The Phony King of England

[Ewan Dunsirn]

It had been... a long night. A long series of nights – had it been nights? Any amount of time that he spent babysitting Sansa Martin felt like an age to Ewan Dunsirn. Everything blended into one long whine. He'd been hoping to come back to the apartment he shared with his cousin, Liam, for a bit of peace – but the obnoxious sound of canned television laughter coming from the lounge dispelled all hope of that.

Pacing into the lounge, Ewan froze with one hand half-way to returning his smart-phone to the inner pocket of his suit jacket. He could smell it before he saw it.

Directly in front of him, there was a body lying on the couch; a body with a rolling pin sticking out of its chest. Gabriel Rodermark. His empty eyes stared out at the flickering screen of the wall mounted wide-screen TV that Liam - sprawled across an armchair like a heap of discarded laundry - was watching.

“For fucks-”

Lips pursed as he bit back his words, Ewan pushed one hand back through his hair.

“Liam. I told you to put him somewhere discreet, not toss him across the couch like a fuckin' throw rug.”

[Liam Dunsirn]

Liam didn't look away from the telly, Holmes and Watson arguing over the existence of a giant hound on the bright screen. "Hmm? Oh. Well, it was there or your bed. Or maybe the kitchen table."

He slowly looked up at his cousin, who looked as exasperated as ever. "There aren't exactly a lotta choices in the flat."

Don't ask me where Sansa is. Admitting that she'd given him the slip after he'd encouraged her to go out for the evening was pretty far down on the list of things he wanted to do. Like, just below 'pull out my own fingernails.' Liam put his beer to his lips and took another sip, eyes tracking back to the television.

[Ewan Dunsirn]

“That's right. I didn't expect you to bring him back here, Liam. Bringing a body back to the flat. It's like... shitting in the kitchen sink. You haven't started to shit in the kitchen sink, have you?”

As he spoke, Ewan stalked across the lounge, shrugging out of his suit jacket. The room was open plan, the seating area adjacent to a kitchenette that was all dark woods and chrome accents. Ewan laid his jacket down on the table top of the island in the centre of the kitchen and opened the fridge. A handful of blood bags sat cooling in the salad drawer. Above, there were shelves and shelves worth of meat.

He snatched a blood bag then let the refrigerator door thud shut.

“If you weren't family, I'd tear out your larynx with my teeth.”

The only small mercy was... Ewan's eyes narrowed as he pinched the top of the blood bag between thumb and forefinger, poised to rip it open.

“I can't hear the wailing of that violin. Liam... tell me that she didn't see this and run off.”

[Liam Dunsirn]

Liam sat up, his sock covered feet falling to the floor with a thump. "Ah, not exactly. She needed to get out, get some air." He ran a hand through his hair and leaned his elbow on his knee. "So, I went with her, of course. But then ...well, she gave me the slip. I'm sure she'll be back before sunrise."

He stood, looking down at the rolling-pinned body. "So, we going to do it tonight?"

[Ewan Dunsirn]

As he considered the prospect of losing Sansa Martin, Ewan tore the blood bag open and poured the contents of the pouch into a mug, the white ceramic inside flecked red where the blood had sloshed against it. It wouldn't be the end of the world if she were to go missing. Then again, as much of an annoyance as she was – as all simpering Toreador could be – there was the potential that she could be useful too, if only as leverage.

Leaning one hip against the island in the centre of the kitchen, Ewan lifted the mug to his lips and sipped before speaking.

“I think we've waited long enough,” he said, pacing over to the thick, heavy rug that lay in the centre of the lounge. Dipping at the waist, he grabbed a corner of the rug and tugged, snatching the whole thing away – to reveal a series of four manacles set into the wooden boards beneath.

“Get him locked in.”

[Liam Dunsirn]

"Yeah, yeah," Liam groused good-naturedly, stooping over the couch and grabbing the nearest arm and leg. He pulled, the body thumping to the ground, and dragged the staked (pinned?) vamp to the manacle. Ewan had such a flair for the dramatic and macabre, but Liam had to admit that the chains had been a very useful and fun addition.

After snapping the cuffs into place he sat back on his haunches, his longish hair nearly covering his eyes as he gazed down at Gabriel Rodermark.

[Ewan Dunsirn]

Watching as Liam secured the manacles over Rodermark's wrists and ankles, Ewan was – not for the first time – pleased with what he liked to think of as the flat's unique selling point. The restrains wouldn't be enough to keep anyone with any real strength secured – blood forbid he should ever have to try and restrain Liam with them – but Rodermark had slender little effeminate wrists and given the condition he was in, they could have held him down with a paper towel if they'd wanted to.

“We've already been through this, but given your recent inability to follow simple, one-step instructions... we'll just cover it off again, okay? Okay. What do I need,” he punctuated the word with a gesture from both hands, thumbs and forefingers pressed together, “you to do?”

Liam stared at him for a moment.“Yank out the rolling pin.”

“Yank. Out. The rolling pin,” Ewan agreed, nodding at each word. “And then?”

The silent stare was longer this time. Impatient, Ewan continued. “And then make sure no one comes in here when they aren't supposed to – and just to clarify, there is literally no one who should be coming in here now or at any point during our little chat with Rodermark, okay?”

[Liam Dunsirn]

"I'm not an idiot," Liam said. He stayed where he was, crouched by Rodermark's impaled chest. "If Sansa shows up I'll keep her distracted." He smiled in an unpleasant way, a leer that he'd spent years perfecting, then he grinned at the look on his cousin's face.

Before Ewan could think of something insulting to say, Liam grabbed the available handle on the rolling pin and pulled it out of the skewered vampire with one quick movement. He stood up, handing the bloody object to Ewan. "Satisfactory, I hope."

[Ewan Dunsirn]

If Sansa shows up. Not if, he thought, but when? Toreador had fawning down to an art on their best days. Deprived of her sire and sweetheart, Sansa Martin was taken her clan's idiosyncrasies to the extreme. The only thing worse than how she was behaving now was how Ewan imagined she'd be when she realised that Rodermark was not, as she understood him to be, dead.

There was a wet-crunch and as Liam thrust the rolling pin towards him, there was another sound. Quiet, almost inaudible. A strangled grunt. Standing over the shackled body with the bloody rolling pin still in his hands, Ewan smiled, all teeth.

“Hello, Gabriel.”

[Jude]

I was not aware that I was in torpor. I was not even aware that I was not aware. My conscious mind was like a dandelion puff in the wind, floating aimless– wait, no. No that... that doesn't make any sense. How am I supposed to make coherent, meaningful metaphors when I'm unconscious? My conscious mind was like – a cherry tomato dropped inside a bath-tub. A bath-tub in a basement, full of exceptional black coffee. It was all soft and squishy and floating about in those dark depths somewhere but no one really understood how or why or – ahhhhh, fuck it.

I gasp – a pointless yet absolutely necessary gesture – as the rolling pin is whipped out of my chest like the sword from the stone. The sword is bloody but me, I'm the stone. You don't get blood from stones. You get blood from – from – blood. Blood blood blood. My bones ache for want of it.

“Sssssss,” I hiss up at the Suit. My tongue's limp like a deflated balloon.

Ssss-what? Sssansa! That's where the blood comes from. But I can't see her, can't smell her. Can only smell – a big bad wolf.

!

[Liam Dunsirn]

Ewan would want him by the door, but Garou have excellent hearing and smell, and Liam would know if anyone was approaching the flat long before he'd need to do anything about it. Well, his senses were somewhat dulled in his hominid form, but he wasn't going to miss this for all the beer in London.

"He sounds leaky," he quipped.

[Ewan Dunsirn]

“What do you think, Gabriel? Are you leaking? Because you know, if you are, I can plug up that leak quick sharp like.”

Ewan brandished the rolling pin and Rodermark's goggle-eyes snapped from Liam to the pin's precariously pointed tip, still darkly stained with his own dried vitae.

“No?” Forehead wrinkling, Ewan shook his head.

“Now,” he went on, holding up a hand as Rodermark wriggled a little, posing absolutely no threat of escape.

“I can see that you've discovered that you're chained to the floor and that, well, you're not too pleased about that. But Gabe – I'll be honest with you. I'm not too pleased myself, because my cuz here, he just pulled a stake out of your chest and you know what? I haven't heard a single word of thanks come out of your mouth. I don't know how you Camarilla boys do things down in London, but where I come from, that's just bad manners.”

[Jude]

“Fk.”

A word escapes me. It's a single word. A word of complex and esoteric origins, whose true meaning you couldn't begin to comprehend. In laymen's terms – in the simplest parlance – it means: fuck. How do I even begin to rank the warring impulses at that moment? Find blood, escape from chains, run far far away from big bad wolf. Not necessarily in that order. Although one is arguably crucial as a first option, unless I can summon the strength to rip the chains out with the floorboards still attached to them and use the boards to batter the wolf to – no.

Stop, stop thinking that. For all you know, he can read your mind. He's reading it right now. Oh shit, shit telepathic werewolves. RIGHT NOW. Right - wow, I don't think I have ever met a more handsome, intelligent, well-dressed man. I imagine that he has fascinating hobbies, such as wood-work and smoking meat. I would gladly get staked in the chest again if it meant that I could wake up to this man and his rough, strong hands pulling that stake out of me –

“I'm not-”

[Liam Dunsirn]

"Somehow," Liam said, "I was expecting more." Ewan shot him a look, and he shrugged, backing up a little in the direction of the front door.

He'd seen starving vampires before, though usually on their way to Death, not being brought back from torpor. Being a Giovanni was ...educational.

[Ewan Dunsirn]

Ewan shook his head. “I wish I could say I was surprised. This is exactly the kind of piss poor excuse for a Cainite that the Camarilla put in charge of their cities.”

Leave it to the Camarilla to think it was reasonable to make an artist their leader. Then again, everything the Camarilla did seemed to invite farce and failure. There was a good reason why the Family had been strong since its inception, why they didn't need enforcers and princes and whatever other fancy titles the Ventrue liked to give themselves: they were family and they rewarded only those whose performance warranted rewarding.

Who knew – there might even be a reward in order for Ewan and Liam if their capture of Rodermark proved useful to the Family. Smiling at that thought, Ewan peered down at his captive.

“Rumour has it you drank an ancient dry, Rodermark. Is that true?”

[Jude]

The Suit was smiling, an python's smile. Exactly the kind of smile I didn't want to see while I was chained to the floor. The watercolours at the edges of reality are starting to sharpen, the bleeding colours sucking inward back onto the painters brush. I'm remembering.

The Suit knows my name. He thinks I'm Lefty, so I grin up at him.

“Maybe I did. Maybe I stuck a straw in him and drank him like a strawberry milkshake.”

[Liam Dunsirn]

Liam leaned forward a bit, nostrils flaring. "You don't smell like a diablerist." Ewan looked at him, irritated, and the Garou shrugged. "Not that I know what one smells like. I thought you said there was like an Aura or something."

His cousin looked pointedly at the door, and Liam shrugged, backing away a few more steps and letting the Kindred get on with it.

[Jude]

I can’t help but watch the possibly-telepathic werewolf as he walks away. Can’t help but feel like I should keep my eyes on someone like that, the kind of someone who can tear your arms right out of your sockets and snap them in tiny bits before you could say ‘woof’.

The Suit steps in my line of sight. If you snapped him in half, I bet the word ‘Ventrue’ would be written all the way through the middle of him, like a stick of rock. But if he’s a blood blue, why the chains? I give them a rattle, to confirm that they’re not a figment of my occasionally overactive imagination. They rattle. Real chains. If the Suit was a Ventrue, he’d do what Ventrue do and talk to me in the big voice that Lefty uses to get people to do what he wants.

More to the point, any blue blood would know Gabriel Rodermark when they say him.

“I’m not… like that. I’m not him. I'm not Gabriel.”

[Ewan Dunsirn]

Something like confusion rippled over Ewan’s face. An dawning look of horror. His lips parted into an exaggerated ‘O’ of shock. Silence, and then - the corners of his open mouth turned upwards, into a strange sort of grin that bared his fangs. The quiet in the room shattered as Ewan Dunsirn slapped his free hand against his thigh again and again, a one-handed half-hearted round of applause.

“Bra-fuckin’-vo, my man. You lasted a grand total of about twenty seconds in that elaborate ruse of yours. A blind man with his head up his own arse could have told me that you’re not Gabriel soddin’ Rodermark. Fuck knows how you kept that bloody woman convinced you were anything remotely as impressive as the Prince of London.”

Ewan rocked back on his heels, regarding the somehow even more deflated face of Rodermark.

“Here.” He tossed the rolling pin at Liam. “We won’t be needing this. A stiff fuckin’ breeze is all you’d need to put this idiot back down.”

[Liam Dunsirn]

Liam caught the rolling pin with one hand, a drop of vitae continuing it's journey and splattering on the light grey wall beside him. He regarded it, and then looked at his cousin.

"He isn't Rodermark? Then..." He frowned in thought. "Are we doing to kill him, then?"

Liam brightened at the thought.