I locked the door, I shut all my windows but you creep in like a whisper

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*After exchanging an owl or two with Bellatrix and then the Ministry to dig up who Andromeda Black--Andromeda Tonks, apparently--was married to, and then who he was, and who his muggle parents were, Evan has the address and sends it along. Two minutes to midnight, he appears in a nearby copse of trees, masked and cloaked and ready. Under any other circumstances, he might be thrilled at the prospect of bonding with one of the Dark Lord's favorites over a lovely pile of steaming entrails, but tonight he feels strange.

He had to explain to Amrita this morning how to disable the wards around the flat, and gave her a key to the door. He's never done anything like it before, but it makes sense, and she's spending half her nights there anyway, and the other night he found himself unable to sleep for lack of her weight on the bed next to him. Whatever this thing is, working it through his system is most likely better than trying to play the martyr and shove her off or keep her at a distance. It's rather more fun this way besides. Nevermind the fact that he hasn't so much as looked at the stack of files copied from the Ministry of other city werewolves, and nevermind that he hasn't even tried to bring her hunting despite the current phase of the moon. Next month, or the month after, when there are not other things to attend to like Bellatrix and her fool's errands, maybe he will show her what he picked her for. Nevermind that the idea of picking her seems now less like a calculated part of a plan and more like providence.

Evan has never had occasion to lie to himself before, has always been totally at ease with all of his compulsions and motivations and indulged them or redirected them or stifled them as the need arose. Having to hide from himself now puts him ill at ease. The reason why this murder tonight will function as vengeance is because Andromeda fell in love with someone who she should not have, someone filthy and not worthy of her name or blood. Why it makes him uneasy, he does not want to think.

Still, if there is one thing Evan Rosier is good at, it is serving the Dark Lord and the interests of the other Death Eaters. If there are two things he is good at, it is that and killing. They are both his birthright, passed down from Dearborn. But he is grateful tonight for the mask, for its impervious and smooth surface pressed to his face, for its narrow slits sealed around his eyes. It has been his face when he could not show his own, and now, it hides him both from any authorities who might peer in and also from Bellatrix and himself. Something tells him his own face might betray him in a way his wand will not, and for that, he is thankful that he might hide.*

Comments

[ruined-siren.livejournal.com]

*Bellatrix just misses the trees, appearing with a crack in the middle of street. She is masked and cloaked, as well, but her sloppy Apparation attests to the fact that she feels strange, too. Murder, for her, has always been a sport. Like the way a Muggle hunts a deer, not necessarily to eat, but for the thrill of the hunt, the fun of the kill, and the pride that comes with a particularly marvelous job well done. Murder is impersonal because Muggles aren't people, but tonight has become personal, anyway.

A bit of it is revenge, which is as good a reason as any to kill. She can picture Sirius's guilt tearing him apart when he hears. But so much of it is more than that. This is punishment, for Andromeda, for that dirty, stupid man who stole her away from her family. This is an outlet twenty years' worth of anger and hate and sadness.

So Bellatrix stumbles a bit when she lands, but takes a deep breath and steels herself for the night's festivities. Distraction is not allowed. She's learned that lesson well, now. She glances around the empty street, hoping that Evan hasn't arrived, and that he didn't see the way her Apparation missed the mark.*

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*He does notice, but he's not about to mention it. Evan emerges from the trees, a twig snapping under his feet like a gunshot. He inclines his head to her as he approaches, and gestures to the little home.*

After you.

[ruined-siren.livejournal.com]

*She nods in response and strides purposefully toward the door. The lovely thing about Muggles is that their doors are always so simple to unlock. It squeaks open, revealing a small foyer and dark adjoining corridor. Once inside, she steps aside so that Evan can join her.

She pretends to ignore the photographs of Andy and Ted that grace the walls, along with the annoyance she feels as she begins to assume that Andy is close with her in-laws.*

Shall we start trying doors?

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

Let's. Upstairs.

*To demonstrate his willingness, he begins to creep slowly up the steps and around the corner to the hall. A soft spell opens the door to a darkened and empty study, and he turns to her, gesturing as if to say, your turn.*

[ruined-siren.livejournal.com]

*She doesn't hesitate, and turns to the door directly across the hall and whispers her own spell. The door slides open.

Jackpot.

She smirks beneath her mask and steps into the room, sinking back into the shadows as she beckons to Evan. The couple is sleeping, snoring softly. Bellatrix tilts her head to the side and watches them curiously, before whispering to Evan.*

Is there one that you would rather deal with? The man or the woman?

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

Man.

*There are death eaters who prefer to wreak their violence on women, but Evan is not among them. He will kill them, certainly, but there is no particular preference in him and the man is built rather like the picture he saw of Ted Tonks, the mudblood. Besides, judging by Bella's anger, it is best to leave her to anyone whose head she can replace with Andromeda.

His spell yanks he man from under his sheets so cleanly, he only gives a startled, sleepy noise until he's spread-eagled and pinned to thin air.*

I wouldn't presume to start without you, of course.

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

You're too kind.

*But even the pleasantry comes out different: low, from her throat, and her eyes are fixed on the sleeping couple as if Evan isn't even in the room. In the next instant the woman joins her husband, only she's upside-down, dangling by one ankle, wisps of hair trailing on the hardwood floor. Red, maybe, or brown, it's hard to tell in the darkness.

The screams are gratifying, and she has to raise her voice to be heard over them.*

Get the light.

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*Evan knows better than to ask why. He steps to the wall and flicks the switch, and the room is bathed in pale electric light.

The man's screeching is awfully loud and irritating. A pillow flies up and begins stuffing itself into his mouth. The first corner fits, and then more, but his cheeks begin to strain shortly and the corners of his lips split as the pillow keeps shoving itself inward and down.*

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*The sudden light hurts her eyes a bit--it's cold, ugly light on a cold, ugly room, as soulless as any of the hundreds of Muggle homes she's set foot in--why should she expect anything different from this one? Bellatrix tilts her head to the side, watching almost idly as the pillow makes short work of the man's face. Not that she's as prim as Evan on this particular subject--but it reminds her to cast a silencing charm on the room around them before, almost casually, Crucio.

After a healthy bit of that, the screaming woman's arm is flapping in the general direction of a Muggle device on the nighttable, a funny thing with a circular dial, and Bella can't help laughing, a harsh and almost cawing sound.*

Why do they always do that?

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*Evan shrugs. He could tell her about telephones--he's even gone so far as to use one once or twice, with Esmerelda's instruction--but now seems to be not quite the time.

He gestures, and the pillow comes out all in one, smeared with spit and blood. The man doesn't even have screams left in him, just desperate, weak gasping for air.

Evan takes out his knife and tilts his head.*

I was actually hoping to ask you a question, if you don't mind? Advice, more precisely.

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*She's leveled her wand now with a bit more finesse, and the woman goes rigid and cruciform, her nightgown falling around her face and exposing grandmotherly undergarments and a pale, soft belly. The incantation is murmured softly, and strips of skin peel back almost delicately from each of the woman's fingers and up her arms. Her voice is absent, but cordial enough.*

Of course, Evan. Anything.

*Under direction from her wand, the strips weave and unweave themselves like ribbons around twin maypoles--there isn't so very much blood, but droplets of it begin pattering steadily onto the floor.*

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

I find myself--involved. With a woman.

*He approaches the man, and prods his abdomen. He finds the ribcage and slices neatly along the curve of it in a semicircle, through the membrane, through the muscle. It's a surgical, easy, practiced maneuver. When he's finished, the man's innards slump outward. A charm stops the bleeding that might make him die more quickly than Evan wants. The man could live for days like this.*

It began a project, of sorts, but I find myself more personally invested than I would usually be.

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*Personally, Bellatrix views an excess of blood as mildly distasteful, but--well. To each his own. She takes a prim step or two back, so that none of it can get on the toes of her elegant boots. The strips of skin continue their gentle undulations, peeling back farther and farther up the woman's arms, widening as they go.*

Ah. Of course.

*It's difficult to make herself heard over the woman's gibbering and crying, so she seals her lips together with a flick of her wand--it doesn't eliminate the noise but dampens it sufficiently. She can't resist a quick little jab, but it's more dutiful than anything else.*

I do hope you've managed to abstain from poetry.

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*Evan pauses in removing the man's liver to look at her. Behind the mask, he's rolling his eyes.*

I do believe I've learned my lesson there, yes.

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

This is a pureblood, of course.

*There's no lift to her voice, but there's still a tiny iota of a question in there, much less friendly than the needle about the poetry. She had heard about Evan's predilections at school.

But that thought leads her to another thought, one that's more closely related to the middle-aged couple in front of them--to precisely who and what they are--and her wand hand jerks slightly. The flaying spell jerks as well, the strips coming off wider now, more clumsily, less prettily, like wallpaper.*

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

Of course she is.

*The stomach severs cleanly and is dropped out of Bella's sight, next to the bed, so she won't have to look at the leaking thing.*

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

It doesn't do to make projects of our kind, Evan. I hope I shouldn't have to remind you of that.

*In other words: let him play in the mud with his half-bloods if he must--it is one of the two or three very limited things they are good for--and leave the real women out of it. Still, if he's asking for advice, he's asking for advice, however evasively. She probes a little further, watching twin runnels of snot trickle down--or up--the Mudblood's face onto the floor.*

Is she unsuitable?

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*She is, in more way than one, and Evan can visualize her response to werewolf very clearly. It won't do to leave even the slightest window of doubt. He is jointing the man, beginning with his left shoulder, as he speaks.*

No. Perhaps strange, or far afield, but what else is to be expected, with the pickings so slim.

*The arm comes away cleanly, with all the efficiency of a butcher taking apart a chicken.*

I'm more concerned with the fact that this has gone from something that was intended to be of use to something more personal. I'm unsure if I should allow it to continue.

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*Ah. Another French something-or-other, then. Hopefully this one is a bit more robust. Bellatrix tilts her masked head at the Mudblood woman; her nostrils are thoroughly plugged now--between that and her sealed lips she's turning faintly blue, and that won't do at all. With a brief, almost elegant twirl of her wand, she punctures the woman's cheek and talks over the sucking and flapping noises that result.*

I can't say that I blame you, Evan. Have you seen the little dairycow they've set aside for Regulus?

*Pausing, she watches him butcher the man--it's awfully clinical of him-- and frowns beneath her mask. That's exactly the problem, then, isn't it.*

You needn't manage everything. So long as she's pureblood I don't see the issue.

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

I suppose you're right. Mercy, if I'd had a Higgs girl forced on me--well, thank goodness for Mother's patience.

*But the problem is that Bella wouldn't think this way if she knew the reality of the situation. He wishes to move forward but cannot, in good conscience, out of loyalty to his name and family. But he finds himself uninterested in moving back, and thus is force to dance sideways around it. Bella's advice is useless, and he's in the same bind he's been in for weeks now.

The man isn't bleeding out, but shock is setting in and there's not much left in him.*

This one is almost through. If you'd like to do the honors, you're welcome to it.

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*But she's fallen silent now, broody and still. The subject has brought her back to why they're here in the first place, why they're really here, not just Sirius and that infuriating joke of a Vow, how neatly she'd been outsmarted--but, of course, Andromeda, and the beast she's rutted on, and these, before them, the people who are in some roundabout way responsible. But it's awfully roundabout, not nearly as satisfying as she'd expected, and there's a stony frown behind her mask that would give most people who know her a reasonable amount of pause. The flaying spell is getting sloppier still, skin shucking off the woman in clumsy, ragged sheets that take chunks of flesh with them.

It comes out through gritted teeth, her voice tight.*

No, not yet.

*Dropping to one knee before what's left of the Mudbloods, she lifts her mask free in one swift movement and leans in close, gripping the woman by her punctured cheeks. Her voice is murderous--but somewhere, underneath it, it's ragged, unsteady.*

Look at me.





Look at me.

Do you know who I am?

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*Evan stays perfectly still, silencing the man at the throat. The only noise is the gentle whistling of his torn throat, and Bella.

The woman is still Silenced, but she searches Bella's exposed face with growing horror. The jaw beneath her sealed mouth makes the shape of a name, but it's longer than it should be. It's got four syllables instead of Bella's three.*

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*This hasn't been rage, not yet, but now she can feel the tenuous hold she's kept on herself slipping away, parting easily like wet parchment--almost gratefully, she lets it go.

When she returns to herself there are tears on her cheeks and half the woman's head is gone. She's leveling her wand at the man, but it's shaking badly, the tip of it skittering all directions as if she's liable to break her own fingers at any moment or send the Killing Curse at the wall or the ceiling or at Evan.*

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*And isn't this just precisely the reason why he had been in love with her when he was younger? It still stirs inside of him, that old warmth, the smitten affection of seeing something so kindred to the predator that lives within him, and yet also so much more reckless and emotional and vulnerable--and, naturally, there is the blunt and sexual appeal of a beautiful woman with blood on her face and hands. He can't help it if his body responds to that kind of stimuli.

Still, whatever residual enjoyment he might get out of being close to the death of the old man, it won't do to catch her curse. He steps smoothly out of the way, where the shake in her fingers won't threaten him.*

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*It's awhile before her hand steadies out, a long while during which all she's really conscious of is the man blinking and twitching and laid out as neatly as a butchered animal. Finally, Avada Kedavra hits him cleanly in the chest and all there is in the room is the great rushing sound of the spell and the gurgling he makes before he's quiet.

It's awhile yet before she even remembers Evan is in the room. But at least her hand is steady as she picks up the mask and fits it again to her face. Once she finds her voice, it's steady, but distant, faraway.*

Let's go.