isolt griffin

She was weightless.

Weightless as one feels they are when in the merciless clutches of a horrific free-falling dream. A weightlessness that summoned every nerve to life, an eerily chilled digit skating suggestively down the curve of Isolt's spine to cast an icy ripple down the length of her entire body. Nearly did it rob the naive vampire of her footing, the quiver wracking her legs a crippling and involuntary thing. Had she more than the barest modicum of control over her own mental faculties she might have feared that such a pathetic display was visible to her assailants. However, something so simplistic had been pilfered from her in the instant her Maker's shadow had cast its darkness upon her doorstep.

Isolt was weightless... and she was falling.

It was an insidiously impressive thing, the hasty manner in which it all came careening back. Memories long ago arduously compacted and repressed far beneath the sod of more comforting, joyful recollections. And yet, as the poisonous seedlings that they undoubtedly were, memories of Risque seemed to blossom anew before her eyes. Memories of Tetradore, as stoic and handsome in this present as he had been in the tenebrific smog of their past, at once charming and darkling hospitable and then... in an instant, it seemed, looking upon her dying, draining form through emerald eyes that no longer harbored any soul worthy of mention. It had taken months and a willfull forfeiting of personal barriers, tightly-held phobias, for Isolt to realize that Risque had, too, drained Tetradore. She had drained from this man a soul that, the redhead would later come to discover, was beautiful, pure in its own right. The vile wretch had taken from both of them so much more than anything as trivial as blood. In one fashion or another she had taken life away from them.

These thoughts and none at all siphon into the open maw of the gluttonous black hole that devours them, her eyes only for the man who draws ever nearer, the lamps that shine overhead sparkling beautifully against the silver spires that adorn the piece he holds. So consuming is her fear, so abject the terror, that Isolt hardly stirs as the conglomerate of flesh and fur tumbles before her. In fact, it is only as the metallic ting of spilt blood curls against her nostrils that the fledgling vampire dares to stir, crystalline eyes falling upon the gore that Tetradore has made on her behalf. And yet all too swift is Risque's intervention, Isolt perhaps just as sensitive to the influence of their mistress as her feline companion was. It is the blood that binds them, her blood, that makes it so. They were shackles, burdensome and cruel, that lingered even now after the years that had spared the pair the agony of their keeper's torment. Isolt could see it in the pained glimmer that skated the curve of every emerald helix in Tetradore's eyes. This... and something more.

Something... else.

Something greater even than the agony of Risque's deathly clutches upon every chord of sinew that should have otherwise been his own. Something pleading, a look so rare upon the face of this particular man that it may rightly have been thought an illusion, a trick of the light played upon an wanting mind. It is only then that Isolt's eyes break from those of her companion to fall first upon the menagerie that materalizes in the wake of those that have fallen, and then do they rise unto her Maker. So rarely had Isolt proven audacious enough to look directly into the eyes of her captor that it is only now that the epiphany of their similarities dawn upon her. Risque quirks a sultry brow at her progeny as the redhead straightens, uncoiling, knowing that she must endure what is surely to transpire for Tetradore's sake. For just as he would sacrifice everything to ensure her welfare, Isolt knows that she would, will, do the same for him. Isolt had lost it all and yet, Tetradore had so very much left to lose. He was precious to so very many beyond these polished wooden walls, but moreso was he precious to the demure young vampire that had caused him such guilt over the last few years.

One of the felines, a jaguar, that paced in a slow, obedient orbit around Risque parted his maw in a foreboding hiss at Isolt's movement, drawing the young woman's fangs forth with a subtle click. "Tsk tsk... put those away, little girl," comes the brusk tones of one of the men that now draws himself forward from beyond the sphere of his mistress' influence, the musk that billows from him in unseen waves denoting him as a Were not yet given to the shift of his primal self. He lingers for but a moment and then... vanishes in naught more than a curling of wayward dust. Isolt can do nothing more than bat a curled lash before he materializes at her back, so near that the warmth of his skin, the sordid heat of his breath upon the back of her neck, ebbs the chill of her long-dead flesh. But she cannot fathom this smallest detail for the time is not there, the hefty Were shifting again and then, all at once, a thick silver chain strains against the pallor of her flesh, treacherous razors pulled taut into the skin of Isolt's neck. It is not a cry that slips from her parted lips then, but rather an animalistic bellow, an homage to the beast that lay in wait within her veins... placed there so long ago by her Maker.

Isolt does not turn as the razors claim their purchase within her skin, rivulets of eerily dark blood bubbling from betwixt skin and silver to drag their spindly fingers down her chest. No, she does not turn, but forces the entirety of her weight, her considerable strength, back against her assailant to slam him into the solid oak of the wall behind them. Once, twice, three times does she strike in quick succession so that he may not lay his hands upon the wherewithal to teleport from her, the subtle popping sensation evident as his ribs give way to the pressure. He slumps at her back, though Isolt is swift in her actions, turning to grasp him about his neck, lifting him from the floor to face Risque and her brood. The man's legs protest only just so, the toil of gravity upon his broken ribs a battle that proves far more taxing than his desire to continue his short-lived assault. A rumble of groans, growls, and hissing erupts from the clutch of Weres and vampires, though Isolt's only response is to further her grip upon the man in her clutches, the desparation evident in his rasping breaths drowning out the sickly sizzle of silver barbs upon vampiric flesh. And then, all at once, there is a tightening of her grip, a grotesque snapping of bone and then he is still.

Isolt seeks to swallow past the fibrous knot that clenches in her throat, the realization of what she has just done not failing to dawn upon her. For the first time ever in this life or the one that had come before... she had killed someone, irrevocably snuffed out the dancing flame of their living soul. But, she urges inwardly, better he than Tetradore. It is this thought and the recollection of all that Risque had done, all that she had destroyed, that culminates in the tightening of a delicate jaw as Isolt launches the man's body to land at her would-be master's feet. The thud of his heft heralds silence for a too-long moment before the bodies that surround her Maker's picturesque form erupt in a frenzy of movement...