A/N: Back in the saddle again...Thanks as usual to Lady Starlight, and congrats to her on getting the first of her own stories up. If you haven't checked it out, go do so now. http://fanfiction.portkey.org/story/7155
Chapter 19: Interview with a Vampire
***************************Godric's Hollow****************************
November 1, 2015
8:35 am
The sun shone into the room through open curtains, flooding a comfortable, large bedroom in soft, yellow light, illuminating a bed with a pair of slumbering forms. A trail of dark clothing, boots, weapons and equipment led from the door to the bed, ending with a sheathed sword lying half-propped against the nightstand.
Harry's arms were wrapped tightly around the smaller form nestled against him, his back to the door as if to shield her from whatever might come at them from that direction. Hedwig sat on her perch next to the window, watching over them, her head swiveling occasionally to take in every corner of the room. She looked down, as a furry streak seemed to phase through the closed door, and leapt to the bed with two long bounds.
A loud purring sound came from somewhere next to Harry's head and he blearily opened his eyes, turning his head from its nest in Hermione's hair to look back over his shoulder. Crookshanks cocked his head slightly, and motioned back, towards the door. The smell of cooking food reached his nose, and Harry snorted faintly, as Crookshanks patted his shoulder with a paw, and hopped down, pacing over to the door and looking back up at Harry.
Harry waved at him, and the cat passed through a solid-seeming door as Harry turned back to his wife, sitting up slightly and slowly drawing her hair back so he could see her face. He swallowed heavily as he let his eyes pan down her body. A deep blue and purple bruise covered her left side, outlining her ribs, and he frowned, stroking her arm absently. We should probably get up, Mione.
She stirred and opened her eyes slowly, stretching and hissing in pain as she pulled at her ribs. She sat up, resting her back against the headboard, letting her head fall forward and her hair cover her face. I suppose that we should talk to my parents, she muttered, sighing. And we should go into the office...
You don't have to, Love, Harry objected as he slipped from the bed, stepping over the mess on the floor to slip into jeans and a jumper, before looking back to the bed, to find her looking up at him, and brushing her hair back from her eyes with one hand.
She gave him a half-hearted glare, before sliding from the bed, and slipping over to him, only favoring her side slightly. Pausing, she leaned against him for a moment, reaching up to pull his face to hers. Hermione pulled away from the kiss, and leaned her head on his chest before moving to the dresser, and digging in her drawer. She pulled on a black thong marked with "Brainy Girl" on the front in white, before retreating into the closet.
She emerged, dressed in a mid-thigh length black skirt, and pulled on a very soft jumper as he watched, concern in his eyes. She shook out her hair and crossed to their discarded gear, and pulled her wand from the drop-leg sheath on her wandbelt, and dropped it on the bed. Hermione sat on the bed, and drew a wand sheath from the cabinet, strapping it on under her skirt and slipping her wand into it before standing and stepping into a pair of low boots that were waiting for her. You know that I do... She slipped across the room, and took his hand, interlacing her fingers, and pulling him to the door.
I'll be alright, Hermione, if you're not with me for one day, you could stay here.
She smiled slightly and kissed his cheek, You get into far too much trouble on your own. Hermione opened the door with a gesture and pulled him along out into the hall and down the stairs.
Remus will be there, Harry objected as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
He's worse than you, she objected, grinning and kissing his nose, adroitly hiding the flicker of pain, at least from her face. Let's go, Harry.
As they stepped into the kitchen, Jane looked back from the rangetop, where she was busy scrambling a large batch of eggs. Her eyes frowned as she watched Hermione cross to the kitchen table and drop heavily into a chair. Harry sat next to her, pulling his chair over until it touched hers. "How are you, honey?" Jane asked quietly, carrying a plate full of eggs over and setting it on the table in front of her daughter.
Hermione shrugged, and scooped a batch of eggs onto a plate, garnishing it with couple of strips of bacon, before handing the lot to Harry. She looked back as he cocked his head slightly and she frowned, before fixing herself a second plate, and taking a bite of bacon. Harry leaned over and kissed her temple before starting in on his own breakfast.
"I'm fine, Mum," Hermione muttered, with all of the annoyance that a thirty-six-year-old Witch could project towards her mother, even if she looked closer to a twenty-one-year-old Muggle than anything.
Jane wisely dropped the subject and took a sip of coffee, glancing over out of the corner of her eye at Roger, "Remus called this morning, he said we could return to the house tomorrow, something about not wanting too many feet trampling around while they looked for clues. It's alright if we stay here?"
"Sure, Mum," Harry answered for the both of them, finishing his coffee and tapping the rim with one finger. The mug refilled itself and he rapidly ate his eggs, not even looking over to see that Hermione had finished hers. He stood, and fed Hermione an extra strip of bacon, grinning faintly at the brief, heated look she gave him as she nipped it off just short of his fingers, before he carried the plates to the sink where they started to wash themselves.
Hermione gave her parents a hug, and joined him next to the sink, "We need to go in; we'll probably see you for supper."
Jane watched as Hermione wrapped her arms around Harry and they vanished silently between eyeblinks. Jane sighed and walked to the coldbox, peering in. "Let's see what there is to fix for dinner."
Roger snorted and stood, kissing the top of her head she started to rummage through the appliance, and headed to the living room to see if the satellite was actually working today as no hormonally-imbalanced grandchildren...or their parents, were home to send errant magic into the air.
***************************Ministry of Magic*****************************
Harry and Hermione appeared outside of Lupin's office and knocked. They waited for a moment, until Lupin's secretary, Teresa Blake, stuck her head out from her adjoining office.
The twenty-year-old girl, only a few years out of Hogwarts shook her head, sending her short blonde bob dancing, "Fred and George are here," she explained, "they are down at the range."
"Thanks," Harry replied and took Hermione's hand, and vanished again, leaving Teresa still shaking her head.
They reappeared several stories below the courtrooms, in the extensively refurbished catacombs that were once Voldemort's near-successful pathway into the Ministry in the last war. Now extensively reinforced, and isolated behind layers of armor and wards, they had become the site of armories and a smaller version of the training facilities at the Auror and Special Operations Academy located on the Channel.
Harry nodded to a grizzled old wizard manning a desk near the entrance of a long hallway that led into darkness. He motioned over his shoulder with his thumb, and without asking, tossed them two pairs of earmuffs, without a word of explanation.
Harry shrugged as he looked back to Hermione and led the way down the hallway, pushing through a door emblazoned "Authorized Personnel Only," in blood-red lettering, in English, Gobblygook, Latin, French, Spanish, German, and Mermish. Harry had not even known that Mermish was a written language before he started at the Ministry, nor did he know why it was in use, most likely some obscure regulation whose source was lost to time.
Five people stood, looking back at them from next to a vaguely tubular-shaped apparatus set horizontally on a steel tripod. A faceted, blue crystal was attached horizontally on top and was glowing softly in the dim room. As Harry approached closer, and waved idly to the twins, he could see that the cylinder was not solid, but composed of what appeared to be six overly-long, carved wands mounted in a cylindrical frame about a central core to point in the same direction, with a half-dozen silver bands holding them together in their bundle. A seventh, half-sized, wand-like object was mounted above them pointing along the long axis of the cylinder.
Harry looked to Remus and Tonks, and then to Wendell, who was looking on with a vaguely amused expression. "What are you doing here?"
"Wanted to be at the scene of the crime before hand, saves me the time when these two," motioning towards the Twins, "blow up the place."
"O' ye of little faith," said Fred, walking up and throwing his arm around Hermione's shoulders. "You alright, little sis?" he asked almost gently. Hermione nodded, and gave him a quick smile, and he smiled back, before waving to his twin who was standing with his hand on their newest toy. "George?"
"Fred and I were thinking..."
"Merlin help us all," Tonks muttered, not at all quietly.
George acted as if he had not heard her, except for the brief flash of his tongue towards her. He rested his hand on the crystal on top of the device, patting it a couple of times, "We were looking into something new, to defend against intrusion, especially after that bit of trouble in Colombia last year with that nest of Inferi." He patted the topmost large wand analogue.
"As you know," Fred went on, "Normally, it takes a wizard or witch to summon the magic for a spell and then focus it through a wand, where it acts as a amplifier and focusing object. However a lot of the difficulty with a wand, is that by its very nature, it's a complicated magical item, they have to be able to normally cast all sorts of spells from housekeeping charms to all-out combat spells...but what if you didn't need that flexibility, what if you just needed power?"
George grinned, and rubbed the crystal on top again, and then pointed towards another two crystals sitting on the ground next to the tripod. One was shimmering with a liquid silver color, and the other throbbing with a bright red-gold. "So far we've just managed to get three spells working, Reductor, Flame and the Argentium Penatartum. Verity thinks that the Ripper should be doable and would be even more effective, but we've had trouble getting the spellforms to coalesce coming out the accumulators."
Fred waved towards the far end of the range, where a half-dozen giant yellow chickens stood, trembling. Hermione looked to him, and he shrugged, "Don't worry, they are just Golems, Hermione..."
Fred slipped on a pair of heavy earmuffs, and waited as the rest did likewise before he touched the contraption with his wand. A bright red beam snapped out of the small wand on top, pointing down towards the chickens, and the other six wands started to spin in a blur around their common central axis. He touched a glowing rune on the back...and the room vanished in actinic light.
A loud roaring hiss, filled their ears, even through the muffs, as a pulsing stream of blue hosed the targets downrange, with snapping explosions every few milliseconds, complementing the roar of the weapon. The glow of the crystal on top slowly faded until after seemingly endless minutes, but probably only a few, it went black, and the streams of spellfire stopped.
The wands continued to rotate, smoking slightly for another minute until they stopped, to leave only the ozone smell of spellfire, and the flaming remnants downrange.
Remus whistled softly, and looked to Fred.
Fred smirked slightly, "That is of course, manual control, they can also be interfaced with Detection and Intrusion Wards to provide a active defense. We are also working a smaller version that should be man-portable."
"Joke shop," Harry said, shaking his head.
"That is only the merest extent of Weasleys' Wizarding Enterprises," George replied, grinning, "as one of our largest shareholders, you should know that, Harry."
Remus sighed, "Write up a prospectus, on what it would take to provide an active defense for the usual high security sites, along with a few floaters." Fred and George grinned, and just waved as Remus turned, still shaking his head and led Tonks, Harry and Hermione out of the room. They tossed their muffs in a box next to the guard, and boarded a newly installed lift, and started to drop even further into the earth.
"Anything from the pair we got last night?" Hermione asked as the lift shuddered to a halt and the door opened onto a small white room.
A plain steel door sat opposite the lift, with a window next to that, behind which a guard sat attentively. The room was otherwise empty save for a bare wire bench, designed to be as uncomfortable as possible.
Remus shook his head and nodded to the guard, a buzzer sounded and they slipped through the steel door into another hallway. "The were knew nothing, as usual, I suppose, the vamp...she's a different box of Kneazles, I suppose." He looked speculatively at Hermione; "It might be best if Hermione interrogates her, Harry."
Harry crooked an eyebrow, but they followed Remus into a small room. His questions were immediately answered as Remus touched a glowing rune on one wall and the wall seemed to vanish, to show the near-featureless interior of a Ministry holding cell.
The interior was pure white, with no discernable difference between the walls, floor and ceiling. A pair of faded black and white striped robes were flung on the floor, below a pure-white shelf serving as a bed.
Remus' concern was obvious as Harry and Hermione looked at the occupant of the cell.
The female vampire, a lithe brunette with dark, nearly black eyes, was stretched out along the bed like a large cat, facing the wall. She was totally nude, her clothes destroyed in the fire damage she had sustained last night, though not a trace of a wound marred her body now. She smiled towards the wall, and let a pink tongue slip out to dance along lips and to suggestively caress the tips of her fangs as she cupped a breast with one hand and laughed, though the sound was cut off from the observation room.
Harry turned to his friend, and made a small questioning gesture.
Remus shrugged, "Oh, it's not that I think that she could even draw your eye for a bit, hell even Veela don't phase you...but she has a touch of succubus in her, she already damn near seduced a pair of the younger Aurors, Tonks had to go in and drag them out."
"I don't suppose that she likes the robes we gave her?" Hermione replied wryly. She sighed and rolled her shoulders, before she reached up under her skirt and handed her wand to Harry. She kissed his cheek quickly and walked from the room without another word.
A moment later, Hermione appeared in the room without ever seeming to walk through a door. Hermione did not look back at Harry, even as he stepped to the one-way wall and touched another glowing rune, causing sound to fill the room from the cell.
Hermione looked down at the vampire as she slowly stood, more or less coming to Hermione's eye level, putting aside the low boots the Archmage was wearing. Hermione leaned back against the wall, and glanced down, smirking slightly. "Cold, luv?"
The vampiress stalked across the room to Hermione and leaned close, moving until her breasts, were just, barely, not brushing across the front of Hermione's jumper. "You could warm me up," she murmured, her eyes going even darker, as the hint of fangs showed at her lips.
Hermione brushed aside the flicker of power that she felt dance across her aura. She waved and a table appeared, along with a pair of chairs. She sat in the furthest and crossed her legs, leaning back slightly. Hermione idly scratched at her leg, next to the end of her empty wand holster as she watched the vampiress lick her lips and start to pace over, her stride every bit as predatory as any large cat's.
Hermione waited, as the other woman started to lean over the table, and sighed quietly, "Give it a rest and sit your arse down, dear, I'm married, and even if I wasn't, you're not my type."
"Just because I don't have a penis? You're missing out on a lot..."
"I meant breathing."
Hermione gestured to the empty chair and it shot under the vampire, knocking her from her feet and dropping her neatly into the chair. "What were you doing last night?"
The vamp leaned back in her chair crossing her arms over her chest, "Going for a walk."
"Yes," Hermione waved her hand over the table and a steaming mug appeared. She picked it up and took a sip, watching her over the rim. "One often decides to take a walk in late October at night in a thunderstorm in the company of Werewolves, Werebears, and Dark Wizards, in the yard that just happens to be one shared by the Chief Auror, the Head of Auror Intelligence and my parents." Her demeanor hardened, her eyes narrowing slightly as a faint smirk fell across the vampire's lips.
"Why, luv, don't tell me that you still care for your genetic donors," she murmured, and let her eyes flicker down and then back up. "I see that you are cold as well, are you sure that you wouldn't want to warm me up?" She looked past Hermione's shoulder towards the blank wall, "I'm sure that they would enjoy the show."
"I'm sure they would," Hermione agreed, her eyes holding the vamps'. She stood and walked to the wall, with a faint smile. "Thank you, I enjoyed our chat."
She vanished and reappeared next to Harry in the next room. He touched the rune again and the wall faded to opacity, and let her nestle against him, as only Remus and Tonks were present. She buried her head in his neck, as he carefully wrapped his arms around her, missing her bruised side. You alright?
Hermione nodded, her face still pressed to his shoulder, It's always so...something in their heads...I mean, you or I...or Remus, even Tonks to a bit, we're predators, for lack of a better term, but it's different. "I didn't get anything really from her," Hermione announced, her voice still muffled by Harry's jumper. "Just three names, Kendal, Sarah, and Olga...they seemed important...they were at the front of her mind...spouses or lovers, I would suppose from the other emotions associated with them." She shrugged and turned in Harry's arms. "No faces, though."
"It's more than we had before," Remus replied, shrugging. He watched as Hermione continued to shiver slightly in the dungeon, and sighed internally as he watched the secondary effects of her magic starting to heal her. "Go home, it's Sunday, anyway...I'll add the info to today's morning brief and we'll go home as well."
Hermione looked as if she was going to argue, and looked back and up at Harry as he obviously said something in her mind. "Alright," Harry replied and they vanished, leaving Remus and Tonks to walk back to the lift and to their offices.
*****************************Hogwarts*********************************
2:25 pm
Emilia watched, vaguely fascinated, as Virginia and Kris snuggled closer on the couch, the redhead letting her hand fall down to cup Kris' bum possessively. Virginia pulled a tartan blanket from the back of the couch over them, covering all but Kris' head as the slightly shorter girl tucked her head comfortably under Virginia's chin. The young Weasley gave Em a tired grin, and yawned, before kissing the top of the brunette's head and leaving her lips there as she let her eyes fall closed.
A moment later, Em could tell that both girls were sleeping, mostly from the flutter of Virginia's Weasley-red hair, which so oddly complimented her café-o-latte skin. And was even more amazingly, natural. Emilia dropped her head back to an old, tattered, leather-bound notebook, and continued to slowly page through the writings of a woman that she had never met. She closed her eyes for an instant at the thought, she would have given almost anything to have the chance to talk to Lily for a few minutes, but it was not to be.
Emilia looked up, startled, as a soft noise came from next to her, even though she had felt Harriet come down the stairs and stop next to her. "Is that it?" Harriet whispered, almost reverently, and Emilia nodded.
"Yeah," she murmured, even though the only other two in the room were Virginia and Kris and they were both sound asleep. "The Potter family cheat book...the potion instructions are inside, as are the needed spells and such...I can help you with the potion but the rest is up to you." She extended the book to Harriet but did not let go as the other girl grabbed onto it, "Are you sure that you want to do this? It is dangerous." Emilia's eyes narrowed, "No one, would think less of you if you didn't."
"You and Rain and...Sirius are," Harriet replied quietly, and Emilia nodded.
"Yes," she took a breath and let go of the book, watching as Harriet tucked it to her chest, folding her arms over it. "But Rain did hers totally differently, some vision quest thing with her mum's side."
Harriet shrugged, and her eyes flickered upward, towards the stairs opposite the ones she had come down, "It might help."
"Honestly...it might," Emilia confirmed. Harriet just gave her a small smile and turned, retreating back up the stairs she had arrived from and Emilia sat back on the couch, her mind flickering towards the Quidditch pitch where she could feel Xander practicing with Sirius' help, her brother more help than she could be, as she was an absolutely hopeless Chaser, even her Mum could beat her in that position. Xander shot an inquiry back as he felt her attention focus on him for a moment, and she sent a mental shrug his way, and retreated from his thoughts.
Emilia looked over as a shadow moved, and resolved into a sleek black cat, eight-feet-long nose to tail if it were an inch. Large, expressive ears twitched, as deep blue eyes held hers for a moment. The cat padded over to Em, its mostly-retracted claws, which were incongruously painted a deep Gryffindor red, clicking softly on the flagstone. The black puma stopped next to Virginia and Kris, pausing to sniff at them, and looked over to Emilia, with a large, cat grin.
The cat stopped in front of her and sat, looking up. Emilia watched, quietly, as the cat's body, compacted, folding back in on itself, and the night-black fur retreating, as the cat rapidly vanished to be replaced by her other best friend, more or less. Rain looked around for a beat with cat-pupiled blue eyes for a moment longer as cat ears twitched from where they stuck out from her hair, before she took a breath and her pupils rounded, and the ears retreated, vanishing beneath her raven-wing hair.
She reached up and brushed her hair behind her human ear with her left hand, flashing red-painted nails before crossing her legs in front of her to sit Indian style. She looked down at her lap, pulling on her skirt to cover her, and back up, "We need to help her, sis."
Emilia sighed and slipped down from her seat on the couch to sit on the floor in front of it. She leaned back against the front of the seat and waited as Rain moved to sit next to her. Her head flopped over, to lightly rest on Rain's, which fell towards hers at the same instant.
They sat together like that for several silent instants, exactly like a pair of large kittens cuddling together. Emilia sighed, and watched as Virginia muttered something in her sleep, stirring for a beat, as Kris adjusted her position unconsciously and the pair settled back down. "You know I love you, right, Rain?"
"Yeah," Rain muttered, "I know."
"I mean you're my sister..." Emilia muttered, "but she is too...and I don't just mean if she and my dumbarse brother finally suss out what's up with them. But she's going to have to do most of that by herself. She's brilliant, she'll be alright."
"What about her and Sirius?" Rain whispered, looking up towards the stairs where Harriet had retreated. Gaheris padded down as she looked over and crossed the room, leaving out the portrait hole to explore.
"I don't know what to do, Rain," Emilia admitted after a moment's consideration, "He's scared. Not for himself, he's so afraid that he will get her hurt...and he's as stubborn as Dad or Mum ever were."
"Then how do they do it...hell, why haven't you done the same thing, run and hide from Xander...I've heard your nightmares, Em."
Emilia snorted, "Mum and Dad, are a team, I don't think that they can function any longer without the other. It's not the telepathy, or magic, in a conventional sense, they just are..." She shrugged and pulled away from Rain, looking over at the other black-haired girl, "Speaking of that topic, how are you and the young Mr. Black, doing these days?"
Rain just grinned and sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. Her face fell slightly, and a flicker of...something, danced across her eyes. "If we were Muggles, we'd probably wouldn't even be thinking of anything past tomorrow," she said quietly. "I'm scared of what we are, Em."
"He hasn't?" Emilia said quickly, lowly.
Rain shook her head, "No...that'd be me if anyone...you know us aggressive Gryffindor girls...We've only been going out, what, almost two years?"
"Maybe Godric really did curse us all to hook up before we leave here?" Emilia mused and Rain laughed softly. "You remember when we were eleven and you'd stay over at the Hollow for the last week before school, and we'd have sleep overs and never sleep?" She laughed suddenly, "Remember when you had just learned to transform...and changed back right in front of Dad...and forgot to bring along your clothes?"
"Thanks," Rain muttered, "thanks, I had almost managed to forget that." She stood, in a slight, poorly faked huff and crossed her arms as she looked away from Em.
Emilia giggled as she stood, and wrapped her arm around Rain, before kissing her cheek, and dancing away as Rain swiped at her. "Come on, Rain, let's go see if Harriet has managed to get through the equations in the first chapter yet."
*****************************Cardiff************************************
November 3, 2015.
10:25pm
"Let them in, Lucian," Kendal said very quietly, looking up at his Werewolf Alpha, among other things, from behind steepled hands. He sat at a dimly lit table, in the very back corner of the abandoned club he had appropriated months ago. A steaming crystal goblet of clear red fluid sat before him, on an otherwise pristine white linen tablecloth.
Two women sat on either side of him, crowding him slightly into the corner of the booth, but he made no motion to move them. On the contrary, after a moment-as Lucian slowly padded across the long room towards a door guarded with a tall vamp and a stocky were, both holding Muggle pulse rifles in their hands with the air of long experience-he slung his arm around the shoulders of the brunette sitting on his right and pulled her even closer, kissing the top of her head, before she let it flop to his shoulder.
Sarah slowly rubbed his thigh under the table, but the act seemed half-hearted, almost despondent. Kendal frowned slightly, looking down at her, and then over at the blonde on his other shoulder, watching as she looked up him, with a vaguely haunted look deep in her eyes. He glanced down at her, and gently buttoned up a pair of buttons on her white blouse, before reaching over and sliding his goblet to her. "Drink, love," he murmured.
Olga shook her head petulantly, and he sighed faintly. "I want Lissa here," she pouted.
Kendal nodded, and looked back at Sarah, to find her nodding silently, silver tears glinting at the corners of her eyes. He turned back to Olga and bent down, kissing her carefully, his fangs retracted, "I do too; love, but she wouldn't want you to waste away." He slowly moved a pair of blonde locks out of her eyes, "Please, Olga, for me."
She smiled tremulously, and took the goblet, letting him hold it for her steadying her shaking hands. He held it to her lips until she had drunk half of it, before he handed it to Sarah, and just looked at her until she drank the rest. He took the goblet from her and sat it down on the table just as Lucian returned, trailed by three figures in dark robes.
Both of the girls looked up at once with sudden, cat-like hisses from their lips as fangs dropped, and eyes changed.
Kendal reached down, stroking their thighs under the table, pushing up the fabric of their identical skirts almost to the hip and back. The pair slowly quieted; though their eyes never left the newcomers, nor did their fangs retreat. They seemed to quiver in place, like a pair of predators about to pounce as he slowly looked back to the wizards that Lucian had escorted in.
He examined the new trio led by a man with an odd resemblance to Harry Potter, the effect only spoiled by the lack of glasses and scar, and light blue eyes. Kendal looked away from Xavier Hamilton, to his left, to find a short, balding wizard named Crandle Jacobson that he knew that Bellatrix used for errands, and then to Xavier's right to find a towering presence, that seemed blot out the light from the overheads.
Johannes Krause was an import from the lands once controlled by cynical old men deep within Russia. He and his followers had flourished under the communist control of East Germany, providing...services, mostly contract murder for Muggles and Wizards, the almightly Galleon overriding his standards of blood purity. After the fall of the wall, he had worked his way westward, to France during the first war, and then to England, just at the end, to see the fall of his new master at the hands of a pair of teenagers.
Kendal looked away from them, and caught the eye of one of his servants, a Muggle Familiar. He had had him for many, many years, even though the man looked only thirty or so due to the Familiar bond, and pointed to his empty goblet with a lazy wave of one finger. The man nodded and vanished behind a curtain to the kitchens.
Crandle fidgeted as Sarah slowly panned her eyes up and down, and licked her lips, letting her tongue dance along her fangs. Red welled on the end and she slowly sucked it in, watching as he shivered. She started to move, but stopped at Kendal's hand on her leg, holding her with the weight of his fingers alone. "Not now, wait, my love," his voice ghosted to her ears alone. Her hand filled his under the table as Kendal focused on Xavier, "Bellatrix could not even come to explain the absolute what is the term, that Lucian taught me," he paused to look at the three, "Yes...an absolute clusterfuck..."
Krause sneered, "It would have been fine if your people," he spat the word as if distasteful, "could have handled..."
Kendal didn't even bother to try to hold back either vampiress, as they seemed to explode from their seat, crashing into the huge, nearly seven-foot man and sending him tumbling to the floor. He outweighed both of them together, by nearly their missing third, and towered over them by a foot and a half, but it did not matter in the slightest.
Johannes managed one punch, which sent Olga flying back at Lucian's feet. He bent and pulled her to her feet with one hand, and received a kiss on the cheek in reward, before she hissed and leapt ten feet in one bound, landing on Johannes' back, just as Sarah twisted her fingers in his hair and forcefully pulled him to his knees, cutting him down to her size.
Fangs flashed, and he screamed once, before he slumped helplessly as both females ripped into his throat. They both sucked for a long moment as Crandle tried to escape only to be cut off by a pair of Lucian's wolves, who tossed him at the floor next to Kendal's table.
Both Sara and Olga stepped away, letting the huge, lifeless corpse fall to the ground with a thump. Sarah licked clean bloody lips, before leaning over and licking Olga's face clean, as if the blood were milk. She kissed her mate gently, before taking the slightly smaller blonde's hand, and stalking over to the bench at Kendal's side.
He smiled down at them fondly as they crawled onto the booth at his side, and curled up together, with their heads on his lap. "Tell me why," Kendal went on softly, petting the pair in his lap, as he watched Xavier standing before him, quivering in repressed rage, and Crandle, just quivering, "why, what I was told, would be a simple operation against a pair of low-level investigators...ended up costing me four of my wolves, getting one of my kindred killed, and my...wife," he hissed, "captured."
Sarah started to rise, only to stop at his gesture, contenting herself to hissing quietly.
"As far as we knew, that was what..."
"Do not lie to me Xavier...I can taste it..." Kendal growled. "It should have been obvious, when only second-rate followers of your master showed, that something was not...kosher, but Clarissa, is somewhat...impetuous. Go back to your masters and tell them, that there will be no further...misunderstandings, or you may just find that our loyalties may shift."
"You would give your loyalties to Potter?" Xavier chortled.
"At least he understands...honor," Kendal snapped, "Now go...and next time, do not expect to leave here with your throats intact." He made a small gesture and two of Lucian's wolves bodily pulled the surviving two Death Eaters from the club. Kendal mouthed, "Thank you," as his Familiar refilled his goblet from a gold pitcher, and walked over to the bar where he popped the top on a beer.
"It would be more effective to send back only their heads," Lucian muttered as he sat down in a chair opposite Kendal and caught a beer tossed from near the bar without looking.
"Probably," Kendal agreed, "but we are walking a fine line, my friend, a fine line indeed." He shrugged, "How is your Lupa?"
"Cursing my name, and swearing that I am never going to go near her again," he replied with a philosophic shrug, and took a deep pull from his beer. "If she hadn't said the same thing during the last trimester for our other three, I would be concerned." He shrugged again, a quick movement of massive shoulders, "I'm just suffering alongside her...which may have been her plan all along."
Kendal laughed deeply, "Ahh, yes, Sarah did the same thing with our last one, a hundred years or so back." He frowned, "I was looking forward to Clarissa doing the same...She is so young, my friend, only fifty-two...a mere childe...but we knew when we found her," he looked down at Sarah and Olga, who were both looking up at him silently, and ran his hand through Olga's hair, "that we had finally found our fourth..."
"We will get her back, Kendal," Lucian said, and Kendal looked up at Lucian's rare, more-or-less public use of his given name.
"Yes, we will...Do what you have to, find her, we will get her back, no matter what it takes."
A/N: There you go, next chapter, Statements of Position, a step back in time, and just maybe a touch of Sirius and Harriet.