my hands are soaking in the blood of angels on broken wings they collapsed will I see the break of day dark clouds exploded and torrents of rain fell all these lost halos wash away - Rise Against

Red Dragon Inn: One day prior

"I can see you." Said the seer to a cloaked being, a whirling mess of color, all blue and white and shadow too. There were so many shadows, but sadness seeped through. Sadness didn't need a shadow. Sadness wouldn't be concealed.

"I can see you but I am not so sure if I want to hear you just yet."

"Maybe if I drew you a place..." Then she would draw out this creature who hovered at a table nearby, there and not-there, in blue and white and seeping with sadness. She lifted her hands, extending her fingers, and began writing in the air.

The one who fought with your cousin is here. He wonders what in the seven hells you are, and how your empathy is off the scale, but he thinks your batteries are dead and your lights are out, and yet you confuse him because you read people like books. We are laughing because now he wonders how you are related to Tara.

"Spaces sing between us." Her delicate fingers were still far into her work, and by now she had mapped a wonderful world of incomprehensible light, though invisible-air-writing did not reveal these things.

The thing sat still and silent as the girl drew her pictures, but soon, the air turned wrong, and the surface of the creature's table sparked to life. Heat wafted from the surface and distorted Viki's view, making ripples in the space between them. Smoke was quick to follow, and burned the seer's eyes.

Metatron. That was its name, but that was a secret.

Viki's nose upturned and all too soon her hands retreated from the uninviting air.

The next few moments were so quick, their birth and passage caught her off guard. The air whipped her face, and the cloaked being vanished through the open door, riding some rogue wind, unseen, unheard, and unfelt.

A message lay behind, burned into the tabletop.

It says to take care of who you form alliances with, or else the Voice would be forced to Speak.

Viki recoiled and quietly muttered to herself.

"Lost his voice but not his penmanship." Smoke trails were sent to the ceiling and the table protested its scorched surface. Not surprising. The words burned her too, in the literal and in the figurative.

"Scottie," she called softly to Sid's mate, who was there all the while, perhaps watching, and not unlike how the lover observed such goings-on. "Can you read all these words too?"

"Interesting bit of graffiti. Wouldn't you say, luv?"

"Oh good. I thought perhaps I imagined that. Yes I would say. I would say a great many things. Would you like to hear me do that?"

Their conversation bordered less on the casual and pressed into prophecy.

Scottie wrinkled his nose. "It smells burnt."

"Yes. The blue-blue-blue is now red-red-red."

"What would you tell me?" He peered at her.

"I think he has lost his voice."

"Mayhaps that is a good thing."

"I know I would be angry if I lost my voice. But I cannot burn things with my head just yet. There was a wind..."

"Did it blow him away?"

"Yes, only he rode it." She made a galloping motion with curled hands on pretend reigns.

"Do you know who he is?"

"He is the lost voice...He has lost his voice." A hand met her forehead. She looked exasperated.

"It seems to me...the man won't speak. Unless something happens...or doesn't."

"Everything is happening now," she said in her quiet way.

"It always has." He touched her shoulder.

"Two wars." She repeated these echoes of prophecy and felt a newfound love for fresh air. She stepped further away from the smoking table.

His touch did not linger. Perhaps he wanted to make sure that she was real. " I only know of one war."

"Oh. The other is a big black secret!" She giggled, with her fingers coming to cup her painted mouth.

"War is often red and hard to keep secret for long."

"This one starts blue. They are all sad and weeping." She looked up once more, her fingers for specific points at the ceiling above.

"What do you see up there?"

"Green lights, not like the firefly. These are green with...what-is-the-word" Want for something. Want for being not of it." Fingers swirl in air, creating perfect little storms. She too, smelled of a passing storm, all heavy and electric.

"Why are they sad?"

"Because. They want." She stretched her arms behind her head, and a hand caught an elbow, and she held them there lazily. "They want and they are sad that we are and they are not."

"Jealousy," said Scottie with folded arms. "I know this green."

"Yes! That's the world." Her limbs uncoiled from that space behind her head. "I mean word. It could be the world too. Their world."

"Who are you, luv?" He studied her sideways.

"I am Viki, Tara's cousin." She tilted her head in mimic to his own. "Did we not meet?"

"I think you are more than that. But I am coming late into this."

necks are cracking sideways hit me from the back side I am on the white side you are on the black side cut a piece thats bite size shoot me from my good side if you got a straight line this would be a good time - The Dresden Dolls

Red Dragon Inn: Later in the day that matters.

"Scottie says they are green with.." A fingertip now tapped her chin, tap tap tap, in rhythm with one across the room. "..not like the firefly was green. Green with want-of-something."

Mr. Howe still sat at the bar, scotch in hand, and eyes still beady and ever-watchful. Glanhelmion tensed in the booth, and his hand slipped beneath the table, perhaps hovering over a weapon he had concealed on his person. Viki didn't notice. She was lost in some new vision, and she was up, and...dancing.

Yes. Dancing. The seer's half steps about the booth had shifted, and now resembled a dance indeed, with fluttering fabric and many layers and colors. Her arms were stretched out, then in, and up over a head. She was humming something, but it was barely audible.

"Messengers," she whispered.

Glanhelmion had interrupted. "Yo Viki I think I'll take a walk wait here kay?" He rubbed his temples to relax himself, then headed for the door.

We like him. He's always angry and hungry.

Vision churned and burned and painted her face. Her eyes were canvases for the other worldly. She turned and dipped with each step to a song played only within. "Waiting," she called out quietly, to the Trueblood, who was gone before she knew it.

But she was not alone for long. Domikai appeared in the alleyway door.

"Skado!" Her theatrics died down and she flashed him a knowing smile. Feet, once small, graceful things, steadily gained speed and fury as she rushed to meet him.

Unbeknown to the lovers, Mr. Howe scowled from afar. Perhaps it was because her pseudo protector (or perhaps official protector), Glanhelmion, had disappeared, allowing easy access to the seer, but the opportunity was shot down by Domikai's sudden appearance.

The realm may never know.

Still, Howe sat tapping away, always in threes, and every now and then the seer's movements picked up on this rhythm, and eyes blinked in threes and feet tapped in threes and similar things occurred, but the girl was oblivious as to why. She was a beacon, yes, and a conduit, and a window too, but much was misunderstood.

Sometimes the sandman understood, though. Perhaps that was why she was so attached to him.

"Am I so little?" He had called her "little dancer" again. It was something his brother Irrykin said too, but she hadn't told him much about that. Now, she was beaming, tap-tap-tap, and feet turned on toes and heals clicked along polished floorboards. There was a spring in her step as she skittered around his shadow, and then landed promptly beside him.

"Perhaps not so." He said softly, however distracted. His black eyes were watching Howe too.

"Does it want after something you know?" Pieces of his shadow began to rise up and whirl around the girl. The magic of his people was always a cause for surprise.

"Want I think." She whispered a reply in regard to Howe, but aqua eyes flickered back and forth as that rising shield of shadow swirled around her figure. "Protection?" She asked, but she didn't really need to. She knew what he was doing, and there was gratitude woven in the word, and love too, though she wouldn't try to say it. She knew better than that. And he could always read that on her face.

"He seeks the firefly. Whether you met her or not...is black." Blank, she meant, surely. And she watched patterns form in the shadow, and pretty soon the occupants of the Inn looked less and less real.

Across the room and at the bar, two enemies spoke. One was Howe, the other Lucien Mal, whom Viki would later get to call "Uncle Lucky." Do read on.

"Oh, its you. The pest who enjoys cluttering our offices. However did you accomplish it, Mal" Rhy'Din courts are typically so slow. And yet' You have such a flair for igniting them against us."

"I can't imagine what you are speaking of, my good man." Lucien said with an easy smile. "May I join you. Thank you." It wasn't so much a question.

"I was waiting on someone. Why don't you excuse yourself, Mal, take a walk off a short pier, before I am forced to take care of you myself."

"Come now. What is a drink between friends" Where is your sense of professional courtesy?"

"Friends"!" Howe roared. "You dare to name us such after all the trouble you've caused us" All our re— work has been suspended in Rhy'Din because of you, Mal."

"If you didn't like whiskey, you should have just said so," Lucien quipped.

But let's get back to our lovers, Victoria and Domikai, or Viki and Skado, as some liked to call them. Tasha Oberon, daughter of Corwyn, had appeared, and though she looked somewhat out of focus through Domikai's shadow-wall, she was still within the seer's Sight.

"Blood-not-blood," she whispered to her lover and shifted at his side. Little feet pressed into a ballerina's third-position, and fingers found their way along his hand. Soon, her fingers were tangled with his, but she was still so careful of his claws.

"You know her and you do not," she motioned to where Tasha perched. "She knows of the snake. Should we speak?" All those lovely s sounds spilled from seer lips in equal irony.

And they had much to discuss, if she could only form coherent sentences.

"Perhaps for you to speak, and us to listen," he replied.

"Okay! But come.." She urged with eyes and hands and all the features of a lovely face. "I like the shadow." The confession was a shy thing, and her smile was half-there.

When the two finally joined Tasha, with slow steps and equal strides, the woman greeted them as if they'd been expected. Pleasantries were passed with necessary speed.

"Um...Viki...I talked to Bel, Luse, Luc and such and told em about the trouble...and they told me I needed to give ya this." Tasha's hands gripped a small box she'd set upon a side table and slid it to the seer.

The trouble" With Name-Like-Bells" You have no idea what you're getting yourself into.

Meanwhile, Howe and Lucien's conversation became less civil - if it ever was - and more heated.

"Don't think we don't know who was behind the wreckage of our local office, Mal, and our security branch. Did you like what you saw" Leaving that feather." Howe's angry laughter drowned out most other sounds. "You think you're so smart"! You have no idea with whom you are playing Mal. I will see you rotting, your soul captured in a stone for me to play with when the mood takes me!"

"All is fare in love and war, Howe. Surely you prescribe to that."

"Love and War. You have no idea what war with us means, Insect."

"So why don't you sit back down, have a drink with me and you can educate me on what war means to you."

"After what you have done to us! You have gone as mad as that insane Blood, Tara. Why don't we step outside, Mal" Where fewer eyes lurk. Then perhaps I can show you what I mean by war." It was clear to the casual observer that Howe was having a hard time holding himself together.

"Careful who you call insane, Howe."

"But you are insane, Mal. You've declared war upon the wrong people. You are fighting your own kind."

A moment, if you please! Let's shift our attention back to Viki, Domikai, and Tasha, and the mysterious box of course. The girl had to release her hold on the lover's hand to accept the curious present, which she was somewhat reluctant to do.

"This" It is a box, all corners." Her eyes danced over the edge of the item, falling to the floor and back to Tasha's face. Viki's fingers were careful to receive the package and place it in her lap.

"Why?" She asked. Questions, questions. And you thought she knew everything.

Tasha spoke quickly, and her head bobbed between words. "It's a Blood Pin actually. Means your one of us and that affords protection and stuff. Later, if ya want I can take ya to pick out a coat too. Seemed easier this way. Sides, Bel seemed really keen on it and the rest agreed. Ya just gotta think really hard and hold on to that little lapel pin when ya get in trouble and it will transport ya to the Manor...and trust me, ain't nothing gonna get in there."

The lover seemed awfully quiet at Viki's side.

"I am Blood?" The girl's eyes were wide, and her fingers were wild, and they threw the lid off the box in a start. Maybe her voice was a bit louder than the rest, and ate up the white noise of the crowd for only a moment. Soon, her eyes were only for the pin which lay inside.

"Well...Tara is, so it's only right you are too....Don't ya think?"

Across the way, Lucien Mal was all smiles as he watched the exchange between Tasha and Viki at the corner of his eye. "I've never said I wasn't insane."

Howe spun around in disbelief. "YOU DID THIS!" His voice boomed over the crowd.

"I've done nothing at all. Just came over to see if I could share a drink with a fellow barrister." Lucien said ever so calmly.

Howe reached for him and snatched him by the jacket from across the bar. Lucien made no move to stop him.

"This is an expensive jacket. Careful you don't ruin it. Or else I'll just have to send you the bill."

Howe only hissed into Lucien's face. "You can't keep her from me, not with a piece of paper, not with a pin, not with the stain of Blood. You can't stop me. Oberon will pay for what he's done, and so shall you!"

"The order requires you to remain away from the family. All members of the family," said Lucien.

And then the Inn erupted, a mess of chaos and violence, with Howe in the offense, Lucien and the Bloods in the defense...

And that is how Victoria Alexandra Chylde Buckhannah LeVey LeFay Valir D'Amberville Tesser became a member of Blood House Onyx, and a Blood too.