The Fruits Of Labour (Silas)

Abe had been a right side more productive on the task of finding Vivian’s killer than Silas had been. After all, the club owner had absolutely no personal stake in the matter so instead he’d shuffled the brunt of the initial work onto Abe and instead dabbled into a personal project for the first week. Specifically, he was digging out everything that could be found on one Adrian Connery. The ex-auror had gone and made a mistake by attempting to blackmail him and Silas was determined to find something to flip the tide of power back in his favour. Adrian was, unsurprisingly, innocent as a fairy but there were at least two instances in his past which could easily be made to look incriminating. It wasn’t substantial, but it would do to ‘convince’ Adrian to foot the exorbitant bill it was going to cost to hunt down Dacian’s friends later.

Finished with that project, Silas had started by sending some owls off to a few vampire hunting organisations with inquiries about recent activity in the area. For good measure he tossed random names from Dacian’s list to see if it got a reaction. When it came to keeping an eye on the blood-sucking pests they were more reliable about it than even the Ministry. At least two were confirmed dead, some hadn’t left their respective countries in years, some were under close watch but too powerful to attack directly, while the rest had disappeared off the face of the planet or were unknowns which gave Silas the most bother. Tracking people was a tedious business and predictably the only known leads to them wanted to be financially reimbursed for their information. Well, screw it. He wasn’t the one that was going to face bankruptcy for it, Adrian was.

After crossing a few names off the register he’d more or less forgotten about continuing. There wasn’t much else to do until Abe arrived with information on Dacian’s history and a few names to start with. He’d practically slipped back into his old routine of repetitive business work and annoying Ed to relax. Ed, however, had been stretched to the limit with Dacian occupying all his time and had no time to deal with Silas as well on top of that. Eventually, out of frustration, Silas had found himself sending the man a crucifix with the dull hope his balls would finally drop and he’d go stick it in Dacian’s forehead. Much to his delight, he’d learned first-hand from the barkeeper that he’d actually gone and done just that. The mental of image of Dacian running outside and screaming like a girl with his sleeve on fire was one that would do him for a while. Money well spent.

Despite the amusing visual, the mood in his office today was rather foul. Not that his mood didn’t usually leave something be desired, but now he had a reason. On his desk was an almost painfully immaculate note from his outsourced accountant that looked as though it had been typed rather than written, each letter was so damn perfect. It arrived yesterday and bore a lot of nasty phrases like ‘missing funds’, ‘poor bookkeeping’ and ‘need to have a long discussion’. He was confident enough that he could wriggle out of whatever noose his accountant tried to throw at him, but mentally he’d already prepared himself for a war when she was due to arrive tonight. Although, the fact the message had been delivered by a freaking duck of all things hadn’t helped. Silas had almost roasted the poor bird in surprise when it skidded onto his desk and sent all his sheets flying.

At the knock on the door he scowled and was half tempted to ignore it. She couldn’t get in unless he let her anyway seeing as the door was conspicuously lacking any sort of handle. Oddly, the voice that came through was clearly not that of a woman, and in a merciful twist of fate it was none other than Professor Grey’s. Excellent. If he could run off with Abe he might be able to get out of a lengthy discussion about finance in the next few hours he did not want to have.

After jabbing his new elm wand in the direction of the door, it swung open by itself. Subconsciously fixing the cuffs of his sleeves as he went merely to give his hands something to do, Silas got up out of the chair and walked over. ”That I do. Come, walk with me,” he said crisply before leading the way back to the bar at a brisk pace for Abe to get as many drinks as he liked. The door quietly shut itself behind them. He was sick of being stuck in the office all day so the change of scenery would be a blessing. The music wasn’t too loud away from the stage so there would be no problem being heard and everyone was too drunk or distracted by the dancers to overhear regardless.

Taking the furthest barstool on the left out of the way of most of the patrons, Silas sat down and leaned against the wall, holding up two fingers to the barmaid and mouthing the word ‘usuals’. Abe was in often enough for her to remember his preferences; the girl had a rather terrifyingly sharp memory which had earned her the job. As she quickly scuttled off to fetch glasses Silas made himself comfortable and gestured at the seat next to him. ”Talk to me. What are we looking at?”

Abe, it seemed, had plenty intention of using his eyes just as much as his voicebox tonight. Lucky Silas was there to intentionally waste time or he would have been a right side more bothered about him getting distracted so early on. There was little doubt the professor was going to walk out drunk anyway, you’d have to be a moron to miss the fact he only wanted to hold the meeting in person for the booze, so there was no harm in letting him ogle the performers either. Although he'd much prefer it if Abe was buying and tipping, Silas had to remind himself he could pay for a few drinks and deal with a few lost galleons in reimbursement for information on their toothy friend.

Abe did eventually get to the matter at hand and at the mention of Dacian’s last name Silas had to choke back laughter. He couldn’t stop his face splitting into an excited grin at any rate. Dacian Love, huh? No wonder he’d dropped the surname, it sounded like a bad pickup line. Oh yes, there would be much fun to be had with that. He was sure the vampire wouldn’t take appreciation to constantly being called Love and Silas was confident enough in his masculinity to go that far to deliberately embarrass him. The only problem was the imminent risk of getting his head snapped off, but that argument with the vampire as to how easy he could be killed had already been quarrelled over and Silas had come out on top. Dacian could do nothing.

”Yeah, that’ll give us a place to start,” Silas agreed, still smirking as the drinks arrived; Fire Whiskey for Abe and something unsettlingly black in colour for himself that was certainly not coke. ”Though with being six hundred years old that fucking list makes sense now. What doesn’t is how he’s still walking. You'd think one of them would have got him by now,” he added, taking a large swig from the drink for the sole purpose of getting some of the ice in his mouth to chew on. Not exactly a healthy habit, but one he’d had for a number of years. ”What else have you found that could be useful?” he asked, hoping for something juicy that could be utilized against the vampire later even though the whole point was meant to be tracking down Vivian’s attacker.

Battle of Agin-what? Silas’s knowledge of wizarding history was deplorable, let alone on whatever crap a group of angry muggles did six hundred years ago. It came as no surprise when the name didn’t even ring a bell. It had an important-sounding sort if vibe to it as though it was something he ought to recognise, but that was really it. Mental note: Find out what that battle was and who was in it. No, wait. Get someone else to find out where it was and who was in it, then tip them later. He didn’t have the time or patience to track down Dacian’s past himself, let alone useless trivia from old muggle history books.

As he accepted the paper from Abe he found himself frowning in confusion as he noticed he was staring at what looked to be a page out of a textbook. Ah, the margins, right. Somehow he doubted the school would be very impressed at Abe’s apparent wanton vandalism, but then, who cared? That was the schools problem. Giving Abe a moment to be as lecherous as he wanted or to get his notes in order, whichever, he took a moment to skim the paper.

What he was looking at was a reprinted journal. Dacian was connected to a variety of kills, yadda yadda, which was to be expected. What was interesting was the quick descriptions and dates of deaths of the victims. David Blant was convinced Dacian had been trotting around killing things at leisure as none of them had been eaten, but the sheer range in victims and dates of death were contradictory to that theory. Firstly they were mostly vampires, strangers, with no connections between any of them aside from some degree of influence and wealth and the dates between the attacks varied too wildly. It was not the pattern of any serial murderer Silas had ever known or heard about. He had enough firsthand knowledge of crime to more or less guess what had gone down. ”He was contract killing. That’s interesting,” Silas voiced aloud, taking another mouthful of the black alcohol. ”How does this connect with the names we got though? Anyone in particular?”

There was only a slim chance that the girls (he’d forgotten her name already) killer could be found there because it had happened so long ago, but at least it was a start. Who knew how much time those crazy oversized parasites held grudges for? Hopefully this was one lead of several for the night or he’d be tempted to make Abe pay for the booze in revenge for bringing him so little to work with. He was half excited for and half dreading the thought of what Abe might have found on some of the lists more unusual names: specifically a Keeko the Pygmy, Mister Halfpint, Shorty McShort and a fellow called Stumpy. Had Dacian gone and run afoul of the seven dwarves or something? Either way it promised to be a comedic bit of back-story if it was going to be up for discussion.

The new page was somehow worse than the other one. Good God, that was a teachers handwriting? You’d think they of all people should have legibility in the job description. Although, considering most doctors, maybe it was the case the more important it was for your handwriting to be readable the more likely you were to be hired if you could somehow make your s look like a t. Never matter, there had to be some charm somewhere for stubborn handwriting but Silas had expected more from a pureblood.

”Oh yes, owling more sociopaths. That’ll be fun,” Silas said with a wry smile when Abe finished talking. ”Had one guy, Frank Bruce, who’s living in Pendinas in Wales now or something, send me a beautiful letter telling me in eight hundred and seventy four words step-by-step instructions on exactly how he was going to relieve me of my spleen I brought up the name ‘Dacian’ again.” That was also precisely why Silas hadn’t signed his name, used his own owl or left any other means of identification on outdoing correspondences since the get go. He may be stubborn, but he’d taken up on Dacian’s hint that care needed to be taken with those on the list and so far that had ended up being exceptionally good advice. ”Brightened my day, that.” There was nothing like the threat of involuntary organ donation cheer you up in the morning, or maybe Silas just had a particularly sick sense of humour.

Abe had done his job admirably; the information was all well and good, just a little bit dated. It was lucky Silas couldn’t read minds or he’d wonder what in the hell Abe was sulking about. Lack of compliments indeed. It wasn’t every day he let someone guzzle his highest quality alcohol without even demanding a knut. Abe was drinking his gratitude right there and he wasn’t getting another thanks unless he pulled up something more concrete. Most of Abes notations on the list, or what could be deciphered anyway, seemed ancient. That was Dacian’s fault really; trust him to throw in as many pointless names in as possible to make things harder.

”This stuff here’s a start anyway. I’ll get working on tracking the Lambert’s when we’re done. Family groups always have the biggest chips on their shoulders so they’re a good bet. Have you located anything more recent since then though? Anyone that’s moved into the area or flown in here from overseas lately, any vamps on the list that are locals here or something? Best to start close to home and work outwards.”