[Kazuma]

OOC: Honestly, I was so happy with what you did. *_*

Kazuma's eyes shot up to Jericho's form, startled by his voice. The man had stayed quiet -- and perhaps, even uneasy although strangely calm, or some combination of everything, he wasn't able to sum it up just yet -- in spite of Divine's exclamations that to hear his own had come out as a shock. There was something so genuine about his tone that did not make it seem like...he was just saying what he said for the sake of it...

He realized soon enough why Jericho had spoken that way. “Do you know Calvin Morris?” he asked carefully.

[Jericho]

“Knew him,” Jericho clarified, his hands spasming in his pockets and a muscle in his jaw clenching. “Son of a hydra's head calls himself a sword of Xanth, a vampire hunter cleaning up the "scourge" as if they never evolved, but he's just a murderer and a sadist.” He scoffed, drew his hands out of his pockets to realise they were trembling a little at the memories, and stuck them back in. “I haven't seen him since Danurai, when the vlareon forced me out of town. I've made a point of staying as far away from him as possible, so it behooves me to keep abreast of his movements, but he's like a kumo: He hides in the darkness and sets his trap to kill a bunch of people, and then disappears again.” Such behaviour made it difficult to track the vlareon's movements, else Jericho would be gone already. “If he's in Hesia...”

If Calvin Morris was in Hesia, Jericho wasn't going to be for much longer. “I wonder what Corantha is like this time of year.”

[Kazuma]

“Vampire hunter?” It was clear in Kazuma's voice the shock, the confusion, the disbelief that Jericho's revelation brought about. Before he saw Jeremy's corpse, Calvin Morris had just been a Therian who was heartbroken and wanted revenge for the sake of a lost love but now...what was becoming of the man?

“He was my friend,” Divine said, croaking.

Kazuma felt her wings relax and he looked down to watch her mumble, her fingers quiver against her lap, dark spots marking where her tired tears landed.

“I thought he was a good friend,” she went on to mutter with what little will she had left. “We met when we were young...and he said he loved me since then. But then I met Jeremy...and we fell in love. He discouraged me from marrying a vampire...but I ignored him and became Jeremy's wife. I was so happy...” she gasped and choked and hid her face by her colorless hands. “Oh Goddess, I was so happy...!!”

Kazuma was quiet for a moment, uncertain of how to speak to her amidst her tears. It took a moment before he could ask her, “Did he come here to tell you?”

All Divine did was point to the empty coffee table -- but what she meant was the crumpled note that laid discarded on the floor, spotted, as everything seemed to be this late, by drops of blood.

[Jericho]

Jericho couldn't believe they were talking about the same Calvin Morris. The vlareon he knew was almost psychotic, as cold as Jericho himself until it came to the killing, and then finding a pleasure in it that made Jeri want to lose his lunch. He was one of few Therians capable of taking out a fully-trained Rutilus, using his human reasoning more than the animal instincts his species usually relied on. His tactics were brutal and clever, and shifted according to demand and occasion. The victims never saw it coming, but he rarely used the traps to kill outright. The sadistic vlareon preferred to capture them alive and torture them in the pretense of tracking down other vampire enclaves and covens, of rooting out their "sympathisers" so he could lay traps for them too.

“Sorry to be the one to say this,” he sighed with no expression or feeling of remorse or regret at all, “but there's no way a guy like that is anyone's best friend.” If Divine was suggesting Morris had killed her husband and Mysto out of petty jealousy, she needed her eyes opening. “More likely, he set this whole thing up to get to Jeremy's coven.” Jericho was intelligent, but his mind was not nearly as devious as Morris'. Without a lot more information, there was no way he could even begin to imagine what trickery the Therian had used to insinuate himself into the murdered vampire's group. Most importantly, he didn't want to even try to figure it out.

“I'm out. I've got some packing to do.” But then he caught sight of Mysto's remains on the table again and paused. There was something wrong with this whole situation. “Let me ask you this, though. If Morris is hunting vampires, how did the lot of you end up infected?” And that reminded him: He really needed to stay away from all that blood lest he become collatoral damage.

[Kazuma]

Jericho mentioning Jeremy's coven -- which is to say The Black Rose Cabal which was Kazuma's coven, too -- had near made his hair stand as its considered its possibility or impossibility. Somehow, some way, everyone had always wanted a piece of the Cabal, it seems, but Kazuma had a suspicion that the Cabal wasn't really a part of his goals. A bonus, perhaps, but the goal was clearly to avenge a broken heart...or so he was made to think.

“Infected?” he asked after a quiet moment of more thinking. “Why...no, Mr. Mortimer. Mrs. Divine, isn't infected...” he looked down to the tearful apalos who knelt before him, her eyes raw from all the crying she'd done, the skin of her neck chafed lightly from when she tried to kill herself. “Have you become infected, Mrs. Divine?” He did his best to carry his voice in a gentle wave.

Much to his relief, she shook her head. “Jeremy wouldn't let it. He promised to leave me if I ever did try...” she tried to smile but failed dismally. “He was a good talker...he'd completely convinced me.”

“And for your good,” Kazuma sighed as he lifted her a little and wrapped his arms around her and her wings so that her cheek rested on his shoulder. “The life of a vampire is not worth anything at all. There is no sense in wondering about it.” Nudging her away a little, he cupped her small face with his cold hands, and he said, “Promise me you will keep your promise to him...and not hang yourself, again. Your wings are meant for flight, not as something to weigh you down a noose.”

Divine said nothing. She merely dipped her head and wept quietly.

Never rising, Kazuma looked up to the man who had led him to this mess. “I'm afraid I've bothered you far more than I should have. I apologize,” he gave him a good bow. “Perhaps I will think about your...offer in the future. But as you can see...” He would have gestured around him had his hands not preferred to stay on Divine's arms, “This isn't a very appropriate time for it...”

[Jericho]

Jericho knew a dismissal when he heard one, and he would have been happy to leave the vampire to his clean-up rather than risk being dragged into helping with something that could kill him. However, something was still niggling, despite Divine's negation.

“Look, she might be telling the truth about herself, but that woman we passed, her wings were dying, if not dead already. No feathers, remember?” He distinctly remembered that much. “That usually means only one thing with Anyeli, so either that woman was already a vampire — which begs the question of exactly what she was doing here, leaving her —” He pointed rudely at Divine Haramond. “— to hang herself and my client to bleed out.”

Huffing in an impatient breath, Jericho narrowed his eyes on the woman acting all pretty and suicidally innocent, his next words pointed and staccato. “Something is very wrong here.” Having made his point, Jericho flung up his hands and side-stepped to the door. “And by the way? That card, as of now, is out of date. I'm leaving town. The number should still be good, though, if you manage to get away from Morris alive.”

[Kazuma]

To say that Kazuma was confused would only be scratching the surface. More appropriately, if Jericho attempted to dive into his mind again, he would be lost in a tangle of thoughts and more besides. That was the reason behind his silence, his lost gaze although he listened to what Jericho had to say. This was only supposed to be a broken love story...how was it turning out to be a web of intrigue?

“With your permission,” Kazuma muttered to Jericho's feet, “please leave me to sort this out. Jeremy was a good friend to me. I will get to the bottom of this.” And then looking up, he said, “And you can bet that I will find you. Count on it.” He smiled lightly.

[Jericho]

And why under Hel did that sound like a threat? Jericho would never consider himself a coward or easily frightened, but finding out that Calvin Morris was in Hesia had already put him on edge. Uemori's blank stare and sudden tight-lipped smile, coming from a vampire when he was surrounded by potentially infected blood, was enough to stiffen Jericho's spine and set the hairs on the back of his neck to tingling.

He wasn't so sure any more that he wanted to be involved with this man, even financially, but Jericho wasn't going to pass up a business opportunity as golden as alastis. With a jerky nod, he took his leave and left the house, stepping onto the quiet street with the all-too-familiar feeling of being watched.

Forget giving his bodyguards time off. They could watch his back while he packed.

((Jericho has left the thread. Funnnnn.))

[Kazuma]

As soon as Jericho was gone, Kazuma forced Divine back to her feet, gathered a few change of clothes, a few of her essentials and walked out with her. He prayed to whichever deity answered prayers that no one would be mistaken to rob the house while a corpse lied in it and he wished his luck hadn't quite run out on him yet as he slipped through the portal with Divine supported by his hands.

Vera met them in his home and stayed there while he returned to Hesia to sort out the situation with the corpse. He sat on a couch, staring at the corpse of the anyelos on the floor for perhaps a solid five minutes before he got up, slipped his coat off, undid his cufflinks and rolled up his sleeves to set to work.

He had never, for once, imagined in his life that he should be fabricating a crime scene. Inconvenient pieces of evidence were removed such as Calvin's letter and the fallen feathers but everything else, he left as is as he thought more. He realized he had to do it when he crouched beside Mysto Haramond's form and stared at his wounded wing. By now, the blood had painted most of the one that was injured and while it was something far from fatal, he figured that something else must have killed him. Like, perhaps, a cardiac arrest from the stress and the shock.

It was a clean death and after a few more minutes of pondering it, Kazuma decided to remove all clues of the noose as he stitched his story together: Sierra Haramond, of a relation he didn't quite know to Mysto, had become turned and in her depression had stabbed Mysto on the wing and fled, leaving him to die of cardiac arrest while she fled, crying.

This was the story he pitched to the coroner and he thanked some deity again that this society did not believe in investigations or tests that the much advanced Earth would have. It made his crime easier to hide but it was a necessity. Asked for his name, Kazuma offered, “Jeremiah Tim Morris”. He felt not at all sorry to Jericho Mortimer.

Back in Alexandria, it was decided that Divine would stay with Kazuma for a moment until they could find her a better place for safety because vampires have clearly done her no good. She asked to see the body of her husband but Vera had insisted it had been burned.

“You had no right.”

““I have my reasons,”” Vera said as she cradled her glass of red wine to her chest, elbow on the back of her left hand as she reclined against one of Kazuma's plush seats in his living room, watching the other vampire fill up his own glass for seconds. ““Would you risk having her dead in your house once she sees the state of her husband's corpse? What would you do if you saw your wife treated with the same courtesy?””

“I would cry,” Kazuma said after a moment, taking up his deep glass to stare at his reflection in the carmine pool. “And I would swear vengeance on her murderer.”

““And go out there and lose your head the way you almost did not more than fifty years back--””

“We weren't talking about me,” Kazuma said in a voice that made him glad Divine did not understand Japanese. In the silence that followed his burst of frustration, he sighed and slumped back to his seat, his glass held to his eyes. “My apologies. I did not mean to speak that way.”

““I understand the yearnings of a man and a wife, believe me or not,”” Vera said quietly before she pulled herself forward and placed her half-drunk wine on his coffee table as he sipped his, pressing his crossed arms on top of her right knee which was over her left. ““But we cannot risk this.””

“Where is his body?”

““Somewhere safe, I promise you.””

Kazuma nodded, swirling the liquid in his glass.

They were quiet again.

Taking breath as he opened his mouth, he said, “Well, what do you make of this mess? One anyelos, Divine's father, dead, another possibly turned to our kind, her mother...”

““If she is indeed of us now, then it might be much safer for her to find our Cabal where we can take better care of her than...whoever else she could count on.””

“Or the Ruby Claw, they aren't too bad either,” Kazuma said as he sipped, “But I much prefer ours where you and I can keep an eye on her,” he added after he caught Vera staring at him.

Vera shook her head. ““On top of that, a letter,”” she reclined again with a toss of her white hand, ““from the murderer Morris, proclaiming his victory over Jeremy's lies, the triumph of truth over illusions...at least we have our suspicions confirmed.””

“It seems it is all for the worse, though,” Kazuma said, stroking the clear walls of his wine glass, “I never realized we could be dealing with an insane man here...an obsessed creature. What had we ever done to deserve him, I wonder?”

For all the problems they carried now, though, Vera, characteristic of her, found something she could smile at. ““Says the man who I keep telling to keep his head low.””

Kazuma's eyes snapped back to Vera. “I pray you don't mean to inform the entire Cabal about this death. Can you imagine what would happen if the entire vampire populace here in Alexandria learned of a Therian's objective in life and his track record besides? Can you imagine the magnanimity of the chaos that can be born so easily from this? Vera, I am starting to enjoy my house here in New Alexandria, I would hate to abandon it again for some foreign land in Dardanos or similar.”

““And so you insist of being the harbinger of truth,”” Vera sighed. ““I hate to admit it, but you talk sense.””

“I learned it only from you.”

They stared at each other for a solid second. In the room above, Divine shifted in her bed.

Kazuma breathed quietly through his nose as he looked at his wine, again. “Pray I get to the bottom of this before the fire spreads. I failed to avenge my buddies who died in the war many decades ago. Perhaps I can pay them tribute by promising Jeremy the justice he is due.”

““Says the man who has very little true friends,”” Vera said, near muttering, before she reached to her friend with her wine glass, ““To you, then, my dear friend. May we sit together again, talking quietly, after justice has been served correctly.””

Kazuma looked at her and her unwavering smile. Moving forward, he touched her glass with his, a quiet clink from the contact made and leaning back to his seat as she did to hers, he drank his wine down the way she did with hers.