank - which would explain the lack of sneering upon seeing him; she didn't know who he was - which meant it was probably alright to toy with her for a few moments.

He waited patiently as she wiped the blood from her face, although even after swiping the handkerchief several times across certain areas, there was still always the red smear of blood. He felt the twinge in his lower lip that signaled to him that his fangs were on the verge of coming out. It wasn't that he was particularly hungry - no, Achilles was kept remarkably well-fed by his underlings - but the sight of a pretty vampire girl covered in blood never failed to get a reaction out of him.

“So, if you don’t mind telling me who the hell you are, I’ll be less inclined to report you.”

That almost made him laugh. Report him? This little vampire girl was going to report him? To whom? She certainly wasn't one of his, otherwise she'd either be trying to smother her hostility towards him, or worshiping the ground he walked on. Achilles had found that the grand majority of the Calistrarius Coven was either at one extreme or the other.

"They do reek, do they not?" he replied with a bland smile. "And as for who the hell I am, well, I'll give you three guesses." He was mentally weighing the odds that she would even join in his pathetic little game - more something to pass the time, really - and if she did...what were the chances she'd guess he was one of the dominant powers in Europe?

This vampire struck Achilles as rather intriguing, despite her apparent lower status. He doubted she was a sire, since he wasn't feeling any maternal vibes from her whatsoever, so she was most likely either a Moderate or an Abl-

Oh. Right. Other covens didn't have Ables. Idiocy, that was. Where did all the regular vampires go? Where did they get their fighters? What did their people do with their time? Achilles padded into the room, a blank expression on his face as he attempted to discern what coven this vampire was from. Maybe it was a small, unknown coven that was so insignificant that Calistrarius had no reason to even know of their existence. Possible.

Maybe, though, maybe she was from Meaulnes. That could be interesting. Small and relatively ordinary as the coven was, Calistrarius had had interest in the coven for a few years, even before Achilles took power. No one outside the top ranks knew why, of course, but everything would unfold in due time. Hopefully, anyway. Achilles reached inside his pocket, withdrawing a fresh, intricately embroidered handkerchief. He held it out to the female vampire, gesturing for her to take it. Her own, sopping with blood as it was, was no longer efficient in cleaning the remnants of her food off of her face.