#horst week

[cynaram]

Horst flicked back the leader’s cowl with an offhand gesture, took hold of his hair, and pulled his head back to expose his throat.  'Yes.  You.'  Horst’s lips parted and unusually long canine teeth showed as he leaned in.  He paused and said to the silent onlookers, 'The rest of you, form an orderly queue.'

Jonathan L. Howard, The Brothers Cabal

[cynaram]

A Horst prompt for you: something with cake, possibly during his childhood? Or perhaps after the whole vampirism incident, when they're no longer edible or taste like ash or however one chooses to interpret a vampire's relationship with food.

Horst Cabal, the vampire, looked at a small squashed cake.  It was a cream-filled vanilla article from one of the concession stands.  He’d been escorting a lady, and it seemed more companionable to get one for each of them.  She’d eaten hers, and he’d taken a few mouthfuls from her behind the ghost train, and  then she’d suddenly felt tired.  He’d escorted her back to the gates.  She was safer away from all this.

The carnival was strange.  He sat on the roof of the train and watched it from a distance.  The May night was cool, but it didn’t bother him.  It was a revelation to be out of the tomb, to talk to real people and feel the air on his face, but the workers smelled of brimstone and sulphur: the zombies of rot.  The only beating heart on the train was his brother’s.  He could hear it now, thudding sullenly in the office.

Horst had blood, at least, but it was a pleasure that blotted out everything else, and that worried him.  He distracted himself with the work of the carnival.  He’d made a promise - to Johannes, but still.  It kept him from thinking about blood all day.  He watched the crowds mill through the carnival from his perch, temporarily above it all. He should be down there, welcoming people, watching the hell-things.  

He broke off a corner of the cake, put it in his mouth.  He spat it out.  Oh!  It was like eating sand soaked in perfume; repulsive.  He moved to throw the cake away, but he stopped; he was reluctant.  He couldn’t eat it, but he still wanted it.  What was he going to do, keep the thing in his pocket?  He pushed it off the edge of the train.  He heard it hit the ground.  It wasn’t important.  

[cynaram]

Horst in Pasiná

Self prompt: [oooooh, auto-inspiration! says Zarenyia] Horst in Pasiná after Cabal’s departure.  Easiest to understand if you’ve read my almost-done story Death and the Maiden, but, I suspect, comprehensible and not very spoilery even if you haven’t.

Semi-raw draft.  Lightly blanched draft?

Horst walked through the streets of Pasiná with a friend.  He was fond of Phil - short for Philomena, and why did parents do that kind of thing?  She cackled and clung to his arm, not a bit slowed down by the transfusion she had already forgotten.  That would be the last time he drank from her, though they’d stay friends, of course.  He would need more blood later this evening.  Did he really need it?  

He usually found someone naturally; this city was full of interesting people who wanted to talk and dance and make friends.  Like that girl with the wild curls over there, who was inspecting him regardless of Phil’s presumed claim.

Wild curls.  A wistful smile crossed his face.  He missed dancing with Leonie.  He’d always liked charming her out of her seriousness, just a little, just enough to find the girl who loved to spin around the dance floor.  She liked it, too; maybe it was a relief.  She was too much like his brother sometimes.  They could both use a little fun, a little more dancing.  

Horst had a letter in his pocket: a terse line to say Johannes had arrived safely and would be in Penlow the next day.  This was the delicate attention of a courtier, by Johannes’ standards.  Horst felt a surge of affection; he was quite sure Johannes didn’t understand why such a letter was polite or appreciated, but he was doing it anyway.  He was trying to be a better brother.

He had been proud of Johannes for making this trip.  Horst was concerned - Johannes might a nasty shock when he tracked Leonie down - but he was less concerned than he would once have been.  He had faith in his brother.  Johannes would behave well, at least for her.  And maybe he would finally speak, if she wasn’t married or something.  Or, knowing his brother, he might speak anyway.  Horst grinned at the idea of Johannes bearing Leonie away from her theoretical husband’s home on a steed, like young Lochinvar, or whoever the chap in the poem was.  Or, just as likely, Leonie bearing Johannes away.  He could picture Johannes sitting across her saddle like a passenger on a commuter train, frowning while she bore him away to mad adventures, her hair on the wind like a pennant.  

Johannes brought that out in her.  And when he did, she just blazed with the relief of it.  More than that, Horst wanted to see his brother around Leonie again.  There was a quiet spectrum of Johannes-expressions that Horst hadn’t seen since they’d last all been together: amusement; concern; protectiveness; contentment.  A furtive appreciation of Miss Barrow’s form that Johannes would be mortified to know was discernible.  He was aware of her, always.  Horst had seen him wake when she murmured in a nightmare, colour and look away when she stretched.

He wanted that for them.  Horst would still be a vampire, a rock in the stream, life flowing by without him, but he’d enjoy seeing them together.  Johannes and Leonie were deep-roots people.  That was half of what was wrong with Johannes these days; he needed his own patch of ground, and the flat didn’t satisfy him.  If the fates were kind, and Johannes and Leonie put down some roots together, maybe he could drop by and sort of borrow their roots, from time to time.  If that wasn’t straining the metaphor, which it probably was.  But he’d never wanted his own.  Maybe he was a stone that skipped across the surface of the water, he thought, and his spirits lifted at that idea.  

[cynaram]

“...I decided he deserved a toy that would play with him for a change.”  He paused, his gaze distant.  “Maybe it will break him,” he added coldly.  

There was a silence.  Finally, Cabal said, “Being dead has made you rather less liberal than I remember.”

Horst shrugged.  “My motto always used to be ‘Live and let live.’  Under the circumstances, I need a new one.”

[cynaram]

Horst was still reluctant to use methods of persuasion more supernatural than gentle nagging.

Jonathan L. Howard, The Brothers Cabal

[cynaram]

[cynaram]

I can really see him in this.  What a show-off.  :-)

from @the-infamous-padfoot

[cynaram]

The Lord of the Dead

“But you’re the Lord of the Dead!”

“No,” said the monster in the loose clothes.  “I’m Horst Cabal, and I don’t murder for the sake of a snack.”