Celeste was writing down notes on Adaline’s condition while she made hushed conversation with the second doctor while the first was tending to her hands. When it was done, they nodded their head to her and told her to come back tomorrow to check on her hands’ healing progress.
The mother looked up when Adaline spoke to her of Vincenzo. Though her eyes showed brief sadness, she managed to mustered a smile and waved the doctors away to leave them alone. “It always has.” She answered. “But I know after years…I know Vincenzo is no longer the son I have cared since his birth. This is not my boy who had died in my hands by his father, but now a monster from the dead.” She shook her head and then took Adaline’s hands between hers, caressing the wounds gently. “Luciana is the one who is heartbroken. She was once a happy woman but the death of her husband, the job she took to protect me, and what she has to witnessed for the past century, has hardened her heart. The Luci I knew is still there but the anger is the dominant personality.”
“We don’t have enough evidence to make a proper statement regarding on the disappearance of The Midnight Mercs.” Doctor Repo said, adjusting her glasses. “If, let’s say your ‘friends’ are the said Blackthorn Knights, then it would be extremely impossible for you to have been friends with them, for they have been dead in their respective dates a century ago and reanimated back in possibly before War World II happened.” Repo grabbed a chalk on the table and wrote down Anneliese’s name and the year 1917 and then the rest of the names the men were told of their real names but rather knew by their respective monikers with the year 1926 for all of them.
“See here for better reasoning. Miss Anne Fritz died when she was 16 yet what you see her now is at Grimwald’s stopped age which is 29. She was also the first to die before anyone else in the team where all of them were either murdered, killed, or commited suicide in 1926…except Athansius who died in 1927 and she never left the island when she was a little girl.”
The door opened silently to avoid disturbing Repo’s explanation. It was the same agent Anthea ordered arrived with a tray of drinks and the files Chevalier ordered for retrieval. They left the tray on the table and left as quietly as they can.
“The files…” Chevalier started. “Each contained informations of The Midnight Mercs, oui? How much?” She looked at Grimwald and without even asking, he snapped his fingers for photos of them to fly towards the blackboard and pinned themselves. Each pictures of the Mercs has their respective monikers written underneath the potraits. The sight of Pyromaniac’s unmasked face made Chevalier widened her eyes with shock. “Mon dieu! This is not the face of my brother! His face is not horribly disfigured!”
Her reaction made the rest of the Keepers inspect the pictures too. Some murmured with agreement about the appearance differences between the Mercs and the Knights.
Grimwald looked at the picture of Raven, looking towards the camera with hooded eyes and a smirk on her face and traced a gloved finger on the scar located on her left cheek. “My Anna doesn’t have a scar on her face…All of you who saw Anneliese, there was no scar on her cheek and never was. This woman is not Anneliese.” But the more he looked at the picture, he couldn’t believe himself. “Yet she does…Who are these people? These people who has the faces of the undead but with minor differences and to be friends with you.”
“This is where the files come in.” Lolita mentioned. “And including the three of you and your daughter to tell us who they are to you and who you are. Normally the mundane would react with fear of the supernatural, but not any of you.”
“ He died? ” Adaline manages through her shock ( an always silent, meek reaction ). Not her X not her Vincenzo. No, he was still very much alive. If it wasn’t her magical affliction that had her surmising so, it was her heart. He couldn’t be dead who else could she ever love unconditionally? Who else would ever dare to love her like he had? She hums as Celeste takes her wounded hands into her own, caressing them with a mother’s gentleness she had never had the luxury of knowing. “ You can either wither away, ” like Ada had in her own grief and sadness, long ago, “ or shelter yourself from that pain. I do not blame Luciana for hardening herself so. ” Silently, she wishes she had done that exact thing.
Silence settles in the air, hues of dark ocean waters carefully watching pale, bandaged digits in the safe grasp of the others. “ Would you tell me about him, about your Vincenzo? ” She doubts he would have been any different from her own … except this one was dead. As her sentiments proved, her Vincenzo CERTAINLY was alive.
Lengthy arms remain crossed, Panos’s calloused and long fingers drumming flexed forearms. His impatience ( though as it always seems to be ) grinds to its bone. He looks to the faces of Vittonio and, mostly, Raphael to see whether or not his sentiments are warranted. This, all according to the bodyguard, was fucked. Cerulean hues scan the chalkboard as Repo scribbles the list of names and their respective death dates. If he had asked Raven about her brother’s death ( and if she willingly and truthfully told him about him ), he’d maybe be able to surmise that, in their world, the opposite was true. They traded places. Vittonio and Raphael were, on the other hand, painfully clueless. The two, uncle and nephew, look upon the chalkboard with childlike wonder and mature terror.
Raphael lifts his chin, dark hues scanning Vittonio’s face and then Panos’s. Quite odd, this situation, but he knew bickering about what may or may not be true was useless. Perception is a tricky bastard. But then he hears it, Chevalier’s exclamation of shock. All is now laid bare. Pale fingers search the breast pocket of his ash - covered vest and pluck a silver cigarette case from its contents. He offers Panos one, who gladly takes one, and another to Vittonio, who declines. His poor nephew was still distressed and even more with Grimwald’s exclamations. Panagiotis lights Raphael’s cigarette then his own, both taking a simultaneous drag before the words of suspicion are delivered:
“ NORMALLY THE MUNDANE WOULD REACT WITH
FEAR OF THE SUPERNATURAL, BUT NOT ANY OF YOU. ”
Vittonio looks to Panos then to Raphael as if to ask, ‘ what now? ’ but neither Panos nor Raphael give him any reassurances. “ We’ve seen our fair share of devilish things; the supernatural seems mundane, ” a wicked smile, wide and followed by a brief chuckle, “ compared to very human, heinous acts. ” Silence falls before Panos breaks it with a cigarette - muffled giggle. Old man’s got a wickedness about him that the bodyguard can only strive to replicate. Vitt’s features contort on his face: well, that certainly wasn’t something he was expecting but, he surmised, it was better than nothing.
Pale fingers flick the ash from their cigarette after the vampire takes another drag, preparing his family’s grand reveal. “ My daughter can manifest energy into her palms as fire and has an affinity for scrying and creating a sorted varieties of elixirs. Whatever you wish to call that in this world, ” a nonchalant shrug, “ so be it. ” He hesitates to speak on himself, offering a brief sigh before continuing. “ I am immortal with no exceptional gifts but I have witnessed many of my kind use theirs, and these fine young men, ” indicating a smiling Panos and a woefully silent Vittonio, “ just happen to be here for the excitement of it all. ”
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