the temptation.

viktoria lomidze. put me in position.

[eastonsadie]

The compliment catches her off guard. She loves being a provider. She loves providing. Whether it's teaching a child how to read, or write, or add numbers, or a history lesson, she loves that. She loves caring for others. She'd resented it for a long time, because Jordan's never really made those things feel appreciated. He calls her a good home-maker and other outdated things and it incenses her. Viktoria here, doing the same thing, even praising her for it, though, it makes her heart feel like it's floating in her chest. She's kissed, and it only makes that feeling balloon.

She looks away, cheeks flushed, and at the recommendation, Sadie looks up, and though her expression twists at the mention of blood, its all cradled in a smile.

—

She'd felt a little odd, rummaging through a pantry as big as the one in this house. The food's all fresh though; probably thanks to the seemingly invisible staff that keep the place up and running. It's an endeavor, and she feels herself continue her bashful blushing while Viktoria tends her. Sadie makes a quick thing of lentil curry to put over rice, and some salmon patties, and then finally a set of stuffed peppers - easy things - even if the peppers take the longest; they get to bask in the smell and warmth of a kitchen doing what it does best.

She puts some of each on a set of plates (that Viktoria had to help her find) set on a counter, steaming and gleaming. "Voila," she jokes, sheepish.

[viktorialomidze]

Viktoria mostly watches while Sadie does her thing, hovering around her as she studies what she's doing and why. It does smell wonderful. But wonderful has always turned to ash on her tongue, so there is no clenching of her stomach as she looks down into the pots and pans.

Sadie soon finishes plating the food, and a lot of the food itself is not something she would have eaten as a human - too much color and spice. When she was human, only the truly wealthy could afford something with the variety of things put into this dish. She reaches out for Sadie's hand, holding it over the plate.

"Needs a final touch, my love." She presses a sharp thumbnail into the palm of Sadie's hand, dripping red over the curry, peppers, and salmon. She presses a kiss to the small wound once she's done, flicking her tongue over it like she might have done elsewhere in nights previous. Then another kiss to her knuckles.

When was the last time she'd tried real food? Hard to say.

She takes a bite, though, and pauses. "Oh. Wow."

[caskalomidze]

Blinking-fast, Çaska catches the hymnal book, cracking open and holding it, very stiffly, against her bos', scanning the lines with a sneer and lets out a few chirps of sing-song notage as her sister speaks. Idly she shrugs. "Your strength is boundless, I'm always so tempted to simply pluck annoying thoughts out of their heads, at least the egregious ones."

"We're all very bored," she follows up, still flipping through the music pages. "Fran is listless, 'Sana is hungry for revenge..." Thoughts of the witch pop up then, and she rolls her eyes. "The Augury girl is her own sort of church mouse." Small, cute, easily held in the hands, extremely fragile.

"I didn't kill him, I let him go!" She protests, scandalized, shaking her head before taking a large, false breath, if only so that she might project better as she sight-reads from the hymnbook.

"All who hunger, gather gladly; Holy manna is our bread. Come from wilderness and wandering, Here, in truth, we will be fed. You that yearn for days of fullness, All around us is our food."

The last line sees her fangs stir as she grins at the priest. It's all nicely sight-read, and all nicely sung, but as that last passage echoes off the inside of the stone and glass, she looks up from the book, planting it back in the slot behind the wooden bench before her, strolling from behind the pew at their captive audience.

"We should play a game," she says, skipping up the aisle. "These folks do so love to play pretend." Çaska looks back to Viktoria. "Let's play house, Viktoria, like we used to - you can be the father, I the daughter..." she turns to the priest, adjusting his stole. "And this can be dinner."

[viktorialomidze]

Viktoria keeps walking slowly forward, and cuts her eyes to the side to view her sister in the periphery. Port Leiry has ground to a halt, it seems. The city itself is buried. Sash's friends are bored. Viktoria herself has fallen into domesticating herself with the human pet she keeps. All that's interesting for her has been the idea of self-surgery.

The ribs would be delivered to the grave-witch soon.

She keeps slowly walking towards the priest as Caska sings the hymn. She could easily just remove head from body, but she blinks past him so her sister can see him from the front. A hand rests on his shoulder as he whimpers. "I hope you find solace with your own church mouse, then. But yes, a game." She tilts her head. "So, daughter, would you like a choice cut to sup on?"

A fingernail traces over his throat, down his arm, over his wrist. "I think it'd be fun to leave his entrails decorating the aisles."

[ajastor]

If he didn't know who he were talking to, he might've bit back about being called boy. Like a parent chiding a son. Those aren't thoughts a drunk mind can handle, warring with the darkness. But he lets her have it, because she's dead and she's been long dead a while. Long enough to dally with the Scots, so she claims. Moons and stars and all that shite. She should be less than wrinkles, and botox and more bones and gristle if she's as ancient as implied. AJ thinks she's prettier this way; skin attached, and crested with snow.

"Sure you've had a lot in your bed and your heart, love, eh? Grieved plenty." Depressing. Mood killer. Vicky didn't give him the impression when they'd looked at grisly paintings in Nouveau that she pined for a partner to hold her unbeating heart. AJ's convinced that every vamp he knows is either pining, or brooding. Fucking tragic. So he laughs, too, despite the subject. "Sounds shit."

What might be shittier, in his stupor, is the pause he makes every so often to assess if a shadow is real or a falsity. Movements that aren't human-like, nor beast like. Graceful, but damning in their suddenness. A spider that's too fast to track. Gone beneath the furniture; the snow; the streetlights.

She draws him back, standing in the threshold of the house.

Ah. Invitation. What a nuisance that bloody is.

He bets he could fabricate a spell to fix that problem for her, sometime. He's done grander things than that.

"In you come, Vick." Jacket thrown over the lounger, as he rolls up the sleeves of a dark shirt and hunts for the liquor in the kitchen. For a moment, he pauses, steadies himself on his feet when the ground looks too close, and then goes back to emptying bottles from the cupboards and onto the island. "Whatever takes your fancy, love."

He's got the Springbank out, and he's popping the cap. Then, as if realising in his brief moment of faux sobriety what he's said. He points a finger at her, smirking. "Throats ain't on the table for at least another bottle or two, little nightstalker."

[viktorialomidze]

"Both more and less than you might think." Viktoria laughs - her heart has belong to very few, but her bed has been as open as one could imagine. She was no stranger to grief, and certainly wouldn't be going forward, either. "Only if you think human experience is shit." He might. She wouldn't judge him if he did - witches can have quite large egos. Such is the way of having that amount of power at the tips of their fingers.

There's a flash of a moment where her gaze tints AJ in a green light, and she turns her head away to shake away the jealousy. He's having his own... issues, it seems. The way his head shifts, the way his gaze locks on nothing, the sway in his step.

The invitation comes, and she steps over the threshold with a smile. She follows him towards the kitchen, light on her feet, to watch the way he moves. Perhaps not just the liquor in his system. Perhaps something more. She wants to carve his mind out and study it.

"No, dear. I have my own samples waiting for me at home." Blue, piercing eyes seem amused at the realization he'd come to. "If you offer later under the influence, then far be it from me to refuse." More studying, then: "What is it you're seeing?"

[majagrim]

Maja studies the pages, as if the ink may bleed and shift under her touch. She thinks there is Latin scrawled in small script down the side of a page, and detailed in length at the base. She thought it irrelevant notations; a spellcaster with bad memory, but in the curious doubt she wonders if it were translations for exactly what might be required to promise success of the ritual.

She had the conduit. The blood, the ribs; the tie between life and death. Ancient, and old. The first of its kind, or near enough.

A willing cold one and the chance to equal the playing ground for herself and her brother. "Vampyr." She mutters, beckoning the woman closer. Maja is under no impression that her languages would best an ancient, so in case she dares let Janet trick her into an incomplete ritual, she asks the Lomidze. "Translate. Be precise."

prima ossa, primus sanguis et vas inter regna, Vas primum absente luce sculpe, et lineam in tenebras iacta.

She would not get this wrong, if it is to cost her an almost life, by the end of this. Maja turns around and presses on either side of the dead creature's ribs, feeling for the lowest of them; easiest to remove, she believes. It would take a while to slice away, and even longer to hack them from the cage. Lomidze may need to break them, herself.

Maja grins, because she is not sure friend is a word they would use. The creature is the other side of death; the duller sort, but helpful in the case of sacrifice.

"Yes. I take two." Decided. She thinks it is better, to draw the runes around and soak them in the blood; she would develop the version of the spell, with her talisman in mind. She needed to call Ivar, to get him to detach his, for them to stand a real chance of transference between lives.

Maja's not sure how long she would be able to keep the channel of hers open, before it would snap itself back, and cancel out all her intended preparations, otherwise.

Grimhjarta stops dragging fingers over the other's body, following her internal plotting. "When will you be ready?"

[viktorialomidze]

She is asked to translate, so she turns the book - gently - back towards herself. Viktoria's fingertips trace the words as she reads and hums. Slowly, she translates the words out loud so as to not make a mistake and allow the witch to understand.

"The first bones. The first blood. And a vessel between kingdoms. First, sculpt the vessel in the absence of light, and cast a line into darkness."

Viktoria understands the first instruction, but not the second. She has no time to question before Maja is feeling around her waist for her ribs. With little to no reaction, she waits for the next task she needs to complete. Taking in a breath, she lifts an eyebrow in response.

"Dear, I'll come when you call, ribs in hand."

[ajastor]

He isn't exactly sure what he'd have done had the house been an Uber ride away.

Probably got Vicky to call him one of those, too. But AJ had known he'd been right — thinking the Airbnb is on this street. Port Shitly's got a hold on him, now. So much so, he's got the roads mapped. (Shocking, actually) He's not unpacked that just yet. Part of the reason it'd been so bloody easy dropping back bevy after bevy.

His hand smacks her shoulders, "Atta girl." with a drunken chuckle-slur he hop-skips over a storm drain. If he maintains contact with her, then he's reminded that she's not one of the periphery shadows he's got talking bollocks in his ear. Moving between the snow, as if it isn't there at all. Bloody creeps don't know who they're taunting.

Astor's charm's so potent, that he didn't even realise he'd said a penny to her.

"Bold, Vicky." He teases, trying to match her step (and failing) "Isn't no who."

A what, maybe.

He's a man whose made a killing with secrets. So airing them to the dead-still-walking isn't going to do him favours. AJ doesn't live in regret, he burns the scripture that gave it a name. And the hearty laugh that spills like liquid gold, is not mockery, but amusement to the audacity. Love would have been less complicated than the real thing he's drowning. "I'm not twelve, Vick. Love. Fuck." he's going to choke on his drink, if she keeps coming at him with comedy gold.

Opening a well of shit, following a massacre he'd written the equation for. That might've started the indulgence to get lit, tonight. It's not the part that most would be haunted by, that's crawling under his skin. "Only thing I love, is that bottle I've got waiting for us, back at the house, eh?"

[viktorialomidze]

Her face remains quietly amused when he keeps talking - immune to the ways of the heart. She thinks perhaps that is heart does not beat in his chest like a normal witch would. The vampyr hears it just as steadily as she hears any other, but she swears if she were to slice her fingers through his ribcage, she'd instead find solid gold.

But they continue their frigid trek down to the rental, Viktoria's hands in her pockets as she remembers winters of old, of what it would have been like when she'd traveled to northern wastes to hide and feed, when the sun finally penetrated through the clouds and she'd had to hide from it. An old tune sits on her breath, lowly humming as he goes about his drunken explanation.

"Twelve? Dear boy, you don't know how many of us long for a love to grieve." She laughs, though, "But I'll concede your point." It's been a long time since she's been out just to be out. The stars above feel like a calling card - telling her to shift her direction and instead find her way to Sadie's home. She does not, and when they arrive at AJ's abode, she bows and gestures towards it. "You'll have to invite me in, of course."

[eastonsadie]

Sadie laughs, sheepish as she tugs the blanket tighter around her shoulders, as if a draft's crept in beneath it, but Viktoria instead pulls her to her feet and, not for the first time, the sensation of Viktoria's fingers wrapped around hers stirs a palette of feelings; guilt, desire, regret.

"Not too married to the boardgame," she says, head down, almost immediately regretting the phrasing. "I'm never any good at that kind of strategy."

She sits there, hands in Viktoria's, and she shakes her head, forcing her to look at the other woman. "I'm... boring, Vik - I like.. gardening, reading on a back porch. Stuff that's... you know... a little lonely, I suppose. Never been much for games, never really been a drinker. Most of her life has been much of what it is now - go to work, come home to do work, go to sleep. "- not to mention a little hard to do right now," she says with a tip of her head towards the cold outdoors.

"You don't eat, or I'd cook you something. Or... you know. I like it, being the home-maker. I don't know - I'm not fun, you are," A nervous laugh bubbles out.

[viktorialomidze]

Viktoria tilts her head slightly down and to the side as she regards Sadie, and listens to her speak. She has told her before that the boring nature of her is what intrigues her, and she had hoped that Sadie would have taken that to heart. There is so much fantastical in her life, so much that she has lived through, that the simple things now are what calls to her.

A woman who prefers to stay at home, clean, cook is something that fascinates her. What about those activities makes fulfills her, what about them makes her satisfied? Sadie is right, though, she could never be in that position. She is the fun one - maybe. Viktoria would, of course, give that label over to her younger sister, but perhaps if compared to the human standing in front of her..

She offers a laugh and bends down - capturing Sadie's lips in her own. Just a quick thing. "I adore that you find joy in the slower aspects of life." Maybe once upon a time, it would have appealed to her, too. Time truly feels relative to her, at the end of the day.

"I can eat. I mostly choose not to, but I am able." She slides her hand down to Sadie's hip. "Come, cook something for me. We do keep food for our human compatriots.. sometimes. I'll just need a bit of your blood to make it taste as you intend."

[majagrim]

"Ja." Most likely. Maja will not pretend to know their version of undying, or how cut off from the realms they must be. How peaceful, she suspects. How boring, to be shuttered from stepping across plains. Like finding home in the heights of the trapeze with the wind at her mercy, she enjoys the fall, if she never knows the impact (and she does). A ghost, with the ability to interact like any other tangible being. Flesh and blood stops for a heartbeat, and then she is revived, over and over. Until, there are no bones to reforge the physical host of her soul; where it roams the skull-ridden shores of a God's domain instead.

Lomidze offers her insights, nonetheless and Maja — ever the intrigued, listens. "I will make your blood the conduit; you have this," Maja gestures to the mention of her riddling dilemma that had brought her to the vampyr's door to begin with: the ancient that bleeds but has not known the shores of skull and fog. Lomidze is all those things. "— you see, you are yet to know the grey realm; it is only for you to visit once." At the end of it all, there is no coming back for her once she arrives at the shore.

Reading the verse again, Maja begins to wonder if the blood is enough. If the body needs to come attached, with the realised implication that there is no quantity. Did the dead need be the conduit itself?

That complicates their potential arrangement, if it did.

Under her breath, she curses the grimoire's owner, Janet whoever, for making a puzzle of a spell, so those who did not speak nonsense languages were tracing cursive lettering as if it would transform to simplicity. She thought she'd liked Janet, at first. Now, she began to plot returning to the grave she'd thrifted the book from, and defile the remains of that entire bloodline. One ritual at a time. Her brother came first. Their linked lives were going to catch up to them, without intervention. She felt close.

But appreciation would not serve them. Intention, would. "Maybe your ribs, you still have marrow? Yes, one, two," she keeps analysing the book, murmuring to herself, mostly. "You can keep them, after."

Her one question might need to become two, if Maja needs to cut more of the old, dusty vampyr. Her library, not as dirt-ridden as Maja had first pictured; well looked after.

"Coven," That's free, she supposes. "Garnett." a beat, as she lifts her head and steps around the peering vampyr, searching the lengths of the aisles, to know if there was anything that aided; rogue trinkets, or curioso's that the Lomidze of her existence had collected. (There's always at least one thief per home) Maja glances over to Viktoria, adding with more glittering pride, it's dark: "Familie. Grimhjarta." The vampyr could drink from whatever orifice, if that's her only price. And if it is worth the cost, she could drink until Maja were no more but crumbling over to the other side, clawing through the dirt again, and alive once more.

For a spell of this risk, she would have to know how close she was to success. "Du ville lært mer i blodet mitt enn du ville gjort med ordene mine, vampyr."

But Maja would have the ritual cast, first.

[viktorialomidze]

Her blood as the conduit sounds just about correct. Maja speaks of the grey realm, her own cultures and beliefs and religion weaving through her words. Witches, she thinks, and their faith, are amusing at best. She silently thanks the powers that be (whomever they are) that this woman isn't doused in the belief that Christ is all. Otherwise she'd turn her away at the door.

Her eyebrows raise the idea of the witch taking her ribs - and giving them back. Would they grow back? Potentially. In all her years as this undead thing, she had sustained many wounds and many broken bones. Regrowing or having them taken is a new experience. It excites her, she thinks. And if she gets to keep them afterwards, then they will reattach.

An offshoot of Garnett from over the sea? Interesting. That means life energy. Healing, death, the like. Makes sense, with the way she speaks of her own magic, with the markings she barely understands in the books. She's seen a fair few here and there, and seemingly every larger coven has its signature. Grimhjarta. She will research that name later.

"Then learn I will, once you take my blood and my ribs." She offers a smile, wide and sharp. "Have at it, witch friend."

[ajastor]

He's briefly shocked that he's remembered correctly. Vicky, eh? Or, Viktoria. Same difference. AJ likes to believe he remembers notable faces, she'd evidently had one that stuck somewhere in the depths to be anything at all. Not as he'd first thought though; no bed, and no memory of heat and desire.

Just bloodied paintings and shit champagne.

Astor's more kicking at the snow, than he is stepping through it. Balenciaga's are soaked through to his socks, and ringed fingers rattle against the glass bottle with every near slip between iced hands; the gloves are off. Yet, he's still eying the movements of limbs that aren't there, made more blurry in the intoxication.

She's observant, in the way she turns back and forth to follow his wandering gaze. If heightened senses can't detect the gestures from something other, AJ's settling on ignorance for the rest of the evening; he's drowned enough of the voices, that he's only a few more shots away from silencing the shadows too.

"Is that a question, love?" Rhetorical. The dead could lie for all he cares, he'll be able to tell if she's got enough of wealthy pallet to understand what he does. He just needs to find the house he's paying for, first.

It's on this road, he's certain.

It's about now that he could do with local girl driving up beside him, and taking them to the driveway. But she's not a callout, now, and he's yet to trust another with the bloody job. He pulls out his phone, squinting through the light of it: "I'm gonna write a number down, and you with your good eyes can find the right postbox, aight?"

[viktorialomidze]

Oh, she's an errand girl, now. This is amusing. She owns most homes in this neighborhood - rentals or mortgage, she collects the money all the same. She hadn't known of other creatures in the neighborhood, but witches like to lurk in plain sight. Her head tilts as she regards him again. No, this man doesn't lurk. He commands attention, even when embarrassingly intoxicated from head to foot.

He shows her the number on the phone, and she leans forward to meet him, lest he lose his balance again. "It's not far." She says, simply, and wonders if he'll let her sample some of the other delicacies he might have hidden away.

It's not his home, she doesn't think - one of the vacation rentals of some sort. But still, she wonders if the invitation will extend. A night of drunken stupor sounds fun, in a way.

"So, Mr. Astor, flirtatious as you are - Who has driven you to the bottom of this oh-so-expensive bottle? Surely it isn't love that's penetrated your golden core."

[caskalomidze]

"I miss old cathedrals," she says, looking around. "The ones lain brick by brick with nary a whir machinery - they felt more important." She sits on a pew, picking up the hymnal. "Oh! Or the little chapels you'd see on the countryside, all lopsided and crooked - those ones oft felt the most real."

She looks at the priest, who, bereft of further self-incrimination, has begun reciting prayers, looking between the two of them.

"Is he answering?" She asks casually, before turning to her sister with curiosity, addressing her next. "We should've brought your little churchmouse then. She'd have gotten a spin out of all this, hm?"

[viktorialomidze]

"The chapels are the most beautiful, I'd have to agree." The larger ones often led themselves to more corruption at the end of the day. Though, she'd definitely found her fair share of local pastors and priests leading their flock astray for their own horrible sense of self. Viktoria moves over to the pew, and picks up her own hymnal. Horrible music. She tosses it behind her.

The priest stumbles over another prayer in answer to her little sister, and Viktoria rolls her eyes.

"My churchmouse would have started praying herself. I haven't had the ability to rid her of the delusions they raised her with." Though, she does like the idea of letting her keep them and sending her further down the path of depravity. "She's too scared for our games. What of your escapades? I know your friends are in town. And that one Augury girl."

She pauses. Taps her lower lip. "Didn't you kill Boy?"

[eastonsadie]

When Viktoria's voice settles in her ear, the way it does, she can't help but feel a chill settle over her skin. When her the chill of her hands, her lips settle on her skin though, that's when she she stirs, like a breeze has hit the underside of her brain and chilled all of her worse than the cold outside ever could.

Sadie's eyes look over Viktoria's face, along Viktoria's cheek, the trace of her gaze following the trail of where the Vampire's thumb slides along her own. Viktoria asks her to stay - stay a little longer.

A wave a guilt wraps her up with the question. She'd prided herself for years on being the one who didn't do this. Who had stuck it out.

"I shouldn't-" she murmurs. She shouldn't but it's not like she doesn't have the perfectly acceptable excuse. Does Jordan suspect, she wonders? That there's anything more than a hen's friendship between her and Viktoria Lomidze?

After a moment of trying to will herself to say no, she nods. "Okay." Her eyes cast back to the abandoned book, to the fireplace past it. She has things to grade at home, but those can wait, she supposes - if the weather keeps up, the schools will close, surely. "So, Monopoly?" It's a joke, mostly - to fill the air.

[viktorialomidze]

Sadie likes to rely on shoulds and should-nots, Viktoria knows, so it doesn't surprise her when the words are uttered, even if she stops short. It would be very easy to allow their gazes to touch, to reach out and slip into her mind to make her do as she pleases. She finds she quite likes the idea that Sadie, even after all the madness and poking and prodding, has made the choice to stay of her own accord.

It is the weather, surely.

She also can't help the wide smile that comes when she finally relents and gives her the simple answer of 'okay'. The tension breaks with a laugh, "Monopoly? Worst board game. But for you, I'd play." She helps Sadie out of her seat and steadies her with a hand on her back. "If you want a board game, we have plenty - and plenty of puzzles instead. Or if you'd rather my silly games, we have those, too." She's humoring her joke, waiting to see if Sadie plays along or suggests other activities.

[eastonsadie]

It had been so... easy... to let herself start thinking this wasn't so wrong. After all, Jordan had used and abused her for so long, hadn't he? But now that he's back, now that she sees him every day, the guilt's been setting back in.

She keeps him out of her talks with Viktoria, but it's never been a secret, and Viktoria's been in her home, seen pictures of them pretending their happiness.

But with him back from his business trip abroad, it's come back around to her feeling like the monster between the two of them. Staying with a friend, that's how she'd characterized her time with Viktoria to her husband, and with their house still under repair, they were living out of a hotel, save for when business took him out of town, which led to moments like this, where the Eastons' hotel room laid empty and Sadie haunted these halls with wandering thoughts.

Sadie can't help but sag under the firmness in Viktoria's fingers, reaching for the teacup and sipping at it, letting it warm her chest the way the blanket warms her shoulders.

She looks up to Viktoria, and marvels briefly at how the light catches her. She knows so little about her, but she does know that the way low lighting casts shadows on her finger makes her think of heroines from some of her favorite classical literature. "I feel really... adrift," she finally gets it out. "Like I don't belong any of the places I'm supposed to be in."

It's a really broad and vague confession, but it's true. They'd slept together - she'd slept with Viktoria. She was no better than Jordan - worse actually. Her patience with school is failing. Her patience with Jordan is failing. Shit teacher, shit wife, shit lover.

"I should get going," she murmurs, pensive. "I have to be back at the hotel tomorrow anyways."

[viktorialomidze]

Viktoria, of course, knows about the husband. Wretched man with no respect for what he has in front of him. She harbors all ill will towards him, and is simply waiting for the moment that she can rip him to shreds and set Sadie free. But for now, she enjoys the moments she can have with her.

Her words make her lips twitch downwards, and she leans in close to press a gentle kiss to her temple. Does the husband see the marks on her skin she leaves? Or does he simply not see them? She knows better than to try something tonight, when she returns to him on the morrow. Instead, she'll give her affection that she deserves and must not receive elsewhere.

"I am sorry, sweet girl." The key word she'd uttered is supposed to be. Viktoria knows that she belongs elsewhere, in this world of monsters and magic, but the poor girl can't see it for herself. She cups her face and pulls her attention to her, stroking a slender thumb along the apple of her cheek. "You will always have a place here, with me, and my silly books and video games." A bit of humor, and she smiles to show it.

"I know you have to leave, but the weather's kicked up again - stay. For a little longer, and I'll escort you back."

[caskalomidze]

The high ceilings make her crane her neck to peer at the top of the place; it's very old world in a way she finds quaint, but it lacks the spirit that stones laid by fervent hands clutching for meaning impart. No, this was raised by mechanical beasts within the last century, and just like those pieces of machinery, this place too is hollow.

All of Christendom is hollow, she thinks, save for the faith men and women impart to it, and Lomidze had a proud tradition of showing the error in misplaced allegiances to this lot for time immemorial.

"I for one find the quiet gratifying. Imagine a thunderous voice, booming its disapproval as we enter."

A priest comes up to them through the center aisle, busy with his evening work of tidying the apse. He looks from one to the other, and is babbling welcomes and platitudes. Çaska takes his weathered old hands and smiles into his eyes. "Don't mind us, for now," she chirps, her eyes blackening as her pupils dilate. "Be silent though, and give us your confessional. Every little secret."

Çaska skips past him, turning to Viktoria. "Do you think he has hunter friends who will come?"

[viktorialomidze]

Viktoria clasps her hands behind her back as they stroll into the church. The architecture is, as usual and unfortunately, beautiful. The night is not so dark with the snow filling the streets and sidewalks - so the reflective lights of stars and moon bounce from the white into the stained glass. It's an almost magical sight - something that would make idiots feel as though they're not alone in the world.

"I was more speaking of the whole 'burst into flames' myth of it." She's amused, though, and it's clear in her tone. She watches Caska do her compulsion of the old priest and leans against one of the pews as he starts to rattle off his crimes - working from the most recent to his earliest. She's not surprised by the words that come from his mouth - most of these men are corrupt to the core.

"I highly doubt it," She finally says after considering him for a moment, "But I wouldn't doubt that there are hunters around. They've been prowling so often lately."

[majagrim]

Strange vampyr, but a necessary formality. That thrill remains, playing the strings of eager hungers. Maja supposes there is a power in knowing what's after, and what never comes for them. She might know what death is like, and a version of resurrection; a revival of the very core of the soul, but Lomidze will never know the magic that lays beneath, desperate to be given purpose. A willing sacrifice uprooted from its timeless dominion. To hold it in a hand, and squeeze. To be able to watch the world bend and morph for mere seconds; an interference that displaces the natural order, for just a beat.

She throws a look over her shoulder at the Lomidze's curious nature, leering over to see what's inked inside an old tome. Maja spreads open the book, and thumbs the pages with the precision of a well read scholar. Tips of fingers, treading carefully over the edges of thick pages of the grimoire. Absently, it's one part provocation, one part intrigue: "Forstår du magi, vampyr?"

Maybe an unfair question. There are limitations to even the dead's keen senses. "Under all, you must give, if you desire to take. Every power has a counterweight." Maja begins, even the kind that runs in the veins of the living dead. "You." An example, "Exist at the cost of indulgence. Glutton. Balansere." Grimhjarta themselves, bleed for theirs.

Maja continues, long after Lomidze has named her price of exchange. "I cut you wide, flesh and blood. An anchor. The weight. Old blood opens door for bones to find new hosts." Maja grazes a thumb down the length of old text, navigating a language not her first to memorise the order of ritual. It's not clear, explicitly, if it will allow her to trade her spare revival to equalise her brothers, but it could.

She finally acknowledges the cost with a bemused smile, she holds her fingers up, and drops one for clarity, "That is two. I will give you one. Pick." If she wants both, she would have to offer more than a vial of her blood.

[viktorialomidze]

"Understanding magic would be easier, perhaps, if I were still alive." She leans forward to look over the book - no, she can't make sense of it, and doesn't know exactly how to complete the rituals and spells laid out before her. But she can pick out pieces after watching other witches over the thousands of years. "This bit here - to my eye and from my experience - looks as though this particular spell could be done with some sort of focus or conduit. Maybe."

Her smile is light as she regards Maja, studying her with a lingering gaze. "But no, I don't understand it as you would. I appreciate it, more than anything." No one has yet disproved her theory of drinking magi blood and what it could do for vampires. Too stubborn to let her ideas lie, and now she's entertaining a witch that she does not know in her library.

Being cut wide doesn't particularly sound fun, but her curiosity often wins out over logic or fun. She clicks her tongue against the back of her teeth with a nod. "One, then." And they could make a trade for the other, if it comes to that.

"I'll take the information. I'd like to know more about this coven that smells of death." Viktoria pauses, then, though, and considers. "If you're willing to give up a feed, name your price - deals are quite fun when both parties win."

[eastonsadie]

The locks of brown hair pulled back from where they hang over her eyes are ticklish on her neck and she squirms faintly at the soft touch before Viktoria's pulling at the blanket whose warmth and weight had woken her up, fixing it faster to her.

Sadie cranes her head to see the built fire and it's flames flicker in her eyes. Fireplaces are so cozy and safe; she'd loved theirs back home, and wishes for all its quaintness that the new house had one as well, but with her husband out of town so often, she's practically living here anyways, so she'll enjoy it.

"Still not... really making sense," she says. "But I'm a little distracted, I guess. I don't think I'm cut out for seeing whatever it is you're trying to show me."

[viktorialomidze]

Viktoria's lips twist in something akin to disappointment. Perhaps they need a break, then. No use beating a dead horse, so to speak. "We'll break, then." The woman's husband is.. elsewhere for now. And there's so much snow outside their mansion. It might as well be a vacation, rather than homework.

She moves over to the warm cup of tea, and places it in front of her, pulling the books away, shutting them. "Drink, love." She murmurs, holding her hands out to the fire before draping them over her shoulders, rubbing at the tension she finds there.

"What's on your mind?"

[caskalomidze]

"I crave menace." She smirks at her sister, wide grin showing a toothy smile that's seen much more play lately.

The cold chills the body but she doesn't feel it sinking into her; a vampire is always cold, and the only betrayal of the season is the quiet of the evening and the fact that a handful of shops darker earlier; her sisters had chosen this haunt wisely though, it is built around its nightlife.

The Sorority House's novelty has worn off now, and Çaska has stopped living there exclusively now that their elder sister has... taken time to herself.

"Oh, can we play with a priest? For old times' sake! I do so love hearing the pious tell on themselves." None have ever been half so interesting at Tzimitrescu, but it's always good for a laugh.

[viktorialomidze]

Menace is exactly what they have done for most of their lives at this point - save for the breaks in which Caska found herself sheltered away at the behest of their elder sister. It only stands to reason that now things have been settled, they fall back into the same patterns.

Viktoria regards her youngest sister with a bright smile. "A priest? You speak directly to my soul, dearest."

Which is how, exactly, they find themselves arm in arm at a somewhat beautiful building. The architecture, she can admire. What's inside, though, turns her lips up into something of a disgusted snarl. This late, there's bound to be no one here but the priest, guarding his confessional.

She hums as she steps foot first into the building, over the threshold. No flames. No choking. No hell on Earth. "Always such a let down that nothing happens."

[ajastor]

Ah. Nouveau. What a night that had been. Distasteful, mostly. Laden with open invitation from Port Leiry's elite — or at least, whatever watered-down version they had, here.

A low chuckle between their exchange, because there's no dampening the foul of his manner, "You remembered my tongue then?" He doesn't remember that part. But she did say trying, and so, he doesn't dwell on that.

Astor pulls out the miracle from the back of his mind, talking nonsense over some slick painting on a wall, "Vicky, wasn't it?"

The bottle in his hand is almost empty. And he knows he's paying for one of these cribs; he'll know it when he sees it, he thinks.

In the walking, he turns to eye her. Slow steps backwards on the stone, whilst he wonders what sort of trick she's playing on him, in his intoxication. "Running? That's a funny one, love." A wink, as his eyes move beyond her, to the electric pylon, with the shadowy hands drawn long along the ground, teasing her ankles. AJ wants to warn her to keep walking. But he's drunkenly curious to know if she'll see what he does; if the Gods play with her kind, too.

Same way he does.

"Come on then, nightstalker. I've got some decent Springbank hidden away, eh? You even dallied with the Scots." A moment, to poke as he almost trips on a jagged paving stone in his stupid backwards walk. "You even old enough to 'preciate it?"

[viktorialomidze]

Her eyebrows raise up - it's the AJ she remembers meeting that night, to be sure. Only this one seems to be drowning in an ocean of liquor, "Viktoria." She corrects him, but doesn't linger on it. Her gaze does dip down to the nearly empty bottle, as if assessing what, exactly, might he find at the bottom of it.

She follows him, hands clasped behind her back, in a casual stroll. Anyone viewing them might think them two unlikely friends trudging through barely salted sidewalks, ice and snow crunching beneath their feet. Her heel slips slightly with a step, but she continues walking unphased.

He looks not at her, but behind her. Her head tilts, and she turns her head to see what it is he might be focusing on it, but Viktoria sees nothing there but a snowy neighborhood landscape. "Oh, you don't know how old I am? I'd love to sample."

[viktorialomidze]

closed starter for: @caskalomidze

"So tell me," Viktoria begins, gaze cast to the murky sky. The stars have not come out since the clock struck midnight into the new year, and it's almost sad how much she misses looking up at them. She hasn't seen the sun in a millennia, and now she misses the moon. Tragedy, and yet still her thoughts go to the human woman across town, stuck in her own, new home in the snow.

Sucking on her teeth, she looks back to her sister, "Where shall we wreak havoc tonight, now that we have our freedom?"