Love and Broken Noses {Detox}

[Dacian]

What possessed them to use owls of all things to carry mail? It was staring at him with great luminous eyes, and no doubt about to call attention to his presence any time. It was enormous, presumably tawny in colour (hard to tell in the moonlight), with great thick talons and a wicked beak. He’d seen the animal before, sitting on a headstone in a graveyard months ago.

Since then, he’d learnt wizard mail owls could find anybody. Silas had used this bird to find him before, and would explain how he managed to pop up at the most inopportune moments. The beast ruffled its feathers and if summoned, gracefully rose from its perch and flapped up to the balcony of the building’s second floor.

Dacian shrunk back into the surrounding cover, and waited. The door opened and the owl came back into sight, something clutched in its talons. It sat on the balcony rail for a moment, then shuffled it’s feet and took flight. As if it couldn’t resist, just like its owner, it swooped low over Dacian’s head.

It wasn’t expecting the man to snatch it out of the air, but it recovered fast and fought back with valour. It was a clumsy affair, and Dacian was bleeding profusely from several gash wounds and plenty of bites but there was finally the hollow snap of wing bone and a terrified cacophony of sound before the vampire snapped the bird’s neck.

A glance at the house showed no movement – soundproofing? – and when he was certain there was going to be no response, he retrieved the note. Breaking the wax seal and reading the letter proved to be pointless. It was useless wizard drivel. Charm this and spell that. He screwed up the note and put it in his pocket, then straightened and positioned himself below the balcony. His real quarry was up there, hiding behind his protective threshold. Bastard.

He hefted the dead weight of the bird a few times and with surprising precision, threw the corpse at the door it had just left. Huh, not so graceful when dead. He dashed under the balcony, standing flat against the wall so a cursory glance would not reveal him. He just had to wait. Sure enough, there was the sound of the door opening. No doubt the wizard had found his bird and was proceeding with caution.

Not careful enough. As soon as the tip of a wand showed itself over the balcony end, he leapt upward, first grabbing the balcony banister with one hand and the wand with the other. He flashed a fanged grin, snapped the wand and dropped the pieces over the edge. “Hello, Silas.” Dacian grabbed the man’s shirtfront and dragged, propelling him over the railing and down to the lawn below. There was a satisfying crack and a strangled cry.

The vampire dropped from the balcony, landing on the balls of his feet. As loomingly as possible, he leant over Silas and rolled him onto his back. “Not dead, are you? That would be no fun at all.” The wizard was still breathing, if a little raggedly and the pounding of his heart was music to the vampire’s ears. Much better. He did so enjoy the reek of fear in the evening.

[Silas Rosier]

  Valentine’s day, huh? Which genius decided on that holiday? The more Silas thought about it the more it sounded like some get-rich-quick scheme devised by flower shops. Or some poor fool thought he could use it to make sure he got laid at least once a year. (Couldn’t argue with that.)

  It seemed funny. He’d been avoiding it for years, and now here he was roped back into it again. You could hardly blame him for trying to skip holidays that were entirely devoted to celebrating feelings; they weren’t exactly his strong suit. But hey, if it involved Jac perhaps it wouldn’t kill him to suffer through it just this once. After all, their time together could hardly be called unpleasant. And he wasn’t so sure there weren’t any ‘feelings’ to celebrate either.

  Where the hell was that owl? Business didn’t stop even for Valentine’s day and Silas was sending off some final requirements before actually bothering to get ready.

  Jac would probably like what he had planned. London had its charm, but he was thinking more along the lines of a night out in the south of France. Okay, so maybe he’d come to that conclusion a little last minute, but he’d gotten all the reservations and everything was ready to go. God bless magic. Overseas travel was almost sinfully easy.

  On cue a massive owl alighted onto the outside balcony. Silas couldn’t tell if she was throwing a distasteful look at the letter or if that was just the set of her face; eagle owls had a habit of looking perpetually pissed. He opened the door and she swooped onto his arm to be brought inside, her claws digging into the expensive fabric of his suit.

  “It’s for Richardson. Think you can handle that?” Silas asked rhetorically, fishing a letter out of a drawer for her to take. The bird gave him an offended look and picked up the note delicately before fluffing her feathers self-importantly and allowing him to throw her back outside. The glass door shut behind her with a faint snap.

  What time was it? After casting reparo on his sleeve, Silas pulled it back to reveal his watch. Right, so maybe he was cutting it a bit close, but it should be fine. Nothing that copious amounts of scotch couldn’t fix. You know, as opposed to the copious amounts of scotch he’d been drinking just moments prior. Unfortunately for him Jac wasn’t the type of woman to arrive late because she was putting on makeup; when she stated a time, she meant it.

  His foray into the bathroom didn’t last very long. Something large and heavy suddenly crashed into his window without warning, the glass rattling dangerously in its frame from the impact. At once a dangerous electric crackling roared out from one of the security charms.

  What the flippin fuck was that?

  Silas threw the handtowel he’d been drying his face with down onto the bench and looked through the door, his gaze immediately darting in the direction of the noise. Despite the darkness outside, he could make out a dark bundle crumpled at the foot of the full-length window. What the hell?

  He drew his wand warily and the outdoor lights switched on. The charm wouldn’t have gone off like that unless something was up. The shape looked familiar, but it couldn’t be. There was no way in hell. He made his way over cautiously, the figure on the ground quickly becoming unmistakably distinct.

  Beak. Feathers. Claws.

  You’ve got to be joking.

  Who the fuck had just thrown his own dead owl back at his house?

  Silas paused to stare at the carcass in surprise, wand poised. No. Really. What the fuck?! The list of potential culprits was enormously short. Dac—No. The vampire couldn’t have tracked him back to his own house. He’d been careful about that.

  Fuck.

  Son of a bitch, this was not happening today.

  Silas grit his teeth in frustration and approached the door, slowly unbolting the lock and pushing it open. There was no movement from the balcony, and after a few seconds Silas stepped through, making a quick visual sweep of likely ambush positions before moving forward again. Nadda. The place looked empty.

  What the hell. Silas felt his hand clench tighter around his wand, ire rising. Bullshit. No one killed his fucking owl and then just vanished. The animal was lying freakishly motionless on the balcony, one wing stuck out at an odd angle, head turned backwards, eyes sightless and glassy. Perhaps the culprit wouldn’t find it as funny when he wrung their necks.

  Dacian.

  Had to be.

  The name was ringing around in Silas’s head involuntarily. He neared the balcony, wand ready for any movement. If the vampire had even dared to show his face outside his house Silas was going to kill him. Slowly at that. And creatively. Possibly with his own knives. Son of a b—

  He never got to finish that thought. The vampire exploded into sight, his hand closing around his wand and tearing it away before Silas could react. “Hello, Silas,” he grinned maliciously, seizing the front of his clothing, and before Silas knew it the vampire had picked him up and hauled him over the balcony. He didn’t even hear himself giving a surprised yell of protest. All he was aware of was the disorientating feeling of falling before he collided hard with the ground, a flash of pain tearing brutally from his right knee.

  Ow. Fuck. Shit. Ow.

  His head was swimming.

  Get up. Turn around. Get up.

  Silas groaned.

  Get the FUCK up you son of a bitch.

  There was a dull thud of something landing next to him and Silas sluggishly tried to turn around. A hard boot collided onto the side of his ribs, practically kicking him over onto his back, grinding the shattered bones of his knee and sending another flash of pain through the joint.

  “FUCK!”

  Sure enough, Dacian was looming menacingly over him. Silas’s head was still murky from the fall, but everything else seemed to be in surreally sharp focus. The voice telling him to get up was now turning into a deafening roar. Fuck. This wasn’t happening. His limbs seemed to kick back into motion, but his attempts to drag himself backwards were met with excruciating stabs of protest from his leg.

  The smug exterior Dacian hated so much wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Silas was breathing hard, expression twisted in anger. There were bloody scapes to the side of his face and the palms of his hands. The smell of blood was probably already on the air. And for God knew what reason, it looked like Silas was still trying to get up.

  “What the FUCK do you want?”

[Dacian]

Silas Rosier’s blood on the air. Dacian took a long savouring breath. The first of much blood to be spilt. A flex of his hand revealed some stiffness, and cursory glance revealed welts. The wand, it had felt strange against his skin but he assumed it had been the magic. But these looked more like burns. He opened and clenched his first, feeling the extent of the damage. Not much, but it would be stinging for a while. “Holy water on your wand?” he huffed, “A nice sentiment, but really, you shouldn’t have troubled yourself.”

His teeth were glinting dangerously in the light from the house as he followed the wizard’s scrambling retreat. It looked like one leg had been damaged in the fall, and the vampire chuckled. “Having a little difficulty getting up?” He reached out the tip of his boot and picked the leg up under the knee. The resulting yell of agony was tremendously satisfying, but not exactly stealthy. Silas’s garden, barely sheltered from the front gate by the house was hardly a convenient place for revenge.

“Alright, that’s enough.” Dacian knelt and pushed the heel of his palm under the wizard’s chin. Silas would be wise to keep his tongue free of his teeth, since Dacian was now forcing his jaws together and tipping his face up. The pressure would also serve to pin the man’s head back on the grass and his other hand was free to swat away any flailing limbs. “Shut up, and stay still. Not that you have a choice.” He shifted one knee to rest on the mortal’s chest, knowing he could compress the man’s lungs to the point of asphyxiation if needs be.

“What do I want? Seems like I already have what I want.” The struggling reply was met with increasing weight Silas’s chest and a low growl from the vampire. “What did I tell you?” He kept the pressure on Rosier’s chest until it would be hard for the man to breathe and consequently make much noise, then released. “Your little games are over. You lose. You really think I’m going to sit here and tell you all about my devious plans?”

Thankfully his gloating was interrupted by a movement in the house. The soft glowing orbs that lighted the interior were moving from the upper levels where Silas had been working to the lower floor. Someone had arrived. And there was only one person Silas regularly invited over. He flashed a grin. “You have a visitor.” Which Silas could no doubt see from his unique advantage point.

The response was immediate, and surprisingly more frantic than when his own life had been in danger. Interesting. Dacian had known about the wizard’s attachment to the woman, but not that it had run this deep. Said woman came into view, and Dacian quelled the man’s struggles with a bite to the neck, injecting the pacifying venom until the struggled stopped and the racing heartbeat slowed. It took a lot, even for a full grown man. A man of his age and size shouldn't be able to take in so much of the fluid before passing out.

It was a mystery to solve later. Ensuring the woman was looking away, he hefted the unconscious man and carried him into the topiary that was as painstakingly maintained as the owner’s beard. Seriously, who spent that long shaping facial hair?

He stashed the body behind a rather elaborate dragon creation and poisoned himself well within the shadow with a view of the house. The woman took a while to make a circuit of the house, no doubt seeking her lover. It was a pity someone had to give a damn about Silas, but anyone wasting any semblance of affection on the sorcerer probably deserved a little heartache.

She finally came back into view, approaching the office on the first floor. After a moment of checking the papers on top of the desk, she opened the balcony door. Dacian tensed, but she only uttered a short scream at the sight of the owl she had all but tripped over. She quickly retreated inside, and Dacian was satisfied she was not going to follow.

He returned to the body of the wizard and lifted him onto his shoulder. It was a small feat to get them over the high walls surrounding the property, but he managed without dropping Silas too hard on the other side. It was easy enough in a swift jog to carry Silas around the back of Hogsmeade and into the forest. The mortal’s knee made a noise of grinding bone with each step. Must be painful. Dacian smiled to himself as the trees enclosed round them. They were in his domain now.

[Silas Rosier]

  Silas didn’t like the way Dacian was eyeing his leg. And he definitely didn’t like the way he was grinning and heading towards it either. What the hell was he—

  “Don’t even think about—” Silas’s threat was cut short by a surprised “ARGH!” of pain when Dacian hooked his boot under the crook of his knee and lifted. The shattered bone crunched together like sandpaper, causing a vicious stab of pain from the broken joint. Dacian dropped the leg none too kindly and Silas hissed in a breath, gritting his teeth so as not to give the vampire the satisfaction of hearing him cry out again.

  “Fuck you, Dacian!” he roared, remembering with a stab of fury that the crucifix was still lying on the bathroom counter. “If you wanted me for yourself on Valentines you could have just a—”

  “Alright, that’s enough.” Dacian’s hand closed under Silas’s jaw, pushing him down so the back of his head collided with a dull crack against the deck. Silas made an indistinct noise of protest, but any shouts were cut off by Dacian pushing hard against his chin, painfully forcing his head back and exposing his throat. Oh fuck no. Silas thrashed instinctually, kicking out with his good leg and grabbing onto Dacian’s wrist. The vampire wasn’t having any of it and pushed his knee into Silas’s chest, pinning one arm to his side and making it a lot harder to breathe.

  “I already have what I want.”

  Slimy son of a bitch. Silas bet he did.

  Through clenched teeth he managed a furious “Getthefuckoffme,” shoving hard with his shoulder in an attempt to push the vampire off. The reaction was instantaneous: Dacian cruelly ground his knee down onto Silas’s torso, crushing his ribs forcing him to take ragged gasps for air between gritted teeth. It would feel a lot like sleep paralysis if the situation wasn’t so dire; his heartbeat was thundering in his ears, white lights dancing up in front of his vision from lack of oxygen, lungs burning as he tried to twist free out of the vampires grasp.

  With that, the pressure lessened. Silas hissed in a gasp of freezing air. His head was pounding, the back of his neck starting to ache from being forced back and he was about ready to kill Dacian the second an opportunity presented itself. What the fuck was he doing if he wasn’t going to kill him immediately? Fuck. Silas hated being toyed with. If the vampire was getting a hard-on from pinning him to the ground then fine, but Silas was getting sick of it.

  All of a sudden Dacian’s weight shifted. Not much, scarcely millimetres, but enough to suggest he’d just been distracted. It barely took Silas a split second to notice why. The lights. The lights in the house were mov—

  No.

  Silas’s heart leapt somewhere into his throat.

  Dacian thoughts weren’t far behind his. “You have a visitor,” the vampire grinned maliciously.

  Fuck!

  Silas gave another violent lurch. FUCK, this wasn’t happening. He had to get away. Get Jac away. Panic was clouding his senses and Silas struggled back with renewed force. His knee was exploding with pain from his efforts, but all he was succeeding in doing was making the damage worse.

  Wordlessly, vampire forced his head to the side and Silas realised what was about to happen before it did. He didn’t even have a chance to make a muffled shout of warning to Jac. Dacian’s head descended, and with a stab of pain something sharp sliced into the muscle of his neck.

  In any other circumstance Silas would have said he was about to be sick. He gave a strangled cry and bucked in surprise, trying to push himself out of the way only to inadvertently drive the fangs in deeper. Through the cutting pain he could feel the vampires mouth on his skin, the hand on his jaw that was pinning him down, and ARGH. Get the fuck o— He shoved against the vampire’s head, only to feel Dacian’s jaw clench to maintain his grip.

  Dacian wouldn’t budge. The pain was starting to fade, but a worrying sense of light-headedness was starting to get overwhelming. His breathing was getting laboured. It was harder to fight.

  Jac was looking around in the middle of the room. She mustn’t be able to see through the darkness.

  His vision gave a dangerous lurch.

  She looked gorgeous.

  Moving was arduous. His breathing was slowing. The world was starting to swim again. Darkness was creeping in.

  He couldn’t remember anything else.

[Dacian]

He had to take a slight detour to avoid a hunting party of centaurs, and he had to dose Silas no less than four consecutive times before they got the cave system, but otherwise the journey was uneventful. Dacian had used the caves as shelter before, and so far it was the only place Silas had never found him. Well, lucky for Silas, he was going to get the executive tour.

The cavern Dacian chose was quite deep, and he accidentally on purpose scraped Silas’s flaccid limbs along the abrasive rock wall more than few times. Whoops. The vampire was practically whistling a jolly tune by the time he set his captive down against one wall. Somewhere around here there were candles and matches. Even a night hunter like Dacian needed some light to see.

It took a few minutes to set up a couple of candles to illuminate the battered and unconscious wizard. The golden light make ominous shows on the wall, and to human eyes, an exit would be hard to discern in the shadows beyond the ring of light. The vampire crouched between the candles and metaphorically patted himself on the back. Capturing Silas had gone without a hitch. It just went to show that when he put his mind to something, and actually made a plan rather than running in head first, things went in his favour.

Of course, he was breaking plenty of rules set down by the coven by doing this, and if caught, his punishment would likely be death, but this revenge could not be left to grow cold. Silas deserved everything that was coming to him. His death would be a mercy. Dacian could take the risk. He’d been careful. Nobody knew of his plans, and nobody had followed him here. By the time they realised Silas was gone, his tracks would be untraceable, and Silas’s body would be buried deep in the forest.

The wizard was due to wake up soon, and while Dacian listened to the man’s heart for a change in rhythm, he realised one thing he had not included in his plan. A meal. Ordinarily Dacian avoided drinking from males, but since this was Silas, he supposed he could make an exception. Besides, there was nothing more invasive than stealing blood from an unwilling mortal.

Licking his teeth, he arranged Silas to be lying flat on the cold stone floor, and leant over his chest for the best angle on his neck. Keeping his venom contained, he tipped the man’s head up and to the side, baring the length of his neck. He bit low, avoiding the rougher skin around the jaw. He buried his teeth deeply into muscle and began to draw blood from the wound.

It came easily, and though the blood was musky from testosterone, it had a strange undertone. It was almost like, alcohol? It was as if someone had just emptied a bottle of wine into his blood. How was he not dead?

He felt the first stirrings of the wizard underneath him, and he casually pinned down an arm and his opposite shoulder so any thrashing would not cause his fangs to tear the muscle or more major blood vessels and ruin his fun before it began.

He continued to feed, slowly drawing on the blood so as not to drain the wizard too much. He needed him alive for a good long while yet. The wizard was coming round fast, and Dacian growled against his throat when he tried to feebly push him away. He warned Silas with a tighter bite, but released his jaw to continue feeding. Only when the thrashing started in earnest did he release the neck and lap the wounds to encourage them to close. No use if he bled out, after all.

“You just can’t keep quiet, can you?” He rumbled, still looming close over Silas’s torso. His stomach was strangely warm, more so than after a usual feed. “Doesn’t really matter now, I suppose. Nobody but us can hear you.” His slightly blood-stained smile was languid. His pupils were dilated wide, and that warmth in his stomach was spreading. Well that wasn’t normal, but it was a relaxing feeling and he couldn’t bring himself to care much more than that.

[Silas Rosier]

  Urgh.

  There was an unidentified shuffling noise. Something being scraped against rock.

  Silas groaned.

  Damnit.

  The ground was cold. Hard. Something heavy was lying over his chest making it difficult to breathe.

  Murrphh—Fuck. What?

  Where was—

  He couldn’t think. A smoggy cloud had descended over his head. Forcing his thoughts into something resembling coherency was a nightmare.

  It was dark. Ridiculously dark. Only one or two candles were providing meagre light against some weathered stone walls. He couldn’t seem to focus his eyesight. Hell, he wasn’t even sure he’d recognise the place even if he did know it.

  Where was— Argh. He tried to roll, only to have the offending limbs casually pinned down.

  Everything seemed to hurt. A sharp pain shot from his neck as he tried to lift his head. The weight lying on his chest shifted in response. At once a freezing hand forced him back down, holding his head to the ground and keeping his throat exposed with more strength than was strictly necessary. Shit. Silas felt a triggering of alarm and tried to groggily force himself up. The movement sent a sharp flare of agony ripping from his knee and resulted in a dangerous snarl from somewhere above his collarbone.

  Son of a b—

  He instinctively pushed harder, realisation dawning. Fuck. Not again. He wasn’t living through this shit again.

  Where was—

  Jac.

  Something tight and unpleasant knotted in his stomach. The memory seemed to startle him into action and he tried to move again with more force. No. Move. He had to mov— Silas growled in a mixture of anger and frustration, pushing back against the vampires grasp with all the strength he could muster. His limbs felt like lead, he was lacking any sort of leverage, but he didn’t notice, or didn’t care.

  Jac. Where was—

  Fuck.

  The feel of the vampire languorously licking the wound closed caused Silas to bristle in disgust.

  “What’ve you done with her?” he roared, grabbing Dacian by the shoulders. For the first words out of his mouth, it was a stupid move. Ridiculously stupid. In one hit he’d just confirmed his relationship with Jac and left himself open to attack. If he had of been thinking clearly he’d have kept his damn mouth shut, but he had to know – needed to know.

  Fucking hell, if he’d killed her—

  What happened next wasn’t voluntary. Silas didn’t even have the time to finish his thought when at once a large surge of electricity shot through his arms with a dangerous crackle. If it weren't for the vampires natural resistance, it was a fair bet he might have found himself thrown across the room from the brute force.

[Dacian]

[atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=background,http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/Tigeress/Random/postscripts/daci.png][bg=000000][atrb=style,background-position: top; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 220px 65px 65px 65px;]Dacian usually assumed Silas to be a self-obsessed man, which made having any leverage on him difficult. The explosive words however and the apparent disregard for his own safety as the wizard grabbed him was the first sign that Silas was human after all. He has weaknesses. The vampire’s smile was anything but kind. He’d found a crack in the impenetrable wall. Hell, by the ferocity in his eyes, Dacian could say it was a whole damn door. His smile abruptly faded in a grimace as power slammed into his shoulders, as if the wizard had punched him hard. He automatically slapped the offending hands away and pinned both of them over the man’s head. His shoulders were still tingling, as if electrocuted. Magic. Dacian hated wizards. He deserved everything that was coming to him. Lazily licking the remains of blood from his lips, he glowered down at the wizard. “You’ll make me grumpy if you do that again.” He said with the slightest slur. “Your brunette? I like brunettes. She made a nice starter.” He continued, the cruel smile returning. “Don’t worry, I buried her proper, there’s no trace.” He made a half laugh as the mortal bucked and protested. Dacian kept his arms pinned at the wrist, and straddled his waist to reduce movement further. Who knew Silas Rosier could be so fearful over the death of one woman. He let the man struggle. Let him realise how feeble it was now. He was trapped, there was nowhere to go, and no one to save.

[Silas Rosier]

  The bolt of electricity had done a brilliant job of wiping the smile clean off Dacian’s face. Silas didn’t even have time to ponder what the fuck had just happened, let alone stop to gloat; the vampire recovered fast and tore Silas’s grip from his clothing, pinning his arms tightly above his head. Silas’s livid glare was met by the vampire’s furious snarl.

  Fucker. Silas hoped that’d burnt something fierce.

  “She made a nice starter,” Dacian grinned wickedly. “Don’t worry, I buried her proper, there’s no trace.”

  Silas felt his blood run cold.

  What— No.

  The vampire was lying. He had to be. He couldn’t have found the time to— How long had he been unconscious? Fuck. It could have been hours and he’d never know the difference.

  Something heavy fell into the pit of Silas’s stomach, followed by something infinitely more familiar:

  Rage.

  “YOU SON OF A—”

  A shade of red crossed over Silas’s eyes again, but this time Dacian would have to be blind to mistake it for anything else. Silas set upon the vampire as though pure hatred was all the fuel he needed; attacking, punching, fighting harder than when his own life had depended on it. His legs were the only part not held down and he kicked violently in an attempt to shake loose. The pain from the movement on the broken limb was absolutely torturous, but he didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  God, Silas would have killed Dacian then and there if he had the chance.

  But he couldn’t. Not with the way Dacian was lying on him, pinning him underneath him, owning him. He couldn’t do a damn thing, and Dacian knew it.

  And Jac— Her laugh. Her smile. That endearingly irritating way he could con him into working just with a well-timed look. The quirk in the corner of her lip when he made her happy. Her eyes. He didn’t want to believe that all of that had just... vanished. It didn’t even seem possible. A shallow grave. It sounded so vulgar.

  Jac... She’d gone where he couldn’t follow. And God, he wanted to follow – would have given anything if he could. Fuck. Just the idea she mightn’t be there any more felt like an impossibility; like a hole had been torn out of existence.

  He couldn’t think. Didn’t want to think. It hurt. It actually physically hurt.

  He was light-headed from lack of blood, his chest was tight, his limbs pained, but he didn’t stop until the blood loss took its toll and Silas didn’t have any other choice. His head was whirring dangerously, the now familiar white lights materialising in front of his vision and for a second he thought he was going to black out. Every muscle was still tense, straining against the vampires weight.

  “AND I’M NEXT, IS THAT IT?!” he demanded furiously, eyes starting to burn. God, he wanted to kill him. To let everything out as though that would somehow make it all better. “THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!”

  End it already.

  He’d had enough of Dacian’s game.

[Dacian]

[atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=background,http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v36/Tigeress/Random/postscripts/daci.png][bg=000000][atrb=style,background-position: top; background-repeat: no-repeat; padding: 220px 65px 65px 65px;]That flash of red. He’d seen that before. Then he had dismissed it as a trick of the light but now… it could not be a coincidence. Perhaps it was his desire to see Silas in any demonic light, but as far as he knew, wizards’ eyes did not traditionally flare red with anger. Then again, what was traditional with magic? It broke every rule of nature. It turned men into gods, and gods into laughing stocks. Well Silas’s reign was over. What power he had now was no match for his own. It was a curious thing, how wizards could be so infallible, but take away something as simple as a wand and they lost it all. Their Achilles heel. How they should come to possess such power in the first place was an imbalance in the weighted scales of the cosmos. What did a wizard have to give up to command the forces of the universe? To call on the sun to do their bidding. Bring inanimate objects to life. Even reanimate the dead for their own dark wants. Nothing. A wizard had all the boons of any mortal, and none of their weaknesses. Well, except for their mortality of course. No wizard was immortal. A fact Dacian intended to exploit. The fury fuelled the wizard, gave him a strength only a doomed man could muster. It would be quite admirable if it weren’t so ultimately pathetic. The vampire was distracted from his thoughts by the passion of it and put his attention to holding him down, moving against his struggles to keep his back flat on the ground. Finally he quelled, and Dacian was able to lean in closely, focus his eyes on the glare of the captured wizard beneath him. No red. Perhaps he could invoke it again. “If I were going to kill you, Rosier, you wouldn’t have made that fall from your balcony alive. No, you’re going to suffer, just like I have for months. This is only the beginning. No amount of begging is going to end this before I say it’s even. Only then do you get your grave. Maybe I’ll bury you alive to finish you off.” He sneered and quirked a brow. “If you’re lucky, I’ll be generous and bury you next to your woman.”

[Silas Rosier]

[atrb=width,450,true][atrb=cellspacing,0,true][atrb=cellpadding,0,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=background,http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/1300666/Characters/Silas/Scripts/sigpostscript_bg.png,true][atrb=valign,top]	[rs=2][bg=ffffff][atrb=background,http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v321/1300666/Characters/Silas/Scripts/sigpostscript_mainbg.png][atrb=style,background-position:top;background-repeat:no-repeat;]   Dacian leaned in close and Silas glared back resolutely, teeth grit, blinking steadily so as not to give the vampire the satisfaction of seeing him break down. Silas wasn’t an emotional person, he never had been, but the news of Jac had somehow struck him in a way any of Dacian’s numerous blows to the face couldn’t.   The vampire was reciting what sounded like a speech, but Silas had already expected the response he was being given. Dacian wasn’t going to kill him until he was good and ready. He was going to keep him here alive, toy with him, and then finish it once he was satisfied. Silas gave a guttural groan of absolute frustration. Why else would he have dragged him out here? The powerlessness of his situation was bordering on ridiculous.   But what Dacian planned to do didn’t matter. Silas couldn’t muster the energy to fear what was coming. He hadn’t quite grasped the severity of what he was in for. Dacian could fuck off and die. He could survive a few hours worth of torture, then come back. Besides, nothing Dacian could do could top what had already been done. The redness that was growing in his eyes now had nothing to do with magic. He couldn’t seem to breathe properly, his throat was tight and the image of Jac kept floating in his minds eye.   The vampire quirked an eyebrow, lips pulled back in an insufferable sneer. “If you’re lucky, I’ll be generous and bury you next to your woman,” he goaded, and at that, Silas snapped.   In the blink of an eye his forehead collided painfully with Dacian’s nose. The cartilage crunched audibly in the silence and before Dacian had a chance to recover Silas wrenched his arms in an attempt to get loose. The vampire wouldn’t give. Desperately, in a last attempt to strike out, he hocked loudly and spat in the vampires face.   “YOU’RE A SICK FUCK, YOU KNOW THAT?” he roared. The anger was there, but his voice was cracking and before he knew it Silas was blinking back tears.   Dacian could do what he liked, but Silas would return the favour sevenfold. Dacian would get the revenge he deserved. Everything Jac had suffered and more. She’d done nothing to warrant getting dragged into this, and Dacian would get what was his.	[atrb=valign,top]
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