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They've only been at this haven for a handful of weeks: not long enough to add in all of the cameras and security systems which the justifiably-paranoid trio usually demand. Most of their possessions, including Artje's precious collections of clothing and snow globes, haven't been unpacked, and sit in a maze of crates stacked across the warehouse near the docks which the trio has begun converting into their Haven.
They sleep in a basement room that's been hung with thick velvet drapes and carpeted with thick rugs in order to make it seem less terrible until the renovations are complete, and two sets of stairs lead up from the basement to different parts of the warehouse itself. Artje wakes earlier than Jean-Louis, and always has, both due to Humanity and general inclination, though the margin has narrowed significantly as they've worked on the former together.
He's used to waking up to the sound of her singing to herself upstairs as she chooses clothing and prepares herself to go hunting and attend to the matters of the night, or playing violin, or chattering with Hans, her ghoul.
He isn't used to waking up to the sound of her screams.
With the sole possible exception of when Annikah's cackling is involved. But that is manifestly not the case this evening. And so the Spina wakes to the most profound rudeness he could possibly imagine. Someone invading his haven and manhandling Artje. That's all kinds of this shall not stand. He sleeps armed, of course. (Doesn't everyone?). But his sleep weapons are meant for, well. Sleeping. And the bedroom. Murder is all about preparation. The proper tool for the proper job. And when someone breaks into your haven and manhandles your Artje, you reach for the weapons with weight and history and grevious potential for injury.
There's just a blur of air and a rush of wind that leaves the frog of his main-gauche and the sheathe of his saber rattling against the bedroom wall. In his mind, of course, he has for ever and a day to traverse the length of the hallway, his bare feet barely touching the concrete as he all but flies towards the danger. He might have his cravat tied by the time he reaches the commotion. Perhaps not.
However he arrives, it will have to do.
The upstairs truly is a maze right now: the cavernous main floor of the warehouse hasn't been converted even partially into the kind of 'elegant home stored inside a sturdy cinderblock building' which is their usual fare. It's all just stacks of crates with zig-zag passages through them where various companies have arrived and placed their belongings (mostly Artje's) in pallet-borne stacks.
She's half-dressed -- corset and chemise only, and the corset only half laced-up, clearly interrupted in the middle of lacing herself into the comforting and supportive garment she's worn for the last century and a half -- and shrieking in a mix of what Visigny knows is genuine fear and put-on drama (most assuredly to get his attention, and also because a Toreador does love to perform) as she's dragged out of the bathroom and down one of those passageways.
A tall, slender woman in an impeccably-cut dove-grey business suit has a handful of Artje's hair and is performing said dragging: rapier at her hip, fresh and headless rose pinned to her lapel, so only the thorns remain. The intruder hasn't bothered to appear human, and why would she? Pale, inhuman, her dark hair and eyes a deep contrast to her corpse pallor. She says nothing, and doesn't even look at Artje, her gaze instead sweeping the passageways: the Toreador is of little interest to her. Just bait.
She will feel the brush of him pass her once on her right, then on her left, and then he appears from the shadows and the mist, filtering into the moonlight trickling in through the warehouse's grimy and damaged windows. His de rigeur white french cuffed shirt loose and billowing over his reedy torso. His britches are buttoned tight to his hips, and end well above the ankle, putting his calves on display above his bare feet. He carries naked steel in both hands, and his bullowy hair is worn as it looks when he first awakes. Like the hair of a desperate man on the run from a war machine bent on his destruction.
Given he's now standing between the woman and her progress, one might assume he's done running.
"I am Visigny. That is my paramour. This is my haven. Prepare yourself." Under the circumstances, that is the height of courtesy. He could have simply taken her from the shadows, after all. Well within his rights after the depth of this discourtesy. (edited)
She shivers as he passes her -- no doubt delighted on some level, and not actually afraid anymore now that she knows he's here. Now it stops being really any kind of actually scary and starts being, you know.
Sexy.
One of her beloveds is here to save her, after all, with great competence.
Artje pulls against the hand on her hair but not hard enough to pull her hair out -- she's terribly vain, after all -- and hisses through her teeth while the gloved hand in said hair tightens, and not in the way she likes.
The woman, on the other hand, stares at Visigny, the corners of her mouth turning down ever-so-slightly, the bridge of her nose wrinkling as if she'd just stepped in dog shit. "I am Ellery Kiersten Pender," she answers, her tone indicating that this should tell him everything she thinks he needs to know. The hand on Artje's hair doesn't release itself: she takes hold of her rapier with her off hand, draws it, and then tosses it into the air lazily in order to catch it right-side-round.
Visigny creeps forward slowly in a predatory crouch, his saber leading the way and gleaming in the light. He lets her learn about him in this, and he knows it. Just as he's learning from her in what she has to say and how she says it. This is the saber he uses to make points with. He's going to write a message in her blood if he ever gets the chance. Be careful, cousin.
"Blood of my blood, under any other circumstance I might have counted this an honor. However, I must insist that you unhand Madame Berenyi at once or suffer my dire consequences." And here again, he gives her a moment more of peace. Perhaps making the point that he can, or that he will because he feels himself superior. Perhaps he's even trying to talk her out of it. Or give her that extra moment to let discretion better her valor.
A small smile, and her fingers tighten just a bit more as Artje tries to pull away. Ellery's ramrod-straight posture does not change in the very least as he creeps forward: she stands up as tall as possible, looking down her narrow nose at the other Spina. The heretic Spina.
"And there we find the error, cousin. I come to you not to honor you but to remind you of the obligations in your most noble blood, and the disgrace you bring to the house that nurtured you and the line that birthed you. That your prodigal nature necessitated this discourtesy I do regret, but for it I cannot apologize. Your mother we know is lost to us, but... perhaps you might not yet be." A flick of her eyes toward the Toreador who spits like a damp cat. "We will tolerate much," like sleeping with Carthians, comes the implication, "but not heresy."
"Night after night, Madameoiselle, thorns of your wreathe come to trouble me. And none of them ever come to answer the true challenge that I represent to you. You come, when you come-- and you always come --in secret. Oft through your ghouls, or your humans. With bombs and devices. Gasoline. Once it was napalm and that, truly, made me feel complimented. When you come in person you come brusquely. You trespass. You break down my door. You stab my guards. Kill them, often. You break into the private chambers of those I hold closest to me and use them to draw me out. And by this you think you can somehow tame the wild cur."
Visigny's guard lower's briefly, and his head shakes as he begins to chuckle. It's probably all for show. Part of the cat and mouse of two spina about to lock blades. "Not one of you has ever come to be better than me. Only to better me. I am a wild chute, dear cos. And I germinate in the blood and heart of the proletariat now. Le Jumel was a man. But I am an idea now. The more you hunt me like this, with these methods, the more popular my story becomes and the more desperate you all appear. Soon you won't be hunting just me. You will be hunting people pretending to be me in every Praxis in the Americas."
"Now. This is your last chance, Madameoiselle. Release Artje whom I love. Or you will be the first among all of those to face me who knew just what I was capable of, was given a chance to retreat gracefully, and still imagined some other ending. You will be ridiculed. Justly so. For centuries. They will name the bar they build on the spot 'Ellery's Folly'. All the drinks will have swords through two olives. Which is just how I am going to leave your face. Cousin."
"Unhand her. Or be my pen. Now."
Artje was ready to let the Invictus Spina tear her hair out just so she wasn't being held half-bent-over, half-dressed, with her tits nearly hanging out. It's a look, right, but she wants to be in control of that sort of semi-disheveled look, otherwise, what's the point? Artje twists in Ellery's grip, almost exactly how she twisted in the grip of a wildcat one time after Vinz threw one at her as a lesson.
Not only does she come free, she keeps all of her hair, and she looks amazing doing it. Graceful and sleek, with her chemise falling off of one shoulder and her hair tumbling over her pale skin. The Toreador takes two quick steps backward, like a dancer, and scowls. "Now then," she huffs. "Honestly, you should let a woman get dressed. It's terribly rude."
Ellery seems briefly surprised when Artje pulls out of her grip, but she recomposes her expression just in time to stare at Visigny as he goes on -- and on -- in a very precise sort of way. And at the end of it?
She rolls her eyes and tosses her rapier to her right hand. "You have to be lucky every night, cousin. We only have to be lucky the once. It all sounds so very exhausting. And for what? The company of the rabble? What sort of erudite discourse can the chaos of the Carthians give you? They always destroy themselves, eating their unity from within with petty squabbles."
"Really, you must come home, or we will never stop coming for you. You have been warned, and warned, and I warn you once more. Even if I die, the line of Coy-Noel will never cease to seek our prodigal relation." (edited)
"Again, I see I must begin sending more of you back with the capacity of speech still in tact. You see, the error dear cos is not that I have been lucky each and every night." And here, Visigny advances cat like and lazy out of his preparatory crouch. It's imperious and boastful in a manner only a french man in capris pants and a poet shirt could manage sincerely. And it is all part of this courtly dance that is the duel before the duel. "It's that I am better than all of you."
"I am going to cut off each of your limbs and send them to each Invictus family in Philadelphia with apologies, for I am too new to the Praxis to know yet just who you have affronted by attacking a guest of the Saakima without their permission. Your torso and torpid head I will keep here. With me. I will send word to my mother that I have you and that you are well in my care under the circumstances and then you only have to wait out the temper of a Daeva blood feud that spawned out of a dispute over railroad stocks in the 1800s. Or however long it takes four Invictus families with a limb each of a New York Spina to put aside their differences between families and cities and achieve what I could achieve with the Carthians with a phone call, and come together to find the rest of you and pay the penance."
"Either way. Nobody can say I didn't warn you." And here Visigny brushes aside the collar of his shirt with his left hand, revealing the red winking light of his body camera. His subsequent laugh is not kind. It is not kind at all. And he's still laughing it as he begins to close in far less like the hesitant hare he seemed just moments ago. (edited)
Artje takes another step or two back, barefoot and soft, outside the immediate range of two terribly deadly individuals and their rapiers. She blinks once, twice, and the tiniest little smile flickers across her face like the guttering flame of a candle in the path of a draft. Rather than fold her hands across her stomach as she is wont to do, however, she smooths her chemise, settles her corset in place, and finishes tightening the cords before tying them neatly; the gestures come of long habit.
And then she folds her hands behind her back. Neither of the Spina can see her fingers anymore, but Visigny might know -- or at least suspect -- that his kitten has claws now. Waiting. Ready. Just in case.
Just in case.
But she does nothing, while Ellery listens to his monologue with an increasingly bored expression. "Yes, yes," she agrees, her eyebrow lofting just so. "And then all my brothers and sisters thereafter, et cetera, et cetera. Clearly you have not been properly raised, or you would remember the old aphorism regarding brevity and wit. Shall we?"
The opening rounds of a duel, at least for those who are accustomed to them as a matter of social engagement are usually reserved for polite repartee and the getting to know you portion of combat. This is when and how they size one another up in practice rather than in theory, to see if all their previous guesses and maneuvers were actually going to pay off when the steel rasps on the steel.
Visigny's initial assumptions prove true enough, and his opening gambit-- an attempt to get to know his opponent's defenses and weaknesses --that goes entirely as he would have had it. She surges to win the initiative, she succeeds, and she plays out a hand. It succeeds. His feint, less so, but given that his arm now dangles useless at his side he is forced to concede the point.
"Clever. That will be the Coy side of the family, no doubt?" He backs away, hissing as his bones crack and his dangling arm resockets itself into its joint. "Okay. You've done that. Now what's your big finish?" He simply falls back into his barefooted en garde, the belly of his blade presently facing the floor as his guard rests temptingly low.
The way she holds herself looks so sloppy at first, as if she's some sort of impetuous childe come to teach him a lesson with not enough training. A wide-open target, her stance imperfect, disorganized, one arm rising behind herself to counterbalance the weight and length of the saber she wields. Something about her seems slow, too, for a moment -- and with all of Visigny's taunting, it might be possible to believe that he unsettled her, threw her off her game.
And it isn't until Visigny is in mid-attack that he realizes the whole thing was just a ploy, and in overextending himself, she's ruined his grip, sent the saber tumbling with a clatter to the floor. "You expect me to think like you, cousin, and in that is your downfall. I am not interested in dissecting you, in bringing you home piece by piece." Ellery draws back to that same position, fluid and easy. "You are Le Jumel's, in the end, and yes, I will kill you if I must, but I would truly prefer not to do so."
The tiniest flick of her gaze toward the corseted Daeva follows. There are people here Ellery doesn't care about killing, after all.
It is almost a dance when Visigny spins the woman about by the sword hilt in her face and pulls her in against his chest tightly. This is obviously not really comfortable-- she has a sword through her head, after all --but despite that fact, Visigny is not wrenching it cruelly or attempting to inflict more damage. Yet. He does make eye contact with Artje. A warning is in the look. He knows he's grappling a frenzying Spina, and may need back up very very soon.
Calmly, with no reproach or judgment in his voice, he speaks at her ear, "Yield to me. Concede that in this at least I am your better. And I will forgive your trespass, your assault on her person, your numerous insults to me, the damage you have caused-- everything and all of it --I will forgive. Once you admit it to yourself you'll be free of them. And you can join us. Learn. Grow. Advance past the fourteenth century. And its weapons that cost you an eye and this duel."
"You don't even have to say all the words. Just tell me yes. By your blood yes. And we can be friends, cousin." Still he holds her hard and fast against his chest, knuckles white around his saber hilt.
He warned her at every possible turn. He counseled her to better conduct repeatedly. And even after he had her right where he wanted her, he offered to forgive it all if she would simply concede the matter and admit what everyone must know by now. Because it's so obvious. It's obvious to him, certainly. Why don't they see it?
"I am offering you freedom," he complains bitterly at the woman's ear as she continues to flail and battle in his arms. "I am offering you a chance to be everything you are, but for a better purpose. In service to better ideals. Here you are, just a child, sent to settle some petty grievance neither of us were alive to witness. Because I had the temerity to be the first to tell them we are through being the best among them while doing their worst." Resigned now, Visigny begins to redouble his grip on his saber and twist it in her skull. The problem is that she never stops fighting him until the ash begins falling from her skin, and her body just piles at his feet in a clatter of weapons and clothes.
She struggles like a wild beast -- fighting her Beast -- and that one twist of the sword, as hurt as she is with, you know, a saber in her skull, doesn't give her enough time to fight her Beast or ride the wave. It really isn't much time at all, with all the grievous bodily harm Visigny can do to another vampire in short order. Ellery doesn't have a last word. She has a last animalistic howl before the hold the blood keeps on her corpse snaps in one massive burst of damage, and she simply ceases to be.
This isn't the first time, nor will it be the last, one supposes. Perhaps that's why Artje just wiggles her fingers, relaxing her Protean claws, and says in that soft and disconnected voice she gets when there is Great Violence: "I will have Hans fetch the broom."
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