[center] [img] https://thequillwritings.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/fire-man-silhouette.jpg [/img] [/center] [center] [i] Des yeux qui font baisser les miens Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche Voila le portrait sans retouche De l'homme auquel j'appartiens. [/i] [/center] Lothaire crouched in the darkness, his lean form shrouded through obfuscation, melding him into the very shadows in which he dwelt. Although he had every intention of killing her this night, the Baali found himself rather content to sit and watch Rachelle Rousseau as she worked, the soft tones of Edith Piaf drifting tenderly out of a nearby radio. [center] [i] Quand il me prend dans ses bras Qu'il me parle tout bas Je vois la vie en rose Il me dit des mots d'amour Des mots de tous les jours Et ça m'fait quelque chose [/i] [/center] She glided daintily through the room, floating from place-to-place with such delicate grace that she seemed almost spectral in nature. Dressed in a lavish set of lingerie, with her long golden locks falling over her shoulders like flowing water, Rachelle danced towards her masterpiece; a long, polished blade clasped in one hand. Lothaire recognised Rachelle’s latest work of art as [i]Elijah[/i], the man from the other night at the Ahmanson Theatre. His smart suit was gone, and he hung, naked as the day he had come into the world, from a series of glossy steel hooks and chains, which were fasted to the ceiling of Rachelle’s luxury apartment. His eyes had been removed, leaving sickly red sockets in their place, and twisted gouges were dotted across his bare flesh. Rachelle took a single elegant step forwards, pressing the sharp of the blade beneath Elijah’s throat, and drawing forth yet another stream of trickling carmine. Lothaire watched the Toreador delight in her meager display of pain, and it almost elicited a chuckle from him. Even her very concept of suffering was laughable. What she envisioned as agony was but a pinch, a minor, insignificant annoyance. Her mind was rooted in the arbitrary limits of what the tangible, material shell could comprehend, but he would shower her in darkness and hellfire, the likes of which even night terrors could only barely fathom. Readying himself, Lothaire leapt from the shadows, soaring towards her, but Rachelle whirled effortlessly beneath him, striking upwards with her blade, so that the pair came crashing to the ground, biting and clawing and stabbing and roaring in a monsterous cacophony of tooth and steel and claw. [i] Had she know he was there, the entire time? Had she simply been waiting for him to strike, so that she might launch her own onslaught against him? [/i] “You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are, my dear boy,” Rachelle cackled, her eldritch strength burrowing into him with each slash of her knife, shattering his senses, and rocketing his body with freakish bouts of pain “and now you’ve gone and made such a silly little mistake!” “You will regret crossing me, Rachelle,” Lothaire promised, his voice calm, seemingly emotionless, with only the faintest quiver of rage that would remain inconceivable to all but the most perceptive of ears “and you will die screaming.” The Baali kicked upwards, his body jolting with supernatural might, and Rachelle was forced off of him, flying across the room, her knife falling from her fingers, and crashing into the blackwood bookcase which housed the tomes and novels she had collected throughout her unlife. The Cabinet collapsed as the vampire came slamming into it, splintered wood and tattered paper raining down onto the floor in a mess of flakes and fragments. “You’ve spent far too long in the shadows, Lothaire,” Rachelle hissed, pulling herself up out of the ruined bookcase, and darting back towards the Balli, her eyes burning with hunger “you don’t know what it means to stand near the heart of a roaring flame!” As Rachelle leapt forwards, Lothaire extended one arm, grabbing her by the throat, and hoisting her up into the air. “Is that so? Allow me to show you what it means to truly [b]burn[/b].” Suddenly, the air around both vampires began to crackle and smolder. Hissing, screeching embers seemed to leap out of nothingness, gnawing and skimping across Rachelle’s skin, whilst the aura which encircled her became hotter, and hotter, and hotter. The vampress spat in frustration, kicking and scratching as she fought to be free of Lothaire’s grasp. “You trickery and blood magics won’t work on me, Tremere!” She snarled, sweat coating her forehead. The air itself began to shriek, and blaze, tides of boiling wind billowing across Rachelle’s flesh, and clouding her vision with vapour and sweat. She roared in defiance, whilst Lothaire’s grip wrapped tighter and tighter around her. Suddenly, through eyes that were veiled with mist, Rachelle witnessed the form of Lothaire Loyonia bend and burn, his outline twisting and twirling, loosing shape, and breaking away into an inferno of clamorous, conflagrigating bursts of booming terror. Pale fleshed rotted and crumbled, flaking away and giving birth to skin that was as black as the very depths of the night itself. Horns, curled and magnificent like those of a ram, burst through the beasts’ forehead, sprouting out of its skull like weeds from the dirt, and rocketing upwards. “No...no!” She heaved, her words pouring out of her “You’re not real! You don’t exist! None of you exist! You’re just a...j-just a story!” The beasts’ mouth opened, and a flare of ghastly, terrible flames rocketed outwards; bathing Rachelle in blistering agony. She screamed in terror, and then Lothaire broke free of the illusion, Rachelle's demonic hallucination fizzling out into nothing, just in time for the Baali to sink his fangs into her neck, and begin sapping her of the very energies which fueled her unlife. [i] Do not be scared, Rachelle[/i]. A voice seemed to whisper in her ear. [i] Now, two become one, and you will serve at the table of the First House. You will blaze bright. Brighter than ever before. Brighter than ever before. Brighter than ever before. [/i]