Tuesday. August 15, 2006. After midnight.

Salvador had faced all manner of opponents in his short lifetime. He'd fought against dozens of supernatural beings. Vampires were popular, and there was never a shortage of them in Rhydin, particularly with his closest friend being one. Werewolves were always fun, the mutual savagery he shared with them made for entertaining battles, especially when they clawed him up enough to get a taste of his blood. Oh how they howled. His most formidable opponent had been his uncle Kymeera, however. The Nightmare Keeper had been a thorn in his side ever since his birth. In fact, he had been convinced that Kymeera had been the only creature in all of creation that posed a threat against him. Until tonight.

The predator had a reputation in Rhydin. People in black market society knew of him in whispers. He was the weapon of choice. When one tycoon wanted to get rid of another tycoon, they always found a way to get in touch with him and hire him for the job. Though they should have all known that after he finished the job, he always came back to get rid of them as well. Criminals were criminals, and Salvador made it his job to eliminate them everywhere they cropped up.

A week ago he'd been contacted by a man who had hired him to assassinate another man by the name of Niklaus Kostya. The man who hired him had given no name for himself, but had given plenty of description and information on this black market kingpin. At least, the stranger had said Kostya was a black market kingpin. Salvador had been unable to read the man's aura to determine whether not he was telling the truth. But with the amount of money he was willing to pay the boy, he had decided to take his word for it. He should have been suspicious.

Not long after that initial contact, Salvador had spent some time researching. He hadn't been able to come up with more information on Niklaus Kostya than his client had given him. After Dris had mentioned wanting to go on a hunting trip with him, he decided to enlist the bard's help. Dris hadn't been able to dig up anymore information either. All they had was a name, a location, and a list of things they were supposed to acquire. It was only one thing, actually. A briefcase full of documents that Niklaus Kostya meant to buy off of another informant that very night. Neither of them knew precisely what those documents were, but at least now Dris had a chance to be nosy and find out. That is, if the bard had managed to get his ass out of the building and far away to safety. Salvador didn't have much time to dwell on that, let alone extend his clairvoyance to check. He was far too busy.

He hadn't got a very good look at Niklaus Kostya until the man lay in an unidentifiable mess on the floor of the conference room. Everything had moved far too quickly, under the cover of unnatural darkness, for him to have gotten a good look before. The aftermath of the battle had resulted in a bloodbath. The other men hadn't stood a chance, especially with Dris firing 36 rounds of bullets from two separate but equal guns. Salvador had caught a few of those bullets himself, but they hardly slowed him down. Only now was he feeling their impact, as the slow leak of acidic blood oozing out of the wounds and eating away at the leather of his gear.

The only difference between Niklaus Kostya and the other twenty to thirty men present, now deceased, was the fact that this man was now regenerating at an alarmingly rapid rate. Not even Salvador could stitch himself back together that quickly, as the loss of blood was reminding him. Sure, he could slow it down quite a bit and stop himself from bleeding to death. But even he needed to sew up those wounds, eventually. How much longer was he going to last, and how many times would this man (or whatever the hell he was) pull himself back together again?

Darkness filled the room steadily. The predator focussed his sight in other ways, by turning off the filter to let his fae eyes view the world as it really was. The body of Niklaus Kostya pulled itself together like some shadowy serpent and rose off the floor. Only a second ago he had shouted at Dris one last time and sent the bard running for his life out of the room. Hopefully out of the building. Hopefully the man remembered not to head home and instead to their rendezvous point. Hopefully he managed to get out of here and meet up with him! He decided not to waste any more time. With a snarl, he spun the hook swords and brought them down together to rend the man in two again.

But his attempt was halted by two matching swords. Steel clashed against steel, and the two of them looked deep into each others' eyes, bared their teeth at each other, and growled wordless challenges. Kostya's swords were only identical in shape. They were black instead of metallic. Black like the shadows around them. "Who the fuck are you?" Salvador snarled at him as they pressed weight against weight, trying to overpower each other.

There was something unnerving about the man's voice, serpentine and of indeterminate gender. Sure, he looked male. He didn't sound male, nor female. Nor did he have a definite scent to determine the matter either. The voice instantly reminded him of Kymeera, with the way it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. How it seemed to instill the very core of his being with a sense of fear. Even the laughter was snakelike, a hissing and breathy sort of chuckle. "Don't you recognisse me, boy?" It was Kostya who won the match of strength. He pushed his swords against Salvador's swords and sent the predator stumbling back a few steps.

Not only did he send the boy stumbling, but he also caught his ankle with one of the hooks and tripped him up. Salvador lost his balance and fell hard on his back. Impossible. This man was as fast as he was, if not faster! Fortunately, his reflexes were still quick enough to deflect the downward strike from the second blade with one of his own. "I only recognize you from your pictures, chupaverga," he growled. He tried a similar tactic with an outward swing from his primary sword, the right hand. But Kostya caught hook against hook and pulled back, successfully jerking the weapon out of Salvador's grasp. How was he so quick?

"You sshould know me," Kostya hissed. No. There was something more in that voice than fear. It was something more familiar. An energy that coursed deeper, something far older and more diabolical than fear incarnate. Was that possible? It made him shiver, and not altogether unpleasantly. That was the most disturbing thing of all.

Scraping steel against steel, he caught hook against hook and matched tactics to pull Kostya's primary sword out of his grasp. As with his own, it was a successful tactic that sent the weapon clattering across the floor overhead. But the man brought his other sword around quickly, before Salvador could deflect it. He cried out as the hook cut through leather and imbedded itself into his shoulder. God that fucking hurt! But worse than that? He heard his blood shrieking in dismay. The only thing burning and melting was the leather of his outfit. The sword itself was immune!

His blood was boiling. He was already starting to develop a fever. With his heart pumping at swifter speeds to keep what little remained flowing, trying to regenerate rapidly, he was losing concentration. Bullet wounds and more. Now this. Kostya stomped down on his wrist and held him at bay. Fuck. No one had ever bested him in hand to hand combat like this before. "Who ... who the fuck are you?" Great. He was gasping. Panting. Growing weaker by the second. He might have enough to strength left in him to relocate the fuck out of there, but he wanted his answer. He needed to know who this man was, what he was.

"Look closser." Niklaus Kostya crouched down over him, planted a knee in his stomach. Instantly, Salvador wanted to reach up and rip him apart. He didn't like people being that close to him without his permission. But the man had skill. The steel embedded in his shoulder had connected with the appropriate tissues to incapacitate his right arm. He couldn't lift it, couldn't even feel it! And his other hand. Well. It was captured under a boot right now. So all he could do was growl, grit his teeth, and do as the man had instructed. He looked into the eyes.

The eyes. They were dark eyes. Hollow eyes. With the filter removed, he saw two black holes in a white skull. This man's aura was unlike any other he had ever seen. There were no swirling colors, but it wasn't pitch black or gray. Niklaus Kostya wasn't undead, but nor was he living. He was a mass of spirit energy the likes of which he had never seen before. None of the fae looked like this, at least none that he knew. Their essences swirled and twisted, never stopped moving. This creature, this man, whatever he was, had a stable and solid aura of dingy white. Hot white that made his eyes hurt to look at. An illogical contrast to a creature who could manipulate shadows and darkness.

It made him dizzy to look at that aura for too long. The sight of it smothered him and suffocated him. A purely physical force of ethereal menace. His eyes rolled and without even consciously thinking about it, the filter slid back into place. When he was able to clear his head, he looked again into Niklaus Kostya's eyes. What he saw terrified him, and Salvador Delahada feared nothing.

He realizes then that he is laying on the ground, black and sooty, and it undulates like some great serpent beneath him. In fact, it is a serpent! ... The serpent is a monstrously large creature, completely composed of shadow. Except for the eyes. They glow red against the black of its body.

"No," Salvador whimpered. To think that he would ever whimper. He used his legs to try pushing himself away, but Kostya kept him pinned. The attempt only caused the hook to sink deeper into his shoulder. He grit his teeth and caught his breath to keep himself from crying out again. "Nngh!" Kostya applied more pressure and leaned in closer. He couldn't look away from the man's eyes.

The serpent slithers around him. Though he is not as hungry around it as he is with the man near, he still feels it. He draws in a deep breath and he can hear the serpent hiss. Then he feels something more. He feels it slide into him, through his mouth as he closes his eyes. He chokes, coughs. Something of that immense size should not be able to fit inside of him! But somehow it does, and he falls over onto his side, shivering and coughing. It is such a quick exchange. Once the serpent was there and now he can feel it. Tendrils of slimy scales slithering through his veins and under his skin, wrapping around his spine.

"No!" Then he shouted, wanting to disbelieve what he was seeing. Belief defines reality, as he was taught. But it's there. The truth of it is there in those black, black, black eyes. Salvador was colorblind, but that made no difference. He saw only pupils. Maybe it was the disorientation caused by too much blood loss. He could feel his strength waning, fading away, draining out of him with his blood. "Imposible," he hissed at the man.

Kostya leaned in even closer. In fact, he sat down right on the boy's stomach. Still he kept one foot pressed heavily down on his left wrist, so it was an awkward arrangement of the body. But somehow he managed, as if he had slithered on top of him. The body remained human, but the presence was still all serpentine. "Not imposssible," he hissed in response. "But not exssactly the ssame."

"Sin took you out," Salvador protested, trembling. Even his breath was trembling. He was starting to sweat from the growing fever. "Madre ... she ... she got rid of you." He remembered it clearly, painfully clearly.

"Sshe gave me exssactly what I needed," Kostya crooned. He jerked back on the hook sword, and that time the boy cried out again. "Ooh, sshe didn't know sshe wass giving me what I needed, of coursse. But it wass exssactly what I needed nonethelesss." The man let go of the sword, since Salvador couldn't move that arm anyway, and stuck his finger in the wound next to the hook.

He couldn't grit his teeth together any harder, but he tried. He heard them grind together as he writhed under the weight of the man. "Rrrgh! Stop!" His blood licked at the finger probing deep into his flesh and whined more protests into his mind. Not only was the sword immune to it, but the man himself seemed to be as well!

Kostya didn't stop, though. He reached with his other hand to pry the wound open further and leaned ever closer to take a peek inside. "What a fasscinating creature you are, boy," he said. That fascination was audible in those hissing tones. "I knew I had to meet you when I merged with the sshadow."

Salvador snarled and writhed even more. How dare this man, this ... whatever he was!, touch him like this. Christ. That fucking hurt! Oddly, he sort of knew how his brother felt. Maybe this was just a karmic backlash. He'd had those before. Damn pain in the ass too. "Mer--" He gasped for air. His lungs burned for no reason that he could determine. Maybe a bullet had ripped into one of them? No time to check now. He tried again. "Merged with it?"

"Oh yess," Kostya hissed. He pried the wound open a little further and Salvador howled his outrage, tipping back his head and closing his eyes tight. He could hear the man's viciously pleased smile when he spoke. "Your sshadow gave me sstrength, child. What wass itss name? Lussuss?" He slid two fingers deep into the wound next.

"Yeh-yes! Fuck! Stop!" The pressure of two fingers exploring caused one of his legs to spasm and twitch. He also thought his arm might have moved for a second there, but he wasn't sure. Hot tears were gathering at the corners of his eyes. He was starting to see bright white spots on the insides of his eyelids too. A mewling whine slipped out of him, completely unbidden. He held his breath.

"Lussuss told me a great deal about you, boy. Before I abssorbed it completely, I learned a great deal about you." Salvador lost the grip on his second sword, finally. The man lifted his foot and kicked it across the floor. He shifted his weight to press his knee against the boy's arm instead, keeping it pinned to the floor. That change also pressed the other knee deeper into his gut. He wasn't going to be able to breathe again, but he gasped for air anyway. "Half fae, aren't you?"

Only now was he beginning to hear it. Underneath the serpentine layers of vocal patterns, this man had an accent. The accent was something completely foreign to Salvador, but at the same time very familiar. Kostya's voice was lined with an ancient dialect, one that had been dead for centuries, but he couldn't place it. He knew he should be able to, but it just wasn't coming to him. Probably because he had shut his mother out. Half fae the man had said. "S-sí. Please. Stop."

Every time he begged (God, was he actually begging?) Kostya to stop, the man only proceeded further. He slid a third finger into the wound and held the boy steady while cutting through the leather with one of Salvador's own knives. The predator could do little more than gasp for more air. His supply was limited and very difficult to come by with all that weight bearing down on him. The man wasn't even fat! But damned if he didn't weigh a ton. "Ssuch a rare thing," the man cooed. "And what iss thiss in your blood, child?" Those three fingers retreated. Salvador sucked in a stinging, but relieved, breath and sagged against the floor, panting. He managed to open his eyes in time to watch Kostya licking cold orange blood off his fingers. "It tasstess like death."

"Ih-it should," Salvador said, still struggling to breathe. "Mi ... mi madre..."

He watched a wide and wicked smile form on Kostya's lips. "Iss the Linewalker," he said, finishing the statement for the boy. The man sounded more than pleased by the revelation. The fact that Kostya knew his mother only made him tremble more, but he was willing to claim it had only been the blood loss and his waning strength later on. Still, the way he said her title... He sounded as if he were making connections with an old friend whom he hadn't seen in several decades. "When did sshe finally decside to mate?"

Maybe if Kostya kept him pinned like this long enough his blood would eat a hole in the floor. A big enough hole to send them both crashing down to the next level. He could no longer hear it whispering to him, let alone hear it burning through tile. What was keeping it from acting? Kostya grabbed the handle of his sword again and jerked back on the sword. The pain was enough to cause Salvador to cry out again, enough to make his muscles spasm all over. And it was also enough to make him decide to answer the damned question. "T-two years ah-ago!"

"Sso young? But look how big you are," Kostya said, intrigued and astounded perhaps. He slid a hand across the boy's jaw, and Salvador hissed at him, closing his eyes once more. The man was unfazed by the potential threat of that sound. After all, he had the boy pinned to the floor. He grabbed Salvador's jaw and turned his head to one side, then the other. "It musst be the esssencse in your blood." An accurate guess.

"Nngh." That was all Salvador could say. What he meant to say was to tell the man to get his filthy hands off of him before he gutted him. But words were becoming more difficult to come by. He never should have closed his eyes. Opening them now felt impossible. Even breathing was becoming next to impossible. Slowly but surely he was losing the capability.

That's when he felt the weight lift off of him. Niklaus Kostya stood up. A looming shadow hovered over him, which he was only aware of because of how dark everything seemed behind his eyelids. "Fasscinating," the man hissed again, and he meant it. "It would be a sshame for you to perissh sso ssoon, boy."

There was one last sharp pain when Kostya tore the hook out of his shoulder. Salvador howled in agony. His body even jerked and twitched, but he wasn't aware of it. The very last thing he was aware of was something the man said. "We sshall meet again, Ssalvador Delahada." And then everything became darkness...