"The fuck I care."
Tset started coming towards them, across the porch, down the steps. He was irrationally throwing himself into what he really knew to be his doom.
"Hold it!"
The three looked around, and Tristram stepped out behind them, Tset's Mossburg in his hands and a look of determination on his face.
"Tset, get back inside. They can't come get you 'cause Gregory's in there."
The two looked entirely annoyed, "Then could you go get him?" Alexander asked.
Tristram, only now remembering to arm the shotgun, said, "No way, Jose. Why don't you guys fuck off before he catches you trespassing?"
They laughed, "We want the Child, not the Demon. We have no truck with his ilk."
They disregarded Tristram and looked back to Tset, their strange eyes pulling him almost to step from the safety of the porch into the danger of the open night.
Tristram cut around in front of them, holding the Mossburg up and his hands out, "Look, I know I act a bit immature, but child's taking it a little far..."
They did not appreciate the joke, "What?"
"... but I gotta ask Darky McGoo here, why the fuck are you wearing mascara?"
A hand fell on his shoulder, Tset stood on the dirt, behind Tristram, no longer in his sanctuary, "T, gonna have to ask you to get out of the way. If you could get Gregory, that'd be a peach. Me and these two fine young men are gonna have a parlay."
"But..."
"Go inside. Get Greg." Tset's black eyes implored him. Tset did not say, 'Truth of the matter is, I need Greg 'cause I ain't gonna make it.'
When Tristram was gone, Tset sat back heavily on the bottom step of the porch, wishing he had a beer, "So, you gonna tell me some shit before you attack or what?"
Alexander chuckled with incredulity, "What?"
"Sorry to be cliché, my friend, but the bad motherfuckers always explain everything to the good guy before they try and off him."
"You're just buying time, aren't you?"
Tset scoffed, "No. I'd like to know. I think if you didn't have the situation under control, you woulda stuck me already."
Alexander and Solomon considered their options - namely, they needed Gregory to come out to be lured away. They had no hope of handling Gregory on even terms. Tset they weren't sure of, though their confidence was bolstered by how dead he looked.
Gregory would definitely be a more delicate matter.
"Fine, then, let's hope, for your sake, Gregory arrives before we finish."
And they began to unfold Tset's story for him...
Tristram ran to Gregory's study door, pounding on the massive iron-enforced imitation-oak.
Nothing, but Tristram could hear Gregory's music playing loudly on the opposite side - he had probably fallen asleep in his chair again.
Tristram ran downstairs, and decided to set fire to a settee in a nook under the stairs.
Instead of the alarms going off, the fire suppressant system annihilated the flames before they'd really gotten going.
"Damn you!" Tristram pointed his shotgun up to where the sleeping Demon probably lay, then had an idea.
Twelve gauge wouldn't do anything to the ceiling, but Tristram's eyes drifted to the demonic shotgun Tset had brought home, and the few extra rounds.
Without any hesitation, Tristram lugged one of the huge, heavy casings down from its pouch. He rolled it across the floor to directly center underneath where Gregory slept.
"Now for the tricky part..."
Tristram went carefully at the blast cap with his screwdriver.
He had to keep himself from running away - the idea of the shell going off in his hands was alarming.
Soon, the cap fell, thunked and rolled noisily across the hardwood.
Tristram was careful with the gunpowder, and very delicately distributed a trail into the foyer.
He crossed his fingers that the suppressant system wouldn't be quick enough to catch his fuse, and touched a match to the small black pile.
The race between the water jets and the burning cordite was so riveting Tristram almost forgot to duck when the fuse finally hit the underside of the large cast-iron shotgun casing.
Everything rattled, the TV exploded, the suppressant system went crazy, and, when Tristram checked, the flak had put a hole through the ceiling and Gregory's floor - a minute one, but enough noise...
A brown blur, a rumbling in the floor and walls that made Tristram's knees wobble and Gregory flew out the door. Upon waking, he'd checked his monitors, seen the three outside speaking and bolted from his chair.
Tset was nearly knocked down when Gregory went over his head in a lunge and raked his sharp nails at the two vampires.
They hissed like soaked cats and brought out their swords, slashing ineffectually at Gregory and then disappearing into the woods. Gregory followed, plowing a tree down.
Tristram ran outside, "Tset! Time to get back in! Lock it down! Gregory'll fuck up the punks."
Tset nodded and turned wearily, barely supporting himself. He took Tristram's offer to help and leaned on him. They made it back up the steps to the porch when there came a roar, angry, from deep in the wood.
"Sounds like maybe he ran into some shit. You lock it down, you defend the homestead, I got some more to say to these bitches." Tset took Tristram's arm from around his shoulders and shoved him to the door.
"No damn way!"
"Tristram. How long we gonna hold?"
Tristram had never wanted so badly to punch Tset in the face, but he went inside, begrudgingly, throwing all of Gregory's panic locks and turning the well-defended mansion into a virtual fortress - the basic structure and material of the mansion was already such that it was fairly impenetrable but with the addition of the extra plating and hermetic seals it was an above-ground bomb shelter within seconds of the titanium shutters rolling down over the entry doors. All the windows and French doors were bolstered by hidden steel rods sliding into locking position.
From the outside, all appearances were normal.
Tset removed his boots and placed them at the foot of another tree nearby. Further up the treeline, he hid behind a hedge and waited.
A few minutes later, the two vampires came back up the yard out of the shadows, Gregory's howls of warning echoing behind, and a clattering and straining of chains.
Tset was behind their left and they approached, cautiously, the boots in the opposite direction.
He evaluated for a moment more, for them to get almost close enough to that tree to establish he wasn't in it, and he padded up to them, barefoot and homicidally silent.
At about seven feet, just as his targets' balance was shifting to sweep the yard for him, with no word or otherwise and a sound like shrieking steel, he threw himself against the two.
They instantly blurred together - Papillion riding high and bright in arcs without hesitation, and their wrought iron broadswords cleverly deflecting her by the flat in a style they had practiced long ago.
Tset was too weak to drive his point home, and so the blows were exchanged on even footing - Tset simultaneously attacking and defending himself, albeit sluggishly. His feet stayed planted and the other two danced.
Their blades didn't cut - they maimed; their rusted burs digging gouges, their ill-honed tips leaving open basins.
Their edges didn't slice - they bruised and tore, cutting lines like a Cat-o-nines across Tset's flaying, quickly-purpling, body.
Tset was flanked before he knew it, and a pommel came against his neck, cracking him off balance.
In his blurred eyes he saw the blonde one before him, rising up as he went down to his knees.
He struggled with his own weight, thinking an attacker on his back.
His breathing cut short when a hand wrapped around his neck from behind to lift. He floated there before Alexander, bleeding, ravaged and wasted.
Papillion almost slipped and fell to the ground, but he held onto her, and the simple motion of his fingers clutchin
g her and straightening her seemed to bring him strength and he was in violent motion once again, separating several of the vertebrae in his clutched neck with his spin.
Papillion whickered close to Solomon, but did not strike, and Tset went to the dirt, prostrate, struggling to raise himself even to his elbows. He couldn't cough the soil out of his throat.
Solomon spoke again, his voice tiring Tset even further, "We're toying with you. Why do you think Gregory remains trapped? He knows we could strike you both down." The dark one laughed at his own lies though they ran low on time.
The two began to walk a careful circuit, doing two laps.
Tset ignored them, many rejoinders coming to his lips and being pushed back down - he needed the strength.
Solomon came up behind him while he crawled and hooked a clawed nail under his skin, pulling him into a sitting position.
Tset managed a moaning growl, not a roar. His head rolled back and he looked to the two smiling faces of his enemies.
'Enemies...'
"Dammit!" Tristram swore, watching Gregory's monitors.
He had a worried look on his normally-grin-wreathed face, wondering what to do - Tset was in trouble and Gregory was as well.
"Shotgun?" Tristram wondered about the huge rifle Tset had brought back.
"No. They're too fast." The HD cams barely kept up with it.
He became immediately frustrated at his lack of options and still had no idea what to do when something crashed through a window downstairs - opening the house to attack.
He ran from the room and past the shotgun.
Tset had grabbed Solomon's finger in anger while the two brothers spoke belittling things to him, broken it backwards and continued to twist while undescribable sound escaped his mouth through clenched teeth.
Had Solomon's boot not connected with his sternum, cracking his ribcage and sending him to roll, bounce and tumble across the yard and through one of Gregory's plate glass French doors, Tset would've kept the finger for himself.
With the kick, the word 'enemies' blurred out in his mind to something much more base, much more vile.
When Tristram made it downstairs, he found something he did not want to.
Tset, laying on shattered and bloody boards, barely moving, his hand inching for Papillion.
Then the two, Alexander and Solomon, floating in through the broken doorway, bowing to Tristram, "Rules dictate, we can enter on this one's attack of one of our own."
Solomon held up his broken finger, which was straightening itself out like a budding fiddle head.
Tristram nodded his ascent. Knowing the custom, he still would have killed them if given the opportunity.
Alexander snapped his fingers and made a terrible mistake, "Tristram, go get me a drink. I'll be thirsty when I'm done here."
Tristram fed an unknown flame, "Yeah, blondy, go fuck a cactus."
Tset's world was a spinning black and brown, blue and red, little pinpoints of light cut through the shadow of his vision. One long glowing thing showed itself to him and he went for her, slowly, achingly.
Two hated things crept up behind him while one beloved stood nearby, doomed itself and unable to support him.
There was a sharp, shattering clacking. In the corner of his eye he saw a hard satin hand snapping fingers. Some garbled words made themselves to him and he barely understood them beyond that they were an insult.
The voice he enjoyed sent an insult back.
Then another voice spoke, and this one Tset made out, this one chilled his blood and burned his soul, and his world began to shake.
The voice, like chocolate, said, "We'll deal with you later."
On the ground, Tset began to struggle anew, Papillion now in his weak grip.
Solomon looked down while Alexander stepped forward to challenge Tristram.
Solomon had been trying to keep Alexander on the matter at hand, but of course, he'd gone off, insulted.
Something about the unnaturality of how the Child almost heaved worried him.
It worried Tristram, too - Tset was quite obviously dying. Any minute a death rattle and that would be that.
Tristram hoped to get at least one of them when they came for him, though he had no plan for this contingency. Maybe Gregory would return in time.
Solomon used his boot toe to roll Tset over on his back, and Tset's feral face was twisted by pain, eyes shut tight and blackened sharp-ringed mouth open in a contorted O.
Then, a breath, relaxation, and everything fell soft again, still, but warm.
Something was wrong, "Alexander..." Said Solomon, looking up. Alexander waved him off and threw another taunt.
When Solomon glanced back down, Tset was glaring up at him, something ancient in the cruel-edged features.
The mouth was a sick V of sharp teeth, the eyes were depthless pools of something evil. The V rose and Solomon felt hot breath on his face.
Solomon brought in a small breath to speak his brother's name then his arm was gone and he was against the high ceiling - the arm had been clutched, crushed, hewed and twisted free - leaving a squirting aggravated mess of tubes and flesh under his leather epaulet.
Though all he knew was that he was laying against gravity, high above in a decorative semi-dome.
In the split second before he was tossed, he saw the trail - through reinforced mansion walls he had been dragged, cutting and smashing through paneling, stone and the titanium bulkheads hidden behind, and Tset's leer was below him, soaking up the night entire in its terrible mirth.
Tset wasn't standing on anything, just hanging by air, crushing Solomon's throat back, back, back into a chemically-hardened beam.
Solomon went half into the basement.
Alexander turned to see Solomon flash by, downwards, and was driven against the ground as an errant moth.
A pain flared up in his face as teeth cut into his jaw and tore his flesh away.
He was lifted and brought down again, again, again, his spine cracking, his skull softening as he hit Gregory's special formula hardwood.
His lapels tore and he bounced instead, coming to crash against the ground, in a crater of his own make.
When he got his eyelids peeled back Tset was above him, Papillion in one hand, the other reaching its fingers to hook under his eyes.
"Wait!" Called Alexander, holding a hand to stop the attack.
The expression Tset wore was the tightly-focused vacancy of the apoplectically enraged.
Alexander made a gambit, and would've won, "Please! Let us go! You are too powerful!"
A memory hit Tset hard, flashing through him: Gregory spoke while Tset regained his breath, and gripped the edges of a massive sword wound. "I would've killed him. Not bantered."
And another thought: A message to be delivered.
Tset's eyes focused on Alexander again, not on the spot near his head, and he noticed the running wound on Alexander's face, not making the connection with the taste in his mouth, but wondering how it had come to be.
Alexander continued to gibber.
Tset shook his head clear, "What?"
"Let us go! We wish nothing to do with you. Clan BlackHawk is your friend, you've proven too powerful... just..." Alexander, scared beyond sanity at the tightly-spun malefactor above him, rambled on.
"Fine." Tset's voice was a wicked knife in the ears of all. "Leave me now." He was going to add, "Before I change my mind." But decided he wasn't Clint Eastwood.
Alexander crawled out of his impermanent grave in the reinforced flooring and stumbled to lift the wounded Solomon from his own.
Neither of them could remember pain, and the depth of the wounds that held in place made it hard for them to see or think.
Alexander made to pick up Solomon's arm but Tset said, softly, almost kindly, "Leave it."
So he did, and they were gone.
A few minutes later, Tristram spoke. "Tset?"
Tset was turned away, rummaging in the rubble, "Yup." He was digging around for
his sunglasses. Tristram didn't know what to say.
Gregory burst through the doors, heavy brass manacles on his bleeding wrists. He stepped forward, anger in his great voice. "Where are they?"
"Let 'em go." Tset was calm, even and undistracted.
Gregory was incredulous, "What! You're inconsistently cruel, Tset. Some enemies, you smash like insects, but your worst you let go. Fenrir, and now two of the most vengeful vampires to ever have lived?"
Tset was not in the mood for criticism, so he smiled up at Greg, his jaw taught, one of his molars shattering, "You think I'm stupid?"
Tset still shook, now dusting his sunglasses. Gregory hesitated for a moment, unsure of what the little thing was or was doing. "N-"
"Just a bit worn out. When Lexi begged for his little life, I got a bit distracted, and got a bit of an idea. Gimme a fucking breather. I wanna make a point to these assholes. BlackHawk? Pah." He tore the bandages off of his raw flesh while Gregory fumbled for something to say. Tset's wounds were all puckered and scarred, meaning his regeneration and metabolism were dead.
Gregory finally landed on this to mention when the black eyes, now definitely depthless, snapped to Tristram, "Get my jacket, boots and jeans from upstairs. And my Commando, drop a clip of high-impact shells in there." His tensed smile had relaxed, though its ease now still put Gregory out. The casual way he rubbed his glasses with a silken scrap was odd and out of place.
Tristram saluted and ran up the stairs. Tset called after him, "And a shirt!" He slipped his glasses on.
Then to Gregory, "Kate okay?"
"Er... yes. Probably. But, Ts-"
"Nope, make sure she stays okay."
She, hiding near the top of the stairs, listening, smiled at him as best she could, "Okay." But her knight was horrifying and torn. Already second thoughts crept into her mind and she couldn't even see him.
Tristram went by with a suit, shirt and tie, plus a pair of heavy but (in Tset's words) 'workable' boots.
When he got back downstairs, "What the fuck is that?"
"Hey, you're going out, you're a preppy ninja, I thought it was more appropriate."
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