Pretty good movie. Gory as hell and just as violent. Had to admit that some filmmakers were just damned perverse. Nikita thought about that as he walked out of Vision Cinema, rubbed his stomach idly. The whole shower of blood thing had been really cool but it had also made him hungry. In fact, the whole movie had left him with the vague urge to try some of what had been onscreen.

Of course, he doubted a human being would actually be able to stay conscious (as they had in the movie) throughout most of the stuff. But it would be fun to find out, wouldn't it? Some of the stuff he'd actually done. As for the other stuff... well, inspiration --or downright copying-- came from anywhere. He didn't mind if it came from a movie.

The vampire blended in fairly well with the young, largely male, crowd leaving the theater after the eleven o'clock showing of Hostel: Part II. He wore loose black jeans held up by a belt with a moderately flashy buckle, tan work boots, and dark jersey that said "Owens" on the back. The clothes were a bit baggy but not to the extent where he looked as if he was swimming in them. As he'd been trying to fit with the crowd, the attire wasn't what he usually wore, but it suited him well enough.

Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure why he'd gone to see the movie, other than a random whim after seeing the poster. That and the fact that the genre was described as 'torture-porn' and who could resist that? Even as he ambled along, slightly behind a group of chattering eighteen year-olds, his stomach reminded him that the show had woken up his appetite.

Just his luck, one of the girls was peeling off from the group. She gave them a wave before making her way across the street. Looked like she'd had to park away from the theater. Nikita grinned and followed, as unobtrusively as possible.

He studied her as he did. She wore platform heels, a short skirt, and a tight shirt--showing off generous breasts and toned legs. A bit heavy-handed with the makeup, somewhere in-between pretty and party, with big earrings. Her hair was a highlighted brown. As she walked, she dug into a monster handbag for some car keys. Nikita waited until she'd pulled them out and gotten the door open before making his appearance. He put his hand on the top of the car door, shoved it shut. And grinned.

A few moments later, he smothered her screams with his palm as he dragged her from the car and into the shadows. Right now, he was just hungry, so his fangs dragged tracks in her slender white throat and released bright red ribbons of blood. She flailed against him uselessly, her fists bouncing off his shoulders and chest. Already, he could feel her weakening. He moved his grip from her mouth to her hair, pulling her head back and listening to the gasping whimpers and half cries as he ripped at her throat. She was still alive when he stopped, blood dribbling from his chin, and looked at her dazed face. Nikita tore open the excuse for a shirt, grinning again as he bit into the soft mound of her breast.

Perfect night all around, really. Good movie followed by a good, messy kill.

Movies had no appeal to her, no matter the subject matter. They might contain blood, or they might contain history, but at the end of the day, they were simply stories acted out by people with delusions of grandeur. To her, it took very little talent to pretend to be what one was not; especially if that was what one had always been doing. People did it everyday, yet they were not awarded for giving an outstanding performance to the world. She herself was case in point.

The night was cool enough under the large, clear sky. Summer had not yet quite set in, but it was inching ever closer. Euthalia walked through the back streets like something out of a dream. Her steps were slow and precise - fluid. Her skirt was full around her, but went only to her knees and over her shoulder, she swirled a parasol of white lace. It wasn’t the best way to remain unobtrusive, but that had never been her desire. The more people followed her, the better her night would be.

She was the Pied Piper of the curious, of the lonely, of the delusional.

Tonight, however, she was lacking in a retinue. The dusty streets had offered up nothing to her liking, so she kept walking, thinking that she might find something else that would satisfy her instead.

Turning the corner in a sort of pirouette, she walked down the alley between two brick buildings, one of red and one of grey. A dumpster had littered its contents on the ground, so she tiptoed her way carefully around the moulding food and crumpled wrappers. Then, as though she had not just indulged in some childish game, she emerged from between the buildings.

What she saw made her pause, made her cock her head to the side in a gesture more animal than human. One of her own – it had to be one of hers – was mauling a young girl. Euthalia didn’t move, she didn’t say anything, she merely observed, still twirling the parasol resting on her shoulder.

Nikita ran his hands over the curves of the young girl's supple body, relishing the feel of her skin and the muscle beneath. She had worked to enhance a pretty but unspectacular face; worked to showcase a body toned, no doubt, by hard work and great care. Worked so that she might be seen as beautiful and have that beauty appreciated. And it was. The vampire appreciated it very much as she writhed beneath him and her skin became clammy.

Perhaps later than he should have, Nikita became aware of another presence. His first instinct was to turn and snarl—like a dog furious that some interloper might be trying to take its bone. But he resisted the urge when there was no further sound, no shout of alarm as a human might give. No hiss from a fellow vampire wishing to stop him or take what he had for itself.

Instead of turning, he looked down into the empty face of the girl he held. She was near dead, her head lolling backwards. He was the only thing supporting her and she was boneless in his arms. Her eyes were open, but glazed and hardly aware. Though she wasn't dead yet, she would be in moments, he judged. Almost tenderly, he cradled her head in his hands, looked into those empty eyes. A slight squeeze was all it took to make her skull crack between his fingers.

A corpse now, she held little interest for him. He watched as her body fell to the filthy asphalt, arms and legs askew. While he hated to use an obvious analogy, she looked like a rag doll someone carelessly tossed aside. Broken and forgotten. Nikita frowned, used her shirt to wipe at the blood staining his face, and finally turned.

He recognized the vampire who stood before him, forever wearing the guise of a sweet little girl. Euthalia Akakios was one of the few, very few, vampires in the city that he respected. There were a few he feared, but no others that he truly deferred to. Nikita doubted she knew his name or the fact that he existed, but that was fine with him. The broad, towering figure glanced again at the corpse. "Humans die so easily. I tend to forget myself and they break."

Truth be told, Nikita was quite unsure how to act around the Tarepha leader. She didn't exactly strike him as the sort he could slap on the back as they picked out another one of the fragile little humans to shatter.

There were certain similarities between Euthalia and the now-deceased young mortal. They’d both been young when they’d died. They’d both been killed without a second thought. And now, both without heart beats, they both resembled dolls but whereas the mortal was a rag doll, limbs flung about carelessly, Euthalia was cast in porcelain, barely moving, eyes wide and carefully blank.

When she was spoken to, she blinked slowly and stopped twirling her parasol. Then, when whatever she’d been waiting for had happened, she started twirling again and came forward. The crowd of moviegoers had died down now, so she and the Tarepha before her were almost completely alone. She moved around him, and crouched down next to the corpse, the way a real child would over a mud puddle.

“I’ve found,” she said softly, moving a piece of hair out of the corpse’s face, “that the point is not to forget, and to make it as hard as possible for them to die.”

What went unsaid that she was a very different sort of monster than many in her club. While many enjoyed the viciousness, the carnal tearing of flesh followed by blood, Euthalia preferred to take her time. She thought about what she was doing. She planned ahead in many cases. Breaking the body was one thing. Breaking the mind was something else entirely.

Bending over, she placed a small kiss on the corpse’s forehead. Looking up at the man, she smiled. “You’re in my coven.” It wasn’t a question. “Amusing yourself, are you?” Her eyes flickered back towards the girl.

Nikita watched, fascinated, as Euthalia approached the girl. Her movements were both precise and strangely graceful, deliberate and flowing. It was unnerving to watch such a small, forever immature, body make such balletic movements. Stepping back slightly as she leaned over the dead girl, wondering idly what the corpse's name had been so he could stop thinking of her as 'Dead Girl', Nikita dug in the pockets of his baggy jeans for his cigarettes.

Tapping one out and lighting it, he arched an eyebrow (the one with the thick gold ring through it) as she daintily pressed her lips to the girl's forehead. But the dark brows furrowed slightly as he considered her words. "I guess," Nikita conceded, blowing out a stream of smoke before continuing, "but I like the smash and the snap. Great big geysers of hot blood and all o' dat."

Stereotypical or not, Nikita was certainly Tarepha. Human lives meant nothing to him beyond how they could entertain him. Generally brutish, he almost always killed those he fed from, delighting in all the gory ways he could end them. At Euthalia's question, he grinned, took another lazy drag on his cigarette. "I was hungry... m'lady," he replied, hesitating before addressing her. Typically he called any female 'doll' but he was a bit wary of doing that with Euthalia. He didn't want any choice body parts ripped off, after all.

"But, yeah, I was havin' me some fun, too."

Euthalia raised her eyebrows, but refrained from commenting. It wasn’t that she was opposed to cigarettes – what could they do to her? – or even that she disliked people smoking in front of her (same reason as before). There was cigarette smoke enough around the club, wafting up the stairs and halting just in front of her door, held back with a shield of potpourri. Her biggest question was why someone would smoke if they didn’t need to. Having never felt the need to try it herself, she could see no appeal.

“Hm,” she said with a small shrug of her shoulders. She stood up, twirling as she did so. This was her game, this façade of innocence. “That is fun, isn’t it? But I like seeing the fear that goes beyond blind panic and into sheer terror.” Hands clasped around the stick of the parasol, she smiled.

If human lives had meant something to him, he would most probably have despised Euthalia. She could count on one hand the things that were important to her, and mortals ranked nowhere at all. And she could understand his love of breaking bones, of blood and darker liquids pouring out of a body. There was a certain cacophonic poetry to it all.

“I can see that.” Her tone was almost teasing. She downplayed every aspect of her personality save the apparent innocence. “I was looking to amuse myself as well, but, well…” Her gaze moved off into the distance, frowning at something she couldn’t see.

Lazily, Nikita took another deep drag on the cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs. For tarry tobacco, there was something about the flavor of it, not to mention the nicotine, that made you want more. Harsh and a little bit sweet, he thought as blew it out. Anyway, it wasn't as if he was going to get cancer or emphysema.

He crouched down, studying the girl's empty face as Euthalia spoke of fear. There were levels of it, he knew that much, but he'd never really been one to take time with his victims. They gurgled and died, flailed and flopped like fish on land. That's what he liked, watching them flop and the way their eyes went so wide and blind with the onset of death. And the way those eyes emptied as the last drops of blood dribbled out.

Nikita looked up as she trailed off. "Yeah?" he asked, wondering what it was she had been looking for. When you lived forever, amusement was pretty much the most important thing. At least, that's what he thought.

((OOC: If this doesn't fit or if I've jumped in too far into the thread, feel free to tell me and this can disappear. I just had this post and thought maybe I could jump in?))

Some people have a favorite blanket, a purse, or pair of shoes. The form is often different from one person you ask to another, but it isn’t the item that matters, so much as it is something that becomes a part of a person’s routine or ritual, something that has some kind of memory or significance attached.

Everyone has something, even if they never truly admit it to themselves, there is something, a reminder of a life lived; but for Oliver Quentin Grey, oh so different from most people, especially mortals and their tawdry little lives, this something just so happened to be a set of knives, stilettos to be exact, and a MO that had been with him for two centuries or more.

He didn’t indulge often, or rather at least as much as he’d have liked, but tonight. Ah, there just seemed to be something about tonight…

Like a shadow that is if shadows had wry grins; Oliver Grey, Ollie to his friends (that is if he had any); stood over the prone figure, evaluating it for a second as he moved about in a tight circle near the claustrophobic close walls. Each step was careful, measured. Steps that were almost soundless, even as he avoided the obligatory crumpled wrappers and trash littering this and every other alley in major cities all across the globe.

The subject of study was a big man. Indeed he was monstrous, even by the increased standards of this day and age. His dark skin made him nothing more than an outline in the darkness afforded by the alley, even with glaring lights from the street at its mouth. Something which Oliver had to admit was just as well, now that his fun was done and the man dead. At least it would be a bit before he was discovered…it was never as fun when they were discovered fresh. No.

And now that he’d been fed well and well amused Ollie was at least in the mood to consider the finer and more subtly mechanical points of what he’d done. And so he worked upon the future crime scene with all the thought and detail of an artist until he was sure that it was just right and with a decidedly impressive spin and sheathing of the thin blades in small and near equally thin hands he started for home.

Or so that had been the plan, that was until he caught the scent of blood, spilled. Not so rare a scent as you might imagine in a major city, but it was followed close by a second that begged for his attention.

Even if his more common and decidedly sane nature voted against it…one doesn’t seek the tiger in the jungle. But then the moth goes willingly to the flame, does it not?

It didn’t take much tracking. Almost none. And knowing that stealth would do him all the good of shot to the skull, Oliver moved out of a direct following path, still sticking to the back streets, but simply a different one. Until. Well until he found that which he sought, she who he sought.
She was all white lace and of all the things in the world, a parasol. Like a doll he’d seen once, long ago when the dolls were more eloquent and graceful. There was an innocence about her, a glow. A voice that seemed to whisper “come follow me,” And yet Oliver had whispered it enough times without word himself to know exactly what wasn’t said, “to oblivion.” And that made him smile despite himself.

“A fine night governess…” He greeted her, moving from his place among the brick and shadow of the alley. Then a moment later, he noted that she was not alone. First the dark skinned man, not so unlike the man he’d left not to long ago. Then there was a girl…well a corpse the more reasonable man might call it.

“Well then, e’llo to you too…” He said in slight bemusement at the other vampire.

Moving a bit more from the alley, Oliver Gray was still a shadow. Indeed dressed from head to toe in black did that to a being born without much color.

The boy Oliver had been before the blood was no more than nine; his hair was long and dark, a bit ratty with the lack of care he put into it to play the street urchin from time to time. It was tossed, both by wind and by sport, and edged into a pale dirty face, to look like bars, caging large eyes that focused on the two immortals before him, eyes that looked a lot like storm clouds before a harsh rain, though of course they were quickly softened by a perpetual smile. That smile, he wore it the way some wore a blank face, it held about the same amount of emotion as he studied the scene before him.

Had she been able to read minds, Euthalia may or may not have shared her own opinions with this man. While amusing herself was important, she was one of those rare people that take ambition and drive it forever onwards. It had taken her a long time to get to where she was – a very long time, and a very many of those same years spent pretending, hiding, and whispering in exactly the right person’s ear. Perhaps it was because she appeared to be a child and thus had to be more cunning – or perhaps not – but almost everything she did had a plan behind it.

“Mhm,” she agreed, looking at him from out of the corner of her eye, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “Unfortunately, no one seemed to take pity on the small little girl out on her own. I had one recently who took me thinking he could get a ransom for me.” Her expression was sadistic beyond the abilities of her six-year-old face, yet when she spoke, her voice was almost mockingly sad. “It didn’t work.”

She took a few steps closer to him, looking into his face. “I apologize, but I do not believe I have the pleasure of your name. Will you share it with me?”

And then her face turned to the side, and she got a look better suited to a grown woman’s body. It composed of a raised eyebrow, a half-smile, and the overall impression of cynical amusement.

“Hello Oliver,” she said. “Have you met my new friend?”

Friend might be taking it a tad too far, but such boundaries had never mattered much to Euthalia.

OOC: I have no problem with it, although I've made my post such that if there is any problem, I can edit it easily. =)

((OOC: Bitch me out if I'm intruding. I'm still getting used to this site.))

She'd stumbled out of the theater after the credits had rolled. Yhihre was still fighting to keep the popcorn down. She'd known the movie would be bad, but she hadn't expected to see people practically reduced to raw meat. The neon sign for the lady's room flickered above her head. Thank god. A toilet. She rounded the corner into the tiled room to find... one helluva long line. Shit. She strode back out, trying to find a place to do the Jeffrey Star act. Just stick the finger down the throat and it would all be fine.

In her skinny jeans and vintage Bowie shirt, she might be able to pass for a guy. Well, if she took off her earrings, necklaces, bracelets and bra. She could just claim to be an emo boy. Yhihre peered into the men's room only to see a line just as long, if not longer, than the one for the ladies.

No luck. She'd have to keep a meal down. Two weeks ago she'd stepped on her scale to see a number way over a hundred, and a bit under one-twenty. Yhihre had never been an ounce over one-hundred-and-eight in her life. Dieting was out of the question for her. They just downright sucked. She wasn't a rabbit, so she couldn't survive on lettuce and carrots. The only solution she saw was to do as her favorite drag queen.

A frown etched into her face, Yhihre left the Vision Cinema. She was hit by a blast of cool air, and regretted leaving her jacket at home. She forgot that it didn't stay seventy year round here. She sighed and began the twelve block walk back to her apartment.

Not that he was stupid enough to say anything, but dee-yamn, it was funny. Just, you know, funny. Look, here was Nikita in his great, gargantuan glory at six feet, six inches tall and between 220-230 pounds. Of muscle. Sure, that was smaller than some folks--if they were professional football linemen--but it was pretty damn big to be walking back at you down the street. And he knew it.

Then you had the infinitely more dangerous Ms. Euthalia Akakios. Three and a half feet tall and, as he eyeballed it, maybe fifty pounds. With the alabaster face of a precocious six year-old. Nikita would easily admit that she could clean his clock.

Now you had another of the little guys. He looked, what, eight? Maybe nine? Kind of skinny, so maybe he was older than he looked. The tall vampire almost laughed as soon as the thought occurred to him. Of course he was older than he looked. Though Nikita didn't think the little dude was older than he was.

Funny to look at, huh? Big, bad, black guy and two little white kids. And the little girl was the most dangerous of them all.

Nikita grinned a bit at the ransom comment. "Don' imagine it woulda. Call me Nikita. Some folk call me Nik." He didn't add that he usually drove the noses of the ones who called him Nik into their skulls. Euthalia Akakios could call him whatever she wanted. His dark eyes tracked over to the little dude. Oliver, apparently. "The 'Nik' thing don' go for you."

Oliver grinned and it wasn’t a very pleasant grin at all. If anything it might have seemed a bit affronted. But at the same time, the ever present sense of self that Oliver held like a leash around his own throat, it was this that pulled back the intensity on that smile just a bit. Whatever the man had meant, Oliver would take it in stride. He’d gotten good at that long ago. Let the man think whatever he wanted, especially about their ages. Oliver didn’t have to read minds to know the thought when it crossed the other’s face, he’d been reading that look for a long time. Probably longer than the man that instantly underestimated him.

After all it’s always easy to feel the old ones, to know that feel of power on your skin, a tang on the back of the tongue. But harder to read those closer to yourself, though harder of course didn’t equate to impossible. Indeed when he’d been young, learning, nothing had equated to impossible. The old man had saw to that.

Of course Oliver wasn’t one to ignore Euthalia’s words. Indeed only a fool would do that. And of all the things he might be; conniving, ambiguous, misleading, and surprising…fool was not among the list of self imposed traits. And besides Ollie had learned to read between the lines. Friend didn’t always mean friend, but it did mean ally or at least coven member. And that last was enough to curve any aggression that the Englishman might have had toward his dark skinned counter part. It was the final nail in the coffin, or so to speak.

“No, can’t say that I have, governess. But he does seem quite the spirited duckie. I’m glad that I get the chance.”

That said, his gaze turned to the other vampire.

“Oliver Quentin Grey.” The English born vampire returned. It was crisp of accent and edged with a touch of propriety that he’d known only briefly in mortal life. Something that was decidedly unlike the Elizabethan subject he once might have been, but much like the one he’d become. After all the name was offered as what it was, simply a name, no feeling at all behind it.

Then another smile, wry and amused, perpetually so and devoid of character, sans a sudden splay of cockney into the mix of proper English; “Though me friends call me Ollie.”

That last was pointed. A bit posturing, Oliver granted, but then again he was annoyed because he could have done without the posturing. But the other had started it and as such, when given a challenge, Oliver wasn’t one to back down.

Well with the exception of two beings…two that he could not find it in him to ever even consider challenging. And one of them was in this ally, and her dress looked splendid, even if he did say so himself.

Euthalia silently watched the two interact with each other. Her eyebrows were raised, and to anyone who knew her, really knew her (and the list was extremely limited) they would see that she was trying not to smile. She thought, as she often did, that the Tarepha was really remarkable. So many different people, so many different methods, yet they all felt the same – or felt similar things. They gave into that urge, that tugging from the centre of the soul and just did what they pleased.

It was all rather lovely, actually. It gave her a great sense of pride.

“Nik. Ollie.” Euthalia’s nose wrinkled up. She didn’t say anything else. Her tone summed up quite accurately what she thought of pointless shortening of names.

She sighed then, but it was soft and more theatrical than anything. “I suppose I don’t have to introduce myself, but to the new boy in the classroom, you’re free to call me Ms. Akakios.” She said it like it was generous of her to allow that, and perhaps it was. Before Cheveyo, her fledglings had never called her by her name, never gotten that close.

“Well then, children, what do you suggest we do now? We’ve finished with the vacuous pleasantries. What now? Ideas?” She looked back and forth between them.

'A spirited duckie'? Nikita tucked his hands in his pockets. Easiest way to conceal the fact that they wanted to wrap around Oliver Quentin Grey's neck. Not just because the little vampire had called him a duckie, but just the gut reaction at hearing anybody use the term.

Still, when one was around the leader of one's coven... probably best to play well with others. Infighting was one of the don'ts, after all. "Likewise, Grey." Nikita replied calmly, his voice smooth enough to pass close inspection.

To Euthalia, he nodded respectfully. "Ms. Akakios, then." Hands still tucked in his pockets, though they were loose and relaxed now, he ambled towards the open end of the alley. No one around. Turning back, he shrugged a little. "Don' know 'bout the two of yo, but I'm still hungry."

Oliver almost grinned at the other’s reaction, especially at his use of decidedly stereotypical gutter slang. Well okay, maybe not grinned, after all he had better control of his expressions than that. Indeed Oliver’s current expression was almost blank, bland with the exception of the decidedly sinister light that quaked behind gray eyes like lightning behind storm clouds, but as quick as lightning it was gone. Nothing more to be seen but easy confidence and absolute control, indeed some might say arrogance.

But to Oliver arrogance was about not being able to do what was put forth. Not the same as confidence, knowing what you are capable of and having absolutely no doubts in the way you use that ability. To Ollie that was simply confidence.

And he felt confident, even as he felt the fear that Euthalia Akakios had a way of generating in any sane being. Quite the mix really confidence and fear, but one that Oliver wasn’t unaccustomed to; if anything, it was comfortable. A bit like coming home again, though that of course went to say a lot about just what kind of home he’d grown up under or at least the master that had been all the family he’d known for quite some time.

Oliver watched the other saunter then. Inclining his head thoughtful or how a hawk might a mouse, Grey nodded.

“Not quite hungry in my case,” He clarified. “No. More like I’m suddenly not as satisfied as I thought.”

Put simply, his buzz from the hunt was gone. The thrill he felt at simply presuing and capturing prey. The thrill of pain and death and savagery. All of these things had melted away. Leaving him like a child with a runny ice cream that managed to escape its cone. Not an intimidating analogy, but one that was accurate none the less in the simple frustration that Oliver felt right then.