Rage

Time: Immediately after "Howling of Wolves: the Immortals".  The night of Oct. 23.

WARNING: Consensual Violence, SM

Disclaimer: Lacroix's opinions of Thorne Severan, Cash, and especially Julian Luna do not in any way reflect the opinions of his player.  Au contraire. <g>

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The rage begins even before the black Mercedes reaches the Victorian house on the point near Belvidere.  Miklos, driving, can feel it like a prickly heat on the back of his neck.  Vachon, sitting beside him, is not as tuned in, humming quietly to himself.

Nicholas, sitting beside his seething master in the back seat, drops a hand on Vachon's shoulder.  "Please, Javier," he whispers, vampire-quiet.

Vachon stills, freezing under the weight of that hand.  When it lifts, he lets out a sigh of relief, then reaches into the compartment in the dashboard to retrieve a black thermos.  "Anyone need a sip as much as I do?"

"Give me that."  It's Lacroix's voice, and no snake drips deadlier venom.  With a surprised noise in his throat, Vachon hastily gives up the offering, careful not to turn around.  [Geez,] he thinks but crosses his arms, not even risking a glance at Miklos.

Nicholas watches as Lacroix downs the contents, his heart sinking, for he knows all too well this little libation cannot touch the rage-borne thirst his beloved suffers.  Lacroix is shielding from him, he notes with dismay, though the leakage is enough to make him a little sick to his stomach.

The meeting at Camera della Luna... had not gone well.  Instead of finding his old acquaintance, Archon Raine, Lacroix had to face his successor, the impudent Julian Luna, whom Archon had mentioned once as being his personal "enforcer".  The erstwhile Prince was unbending, posing ridiculous restrictions on Lacroix and his family, things that should never apply to any who were not Kindred.

Worse, SEVERAN was there, seated with the Prince's advisors!  The wizard had faced him with more power than Lacroix could have believed possible, and insisted that he did not have to answer to Lacroix.  The torture Lacroix had inflicted on him would have broken any other Kindred in the room.  That the Tremere resisted him... was inconsignable.
 
 

Once they return to their new home, Miklos and Vachon wisely remove themselves to the coach house, knowing that only Lacroix's beloved son, Nicholas, has any chance of dealing with the enraged elder.

Alone with his master at last, Nicholas stays near, within reach but without touching.  He keeps quiet, knowing his father will start in when he is ready.  The trouble is, Nicholas himself is just as angry.

Lacroix stands by the cold fireplace, his forearm leaning on the mantle, eyes staring at nothing in the ashes.  "We are not leaving this city, Nicholas," he says finally, his voice low and lethal.

Not daring to approach Lacroix just yet, Nicholas nods his agreement, not quite trusting his own voice just yet... his anger barely in-check.

The elder glances toward his child, his eyes gold, gleaming.  He stabs a finger in the direction of Camera della Luna.  "I will not let... THAT little man run me out of here."  His eyes shifts back to the ashes.  "This... must be answered, my son."

Taking a deep breath, Nick tries to calm himself somewhat.  "I agree. We were treated rudely, although they covered it with their..." he sneers as he finishes the sentence, "thin veneer of courtly manners that seems to be their trademark."

Lacroix abruptly grabs the poker from beside the fireplace, hurls it in his son's' direction, missing by inches.  The iron implement shatters a lamp on a table on the other side of the room.  "This is far more than RUDENESS, Nicholas!  For a Ventrue heel-sniffer like
Julian Luna, Archon's old hired gun and lackey to be telling ME I cannot sire children is..."  He stops, feeling the rage surge.  Controlling that is a must if he is to do anything at all with what they've just endured.

Seeing that silence here will be a better option, Nicholas doesn't flinch as the poker flies by him.  If Lacroix had meant to hit him, he would've, of that Nick has no doubt. The younger vampire stays perfectly still and watches his sire struggle to control his anger.

Still, there is a time when rage needs release.  This... is a time.  His only concern is that Nicholas is ready for that... with him.  At least none of it will be directed toward his son personally.  Never that.  Never... again.

Watching Lacroix process his rage helps Nicholas gain some control as well.

Suddenly, moving swiftly, Lacroix grabs his son and flies them both in a burst of strength, landing hard against a wall which is going to require re-plastering later.  The ancient's face is contorted with the effort to keep from doing any serious harm to his beloved.  "Nicholassss... give me your blood..." Lacroix rasps, his eyes a frightening red-gold.

Knowing exactly what's prompted this reaction in his Master, Nicholas rips his own collar open instantly and bares his neck to his master.  "Yours, Lacroix," he whispers.

The aching fangs pierce Nicholas's neck before his words are even finished.  Lacroix sucks at the wounds avidly, shuddering as the blood of his beloved fills his mouth and throat.  In seconds, he is already removing his fangs.  Swallowing, Lacroix licks the twin
wounds clean and pushes his cheek against them, still leaning his weight on his son as he processes the blood entering his system.  The blood, laced with the trust and love of the other vampire, gradually calms him so he can think, though Nicholas, too, is also very upset by the ultimatum just handed to them.

Nicholas wraps his arms around Lacroix, holding him. He sincerely hopes this has helped his Master somewhat.

Lacroix has been afraid to open his link with his son wider, knowing the blackness that is consuming him.  For his son's sake, though, he needs to regain his control.  They will both need that link open.  And nothing can be done about the "little man" across the Bay without clear heads.

"I'm here for you, Father," Nicholas murmurs. "If there's anything else you need..."

"I need," Lacroix mutters into his son's neck, "that man's head."  Slowly he straightens, his hands shifting from Nicholas's shirt and jacket to his shoulders.  "But I'm not going to get it that way."  He lays a hand on his child's cheek, meeting his sincere blue eyes finally.  "Thank you, my love.  The taste of you... always heals me."

Nicholas smiles, meeting Lacroix's gaze with love.  "I'm glad, Father."

A wash of tenderness goes through the gray-blue gaze of the elder, then it hardens again.  "If it were not for you, I would have killed already, just to spite them.  Kindred!"  He says the word in a sneer.  "Did you HEAR what he said to me, Nicholas? 'By the laws of evolution, I would say I have the upper hand.'  Outrageous!!"  The hand on a cheek lifted, smashed back into the wall beside them in a fist.  "He dares to call US an inferior species!"

Nicholas can feel Lacroix's anger as an almost palpable heat.  Controlling his own angry response, he says tightly,  "Luna fears us. Fears you. Despite his arrogant words to the contrary."

The fist lifts, returns to his son's shoulder with controlled gentleness. "He should fear me.  As should his wizard lackey!"  The hand squeezes lightly, then Lacroix is turning away.

"Wizard?" asks Nick, puzzled.

"Severan," Lacroix murmurs, then moves to the panel beside the fireplace where they've installed a hidden refrigerator.  He picks out two goblets from an abattoir, and takes a bottle from the refrigerator.  Seating himself, Lacroix lays his wares on a coffee table and works on opening the bottle.

Watching Lacroix pour, Nicholas walks toward him, frowning. "The tall blond man with the long hair? Why do you call him a 'wizard'?  Surely you don't mean that in a literal sense, do you?"

Lacroix pours one glassful and hands the goblet to his son.  "I do indeed.  The 'Order of Hermes' they were once called, a collective of mages who experimented on the wrong sort of... 'creature'.  I've heard of their origins, and heard only else that they utilize blood
in some sort of magic."

Nicholas shakes his head, a wry smile on his lips. "That sounds like a group of Necromancers to me."

Lacroix gestures for his lover to sit beside him, taking up the glass he has poured for himself, and sitting back in his chair.  "These are Kindred, and all else of them is shrouded in the same secrecy, this 'Masquerade', that clouds knowledge of the others.  Some, no doubt, have indeed been Necromancers, and some have been very high in the Church.  They are, indeed, everywhere."

"How many of them are there, compared to our kind, Lacroix?"

The old one snorts in derision.  "They could be legion, Nicholas, or very few.  Luna would have you believe they blend in seamlessly into human society.  How could they then be counted?"  Lacroix drinks from his glass, still trying to relax.

"I would not trust anything Luna has to say," Nicholas mutters darkly. "Lacroix... if you don't mind my asking...about this Tremere Wizard, Severan. You seem especially upset about him."

Lacroix does not reply, choosing instead to stare into the depths of the red fluid of life in his glass.

Nicholas takes a sip of the blood, letting it replenish his energy, soothe his mood. He sits down beside Lacroix in the empty chair.  "I don't mean to press. Forgive me.  It's just that, if he's an unusual threat to us, I'd like to know how and why."

Still staring, the elder intones impassively, "He allowed me to torture him and I did.  I mastered him, and now he defies me."

Nick almost drops his glass. Carefully, he catches himself and places it on a nearby table.  He's shocked. "Tortured him? Why did he allow you to do that??" Nicholas recalls the evening when Lacroix had been in the basement...

"Pleasure, I thought," Lacroix murmurs.  There is utterly no emotion to be gotten from him.  "or a bluff.  Of course, I called it, if it was.  No, I do not know why unless he is insane.  Which isn't too hard to believe of any of them."

Then he sips on the blood again, and sighs.  "He's older than you, Nicholas, probably older even than that Nosferatu.  I knew him by another name, just as he knew me by Lucius.  We'd... met before, long ago.  A seeker after pleasure, that one.  When he can fit it into his scheming and wizardry."

This scares Nicholas a bit. "Is he... older than you, Lacroix?"

Now the gray-blue eyes shift over.  "No, of course not.  In his day, wizards lived to a couple centuries old, due to the magical powers they held.  There was more magic in the world, then, Nicholas.  Now we have *science*."  A snort of irony, for many would call it the same thing.  "No, perhaps he is more your Janette's age."

A bit unnerved, Nicholas takes his glass and finishes the blood off in two gulps. He sits back and runs a hand through his hair.  "He sounds dangerous... and I do not understand his actions, Lacroix."

Lacroix pours his son and himself more of the blood.  "Dangerous?  Likely.  I do not understand him either."  Then a twisted sort of smirk moves through his patrician features.  "I rather enjoyed him.  He has a taste for the Dark.  A true masochist, so rare to find..."

Lucien Lacroix, of course, can say that not knowing Thorne's sadistic side.

"Ah, I see," Nicholas murmurs, a bit unsettled.  This aspect of his father's personality doesn't often come to the fore around him.  "What will you do - hunt him, get him back?"

The elder turns to gaze at his beloved.  "Nicholas, my dear, this sort of thing isn't your forte, I know..."

"You can say that again," Nicholas replies hastily, taking a sip from his refilled glass.  "Just don't ever ask me to... watch."

Lacroix smirks.  "Very well.  But you give me an idea - I do not like that he flaunted his resistance to me in front of that little prince.  Therefore I need to force him to come back to me somehow."

The younger vampire sighs, wishing his sire didn't have such a taste for... games.  But he knows he will help, if he can, as long as there are no killings.  Fortunately, in San Francisco, it will be very dangerous for Lacroix to kill, if not insane, for the Kindred will be after him in a flash.  "I don't like what you will do to him when you get him," Nicholas contemplates, "but I will help bring him to you.  Do you know where the Tremere live?"

"Yes, but he is a wizard..."  Lacroix rubs at his forehead.  [How to put it?  How to explain to my son that I do not understand their magic?]  "Nicholas, their headquarters is likely a fortress and protected by their magic."

"You believe this magic works, Lacroix?" Nicholas chuckles, getting a perverse pleasure out of his sire's discomfiture.

"It is prudent to be wary of the unknown," Lacroix retorts.  A taste of the rage returning, he clanks down his glass and erupts from his chair, ending up leaning on the mantle of the fireplace.  Back to contemplating ashes.

[O-kay, next approach,] Nicholas thinks, then puts his glass down on the coffee table and goes over to his master.  "I'm sorry," he murmurs, sliding his hands up to the taut shoulders.  "We will find a way, my love..."  He rubs at the tight muscles, seeking to relieve the tension knotted there.

"Oh, that's good..."  The ancient vampire holds still for his son's ministrations, though it's going to take a lot more than a backrub to relieve the well of fury still banked inside.  "Severan I can lure back in, somehow.  Luna, on the other hand... we must discover his weaknesses, find who is close to him.  That half-wolf who serves as bodyguard... his body language reeked of an intimacy with the prince that we can exploit."

"I will do some poking around with Vachon and Miklos," Nicholas offers, pausing in his work to lay his body against Lacroix's back.  "I think Vachon had already met that 'half-wolf' as you call him.  He can get to know him, befriend him.  Miklos is a master of stealth, and will learn much just being his usual invisible self.  Perhaps I can learn some things out in the police department.  I start there tomorrow afternoon, you know."

The body against his is drawing Lacroix quite effectively out of his funk.  "Mmmm, Nicholas..."  He turns around, his hands slipping around his son's waist to pull him in close against his body.  "Can't you wait until Monday?  I may have need of you exclusively for the next 48 hours..."  He bends his head to kiss his son below the ear.

"No, I've waited long enough," Nick chuckles, "I want to get started, especially if I can start to get the lay of this city.  And speaking of waiting long enough... I believe you certainly have..."  He turns his head and captures his master's mouth with his, immediately twining tongues with him.  [Now, is there more I can do for you, my love?] he continues in their link, amusement bubbled through with a growing mutual desire.

[Oh, yes, there is a great deal, if you are up to it,] Lacroix answers, his hands already squeezing Nicholas's ass as they kiss.  [My loyal, strong one, with you beside me, I can put these troublesome Kindred in their place.  Damn, they do infuriate me...]

Abruptly he breaks the kiss, his eyes a dark, stormy gold-flecked blue.  "Meet me downstairs, Nicholas," Lacroix snaps, then without another word, departs the room.

Stunned, Nick hesitates.  [Uh, oh... nah, he wouldn't... would he?]  Then, sighing, he follows his master.
 
 

Down in the basement of the mansion is Lacroix's private "play" area.  In other words, his private dungeon where he indulges in his sadistic, dominant side.  This particular dungeon was baptised as such in Thorne Severan's blood.  In the recesses of the Raven in
Toronto, Lacroix had a similar room, and employed it on occasion with a variety of mortals - usually those who have crossed him in business - and vampires who shared a similar taste for sado-masochism.

Lacroix has never asked Nicholas to join him down here before.  Hastily he strips, donning his leather pants and boots, but nothing else.  The room still holds the stench of spilled Tremere blood, he is satisfied to note.  [Good, that will help...]

Nicholas arrives a few minutes later, his shirt in his hands.  The stench of blood assaults him, and he reels momentarily on the stairwell.  [I can do this,] he tells himself, though he wonders if he truly can.  [He needs this...]

Immediately two hands are cupping his face.  "Nicholas," Lacroix says earnestly, his thumbs caressing his beloved's cheeks, "I cannot do with you what I did to him... Love tempers that.  But I have need... for some of it.  If you allow me to..."  He brushes his lips against the other's.

"His blood..." Nicholas gasps, still reeling.  "Will mine join his?"

"Yes, if you will it."  Lacroix tilts his child's chin up, makes him look at him.  "I will never force you, my love.  I cannot... to you... anymore.  Those days are past.  But you know what I am, what I need.  I can always ask Javier or Miklos..."

"No," Nicholas says abruptly, his voice firm.  "I am your son, this is mine to bear.  I will not allow another to take my place."

"My son," Lacroix breathes, loving this amazing creation of his.  "I did not allow Thorne a safeword.  He was gagged and when he spit it out, he could only scream at that point.  I give you a word - 'blue' - and I fully expect you to use it.  Promise me?"  He continues to
caress his beloved's face.

"I... I promise," Nicholas murmurs, looking deep into his master's eyes.

For a long moment the two vampires, father and son, master and child, stand still, gazing at one another.  Within the mental link they share, the energies gather.  Nicholas feels a new resolve, a new fierceness blooming within.  He understands intellectually what will
happen - the power exchange.  But this is his first time to actually participate.  He feels limitless, powerful, majestic, his master a vessel waiting to be filled.  And he understands now how different this will be for him than it was for Thorne.  While the Tremere might have been initially willing, he never released power to Lacroix, never yielded all the while his flesh was being mangled, his blood spilt.  Thorne Severan allowed what happened to his body, but Lacroix had to TAKE power from him, not receive it.  It was a physical mastery alone that was allowed.  How different this will be...

Lacroix, too, feels the difference, knows what is happening within his beloved, and his relief is immense.  [Nicholas understands!  Gods!]  This is going to be far easier because he does, and it will not risk their relationship.

Nicholas is ready to yield his immense bank of power to his master.  Sighing, he closes his eyes, and crosses his wrists before him in a symbolic gesture of handing himself over.

Within their conjoined minds, the power begins to flow from one to the other.  "Strip first, then I want you on your knees," Lacroix cracks a command, turning to a nearby table.

Quickly Nicholas tosses aside his shirt and divests himself of pants, shoes and socks.  Gracefully he drops to his knees then bows his head as his master buckles a collar a bit roughly around his neck.  The flow continues.... [Yes!] Nicholas rejoices, [I can feel the
difference...]

A finger hooks the ring on the front of the collar, and heaves upward without regard to the collar's contents.  Nicholas goes with it, allowing himself to be dragged over and tossed by the neck onto the nearby bed.  He willingly sprawls face down, then tucks his head to the side as Lacroix janks on his limbs, arranging him.  In seconds, restraints are fastened - titanium chains attached to the bedposts, fastened to wrists and ankles.

"Test them," Lacroix orders him, looking over his handiwork with pleasure.

Obediently Nicholas pulls against each chain with his full vampiric strength.  Apart from a bit of creaking from the bedposts, nothing breaks.  He is well and truly restrained, captured for his master's pleasure.

Lacroix is back to the table, arranging items on a tray, which he then brings over to the bed and places where Nicholas can see it.  "Now, my boy, I'm going to use two of these on you.  Your pick."

Nicholas, however, is already drifting toward the twilight zone called sub space.  He gapes at the array of knives, trying to grasp what he's been asked.  Blinking, he makes a choice.  "The left one.  The one next to it," he murmurs.  He tenses against the bonds again, then relaxes.  "Tighter..."

[Forget about training this one and just use him,] Lacroix thinks to himself with glee, noting how very different Nicholas is from most submissives he'd played with.  Nicholas has chosen the two sharpest daggers and wants his restraints tightened.  It doesn't matter to the ancient that he didn't direct Nicholas to call him "Master".  This isn't a master/slave situation at all, merely a complete and beautiful exchange of power, one equal to another.  [Delicious...]

The chains are tightened painfully.  Nicholas tenses, then nods.  He needs the pain to find his space, deepen it.

Lacroix lays the daggers on Nicholas's back, unsheathed, and removes the tray.  When he comes back, he climbs to the front of the bed, seating himself between Nick's head and the headboard of the bed.  Roughly he grabs Nicholas's hair and pulls his head up.  At that angle, the younger vampire's neck is arched far back, his throat extremely vulnerable.  Lacroix thinks momentarily of slitting Julian Luna's throat like this and letting the spray of blood cover his body.  But he will not do that with Nicholas, though the image warms him.  Instead, he pulls away the panel from the front of his leather pants, and puts his cock against Nicholas's cheek.  "Suck on it!" he directs, pulling the other's jaw open and shoving his cock into his mouth.

The vulnerability pushes Nicholas further into himself.  When his mouth is filled with cock, he immediately and eagerly begins to suck on it.  Some part of his brain that is still thinking, asks his lover, [You wanted to cut my throat open, didn't you?]

Lacroix's reply is a tremendous shove, which plunges the massive organ in his mouth deep into his throat.

[Yes!] is Nicholas's only answer.

[I may still cut you open,] Lacroix murmurs as he begins to fuck his mouth and throat.

[Please,] comes the answer as Nicholas relaxes his throat to take him in deeper.  Tricky at that angle.

Once Lacroix's organ is rock hard and dripping, he withdraws it, shoving his lover's head down onto the bed.  He climbs over to the other end of the bed, then comes up to straddle Nicholas's body just behind his ass.

Nicholas grunts as his master's weight settles on him, a spark of lust surging through as the movement causes his cock to rub hard against the bed below.  Again he turns his face to the side, his eyes closed.  He knows the knives will be next.

"Damn wizard," Lacroix suddenly mutters, his voice already raspy, "all you did was let me carve you up.  I couldn't make you MINE!" At the final word, he stabs into the shoulder beneath him.  "Where is your magic now, wizard?" The knife, a long bladed silver dagger, is pulled out and then plunged in again savagely.

At each stab, Nicholas lets loose an exhale, tensing momentarily against the burst of pain.  Somehow he yields up even more power, slips further into the twilight.  At the third stab, he feels no pain, only the pressure of the blow.

"Why did you give yourself to me only to resist me?" STAB.  "You seduced me, made me go further and further with you..." STAB.  "I bloodied you but I never had you, never your spirit!" STAB.

It continues for a while, then, sobbing, the bed splattered with his blood tears and his loved's one's blood, Lacroix ceases, throwing the knives away with a clatter.  Then the body beneath his becomes the "little man's" and he angrily seizes the cheeks of the other's ass, pulling them apart, pressing his hard cock against the puckered opening.  "I must HAVE YOU, LUNA..." Lacroix growls ferociously.

Nicholas releases his last bit of power, his last ounce of self, relaxing his sphincter completely.  His master's cock pushes in relentlessly, forcing a long, drawn out gasp from the younger vampire while Lacroix sinks to the hilt within him.

"Damn, you!" Lacroix curses the Prince of San Francisco.  "Fuck YOU!"  He heaves into the ass beneath him with all his might, then pulls out and plunges it in even harder.

But after four more of these, everything changes.  Nicholas feels a heavy weight pressing him down, down, into the bed, and from his distant twilight realizes Lacroix has lain his full length along his prone, bound body.  Then there is a jerk, then another.  Again belatedly, Nicholas understands this means the restraints are being taken off.  His ankles are freed as well, but he cannot move for the weight upon him, and the other's cock still pins him where he is.

Then, hands slide along his arms and fingers twine into his.  When Lacroix moves within him again, it is very different.  A cool tongue cleans the splatters from his back, lathes his closing stab wounds, and Nicholas rides calmly on the sensations, tongue and internal massage, and the heavy pressure.

Twilight passes and a full moon rises.  Nicholas wakes to himself to realize that he is being made love to, Lacroix his master, his father, his lover moving above and within him.  All urgency gone, the movements are slow, deep, languid as if Lacroix, too, is coming back from another plane of reality.

Kisses rain on the younger vampire's hair, ear, neck, a deep, sepulchrous voice whispering his name:  "Nicholas... I love you..."

Rage... stilled.  Power... returned, intact.  A blond head turning, a smile.  "I love you, Lucien..."
 

The end