"Well aren't you a nasty little thing~"
Cherish spun at the voice, heart hammering in her chest. There was nobody here - supposed to be nobody here. That's why she'd picked it for sitting down and sifting through the endless orchestra to find Jean-Paul. And yet there they were, lurking by the doorframe without a care in the world.
The stranger seemed to be an albino - white hair, extremely pale skin, red eyes. He was beautiful with an easy smile and rustic clothes of fine silk and leather. As he leaned away from the wall and began walking towards her, she noticed that both his ears and canines were far sharper around the edges than anyone else. Some delirious part of her brain whispered 'vampire' but that was ridiculous. This was some Stranger cape with a shitty aesthetic who could avoid her empathic senses, that's all.
She focused her attention in his direction and blasted as much suicidal ideation as she could muster. She may as well have wished on a penny for all the good it did, for he didn't even seem to notice the attempt. She began backing away from him, shooting feeling after feeling trying to find something that would stick. Despite Bonesaw's upgrades, Cherish wasn't confident she could take on most capes more built for close-quarters-combat, and it would be terrible to bet this man wasn't and find out she was wrong. And yet, she might have to find out: she was running out of room to back up, unless she was going to dive out a window.
"You know, I was told of a fascinating thing about the powered folk of this world," the stranger said casually. "Something called the Manton Effect, I believe it was? It's this pattern with powers where, a given person can either affect themselves, or other people, or other things, but not any two of the three, and certainly not all three."
She threw a lamp at him, but he didn't even bother dodging. He just caught it, and set it down. "There's exceptions that prove the rule, of course. But you aren't one of them, in my reckoning of things. You can twist up anyone around you, messing with their heads until they don't know up from down. And maybe you can do the same with yourself, although I imagine that's a terrible idea. But there's no universe where you can instill fear or depression or anger into an object. Am I right, darling?"
Cherish yanked a window open and leaped out of it. Getting cornered by an unknown cape was a recipe for disaster. She needed to get some distance and then either find her brother to finish recruitment or find another member of the Nine who wouldn't be completely shut down by this guy. Her upgrades allowed her to sprint for several blocks without getting winded, and surely that would be enough to throw off whoever this was. She stopped to catch her breath in an alley and extended her senses, looking for both her target, her allies, and her pursuer (even if it was fruitless). Maybe she'd get lucky, and it was just an illusion or projection, and the real him was out there somewhere in the crowd feeling insufferably smug.
Someone grabbed Cherish from behind, and she screamed. It was him. No illusion. Maybe no projection, given she couldn't sense anybody feeling anything other than miserable. He pulled her close. "Just one slight problem with that: corpses are objects, not people~" he said teasingly, before he bit down into her neck.
She felt her blood being sucked away, and panicked. She flailed her limbs and her power, trying everything she could to break his grip. Had he been a normal man, Bonesaw's upgrades would've been enough for her to win a physical altercation...but this was no normal man. Some frenzied part of herself even believed he might really be a vampire.
He never stopped drinking, never came up for air. Soon, Cherish was like him, in that she would never need to breathe again.
Astarion wiped his mouth delicately with a bloodstained handkerchief. Part of him rebelled at the thought, wanted to just let it drip down his cheeks and warn away anyone who dared think he was some pretty face ripe for the picking. But even after centuries, and getting his revenge, the manners that had been literally beaten into him were hard to shake.
He looked down at the bloodless corpse he'd made of the Canadian girl. When he'd learned her story, it had echoed his own in a way he couldn't ignore. It hadn't felt right to let anyone else handle her, especially when he was so well-suited for her. In her last moments, he knew exactly what was going through her mind: 'oh god, not again, never again'. He didn't need to be telepathic to know what motivated her death throes. He knew better than anyone her greatest fear would be recapture. A baseless fear, not that she could know that: even if it was something he went about doing in general, he would never have turned her. From one escaped slave to another, he would've owed her that courtesy.