FIC: The Necessary Steps :: The Lycan Master [R (1/4)]
Lady B, I sincerely hope that I did your pairing justice. *crosses fingers*
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Story Title: The Necessary Steps
Chapter Title: The Lycan Master (1/4)
Author: DMitchell1985
Beta: indigochild76
Fact Checker: decadence1
Genre: Drama and a bit of Angst
Rating: R - "adult" language/situations and a couple gruesome descriptions.
Summary: No matter what he did or how many of his brothers were murdered by the Vampires, Lucian's infatuations continue to burrow deeper still into the clan that betrayed him all of those centuries ago. All the while, Selene is forced to face the dissolution of her reality at the hands of an unexpected culprit. Despite all of this, they both take the necessary steps on their parts to bring about the end of the war.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the canon characters, places, or events that are included in my story. And no, I don't make a monetary profit off of my fiction, only the occasional review.
Warnings: Slash, some porn-ish material (How in the heck did that get in there?!), incest (Lucian/Kraven) and a couple of rather unsavory descriptions of what Lycans can accomplish when they are pissed off.
Spoilers: Underworld and Underworld: Evolution
Pairings: Lucian/Selene, Lucian/Kraven, Lucian/Sonja, Selene/Marcus, Selene/Michael, and Kraven/Erika
Chapter Word Count: 2342
LJ Crossposting: my LiveJournal, uw_fanfic
Author's Notes: This was written for my own Multi-Fandom Unloved Pairings Challenge. It took me ages to flesh this out, but I am happy that I got to play with a few of my own plot theories. You know, despite this technically being my first Underworld fic. I also took a guess at the city that the movie takes place in.
A huge thank you to my beta, indigochild76. Thank you SO for taking the time to go through this for me. I would have still been panicking if you had not come along and had nice, calming chats with me. = D
The longer story notes are at the end of the fourth chapter, if you want to read them. Happy reading, everyone!
Chapter List:
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
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Lucian shifted in the uncomfortable metal chair he had taken to slumping into following each disappointment that further scarred his hope for some measure of respectable peace between the Lycan and the Vampire clans in order to prop an elbow upon the wooden table before him. At every instance, when a small victory made his goal seem only millimeters away from his grasp, cracks appeared in his plan.
If it was not Kraven's growing impatience, it was surely yet another human they had captured who did not possess the genetic coding they were so desperately searching for. It was in these moments of frustration that Lucian found his thoughts dwelling heavier than usual upon Sonja. It had been nearly one thousand years since she had been murdered, and yet the ache in his chest lingered on as though the events of that night had taken place merely days ago. Perhaps even Time itself wished to remind him of the lesson he should have learned from that savage execution; a lesson which had all but stoutly refused to sink in.
They both had expected some variety of Viktor's imaginative punishments to take place, should their clandestine meetings and well-planned "human" marriage be revealed to the coven master by his lady's closest servants, but never had they anticipated the repercussion that lay only months after their vows' exchange.
Lucian turned the memory over in his head for several more minutes, but he grew no closer to any true sign of resolution. There honestly was no point in holding on to a past that could not be unwritten, yet Lucian found himself unable to merely discard the anger and heartache that had become ingrained in every facet of his life. This was not a surprise to Lucian, as those same emotions had driven every one of his conversations, waking thoughts, tactics, and even the horrific nightmares that laid with him at the height of each Full Moon.
Lucian sighed and reached across the battered table's surface for one of Tanis' ultraviolet bullets. He had come to learn of the developing weaponry through only the vaguest of whispers that had trickled down from the human taverns, which dotted the northern country. The villagers all spoke of a man who never appeared during the daylight hours and refused to visit the village's gathering circles when he decided to emerge from whichever perilous mountainside crevasse he sought refuge within. He seemed to have little interest for anything in the quiet village, beyond the metal shop and the smithy's much-desired daughters, the dark-haired Angelica and the fair-haired Diana.
The night the metalworker's daughters went missing had been the very same that the blacksmith completed the strange man's request for hollowed out tubes. Lucian knew then that the rumors of a night-walking man with occasional inquiries about the chemicals available in the area and no stomach for the local food were much more than idle village speculation; they confirmed the whereabouts of one Andreas Tanis, who had suspiciously vanished from Viktor's own coven several centuries earlier.
Lucian had not been certain what Tanis wanted with metal tubes or what sort of chemicals would interest him. That was, until he sent his scouts into the area. They asked the questions that Lucian himself could not request of the villagers, for it would cause the chatter that was sure to follow the appearance of still more strange men to become all the more detrimental to Lucian's plans. Inevitably, news of the men would reach Tanis, and it would not do to have him realize immediately from the investigators’ descriptions whether Vampires or Lycans wished to know how he had been spending his years in exile.
Within only a day's time, the scouts had retrieved more information than Lucian thought readily available. They had discovered that the chemicals Tanis inquired about were in actuality a mixture of radioactive fluids and deduced, after a fair amount of leg work on the scouts' parts, that Tanis was most likely holed up in an old monastery that had long been abandoned since the days when the Black Plague devoured the village's original occupants.
Lucian's first visit to see Tanis had not taken nearly as long as he might have expected it to. He supposed that when a person like Tanis is suddenly confronted by one of the old clan members who had been believed to be dead for hundreds of years, they could easily be persuaded to supply said clan member with the information they are seeking. The fact that this particular informant knew that Lucian would readily tear his limbs free of his torso before eating every scrap of flesh from his bones helped the meeting along as well.
Lucian smiled darkly at the memory of the image he had projected. Although he had not wanted to resort to harming the Vampire, he knew that certain sacrifices had to be made on both of their parts, especially if it appeared that Tanis did not sufficiently value his appendages where they were.
Tanis told him unimaginably fascinating details concerning the Vampire's more secretive inner workings, which Kraven, that coward, had conveniently forgotten to tell him during all the years of their partnership. Tanis told him how he came to be in his predicament and exactly who had placed him there. After Tanis had exhausted every known strategy to delay the unavoidable outcome of their conversation, and had weathered several of Lucian's strikes about his head, Tanis told him what he truly needed to know about the weaponry that had first come to Lucian's attention as nothing more than a whisper.
With a deal of Lycan guards, a few easily-acquired luxuries, and a simple gate in return for a steady supply of ultraviolet rounds in place, Lucian returned to the shelter of his hideaway. He had Tanis' new guards to select, an announcement of weapons upgrades to make, and he still had to face yet another candidate's disposal after he, too, proved useless for anything besides becoming prey.
He had been satisfied then in his knowledge of their gained advantage. So equally satisfied with this new development, and angry with Kraven over his deception, Lucian had requested a meeting with the Vampire Second the very same night of his return. There were several issues they needed to discuss. Not the ultraviolet rounds, of course, it would have been imprudent to reveal such an important kernel; however, Lucian had still needed to ferret out the perfect candidate on which to test his newest acquisition.
The test subject needed to have been someone who would be missed by Viktor's clan as a whole, and meant something to Kraven personally. Kraven had to pay for his years of treachery.
Lucian had gotten wind of a wisp of a woman named Erika, who had been known to spend time in Kraven's personal quarters when not absolutely necessary, but even she had seemed insignificant. She was not often brought up by Kraven himself and was done so only in passing when Kraven occasionally stalled their meetings with aimless small talk. This Erika would not have created the effect that Lucian desired. She would not have been enough, and Lucian scarcely believed that she would even be missed by many of the other coven members, let alone by Kraven, or even Viktor himself.
Lucian had attended the meeting with the same face he always presented, quiet, stern, and consciously giving the impression that he might rip out Kraven's throat at any moment. He had moaned appreciatively when Kraven's hands began to wander, as they always had the tendency to do during their "business" meetings. But even as his trousers were unzipped and his half-hard cock was released, Lucian's thoughts had already passed onto the one woman Kraven spent the better part of fifteen minutes bitching about that night. Selene.
He knew her name previously as a footnote in the war only. She was a Death Dealer and he had yet to uncover any reason why she should stand apart from the rest of her kind. She did her job and he and his brothers completed their own tasks in the centuries-long feud. That was the way of things.
While Kraven's head had lowered to his lap, Lucian had already begun formulating how he planned to draw her out. She would have been a warning to the Vampire clan of what awaited them if they wished to continue their campaign. Though successful the campaign had grown to be, one of their own had now provided him with the cure to impede its steady progression.
Lucian shifted in his chair once more, and considered simply throwing the decrepit relic into the murky pool of sewage and rainwater that drained down into the den, since that was all it seemed to be good for anyway. But still he sat there, as though consciously punishing himself for any number of his faults as he wallowed in his failures.
His maneuvering to simultaneously use Michael as bait to draw out Selene and check the human’s DNA patterning had all but failed according to its original design. Although his men had managed to take out another Death Dealer, he was not the target Lucian had intended. The casualty had to have been Selene; little else would have driven home the fact to Kraven that he was not to be deceived in the future.
Kraven would now simply write off the event as a one-off, instead of recognizing it for the transference of power that it represented. Lucian supposed that it was just as well. No matter what Kraven allowed himself, and Viktor's coven, to believe, the demonstration of Tanis' updated ammunition still stood. It might not beget him an explosive response immediately, but the Vampires would soon come to realize that the Lycan clan was not to be taken lightly.
Lucian rose from his seat to pace the length of the room. Despite the fact that the new rounds had been revealed effectively, regardless of their unintentional victim, the memory of Kraven's obsession with the female Death Dealer crawled underneath his skin. Why would anyone plotting to usurp Viktor's place allow himself to become overtaken by an attraction to someone Kraven himself admitted was Viktor's favorite? Lucian knew Kraven well enough to know that he did not conduct any of his dealings idly.
Granted, Lucian did not doubt the fact that Kraven appeared sincere in his own contradictory infatuation, yet he knew that there had to have been something more to it. Something Kraven was not saying, but surely had planned. Perhaps he thought that by securing Selene to his side, the coven would readily accept his new ascent to full leadership. It was a foolishly daring plan to enact on any grounds, let alone among an atmosphere that was soon to be thick with the unexplained deaths of the council members, including Selene's beloved Viktor.
A twinge of a smile ghosted across Lucian's face. No matter the setbacks his plans had been made to suffer, his night of retribution crept ever closer. The Awakening was only one day away, and then the Vampires would know what it meant to have their own species exterminated.
There was still the matter of her. Kraven had been wholly fixated on her every utterance and action during his childish griping. This led Lucian to believe that she was worth pursuing simply for the sport of further enraging Kraven. He thoroughly deserved it, after everything he'd done. Not once in the centuries since they had agreed upon their arrangement had Lucian taken another lover. Yet Kraven had run through them like a ship’s bow through seawater.
He would need to locate the places she spent her time outside of the manor, as it would provide his only clean route to her. There was no need to reveal himself to the entire household just yet.
Lucian stepped over the threshold of the make shift office in which he spent his time devising their next moves and conducting his more personal meetings. He knew the perfect Lycan to weed out the ideal place a Vampire was likely to seek out when they sought the quiet embrace of solitude.
"Davis!" Lucian did not feel even the slightest wince grace his features in response to the way his magnified voice echoed back to him.
"Davis!" he called out once more.
Davis would blend into the surroundings of London perfectly. He was somewhat newly turned and had yet to fully complete his physical training; therefore, he had not been out of the den on any specific assignments yet. This worked well in his favor, since he was not likely to be immediately recognized by any of the Vampires, should he be spotted.
Lucian knew that Davis would need a reliable second to back him up in this task, and so he strode purposely toward the men's sleeping quarters, just as Davis fell into step beside him.
"I have an assignment for you, Davis," Lucian paused to let the enormity of statement sink in. This was the boy's first official assignment, after all.
"Yes?" Davis pressed when Lucian did not continue right away.
Lucian observed the young man out of the corner of his eye. He shared Kraven's tendency toward impatience, despite the fact that they'd never met to Lucian's knowledge. But, he'd always heard good excellent reports on Davis' progress.
He raised his eyebrows before returning to his thread in their conversation. "I want you to locate a building or an outdoor area that would be best suited for someone who wished not to be disturbed."
"What kind of a building or outdoor area?"
Lucian noted that Davis appeared to shake faintly with every step that brought them closer to the quarters he shared with several others in the abandoned research facility.
"One that would fit a certain person in particular. Go inside," Lucian gestured to the open sliding door, that sat heavily upon its track, "and I will tell you and Johnson everything you need to know."
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TBC
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Story Title: The Necessary Steps
Chapter Title: The Lycan Master (1/4)
Author: DMitchell1985
Beta: indigochild76
Fact Checker: decadence1
Genre: Drama and a bit of Angst
Rating: R - "adult" language/situations and a couple gruesome descriptions.
Summary: No matter what he did or how many of his brothers were murdered by the Vampires, Lucian's infatuations continue to burrow deeper still into the clan that betrayed him all of those centuries ago. All the while, Selene is forced to face the dissolution of her reality at the hands of an unexpected culprit. Despite all of this, they both take the necessary steps on their parts to bring about the end of the war.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the canon characters, places, or events that are included in my story. And no, I don't make a monetary profit off of my fiction, only the occasional review.
Warnings: Slash, some porn-ish material (How in the heck did that get in there?!), incest (Lucian/Kraven) and a couple of rather unsavory descriptions of what Lycans can accomplish when they are pissed off.
Spoilers: Underworld and Underworld: Evolution
Pairings: Lucian/Selene, Lucian/Kraven, Lucian/Sonja, Selene/Marcus, Selene/Michael, and Kraven/Erika
Chapter Word Count: 2342
LJ Crossposting: my LiveJournal, uw_fanfic
Author's Notes: This was written for my own Multi-Fandom Unloved Pairings Challenge. It took me ages to flesh this out, but I am happy that I got to play with a few of my own plot theories. You know, despite this technically being my first Underworld fic. I also took a guess at the city that the movie takes place in.
A huge thank you to my beta, indigochild76. Thank you SO for taking the time to go through this for me. I would have still been panicking if you had not come along and had nice, calming chats with me. = D
The longer story notes are at the end of the fourth chapter, if you want to read them. Happy reading, everyone!
Chapter List:
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
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Lucian shifted in the uncomfortable metal chair he had taken to slumping into following each disappointment that further scarred his hope for some measure of respectable peace between the Lycan and the Vampire clans in order to prop an elbow upon the wooden table before him. At every instance, when a small victory made his goal seem only millimeters away from his grasp, cracks appeared in his plan.
If it was not Kraven's growing impatience, it was surely yet another human they had captured who did not possess the genetic coding they were so desperately searching for. It was in these moments of frustration that Lucian found his thoughts dwelling heavier than usual upon Sonja. It had been nearly one thousand years since she had been murdered, and yet the ache in his chest lingered on as though the events of that night had taken place merely days ago. Perhaps even Time itself wished to remind him of the lesson he should have learned from that savage execution; a lesson which had all but stoutly refused to sink in.
They both had expected some variety of Viktor's imaginative punishments to take place, should their clandestine meetings and well-planned "human" marriage be revealed to the coven master by his lady's closest servants, but never had they anticipated the repercussion that lay only months after their vows' exchange.
Lucian turned the memory over in his head for several more minutes, but he grew no closer to any true sign of resolution. There honestly was no point in holding on to a past that could not be unwritten, yet Lucian found himself unable to merely discard the anger and heartache that had become ingrained in every facet of his life. This was not a surprise to Lucian, as those same emotions had driven every one of his conversations, waking thoughts, tactics, and even the horrific nightmares that laid with him at the height of each Full Moon.
Lucian sighed and reached across the battered table's surface for one of Tanis' ultraviolet bullets. He had come to learn of the developing weaponry through only the vaguest of whispers that had trickled down from the human taverns, which dotted the northern country. The villagers all spoke of a man who never appeared during the daylight hours and refused to visit the village's gathering circles when he decided to emerge from whichever perilous mountainside crevasse he sought refuge within. He seemed to have little interest for anything in the quiet village, beyond the metal shop and the smithy's much-desired daughters, the dark-haired Angelica and the fair-haired Diana.
The night the metalworker's daughters went missing had been the very same that the blacksmith completed the strange man's request for hollowed out tubes. Lucian knew then that the rumors of a night-walking man with occasional inquiries about the chemicals available in the area and no stomach for the local food were much more than idle village speculation; they confirmed the whereabouts of one Andreas Tanis, who had suspiciously vanished from Viktor's own coven several centuries earlier.
Lucian had not been certain what Tanis wanted with metal tubes or what sort of chemicals would interest him. That was, until he sent his scouts into the area. They asked the questions that Lucian himself could not request of the villagers, for it would cause the chatter that was sure to follow the appearance of still more strange men to become all the more detrimental to Lucian's plans. Inevitably, news of the men would reach Tanis, and it would not do to have him realize immediately from the investigators’ descriptions whether Vampires or Lycans wished to know how he had been spending his years in exile.
Within only a day's time, the scouts had retrieved more information than Lucian thought readily available. They had discovered that the chemicals Tanis inquired about were in actuality a mixture of radioactive fluids and deduced, after a fair amount of leg work on the scouts' parts, that Tanis was most likely holed up in an old monastery that had long been abandoned since the days when the Black Plague devoured the village's original occupants.
Lucian's first visit to see Tanis had not taken nearly as long as he might have expected it to. He supposed that when a person like Tanis is suddenly confronted by one of the old clan members who had been believed to be dead for hundreds of years, they could easily be persuaded to supply said clan member with the information they are seeking. The fact that this particular informant knew that Lucian would readily tear his limbs free of his torso before eating every scrap of flesh from his bones helped the meeting along as well.
Lucian smiled darkly at the memory of the image he had projected. Although he had not wanted to resort to harming the Vampire, he knew that certain sacrifices had to be made on both of their parts, especially if it appeared that Tanis did not sufficiently value his appendages where they were.
Tanis told him unimaginably fascinating details concerning the Vampire's more secretive inner workings, which Kraven, that coward, had conveniently forgotten to tell him during all the years of their partnership. Tanis told him how he came to be in his predicament and exactly who had placed him there. After Tanis had exhausted every known strategy to delay the unavoidable outcome of their conversation, and had weathered several of Lucian's strikes about his head, Tanis told him what he truly needed to know about the weaponry that had first come to Lucian's attention as nothing more than a whisper.
With a deal of Lycan guards, a few easily-acquired luxuries, and a simple gate in return for a steady supply of ultraviolet rounds in place, Lucian returned to the shelter of his hideaway. He had Tanis' new guards to select, an announcement of weapons upgrades to make, and he still had to face yet another candidate's disposal after he, too, proved useless for anything besides becoming prey.
He had been satisfied then in his knowledge of their gained advantage. So equally satisfied with this new development, and angry with Kraven over his deception, Lucian had requested a meeting with the Vampire Second the very same night of his return. There were several issues they needed to discuss. Not the ultraviolet rounds, of course, it would have been imprudent to reveal such an important kernel; however, Lucian had still needed to ferret out the perfect candidate on which to test his newest acquisition.
The test subject needed to have been someone who would be missed by Viktor's clan as a whole, and meant something to Kraven personally. Kraven had to pay for his years of treachery.
Lucian had gotten wind of a wisp of a woman named Erika, who had been known to spend time in Kraven's personal quarters when not absolutely necessary, but even she had seemed insignificant. She was not often brought up by Kraven himself and was done so only in passing when Kraven occasionally stalled their meetings with aimless small talk. This Erika would not have created the effect that Lucian desired. She would not have been enough, and Lucian scarcely believed that she would even be missed by many of the other coven members, let alone by Kraven, or even Viktor himself.
Lucian had attended the meeting with the same face he always presented, quiet, stern, and consciously giving the impression that he might rip out Kraven's throat at any moment. He had moaned appreciatively when Kraven's hands began to wander, as they always had the tendency to do during their "business" meetings. But even as his trousers were unzipped and his half-hard cock was released, Lucian's thoughts had already passed onto the one woman Kraven spent the better part of fifteen minutes bitching about that night. Selene.
He knew her name previously as a footnote in the war only. She was a Death Dealer and he had yet to uncover any reason why she should stand apart from the rest of her kind. She did her job and he and his brothers completed their own tasks in the centuries-long feud. That was the way of things.
While Kraven's head had lowered to his lap, Lucian had already begun formulating how he planned to draw her out. She would have been a warning to the Vampire clan of what awaited them if they wished to continue their campaign. Though successful the campaign had grown to be, one of their own had now provided him with the cure to impede its steady progression.
Lucian shifted in his chair once more, and considered simply throwing the decrepit relic into the murky pool of sewage and rainwater that drained down into the den, since that was all it seemed to be good for anyway. But still he sat there, as though consciously punishing himself for any number of his faults as he wallowed in his failures.
His maneuvering to simultaneously use Michael as bait to draw out Selene and check the human’s DNA patterning had all but failed according to its original design. Although his men had managed to take out another Death Dealer, he was not the target Lucian had intended. The casualty had to have been Selene; little else would have driven home the fact to Kraven that he was not to be deceived in the future.
Kraven would now simply write off the event as a one-off, instead of recognizing it for the transference of power that it represented. Lucian supposed that it was just as well. No matter what Kraven allowed himself, and Viktor's coven, to believe, the demonstration of Tanis' updated ammunition still stood. It might not beget him an explosive response immediately, but the Vampires would soon come to realize that the Lycan clan was not to be taken lightly.
Lucian rose from his seat to pace the length of the room. Despite the fact that the new rounds had been revealed effectively, regardless of their unintentional victim, the memory of Kraven's obsession with the female Death Dealer crawled underneath his skin. Why would anyone plotting to usurp Viktor's place allow himself to become overtaken by an attraction to someone Kraven himself admitted was Viktor's favorite? Lucian knew Kraven well enough to know that he did not conduct any of his dealings idly.
Granted, Lucian did not doubt the fact that Kraven appeared sincere in his own contradictory infatuation, yet he knew that there had to have been something more to it. Something Kraven was not saying, but surely had planned. Perhaps he thought that by securing Selene to his side, the coven would readily accept his new ascent to full leadership. It was a foolishly daring plan to enact on any grounds, let alone among an atmosphere that was soon to be thick with the unexplained deaths of the council members, including Selene's beloved Viktor.
A twinge of a smile ghosted across Lucian's face. No matter the setbacks his plans had been made to suffer, his night of retribution crept ever closer. The Awakening was only one day away, and then the Vampires would know what it meant to have their own species exterminated.
There was still the matter of her. Kraven had been wholly fixated on her every utterance and action during his childish griping. This led Lucian to believe that she was worth pursuing simply for the sport of further enraging Kraven. He thoroughly deserved it, after everything he'd done. Not once in the centuries since they had agreed upon their arrangement had Lucian taken another lover. Yet Kraven had run through them like a ship’s bow through seawater.
He would need to locate the places she spent her time outside of the manor, as it would provide his only clean route to her. There was no need to reveal himself to the entire household just yet.
Lucian stepped over the threshold of the make shift office in which he spent his time devising their next moves and conducting his more personal meetings. He knew the perfect Lycan to weed out the ideal place a Vampire was likely to seek out when they sought the quiet embrace of solitude.
"Davis!" Lucian did not feel even the slightest wince grace his features in response to the way his magnified voice echoed back to him.
"Davis!" he called out once more.
Davis would blend into the surroundings of London perfectly. He was somewhat newly turned and had yet to fully complete his physical training; therefore, he had not been out of the den on any specific assignments yet. This worked well in his favor, since he was not likely to be immediately recognized by any of the Vampires, should he be spotted.
Lucian knew that Davis would need a reliable second to back him up in this task, and so he strode purposely toward the men's sleeping quarters, just as Davis fell into step beside him.
"I have an assignment for you, Davis," Lucian paused to let the enormity of statement sink in. This was the boy's first official assignment, after all.
"Yes?" Davis pressed when Lucian did not continue right away.
Lucian observed the young man out of the corner of his eye. He shared Kraven's tendency toward impatience, despite the fact that they'd never met to Lucian's knowledge. But, he'd always heard good excellent reports on Davis' progress.
He raised his eyebrows before returning to his thread in their conversation. "I want you to locate a building or an outdoor area that would be best suited for someone who wished not to be disturbed."
"What kind of a building or outdoor area?"
Lucian noted that Davis appeared to shake faintly with every step that brought them closer to the quarters he shared with several others in the abandoned research facility.
"One that would fit a certain person in particular. Go inside," Lucian gestured to the open sliding door, that sat heavily upon its track, "and I will tell you and Johnson everything you need to know."
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TBC