12 December 2012, Late
Camden Town Hookers
Directly following 12 Dec 2012 - Driven by the Strangle of the Vein

Earnest Carstairs snapped open the heavy curtain and stood there a moment, white as a sheet if not for the left side of him covered in blood. His neat blonde hair was out of order, and his fully open cuffed white shirt was ruined. The main room was relatively calm. Some booths hosted swooned patrons, but they were un-partnered. In his shocked-stunned haze, Earnest couldn't mark who in the room was a vampire and who wasn't. If anyone had heard or was alarmed by the carnage in the back hallways of the coven, it was only barely Indeed, it took a full minute of Earnest standing there for anyone to notice him.

He'd just seen a man's throat ripped out and didn't know what to do. "Everyone," he muttered, his throat tight and his voice hoarse, "everyone needs to leave."

He was stopping over on his way home from the Ministry - Tristan had spent today's daylight hours, and then some, up to his neck in Being Division paperwork. As much as he supported consensual feeding, it had meant more parchment than expected.

Then again, one had to find some way to pass the time.

His ears arrived at Hookers ahead of him. Screaming. Tristan learned to expect some of that from covens, now that certain appetites could be legally fed. But this was not the right kind of screaming... and it stopped soon enough, replaced by talking, snarling, other noises. None of them good. He quickened his pace.

By the time he stepped into the bar, troubling suspicions had taken root.

        "Everyone... everyone needs to leave."

The words were leant weight by the appearance of the wizard, stained by blood and reeking of acrid fear.

Tristan stilled himself - he felt the eyes of human patrons on him, and that of other vampires. He was a familiar sight in his black Victorian suit. It wouldn't look good to head straight for the back passages. A confused smile crossed his face instead.

"But I have just arrived..." Tristan announced flippantly before making a show of looking the man over. "Too late, it seems, for one of Terry's jokes, hm? How disappointing. Perhaps you should sit, mon ami."

Earnest was a brave boy. He'd been kept safe and tidy, but his father was an Auror, and his poor mother a werewolf. Not a little derring-do was needed to play Quidditch at the level he did. But he though to himself that maybe no one, no matter how heroic, could see what he'd just seen and not flinch when a vampire approached. Wide-eyed he slowly side-stepped Tristan Vaillancourt. Earnest knew him by name and fang from having visited here so often before.

"It's not a joke. She's mad back there," he said, his voice still not able to rise above a whisper. In following Tristan's eyes over him, Earnest seemed to notice himself the state of his dress. He wiped futilely at his bloody front.

"I have to go."

Go? Now where was this child keen on going, exactly?

Tristan turned in tandem with Earnest Carstair's side-step, still with an air of good humoured confusion. He could hear the commotion going on in the back, blocked out for now. If someone really had snapped and ripped into a patron then there would be trouble. This wasn't his coven but he liked Terry's flock.

"Leave, in those clothes?" Tristan gestured at the boy's appearance, laughing. "Non, non. You are confused I think."

He exerted the slightest hint of hypnosis, testing for weakness in mind. A soft light gleaned in his dark eyes and he laid a light hand on Earnest's shoulder. "We will find you something else to wear, yes? And a drink for your poor nerves."

Earnest had always been susceptible to the glamour both vampire and otherwise, and it was never hard to convince him to have a pint. He hesitated only briefly. Their little scene was drawing eyes and Earnest longed to be safe. Returning to help with that was some of his bravado, drawn forth by vampire's steady hand.

"I could have a pint," he agreed and followed Tristan to one of the private spaces - not, of course to where a macabre clean-up was unfolding.

The glow of the streetlamp through the uncurtained window augmented the classic wall sconces. Earnest shed his shirt.

"My wand's somewhere, he said as he moved behind the folding screen to peel off his trousers. With the wand he'd be able to vanish the blood well enough. The designer clothes, though, might be a loss. Blood of the murdered was tricky that way, though Earnest had no way of knowing that.

"What was that?" he asked the vampire, the horror still with him. The picture in his mind.

He knew the back passages at Hookers well enough to lead the boy to a room far away from trouble. Tristan was trying his best not to let his ears linger there while he took advantage of Jin-ho's dresser table in the corner. Luckily the other vampire had plenty in the way of lounge wear.

Earnest was beautifully susceptible and sounded almost normal behind the screen, taking off the evening's evidence.

It was going smoothly. Tristan shut a drawer, about to hand over a set of joggers and sweatshirt, when he heard it. When he heard Cass Motley's[1] dying shriek. He breathed in sharply and clasped a hand to his ear.

Cass. He wasn't certain earlier, he had never heard her out of control like that. But he recognised his friend in her last protest and it froze him in place.

       "What was that?"

A tragedy, Tristan wanted to say.

"You should know by now," he replied, slowly, extending the clothes behind the screen. "Terry's games aren't for the faint of heart. Get dressed, mon enfant. I owe you a drink."

His instincts were torn for the first time in a very long time. Tristan could guess what happened but he wanted to be there, to find Terry right now and ask. He wanted to sweep up what remained of the girl. Instead he was here. Controlling the damage.

Cass's final gift to him.

1.	12th Dec - Driven by the Strangle of the Vein

Earnest dressed and came out from behind the screen. He'd used his own shirt to wipe his face and hair and hands but he knew from quidditch that he'd still look ominous in the light. Maybe it was this knowledge in combination with Vaillancourt's perhaps wavering of his attention that Earnest remembered himself. He remained still as he looked for and failed to find a mirror in the room.

Of course.

"I'm not cavalier about the risk," Earnest said, trying to quiet his heart. He didn't immediately obey the vampire this time. "Someone's dead in there."

There was no way anyone could have survived what he saw. He'd seen werewolf attack crime scene pictures before; this had been comparable.

He was still feeling sore, somewhere inside him, when the wizard emerged dressed but not quite for polite society.

"Cavelier..." Tristan repeated the word and drew his gaze from foot to crown.

Not a word he expected from this one but humans were interesting if nothing else. The vampire sighed, hearing the quick beating of his heart and sensing a kind of resolve in Earnest's words. That's what he deserved for letting the hypnosis drop for as long as he did.

"Who is this someone?" he asked more pointedly, tilting his head slightly as he slipped his hands into his pockets. "You have, maybe, a name and a face? Terry's jests can be very convincing. He has had, I believe, a century to perfect it..."

Earnest couldn't hold Tristan's gaze; he didn't want to. He felt that calmness prying its fingers in again, which he recognized as prelude of those vampire bites he'd so happily sought out. Under certain charms, why, Earnests would be a honeycomb. And he'd never heard of Terrence Hooker staging 'jokes'. Or hadn't he?

He knit his brow and probably looked like the vapid lout people often thought he was. He couldn't find the face. He knew there'd been no name. He'd been high. Was he still? The rising doubt was unsettling to say the least. He actually laughed and felt sick at the sound of it.

"I don't remember," he admitted and collected his clothes to carry over his arm. He pointed at Tristan as he made for the door with a little more vim.

"But I know what I saw, mate. It was the blonde. The one who was complaining the other night."

The prospect of what-came-next was deeply unappealing to Tristan. If even this child could believe his memory under the influence of vampiric glamour, there would be no way to strike it from the record altogether.

He was, of course, going to help the coven disguise this as something else so as to avoid having their feeding certification revoked. Something more acceptable and understandable by mortal standards. Ministry standards.

"She does complain and complain, doesn't she?" Tristan followed the wizard to the door, speaking in an easy voice. "Doesn't like Terry's games either, you know."

The vampire laid a firm hand on Earnest's shoulder before he could open the door. "It's possible one of you... less resilient creatures got in the way of a disagreement, don't you think?"

He smiled, then. A sad smile.

"You're so soft, you humans." Tristan squeezed his shoulder slightly. "It would not take much to create a mess like this, non? Poor soul."

Anger was easier than fear, and fear there was. The threat was as easy to read as the Daily Prophet and for a few moments, Earnest stood strong in the fatal aura of Vaillancourt. Didn't Tristan know who his father was? The flood of shit that would rain down on this place if he told old Solomon. The vampire thing, it was so fragile. The law, the unsolved vampire murders. Earnest's lip curled. But then he frowned. He couldn't be sure of any of that. Glass was out, the Ministry was fully off-kilter, and his father was on more than one short list if the chatter could be believed. His son in some sordid scandal amid Level Two's being unable to close vampire murders.

Earnest laughed nervously. "That must be it. Balls, man. I took a fuckload of streeler. I really should cut back. Great fuss about nothing."

The boy relented. He saw reason or felt fear, or both. Tristan released his shoulder and continued in the same genial air with which he had made his indirect threat.

"The mind is a fragile thing," he agreed, bowing his head slightly. "And a mind like ours does not forget a good turn."

After all, he wasn't so criminal an enterprise as Terry's coven. There was never any reason for him to instill fear in wixes, when their imaginations did most of the work for him. Better instead to cultivate a sense of give and take, a relationship beyond prey and predator.

"Good night, mon ami..." Tristan gestured and the door open under his influence. "There is a drink at the bar if you still find yourself thirsty this evening."