~*~

Kirke sat there, morose. Turning a stake of wood over and over in his hand, going over the conversation again and again in his head. Changing it here & there, hoping for a different outcome. If I had only said this, instead of that, maybe he wouldn't have wound up leaving me...
It was too late tho, of course. That had already happened.
Cronus Vladislas had withdrawn his hospitalities to Kirke and his little brood of Kindred. The Nirvana bloodline were orphaned once again.
In the end Kasilin had offered Kirke a thread of hope- "Follow him, he won't come back to you on his own, he's too proud for that." But tho moments before Kirke had been crawling the floor, begging like a crack whore for Cronus to love him, to forgive him, to not go, he had regained his reserve at that. Found a shred of dignity.
For Kirke could be just a stubborn as the elder vamp had ever been. He picked himself up and hardened his determination. "I'll prove to him I can raise these fledglings," Kirke mindsent Kasi, his decision made, "you come back to us. You check in on us from time to time, & you let Cronus know. He'll come to love me again."
Kirke fervently hoped that the elder was hurting as much from the breakup as he was. Kirke was determined that this was only a lover's spat was all, & he decided at length it was for the best. The fledglings had been getting in the way and making Cronus cranky for some time now.
Kirke was sitting in Tenshadows tavern now, chainsmoking. Dave had tried to console him, cracking jokes, but he had ordered Dave to leave him be. He was listening to Dave now, chatting up some goodwife Taylor'd taken a fancy to, while Taylor played on the floor. "Ahh, you think Cronus is bad, you shoulda seen his ex-wife Courtney!" Kirke looked away in revulsion, knowing Dave was talking about him. Not really wanting to hear what Dave was saying. He contemplated the stake in his hand,& had a brief fantasy of shutting Dave up for good & all, but he loved Dave too much to follow it thru.
This HAD all started some time ago.Kirke had 'issues' with abandonment. All his life, death, & unlife really... Consider the man, the Wraith, the vampyre that Kirke was, still barely out of fledglinghood himself. He had been Kindred now for just about 4 years..the nights seemed an eternity already. His parents had divorced as a mortal child, a long & boring story really. he would have scoffed it off as ancient history, but it had truly shattered his world. Shunted thru relatives, & finally, a few families who temporarily adopted him. From there, friends couches, and even a brief stint under a bridge. He'd write a song about that, later. Make himself a little money. Dave came into the picture first tho.
Dave had been his roommate and the sixth drummer in his band- they'd shared a tiny cramped apartment in Olympia and later, fame & fortune. An ex-girlfriend/groupie/singer/'friend'? of Dave's would inevitably drive them apart. Dave delivered to Kirke from her a small heart shaped box full of weird little trinkets, & she in turn would eventually deliver Kirke a child, and possibly? a reason for exiting that world completely.
A shotgun blast closed that chapter.
Murder or suicide? "I was pretty fucken stoned at the time," Kirke would tell Dave later, "and no little brain damaged after." Endgame? Hardly. the real fun was about to begin.
Kirke found himself again, amnesiaced and aching, in an afterlife plane called the Western Lands. It would take him a few years to remember who he was & what he was doing there. It didn't take him long after that tho to decide he wanted out. He began to roam the afterlife looking for the exit.
Impossible, most Wraiths told him. There WERE rumors of gallitraps, magickally wrought loopholes, but who had ever seen one? or dared to pass thru it if they had?
There was a self-appointed police force in the Western Lands, known as the Ferrymen. They hunted down straying spooks & doled out a terrible vengeance on those they deemed breakers of the dictuum mortis- the law of the dead. To those outlaws they delivered Final Death; soul obliteration, by burning in hellflame.
Kirke was determined to escape tho, more determined of this than his fear and determination not to be caught by the Ferrymen. He swam the Duad, the foullest stinkiest river of the supersargasso sea- and found a gallitrap 3 miles north of Stundevil fen. Escaped! He landed in a medieval-like backwater not far from the Inn of the Weary Traveller. He spent some time briefly as a merc for Dekar Doomfist, amking a few coin as a healer- all his Wraithskills had remained in him tho he was corporeal in this place- and a rather inept fighter. In time he made more money as a minstrel- people paid him great sums to please NOT play his viola near them!- and fishing trinkets out of the lake & selling them. Familiar turf, really.
Things were looking up. Until he began to flirt with the vampyresses.
Josie had been his first- 'Mysterious Illusion' her vampyre moniker; he had discovered the sensual pleasure/pain of having his ectoplasm drank from, & he healed quickly. One or two nights Josie wasn't there, so he began to court Gwynna Nightstalker, & it was soon that his 'shelflife' would take quite a turn. Gwynna found out about Josie. & instead've just making friends and maybe having a threesome as Kirke had evilly hoped, in her fury she drained him too much &, thinking him doomed elsewise, she turned him into what she was.
Who could've thought a Wraith could be Embraced?
But again, he WAS corporeal here, & drained now of his ectoplasm, made to drink the viral vampyric blood of Gwynna. The change had occurred. He hadn't known it, at first. He'd been very high the night he had jokingly suggested a threesome, and now Gwynna too had huffed off.
Kirke was on his own, with no idea what had happened to him. For those nights he lay in fevered nightmares, growing weaker & weaker. There, he might have died for a second time... save that pnaic drove him from his room & down intot he main room of the Inn. Sabria F'asayle found him there, Thirstfevered and lost. She bloodbound him, second-Sired him to her obscure and almost extinct Tremere bloodline. Kirke's mixed yet powerful blood would get him into trouble for the rest of his unlife.
~*~ For two blissful years Kirke was Sabria's bloodbound sex slave, and not one bit complaining about it. Occasionally he'd see Gwynna and be drawn into her world, her melodrama, the whirlwind of conflict that she brought with her. About this he rarely complained either; Gwynna was a drama queen, but he loved drama queens, or Courtney would never have intrigued him all that time ago. He never saw it coming. That Gwynna and Sabria would fall for each other. Never. saw. that. coming.
..and he was abandoned again, the vampyressses promising to return for him, but they never had.
He lived a shadowy, miserable existence for a time after that, hiding in the walls and rafters of the Inn or, more & more often, living completely feral in the woods, alone, drinking the blood of animals or stray parties of bandits. Painting, brooding, trying to forget...
The Inn had been invaded by hecauva, a type of zombi, the night he had returned there, haunting his old haunt, haunting, haunted... one of the filthy things had tried to kill him, and for the moment it seemed to have suceeded- mutually assured damage. Badly injured, he had collapsed under the now twice-dead abomination, perilously close to being thrice-dead himself, his own unlife ebbing fast.
He awoke in the mansion of Cronus Vladislas.
Kasilin Shadowbane, Cronus's niece, had found & rescued him. What she'd seen in him he still didn't know. Did she just figure he'd do well enough as a replacement lover for her uncle? Either way, he'd bcome just that. Cronus's pupil, his ward...his thrall. Tho he had his own room, & his own personal manservant, Josin, Kirke knew in his heart he had traded one stint of slavery for another. But his love for Cronus was sincere, at least he believed it to be- it was hard to tell when one was bloodbound. And, being bloodbound, his own blood chemistry changed again...
And thus Kirke came to live in Paris. Cronus's mansion was thru some other sort of portal; it was in what Kirke would have considered 'present times'. He arrived there sometime towards the end of the 90s. & thrived, learning from Cronus & his brood, kept more or less safe from predatory vampyres, feeding mostly on whatever victims were brought to him by the servants, or prowling Pere Lachaise for Doors fans. one night, by some weird quirk of fate he was following a most delectable bloodscent, & was horrorstricken to discover the scent belonged to Dave. Kirke was in a dilemma. All within him that was vampyre wanted that blood. But this was Dave, his ex-bandmate! His human side won, temporarily. He fled, confusing & startling Dave, who surely must have thought he was seeing a ghost... No way was he going to bite Dave. No way. Never.
Kasi had no such qualms. & how had she come to be there? It seemed she watched him anticipated his every move, had motives of her own for him... Kirke had never even seen her coming! But he heard dave struggle as he was captured... Kirke fought Kasi as he has never fought anyone before, but she had easily beaten him back. And devoured Dave's vitae to the point of no return.
Kirke had no choice- he HAD to save Dave, had to! He had bitten his own wrist and given Dave to drink. He had no way of knowing if this would work- all his fledglings thus far had been failures. Sabria had torched all but one of them; a dying nun named Francesca Protogenia who Kirke had Embraced out of pity; she now roamed somewhere, crazed, vicious, and completely hating Kirke, her 'Father'. Dave survived the ordeal.But from word one he had been Kasi's, tho Kirke had Sired him- Kasi's pupil, her bloodbound, and as this, he had all Kasi's bloodthirst, cruelty and bratty abandon. Dave,without knowledge of or approval by the brood, had summoned his drummer Tay Hawkins to France with the intent of making a blood doll of the mortal. Cronus was already annoyed by the fledgling; this insubordination infuriated him. He drank the drummer to spite Dave, then left the tableau, which Kirke found- Dave in the street, weeping, trying to feed Taylor enough blood to keep the dying mortal alive. Again it was Kirke who had to rescue them. dave had fed Tay so much of his own blood he himself was starting to die too of the bloodloss, but he hadn't the vampyric strength to turn Taylor. Kirke opened both his wrists and gave Dave and Taylor drink. In that moment, weakened by their pulling & in weird pain/bliss as they drank from him, Kirke had known- no matter what else happened, he could never leave these two. They were his. Forever.
Except, as vampyres, they hated each other.
Taylor turned was an unusually happy vamp; all the woww! of a newly turned vampyre never left him, & due to all the varients in Kirke's blood, Taylor's was incredibly powerful & quirky for a fledgling. (Tay's tale here) When fully distended, Taylor's claws were HUGE- a full two inches past his fingertips, & the fledgling had an incredible celerity. He tended to scamper about more or less on all fours, and could circle a room this way 4 or 5 times well & before you'd even noticed he was moving. Taylor rarely got angry- he was a simple and happy creature with all the exuberant spaciness of a puppy or a small child, but when he did frenzy he was an unstoppable killing machine, shredding 'bad guys' with his speed and his claws like a Popiel machine making Julienne fries.
Kasi seemed to enjoy keeping the 2 fledglings at odds with each other; dave was smarter, more hedonistic and ultimately more immoral, but Taylor was her partner in crime; a good looking boy with an easy lure to his prey and an insatiable need for fun and approval; Taylor was in love with Kasi and an easily controlled boy-toy.
Dave, furious at having to share Kasi, went bad. In spite of being told not to, he returned to his musical career, preying on Foo fans. He was attracting unwanted attention. Cronus decided he had to be stopped. At all costs. Nothing Kirke could say or do would change Cronus's mind. And on that fateful evening it almost seemed Dave goaded him to do it, that Dave wanted to die. Caught, he attacked both Kirke & Taylor, who had tried to reason with him & warn him of Cronus's decision. Instead've seeing reason & hding til Cronus's rage had blown over, Dave attacked his brood, mangling the drummer, & slashing the face of his ex-band leader. Kirke was horrorstricken and heartbroken when it happened, blood-tears mingling on his face with the blood from the clawslashes Dave had dealt him. Cronus impaled Dave on his own claws- probably a fatal wound in & of itself- but as dave struggled, Kasi tore out his heart and ate it, staring him in the eye as she passed sentence on him. "but I loved you." had been Dave's last words, his last act a reproachful glare at Kirke as the light went out of his eyes.
That accusation haunted Kirke, and he put himself into a drug-induced death state with ibogaine, tetrodotoxin and laudanum. He went back into the Western Lands to bring Dave out, & give him back his life. Would have been easy enough if he'd sworn after that to never see Dave again. Just let him get on with his existence and his Foo Fighters and let him believe that Kirke was gone forever... Only one problem with that plan.
Kirke wanted him. Hungered for him. later, he would wonder if maybe Kasi had planted that seed of longing in him. Tho inevitably, his next act was purely his own. There was no excuse for it. & inevitably, no real way to expect forgiveness for it, either. He wanted Dave's companionship- who else truly knew and remembered him in the lonely nights with the immortals? But mostly, Kirke wanted Dave's blood. That sweet scent of what he'd been denied, denied himself when Kasi had taken Dave instead. Wanted it, and no other meal would do until that urge had been satiated.

to be continued...