SUE VS SUE
May. 3rd, 2013 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratFirst, some vampire author drama
http://sf-drama.livejournal.com/3418742.html
And some very bizarre past drama from the same author that I was not aware of but is definitely worth a read even if it's not recent
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1132356.html
And now...SUE VS SUE!
Anita was in the shower, one of the special spacious ones in Jean-Claude's quarters at the Circus, sitting down on sort of built-in bench inside it. Nathaniel was standing behind her washing her hair, Damien was kneeling at her feet clipping her toenails, and Micah standing over Damian so Anita could blow him, because that was only way they could get her to agree to wash up regularly, or at least stay in long enough to let them do it for her. After she got done internally monologuing about how big Micah was and how much she loved giving head like the awesome exceptional woman she was, she began internally monologuing about how she was just like a guy, no muss no fuss, because she didn't "waste time and water" bathing when it was "unnecessary" and how prissy other girls were for being all about long baths but how it was great that her guys were so big on being clean and shampooed and smelling nice and having everything shaven, waxed, and trimmed to perfection. And it was okay that she was all these things too since it was because her men were doing it for her, they were MAKING her, it was for them; other women chose to do it to themselves, so therefore that was unnatural and vain for them instead.
She needed all that done especially tonight because Jean-Claude had asked her to some event. Something very short-notice, but very important as well. The Master of New York apparently wanted to give them some new allies. Anita had rambled a lot in her head about how suspicious this was, yet agreed readily enough to it. A similar song-and-dance would be performed when she was dressed by her sweeties, claiming how much she hated the outfit and its ineffectiveness for combat and its constraint and its girliness and its emphasis of how short and curly and dark-haired she was...while also eagerly stepping right into it and talking about how it showed off her tiny waist and creamy goodness so perfectly! Speaking of the outfit, once her bath was finished and the men had dried her off like a dog, she was shown that it was an evening dress from made from vivid red and black fabrics with a cinched waist and black heels accentuated with delicate gold chain decorations to match her jewelry: a narrow bracelet and a necklace with a rounded ovoid pendant in an old-fashioned design.
Naturally she listed every detail mentally--the style of the straps, where the hem hit on her legs, exactly how shiny or matte the shoes were--as she did for each of the outfits that her men donned after a few hours each of blow-drying their absurdly long locks. Damien in an Edwardian-inspired gray suit with a white shirt and green accents while Micah sported a double-breasted suit with a mandarin-collar shirt all in muted dark shades. They'd originally been going to wear, respectively, a suit made entirely of green velvet and one of black leather, but Jean-Claude had called to tell them not to come in any of their usual formalwear, that the visitors they'd be meeting preferred a different class of couture. Anita was disappointed, but comforted that at least her pet leopard-kitty was in familiar garb. Nathaniel was naked save for a black leather pair of womens panties, some June Cleaver pearls Anita had gotten him, and a black collar around his neck, complete with two attached leashes for Anita and Micah. It'd be like holding hands! Just kinkier! Hey, it was supernatural business, which meant that being as ridiculously sexual in the awkwardest and most tasteless of ways was not only allowed, but protocol! And anyway, Nathaniel did get to be fancy too; he had a lovely brooch pinned right through his left nipple, so there. Anita decided the other men needed jewelry like this too, and wouldn't let anyone leave until they'd pinned similar brooches on their ties and cravats and vests as well as rings, bracelets, and a necklace each, all very large and obviously expensive to the point of tackiness. Anita patted herself on the back all the while for this about how enlightened she was for giving jewelry to her men...whether they liked it at all or not.
Then they carried her (for she still had not yet learned to walk in heels--she refused to, in fact, it would be girly!) to the waiting limousine that Jean-Claude had sent and were on their way. They had to fix her hair (not to mention their own!) in the car as best they could, since she'd used up the intended time for that with the jewelry business. Thankfully, this meant no time for some 'fooling around' as she had kept demanding in that quaint way of hers, meaning that she kept repeatedly saying how very much she didn't want to fool around and mess up her dress and hair and arrive in such a state so that total strangers could completely tell she'd just had at least European sex with these three men on the way. They just pretended for once that they thought she really meant just this rather than the opposite, and though she pouted quite a lot as a result, she got there looking passable enough for Jean-Claude not to give the rest of them any grief about her appearance. Mother Dark knew she couldn't look after that herself...though it didn't stop her from being very insistent about theirs, of course.
But that was the lot of the kept man, alas.
***
Holding hands (or leash handles) Anita and her men entered the underground guest room of the Circus, which had been done up in even tackier decor than usual to welcome their visitors, all of which Jean-Claude gave her time to list mentally before approaching and speaking to her,
"Ah, ma petite, our guest of honor. They have been asking for you!"
"Of course they have. Who're they again?"
Jean-Claude laughed, as if Anita's tendency to forget things she'd already been told was a little joke of hers versus a troubling sign of her slipping mental capacities. He then took her by the hand once she'd passed one of Nathaniel's leashes to Damian and led her over to their actual guest of honor,
"Allow me to introduce you to Armel Daube, the Master of New York City."
Armel Daube was a short, slender man turned during his 20s, his features somewhat delicate but not at all girlish, his dark eyes very large, his short black hair very wavy, and in absolutely no danger from Anita because his skin was a nice rich medium brown tone owing to a West Indies (St. Croix, specifically, was his place of birth, in the Virgin Islands) mish-mash heritage. His father had been Dutch and French, a descendent of the colonizers, while his mother had been African and South Asian, a descendent of the slaves. He wore a simple black suit, black shoes, white shirt, white tie, and a perfect mask of congenial ease over his true nervous feelings.
Anita extended a hand, and he hesitated before shaking it. He'd heard of how she could get into people just by touching them. You're not white, he reminded himself, She won't 'accidentally' do it to you. But just as he'd gotten over that fear, another one entered his head...who knew where that hand had BEEN? Still, he couldn't afford to break the charade before it even began, and so he reached forward and took it. The fact that he didn't try to crush her hand and then tear it off her wrist like some deranged asshole made Anita give him a peeved look for treating her like a delicate little dainty girl who couldn't handle a real man's handshake, the sexist pig, and then, as he started to let go, she told him, "You can kiss it."
"What?"
"I know how hard it is for you vampire men in the modern era. You're still so used to when women wore bustles and you're all about standing up for us and pulling out chairs and stuff. I'm definitely a liberated free independent empowered woman but I'm also cool, see, not one of those crazy feminists. You can kiss my hand, it's okay. I'll allow it. I'm used to all that old-fashioned stuff from my own men."
Armel blinked. He had been born in 1902. The bustle had completely disappeared by 1905. Not every previous era had worn the same things, after all. But he got what she was saying, and he wondered if there were any believable way to pretend that he didn't. Shaking the hand had been scary enough, but kissing it? He looked down at the tiny (petite! dainty!) short-nailed (but not girly, ew!) white (pale as vampires yet totally obviously mixed-race!) hand that lay expectantly in his, closed his eyes ("As if to sniff a fine wine so that he could focus totally on the bouquet, shutting out all his other senses so as to wallow in this alone," Anita thought to herself) and leaned down. Unfortunately, vampire senses are quite keen ones, and the fact that her harem had bathed her had not washed away quite enough to hide from Armel's nose just where indeed this hand had been and what it had been doing, and he was convulsing with gags before his lips even touched her skin, to the point that he had to step away from her and turn around so she wouldn't see him dry-heaving.
My power flowed into him before his lips even touched my skin. I couldn't control it, it was just there, it sensed another vampire and it flared, reaching out and into him with intagible tendrils that seeped into his skin and caressed his veins from inside. He writhed and sighed and fell back from it all, gasping. It was perhaps the first air he had breathed in decades, judging by how heavy and awkward it was, as if he were out of practice and his body trying to overcompensate for that.
"She has that effect on many of us who are sensitive to such things," said Jean-Claude.
"I, uh..." Armel, as a Master, was no stranger to putting pretty words around unsavory subjects so as to avoid offense and play the game, but he really did not know what to say to this. "She is...most potent. Her power."
"Yes, isn't she?" Jean-Claude smiled, enjoying the discomfort of the other man. Disgusting another could be its own threat, its own show of strength, and Anita performed that function magnificently without ever knowing, as she did now. Why, he could see her preening now in her head over it, imagining Armel overwhelmed and aroused instead of overwhelmed and aghast! At that moment, another guest swept over and took Armel's arm in a gesture that was meant to be deliberately over-possessive so that even the obtuse Anita would register it as just that, which she did. She also registered that the guest was a very attractive man in his late thirties, and clearly a white weretiger as well, judging by his blue eyes (which she spent a few sentences in her head talking about and how they totally weren't human eyes even though honestly they did not look different at all) and his white hair that was tied in a ponytail down his back like Karl Lagerfield. Speaking of Karl Lagerfield, his six-foot-plus very-built body was clad in a suit that was some serious haute-couture, though Anita wouldn't know how stylish it was since it wasn't like something on a romance novel cover or bought discount at a Ren Faire. Oh yeah, and he was a white man, but unlike those ethnic types there's no need to mention that since it goes without saying, right?
"This is the necromancer?", the weretiger asked. "And your queen," replied Armel in a reminding sort of tone. Anita was now Master of Tigers, after all, and it would not do for one to forget that. Something passed over the tall tiger's face, and Anita did not catch it, but Jean-Claude did. It was resentment, he thought, or perhaps indignation, or something similar. He was not surprised by it or even bothered, though; he'd expected that not every tiger would be thrilled about becoming owned all of a sudden without warning. In fact Jean-Claude rather hoped that such was the case with this big handsome fellow. He'd noticed that Anita seemed to especially like breaking those who were haughty and resistant to her, and he rather enjoyed the spectacle himself.
"Anita, Jean-Claude, please forgive the rudeness of my Klaus here," Armel cupped the other man under his strong, square chiseled chin. "He is a little jealous of her charms being wielded against me, especially so suddenly and effectively. A man, he has all the confidence in the world against, but he has no idea how to compete with a beautiful woman."
Anita, of course, made a show of pretending not to know what he meant and as if she were just so modest (which he of course then complimented her too for) that the implication of Klaus being envious of her and Armel being attracted to her had both gone right over her innocent little head.
"But of course, we have come to do more than dote on this dark beauty," said Armel, which was both news and disappointing to Anita. So much so, in fact, that she missed Klaus rolling those eyes she had waxed on about so much.
"You have done great things in this city together, Jean-Claude, Anita, Nimir-Raj. So great that others have learned from your example. I am one of these others. In New York, we have long warred among one another, the greatest groups fighting for territory and resources, the smaller ones left to tear at each other's throats for mere scraps. Yet here, you all live in peace, side by side, sharing what you have and all benefiting because of it. Recently I have succeeded in making my city the same; all therians and vampires are now united, and I rule in partnership with the werebeast leaders, rather than in conflict with them."
"You got the idea from us?" Anita asked even though he had just said exactly that, and he re-explained that, yes, that's precisely where he got the idea.
"And let me test my understanding, you're running New York just like St. Louis is run?"
Klaus put one of his big hands to his forehead. Armel gave him a nod to let him know he could go, because he was clearly about to hurt something...and when it came to Klaus, that 'something' could be someone else's bones. As he strode off in search of someone to talk to with a brain, Armel continued the conversation with the St. Louis heads on his own, "We've attempted to, at least. But we have not your bonds of love, and so we lack your levels of success. Still, peace has been attained, at least for a time. I only hope that it shall stand."
"A house without love will always fall," Anita told him sagely. Well, she thought it was sagely. It was really more smugly.
This time it was Armel who had to fight to roll his eyes, "Yes, well, while we're working on getting that part in order, we were wondering if you would be so kind as to help us. Part of what caused such conflict in our city was that we have a great number of supernaturals residing in such a small range. I realize that St. Louis is hardly a scarce population itself, perhaps you could take on some of our excess?"
"What does that mean?"
"We have a lot of people, can some relocate to your city, become yours? You have taken lions from Chicago, tigers from Vegas, might you accept some shifters from the Big Apple?"
"You want us to take in some of your people?"
"Yes." Thank goodness that immortality bred patience. "I have brought a selection to you, for you to inspect before you decide if they are both safe and worthy of your shelter. Klaus is among them. Let me show you to the rest."
Jean-Claude, Anita, and her still-silent entourage of Micah, Nathaniel, and Damian followed Armel further in to the room to where some unfamiliar faces were speaking with the rest of Anita's harem and some guards.
"Klaus was the only tiger that New York's Little Queen would spare, they are a small clan, but we do have some other rare breeds--here, two weresnakes, one of each type, one of each sex. Edgar, the wereanaconda, and Sati, the werecobra."
Edgar was a pale, lean man in his early thirties of around six feet with short dark hair, a somewhat strange facial structure, and astounding blue-green eyes that seemed to shift like the sea, which Anita spent quite a lot of time thinking about in bizarre metaphors before moving on to mentally list the components of his outfit: a blue waistcoat under a darker blue pinstriped suit, black shirt, light blue tie, and polished black shoes. He looked very dapper, to an extraordinary spiffy degree really, but, as with Klaus, Anita was blind to the appeal of anything that wasn't a big lacy shirt and leather pants.
As for Sati, she was immediately pegged as 'exotic' by Anita not only for not being white, but of not being of any one ethnicity that Anita could identify. This was because she wasn't of one ethnicity at all, but a mixture of Indian, Moroccan, English, Ethipian, and Egyptian blood. Anita, however, tended to forget she wasn't the only mixed-race person in the world, and so did not even consider the idea that this girl could be. As she mentally jotted the basics of Sati's exterior in her mental notebook (twenty-something, five feet six inches, golden skin, black hair in Cleopatra braids with golden clips and golden beads) she was sure to throw in a healthy dose of Othering and what-are-you-it-is-totally-my-business into her thought process. This all took her a little while, and the two weresnakes exchanged a slightly puzzled glance as they stood before her waiting to be spoken to.
Edgar experimentally waved a hand in her face. This seemed to snap Anita out of it, but she reacted by grabbing his hand, turning it over, and sniffing the wrist. Edgar had not in fact been offering her a formal greeting of that nature at all, but since Anita clearly thought that he had, Sati followed suite and held her own hand out, wrist-up, so that Anita did not think her insolent, as not doing so would communicate that she considered herself dominant against the necromancer panwere queen. Where Anita had practically lick Edgar's wrist, she barely pretended to so much as sniff Sati's, her nose held as far away from the skin of the other woman as was possible without breaking the farce that she was even bothering to inhale. Sati was quite relieved by this. When Anita then looked at them both expectantly, Sati imitated the 'shuddering and spasming from the taste of her power' bit that Armel had (to Anita's eyes) performed, and in the process managed to 'accidentally' lightly hit Aggie's arm so that he realized he should do it too, which he did, his movements awkward yet fluid.
Pleased, Anita moved on to the next pair of rarities. "Werefoxes," said Armel, "Both have black fox forms, curiously enough. Pryderi and Rowan, if you will?"
Both men were dressed in stylish suits like Edgar had been, both were in their mid-twenties, and both had black hair and very dark eyes (behind rectangular glasses in Pryderi's case). Pryderi was lean with narrow shoulders and, Anita saw when she shook one, burns on his long hands, while the androgynous-looking Rowan was thin with subtle muscles and slim hands that had long fingers. In their brief interaction, Rowan gave an impression of competence and professionalism (whatever it was he was a professional at---a secretary, he said), all calm and cool and collected. Pryderi, by contrast, seemed fussy and uptight yet also ineffectual, which perhaps was a side-effect of his career as an accountant.
They moved on, and Armel pointed out a quartet of New York wererats to her, but she continued walking on her way as if he hadn't said a word at all. She did glance, however, at one of them, a young man with black hair and copper skin who was talking animatedly with a very attentive Cardinal, Kelly, and Rosamund. She considered just happening to flash her cleavage his way while walking between him and the girls, but was able to restrain herself since, well, he wasn't white. She'd have thought him Indian, but he wasn't wearing a turban or harem pants, and they all wore those, right? Besides, she could feel that a therian leader was somewhere in this room, and she intended to find him...
"Our Swan Prince of New York," said Armel, holding out his arm towards the Prince in question when they arrived before him, as if he had read her mind.
"Looks more like a Stork Prince instead," gaped Anita, making this one of the few times that her 'witty' rude remarks were actually in any way witty at all. The man stood at six-foot-eight, though he was otherwise unremarkable in appearance: white Caucasian, skinny, short sandy hair, blue eyes, and thirty-something (actually, he was forty-three, but he looked a bit younger). Really not her type at all...but he was still a therian bigwig, and that meant he was instantly on her to-bang schedule. After all, Rafael was both Hispanic and a wererat, but she had deigned to let him have that privilage, given his position, she wouldn't hold out on...on...
"Sigmund Browning," said the man before her stiffly. Anita was too busy mentally exlaiming over how her penguin shared that name to notice the coldness of his stare, the twitching of what was in fact his gun hand, or that Armel almost stomped his foot to make him offer said hand to Anita but then clearly thought better of it before his shoe made impact on Sig's.
Remember how Anita committed mass metaphysical rape by feeding on every swanmane in the country through Donovan Reese? Sig certainly remembered. And Armel knew that, which was why even he didn't want to push Sig to touch her. Bad things might happen, and it would screw up their plans quite a lot if Sig reenacted Lucille's original idea for dealing with Anita.
Before anything terrible could happen, Armel swiftly turned the conversation to a weighty matter, hoping even Anita would grasp its relevance and thus that it would make an ample distraction.
"My people need to be shown their rooms soon, I'm afraid, dreadful jet-lag all around, but first I need to know, how long shall it take to decide whether they are allowed to stay? We only brought clothes and other necessities for a short visit, just in case, you see...of course I realize this is a matter of much deliberation and that you must talk amongst yoursel--"
"Oh, I'll leave it up to them," said Anita in a blatantly bored tone. There were a few out of the lot that Armel had shown her that she intended to get a screw in with--Rowan, Pryderi, Edgar, Klaus, and The Stork Prince, basically every male that hadn't been a rat or Armel himself--but there was no one she wanted permanently in the harem, so whether they stayed or went after sex was of no concern to here. Jean-Claude could hash that out, which he planned to, with Micah and Richard and the rest of the lot who handled these sorts of boring non-sexy leadership things. She sent a telepathic summons to him, and he was soon at her side, speaking to Armel, leaving her to wander around and see if she couldn't get some of her goals to have a look down her dress. After all, it would be neither her nor their fault if they did, there was just so much yummy mounded goodness going on at her front!
***
Meanwhile, as the welcoming party went on below-ground, another host of supernatural newcomers from New York as well made their arrival well above the earth's surface, booking in the finest hotels that St. Louis had to offer. Since there was both a convention and a ball game going on in the city this week, this was not noticed as odd at all, just as they'd planned. They'd needed no security tricks to get past the notice of the preternatural community, just plane tickets and reservations, neither of which required one to list one's species. As long as they kept out of the hotspots frequented by the local monsters, they should be able to pass well under the radar...so basically no strip clubs. They'd survive.
The 'they' was a large group of women, around fifteen or so, and they were currently in the large conference room of the hotel usually rented for meetings of upscale businesses. At the head of the table sat a blonde woman...the very same that had shot and (temporarily) killed Anita. Her name was Lucille, and the group was her harem.
"I couldn't completely talk them all the way out of having their little hi-we're-here mixer with the enemy," she said, "But I've figured out a way it can serve a purpose, and I convinced them not to spill absolutely every detail of our existence and plans. Infiltration will be the key instead. They get in, then they open the doors for us."
"Isn't that what we had the Oba for?" asked another blonde, this one much shorter and bone-thin.
"Narcissus is not exactly beloved by the Big Four," replied Lucille, referring to Jean-Claude, Anita, Richard, and Micah. "Nor by the other therians. Even new arrivals will be more trusted than him. Especially the nice, normal, background-types like the rats we put in."
"I'm a rat, why couldn't I go with them?" piped up a chubby bespectacled woman with a Cockney accent.
Another chubby bespectacled brunette, this one without accent, answered her, "Blowing things up as a hobby isn't exactly a nice normal background-type thing, Wander."
"And none of MY girls are getting within sight of that mindwiping skank!" Lucy spat harshly. She knew that Anita hated women, but she did nonetheless have that black tiger girl in her harem, and that was reason enough for Lucille to guard hers jealously from her ardeur-clutches. Lucille was in fact not all that possessive of her own harem at all, they were allowed to play with anyone they wanted, whether it was each other or outside parties. But Lucille drew the line at anyone who would be dangerous to the group and her interests if one of the girls got involved with them, and Anita more than fit that description. Normally she'd just trust them not to be stupid enough to go near someone like that--Lucille had a big harem, but there were no idiots in it!--but Anita was well known for, as she had pointed out, mindwiping anyone that she was interested in, sometimes anyone who even got close to her. It was risky enough sending in those on the team that weren't her lovers, but someone who could stab her in her bed? Bad idea.
Besides, Lucy didn't like to lose, and she refused to lose a lady to this wannabe-werequeen. Anita had originally just been a target to her, albeit one who rather disgusted her when she'd heard tales of her dependency (depravity, Lucy didn't care about, but dependency was offensive to her), but since coming into contact with her, she just felt this utter irrational hate for the woman, despite not having interacted with her at all beyond her hello. Her beast, Padma told her. It sensed the only thing that could be its equal, and wanted to eliminate it.
"What about Max?", persisted Wander. Max was a wererat and another harem member.
"That one can't be helped. Max is one of our best recruiters. We need these people to get on our sides willingly, no forcing them with Padma, or they'll see us as just Anita 2.0, just more people there to control them." Of course, that would be the outcome, but it would still be a better situation for everyone. And if it wasn't, well, Lucille couldn't really care less as long as they didn't rebel...and for their own sake, they'd better not dare. Some of her harem knew all this...others, like the goodhearted Max, were kept in the dark about certain less savory aspects of her personality and plans.
They got down to discussing tactics then. The biological warfare would be handled by Mitria, demolitions left of course to the expertise of Wander, Astrid had personally asked for a turn with Damian, literal fire-power from Lix, psychic strikes and lock-picking of all sorts from Cornelius, Ufa with her scissors just to be mean, Lucille herself with a ridiculous array of superpowers and personal mini-armory, and then myriad talents of the rest of the monsters, harem and otherwise, that dear Padma and Oliver had found for her. Fell and Tungsten, who were, like Mitria, some lovely little experiments gone right, should prove particularly interesting to watch in practice at last.
Everything was just about worked out when there was a crash on the other side of the door. There was silence. Some froze, some drew weapons. Then a voice from the other side called with eager cheeriness, "Hey guys, I'm here, let me in!"
Lucille pointed at the door, "Who invited fucking Moon Moon?!"
Credits:
Pryderi, Rowan, Sig, Edgar, and Astrid are all loans from fellow AB-hater friends
Mitria is from Mitrian
Ufa is from uf_addict
Fell is from lady_fellshot
Tungsten is from tungstenmonk
Wander is from wanderingworlds
Nan, the other chubby woman with glasses, is from Nanoquill
Moon Moon belongs to the internet
And any other non-canon characters mentioned are mine! <3
http://sf-drama.livejournal.com/3418742.html
And some very bizarre past drama from the same author that I was not aware of but is definitely worth a read even if it's not recent
http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1132356.html
And now...SUE VS SUE!
Anita was in the shower, one of the special spacious ones in Jean-Claude's quarters at the Circus, sitting down on sort of built-in bench inside it. Nathaniel was standing behind her washing her hair, Damien was kneeling at her feet clipping her toenails, and Micah standing over Damian so Anita could blow him, because that was only way they could get her to agree to wash up regularly, or at least stay in long enough to let them do it for her. After she got done internally monologuing about how big Micah was and how much she loved giving head like the awesome exceptional woman she was, she began internally monologuing about how she was just like a guy, no muss no fuss, because she didn't "waste time and water" bathing when it was "unnecessary" and how prissy other girls were for being all about long baths but how it was great that her guys were so big on being clean and shampooed and smelling nice and having everything shaven, waxed, and trimmed to perfection. And it was okay that she was all these things too since it was because her men were doing it for her, they were MAKING her, it was for them; other women chose to do it to themselves, so therefore that was unnatural and vain for them instead.
She needed all that done especially tonight because Jean-Claude had asked her to some event. Something very short-notice, but very important as well. The Master of New York apparently wanted to give them some new allies. Anita had rambled a lot in her head about how suspicious this was, yet agreed readily enough to it. A similar song-and-dance would be performed when she was dressed by her sweeties, claiming how much she hated the outfit and its ineffectiveness for combat and its constraint and its girliness and its emphasis of how short and curly and dark-haired she was...while also eagerly stepping right into it and talking about how it showed off her tiny waist and creamy goodness so perfectly! Speaking of the outfit, once her bath was finished and the men had dried her off like a dog, she was shown that it was an evening dress from made from vivid red and black fabrics with a cinched waist and black heels accentuated with delicate gold chain decorations to match her jewelry: a narrow bracelet and a necklace with a rounded ovoid pendant in an old-fashioned design.
Naturally she listed every detail mentally--the style of the straps, where the hem hit on her legs, exactly how shiny or matte the shoes were--as she did for each of the outfits that her men donned after a few hours each of blow-drying their absurdly long locks. Damien in an Edwardian-inspired gray suit with a white shirt and green accents while Micah sported a double-breasted suit with a mandarin-collar shirt all in muted dark shades. They'd originally been going to wear, respectively, a suit made entirely of green velvet and one of black leather, but Jean-Claude had called to tell them not to come in any of their usual formalwear, that the visitors they'd be meeting preferred a different class of couture. Anita was disappointed, but comforted that at least her pet leopard-kitty was in familiar garb. Nathaniel was naked save for a black leather pair of womens panties, some June Cleaver pearls Anita had gotten him, and a black collar around his neck, complete with two attached leashes for Anita and Micah. It'd be like holding hands! Just kinkier! Hey, it was supernatural business, which meant that being as ridiculously sexual in the awkwardest and most tasteless of ways was not only allowed, but protocol! And anyway, Nathaniel did get to be fancy too; he had a lovely brooch pinned right through his left nipple, so there. Anita decided the other men needed jewelry like this too, and wouldn't let anyone leave until they'd pinned similar brooches on their ties and cravats and vests as well as rings, bracelets, and a necklace each, all very large and obviously expensive to the point of tackiness. Anita patted herself on the back all the while for this about how enlightened she was for giving jewelry to her men...whether they liked it at all or not.
Then they carried her (for she still had not yet learned to walk in heels--she refused to, in fact, it would be girly!) to the waiting limousine that Jean-Claude had sent and were on their way. They had to fix her hair (not to mention their own!) in the car as best they could, since she'd used up the intended time for that with the jewelry business. Thankfully, this meant no time for some 'fooling around' as she had kept demanding in that quaint way of hers, meaning that she kept repeatedly saying how very much she didn't want to fool around and mess up her dress and hair and arrive in such a state so that total strangers could completely tell she'd just had at least European sex with these three men on the way. They just pretended for once that they thought she really meant just this rather than the opposite, and though she pouted quite a lot as a result, she got there looking passable enough for Jean-Claude not to give the rest of them any grief about her appearance. Mother Dark knew she couldn't look after that herself...though it didn't stop her from being very insistent about theirs, of course.
But that was the lot of the kept man, alas.
***
Holding hands (or leash handles) Anita and her men entered the underground guest room of the Circus, which had been done up in even tackier decor than usual to welcome their visitors, all of which Jean-Claude gave her time to list mentally before approaching and speaking to her,
"Ah, ma petite, our guest of honor. They have been asking for you!"
"Of course they have. Who're they again?"
Jean-Claude laughed, as if Anita's tendency to forget things she'd already been told was a little joke of hers versus a troubling sign of her slipping mental capacities. He then took her by the hand once she'd passed one of Nathaniel's leashes to Damian and led her over to their actual guest of honor,
"Allow me to introduce you to Armel Daube, the Master of New York City."
Armel Daube was a short, slender man turned during his 20s, his features somewhat delicate but not at all girlish, his dark eyes very large, his short black hair very wavy, and in absolutely no danger from Anita because his skin was a nice rich medium brown tone owing to a West Indies (St. Croix, specifically, was his place of birth, in the Virgin Islands) mish-mash heritage. His father had been Dutch and French, a descendent of the colonizers, while his mother had been African and South Asian, a descendent of the slaves. He wore a simple black suit, black shoes, white shirt, white tie, and a perfect mask of congenial ease over his true nervous feelings.
Anita extended a hand, and he hesitated before shaking it. He'd heard of how she could get into people just by touching them. You're not white, he reminded himself, She won't 'accidentally' do it to you. But just as he'd gotten over that fear, another one entered his head...who knew where that hand had BEEN? Still, he couldn't afford to break the charade before it even began, and so he reached forward and took it. The fact that he didn't try to crush her hand and then tear it off her wrist like some deranged asshole made Anita give him a peeved look for treating her like a delicate little dainty girl who couldn't handle a real man's handshake, the sexist pig, and then, as he started to let go, she told him, "You can kiss it."
"What?"
"I know how hard it is for you vampire men in the modern era. You're still so used to when women wore bustles and you're all about standing up for us and pulling out chairs and stuff. I'm definitely a liberated free independent empowered woman but I'm also cool, see, not one of those crazy feminists. You can kiss my hand, it's okay. I'll allow it. I'm used to all that old-fashioned stuff from my own men."
Armel blinked. He had been born in 1902. The bustle had completely disappeared by 1905. Not every previous era had worn the same things, after all. But he got what she was saying, and he wondered if there were any believable way to pretend that he didn't. Shaking the hand had been scary enough, but kissing it? He looked down at the tiny (petite! dainty!) short-nailed (but not girly, ew!) white (pale as vampires yet totally obviously mixed-race!) hand that lay expectantly in his, closed his eyes ("As if to sniff a fine wine so that he could focus totally on the bouquet, shutting out all his other senses so as to wallow in this alone," Anita thought to herself) and leaned down. Unfortunately, vampire senses are quite keen ones, and the fact that her harem had bathed her had not washed away quite enough to hide from Armel's nose just where indeed this hand had been and what it had been doing, and he was convulsing with gags before his lips even touched her skin, to the point that he had to step away from her and turn around so she wouldn't see him dry-heaving.
My power flowed into him before his lips even touched my skin. I couldn't control it, it was just there, it sensed another vampire and it flared, reaching out and into him with intagible tendrils that seeped into his skin and caressed his veins from inside. He writhed and sighed and fell back from it all, gasping. It was perhaps the first air he had breathed in decades, judging by how heavy and awkward it was, as if he were out of practice and his body trying to overcompensate for that.
"She has that effect on many of us who are sensitive to such things," said Jean-Claude.
"I, uh..." Armel, as a Master, was no stranger to putting pretty words around unsavory subjects so as to avoid offense and play the game, but he really did not know what to say to this. "She is...most potent. Her power."
"Yes, isn't she?" Jean-Claude smiled, enjoying the discomfort of the other man. Disgusting another could be its own threat, its own show of strength, and Anita performed that function magnificently without ever knowing, as she did now. Why, he could see her preening now in her head over it, imagining Armel overwhelmed and aroused instead of overwhelmed and aghast! At that moment, another guest swept over and took Armel's arm in a gesture that was meant to be deliberately over-possessive so that even the obtuse Anita would register it as just that, which she did. She also registered that the guest was a very attractive man in his late thirties, and clearly a white weretiger as well, judging by his blue eyes (which she spent a few sentences in her head talking about and how they totally weren't human eyes even though honestly they did not look different at all) and his white hair that was tied in a ponytail down his back like Karl Lagerfield. Speaking of Karl Lagerfield, his six-foot-plus very-built body was clad in a suit that was some serious haute-couture, though Anita wouldn't know how stylish it was since it wasn't like something on a romance novel cover or bought discount at a Ren Faire. Oh yeah, and he was a white man, but unlike those ethnic types there's no need to mention that since it goes without saying, right?
"This is the necromancer?", the weretiger asked. "And your queen," replied Armel in a reminding sort of tone. Anita was now Master of Tigers, after all, and it would not do for one to forget that. Something passed over the tall tiger's face, and Anita did not catch it, but Jean-Claude did. It was resentment, he thought, or perhaps indignation, or something similar. He was not surprised by it or even bothered, though; he'd expected that not every tiger would be thrilled about becoming owned all of a sudden without warning. In fact Jean-Claude rather hoped that such was the case with this big handsome fellow. He'd noticed that Anita seemed to especially like breaking those who were haughty and resistant to her, and he rather enjoyed the spectacle himself.
"Anita, Jean-Claude, please forgive the rudeness of my Klaus here," Armel cupped the other man under his strong, square chiseled chin. "He is a little jealous of her charms being wielded against me, especially so suddenly and effectively. A man, he has all the confidence in the world against, but he has no idea how to compete with a beautiful woman."
Anita, of course, made a show of pretending not to know what he meant and as if she were just so modest (which he of course then complimented her too for) that the implication of Klaus being envious of her and Armel being attracted to her had both gone right over her innocent little head.
"But of course, we have come to do more than dote on this dark beauty," said Armel, which was both news and disappointing to Anita. So much so, in fact, that she missed Klaus rolling those eyes she had waxed on about so much.
"You have done great things in this city together, Jean-Claude, Anita, Nimir-Raj. So great that others have learned from your example. I am one of these others. In New York, we have long warred among one another, the greatest groups fighting for territory and resources, the smaller ones left to tear at each other's throats for mere scraps. Yet here, you all live in peace, side by side, sharing what you have and all benefiting because of it. Recently I have succeeded in making my city the same; all therians and vampires are now united, and I rule in partnership with the werebeast leaders, rather than in conflict with them."
"You got the idea from us?" Anita asked even though he had just said exactly that, and he re-explained that, yes, that's precisely where he got the idea.
"And let me test my understanding, you're running New York just like St. Louis is run?"
Klaus put one of his big hands to his forehead. Armel gave him a nod to let him know he could go, because he was clearly about to hurt something...and when it came to Klaus, that 'something' could be someone else's bones. As he strode off in search of someone to talk to with a brain, Armel continued the conversation with the St. Louis heads on his own, "We've attempted to, at least. But we have not your bonds of love, and so we lack your levels of success. Still, peace has been attained, at least for a time. I only hope that it shall stand."
"A house without love will always fall," Anita told him sagely. Well, she thought it was sagely. It was really more smugly.
This time it was Armel who had to fight to roll his eyes, "Yes, well, while we're working on getting that part in order, we were wondering if you would be so kind as to help us. Part of what caused such conflict in our city was that we have a great number of supernaturals residing in such a small range. I realize that St. Louis is hardly a scarce population itself, perhaps you could take on some of our excess?"
"What does that mean?"
"We have a lot of people, can some relocate to your city, become yours? You have taken lions from Chicago, tigers from Vegas, might you accept some shifters from the Big Apple?"
"You want us to take in some of your people?"
"Yes." Thank goodness that immortality bred patience. "I have brought a selection to you, for you to inspect before you decide if they are both safe and worthy of your shelter. Klaus is among them. Let me show you to the rest."
Jean-Claude, Anita, and her still-silent entourage of Micah, Nathaniel, and Damian followed Armel further in to the room to where some unfamiliar faces were speaking with the rest of Anita's harem and some guards.
"Klaus was the only tiger that New York's Little Queen would spare, they are a small clan, but we do have some other rare breeds--here, two weresnakes, one of each type, one of each sex. Edgar, the wereanaconda, and Sati, the werecobra."
Edgar was a pale, lean man in his early thirties of around six feet with short dark hair, a somewhat strange facial structure, and astounding blue-green eyes that seemed to shift like the sea, which Anita spent quite a lot of time thinking about in bizarre metaphors before moving on to mentally list the components of his outfit: a blue waistcoat under a darker blue pinstriped suit, black shirt, light blue tie, and polished black shoes. He looked very dapper, to an extraordinary spiffy degree really, but, as with Klaus, Anita was blind to the appeal of anything that wasn't a big lacy shirt and leather pants.
As for Sati, she was immediately pegged as 'exotic' by Anita not only for not being white, but of not being of any one ethnicity that Anita could identify. This was because she wasn't of one ethnicity at all, but a mixture of Indian, Moroccan, English, Ethipian, and Egyptian blood. Anita, however, tended to forget she wasn't the only mixed-race person in the world, and so did not even consider the idea that this girl could be. As she mentally jotted the basics of Sati's exterior in her mental notebook (twenty-something, five feet six inches, golden skin, black hair in Cleopatra braids with golden clips and golden beads) she was sure to throw in a healthy dose of Othering and what-are-you-it-is-totally-my-business into her thought process. This all took her a little while, and the two weresnakes exchanged a slightly puzzled glance as they stood before her waiting to be spoken to.
Edgar experimentally waved a hand in her face. This seemed to snap Anita out of it, but she reacted by grabbing his hand, turning it over, and sniffing the wrist. Edgar had not in fact been offering her a formal greeting of that nature at all, but since Anita clearly thought that he had, Sati followed suite and held her own hand out, wrist-up, so that Anita did not think her insolent, as not doing so would communicate that she considered herself dominant against the necromancer panwere queen. Where Anita had practically lick Edgar's wrist, she barely pretended to so much as sniff Sati's, her nose held as far away from the skin of the other woman as was possible without breaking the farce that she was even bothering to inhale. Sati was quite relieved by this. When Anita then looked at them both expectantly, Sati imitated the 'shuddering and spasming from the taste of her power' bit that Armel had (to Anita's eyes) performed, and in the process managed to 'accidentally' lightly hit Aggie's arm so that he realized he should do it too, which he did, his movements awkward yet fluid.
Pleased, Anita moved on to the next pair of rarities. "Werefoxes," said Armel, "Both have black fox forms, curiously enough. Pryderi and Rowan, if you will?"
Both men were dressed in stylish suits like Edgar had been, both were in their mid-twenties, and both had black hair and very dark eyes (behind rectangular glasses in Pryderi's case). Pryderi was lean with narrow shoulders and, Anita saw when she shook one, burns on his long hands, while the androgynous-looking Rowan was thin with subtle muscles and slim hands that had long fingers. In their brief interaction, Rowan gave an impression of competence and professionalism (whatever it was he was a professional at---a secretary, he said), all calm and cool and collected. Pryderi, by contrast, seemed fussy and uptight yet also ineffectual, which perhaps was a side-effect of his career as an accountant.
They moved on, and Armel pointed out a quartet of New York wererats to her, but she continued walking on her way as if he hadn't said a word at all. She did glance, however, at one of them, a young man with black hair and copper skin who was talking animatedly with a very attentive Cardinal, Kelly, and Rosamund. She considered just happening to flash her cleavage his way while walking between him and the girls, but was able to restrain herself since, well, he wasn't white. She'd have thought him Indian, but he wasn't wearing a turban or harem pants, and they all wore those, right? Besides, she could feel that a therian leader was somewhere in this room, and she intended to find him...
"Our Swan Prince of New York," said Armel, holding out his arm towards the Prince in question when they arrived before him, as if he had read her mind.
"Looks more like a Stork Prince instead," gaped Anita, making this one of the few times that her 'witty' rude remarks were actually in any way witty at all. The man stood at six-foot-eight, though he was otherwise unremarkable in appearance: white Caucasian, skinny, short sandy hair, blue eyes, and thirty-something (actually, he was forty-three, but he looked a bit younger). Really not her type at all...but he was still a therian bigwig, and that meant he was instantly on her to-bang schedule. After all, Rafael was both Hispanic and a wererat, but she had deigned to let him have that privilage, given his position, she wouldn't hold out on...on...
"Sigmund Browning," said the man before her stiffly. Anita was too busy mentally exlaiming over how her penguin shared that name to notice the coldness of his stare, the twitching of what was in fact his gun hand, or that Armel almost stomped his foot to make him offer said hand to Anita but then clearly thought better of it before his shoe made impact on Sig's.
Remember how Anita committed mass metaphysical rape by feeding on every swanmane in the country through Donovan Reese? Sig certainly remembered. And Armel knew that, which was why even he didn't want to push Sig to touch her. Bad things might happen, and it would screw up their plans quite a lot if Sig reenacted Lucille's original idea for dealing with Anita.
Before anything terrible could happen, Armel swiftly turned the conversation to a weighty matter, hoping even Anita would grasp its relevance and thus that it would make an ample distraction.
"My people need to be shown their rooms soon, I'm afraid, dreadful jet-lag all around, but first I need to know, how long shall it take to decide whether they are allowed to stay? We only brought clothes and other necessities for a short visit, just in case, you see...of course I realize this is a matter of much deliberation and that you must talk amongst yoursel--"
"Oh, I'll leave it up to them," said Anita in a blatantly bored tone. There were a few out of the lot that Armel had shown her that she intended to get a screw in with--Rowan, Pryderi, Edgar, Klaus, and The Stork Prince, basically every male that hadn't been a rat or Armel himself--but there was no one she wanted permanently in the harem, so whether they stayed or went after sex was of no concern to here. Jean-Claude could hash that out, which he planned to, with Micah and Richard and the rest of the lot who handled these sorts of boring non-sexy leadership things. She sent a telepathic summons to him, and he was soon at her side, speaking to Armel, leaving her to wander around and see if she couldn't get some of her goals to have a look down her dress. After all, it would be neither her nor their fault if they did, there was just so much yummy mounded goodness going on at her front!
***
Meanwhile, as the welcoming party went on below-ground, another host of supernatural newcomers from New York as well made their arrival well above the earth's surface, booking in the finest hotels that St. Louis had to offer. Since there was both a convention and a ball game going on in the city this week, this was not noticed as odd at all, just as they'd planned. They'd needed no security tricks to get past the notice of the preternatural community, just plane tickets and reservations, neither of which required one to list one's species. As long as they kept out of the hotspots frequented by the local monsters, they should be able to pass well under the radar...so basically no strip clubs. They'd survive.
The 'they' was a large group of women, around fifteen or so, and they were currently in the large conference room of the hotel usually rented for meetings of upscale businesses. At the head of the table sat a blonde woman...the very same that had shot and (temporarily) killed Anita. Her name was Lucille, and the group was her harem.
"I couldn't completely talk them all the way out of having their little hi-we're-here mixer with the enemy," she said, "But I've figured out a way it can serve a purpose, and I convinced them not to spill absolutely every detail of our existence and plans. Infiltration will be the key instead. They get in, then they open the doors for us."
"Isn't that what we had the Oba for?" asked another blonde, this one much shorter and bone-thin.
"Narcissus is not exactly beloved by the Big Four," replied Lucille, referring to Jean-Claude, Anita, Richard, and Micah. "Nor by the other therians. Even new arrivals will be more trusted than him. Especially the nice, normal, background-types like the rats we put in."
"I'm a rat, why couldn't I go with them?" piped up a chubby bespectacled woman with a Cockney accent.
Another chubby bespectacled brunette, this one without accent, answered her, "Blowing things up as a hobby isn't exactly a nice normal background-type thing, Wander."
"And none of MY girls are getting within sight of that mindwiping skank!" Lucy spat harshly. She knew that Anita hated women, but she did nonetheless have that black tiger girl in her harem, and that was reason enough for Lucille to guard hers jealously from her ardeur-clutches. Lucille was in fact not all that possessive of her own harem at all, they were allowed to play with anyone they wanted, whether it was each other or outside parties. But Lucille drew the line at anyone who would be dangerous to the group and her interests if one of the girls got involved with them, and Anita more than fit that description. Normally she'd just trust them not to be stupid enough to go near someone like that--Lucille had a big harem, but there were no idiots in it!--but Anita was well known for, as she had pointed out, mindwiping anyone that she was interested in, sometimes anyone who even got close to her. It was risky enough sending in those on the team that weren't her lovers, but someone who could stab her in her bed? Bad idea.
Besides, Lucy didn't like to lose, and she refused to lose a lady to this wannabe-werequeen. Anita had originally just been a target to her, albeit one who rather disgusted her when she'd heard tales of her dependency (depravity, Lucy didn't care about, but dependency was offensive to her), but since coming into contact with her, she just felt this utter irrational hate for the woman, despite not having interacted with her at all beyond her hello. Her beast, Padma told her. It sensed the only thing that could be its equal, and wanted to eliminate it.
"What about Max?", persisted Wander. Max was a wererat and another harem member.
"That one can't be helped. Max is one of our best recruiters. We need these people to get on our sides willingly, no forcing them with Padma, or they'll see us as just Anita 2.0, just more people there to control them." Of course, that would be the outcome, but it would still be a better situation for everyone. And if it wasn't, well, Lucille couldn't really care less as long as they didn't rebel...and for their own sake, they'd better not dare. Some of her harem knew all this...others, like the goodhearted Max, were kept in the dark about certain less savory aspects of her personality and plans.
They got down to discussing tactics then. The biological warfare would be handled by Mitria, demolitions left of course to the expertise of Wander, Astrid had personally asked for a turn with Damian, literal fire-power from Lix, psychic strikes and lock-picking of all sorts from Cornelius, Ufa with her scissors just to be mean, Lucille herself with a ridiculous array of superpowers and personal mini-armory, and then myriad talents of the rest of the monsters, harem and otherwise, that dear Padma and Oliver had found for her. Fell and Tungsten, who were, like Mitria, some lovely little experiments gone right, should prove particularly interesting to watch in practice at last.
Everything was just about worked out when there was a crash on the other side of the door. There was silence. Some froze, some drew weapons. Then a voice from the other side called with eager cheeriness, "Hey guys, I'm here, let me in!"
Lucille pointed at the door, "Who invited fucking Moon Moon?!"
Credits:
Pryderi, Rowan, Sig, Edgar, and Astrid are all loans from fellow AB-hater friends
Mitria is from Mitrian
Ufa is from uf_addict
Fell is from lady_fellshot
Tungsten is from tungstenmonk
Wander is from wanderingworlds
Nan, the other chubby woman with glasses, is from Nanoquill
Moon Moon belongs to the internet
And any other non-canon characters mentioned are mine! <3
