Title: Mourner's Dawn

Author: Kytten

Pairing: Lucien Lachance/OMC

Rating: PG13

Disclaimer: Don't own.

Author's Note: Yes, I stole it! Ahahahahaha! XD Fear me. This chapter totally belongs to Pheonicia.

May ducked through Cheydinhal's streets, alternately visible and invisible when she thought it'd help her. It was only when she'd circled around twice before finally stopping at the chapel that she had the brilliant idea.

There were any number of miscellaneous spikes and odd outcroppings coming out of the building, after all. It wouldn't be that hard to simply climb up there and hang Vicente's necklace from any one of them. And knowing him and his vampiric senses, there was no doubt he'd see it. Especially if she put it somewhere it could catch the light… For instance above the doors, where Vicente could see it just as he came out of the house.

It was about then, she realized, looking at the house, Vicente hadn't come out after her in the first place. There were footprints in the dust, as always, but none of them fresh. She swore, feeling like a complete idiot.

A complete idiot that had just dodged all through town in an attempt to lose someone who wasn't even following her.

"Oh piss," she spat and made her way to the well, more determined than ever to hang Vicente's necklace from the chapel.

Vicente was amazingly clever with his hands. It hadn't taken long to set the trap. May had left her bag behind after all, all her lovely potions and such rattling together as he brought it down into his room. Securing the trap door with a length of chain and a heavy stone that'd fallen from the walls fifty years ago, he checked his doors.

The trap wouldn't trigger until she pushed open those doors. And once she found her bag missing…

Grinning to himself, he sat down at the table and picked up a book.

Once she hit the base of the ladder, she crouched down, searching the shadows. Vicente was nowhere in sight, only Arquen with another one of her headaches, seated at the tiny table and complaining to herself. All she had to do was get past her, into the living quarters, grab her bag and get out.

The first part of the plan went well. She got past Arquen, who at that moment refused to be roused by anything short of their Listener dancing about in women's clothing to the accompaniment of a dwarven brass band, and into the living quarters.

That was the problem. Her bag was gone. In its place she found a quick, well-done sketch of a smirking man. Vicente's version of a smiley face, she supposed, folding it up to shove neatly in one of her many pockets.

Off to face the beast then.

Vicente heard her coming and smiled to himself, pretending to be intent on his book, though every sense was bent towards May's approach. She hadn't even tried the trap door. Likely because it would have been the easiest to trap… or else, the easiest to catch her coming down.

As it was, she was walking right into his arms.

May glared at the doors and, deciding to make a dramatic entrance, shoved the open. No sooner had she done so then she found herself ripped upside down, a spring rope catching around her ankles and spinning her up and into the room to dangle from the ceiling.

Vicente looked up from his book only at the sound of her startled scream, that smirk firmly in place.

"Oh, hello. I didn't expect you to drop by for another hour yet."

He rose and leaned down to pick his amulet up from the floor where it'd been flung from her hand at the force of her capture.

"Nice of you to return it," he said, trying hard to keep a straight face as May sputtered and turned red. "But now that you have, I'll be off. I'm a bit hungry, as it were."

And with a short nod, he turned to leave the room.

"You dirty fetcher!" May shouted with a funny little wriggle, attempting to spin herself around to face him. "You nasty little cheat!"

"Cheat?" Vicente turned, smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. "I wasn't aware we were playing by a set of rules."

"Oh, I'll get you!" She shook her upside-down fist, eyes narrowed. "Don't think you've won."

"Haven't I?" He couldn't help but laugh then. "I'm not the one hanging from the ceiling."

And May was very, very glad she'd changed out of her skirt.

Vicente enjoyed this game of hers. It'd been a long time since anyone had dared to invite him to a competition on his own territory. She wouldn't win. After all, she was toying with a three hundred year old vampire who, in that time, had learned more than a few tricks.

But it was refreshing, to say the least. The chase, the hunt, the next trap, the next plan. Which was why he'd left her bag just barely within reach. She would, however, find a certain bottle had gone missing.

Spinning the bottle between his fingers, Vicente grinned and went off to find a murderer to terrify while he waited.

May was getting dizzy… and motion sick. As her rope continued to twist her around in circles.

Door… wall… ladder… table… chest… bed… bag… door…

Her bag! She could probably reach it. But as it was all the way on the bed…

"I hate you, Vicente," she muttered, rocking in her bounds like a manic worm, getting a good swing going. "Wretched, arrogant, beautiful man." She was getting closer with every backwards swing of the rope, though no doubt she looked like an acrobat act gone very wrong. "When I track you down, I'm going to beat you… and then ravish you," here she attempted to grab her bag and missed. "And then beat you again. And when I'm finally done beating you— Aha!" she caught the bag but her momentum was such that she couldn't get inside properly, let alone drink any of the contents. "I shall tie you up in a similar fashion and… and do something sufficiently cruel."

She'd slowed in her arc just enough so that if she held the bag at arms length she could dig inside. Still muttering to herself, she pulled out one of the pretty sky blue bottles, and with an awkward half twist, downed it.

Vicente grimaced at the taste, something like grass and orange peels and yet oddly like Greenglade tea. A moment later, his hands felt tight. Looking down, he found the skin of his palm shimmering slightly. Wondering if he'd actually taken the wrong potion, Vicente pressed his hand against the wall… And promptly got stuck.

It was possible he shouldn't have drunk the whole thing.

May shimmied up the rope that bound her and stuck to the ceiling, a rope between her teeth. After she was sure she had her grip, she released a hand from the ceiling and began sawing at the rope, taking off her boots once her hands were free. A moment later the knife was back in her mouth, her bag secured and safely strung across her back, with herself skittering across the ceiling.

She was careful to leave her boots on Vicente's bed, as she was fairly certain she'd stepped in dog shit as she ran off, and him without the courtesy to even pretend at following her.

Once out in the hallway, she stopped and looked around for Vicente. Nothing. But upon loping out into the common area, she nearly fell off the ceiling laughing.

"Serves you right, you dirty fetcher," she gasped between breaths. "Don't take a potion you don't know how to use."

Somewhere along the line of trying to get free, he'd managed to stick his other hand to the wall as well, and so now was rather awkwardly looking over his shoulder at her.

"May, as your immediate superior, I—"

"Can't hear you!" May shouted before he could finish, doing her odd little run off into the training room where no doubt there lay a hundred opportunities to booby trap the hell out of him.

But Vicente was looking at the way she moved. She didn't pull her hand away from the ceiling so much as she pinched it, breaking whatever suction the potion formed.

Vicente mimicked her, grinning as his hand came free. Toeing off his boots he scurried up the wall himself and finding it totally undignified but strangely exhilarating, followed her.

Arquen looked up from her table and groaned, massaging her temples. It figured, it really did. The Skingrad sanctuary had been hard enough to control, filled as it was with Bosmers, but at least there she'd had Fafnir— a huge Nord capable of keeping everyone somewhat in check while she was gone.

Unfortunately, the man she'd thought capable of keeping this guildhall intact without her had just clambered across the ceiling after one of the murderers.

She sighed, digging her fingers in a bit harder. Not that it helped, really, but exerting pressure was therapeutic in its own way. Suddenly she was really wishing everything was back the way it had been. She hated Lucien, yes, but he'd had his work cut out for him here.

But then, he'd only had the Listener to deal with, not sixteen Bosmeri killers who considered town wide hide-and-seek to be a perfectly legitimate endeavor, never mind the Brotherhood had a reputation to upkeep. Sithis, she couldn't even count the number of times she'd been forced to drag one or another of them from under the count's bed.

Frankly, she preferred that to prying vampires from her ceiling.

Inside the training room, something crashed and Arquen put her head in her hands. Lucien could have this bloody guildhall, for Sithis' sake. She wanted to go home.