Lily
She was laughing? Lily thought incredulously, unsure if she should be astounded or bewildered. If only her friend could see herself. She was the ever humorous and effervescent Ruby Carmichael but more advanced in her features, and baring a nasty set of sharpened fangs.
"The joke's over." Ruby said, her laughter dying, "Let me out."
Lily stiffened beneath her fixated, evergreen stare. "Ruby-"
"No can do." Talon intervened, "You're not ready, Green Eyes."
"Who asked you, guy-with-no-swag?"
Talon chuckled, "Touché!"
"Enough of this!" roared a heavy lilted tone.
Lily turned to see Varian standing at the foot of the stairs and even more surprising was the ethereal Marguerite standing at his side. She felt a pang of jealousy at the mere sight of them standing so close to one another and quickly dismissed it.
"Leave us." Varian directed, averting his heated stare to Talon.
Talon's grin broadened as he winked at Ruby and sauntered upstairs.
"What do you plan to do?" Lily asked almost in a panic.
Marguerite released an exasperated sigh, "Don't worry your pretty little head about your not-so-human-friend."
"My goodness, you've all lost your marbles!" Ruby exclaimed, "You actually believe all this nonsense about vampires, Lily?"
Feeling her face going frighteningly pale, she turned slowly to peer at her friend. "I wanted to tell you-"
"I don't have time for this." Marguerite hissed, "Why did you bring me down here?" she spat, turning to Varian.
"You created her." Varian said in an icily calm. "Therefore she is your responsibility."
"No." Marguerite snapped, her eyes flashing daggers. "My hands are clean of fledglings."
A sudden thickness in the air warned Lily that Varian was teetering on a feeble tolerance for Marguerite's haughtiness. "You will do as decree of the vampyre demands you. I will see to justifying the wrong that has been done here."
Marguerite opened her mouth to say something but the warning glint in Varian's eyes deterred her words. Instead, she clamped her mouth shut and turned a heated glare on Lily.
Varian slowly turned to address Ruby, "Marguerite will show you all you need to know." He paused to level a hard glare on Marguerite, "If she fails in doing so, there will be repercussions."
"You cannot be serious?" Ruby exclaimed, the first hint of tears hidden behind her eyes.
Lily's chest tightened, "Ruby-"
Varian's hand around her arm stalled any words of comfort, drawing her attention, "We need to leave. There is nothing you can do for her."
"That's not up to you!" Lily cried.
"Get out! All of you!"
Lily's heart sank deeply in her chest as she turned to look at Ruby and for the first time in all the years she'd known her friend, she saw real pain in her green eyes.
Varian's hand around her arm was the only means in pulling her from her daze. Once upstairs and out of Ruby's condemning eyes, Lily wrenched out of Varian's grasp and whirled on him. "How can you be so cruel!" she demanded, "How can you just speak so casually of life lost?"
He stiffened, "There is no other way around immortality."
Her chest rose and fell with sudden anger, "Ruby has no one! Just me! Do you understand? And now you may have potentially ruined that. She will never forgive me for what's been done to her, and you want Marguerite, the one responsible for turning my best friend into a raging vampire to baby-sit her?"
She saw the anger in him gathering and his perfectly sculpted mouth tightening into a grim line, "Do you know the risks I am taking in just doing that? If the council found out about Ruby and the reasons behind Marguerite turning her, they would have her destroyed. Do you understand, Lily?" he stepped closer toward her and grabbed her shoulders, "You are fighting a losing battle." He said darkly, "You shouldn't be so concerned for others when you are dying yourself."
She laughed dismally, "And whose fault is that?" she shrugged out of his hold and stalked away, leaving him to stare sorely into her back.
"We have a visitor." Lily looked up from the book in her lap, which she had been skimming the same page for the last twenty minutes, clearly unnerved by the intense, black stare coming from across the room, to peer at Blanch standing in the doorway of the parlor.
Varian immediately was on his feet, his nose curling upward into a snarl as he bared his lengthened fangs.
Lily's heart leapt against her chest as she rushed to her feet, "What is it?" she asked worriedly.
"Dog!" Talon hissed, strolling into the room.
Varian nodded grudgingly to Blanch, "Show him in."
Blanch hesitated only a moment before moving toward the door, seconds later, the man Lily had vaguely recalled from having rescued her from Ward's desperate clutches, now stood in their parlor. Lucid green eyes swept the room briefly before settling firmly on her.
"Direct your eyes elsewhere, mutt." Varian hissed precariously as he was suddenly at her side, pushing her behind him.
Varian
The man smirked and took the leisure of making himself comfortable. He settled into a red, plush settee, crossing his legs as though etiquette was of utmost concern and surveyed Varian with an unnerving, knowing gleam. "Do you normally show your guests cold courtesy, fanger?"
Varian narrowed his eyes harshly as a deep inkling that the wolf was up to mischief coiled down his spine like acid. "What do you want, wolf?"
Eyes so green with a hint of gray wavered curiously to the woman standing behind him, "It hadn't occurred to me at our last encounter who or better yet what the female is-until now."
Varian's body tensed but he said nothing-wolves were a clever sort-the dog was just sniffing around for information.
The werewolf stood and Varian heard a small intake of breath behind him.
He won't touch you. He consoled mindfully, hoping to ease some of her fears.
He knows what I am. He tasted her fear as if it was his own and it fueled his anger.
The wolf stepped closer and Varian tensed his body, prepared to fight if need be.
"I told you to expel the human threat." He warned in a low, threatening voice laced with subtly with a foreign accent.
Varian's eyes narrowed harshly, "I work on my clock."
"Time is ticking." The wolf warned and his green eyes averted on Lily, "For your girl that is."
A deep, guttural hiss issued forth from Varian's throat. "Is that a threat?"
The wolf laughed, "No, fangs. It's a fact. I know what she is, I can smell it in her blood and it won't be long before others will too. You better handle your business before another does." Lily's heart turned over in her chest, "What does that mean?"
"Ah, she speaks."
"You're on our turf, dog." Talon growled, stepping forward to make his presence known. "Curb your tongue when speaking to the lady."
Varian caught the particular flare of anger in those vivid eyes but knew the wolf wouldn't react on it. Talon was right. He was on there turf.
The wolf bit down on his anger and instead produced an impish grin, "You haven't told her?"
"Told me what?" Lily demanded.
"Later." Varian warned.
"You're still human-" the wolf started, "-judging by the pallor of your skin, the transitioning isn't complete which means that if your fanger here doesn't finish what he's started-" he paused, his mouth tilting into an alluring grin, "-then there are others who will seek to see it done."
Marguerite
Marguerite had long fled the house, eager to escape the sudden paranormal harlequin unfolding before her eyes, and now she was an unwilling chaperone to this insolent fledgling that fidgeted and talked too much.
Rolling her eyes skyward and shielding a yawn with her hand, she leaned against a brick wall as her little puppet struggled with her first meal.
"This is disgusting!" Ruby uttered with a hint of chagrin as she pushed the slightly dazed and confused man away from her.
Marguerite eyed the young man she had easily persuaded with charm and a little mind seizing. He was young, handsome and currently there only meal. She wasn't about to let this one get away because Miss Skittish found it unnerving.
Her slender hand lashed out and seized the unsuspecting man around the throat. There was some awareness beneath their mastery over the man for a flicker of fear rounded his eyes.
"You haven't even tasted him." Marguerite challenged-on the outside she appeared beautiful and ethereal-like, but the fiendish glint in her eyes revealed the monster that lay within. Her mouth parted, exposing her fangs while her hands splayed the throat of her victim.
Ruby
Ruby shuddered as Marguerite wasted little time in making an example of the man's throat. Blood trickled from where Marguerite's mouth drank greedily with a hunger that was almost terrifying but at the same time, instilling a mirrored hunger of her own that was becoming increasingly insufferable to ignore.
The mere sight of blood churned her insides, but those insides even now burned and twisted with the lack of the life sustenance now streaming Marguerite's throat. The beast in her was working its way to the surface and what little trace of human Ruby remained was beginning to evaporate with her vicious thirst for blood.
She hadn't wanted to believe any of it but there was no escaping it-she was a vampire and a hungry one at that.
**********