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All feeling appeared to have been leeched from that white face, those crystal eyes.

They looked like what the vampire was.

They looked dead.

“I’m afraid we have need to return things to how we rather enjoyed them in the past,” Betial added, exhaling another cloud of the sweet-smelling smoke. “We miss that world, you see. And while I rather like your niece and nephew, they will get quite the scolding as well. They will be given some fairly strong words, and quiteinflexibleconditions around remaining on this tidy little bauble we call home…”

Faustus wanted to not have an interest in what the vampire said.

He wanted to not fall for his annoying attempt to pull him in, to evoke his unease or fear or curiosity… or whatever the hell the vampire was attempting to evoke in him now.

“But that is a matter for another day, yes?” Betial the Vampire King smiled, making a graceful gesture with the hand holding the cigarette. “For I hear sweet Miriam is awake once more, from whatever it is you did to her. They are flying out to complete the wedding ceremony… in just a few days now. Happy news, yes?”

Faustus didn’t answer.

He watched the vampire’s eyes.

He saw the faint curls of blood there, like bare wisps of scarlet smoke.

He could not look away from the lack of feeling there.

He knew what that look meant.

In spite of himself, he rose to the vampire’s taunts.

“You would kill me now? Now, Betial?” He met that predatory gaze, scorn in his voice. “The humans won’t like that very much. You would deprive them of their charade of justice and normalcy? Or is that the point?”

Faustus saw the vampire’s eyes react in a bare flicker at what he called him.

“…Oh, I do apologize, ‘Brick.’ I am not supposed to know your true name, am I? Your sire-granted name? That is not for us mere mortals to let pass over our tongues.”

Charles’ voice grew even more scornful.

“Whatever you choose to think of yourself, or call yourself, you cannot possibly believe the humans think of you as some ‘indigenous’ race. On this obviouslyhumanworld, you are as much an alien as I. More, perhaps. Certainly far more dangerous.”

The vampire king’s smile didn’t move.

That empty look never left the cracked crystal eyes.

When he spoke, his voice came close to sounding bored.

“It is so interesting, how quickly fates can turn.” Brick’s voice altered as he spoke, pulling in a vampire’s thrallish melody. “How difficult it must be for you, Charles. To have no power whatsoever. To know your fate, to understand it… perhaps even accept it as inevitable after a fashion… yet to be unable to let go of who you once were. You cannot help yourself, can you? You simply cannotstopyourself from chafing against this powerlessness. Chafing against the reality of your defeat. For that isreallywhat bothers you, isn’t it, Charles? Losing?”

The vampire’s smile widened perceptibly.

That same smile continued to elude his eyes.

He studied Faustus like a butterfly with a pin through its thorax.

“You simply cannotstandthe fact that you have nothing to threaten me with,” the vampire marveled. “No means of enacting even thesmallestamount of vengeance or fear. No means of eliciting any emotion out of me, or out of anyone else. Nothing except perhaps pity. That must simply betorturefor one like yourself.”

The vampire’s smile turned musing.

“So you threaten me with humans… with knowledge of my name… you seek any means of leverage you can find. Anything. But the sad truth is that you have nothing, Charles. You have nothing left. You cannot blow so much as a dandelion’s petals at me… assuming you could reach me in the first place through these prison walls.”

Betial again gestured fluidly around at where he stood.

Faustus felt his rage intensify.