Shit! I uploaded the wrong chapter! Sorry, very big idiot. That's what I get for doing anything @ 1 am.
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Thief of Spirits by Eternity's Voice
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Ch 17: T'inking of Familie
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Nakor sat with his son in the boy's room. Shilf had tried to force him away, but he had been firm. The Lord was the oldest person still alive among his people. He was not the strongest or the quickest, but experience gave him the edge. After a time, he took the young man in his arms as he had often wanted to when the boy was still a child. Shilf had been raised by his mother, as tradition dictated when twins were born. A family could only raise one child at once. Nakor had raised Makkae, but his heart as ached when his dear Danai took Shilf away. He had been ready to damn tradition, but his wife had convinced him it would be impossible to hunt for all four of them, that he would kill himself and starve the twins.
His son did not fight him, but clung to him like Makkae had when frightened. Nakor closed his eyes and wished the all the terrible years had not happened. He imagined Makkae was not dead and Danai not lost to him forever, that his wife had changed her mind and allowed them to be one family. He imagined Shilf had never been captured and been forced to flee into the sunlight to escape, that he was still an innocent boy. He imagined his son would open his eyes and look at him with tears, looking for an answer to a childish question.
The dream broke and Nakor's darling girls were lost. Shilf was blind and a stranger to him. The young man he held did not remember his face and often forgot the sound of his voice. "She didn't know, Shilf," he said quietly at last in the prey tongue. "She didn't give the doll red eyes on purpose." Unlike so many others, the former prisoner didn't react violently at the language of his humans tormentors. He seemed to take comfort in it. It was unusual, but then he had been the only person to escape from where he had been taken.
The LeBeaus were different, cruel in ways that seemed kind. Shilf didn't talk of his experiences except to family. He spoke to few he hadn't taken under his wing as some member of an imaginary family. He had told Nakor of his encounter in a dark room, visited by strange people. He spoke of unending dreams where he lived a life with his captors as a human. At the time, he had thought his real self was the dream, that he was truly prey only dreaming he was a vampire. The Lord had succumbed to rage when he realized what his son spoke of. Shilf's mind had been forced into a prey body by a Changed or some other prey abomination. He had not lived the terrible pain and mutilation others of their people spoke of, but Nakor could never forgive the LeBeaus for what they had done.
Even then, Shilf had eventually known torture. Perhaps the prey thought they had tamed him or grew bored with defiling his psyche. His mind left that of the human he had been. Shilf had awakened in darkness, fastened to a machine. Tubes ran through his body. Some sent fresh red blood into him and others cycled his own blue blood around into a metal box and out again. He fought his way out, ripping the hollow tubes from his skin. His son's wounds healed, but his blood poured from the machine, covering the floor with glowing, pale blue liquid. Curious, he had torn apart the machine and found vials of an intense blue liquid. It smelled like his blood but so much stronger. There had been a noise and he turned to see a pair of red lights. He squinted through the brightness and saw a man -his family, or so he thought. The memories of Shilf's life as prey flooded him and he walked towards the LeBeau man innocently, asking what had happened. The man reached out and his body froze. No matter how he fought, he couldn't make it move. His lungs would not breathe and hours later, he fell unconscious.
He woke up chained in metal bonds he could not break. The man with the red eyes was there, angry. He beat Shilf mercilessly, calling him by his human name, somehow knowing how to make it hurt. The prey wanted him to hurt for some reason. His wounds wouldn't close because of some unknown force and he bled himself dry every day. He became gaunt, starving from the effort it took to heal. Finally, the red eyed man no longer chained him, just left him motionless on the cold floor. Then prey came into his prison; his wife from the human life. She knew him, somehow, and rushed to him. He fed from her, crying. Then when his wife lay dead, he realized his captor's mistake. His power was returned and he was unchained. His anger lent him strength enough to rip through the doors of his prison. Surprisingly, the room outside had been dark. It was a set of prey quarters blackened. There was no light, the windows were covered to let in no light and seemed to have been that way for years.
Shilf felt the red eyes on him before he saw them. He backed away from his tormentor towards a darkened window. The prey told him coldly it was broad daylight outside. He froze for a moment, but it was of his own fear and not the man's strange power. The man laughed; sure that he had cowed Shilf with the murder of his beloved wife. The sound gave Nakor's the strength to do what he had to do. He cursed the prey in his own language and dove through the window into the blinding noon sunlight, down so many stories to the hard ground. Shilf ran sightless through the alleys, following his nose to the slums. There he drained several tramps dry, then more. But no matter how many he fed from, his sight would not return. He lived that way, recklessly killing and running blindly from each spot so the red eyed human would not find him.
In the end, his own people found the boy and brought him home. Nakor heard of his son's return and rushed to the wards, only to find a blind prey in Shilf's place. He had been the first to learn the truth, to learn how his son's eyes had been blinded, turned the icy color of blood. A little over a decade had passed and the young man still woke, screaming from memories of the red-eyed monster. When that didn't happen, he awakened thinking he was human and the world about him was the dream. He cried for the wife he had killed, the prey child he had left behind. It made Nakor sick, but he never said so to his son. The boy had endured enough.
Nakor opened his eyes and looked at his son, dozing in his arms. Shilf slept like a human: every night. It was unnecessary and most likely unhealthy, but his body would not break the habit. In that resting state, the Lord saw his son's starvation. He sighed, then grimaced at his human reaction. In some ways, Shilf believed he was a vampire, a human turned into one of the people. It was only silly human superstition and a medical impossibility, but Shilf believed. He ignored the Spirits, choosing to trust the voices of his own dreams and fantasies. He felt like he had been human once and loathed feeding off them until the hunger was apparent on him. He hid the signs as well as he could though.
The Lord stroked Shilf's black hair, making a decision. He had only just hunted, but it would not be hard to do so again. He hunted in a specific area his people normally avoided. They didn't like the type of prey that frequented clubs. They only saw the addicts and the drunk. Nakor saw healthy people, only depressed and trying to find companionship for their lonely lives. It wasn't hard to find those who would not be missed among that lot. Better yet, he was not the only hunter. Humans stalked humans in clubs. When humans went missing there, humans looked for human predators. He would never be suspected, even by monsters like the LeBeaus.
He lay his son down and let him sleep. The next day Shilf would feed, his protests falling on deaf ears. Nakor left, going out to hunt.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It was late, but Mell's world didn't sleep. She herself could find no rest. Perhaps it was the caffeine; Hell, it was probably the caffeine. Still, she would have stayed awake had she not gorged coffee. It was finally dark; it was her time. For hours she had lain in bed listening. Things were quiet to human ears, but she knew there were insects and vermin everywhere around the building. They crawled and found their way through the wall unseen. They dared not go anywhere near her six foot cube of an apartment though. There were penalties for invading her space. Choo enforced them with a glee that seemed almost human.
Choo, he was the only animal allowed in her tiny sanctuary -a cross-eyed tabby cat with no qualms concerning the digestion of insects or rats easily his size. He lay sprawled in his own sleeping space: a laundry basket lined by towels that couldn't fit in the bathroom. In Mell's opinion, the feline had the bigger bed. Hell, his basket was larger than the bathroom. She stood and looked down at the basket that jutted out from under her bed. With a practiced motion, she flipped up the mattress back into its place on the wall, giving her two feet of extra room. Choo hissed when his hiding place was revealed.
With a sigh, the girl grabbed his basket and shoved it across the room. It slid neatly underneath the sturdy low table against one wall, again giving the cat a roof over his head. Choo meowed with an air of superiority that was out of place, even in a cat, and then went back to snoozing. Mell strapped the mattress to the wall. She knelt and opened the plastic box next to where her cat had been. She dug through the bags until she found a certain one. She broke the air-tight seal and let the pack expand to three times its original size. It was truly amazing how many tricks she knew about space conservation. Then again, she had to. She upended the plastic bag and clothing plopped into her waiting hands. It matched her boots that waited by the door. All her clothes did; shoes took up too much space. She only owned one pair.
Minutes later, Mell surveyed her unimpressive reflection. Unruly short brown hair, dull black eyes, a nose the width of a knife and about as flat, she was nothing to look at. She looked nothing like Marie, the beautiful one. Her sister had always been beautiful, she had mattered. She walked down the street and people looked.
Mell was nothing. She had a body -she looked down- but it wasn't much. The one advantage she had was that it made her look older, older than sixteen in the dark anyway. There was something final to her almost skeletal body shape. It won't develop any more than this, so live with it.
She turned, unleashing the same critical eye on her apartment. It was too small she tried to do too much with it. In reality it was one long room with a cubby called a closet and a closet called a bathroom. Mell slept in the same place she cooked in the same place she ate in the same place she worked. Looking at it, she supposed it was a college freshman's dream, but it was a personalized slice of Hell for her.
I wasn't that she was claustrophobic but as a kid there had been a lot of open space to just be in. The kitchen had been bright and airy and had led out to a wonderful garden. Mell had spent most of her time in those two places. It was at that kitchen table in Vermont that she had turned computer hacking into an art.
It had been Marie's idea. She had promised their parents that Mell would enter the family business before they died but she didn't want her baby sister anywhere near death. The answer lay in the growing world wide web. Finders or information specialists, before the internet they had fallen into two categories: old and rich or young and dead. If word got out you were asking about someone and your someones wound up robbed or dead then you disappeared for while or forever, depending on luck and your ability to turn invisible. The internet changed all that. At first discrete computer chats with snitches were the best it had to offer, but slowly the most amazing information found its way onto the net.
Mell knew her way through the CIA database like nobody's business. She had other equally good sources but CIA was what she advertised and CIA made her the best. Putting those three letters on her resume was basically the same as having doctorates in hacking and brain surgery, seven Nobel prizes, and the cure for cancer up her sleeve, only a hell lot more impressive. She had gone into the business at nine and officially retired at the ripe old age of 10. In English that meant in one year she had built up enough credit that clients came to her and she decided which cases she took.
Even though Marie had...died and she was now Gambit LeBeau's permanent employee, that hadn't changed much. Mell was a retired finder -the old and rich kind. She just happened to do Gambit's interests free. That wasn't much of a change either She had done Marie free too. He sister had called it a family favor; Gambit called it the price of living, which was a frightening phrase when you thought about it for too long.
Mell sat at the table she had shoved Choo under. He computer lay waiting on the otherwise empty tabletop, which showed how important it really was. Nothing else in the apartment had just one purpose. Instead of a cupboard, her dishes lived in the dishwasher. Her clothes washer also dried them. Her bed was also her closet and normally Choo's roof. Mell smiled down at the tabby whose tail poked out of the whicker hamper. Even Choo's basket did double duty as the linen closet and the hiding places of her cigarettes, vodka, and Marie's picture.
It was the perfect secret spot. Choo was basically Garfield. He slept twenty hours a day and only left bed to eat lasagna. Or rats, but he hadn't done that for two years. He lived the good life by milking the myth of himself. Choo of the Bloody Teeth was a pariah among vermin. Mommies told bad little mice he would kill them in their beds and chew their bones in alphabetical order, or so her wild imagination said in her dreams.
Girl, your imagination got nothing on me.
Mell blinked, and then stared down at her cat's basket. "What?"
I said your imagination got zilch on the Choo-Master. Alphabetical order? Don't make me hack a hairball on that lovely little number you wearing. Reading mice are a minority in N'Awlins. Shit, they a minority of a minority. Alphabetical. No, what them mama mice say is that I eat bad mouse kids alive. I chew the meat off their legs, then their feet, down to their little toes. Next I tear open the ribcage and eat all the organs, less it's a boy mouse. Then I tear off their organ and then open the ribcage. Gruesome, yeah, but them mama mice are vicious. They scare the mouse kids dead straight. Shred those dreams of being bad street rats into nice little pieces.
"I'm insane," she said, numbly.
A little kitty head popped out from under the table, glaring murder. Don't you pull that "I'm cuckoo" shit on me, girl. You fine. All them other humans, they crazy. They ain't got no respect for the fur.
Mell laughed. She'd gone off the deep end. "Right, okay den. Long as we on speakin' terms, pass de vodka. I want to blame dis on bein' wasted."
Girl, you think I'm gonna touch a bottle of taters rotted into a liquid? You can get it your own damn self.
Choo's head slid back into the basket. Mell rolled he eyes. "Fine," she muttered, reaching in after the cat to dig under the towels. She yelped and snatched her hand back. "Ow!"
I'm sorry. Did I forget to mention the "over my dead body" part?
"Little bastard."
Choo leapt onto the table. Now there's no need to call people...mammals names. He sat. You can finally hear me so listen up. No more drinking, no smokes. And you're damn lucky you not on drugs yet cause I'd whup your ass to Abu Dhabi if you were.
Mell snorted and he ignored it.
I'm Officer Kitty and you're clean from now on or I tell Gambit.
The girl snorted again and knelt on the floor. She searched through the de-kittened basket. "An ultimatum from a cat, how precious."
You did Not make "precious" sound all purry! The only purring in this apartment comes from yours truly.
There was a time of silence in which Mell found her vodka and Choo made some odd tapping noises with the computer.
Now where's that send button again?
She spit out the vodka and threw Choo across the room, very ticked off that he landed on his feet. She stared at the computer.
*mell is a alcohlic and she smokes. get you ass over here and kick hers. From choo - yes the cat p. s. believe me or don't. just scare her strayt.*
Hell, he even had the right address. She deleted the email. "I'm gonna skin you, Choo."
He sniffed, So you believe the talking Choo is for real now?
"No, I'm skinnin' you on principle." She advanced on the cat, who backed away. Then she smiled and stopped. "If you tell Gambit den you don't get anymore lasagna." Choo hissed and she went back to the computer. She typed in a code and grinned as the alarm system came on.
Mell grabbed her jacket off the chair and walked to the door. Choo ran to block the door. Where you think you goin', girl?
"Where I always go," she replied and buckled her boots.
You walk out this door and I email Gambit.
"Go ahead. I locked de computer. You try anyt'ing and three muscle men come in dis door packin'. Dey've seen worse den a talkin' cat. Dey got no qualms about shootin' kitty."
He managed to sigh somehow. If you don't come back before two, girl, I'll tell him anyway. There's more to the Choo-Master than computer skills, he's got..." Mell made a rude gesture and pulled open the door behind him sharply, squashing him between the door and the wall. She laughed at his uncatlike yowl and walked out the apartment, shutting the door behind her. She leaned against it and wondered if there was a psychiatrist she could visit without the LeBeaus finding out. Then she shook her head. Witches and werewolves would walk the earth before she found a shrink that was safe, at least one in Louisiana.
She started walking to the garage. It was so normal for her to walk around all corners of the LeBeau complex at all times that when people saw her, they didn't take any notice of her. It was one of the tricks her sister had been willing to teach her. If you were scenery, you didn't stand out. If that was true, than Mell might as well have been a potted plant. The girl looked around at the plush hallway. It had always confused her why the Thieves' Guild was so rich. Normally, the best thieves -and assassins- Hell, basically any true underworld professional was independent or worked in really small teams -family businesses. The LeBeau family ran the Guild, but they were more like Mafia in the way they did it. Still, they didn't go near crime gang business like arms dealing and drugs. It took money to have their kind of connections and...staff.
Mell smiled and got into her car in the dark, deserted garage. What the LeBeaus did for cash? That was something she would find out only if paid enough to put her in a happy retirement -again. To her, a happy retirement was one where you died of old age and not of a LeBeau bullet.
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Knave sat in front of the fire, trying to warm his aches away. He felt a faint sense of irony that he was the world's largest supplier of the Blue Miracle -as people like to call it- and he would not use a drop of it for himself. He touched his face, feeling its leathery toughness. Jean-Luc had led a hard life. His face was the only part of him that was allowed to show it. His body seemed young and strong still, but it ached with old wounds he could not heal. Why, the young doctor in his employ asked him. Why let yourself feel constant pain and move like a crippled old goat when you have dozens of way to heal yourself completely? There is the Blue Miracle, of course, but if you want to save it for clients, then there are witches and mutants able to heal you as well.
The young man himself was one of those mutants. He felt others' pain and considered the smallest ache in his clients an attack on his credibility and himself. It was quite amusing to see the doctor hobble about when treating Knave, strengthening his organs and nothing else. It was driving the boy mad, which pleased the King in a way. He was of Remy's charity cases, the mutant. He had been trying to make it through the system towards a doctor's degree. He had made it to being a resident at local hospital and the pain of his patients was killing him. He became a patient himself, slowly being murdered unknowingly by the wounded around him. Of course, Remy had ran in and saved him, ruining the ending of a wonderfully tragic comedy.
How Remy had known was a mystery to the King. Knave's son knew a lot of things he had no business knowing. There was Mell, of course, but she knew nothing of mutants and the old human predators. Who had told him was a mystery. Remy had an enormous adopted family that only grew as the years dragged on. Knave could barely keep up. The mutant doctor and the half-werewolf were his most recent successes. They were loyal to him as well as his son. Mell, she was the problem child. She hated Gambit, as she called his son. It had seemed some bit of a miracle when she turned out to be the sister of that assassin he set on Remy years ago. When Remy brought her back as an adoptive daughter -his first kid, as Knave recalled- the King had thought her an assassin in the making.
Then he learned about her identity: the Black Widow. Silly name, but it fit. Internet hackers often called themselves spiders or surfers for obvious reasons. Mell was the deadliest, the darkest, and the best hacker on the market. She had CIA access, which was unheard of since she was still alive. Saying you knew the CIA database was printing your own death certificate. Knave was also certain she knew the LeBeau mainframe inside and out. The reason he knew was that there was no trace of her in it. The way he knew chose the hackers he employed was how difficult it was to find them in his system. Everyone who knew hacking tried the LeBeau database. It had records on secrets thousands of years old, locations of artifacts and people lost forever anywhere else. There was nothing on mutants, vampires, magic, and the like of course. You hid your secrets separately. If some were discovered, you still had a few hidden; you still had the edge.
Mell didn't know of mutants. That gave Knave the edge, some extra tools she wouldn't expect. He knew what neither Mell nor his son knew. He had kept that part of her genetic tests secret from Remy. It was only a matter of time before it started to happen. Remy had grown distant, too absorbed in his little wife to keep an eye on the girl. Soon Mell would be frightened and confused by the changes inside of her and only Knave would be there to help her. Then she would be his pet spider; her sources would be his sources. He would be inside the government and who knew what other places. The world had changed since his ancestors' time. Knave -and his father to his four times great grandfather- had been trapped in New Orleans and a few carefully placed shadows. America was different than France, Britain, Rome, and Egypt had been in their prime. It was a hard shell to crack and worm into. The LeBeaus didn't have the influence to control America's many and ever-changing leaders like some crime lords did. It was damned hard to control a modern empire through shadows. But it was the information age, and he who knew all the secrets and kept his was King.
The phone rang and Knave drew it from a pocket. *She's left the complex.*
"Then follow the fille," he snapped. He closed the cell and smiled. In truth, he had suspected she would sneak out to some club that night. It was Mell, after all. She was young, suicidal, and about to go through some very interesting changes. She was a teenager, a very special teenager."
Knave stood, grunting with pain. In his own quarters he didn't bother to hide the pain. Still, he smiled at the stiffness, the old scars on his heavily muscular form. It might hurt, but thanks to Remy's mutant doctor, his organs were powerful and young. His brain was quick. Despite the pain and the age of his features, his body was easily as young as his son's. Everything was going according to plan. It was just a matter of time, which he had an eternity of.
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Don't even think about asking about Shilf's human life or Knave's plan...or the talking cat if you didn't figure that one out. I've got it covered. I promise there will be loads of X-Men POVs in the chapters to come. I just had to introduce some characters and get the plot rolling on this thing.
Yes, no Romy -or Rogue or Remy- but what am I supposed to do, *another* dream scene? They're frickin' unconscious...sleeping, whatever. Point is: I have planned for Romy commencement in just a few chapters. Thank you for sticking with me, if you could just wait a bit longer.
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Review Responses: (I suggest people read all of these. I try to make them self-explanatory so they don't seem like inside jokes. I do try to make them jokes though. I mean, I might answer your question in another person's review response. It might as well be funny if you're going to do this extra reading.)
The Little Prophet: You...read my Scott fic and you...you...want to...like Scott . . . GET THE TRANQUILIZERS! I thought I warned you. Don't read the Scott fic! It brainwashes people. Just tell me you aren't starting to like Jean . . . RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! Okay, back to ToS: yes, Remy does seem like a "dick wad," drinking the vampire blood and all for a broken nose and a bum shoulder. Still, he has his reasons. I guess we'll find out what they are when Rogue pops the "Instantaneous healing?" question. The vampire blood questions shall be answered when Remy confronts Merin about the whole thing, hopefully. I mean, he does have to take Jimmie for a check-up (Merin is a doctor). And Rogue isn't a vampire in any way, shape, or form. Sorry, but it's not that sort of fic.
Nite Sky: Remy's father's name is Jean-Luc...yeah, right. And Remy's real name is Gambit and Logan's real name is Wolverine and Rogue's real name is...never mind. Point is: I mentioned Knave WAS Jean-Luc somewhere...hold on...aha! CH6 - Rogue's POV. Remy: "Non, I'm Jean-Luc LeBeau's son. De world turned Jean-Luc into Knave...yada. Still, you reviewed for Chapter 5, so maybe you didn't read that part yet.
Konstantynopolitanczykiewiczowna (Talk about a mouthful): Nope on any and all "are they vampires?" queries. As to why you can't sleep, you really don't want to ask me that question. I might blather on about possible reasons for...yep, there I go. What has Darien done to Remy? Um, gotta go...bye! (Read on, oh curious and insanely long-named one)
Queen of Hearts: Yeah, I did spend a lot of time on vampires and on this chapter too. Think of it as a very intensive and compact arc in my story. It's going to Vampire City for a while, sometimes literally. Still I'm trying to make it all as Evo: POV as possible. But when the vampires get out of the picture, they're gone and some other arc shall begin. I like this story; I could go on forever...after the Romy gets off its feet, of course. I mean, I've got Lizzy, Cara, Darien, Knave, Jimmie, Merin, Mystique, Kitty, Kurt, and God knows who else waiting in the wings. Good thing you guys like me. I'd have killed me by now.
