First Taste (Part 3)

Questions

Hannibal stood in front of Jade’s house some time later. He raised his hand to knock on the door and was surprised that the contact with the door caused it to open some. His eyes narrowed, his sense automatically straining to pinpoint any irregularities. Carefully, the toe of his shoe nudged the door open. Upon first glance, he saw nothing but the living room and the entranceways to two separate parts of the house. As he took a few more steps into her house he heard the sound of classical music. It was faint, but still audible.

His eyebrows rose in faint surprise. He allowed himself to relax a bit as he followed the sound of music. The drifting tones of the music  brought him to a door off of the kitchen. Raising an eyebrow he could clearly tell the music was coming from the room behind the door. Silently, he turned the knob and crept down the stairs.

Once he reached the bottom his eyes rapidly took in the details of the room. The dimensions of it seemed off. It was both larger and boasting a higher ceiling than he expected. Dark amusement shadowed his eyes; not that he could talk about abnormal basement spaces.

In the middle of the room Jade was flipping around a set of uneven bars. He was rather impressed as he watched her remarkably graceful aerial acrobatics. Content to watch the rest of her performance, he stood in silence.

Jade continued, twisting her way through the air beautifully. After a few more moments she ended her performance with one last rapid flip and a perfect landing. A few undisturbed lines of music  and then his applause rang through the air.

Amused he watched Jade stumble in surprise and swiftly turn to face him with a scowl. The room then dissolved like a mirage in the desert and he found himself standing in a normal basement. Now the dimensions of the room made sense in relation to the rest of her house. She continued to glare at him as the music swiftly cut off.

“Creeper much.” But she gave him a soft smile, to let him know she was joking.

“That was impressive.”

“What the spell?”

“I was actually referring to your performance. I did not know you were a talented gymnast.”

She waved him off before circling around the room. “For a reason.”

“Oh?” He prodded, assuming she would elaborate; she didn’t.  It wasn’t his primary interest so he didn’t press. “A spell created the entire room? It was more than an illusion.”

“The room? Yes. It’s hard to use uneven bars with these low ceilings. So I used a simple construction spell to make the room fit my needs. You’re right it’s not an illusion perse. It’s a surprisingly simple spell that allows your brain to deny reality and replace it with something else.”

Hannibal’s eyebrows rose, interest peaked by such a power. “How does that work exactly?”

Jade scoffed, “It’s magic; it just does. I don’t mean to interrupt this, as I know how much you hate that, but I don't think you came here to ask about spells.”

“Oh, is that so?”

She seemed to ponder something before speaking again. “You are a practical man Hannibal, you have a purpose to what you do and say. It just doesn’t seem likely that is why you came here. It is more a matter of opportunity.”

“Interesting.” He walked more into the room.

“You know... you people tend to say that, a lot around me.”

“Is that a problem?”

She seemed to pause again. “No, not really. I guess I just sometimes forget how in the dark the world is about my kind.”

“I would like some answers.”

She smirked. “Of course you do. Not here though. Let’s go back up.” She walked around him then and made her way up the stairs ahead of him.

For all of Jade’s personality faults he had to admit she was really quite beautiful. He noticed right away a few lightly colored scars on her legs and some on her back. They were so light it was likely not many people would catch them. But he could see them. But it raised a question. She didn’t appear to have sustained a scar from when he had slit her throat. So what made these so different?

As they stepped into her kitchen he spoke up.“You do scar,” he stated. He was surprised when she stopped walking and the temperature in the room jumped rather high. In fact it had gotten so hot that he had to remove his jacket. He opened his mouth to say something else when she finally spoke up.

“Just, give me a moment please. Look around, take a seat, whatever. I will be back.”

A few moments later Jade indeed come back, only this time in a change of clothes. Clearly her scars had strong history.

“So your questions. I hate to do this to you but I would prefer not to repeat myself, and by that I mean I would rather wait until Will is present to answer both of your questions.”

“I am not sure that will happen anytime soon.”

“Meh think what you will. In the mean time.. I would suggest thou ask questions that only thou can hear the answer to.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“What’s the matter doctor Lecter, doth thou not speak Old English.”

“I doth, I however, did not think thou did.” He cleared his throat. “Why does your neck not have a scar yet...” He paused as she lifted her hand.

“I think I know where you are going with this. It’s not something I really want to talk about, my scars, but for this I will let it go.” She seemed to take a moment. “Vampire, purebloods especially, don’t scar often. There are few cases in which we do. Pureblood can only scar if they are wounded by a weapon that has magical properties, or a spell cast on it. You did not possess a magical blade, and there was no spell on it. So no scar.”

He took that in for a long while before speaking again. “I have a request then,” he finally said.

“And what is that, Doctor?” 

“I would like to see how you kill,” Hannibal stated.