Kerr wasn’t sure what would happen when the cuffs contacted the bars either, so he watched with interest. When he’d first been brought to this opulent house, he’d thought its charm was in the sprawling manse above ground but the witch quickly dispelled that notion when she brought him down to the basement.
Constructed specifically for the purpose of holding powerful supernatural creatures, the foundations of this house were laid with consecrated stone from somewhere overseas. The witch had said there were inscriptions of protection from evil intent and of restriction in the layer beneath the floor (apparently the bars, which made the free standing six by six metre cage in the centre of the room, were embedded in two layers of stone top and bottom) and the bars were inscribed, too. They had plenty of latent magic but when Kerr had poured the liquid on the lock, everything had been awakened (he’d thought it an unusual term to refer to a cage... he’d ‘awakened’ it, like it was living, but he hadn’t questioned it) to keep Ben where he was put.
The cuffs were different, temporary magic, an extra precaution for Kerr’s personal safety because he had to get Ben from the front door down into the basement. The witch had referred to them as having a dampening curse but he didn’t know what they suppressed or how, exactly. The Devil’s trap Ben had walked into when Kerr had brought him ‘home’ had knocked the vampire unconscious long enough for him to get the cuffs on and carry him down to the basement.
Ben had felt surprisingly comfortable to heft and Kerr had secretly marvelled at his own stupidity - did he think the older and more powerful a being got, the heavier their bones would be? It made sense that they got lighter, the more he thought about it. They weren’t carrying lots of heavy blood in their bodies and maybe even their organs had dried up and turned to ash inside? He was planning to write in his journal about it when he had the chance.
Either way, he’d got Ben to the cage without brushing the cuffs against the bars and now here they were, with everything activated. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like the vampire didn’t get the cuffs near the cage. As soon as his hands got close, the bars either side glowed orange and twin arcs of electricity shot out and zapped him. Kerr began to grin as Ben snatched his hands back, though it looked like the electric charge hadn’t hurt him.
Kerr’s bag vibrated on the floor a short distance away at the same time, however, which caused him to flinch, too. Belatedly, he remembered the egg-like stone he’d been given by the witch. It was set to shake to alert him any time the cage was attacked. He had a vast assortment of crystals, minerals and rocks in the ornate box she’d given him, all set to glow, vibrate or spin when different protective features of the house were breached. He really should get them set out, he decided.
Given his human vulnerability, the witch - at the Oligarchy’s behest, he assumed - had provided him with numerous early warning systems for when Lazarus finally showed up. What hadnt impressed him about that had been the nonchalant way she’d shrugged and commented that they’d all work but might not buy him much time, considering how old Lazarus was... but they were there anyway. He told himself it was better than nothing.
“I’m not the one who’ll recharge them,” he told Ben offhandedly. He didn’t really want to call the witch in to recharge the cuffs because he didn’t want her identified by Ben, so he was really hoping it wouldn’t come to that, despite Ben’s insistence Lazarus would take his time.
Kerr shivered and looked around, assessing the basement now that Ben was here and he could relax somewhat. Everything in him had been focussed on executing the first step in his plan, he’d given little thought to what would happen with him once that was done, only in how he’d deal with Lazarus. Now he was seeing a flaw in that.
The basement was huge, compared to most homes (but then, the home above was huger than most homes, too). Windowless and with stair access at one end, the room stretched away in echoey, stony sombreness for at least twenty metres around the cage, in all directions. It had a small bathroom built into one corner, a work bench against the opposite wall to where he now sat (the wall had racks and hooks for holding tools but it was empty, the bench heavily stained with dark marks he couldn’t define), two bar stools (one of which he was perched on), and the furnace for heating the entire house in another corner but that was it. The heat apparently wasn’t piped to warm up the basement, which was very inconvenient.
There was a choice of fluorescent and normal lights set into the ceiling at regular intervals. He’d only turned some of the orangish normal lights on, at this stage (there was a panel of switches at the bottom of the stairs and a mirroring set upstairs at the basement entrance) so he could see the cell and where he stood. Most of the large space was shadowy to him and it was so empty, the waves crashing against the cliffs far below were audible as a constant, murmuring rhythm, even to his human ears.
The house upstairs was fit for a king, but he couldn’t afford to be up there when Lazarus came. Strategically, his optimal position was close to Ben, but he wasn’t set up for living down here - he didn’t even have a table to set out his alert stones on, let alone his gear. Plus, it was fucking cold. He needed to shop, he decided. The only safe time to do that would be in the day, when Lazarus was unlikely to make a move. He hoped.
“Do you sleep in the day?”
