Volcano

Unlike Hector and some of his staff, the situation outside wouldn’t end up a late dinner for him. Dragons had reputations that had left virgins wary of them for centuries, but it wasn’t as though they ate the offerings staked out for them like goats for dinosaurs, not in that way at least. Other parts of their legend were true, the flight, the fire, the eye for twinkly things, but not the nibbling. That, Luc supposed, meant that when the door to Hector’s office finally opened again, he’d be wading into a feast he had no hunger for. Not that it was a new situation. When they had been sailing, often he was the one picking the gluttonous up, getting them out of dodge before something bigger and badder came looking for them. Unfortunately in the end their eyes had been bigger than their bellies.

Luc frowned faintly as he looked at the CCTV feed Hector had been staring at as he walked in. Was this going to be a case of history repeating itself? Feed a little too hard and draw the eyes of the hunters. The ones in town didn’t seem to be a patch on The Five – Mystic Falls would’ve had less of a population issue if they had been – but still, they were capable of causing enough trouble to throw some cold water on tonight’s festivities. He scanned the crowd on the feed. If there were any in the crowd they would now have targets painted on their backs, same as anybody else. It was the hunter’s conundrum – do something and reveal yourself, or stand by and just try and mark your targets for later. Either way there was likely to be at least one life lost, and surely it was preferable that it wasn’t your own.

Used to the place by now, Luc didn’t hesitate to lean forward and help himself to some of Hector’s personal booze stash. All the better not to have to bother one of the bartenders when they probably devoting most of their energy towards making sure they didn’t end up one of the Purged. ”Ah,” he murmured as he reclined back with a glass now in hand. ”That was your work. I saw somebody clearing up.” At the mention of Gary slacking, Luc clucked his tongue. ”I take it he’s the gorilla at the front door?” The one who’d barely blinked as he'd walked past. You needed someone sharp in a spot like that, especially with the sort of trouble that kicked off in this town. ”Looks like he’d be a bit heavy.” Lifting his other hand, Luc patted his stomach like either one of them would ever have much trouble with indigestion.

Amusement had Luc smiling as he sipped at the whiskey – the good of course, usually in places like this the swill ended up behind the bar for nights like this when the crowds didn’t care quite as much about exactly what was going down their necks as long as it got them drunk. He froze, frowning at Hector before he cursed. ”Putain!” Shaking his head, he eyed Hector darkly. ”And there I was thinking you had all of this figured out so it wasn’t going to be blowing back on you.” If this did go wrong Ingrid was never letting him back in. Fuck, indeed.

He grumbled under his breath as he set his glass down on the desk and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. The men on board Hector’s ship had picked up their disregard for caution from somewhere after all. ”How bad are you predicting? Surely a couple of dozen bodies aren’t too much for your staff to handle. Unless you think you’re gonna end up with our new friend Manny out there.” Manny wouldn’t draw the line at the staff like some of the guests from Emerald City might. He’d be in the middle of it all, laughing up at the ceiling while he got to unhitch what remained of his sanity for the evening. It would be a dream come true for him, which probably meant he was out there somewhere, perhaps masked like the rest of them. Craning forward in his seat, Luc stared at the screen, trying to find him in the crowd.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 716

Pirates had earned themselves a reputation for barbarity that had stuck around to the modern day. Men – and women, they weren’t sexist like that – pillaging their way across the high seas and any communities that were foolish enough to spring up on the coast. They’d board merchant’s ships, take what cargo they could, slaughter those who fought back. It wasn’t pretty, for sure, and his own family had been on the sharp end of that violence, but that wasn’t to say they were without rules. Hector had the final word that went on aboard his ship, but they were a crew, that meant that they all had some say, including the mouthy kid who’d used his first say to threaten them all. Nothing worked the same way these days, even if you called it a democracy. All that meant was that there were a few voices louder than others.

Luc imagined the same could be said about the club. Hector, the blonde downstairs (who couldn’t have been further from Ingrid if she tried), himself, perhaps Manny, although the jury was out there until it could be proved he wasn’t going to sink the lot of them – they were those voices here. The bartenders, the gorilla at the door, they were expendable, their arguments against that fact absolutely meaningless. The man who Hector had handled at the bar? Pffft, worth even less.

Clucking his tongue, Luc sipped from his glass. Back in the day the man would’ve lost his fingers for that. A small warning for his crossing of a line. Tonight, well, the blood stains being cleaned from the floor once the man was moved spoke loudly enough about what happened now. ”No manners these days,” he said with a sigh, chasing a drop of the liquor from his lower lip with his tongue. ”From any of them.” Humour huffed out on an exhalation. Including the bouncer. ”The poorer the bastard who has to carry him out of here afterwards. I don’t imagine they’ll be sorry to see him go then.” It would be a warning to the rest. A reminder of what happened when you crossed men like Hector Dacre. Sad to say he wasn’t feeling as though he was held in such regard these days, not while he was still Ingrid’s whipping boy.

If things went wrong here, he wouldn’t even be that. Luc wanted to show Manny what respect was, perhaps with the glass he held, but he wasn’t going to set all of this tumbling with a shower of broken glass. Or a slaughter in a nightclub. One night of indulgence wasn’t worth having to run again. Making a low sound in his throat, Luc frowned at Hector. ”And there I was, trusting that you were growing a little more cautious in your old age.” He didn’t wait for Hector to pour whatever he was fetching from his stash, he lifted his glass, tipped it towards Hector before he downed it. Here’s to the night going well and no pitchforks and torches at dawn.

The empty glass was put back on the desk, no move made to help himself to Hector’s fresh bottle for the moment. There was plenty of time to drown his sorrows if this did go wrong later. ”By roasting a few idiots?” he asked before he hissed out a sigh. ”Well, let’s hope you’re right. If this the only entertainment? A free for all on everybody who signed on to be a snack tonight?” He hadn’t ever turned his nose up at it before, although he was never one of the crew members to overindulge. That had probably been part of what had saved his life when their mistakes had come back to call on them. Why chase someone who wasn’t a threat to every port they visited? If it did come to it, well, there was always what burned at the centre of him. Even Manny would’ve fallen under that.

Luc scooted forward a few inches as Hector pulled out a sheet of paper. He inspected it in a way that had him frowning, eyeing it to try and get a read on it before Hector set his glass down on it. The laugh rolled out as he looked up, his expression one of doubt. ”A vampire called Mal? That might as well be a boy named Sue,” he quipped, although Hector wasn’t done with his description. Hundreds of years of life, and plenty of that spent around things that went bump in the night, it was a lot of faces and names to remember. That one, though, was unfamiliar. ”That doesn’t exactly narrow it down much. It doesn’t ring a bell … Mon dieu. There aren’t enough ways for things to spread? He was out there tonight?” The frown continued to bite deep as he shifted back in his seat again, arms folding over his chest, a thumb nail scratching through his beard. ”There were always rumours. People turning up, well, dead .. a rather messy business, but never anybody changed that way as far as I know. Did he not spill the beans?” It might have been vampire versus vampire, but you didn’t get to where Hector was without the ability to come out atop the heap nine times out of ten.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 883

The universe might not have been a fair place, but for the most part it stuck to clearly defined rules. It had made existing for three hundred and fifty years easier. No matter how the times changed, the fundamental things always remained – like vampires being dead enough not be able to go around producing little vampire halflings whenever they felt like it. Apparently things were more different in Mystic Falls than he’d imagined. Vampire kids? Mon dieu.

Luc stared at Hector, shaking his head like he’d just told him he’d seen Jesus flossing on the dance floor last week too. The Mikaelsons had apparently always been a law unto themselves – maybe this was just them reestablishing their status quo then, albeit one that had been flapping in the wind for a thousand years or so. ”There’s your solution to getting him out. You could’ve just handed him over to them, let the Mikaelsons get their hands dirty instead of having to worry about it yourself.” That might’ve meant being a little short handed for the kick off of all of this tonight, but once the doors were bolted who would notice one less brute in here?

Come morning Luc imagined it would be all hands on deck in here, clearing the night’s detritus, swabbing down the floor until the blood stains were practically invisible (they’d likely be so overlaid from other nights that had gotten out of hand that nobody would be able to tell the old from the new anyway. Luc’s brows drew together before they hitched. He laughed wearily, gesturing to Hector with the glass. ”I wouldn’t call that the worst thing. I’m sure the Mikaelsons or the town council could make it a little more painful than having to duck and dive for a bit.” It wasn’t like they hadn’t got plenty of practice when it came to dipping in and out of ports as they outstayed their welcome at one or another.

Slaughtering half the people in your bar didn’t exactly equate to capturing the wrong boat or having their way with some rich merchant’s daughter (usually their very grateful daughter). Hector’s plan was a dicey one, albeit likely popular with his clients from downstairs. ”Here’s hoping it stays that way,” Luc murmured, lifting his empty glass like he was chinking it against Hector’s. Fingers crossed and all that superstitious nonsense.

His shoulders stiffened slightly as he leaned in to look at what Hector had shoved towards him. He hadn’t been blind enough to think that trouble bypassed the rest of this town, there was a reason the club had gotten away with what had happened so far – it was hiding a needle in a haystack full of them. ”That’s … twisted. Perhaps smart too, if you could pull it off too. Can you imagine Frankensteining all sorts of things together?” The logistics were probably beyond him too, but he could imagine.

Luc’s frown deepened as he settled back, his gaze ticking to the monitors Hector had been studying when he walked in. ”He was here and you let him stay for this? That’s risky.” His lips curled faintly all the same as Hector started putting his foot down. Not in his town, the same way it had been not in his boat. ”When are we going to go and put a proper stop to him then? It’s been a … while since I’ve been involved in a decent raid.” Kicking doors down under contract was a very different matter and on each mission for Ingrid came with a tightly wound choke chain around his neck. With Hector there’d be no such thing.

Tagged: HECTOR DACRE * Word Count: 607