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Fandom: KHR
Summary: After Giotto's death - and his own - Spade goes to visit his family and has a nice chat with one of his siblings.
Warnings: Violence, mass murder, Spade not in a sane place.
The manor was old; rebuilt and added to over the centuries from an old castle, a wall around the compound. There were a few small doors in the wall in a few places, and a couple of hidden tunnels and escape passages; it'd be difficult for any outside attacker to prevent escape, particularly for anyone with enough standing in the household to know the passages out.
For someone from the family itself, it was far too easy; the right kind of simple "explosives" that wouldn't be explosive so much as heat - enough to fuse hinges and locks, a bit of illusory intervention to tear over a couple very real trees and use them to block each of the side entrances; booby traps with less subtle explosives on all but one of the tunnels, rigged to blow the next time the escape route was opened, sabotage to the mechanisms for the big old fortified castle gate out front that'd been kept over the ages. It was late enough that it'd be a bit before anyone noticed the gate, and the other entrances were emergency exits; they weren't tried until after it was already too late. A couple hours spent ghosting around, and there were booby traps spread haphazardly around rooms where they would be stumbled across as people settled down for the night; a few good incendiary traps and a number of other simple rigs with knives and spikes, mostly focused around the more valued servants' quarters and the various rooms associated with the family themselves - bedchambers, studies, bathrooms, hall doors.
Some of the others had more personal touches; one of the head servants who took tea in a certain study, pulled apart with the head spiked onto part of the chair, entrails spilling out of it over the arms, room silenced so that there wouldn't be an alarm unless someone wandered in, a few of the other outlying servants and cousins that lived there eviscerated, dismembered, and turned into decorations on their rooms.
Alarms started going up after one of the fire traps was set off; within a short span of time, the house was in chaos, fire spreading through several of the halls, bleeding injuries and deaths going off as there was scrambling for something, word spreading randomly - the gate was sealed, the doors out were sealed, a cousin killed in a bomb on a tunnel, another maimed; the house was going up in flames, it had to be someone within the family - and that led to a few deaths to faster tempers and paranoia, accusations and panic.
It had already been glorious chaos by the time one of the younger surviving sons managed to find which tunnel didn't have any reports of booby traps sealing it shut, grabbing two bodyguards that were mostly intact and heading into the wine cellar.
It was quickly obvious why there hadn't been reports of anything wrong with that tunnel; there was blood splattered across the floor and room, a few of the other hired guards and family in pieces on the floor as if there'd been some kind of wild animals tearing at them. On the ceiling, his old father was pinned to the stone by tree roots that shouldn't have been there, limbs twisted at angles that didn't work, head dangling loosely from a neck broken to the point of flopping like ragged string. The lady of the house was to the side of the door, drifting dead in a column of water with nothing to hold it in place.
A chair had been placed in front of the trapdoor, claimed by the actual youngest son, draped over the chair with a glass of wine from the casks held loosely in one hand, smiling wider than any of them had ever seen and looking entirely too healthy for someone reported lost in a shipwreck. The son that should've still been living took a step back behind his two bodyguards, turning pale.
"Eusabio! I was wondering when I would see you; I was starting to think you'd run afoul of something else and I wouldn't get the pleasure of meeting you one last time." His dead brother - run off for years under the alias of Daemon Spade - raised the glass in a mock-toast. "How's your eye been?"
One hand twitched, and he swallowed, stopping himself from drawing any more attention to the eyepatch he'd had since they were children - when he'd shoved his younger brother down a hill in the woods, and then was mauled by one of the impossible giant man-eating spiders he'd just been terrorizing his sibling with stories of.
Their father had a few scars from some incident involving that same sibling as if the trees in the woods had just decided to attack him, and a few years later, their mother had tried to drown the "possessed" child, only to be the one nearly dying of water in her lungs without having ever been in the water.
"Madre - we'd heard you were dead!"
The smile widened, a gash of teeth. "Oh, I am - I just had to come back from Hell to deal with ... unfinished business."
The bodyguards were about as thrilled with this as their charge, edging away themselves with guns raised on the smaller man in front of them; Eusabio scrabbled for something around his neck, holding out a cross as if it'd somehow keep his dead sibling away, eyes closed and stumbling through bits of different prayers.
Spade tilted his head in amusement, downing the rest of the wine; there was a scrape of wood on stone before the chair disappeared in a brief flicker of indigo mist as he stood.
And staggered back, collapsing under four gunshots to the chest from the bodyguards, still.
The fragmented prayers continued for a moment before Eusabio cracked an eyelid, the bodyguards nervously taking a couple steps closer, guns still trained on the apparently dead body. The noble son glanced up, and to the side. "He's not dead, it's not over, it's still there -"
Something black moved from between the casks on either side, spiders the size of large dogs with bladed limbs cutting off the bodyguards at the knees; there was screaming for a couple seconds, and Eusabio stumbled back, tripping with his back to the door out, the cross still held out in a shaking hand as he curled up against the door, trying to drown out the noise as the spiders - stories he'd made up - tore apart the two armed men.
Then there were footsteps accompanied by other clicking sounds, and he curled tighter against the door, trying to hide behind the cross with his voice shaking more around bits and words. The footsteps stopped a foot in front of him, a pause before a slow, measured voice full of contempt.
"I've killed priests, Eusabio; priests with actual faith and a grasp of all those silly rules about kindness and compassion and 'God's will to show love towards all mankind'. Prayer is words and that cross is a lump of metal."
"God - " His voice cut out, choked and broken hoarse. "Rosario - " Another faint sound as Spade knelt in front of him, more on eye level; he flinched, opening his eyes to find that the spiders were gone, something that somehow was less comforting; the gunshot wounds were visible, more blood from them drenching the rich fabric Spade was wearing, four ragged holes. "What are you?"
It was, briefly, an almost genial smile; an expression that didn't mesh with the carnage. "Isn't it obvious? You and the others were right; I am the demon you called me all along."
Eusabio's hand tightened around the cross, torn between pulling it closer and trying to keep it between him and his brother with a brief, choked whimper. "Why... why now - all these years - you'd said it was past - "
Spade's smile flickered wider, and a little darker. "Thank Elena for that; she was the one that convinced me I could be human for a while, and all that stayed my hand against you." He stood, and Eusabio flinched back around the cross with a stifled sob.
He walked away, stopping by the trap door; the roots holding their father to the ceiling vanished, the broken body dropping to the floor, as did the water to the side, Eusabio flinching as each body hit the ground limp.
"You might want to look again, dear brother."
One eye cracked open; there were odd boxes scattered around the cellar with damp cord between them, smelling of oil, another couple of the fuse-lines running past him under the door into the hallway.
"Goodbye." It was paired with a brief, cheerful wave from halfway down the stairs out, and a scrap of burning paper held down to the beginning of one of the fuses - then the body dropped to the ground, gunshots still solidly in evidence, but one of the servants, with no sign of his brother left in the room.
Summary: After Giotto's death - and his own - Spade goes to visit his family and has a nice chat with one of his siblings.
Warnings: Violence, mass murder, Spade not in a sane place.
The manor was old; rebuilt and added to over the centuries from an old castle, a wall around the compound. There were a few small doors in the wall in a few places, and a couple of hidden tunnels and escape passages; it'd be difficult for any outside attacker to prevent escape, particularly for anyone with enough standing in the household to know the passages out.
For someone from the family itself, it was far too easy; the right kind of simple "explosives" that wouldn't be explosive so much as heat - enough to fuse hinges and locks, a bit of illusory intervention to tear over a couple very real trees and use them to block each of the side entrances; booby traps with less subtle explosives on all but one of the tunnels, rigged to blow the next time the escape route was opened, sabotage to the mechanisms for the big old fortified castle gate out front that'd been kept over the ages. It was late enough that it'd be a bit before anyone noticed the gate, and the other entrances were emergency exits; they weren't tried until after it was already too late. A couple hours spent ghosting around, and there were booby traps spread haphazardly around rooms where they would be stumbled across as people settled down for the night; a few good incendiary traps and a number of other simple rigs with knives and spikes, mostly focused around the more valued servants' quarters and the various rooms associated with the family themselves - bedchambers, studies, bathrooms, hall doors.
Some of the others had more personal touches; one of the head servants who took tea in a certain study, pulled apart with the head spiked onto part of the chair, entrails spilling out of it over the arms, room silenced so that there wouldn't be an alarm unless someone wandered in, a few of the other outlying servants and cousins that lived there eviscerated, dismembered, and turned into decorations on their rooms.
Alarms started going up after one of the fire traps was set off; within a short span of time, the house was in chaos, fire spreading through several of the halls, bleeding injuries and deaths going off as there was scrambling for something, word spreading randomly - the gate was sealed, the doors out were sealed, a cousin killed in a bomb on a tunnel, another maimed; the house was going up in flames, it had to be someone within the family - and that led to a few deaths to faster tempers and paranoia, accusations and panic.
It had already been glorious chaos by the time one of the younger surviving sons managed to find which tunnel didn't have any reports of booby traps sealing it shut, grabbing two bodyguards that were mostly intact and heading into the wine cellar.
It was quickly obvious why there hadn't been reports of anything wrong with that tunnel; there was blood splattered across the floor and room, a few of the other hired guards and family in pieces on the floor as if there'd been some kind of wild animals tearing at them. On the ceiling, his old father was pinned to the stone by tree roots that shouldn't have been there, limbs twisted at angles that didn't work, head dangling loosely from a neck broken to the point of flopping like ragged string. The lady of the house was to the side of the door, drifting dead in a column of water with nothing to hold it in place.
A chair had been placed in front of the trapdoor, claimed by the actual youngest son, draped over the chair with a glass of wine from the casks held loosely in one hand, smiling wider than any of them had ever seen and looking entirely too healthy for someone reported lost in a shipwreck. The son that should've still been living took a step back behind his two bodyguards, turning pale.
"Eusabio! I was wondering when I would see you; I was starting to think you'd run afoul of something else and I wouldn't get the pleasure of meeting you one last time." His dead brother - run off for years under the alias of Daemon Spade - raised the glass in a mock-toast. "How's your eye been?"
One hand twitched, and he swallowed, stopping himself from drawing any more attention to the eyepatch he'd had since they were children - when he'd shoved his younger brother down a hill in the woods, and then was mauled by one of the impossible giant man-eating spiders he'd just been terrorizing his sibling with stories of.
Their father had a few scars from some incident involving that same sibling as if the trees in the woods had just decided to attack him, and a few years later, their mother had tried to drown the "possessed" child, only to be the one nearly dying of water in her lungs without having ever been in the water.
"Madre - we'd heard you were dead!"
The smile widened, a gash of teeth. "Oh, I am - I just had to come back from Hell to deal with ... unfinished business."
The bodyguards were about as thrilled with this as their charge, edging away themselves with guns raised on the smaller man in front of them; Eusabio scrabbled for something around his neck, holding out a cross as if it'd somehow keep his dead sibling away, eyes closed and stumbling through bits of different prayers.
Spade tilted his head in amusement, downing the rest of the wine; there was a scrape of wood on stone before the chair disappeared in a brief flicker of indigo mist as he stood.
And staggered back, collapsing under four gunshots to the chest from the bodyguards, still.
The fragmented prayers continued for a moment before Eusabio cracked an eyelid, the bodyguards nervously taking a couple steps closer, guns still trained on the apparently dead body. The noble son glanced up, and to the side. "He's not dead, it's not over, it's still there -"
Something black moved from between the casks on either side, spiders the size of large dogs with bladed limbs cutting off the bodyguards at the knees; there was screaming for a couple seconds, and Eusabio stumbled back, tripping with his back to the door out, the cross still held out in a shaking hand as he curled up against the door, trying to drown out the noise as the spiders - stories he'd made up - tore apart the two armed men.
Then there were footsteps accompanied by other clicking sounds, and he curled tighter against the door, trying to hide behind the cross with his voice shaking more around bits and words. The footsteps stopped a foot in front of him, a pause before a slow, measured voice full of contempt.
"I've killed priests, Eusabio; priests with actual faith and a grasp of all those silly rules about kindness and compassion and 'God's will to show love towards all mankind'. Prayer is words and that cross is a lump of metal."
"God - " His voice cut out, choked and broken hoarse. "Rosario - " Another faint sound as Spade knelt in front of him, more on eye level; he flinched, opening his eyes to find that the spiders were gone, something that somehow was less comforting; the gunshot wounds were visible, more blood from them drenching the rich fabric Spade was wearing, four ragged holes. "What are you?"
It was, briefly, an almost genial smile; an expression that didn't mesh with the carnage. "Isn't it obvious? You and the others were right; I am the demon you called me all along."
Eusabio's hand tightened around the cross, torn between pulling it closer and trying to keep it between him and his brother with a brief, choked whimper. "Why... why now - all these years - you'd said it was past - "
Spade's smile flickered wider, and a little darker. "Thank Elena for that; she was the one that convinced me I could be human for a while, and all that stayed my hand against you." He stood, and Eusabio flinched back around the cross with a stifled sob.
He walked away, stopping by the trap door; the roots holding their father to the ceiling vanished, the broken body dropping to the floor, as did the water to the side, Eusabio flinching as each body hit the ground limp.
"You might want to look again, dear brother."
One eye cracked open; there were odd boxes scattered around the cellar with damp cord between them, smelling of oil, another couple of the fuse-lines running past him under the door into the hallway.
"Goodbye." It was paired with a brief, cheerful wave from halfway down the stairs out, and a scrap of burning paper held down to the beginning of one of the fuses - then the body dropped to the ground, gunshots still solidly in evidence, but one of the servants, with no sign of his brother left in the room.
