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The air in the bar was stale, a thick miasma of spilled beer and cigarette smoke, the sweat of people just getting off of work and stopping by for a drink before they went off to their miserable homes. Worst of all, it was all ingrained in the materials of which the building was made, for the bar had been temporarily closed down due to special request.
Once upon a time, Nicolae, Courtland, and Jack Mayfair had been the absolute best of friends. They had always been together, romping around the city referring to themselves as the three musketeers, three wild and psychotic minds that worked in perfect harmony. That was why it was so easy for them to conspire together now, sitting in the empty bar, all on Antha's orders.
To the Mayfair family, Antha's pregnancy had instantly become of the highest priority. Keep her safe, ease her burdens, and more than anything, try and keep her safely within Mayfair Manor, where nothing could touch her, nothing could harm her or the fragile little beings that grew so precariously within her. She didn't like it---Antha had always been the type to get her hands dirty, to be the one in the very center of the action---but she had tentatively agreed, for the moment, to micromanage the events she was setting in place rather than take care of them herself.
The word came from her only moments after Cian had reappeared that they were to proceed with their plans, to which Nicolae cracked a wicked grin. "We're all in agreement, then?"
Besides the trio of Mayfair boys, Nicolae seated at a little wooden table, balancing his chair precariously on its two back legs, Courtland laid down the length of the bar, tossing impatiently like a boy in a fretful dream, and Jack sitting upon the end of the bar with his feet rocking a wooden barstool back and forth, the collar of his shirt pulled up over his nose, there were three others in attendance. Claire Leonelli, seated directly across from Nicolae and toying idly with a pocketknife in his fingers, Aurelius, sitting at Nicolae's left with his pale red hair draped over his shoulder, a grin stretched across his face to display his decidedly canine set of teeth, and Atticus seated at Nicolae's right, looking far less than happy to be across from the pack leader---by nature, vampires and werewolves despised one another more thoroughly than either hated witches, and that was even without a deviously charming creature like Antha Mayfair worming her way into their good graces---merely narrowed his eyes at the other vampire.
"I have been saying the boy needs to be exorcised from this world since the day his name fell to ruins," Atticus said firmly.
Courtland, who was in fact very far-gone to the influence of some curious pills he had bought from a delightful stranger in a trench coat with terrible sunglasses to hide his bloodshot eyes, laughed maniacally. "Along with his house and all his family. Except for Cian, I mean." He grinned at his mortal cousin, positioned at his feet, and the two boys shared a look. They rather liked the Calais boy under their roof, and they were quite determined to see how much trouble he could assist them in causing.
"Sounds fun," came Claire's airy murmur of a response, chuckling to himself as he stabbed the tabletop, "I'm tired of other mortals getting in the way of the city's power structure anyways. Antha I'm more than happy to bow down to---" and he threw Nicolae a taunting grin, the permanent glimmer of insanity all aglow in his eyes, "---but I've never heard of the Calais boy before, and I won't let him throw a wrench in my games."
"I'm only happy to be included," Aurelius snickered with supreme satisfaction, "My kind tends to be forgotten in the planning of these things. It's quite a treat to have a part to play."
“Werewolves are the black sheep of the monster universe, Aurelius,” Courtland responded, smirking to the ceiling, “You’re probably the most science fiction of us all. Tell me, do you rip your skin off when you transform or does the fur just sort of burst through it?”
Aurelius grinned anew, flashing the set of disturbingly sharp teeth that his lips curled over. “It’s not the fur you should worry about, soft little mortal boy. It’s the teeth.”
"So, it's all decided then," Nicolae purred, his eyes glimmering with satisfaction, "We wipe Rynn Calais clean from the surface of this earth, along with whatever's calling the shots behind his back."
"Agreed," Atticus said wholeheartedly, with just a hint of relief that the situation was finally seriously being addressed.
Aurelius, laughing, murmured dangerously, "Tear the boy to tiny, bloody shreds. Understood."
Claire, taking a moment to look his rival in the eye, finally declared in typical gangster fashion, the maniac grin splitting his face from ear to ear, "I swear on my mother's grave, the boy gets what's coming to him."
Courtland, unable to help himself, burst out into riotous laughter. "And isn't it typical, when Antha cannot carry out her plans herself she enlists two of the three vampire covens of the city---" he gestured at Nicolae, who represented both his coven and Khayman's, "A talamascan, a wolf pack, and the majority of the goddamn mob." And finally, he laughed so hard that he rolled right off of the bar.
"Antha is nothing if not thorough," Atticus agreed softly.
"Don't get me wrong," the boy continued cheerily from his new place on the floor, "I love it. Sending the entire goddamn city after the boy. It's beautifully overdone. If I could do the same, I'd never need drugs. Power like that is enough to keep you high forever."
"Who needs power?" Nicolae purred, smirking, "Mayfair blood is a hell of a drug in itself."
When the men all finally departed ways, Claire to his fortress in his armored car, Aurelius to his den through the woods on four feet, Atticus to his keep in the drafty Talamasca tower, Nicolae to his freshly scrubbed crypt, and the Mayfair boys to their ancestral home where Jack could carry Courtland on his back up the stairs, laughing wildly, and into their room, snickering to one another with the pleasure of co-conspiring (and the influence of their little bag of pills), bolting the door behind them where they could be alone. Antha, listening to their low laughter and the creak of the bed springs from the attic above, gave an involuntary little sigh of longing.
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