cryptsleeper | 20s AU Post

20s AU Post

Current Carmilla plot outline
--Post-fire, Carmilla and Mr. Peanut team up mostly to use each other. Carmilla's spent the past several months (since November, it is now February 1925) networking, and it's clear to her that Alucard's not suited for the position and that the other two are the obvious weakness. Mr Peanut needs something back, so this is perfect on her end. Mr Peanut can only imagine the joys of vampire blood in his work, and he'd like an army of vampires for his own ends.
--Shit stirring from Mr Peanut (all of March?)
--Mr Peanut also begins to sell mis Miracle Serum, which has vampire blood in it.
--Gang is very much trying to murder Mr Peanut during this.
--Start of April, vampire gets a call from one of the blood bank contacts that 3 patients have come in and are displaying some bizarre signs. Investigation yields the fact that they're in process of turning, and they've all taken the same serum.
--Additional investigation reveals O FUCK IT MR PEANUT
--Meanwhile Carmilla's been made aware of a familiar she didn't sire, so she knows something's up. Big fight with Mr. Peanut and thus Mr. Peanut is left depowered
--Gang commits a murder
--Carmilla's well sured up on her contacts now, and it's time for open rebellion (mid-April)
--In a more subtle attempt to let Alucard just step aside, she cuts the breaks on demon car and shows up to gloat/suggest he not pull a dad and go to deal with his grief quietly while she runs the city. The how he wants to do it is up to him (black widow joke goes here.) Treffy and Sypha walk in.
--1 week of straight up rebellion; feedings, no help from allies, need to do damage control instead of fight carmilla, every dracula rule is
--MEANWHILE IN GRAVITY FALLS, triangle shows Vlad what's up to try and psyche him out, somehow this finalyl snaps Vlad out of his depression and he heads home
--Just in time for Alucard and Carmilla to be tearing each other to bits in one of the bayous, it's not going well
--Vlad coming in means the king of vampires is accosted by a belmont with a pair of blessed knitting needles and a speaker with a fucking gun and he's just like what the shit happened to the world while i was gone
--Wards around the fight means that only demon car can break the wards, everyone has to pile in.
--Carmilla gets her ass kicked AND SENT TO THE JUSTICE DIMENSION

THEN THERE WERE FAERIES.
--Prior to all of this the vampire and Sypha have done a shit ton of research on how to get their Belmont back
--Sypha has also been practicing debating with dad, which leaves everyone Very Tired.
--When Trevor is actually snatched up (1 year after marriage, it takes fae effort. Taking Arn's shape fails, so it's a lot more kidnapping by force), Sypha and Alucard go into Faerie
--But they're playing this as politics, not as heroes rescuing their damsel, so that means the faeries are just "wait what now excuse u?"
--There are 3 gates and 3 trials (the particulars we're still bullshitting.) Each is asked to sacrifice 3 things. (Alucard: voice, his titles as bestowed upon by his father and his people, i forget the third; Sypha: her human form (she's a birb), fuck what were the other two)
--They enter the court at the end of the third trial. After LITERALLY ALL THE TITLES Sypha declares she Speaks for Trevor Belmont
--Claim debate over Trevor, turns out that the rules are in Sypha's favor.
--But that means debating to leave Fae without giving up what they've chosen.
--Sypha lawyers it all out, Alucard is a safety deposit and hangs out with Fae!Trevor
--In the end, safe passage out of Faerie consists of Sypha giving up her memory of the necromancer (billed as a great mage she studied under), the vampire gives up his immortality, and Trevor is replaced with Carmilla (dad was aware of this option and OK with it), but Trevor has his ability to swear taken. He now soundslike a rubber ducky when he tries
--Everyone gets home okay, except for the AU of this AU where the gang fails, but Trevor's on their doorstep like a bat out of Hell because time doesn't work right and he's been in Hell for a WHILE.

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[It takes Alucard four long days to show his face after they capture the Bishop from his meeting at the crossorads. He is in the deepest parts of the castle for those days, letting every emotion run wild. Get out of his system. Let him take it all in, so that when he reemerges, it can be with the face he needs to fulfil the office the city requires him to take on.

Four days also means that all the spellwork for determining who has done such necromantic horrors to can be put into place. Alucard's informed of the complexity, of how some of it was hidden in layers and layers to cloak the one responsible, but in the end, it all traces back to Damien. There's a sick sense to it, after all. He had forced Trevor into Alucard's charge months back to prove that Alucard was a poor fit for Dracula's charge of the city. This was a new way to prove the point, praying on a raw spot and disguising it all as an incompetent princeling who can'r protect his own city from a few overeager hunters. It had nearly worked.

It was beautiful reverse spellwork. Nearly enough to offset Alucard's raw anger at the situation, but then there was new anger: the evidence needed to be replicated by others, because it had no weight coming from Trevor or Sypha. Not because they were human, but because they were too close to Alucard. An independent party had to do it instead, and so that was done. A few members of the local coven. Three vampires with no love of Alucard at all. A panel of elder vampires to know that none of this was biased. All witnesses gathered to watch Alucard make a simple declaration: Damien would be dead for attacking his own people. That was what justice demanded.

The night of the execution saw Alucard leave alone, dressed as he had been the first time. Black and gold, sword at his side, grim expression. But what was unleashed there was different. There was no denying a public death for this, nor was there denying the fact the Bishop would die first, Damien watching. For that horrible shell of a man, Alucard reserved nothing. Dorian's death was a thing of anger at a single situation. The bishop? That was anger for everything. His mother's death, his father's attack and abandonment, everything, everything, everything (everything that wasn't Trevor or Sypha.) He was torn limb from limb. The head flung into the assembled crowd. He was drenched in terrible dark red-black blood before he even turned on Damien, and then the same treatment was given to the offending vampire.

Afterward, when all assembled began to go towards the doors, a single figure walked in instead. Apologized for being late, had she missed the execution? Alucard stared down at her, soaked in blood, and the room named the vampire for him in hushed whispers. Carmilla.

Fuck.

Everyone filed out. She stayed. They spoke as politely as they could, because Alucard might rule the city, but Carmilla was old. Her age was currency that no one, not even the Son of Dracula, could ignore. Politeness meant she told him who she was staying with. (THe kin of an older friend.) Politeness meant inviting her to the townhouse in two days, because a distinguished guest in the city couldn't not be granted a private audience. Politeness meant staying far too late, and then having to smile at her as she left the cursed execution house.

Alucard returns home late. He storms in, and uses magic to project his voice.]

My office. It's an emergency.

[His tone is furious and barely restrained.]

[ They're asleep when he enters. In one of the guest rooms, because it's a reasonable guess that Alucard won't want to be himself-shaped for a while and he doesn't like it afterwards if he gets fur on their own bed. It's a smaller bed, but big enough to fit two people with a wolf tucked neatly between them if needed.

He dresses quickly (mornings of being showered, shaved, dressed and bed made within ten minutes have left him with at least a few good habits) and leaves Sypha to get into work clothes while he makes coffee. Because it's 4am, and even he doesn't function brilliantly at this hour of the morning.

Sypha is not dressed properly by the time he arrives at the office, just wearing his own coat over her nightdress. He sets down the three cups of coffee and just sighs at her. ]

I brought work clothes down for you.

Thank you.

[Alucard sheds all of the bloodstained clothes with his back to the others. It takes no time at all, he's working at vampire speed and they've all seen each other naked enough to hardly care about what they're looking at.]

Belmont, I need everything your family knew about Carmilla. Now.

[ Sypha ignores her own work clothes, because of course she does. He rolls her eyes at her, about ready to make this A Thing.

But then Alucard mentions Carmilla. ]

The Austrian one? Fuck, let me think.[ He doesn't have access to the family's library, so he just has what he's memorized. ] Her sire was a massive fucking problem, I remember that much. Old fashioned 'bathe in the blood of virgins, go about turning innocent maidens' type. I- think she killed him? She certainly took over his territories after his death. We kept watch on her for a while, but as far as vampires in Europe go, she was fairly well-behaved. There were other priorities. Bluebeard moved on Austria about a decade after your father left, and the local rulers vanished fairly quickly after that. She's shown up a couple of times in your father's records, but not frequently enough given her age for it to be likely that she's ever made the city a permanent home.

She's here now.

[He sits himself down behind the desk when the words are said. Draws himself, rests forearms on the desk and leans in. Trevor's said everything he can, that means that there's records to go through.

There's older vampires who know her. That's...no, that's worrying. Carmilla's as close to proper royalty in the region as his father is.]

I don't know why she's come, but I don't trust her for a moment. Her arrival at the execution is too auspicious.

The execution-

[ Now he remembers why Carmilla was fresh on his mind. The execution a few months ago, and the research leading up to it. Her habit of rescuing new vampires who fell on the wrong side of the rules and taking them in.

Damien was far too old for that to be what she'd been doing, but it's still a coincidence that can't be ignored. ]

-to watch it, or to object to it?

Arrived after it was done.

[Alucard's arms tense. His hands are still bloodied, and his nails are threatening to become claws.]

She spoke too politely for me to register her real opinion. I have to entertain her in two day's time in the townhouse, I can get a better measure of her thoughts then.

[ He reaches for the coffee mug, holding it a little less like it's a mug of coffee and a little more like it's a lifeline. This is- not too bad, as far as he can tell. Carmilla is old, but she's never been troublesome compared to other vampires. But he trusts Alucard's judgement enough to believe that something is wrong if he says so.

He sighs, taking a gulp of the coffee as he tries to get his thoughts in order. ]

Let us be there with you. I won't start shit. Won't say a word. I'll just stand around being a Belmont.

[ It'll hopefully throw her off. If she caught Alucard at the execution then she had him at a terrible disadvantage. They can at least try to do likewise. ]

Not yet.

[Alucard wants to sleep. He wants to just change form and sleep because tearing two men from limb to limb is exhausting work even if it's driven by sheer rage, but he can't. Everything about Carmilla set off a warning light in his head, even if she was pleasant and polite. Who just rolls in at an execution?

He's certain that Damien's opinion of Alucard is not limited to the vampires within the city. Feeling Carmilla's opinion out on the matter is step one.]

Vampire at her age probably has more human opinions than most. I need to know where she stands.

You're sure? Unless nobody's spoken to her since her arrival, she's likely to know I'm here. My not being there will be sending her as much of a message as my presence.

[ Something's definitely wrong. He's a little ashamed of taking so long to catch on to the obvious sign. Bloodstained clothes, the ones he changed out of. Alucard hasn't taken the time to deal with the blood before summoning them here. Not a problem in itself, they're both careful. But especially for him, it's a terrible sign.

It also means that Alucard's going to have to clean the office himself tomorrow because neither of them can. Which is a mixed blessing, because he suspects he'll want mindless work to put himself to. ]

I know. [He breathes out.] And every message matters now more than ever before.

[Most of the vampires in the city are American made ones, with only a few from the Old World. Of those from European and Asian shores, none of them have a pedigree like Carmilla. Her presence overshadows every part of the community. It makes Alucard uneasy. Uncomfortable. He can't tell if that's the goal, but if it is...

...he doesn't like this.

He's not thinking about blood in the office right now. He's thinking about the best ways to divine Carmilla's intentions.]

If I'm not visible there now, I can't be visible there at meetings with her in future. That I wasn't at the execution is excusable, you can come up with some shit about it not being my place to watch vampires kill their own. But if I'm not there at one meeting in your own home and then I'm there at another, the message there is- bad. It will mean you're spooked, and that that's why I'm there.

[ He gives it some thought. ]

Make me visible at first, and then dismiss me when she arrives. As a display of respect. That way I can attend later events if I'm needed and the worst she'll get from it is that she's displeased you somehow.

Ugh.

[Which is to say Trevor's right. Of course Trevor's right, Alucard's only resisting it because these are the moments he hates the most: using either of them as political props in front of the world. For parties it has become easier because there are the smaller, intimate moments and because there are a select few night things that engage Sypha and Trevor as Sypha and Trevor only. But this? This makes Alucard sick.

He relents, knowing that his resistance is sentimental and personal. There's no good reason not to do this.]

Fine. [He hates it.] We'll worry about the optics of how you're dismissed later. I know where she's staying, the question is how viable is watching her? Part of me suspects she expects to be watched, the rest assumes great offense as the thought.

It depends how you want to watch her. I can keep basic watch on her without risking being caught. Where she is at any given time, if she does anything dramatic herself. That sort of thing.

[ The problem is that the older, cleverer vampires tend not to do things themselves. It's all traded favors and social influence. Things that are either risky or impossible to track. ]

The more traditional kind of watching her, with the mirror or otherwise- I wouldn't recommend it. A vampire her age wouldn't have any difficulty controlling what the mirror shows of her. It'd be nothing to give us false information and then catch us out when we act on it. Finding someone else who means to watch her and getting information out of them might be an option - we can't be the only ones who are wary of her.

No mirror.

[That's an easy thing to agree to.]

If a vampire of her age is the kind to rely on social networks, then it is vital we determine hers within the city as quickly as possible. I intend to determine how long she's thinking of staying, but beyond that...

[They have to know who to be so very careful around. Carmilla's name, like his father's, is a name with great weight behind it. Weight Alucard doesn't and may never have.]

Your grandmothers need to get the word out through their networks too, none of the hunters can be taken by surprise. This'll be read as betrayal of our norms.

I can track her influence easily enough on the map if we can get- I don't know. A strand of hair or something. But with a spell that invasive, there's no way a vampire her age wouldn't be able to tell that she was being spied on and likely track it back to me.

[ He nods about informing the babas. That's the first priority in the morning, even above the important business of lying in bed being one half of the barrier between a wolf and the world. ]

I don't like relying on outside help so much, but- we could ask Theodora. Her family is exactly the sort of network that could keep track of just about everything about her with ease, and it's likely that she's already doing so. There would just be the issue of- owing a very powerful vampire a very large debt.

[ Not that Theodora seems untrustworthy, but that kind of goes against his- everything. His principles say Belmonts don't owe debts. His fey nature screams 'owing favours to anything that powerful is the worst idea'. ]

Edited 2019-01-24 23:51 (UTC)

Anything that can be traced back to us isn't an option. We'll need to rely on eyes on the ground instead, and assume that our own network is likely to be harmed, save for your grandmothers.

[That's probably the safest network out there. They'll know what to do if things start to go wrong.]

I already exist in her debt, Belmont. She's the eldest of the New World vampires in this city, my duty would have been hers if I had refused it or someone attacked me. Had Damien's attacks twisted into a successful assassination, then this city would be hers.

[She gave Alucard full support. They are friends, yes, he attends her spell club once a week because there's a real enjoyment of her company, but that doesn't erase debt.]

Well, that's all my ideas shot down.

[ He finishes draining the coffee mug, and he's now eyeing Alucard's untouched coffee. ]

I'll talk to Bunicuta in the morning, first thing. I know a few of the hunters in the nearby districts, too. [ Only a few. Knowledge of his name is significantly less widespread among the hunters, and recognition of it is shaky at best and largely skews toward the 'ugh these europeans think they know better' even among the people who care. ] She might have thoughts of her own, and she'll at least be able to gather information on the human side of things.

That would be best. I...I will need to talk to her as well, but I'd rather offer her a few days to get her things in order.

[Alucard breathes out, rubbing at the bridge of his nose slowly.]

If you had to guess at why she's here, what would you say it was?

If you want the biased Belmont opinion? There's only two reasons vampires move from place to place - to find somewhere safer or to start shit.

[ He shrugs, sighing. ]

I think if there'd been an incident in the Americas big enough to send a vampire that age running, it would have hit the newspapers. So - to start shit.

Right now I thrive on biased Belmont opinions, because you know Old World vampires better than I could ever hope to.

[He's not going to have the luxury of wolfing out this time around.]

To start shit, and to what end? I know she has been in Canada for some time.

She's got a long history of being careful. If she's decided it's worth starting shit, she almost certainly sees something to gain from it.

[ And he just takes Alucard's coffee, because fuck it. He can make more. ]

At best, she thinks that a weakened rule will make it easier for her to gather influence here. That would align with her love for safety. At worst, she thinks her presence here will influence how this [ and he gestures across the office ] ends. I doubt she'd ever be vying for leadership herself, but having someone lead who she can manipulate easily? That's power and safety both.

So we are best off assuming that this house is under attack.

[This house. He means them. Because this isn't about himself, it's about the entire house, all his cabinet, and fuck if Alucard did not promise protection for them both. This is terribly personal now.]

If we err at any point, she'll seize on it. Is that a fair assumption?

I've been assuming the house is under attack for- basically the last year. But yes. Absolutely. If we weren't doing so already, we should really avoid fucking up.

[ A thought occurs to him as he downs Alucard's stolen coffee in one long drink. And he hates it. ]

You think her arrival for Damien's execution specifically was more than coincidence, or just her arrival at an execution?

I can't say right now. [Alucard swears softly.]

What is your theory?

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