"If you're looking for the Reaper, you're already in debt."
( Jack O'Connell, 612, Male, He/Him, Vampire ) It’s been a while since we’ve seen OLIN WHITCOMBE. I hear they’re a VAMPIRE and they reside on the WESTSIDE. They’ve been known as THE REAPER, but that’s not all they are. They’re known to associate with [ REDACTED ] when they’re not busy running an UNDERGROUND BLOOD DEN AND BLACK MARKET INFORMATION NETWORK. Some may say they act SADISTIC & EXPLOITATIVE, while others claim they are FEARLESS & RESOURCEFUL. With that being said, they’ve found the State of Calamity.
written by Nyx
───
WHAT YOU KNOW
There is a man lurking in the shadows of Calamity's Westside. Dangerous, no doubt, but valuable all the same. A man known as a broker of all things forbidden - from confidential intel to restricted, ethically ambiguous wares. Blood slaves, fake identities, poison, assassinations, Fae blood - you name it, he'll provide it, and everything in between.
His operation, referred to in quieter circles as the Blood Den, is the result of hundreds of years in the making, and exists beneath the remains of a collapsed transit hub deep in the Darklands. It is not so much a storefront as it is a multi-faceted system; layered, shifting, and built on blackmail and ransom rather than integrity. A secret can buy safety. A favor can buy passage. For a nominal fee, you can have whatever your heart desires. And if you're down on your luck, money isn't the only accepted form of payment. Olin values things far more complex than coin. Indebtedness, to him, is the most reliable form of power, and eventually, whether it be days or centuries later, he'll always reap what he's owed.
As far as affiliation is concerned, Olin does not claim allegiance to any faction, nor would a faction wish to be in any way associated with him. His connections run deep and plentiful, often discreet and predatory in nature. He uses them to his advantage, be it for monetary gain, business opportunities, or to create chaos in a world he finds increasingly tiresome and boring. Even long term affiliates know better than to trust him. Still, they find themselves employing him time and time again. Because if one thing is certain, Olin Whitcombe gets the job done.
To some, he is a necessary evil. To most, he is simply nothing more than a six-hundred-year-old parasite.
WHAT YOU'LL NEVER FIND OUT
It wasn't always like this. He wasn't always like this.
In the early 1500's, during a frenzied vampire expansion, Olin Whitcombe was turned against his will in a time when covens were indiscriminately creating fledglings to rebuild their dwindling numbers. He was abandoned shortly thereafter, his mother coven dysfunctional and ultimately destroyed. He was left alone, forced to adapt or die. With no guidance, no one to share valuable Vampiric secrets, his early decades were inevitably feral and violent, shaped by the blood of anyone he could get his hands on, human, innocent, or otherwise. It was these trying times that stripped away what remained of his humanity, replacing it with cold, calculated animal instinct.
[ Human lore coming soon ]
Quick Bio
Residence: Westside, nomadic but mostly lives beneath transit systems
Faction: Redacted (Unaffiliated, lots of connections, including The Voiceless, but no trusted allies)
Occupation: Proprietor of an underground black market, career criminal
Sexuality: Heterosexual (?)
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Strengths: Highly persuasive, politically cunning, fearless, adaptable, patient, cheeky, observant
Weaknesses: Hedonistic to the point of self-sabotage, incapable of genuine loyalty, violent, overconfident, aloof, sadistic
Appearance
Height: 5'10
Build: Athletic, lean muscular
Hair: Dark brown, long enough to slick back but often disheveled
Eyes: Striking Hazel, he almost always lets them appear a little bloodshot
Fangs: Retracted unless angry, feeding, or purposefully bared
Wanted Connections:
▸ Enemies
▸ Partners in crime (unlikely to be romantic)
▸ Blood slave
▸ Fledgling prodigy
▸ Political connections
▸ Affiliate connections
People keep forgetting Callum Calder does not work here anymore. But also, people like Olin just don't care. Fresh out of training at the Slaughter Ring, Callum rubs at the bruises across his knuckles as if some elbow grease might convince the damage to leave him. The gauze pulls at his skin; dried blood ghosts the edges. He’s here for hobby more so than vocation, and it’s as he’s on his literal way out the Sight chirps once - bright and bird-boned - alerting him to the familiar bloodsucker.
Olin is not yet touching him, but near. Five seconds near. A shadow slipping through the water of the air. Callum exhales through his nose. There is an arm coming for his shoulder, and before Olin’s hand can settle with all that affected brotherly ease, Callum kicks his elbow back. Not hard enough to break anything. Just hard enough to catch him neatly in the gut as the arm swings around him.
(Callum’s life has become this: a series of tiny rebellious acts performed with surgical timing until the world grudgingly reshapes itself around him.)
“Daddy?” Callum says. “Hey man, you and Nolan can keep your roleplay to yourselves. I don’t need to feel included here.”
Because Callum is nothing if not a straight shooter. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the shot tends to land. His gaze drops to the ticket in Olin’s hand. Blonde. Busty. Three thumbs. Alive and in one piece. Okay well, they’ll see about that last part.
He looks back up in time to catch the way Olin’s vintage fangs hook the basement light. Olin’s centuries sit under the his skin like wine gone dark in the bottle. The vampire's all hedonistic and sour in the worst possible way. Callum watches the smile change shades until what remains is not a smile at all. “Now what’s that for?” He reaches out to tap the sneer, personal boundaries be damned. “There’s no need for that. We can play nice.” Callum pulls the slip of paper from Olin hands. With begrudging understanding Callum knows that if he does not file it, it will get crushed underfoot, and if it gets crushed underfoot, then the books are fucked, and if the books are fucked, then what are they even doing here because well, if no one tracks the paperwork, society collapses. “You’re not giving me a reason not to play nice, right?”
The veneer of politeness is sickening. In fact, it's downright bullshit. So maybe Callum isn’t as straight a shooter as he says he is. But to his credit, his last encounter with Olin had spun out sideways and ugly, leaving them both with one eye over their shoulder so neither had to turn a full back. Callum has not proved it yet, but he is fairly sure Olin has been skimming from the top of whatever deal he has going on with Nolan. And Callum knows men like Olin - people who steal first and ask questions never.
He has to put a pause on his interrogation. The girl is clawing at the bars hard enough to split nails. Blonde, terrified, breath coming in shallow animal bursts. Her fear is so loud it almost has a pulse. Callum tucks the slip of paper away and turns to her, reaches through the bars with his freshly wrapped hands. He catches the sides of her head before she can flinch away from him. His thumbs close over her eyes.
Sleep magic is not his specialty, not truly. But dreams live adjacent to divination. So does the dark behind the eyelid. So do all the little doors the mind opens when it cannot bear the room it is in. Callum finds that threshold with the same brutal precision he uses for everything else. He draws the spell up from the ache in his hands, from the ruined sleep banked behind his own eyes, from the old Calder habit of turning a body into a ward when no proper tools are near.
The magic comes thin and silver-blue, threading over his fingers like moonlight caught in wire. A hush folds itself over the girl’s panic and he puts a veil of sleep between her and the rest of the room.
Her body surrenders all at once. The fight goes out of her limbs. She slumps against the bars, boneless with sleep, and Callum catches her before her head can crack against iron. There. Maybe a little peace. He stays crouched there beside her.
From his coat, Callum draws a narrow stick of chalk and marks three small lines on the concrete. Then he presses two fingers to the center mark, and the spell opens beneath him. Speaking to time is a little like speaking to the dead. Time, when coaxed properly, remembers everything and resents being asked. Callum lets the Sight widen by fractions. Not forward, this time, backward. He feels for the impression of the girl’s passage through the evening - where terror first hooks into her, where her path skips.
“Where did you find her?” he asks Olin. Underneath his fingers, the chalk gives the faintest of moonlight flickers. “Was she alone?”
When he says these things, what he means is: 'careful.' What he means is: 'hey how about you tell me the truth, tiger? Cause I think you’re a fucking liar.' Callum does not trust Olin. Callum does not even enjoy pretending to trust him. He is looking, with mounting patience, for an excuse to push Olin out of a tower. In fact, he would have thrown the punch a long time ago. The trouble is, he is almost certain Olin would enjoy that too much.
Without the gift of time on his side, Olin had to rely on instincts to counter Callum's jabs. The back elbow was barely dodged and the prod at his sneer was bitterly rejected by a tilt of the chin - like a dog refusing to be pet.
With detached interest he watched as the boy cradled the girl's face between careful, bandaged hands, and fought the urge to roll his eyes at the disgusting display of mercy. He saw no benefit in sedating a lamb fit for the slaughter. When she finally succumbed to unconsciousness, the vampire quirked a brow. Huh. She was a lot prettier when she was terrified.
And then came time for his next trick; featuring chalk, the concrete, and an audience member lolling his head back in abject boredom. Olin considered simply turning around to leave, to sink his teeth into something more worth his time, until three words dragged him back into the conflict conversation.
'Was she alone?'
... Hah.
Fucker. Olin's lips pressed together, the corner of his mouth pulling upward at Callum's sheer audacity. He just couldn't let it go, could he? The silence that followed spoke volumes - and Olin let it. They both knew the answer to that question. Both knew the next words from his lips would be a lie.
"Yeah." Came said deceit, cold and absolute. "Found her huddled alone up North, twiddlin' all three thumbs on the sidewalk. We got to chatting, real sweet girl. Musician, believe it or not. Guess she found a use for that extra digit." He was babbling on purpose. Deliberately muddying the storylines so the sorcerer couldn't easily reconcile them, filling the past and present with so much bullshit it was near impossible to wade through it before another wave came tumbling down. "Said she was waiting for her friends to go to some kind of bonfire party—" he neglected to mention they were already with her. Another human boy and a redheaded mergirl. They were young. Naive. Easy prey. "Gentleman that I am, I offered to keep her company while she waited. Those streets get real dangerous at night."
Dangerous like a madman might charm his way into your good graces before tearing your boyfriend's throat out and compelling you into submission. "Shh..." he told her, a bloody hand cradling her cheek. "Don't scream. You're not going to remember any of this. All you remember is getting too drunk at the bonfire and blacking out." Hypnotized, the girl parroted his words back flatly. "Now... you're going to follow me back to someplace cold and scary... you're not going to say another word until we get there. And when we do, you'll be so overcome with terror all you can think about is escaping. You'll be as difficult as possible. Scream until your lungs give out. Kick. Bite. Scratch. The men there want to do bad, bad things to you... Do you understand?" She responded with a blank-faced nod. As for the mergirl, well... that was a spoil he reaped for himself.
Back in the basement, fact continued to spin into fiction: "Then she asked for my name—shit, what did she say her name was... Sally? Scarlett?... Tch," he chuckled and shook his head in faux disbelief, "I know it started with an S..."
Then, the sole of Olin's boot came crashing down across the chalk lines, intent on snuffing the magic in its wake. Callous eyes stared down his nose at the boy from above, dangerous and more bloodshot than usual. The mask was slipping, patience wearing thin. And though he was thoroughly annoyed by Callum's suspicions, the subtle upturn to his lips indicated a sort of smugness that feared no consequences.
"If you got something to say, kid..." His voice dipped lower, shed of all its decorum. "Say it."
Clay dragged his blade across the dead vampire's shirt, cleaning away the blood, his expression flickering with one of recognition before it smoothed back into the impassable mask the hunter wore.
As he stood, Clay slipped the blade back into his belt, casting one final dismissive look down at his dead prey. He really should have thought better before drawing the attention of a Cross—especially one who was just as every bit a monster himself.
Then his eyes finally turned to Olin, looking at the other vampire with a cool sort of detachment, but beneath it there was an almost reluctant...fondness. After all, Clay wasn't in the business of letting many of his quarry live, and yet Olin proved to be more useful alive than dead—for now.
"Ain't a friend to anyone anymore." Clay replied, head tilting in curiosity as he looked the other over. "Offering yourself as my next friend?" He smirked a little.
The remark made him chuckle, both the absurdity and the double entendre. "Ah," he muttered with a dismissive wave of the hand, "I'm sure you've got enough already. Wouldn't want to burden 'ya with another." It was a relief to see he caught the other in such a good mood; their exchanges often had potential for volatility and, after sweet talking his way out from beneath the hunter's blade once before, he had no desire to end up back under it.
Hands in his pockets, Olin sauntered past him to nudge the severed head with the tip of his boot. He canted his face to the side, nonchalantly studying the corpse's slack, ridiculous expression before pinching his brows in contemplation. Through the stark rigor of death and thick splatters of blood the man's features slowly emerged as someone he found familiar. Is that...?
Shit. This wasn’t just anyone - it was a bounty Olin had been tracking for weeks. Slippery little fucker too, but for ten thousand kochba, he'd been more than willing to sink the hours into the hunt. A shame Clay had gotten to him first, turning him in dead would shave at least fifteen percent off the payout. He considered voicing this complaint until it occurred to him his friend likely had no idea his kill was worth such a pretty penny. In which case....
"You know... I don't mind taking care of this for you." He chose his words carefully, tried to mask the dollar signs reflecting in his pupils. And the cherry on top? "Free of charge."
Some nights were slower than others, leaving even the thrum of the music not enough to ease her feeling of boredom. Whether it was the types of customers clamouring for her attention, or the fact she was distracted—Selene couldn't say, all she knew was that tonight she felt the drag of time and it frustrated her.
The stage was always a glorious reprieve, she found enjoyment under the lights, the beat of music, the dance of her magic to ensnare and entrance all those who watched. But it was over far sooner than she'd like, and her next performance wouldn't be for another few hours.
Time left to bore her to frustration.
She slipped from the stage, heels taking her towards the backstage instead of out into the crowd where she knew hungry patrons waited to seek her attentions—but instead Selene wanted a moment of peace.
But a familiar voice made her pause. Turning, Selene's gaze landed on Olin, the vampire looking as smug as he ever did. She raised a delicate brow, about to deliver some quick quip of dismissal before he cut off her words, holding up the little baggie of pink powder.
Well, that would certainly take the edge off the monotonous drag of the evening.
Slowly her smile turned sharper, her eyes more excited. "Well, don't you know how to make a girl's night more interesting." She teased before cocking one tattooed finger at him in a come-hither gesture to follow as she led the way to an empty private booth. If he wanted the complete privacy of the suites—well he'd have to pay. "I haven't seen you around in a while, you were starting to make me think you didn't miss me." She teased with a playful little pout.
At the beck of her finger, Olin followed with a lax, assured swagger, mirroring her pout as mock pity flickered across his face. "Aw, of course I missed you," he crooned.
It was cute - her teasing. Sweet enough to stroke his ego and stir a sick kind of thrill inside him, but he wasn't naive enough to think it meant anything below the surface. Smiles like hers had a way of inviting the wrong kind of hope, and he had no intention of becoming yet another sucker at the club begging for her to run away with him. Still, he enjoyed her company a little more than he should. From behind, he let his gaze fall unashamedly to the sway of her hips. The outfits she danced in always left just enough to the imagination without compromising elegance or taste. As usual, she was a sight for sore eyes.
"In fact," he purred as they entered the booth- a narrow, out of the way pocket where the thrum of music and spotlights faded into a dull, distorted pulse. "That's why I saved this especially for you." The drugs. Chin lifting, he leaned back until his shoulders hit the wall, giving her space as the dim light overhead illuminated the flash of his teeth behind his crooked smile.
"It's a new mix I've been working on - hasn't hit the streets yet. Figured you might want first taste, maybe help me come up with a name for it." Without further explanation, he took it upon himself to tip a small pile from the baggie onto the back of his hand, then extended it toward her expectantly. Bait dressed up as an invitation.
“This is fucking bullshit!” The accusation tore through the room like a gunshot, punctuated by the violent crack of a fist against the poker table’s green velvet. In a space where chatter and slot machines took helm, Olin’s spectacle bled into the soundscape, subtle at first, almost harmonious with the chaos before swelling, warping, until it demanded attention in both volume and grandeur.
"Do I look like an idiot to you?!" Heads began to turn. "I fucking saw you do that." Games faltered, hands hovered mid-play. "You switched the cards out. It's up your sleeve. We all saw it - you saw that, right?" Others at the table were quickly forced into the conversation, most of them confused but some peering toward the employee's sleeve to see if Olin's claim held any weight. Tension spread quickly, the commotion drawing more onlookers by the second, the curiosity of some soon sharpening into suspicion as the room bent around Olin's voice. "Admit it!"
Olin leaned over the card table, an accusatory finger held inches away from the croupier's chest. The innocent man flinched in the face of the vampire's hostility, dumbfounded and confused as to where this all came from. Everything had been business as usual up until the last card of the deck had been flipped; ending the game and rendering Olin three thousand Kochba poorer. It wasn't unlike patrons to lose their cool in the face of such a devastating loss, but this reaction? Melodramatic to say the least.
The employee fidgeted awkwardly. "Sir, I—"
"—Oh, what? Cheated? Yeah. We all saw it." The finger dropped, but the theatrics remained heated. For a flickering moment, Olin’s gaze slipped past the man’s shoulder, sharp with anticipation. Because despite how it might appear to the onlooker, this wasn't some menial outburst. It was the culmination of a year's hunt in the making. Olin didn't come that night for a monetary jackpot. He had his eyes set on something far more... succulent. A certain five-hundred-year old Fae, the proprietor of this fine establishment. For months Olin had gathered scraps of information from the shadows, piecing together what little there was to know about the elusive Heathcliff. Disappointingly little. The man was an enigma; guarded, obscured, frustratingly out of reach. But not the first of his kind, and certainly not the last to fall into Olin’s grasp.
And now—he was close.
He was in the building.
Olin could smell him.
Manic eyes shifted back into the false narrative seamlessly, hurling insults towards the employee once more. "You know how much money I've spent here over the years? And here you are - spitting in my fucking face. What kind of dirty business is this, huh?"
It was like clockwork, a mystical, primal compulsion, that Olin found himself seated beneath the sickly neon glow of the Ghouliard. It had been weeks since his last visit, business kept him buried in the trenches of the Darklands, but tonight, he tore himself away from work to indulge in play—to set his eyes on her.
Temptation itself was encapsulated in the lithe, swaying form of the youngest Malikov daughter. Beauty like hers came once every few centuries, and when she took the stage, all eyes in the room followed. No exception, Olin allowed himself to fall victim to her spell, letting it widen his pupils, tunnel his vision, and consume all his attention. Behind that pretty face lay a plethora of secrets; some heard, some seen, some passed down by her family's bloodline, pumping through her veins. God, what he wouldn't give to taste it. To know what she knew.
The song ended too quickly. It always did when she danced. Only once she stepped off stage did he make his move, slipping from the audience to stalk her path like a cat trailing its prey. Though by the time he caught up to her just outside the backrooms, somewhere forbidden and meant for dancers only, he stepped cleanly into her path, grinning like a butcher’s dog.
“Hiya, beautiful.” A greeting she had likely heard for the tenth time that evening, delivered just as smug as the last. His eyes searched hers, looking for that telltale gloss of intoxication, the loosened focus, any sign she’d already indulged or was close enough to be persuaded.
He watched her a beat too long, expression unreadable, caught somewhere between admiration and appraisal. Then, without a word, he lifted a small, clear baggie between them, half full with an off-pink powder. The gesture was shameless and unhurried, lacking all discretion and presented as a casual offering instead of something illicit.
The heavy clank of a rusty prison lock rang sharply against the basement walls. It was the pin in the coffin of the trembling, petrified human girl he had just acquired. As per the client's request: blonde, busty, and born with three thumbs. Not Olin's cup of tea, but a job was a job, a fetish was a fetish, and admittingly, her face made up for the peculiar mutation. He tapped his hand against the cell bars as a farewell gesture, flashing the girl a wolfish grin.
"Sleep tight, sweetheart."
And with that, he ascended the stairs back to the Slaughter Ring’s main floor, the sounds of her pleas along with the other slaves’ exhausted, broken cries fading behind him. They swayed him none. Appealed to a conscience that simply didn’t exist. All it did was remind him how hungry he was. Not for blood—his health was in good standing—but for chaos. Capturing these slaves scratched the itch only in passing. The real thrill came from the kill. And the torture before the kill. And the hunt before the torture.
The girl screamed for mercy as the door behind him slammed shut. Fuck. He really needed to kill something.
Fully intending to satisfy that need, Olin moved toward the exit before the shadow of a man caught in his periphery. On a normal night, he'd greet Callum with cordial and brotherly ease, but considering the way they last left off, that approach didn't come so naturally. A pause. A beat passes. Then four more. Just enough for the sorcerer to know what's coming next before it happens.
A strong hand cups the curve of Callum's shoulder from behind, fully intending to startle him, clairvoyance be damned. Olin’s grin followed, wide and toothy, ill-fitting for the tension between them and transparently condescending.
"Got another delivery for ya," his free hand raised to offer the paper ticket with the client's order: BLONDE, BUSTY, THREE THUMBS. "Alive and in one piece. Just how daddy likes it." By the end of his sentence, his smile had turned sour at its edges, more sneer than charm; a clear indication that things between them were still far from settled. As for the term of endearment, it was meant to be derogatory. If the boy wanted to pledge allegiance to a fledgling, he'd have to suffer the consequences.
Another night, another hunt. But they all ended the same. Bloody. It seemed the other vampire had made the poor decision to step out of line one too many times, or he'd made the mistake to get himself onto Clay's radar in a bad way - it really depended on the perspective. But either way, he was dead, blood soaking the hunter's hands and blade, his head a few feet from his body. The other vampire had gotten a few good licks in during their fight, tried to tear a chunk out of Clay's throat, not that it had done anything to slow him down, the wound already closing. He glanced up from the corpse when he heard approaching footsteps, having been debating whether he clean up or leave the body as another warning to others who might find themselves in the hunter's crosshairs. "The darklands ain't safe for most after sunset."
Night prowling always proved fruitful. Tonight, the moon was bloated and bright, the perfect catalyst for new wolves to shed their skin. It was nights like these that Olin enjoyed most, wandering the depths of the Darklands in search of something soft, confused, and unsuspecting to prey upon. Something that would fight just enough to keep things interesting.
Instead, he stumbled upon the aftermath of a brutal crime scene, arriving mere seconds after the deliverance of the killing blow. Now this… this was something interesting.
Though he had yet to see the victor's face, he knew it immediately to be infamous Wayward Hunter. When he spoke, a smile tugged at Olin's lips.
"Tell me about it." The words came out smooth and knowing, heavy with the insinuation that the very danger in question came from the speaker himself. The vampire's languid gaze dropped to the corpse at the other man's feet, and for a moment, he saw the ghost of a different ending—one that might have been his own all those years ago. Slain by the hunter’s hand, laid out bloody and decapitated with a stupid, open-mouthed look on his face. The image left as quick as it came, and, in an all too casual manner he pivoted his eyes back toward Clay.
