Old Men of the Sea

He’d heard of Mystic Falls and its unusual reputation long before he’d come crawling here to see if his former boss would take him back. There were places like this around the world, nexuses some had called them, places of power, places that drew in things like him. Places that practically reeked of the supernatural. They’d stumbled upon one or two while he’d been under Hector’s watch, more in his time with Ingrid, but this trip to Mystic Falls was a first for Luc. Given that it seemed to want to give him a two for one with his past, perhaps it should’ve been on his radar before.

Given the short, sharp shrift by Ingrid it was only his own stubbornness that had stopped him from immediately driving back out of town now. What stubbornness cost with one hand obviously gave back in spades with the other.

Face to face with a man he’d entirely believed had been killed, Luc gave up some silent thanks for it. His first few years serving in Hector’s crew had been done unwillingly but gradually he had been worn down, had come to see their captain as a friend at least. Luc saw the surprise on Hector’s face, laughed roughly at the sight of it. So Hector had believed he likely hadn’t survived either. The aftermath of the Brotherhood’s attack on them must have left true devastation in its wake.

His lips curling, Luc eased back in the bench seat, long legs angling out from under the table slightly. He picked up his drink, narrowed his eyes slightly over the rim at Hector before he half drained what liquid remained in it. ”You thought I was in a shallow grave in the Med somewhere?” he asked, winging a brow with some amusement. Luc used his glass like a point, tipping it in Hector’s direction. ”I’m a survivor, you of all people should know that. How did you all get away in the end? The last I saw it was practically a bloodbath.” Instead of sticking around to see if he could perhaps help sway it in the direction of a win for Hector’s side, he had taken the self-centred way out and had left without a single look back. Well, perhaps there was some ache in his heart for the men he had sailed with for decades but he’d been able to say without compunction that he had been glad it wasn’t him.

It hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing after that, he’d lost the Nain Rouge faster than he would’ve liked. Ingrid had rescued him, another ship under the thumb of another self-professed profiteer. He had come through it all though, looking for all the world like he’d been untouched by the whole thing. Luc let out a low humming noise at Hector’s question. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to reveal those intervening years but there was little to be truly proud of in it. Twisting in his seat, Luc spotted a waitress and shot her a beguiling look, he gestured towards the glass in front of Hector. ”Can we get two more of those? Thanks.” The woman smiled, scrawled the order on her pad before she started to weave her way back towards the bar.

Luc turned back, leaning in to plant his elbows on the edge of the table. He certainly hadn’t come here to try and lay low, if he had done, he wasn’t so sure he would’ve chosen a place that seemed to be supernatural central. ”Far enough away to the coast to try and avoid anybody recognising you?” he quipped. One corner of his mouth lifted into a slanted smile. ”Business, although not the sort that tends to be hidden. I got myself onto another crew after I thought you were all gone. The captain, or should I say the woman in charge, is here now. Setting herself up another office. I’d hoped to get in on what I believe they call the ground floor now.” The jury was still out on that though. Ingrid would not just cave instantly, especially not since she had herself a new major domo these days – a woman prepared to do more than muss his hair with the gun she’d held.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 709

In this day and age the ambush would have been far more brutal. The modern weapons he had taken to selling after he had been on the losing edge of the ultimatums he had made Ingrid could cut you down in an instant. Churning out bullets – dipped in dead man’s blood, made of wood, laced with wolfsbane – at an astonishing rate. Even creatures who could speed away in the blink of an eye weren’t far enough to outrun them. Cut in two you’d have had no chance. Luc felt a touch chagrined at the thought. Under the guise of being something perfectly human he had sold them to any who would pay for a profit. Perhaps that was why he had tired of it in the end – he had armed a world against things like himself.

Once upon a time though he had been as marked as the rest of his crew. It had been sheer luck and a sense of self-preservation he had not possessed as a child that had kept him alive. Luc’s lips curled, his fingertips tapping against the sweating side of his glass as he shook his head. ”They barely managed to put a scratch on me before I was away. I learned my lesson from the day you took me, don’t stick around and make yourself a target.” Even if you had a faint sense of loyalty to your people. The more rational part of his mind had told him that Hector and his crew would not survive the fight with the Five and there was little point in going down with them.

Luc made a thoughtful noise, tipped his head to study his former captain before he nodded. ”You did what you could for them. I take it you recovered well enough?” He had known little of the world of the supernatural other than his own narrow slice of it until the hunters had almost killed his sister for accidentally displaying what she was. Aboard Hector’s ship he had learned more among that tangled nest of a crew, what each was capable of withstanding, filing the information away in case he were able to use it and free himself. Wood was their captain’s downfall, although without a heart shot almost anything else was healable. He imagined it would’ve been bloody agony though.

Lifting his drink to take a sip from his glass, Luc clucked his tongue at Hector’s apology. In the mess of battle he had done what he had needed to in order to protect himself, not a matter of being left behind because by the time he imagined he had popped into Hector’s mind after the fight, he was likely already had reached the border, halfway on the road to a new ship and a way out of Europe. A huff of humour a low rumble in his chest, Luc shook his head as he set his glass down. ”There is nothing to apologise for. I gladly took the coward’s way out and didn’t suffer for it. I got aboard one of the cart’s fleeing the area, didn’t do more than bloody a nose on the way I don’t think. Did any of the crew…?” From what he’d heard afterwards the curse was a living hell and his yellow belly had bought him the easiest escape.

Fleeing. Years on the high sea … and an entanglement with another dragon that had brought him back around all these years later.

Dipping his chin, Luc turned on the charm for the waitress and caught Hector doing the same from the corner of his eye. She slipped away, leaving the two of them alone again to lament how each had fetched up here. Hunched over the edge of the table, both hands on his glass to tip it side to side, Luc studied the man who had, he supposed, been a father figure to him for a time. ”Perhaps,” he agreed. ”So you heard the same rumours I did before you fetched uphere?” If he hadn’t he imagined it had been a rude awakening for Hector. To anybody with eyes not covered by those pearly scales of ignorance the town was a supernatural cess pit and it was no surprise that Ingrid had somehow found her way here to be in the centre of it all.

Mouth pursing with amusement, Luc slanted Hector a look. Perhaps his path had crossed with Ingrid’s a time or two, although if it had it would seem Hector had walked away without a scratch on him from those either. ”Hardly office work,” he admitted with a chuckle. ”Private security, although once upon a time I suppose you’d have called her a privateer for hire for the Americans.” It was how Ingrid had found him, swooping down on his ship to rescue him. A merchant in distress. ”You might have done, I doubt you’d have forgotten her if you did.” Ingrid left that mark on you, a brand that would drive you insane and she would smirk as you struggled to ease that itch.

As the waitress returned Luc offered her up another of those sweet smiles. He reached for his drink, watching the waitress walk away before he settled back, rolling it between his palms. Dark brows rose, a snort rolling out as Hector admitted that he’d gotten himself entangled with somewhere here in town too. ”I would have said it was a legitimate business for once but it doesn’t sound like one to me. A front for a nest you think? Somewhere to feed on the polite folks of Mystic Falls without people like the Five finding out and snuffing them out.” Luc’s eyes narrowed faintly. A smart move perhaps. That veneer of normality disguising what hid beneath, the same ploy he had once used.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 967

Had it happened soon after Hector had taken him on board, Luc might’ve helped in the attack. Then, all he had thought about was getting his revenge on the men who had killed his family. Nights spent laying in his hammock, listening to them breath, or not, in the darkness, imagining blades slipping between their ribs or someone bigger, badder, more violent and bloodthirsty to turn up and do to them what the crew had done to his family. It had taken years for the feelings to fade and the scar tissue to build around his heart. He had never done to others what had been done to him but the sweet little boy who would ride at the top of the mast for hours just for the feel of flight years before he could actually take to the skies himself had definitely been changed by the time he’d spent with Hector. Years on board and when he had finally made his escape in the back of that wagon he’d felt an ache in his chest for them all. Hopefully some had survived, but thankfully he had not needed to hang around to see if they would, possibly tossing away his potentially very long existence on a losing fight.

Some tiny knot in his gut had given way at the sight of Hector, years after he’d thought it had faded and the vampire was just a blip in his past. Relief? Gratefulness to some higher power he hadn’t believed in since his family had first been forced to flee their second home. No, Luc thought, he was long past believing that life was merely some see-saw ride between blessings and curses. It was all a matter of sliding between and both he and Hector had managed to do it that night.

Luc huffed out a thin trace of amusement. The Captain retiring from the sea while he’d been hit with delusions of grandeur from it. He sighed, pushing the glass away an inch. Perhaps the sea had always been his mistress, ready to devil him at a moment’s notice. ”Glad to hear it. We must have been ships in the night then. I spent more years than I can count plying my trade up and down the Americas.” Until eventually his own ship had been taken and not from the kindness of her heart, Ingrid had taken him in. One hard task master for another.

He had stuck though, hadn’t he? For more than a century, working his way into Ingrid’s good graces and, he’d foolishly believed, closer to her heart. Luc made a low, sympathetic sound, clucking his tongue as he slumped back in his seat, dragging his drink back towards himself. ”Well, it looks like you’re one step ahead of them now. Keeping your nose clean, I hope?” Pot calling the kettle black that way given what he’d done in the last few decades. Grimacing faintly, Luc shoved fingers back through his hair, pushing the sable waves back from his face. At least it hadn’t been hunters coming for his throat of late, just Ingrid’s people drawing down on him. His fingertips grazed the back of his skull where her major domo had been happy enough to prove she had the drop on him.

Luc groaned out a laugh as he sipped at his glass, eyes still following the waitress for a moment. There had been plenty since his fellow dragon but Ingrid had certainly been the most lasting, even after he’d stormed off. ”Of all the towns in all the world you had to drive past the one that’s likely to get you…” He used his glass to gesture at his chest, like he was about to ram it into his own heart, not that it would do anything. His throat, his soft spot, would always be the weakest point on him, the same one the crew had used to cut down his family. ”I guess I can’t talk but, brother, I’d say perhaps driving past and finding the next town might have been wise.” Although they did say there was safety in numbers and working for Ingrid had certainly proven that. With her in town there would be a hard line between those who would slaughter, and those who would stop it with the sort of heat that would leave this place scorched.

Shifting in his seat as he admitted to his own current line of work, Luc took a gulp from his glass. He was pretty sure Ingrid had given him enough of a scorching to leave burn marks on his behind as she’d eventually tossed him out of her office. Luc was sure she would relent eventually, it would just take time to melt the shockingly thick layer of ice around the heart she had buried. Another laugh rolled free on a wince, Luc hunched forward, looking at his former captain with concern. ”It seems you’ve lost that shrewd business sense of yours somewhere since last we spoke. A bar on its last legs seems a poor prospect indeed, even if the man running it into the ground is turning tail. You think you can somehow make it profitable?” He had never questioned Hector before but the last time they had seen each other was centuries ago. One dark brow rose, a thin thread of interest in his eyes. ”Would you be looking for a partner to go into this venture with you?” Ingrid’s voice was Antarctic cold in the back of his mind, warning him of his foolishness but she’d proven today that they were no longer each other’s business, or rather not each other’s business again quite yet.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 946