Reciprocation and Retaliation

[The Cedar Witch]

Laurent did not answer for a moment, his eyes briefly tracing the form of the boy before him as his hand moved to the inside pocket of his coat--for a smoke. His eyes remained locked onto the vampire, even as he lit the tip of the cigarette and drew in a lungful of smoke. The man was almost disappointed: the Whore hadn\'t turned out to be a better Fuck then the Girl. Even if he was the only one of the two who knew how to suck a cock. The Captain smirked, twirling the tobacco between his thumb and forefinger.

He did not say a word until at least a third of the cigarette had been smoked. The smoke drifted lazily in the air in front of him, taking it\'s time to rise into the air and touch the heavens. There was no rush anywhere. Laurent was taking his sweet old time, pupil-less eyes closely examining the boy standing before him. As if bored with the taste of the Marlborough, he tossed it onto the ground in front of him and returned his gaze back to the vampire.

He took a step forward, crushing the burning fag with the toe of his boot, and came to a stop a few feet from Nikolai with his arms crossed over his chest. "I know what you want," he began offhandedly, averting his eyes with a smile mere inches from surfacing. "But how would I benefit from relieving you of them?" Laurent looked up slowly, meeting the vampire\'s eyes with a challenging gaze.

[Saiketsu]

Nikolai couldn\'t stop the quick bitter chortle that escaped his tight jaw. "The ability to say that you\'ve kept your throat, how\'s that?" He could never keep control over his mouth and now, he simply didn\'t care enough to try. Mortals were such vain creatures anyway; never knowing when to say enough. Nikolai would not be talked down to.

The vampire had not grown impatient in Laurent\'s hesitance, his body fully able to stand perfectly still for long periods of time. So he sat there with a less-than-casual expression on his face, the iron jaws clenched to keep the cold anger under control. He made no attempt to look human, prying the gate off of Judas\' cage just in case. Laurent\'s movements were slow, dream-like to him, who could move so fast, smoke curling irratatingly slowly.

"Why, darling? What more could you possibly want?" There wry tone to his voice, no attempts being made to sweeten the habits had developed long ago.

[The Cedar Witch]

Laurent\'s eyes narrowed angrily, keeping his temper in check. Nothing about what the Bitch said came off as threatening to him. The man knew his own power and he had no desire to fight, not when he had better things to expend energy on. After all, there wasn\'t anything left to prove. He had already won. Twice.

"That depends," his voice was low and menacing, nothing like the smooth seduction that had, up until this point, dripped so silky smooth from his lips. "What is there left for you to give?" the deep chuckle ended in a long exhale. He had half the mind to leave now, forgetting anything he had said before about removing the sting from the vampire\'s gut.

After all, he wasn\'t worth shit to him anymore anyway. Not when all territory had been explored. Not when the girl was still out there.

"Tell me, if you wanted to be rid of them so much, why the petty attempts to scare me off?" there was a tone of mockery in his voice. "Because really, there isn\'t anything stopping me now from refusing your request."

[Saiketsu]

Another bitter laugh. "Oh there isn\'t, huh?" Mortals. Their world was run on bribery and blackmail. Any fool with a lever could survive there.

"You can\'t bullshit me, you fuck. How long has it been since you\'ve gotten anything at all before tonight? You haven\'t been with the girl in at least a month and a half." And this time he laughed whole heartedly.

That was it, the lever. Judas grasped onto it with all his strength, hiding it until he could actually use it against the Zalmric.

Nikolai always won, no matter what.

[The Cedar Witch]

The man\'s composer faltered for a moment, showing only in his eyes but nothing else. Despite this anger, and despite his pride, there was still no eminent need to prove himself to the Bitch. And so, like the calm and collected man the Captain was, Laurent resumed his cold stare without so much of a flicker of anger passing across his face. Focus. Forget him. You already fucked him. He\'s practically worthless.

"And again, Princess," Compulsively he took another smoke from his pocket with the lighter, igniting the end of it without much of a pause. "you\'re stalling," Laurent took a lazy drag, letting the black fill his lungs and filter out of his nostrils before resuming eye contact with Nikolai again. He was getting sick of beating around the bush, but he wasn\'t about to take the Precious Shadows from the vampire before he was given something in return. And the Fagot had already sucked his cock.

"And unless you can tell me exactly where to find the Slut, there isn\'t any reason for me to grant your request," there was a knowing smile on the Zalmric\'s face as he twirled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, studying the glowing tip intently.

[Saiketsu]

For the briefest of moments Judas froze at the feeling of the combination of insinuations. His green eyes narrowed on the mortal dangerously for a moment, feeling the slightest hook settle in his mind; the mortal\'s eyes, a leech, a restricting hand on his shoulder.

For the briefest of moments Judas didn\'t understand what he might have been inferring. He wanted the cunt, the Key. Damien\'s Key. And there was no way to hand her over easily to get this fuck off his back. He would have to betray Damien and his noble regime in order to satisfy his own demands.

But there was more than that; there was a sense of arm-twisting that was far too evident for the vampire to ignore. How the fuck was Judas to know where the King and his concubine lived? He never gave a shit what the cunt\'s plans were and Pierre never spoke of the errands Damien forced him to run. So when he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper edged with defense and warning. "You know as well as I do that I don\'t know exactly where she is."

An echo, mocking at first, reached his ears and jolted that hook farther into his being with a sinister reminder of the control that the mortal still had. It was more than degrading to have the image of Jean-Luc flashed that brilliant smile before his mind\'s eyes, evident bait in the mortal\'s plan. The mortal smiled a smirk that made Judas want to tear out his throat. "He does", it said. "Maybe I should ask him."

The vampire\'s expression darkened as he forcibly interjected into the mortal\'s mind, a dangerous threat un-vocalized in correct or distinct syllables. "Stay away from him", was the only message in words across the gap of space that was the air between them.

[The Cedar Witch]

Laurent grinned with a face full of fangs, feeling the Shit\'s reaction to mention of the blond in the back of his mind. It wasn\'t as if the Zalmric couldn\'t hunt the girl down himself, with or without Nikolai\'s help. But help would save him quite a bit of time and trouble, both that the man had quite an excess of. And if he really wanted, he could have trailed the Pretty French Boy for a few days to reap some more fruitful bounty. But again, these things took time. Why should he waste more time when he had his own little \'spy\' to do the work for him?

The Captain shifted his gaze from the tip of the smoldering cigarette to the face of the vampire. He was really getting sick of the eyeliner. The man didn\'t speak until he took another lazy drag, slowly eying the other\'s body with dying interest. "You know as well as I do that you have an Extraordinary Talent of finding things out." His eyes drilled intently into Nikolai\'s in a challenge, as if boasting a trump card. Laurent laughed deeply in his throat, letting the cigarette fall to the ground and crushing it with the toe of his boot.

"I am giving you no more then a week. I want proof that she is still alive and valid information of her whereabouts," Laurent straightened his back, looking directly into Nikolai\'s face before continuing to speak in a controlled tone, "And remember, Princess, I will be watching." He didn\'t give even a fraction of a second of hesitation. As the last words left his lips, the Zalmric\'s skin shifted nearly instantaneously into feathers, his form melting into that of something resembling a large crow or raven. The Bird flapped its wings once, enough to lift it into the air, and took off into the sky without looking back to the earth.