Original -- The Bridegroom: Episode 1
Title: The Bridegroom: Episode 1
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,085
Warnings: the usual Vincent warnings: some blasphemy, some language, silliness… oh, and fun with gender; that one's new
Prompt: 13. If you leave me now, you'll take away the biggest part of me - Chicago, "If You Leave Me Now" at pulped_fictions
Summary: Vincent should know better than to make deals with demons. Belial should know better than to toy with reality television. And Maion… should just know better.
Author's Note: This was going to have illustrations, only I suck. It's entirely eltea's fault idea. If you haven't seen "The Bachelor," it won't be quite as funny. That's pretty much all you need. I sincerely hope you enjoy, because it was a blast. XD …and yes, there will be more.
THE BRIDEGROOM: EPISODE 1
Vincent lowers the fountain pen and wonders what in the hell-literally what in the hell-just possessed him to sign this scroll. He remembers a game of backgammon and a glass of wine that tasted like sunlight, and then he was rambling half in French about his soul, and then…
Belial snaps the scroll back up and beams, smoothing his violet silk tie.
“Perfect,” he says. “Just two short months of torment, and your soul is lily-white.”
“There are red lilies,” Vincent mumbles.
“That,” Belial says, guiding Vincent into a chair as his knees wobble, “is an excellent idea, my boy.”
When Vincent wakes up the next evening, there is an ivory invitation in his lap. Blearily, he picks it up and reads it.
He screams.
Premonitions hurt.
Between hearsay and literature, Maion gathers that they’re essentially the angel equivalent of nightmares. Only worse. Which doesn’t make too much sense, but Maion supposes that the gift of prophecy must come at a price.
This one is slipping away from him even as he wakes swathed in damp, his nebulous essence cradled by the cloud he picked a few too-short hours ago. He clutches at the last few threads of it-a familiar toss of long black hair; a red lily and a gleam of silver; an elegant hand clenched around a… stake?
Oh, no. Nooooooo.
The worst part is that Vincent’s not even going to be grateful when Maion trudges down there and tries to save his afterlife.
Maion had dared to hope after Buffy stopped airing that vampire hunters had gone out of style.
Belial usually tries to avoid wearing red because of the way it emphasizes his eyes-which make some people swoon; and which make others suddenly conceptualize the horrors of the world, climb to the tops of tall buildings, and jump-but nothing else really seemed to fit this occasion. He settles one open hand over this form’s fragile heart and smiles winsomely at the red light that blinks back at him.
“Ladies of America,” he says, “I hope you like older men.”
He’s already overseen the editing of the clip reel that goes with this bit, so he envisions it as he goes along.
“Vincent Duval has everything a woman could possibly ask for.”
There’s a nice shot of Vincent standing in front of his mansion just after sunset, looking like he just played tonsil hockey with an unripe lemon.
“As the CEO of a successful shipping company, he’s obviously filthily rich and highly driven. But Vincent also makes time for numerous hobbies, some of which aren’t even illegal in all fifty states.”
This one is Vincent standing next to a horse with roses braided into its mane. Vincent turns a withering look at someone just off-camera and gets through “Seriously, go f-” before the shot cuts.
“He enjoys long strolls in the moonlight, although he has been known to take them at approximately forty miles per hour, and is generally quite the night owl. Or something like that. Best of all…” Belial flashes a grin at the camera and hears the lens start to crack. “…when he chooses one of these twenty-five women for his own, he might just make her-and their love-absolutely immortal.”
The footage creeps through Vincent’s bedroom and eases the camera through the crack in the bathroom door to show Vincent with his hair tied back, vigorously brushing his teeth, paying special attention to his fangs. He notices the cameraman in the mirror where his reflection would be, sputters, “What the-”, and whirls around to slam the door.
Belial clasps his hands under his chin. “Welcome, one and all, to the most stunning, most scandalous, most salacious season of The Bridegroom ever filmed. Shall we meet the man of the hour?”
Someone cues Vincent, and he storms out, glaring fit to scald someone, to join Belial in front of the show-sponsored manor that is about to house a harem of conniving gold-diggers.
“When you said ‘two months of torment,’” Vincent grinds out, “I assumed you meant sixty days of hellfire.”
Belial throws an arm around his shoulders. Other than the ineffaceable scowl, his vampire never-friend-again looks rather excellent. Belial credits the red silk waistcoat and the matching ribbon that holds Vincent’s black hair at the base of his neck.
“That,” Belial says, “is because you’re uncreative. And here are the first candidates!”
The limousine’s tires crunch softly on the cobblestones as the vehicle draws to a halt. The back door opens, and a woman in an evening dress steps out.
“Please kill me,” Vincent says.
Belial has to stop himself from dancing around in circles. “Go say hello, lover-boy.”
It’s been a while. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this kind of form; Maion just… defaulted to the other setting.
It’s a little strange. There’s suddenly so much… stuff.
Maion takes a deep breath, fidgets, climbs out of the car, and straightens up. At the head of the path, Vincent appears to be fantasizing about suicide, and Belial appears to be checking his notes.
“Interestingly,” he says, “our original final contestant was offered her dream job in South America… about four hours ago.” There’s going to be a very gorgeous Brazilian businessman next to her on the plane. “And all of our alternates… came down with the flu.” But just for twenty-four hours, and they’ll all have gorgeous Brazilian doctors.
Maion moves hesitantly over to the pair of them, steadier than expected but painfully conscious of the camera.
“Who are you?” Vincent asks coldly.
But-he can’t already-the game can’t be up when it’s only just begun!
Vincent arches an eyebrow. “Are you mute? What’s your name?”
Oh, thank goodness.
…oh, crap.
“Um,” Maion says, “um… Mai…a. Maia.”
Vincent looks… her… up and down. Maybe the flowing white dress and the dove-feather headband are a bit excessive, but there wasn’t much time, and-
“Get inside and drink until you’re amusing,” Vincent says.
Maion harbors doubts about this plan.
Maion pretends to drink champagne. If Maion actually drinks champagne, these high heels are going to result in a nose-dive into the fountain, and Maion is wearing a white dress.
Then again, that would get Vincent’s attention in a hurry.
Wait a second, that’s not why he’s-she’s-Maion is here. The cluster of beautiful women currently suffocating Vincent is irrelevant; Maion needs to figure out who’s here to kill the dumb vampire just when he’s trying to set things right. Maion needs to neutralize the threat, and then he needs to go Up and get some real sleep before his powers dwindle any more than they already have-there’s been too much to do these days, and he hasn’t adequately recuperated in weeks.
“At the end of this night,” Belial is drawling to a camera as some of the girls mingle jealously and the rest mob their target; “ten of these women will be sent home. If you write me a personal check, I’ll give you their phone numbers. No, I’m serious. In any case, fifteen will remain, and only one will win… The Bridegroom. Let’s see how things are proceeding, shall we?”
Maion drifts a little closer to the center of the action, hoping to observe some suspicious behavior past all of the exaggerated flirting. This form is-different. Being in this form is different. He has to carry himself-herself-differently, and the senses aren’t quite consistent, and he’s automatically thinking about the same things from a different angle. It’s… unnerving. And a little thrilling. And makes self-reference extremely confusing.
He pauses next to a young woman in a pink dress who’s sitting alone against the wall, slumped in an ornate chair and looking miserable.
“Hello,” Maion says tentatively. His voice is different, too, and it vibrates in his throat funny. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” the girl sighs, swilling her champagne. “It’s just… all of these women are so beautiful.” Maion glances around. Some of them are admittedly very fetching-do people still say that? Oh, dear-but others seem to be relying on a dearth of dress material to convey their interest. “And that’s all men ever care about, even though it’s so… evanescent.”
Maion blinks. “Well, you’re very pretty,” he says. “And I happen to… have heard… that Monsieur Duval has very-unusual-tastes. I’m sure he won’t simply pick the most physically appealing specimen.”
The girl gives him a weird look. Maion plays with the feathers on his headband.
“Well, it doesn’t matter what his tastes are,” the young woman takes up. “I’m only here at all because my father’s company is negotiating a deal with him, and the producers thought it would be dramatic. They’re using me as a pawn, just like everybody else.”
“Then you should take this opportunity to have fun,” Maion says. “It’s not every day you get to take a limousine ride for free. And-ohmygosh that’s a chocolate fountain.”
“Actually, my father has three limos, so they’re just another hollow status symbol to me; this whole thing is so devoid of-”
“I’ll be right back; that’s a fountain of chocolate.” Maion zips over to it and commences dipping strawberries. He barely notices the instantaneous ruination of his lipstick.
He’s so busy with chocolate rapture that a sudden presence by his right arm makes him jump.
“Watch your dress,” Vincent says. He dips his finger into the chocolate and then licks it clean, and his fangs gleam in the light of the chandelier.
“You have terrible manners,” Maion says.
Vincent looks at him a little too perspicaciously, and he busies himself drowning some biscotti in chocolate. He glances at the camera-shy vampire sideways.
“Look,” he says. “And listen, if you’re capable. You have to get out of this.”
Vincent’s eyes narrow. Maion swears to Everything that they weren’t quite so cobalt to male vision.
“I can’t,” Vincent says shortly. “This isn’t some kind of elaborate ego trip.” That’s unusual. Oh, and worrisome. “I made a deal with the demon in the waistcoat over there. Eight weeks of torment, and my soul is clear. I have to see this out until the end.”
Maion stares. After about seven seconds, he realizes that his mouth is hanging open, which probably isn’t flattering even when he’s this pretty.
Vincent pauses, and then he reaches out, lays a fingertip under Maion’s chin, and nudges Maion’s mouth shut.
Maion is not blushing. He also does not drop the biscotti into the chocolate abyss, and it does not send up a bubble or two and then vanish for good.
He clears his throat, which is such a natural gesture that it’s startling all over again when his voice persists in being female. “But one of the girls is-”
Raucous, thumping music blares out from the nearby speakers, and Maion instinctively claps his hands over his ears, which might have just put chocolate in his particularly luxurious hair. The words a vampire hunter out for your ichor vanish into the noise.
A number of the girls begin dancing very suggestively and whipping their own hair around with such violence that it must make them dizzy. Maion reflects sourly that he’s surprised they don’t save everyone some time and rip their clothes off.
…he hopes the record will show that he was not this catty when he arrived. There’s probably something in the chocolate. Yes, of course; the chocolate is full of… things.
He gingerly lowers his hands from his ears and tries not to look at Vincent. Vincent, for his part, mutters something that gets lost in the bass beat and then wanders off towards the table of hors d’oeuvres, where he starts sorting through the silverware. Maion loses track of his unwitting charge when one of the young women steps into his sightline and offers a hand.
“Greta,” she says, quite loudly. “Nice to meet you.”
Maion shakes. “I find it very odd that we should be acting so civil when we’re preparing to fight over a man who hates us all regardless,” he says. Greta stares at him. “And I’m… Maia.”
“…right,” Greta says. She frowns over at the girls who are dancing, one of whom has just drained a champagne flute without missing a beat. “Take a look at those bimbos.”
“Perhaps they were starved for attention in their youths,” Maion says. “Perhaps they were starved for attention and affection, which is why they’re willing to make fools of themselves on national television for a one-in-twenty-five chance of getting engaged until they realize the entire show is a game, and that’s no way to get to know a person.”
Greta stares at him a little more. “Who are you?”
“Maia,” Maion says brightly, emphasizing the syllables more clearly this time. It is awfully loud in here.
Vincent considers putting cyanide into the punch bowl. It would be very, very easy if not for the cameras that hound him every second of this hellish escapade.
After some consideration, he selects the longest and most serrated of the available knives, glides over to the stereo, and plunges the blade into the heart of the digital display.
Sparks spray everywhere, and the music stutters and fizzles its way to a stop. The girls shimmy a little more, aimless and confused, and then gear up for vicious protests until they see that Vincent’s responsible and dissolve back into giggles and coos.
No… cyanide would be far too quick and painless.
A morsel-er, girl-in pink sidles up to him, looking overbearingly unhappy.
“I could just go home,” she says before he can tell her he had better plans for that oxygen. “I’m not like them, and people never think I’m cute or fun.” She doesn’t give him time to mention that this conversation is neither. But there’s something nagging him, and he doesn’t like it in the least. “Honestly… I don’t think I’m ever going to fall in love. I only did this because-”
Oh, hell. Belial is dead quintessence.
“-my father said I should get out more. But I shouldn’t. I should go.”
Vincent’s trapped. If he offends the precious little princess, her daddy will immediately nix the biggest deal Vincent’s undertaken in almost three decades.
He racks his brain. Princess Cruel-World is young-and is mustering a smile that she seems to think is wistful and bravely tragic. She probably wants to go home so she can write sad freeform poetry about the past two hours and how no one understands the emptiness inside her. Vincent sets his jaw.
“If you leave me now,” he manages, “you’ll take away the biggest part of me.”
It’s probably better than her poems.
Princess blinks and then attempts to look attractively bewildered, which fails. “What’s the biggest part?”
The raunchy answer is obvious, but Vincent has to do this for his business.
“I’m about to get a new soul,” he says, and the fragments of the old one wither. “I’ll need someone to show me how to use it.”
Princess looks like she’s about to faint.
Vincent despises romantics.
He escapes back to the table with the drinks, but all of the wine is white. The moment he can get away from the flock of floozies that trails after him, he’s going to call Thompson and demand to be notified the millisecond his deal goes through, at which point Sad Poet Princess can do an Ophelia for all he cares.
Given the all-dayer he and Thompson had to pull last week after Vincent made a miscalculation, Thompson will almost certainly lie to him, then invade Vincent’s home and watch him suffer on his own flatscreen TV.
Maybe Vincent will poison all the drinks, including his own.
It takes most of Belial’s willpower not to cackle. His success is fortunate; his cackle has been known to send army generals into hiding.
They’ve congregated in one of the smaller rooms of the traditional Bridegroom mansion for the traditional Bridegroom decision ceremony. Since this is an unusual season which should be distinguished from its more ordinary predecessors-and since Belial is, after all, ever-so-slightly prone to sadism-each of the candidates holds a red lily before her. Vincent has a huge pair of scissors.
“If I decapitate your lily,” Vincent says disinterestedly, “you have to get the hell out. And no, you can’t take any party favors.”
One of the girls sighs loudly and starts unloading the stash of stolen bath soaps in her bodice.
Vincent appears to consider stabbing himself in the heart with the scissors, but he focuses on his task before Belial can get a humiliating word in edgewise.
“All right,” Vincent says, which is clearly a lie. He stumps up to the mandatory redhead-Vi-and makes short work of her lily. She looks more annoyed about the flower than the dismissal.
Belial would be more dismayed if this didn’t give him a perfect opportunity to “comfort” her later.
And the prospective other nine.
Preferably all at once.
Vincent goes around the half-circle, and by the time he’s finished, Belial’s figured it out: he’s chopping every second lily-making notable exceptions to the pattern for the heiress, Maia, Greta, and Jamaica. The first two are logical; the latter two are likely to get into a catfight that will end with one of them dead or paralyzed, which is presumably Vincent’s intention.
When the floral carnage ends, the floor is littered with petals, three girls are crying, two are sulking, four are pouting, and one is trying to sneak some soaps back into her dress. Maia is patting one girl’s arm and murmuring something about gorgeous Brazilians.
Belial has not been this happy in a long, long time. Millennia, maybe.
“Go ahead and get started, ladies,” he says, “and I’ll escort you to the limousines in a moment.” As they troop out, he flings an arm around Vincent’s shoulders again and grins at the closest camera. “There you have it, ladies-and gentlemen who are watching so that the ladies won’t make you sleep on the couch. There’s one question on everybody’s minds… Vincent Duval, are you prepared to choose one of these beautiful women to start a new life with you?”
Vincent purses his lips. Then he raises the scissors and chops off Belial’s tie.
“I’m dead,” he says. “Remember?”
[Episode 2]
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,085
Warnings: the usual Vincent warnings: some blasphemy, some language, silliness… oh, and fun with gender; that one's new
Prompt: 13. If you leave me now, you'll take away the biggest part of me - Chicago, "If You Leave Me Now" at pulped_fictions
Summary: Vincent should know better than to make deals with demons. Belial should know better than to toy with reality television. And Maion… should just know better.
Author's Note: This was going to have illustrations, only I suck. It's entirely eltea's fault idea. If you haven't seen "The Bachelor," it won't be quite as funny. That's pretty much all you need. I sincerely hope you enjoy, because it was a blast. XD …and yes, there will be more.
THE BRIDEGROOM: EPISODE 1
Vincent lowers the fountain pen and wonders what in the hell-literally what in the hell-just possessed him to sign this scroll. He remembers a game of backgammon and a glass of wine that tasted like sunlight, and then he was rambling half in French about his soul, and then…
Belial snaps the scroll back up and beams, smoothing his violet silk tie.
“Perfect,” he says. “Just two short months of torment, and your soul is lily-white.”
“There are red lilies,” Vincent mumbles.
“That,” Belial says, guiding Vincent into a chair as his knees wobble, “is an excellent idea, my boy.”
When Vincent wakes up the next evening, there is an ivory invitation in his lap. Blearily, he picks it up and reads it.
He screams.
Premonitions hurt.
Between hearsay and literature, Maion gathers that they’re essentially the angel equivalent of nightmares. Only worse. Which doesn’t make too much sense, but Maion supposes that the gift of prophecy must come at a price.
This one is slipping away from him even as he wakes swathed in damp, his nebulous essence cradled by the cloud he picked a few too-short hours ago. He clutches at the last few threads of it-a familiar toss of long black hair; a red lily and a gleam of silver; an elegant hand clenched around a… stake?
Oh, no. Nooooooo.
The worst part is that Vincent’s not even going to be grateful when Maion trudges down there and tries to save his afterlife.
Maion had dared to hope after Buffy stopped airing that vampire hunters had gone out of style.
Belial usually tries to avoid wearing red because of the way it emphasizes his eyes-which make some people swoon; and which make others suddenly conceptualize the horrors of the world, climb to the tops of tall buildings, and jump-but nothing else really seemed to fit this occasion. He settles one open hand over this form’s fragile heart and smiles winsomely at the red light that blinks back at him.
“Ladies of America,” he says, “I hope you like older men.”
He’s already overseen the editing of the clip reel that goes with this bit, so he envisions it as he goes along.
“Vincent Duval has everything a woman could possibly ask for.”
There’s a nice shot of Vincent standing in front of his mansion just after sunset, looking like he just played tonsil hockey with an unripe lemon.
“As the CEO of a successful shipping company, he’s obviously filthily rich and highly driven. But Vincent also makes time for numerous hobbies, some of which aren’t even illegal in all fifty states.”
This one is Vincent standing next to a horse with roses braided into its mane. Vincent turns a withering look at someone just off-camera and gets through “Seriously, go f-” before the shot cuts.
“He enjoys long strolls in the moonlight, although he has been known to take them at approximately forty miles per hour, and is generally quite the night owl. Or something like that. Best of all…” Belial flashes a grin at the camera and hears the lens start to crack. “…when he chooses one of these twenty-five women for his own, he might just make her-and their love-absolutely immortal.”
The footage creeps through Vincent’s bedroom and eases the camera through the crack in the bathroom door to show Vincent with his hair tied back, vigorously brushing his teeth, paying special attention to his fangs. He notices the cameraman in the mirror where his reflection would be, sputters, “What the-”, and whirls around to slam the door.
Belial clasps his hands under his chin. “Welcome, one and all, to the most stunning, most scandalous, most salacious season of The Bridegroom ever filmed. Shall we meet the man of the hour?”
Someone cues Vincent, and he storms out, glaring fit to scald someone, to join Belial in front of the show-sponsored manor that is about to house a harem of conniving gold-diggers.
“When you said ‘two months of torment,’” Vincent grinds out, “I assumed you meant sixty days of hellfire.”
Belial throws an arm around his shoulders. Other than the ineffaceable scowl, his vampire never-friend-again looks rather excellent. Belial credits the red silk waistcoat and the matching ribbon that holds Vincent’s black hair at the base of his neck.
“That,” Belial says, “is because you’re uncreative. And here are the first candidates!”
The limousine’s tires crunch softly on the cobblestones as the vehicle draws to a halt. The back door opens, and a woman in an evening dress steps out.
“Please kill me,” Vincent says.
Belial has to stop himself from dancing around in circles. “Go say hello, lover-boy.”
It’s been a while. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this kind of form; Maion just… defaulted to the other setting.
It’s a little strange. There’s suddenly so much… stuff.
Maion takes a deep breath, fidgets, climbs out of the car, and straightens up. At the head of the path, Vincent appears to be fantasizing about suicide, and Belial appears to be checking his notes.
“Interestingly,” he says, “our original final contestant was offered her dream job in South America… about four hours ago.” There’s going to be a very gorgeous Brazilian businessman next to her on the plane. “And all of our alternates… came down with the flu.” But just for twenty-four hours, and they’ll all have gorgeous Brazilian doctors.
Maion moves hesitantly over to the pair of them, steadier than expected but painfully conscious of the camera.
“Who are you?” Vincent asks coldly.
But-he can’t already-the game can’t be up when it’s only just begun!
Vincent arches an eyebrow. “Are you mute? What’s your name?”
Oh, thank goodness.
…oh, crap.
“Um,” Maion says, “um… Mai…a. Maia.”
Vincent looks… her… up and down. Maybe the flowing white dress and the dove-feather headband are a bit excessive, but there wasn’t much time, and-
“Get inside and drink until you’re amusing,” Vincent says.
Maion harbors doubts about this plan.
Maion pretends to drink champagne. If Maion actually drinks champagne, these high heels are going to result in a nose-dive into the fountain, and Maion is wearing a white dress.
Then again, that would get Vincent’s attention in a hurry.
Wait a second, that’s not why he’s-she’s-Maion is here. The cluster of beautiful women currently suffocating Vincent is irrelevant; Maion needs to figure out who’s here to kill the dumb vampire just when he’s trying to set things right. Maion needs to neutralize the threat, and then he needs to go Up and get some real sleep before his powers dwindle any more than they already have-there’s been too much to do these days, and he hasn’t adequately recuperated in weeks.
“At the end of this night,” Belial is drawling to a camera as some of the girls mingle jealously and the rest mob their target; “ten of these women will be sent home. If you write me a personal check, I’ll give you their phone numbers. No, I’m serious. In any case, fifteen will remain, and only one will win… The Bridegroom. Let’s see how things are proceeding, shall we?”
Maion drifts a little closer to the center of the action, hoping to observe some suspicious behavior past all of the exaggerated flirting. This form is-different. Being in this form is different. He has to carry himself-herself-differently, and the senses aren’t quite consistent, and he’s automatically thinking about the same things from a different angle. It’s… unnerving. And a little thrilling. And makes self-reference extremely confusing.
He pauses next to a young woman in a pink dress who’s sitting alone against the wall, slumped in an ornate chair and looking miserable.
“Hello,” Maion says tentatively. His voice is different, too, and it vibrates in his throat funny. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” the girl sighs, swilling her champagne. “It’s just… all of these women are so beautiful.” Maion glances around. Some of them are admittedly very fetching-do people still say that? Oh, dear-but others seem to be relying on a dearth of dress material to convey their interest. “And that’s all men ever care about, even though it’s so… evanescent.”
Maion blinks. “Well, you’re very pretty,” he says. “And I happen to… have heard… that Monsieur Duval has very-unusual-tastes. I’m sure he won’t simply pick the most physically appealing specimen.”
The girl gives him a weird look. Maion plays with the feathers on his headband.
“Well, it doesn’t matter what his tastes are,” the young woman takes up. “I’m only here at all because my father’s company is negotiating a deal with him, and the producers thought it would be dramatic. They’re using me as a pawn, just like everybody else.”
“Then you should take this opportunity to have fun,” Maion says. “It’s not every day you get to take a limousine ride for free. And-ohmygosh that’s a chocolate fountain.”
“Actually, my father has three limos, so they’re just another hollow status symbol to me; this whole thing is so devoid of-”
“I’ll be right back; that’s a fountain of chocolate.” Maion zips over to it and commences dipping strawberries. He barely notices the instantaneous ruination of his lipstick.
He’s so busy with chocolate rapture that a sudden presence by his right arm makes him jump.
“Watch your dress,” Vincent says. He dips his finger into the chocolate and then licks it clean, and his fangs gleam in the light of the chandelier.
“You have terrible manners,” Maion says.
Vincent looks at him a little too perspicaciously, and he busies himself drowning some biscotti in chocolate. He glances at the camera-shy vampire sideways.
“Look,” he says. “And listen, if you’re capable. You have to get out of this.”
Vincent’s eyes narrow. Maion swears to Everything that they weren’t quite so cobalt to male vision.
“I can’t,” Vincent says shortly. “This isn’t some kind of elaborate ego trip.” That’s unusual. Oh, and worrisome. “I made a deal with the demon in the waistcoat over there. Eight weeks of torment, and my soul is clear. I have to see this out until the end.”
Maion stares. After about seven seconds, he realizes that his mouth is hanging open, which probably isn’t flattering even when he’s this pretty.
Vincent pauses, and then he reaches out, lays a fingertip under Maion’s chin, and nudges Maion’s mouth shut.
Maion is not blushing. He also does not drop the biscotti into the chocolate abyss, and it does not send up a bubble or two and then vanish for good.
He clears his throat, which is such a natural gesture that it’s startling all over again when his voice persists in being female. “But one of the girls is-”
Raucous, thumping music blares out from the nearby speakers, and Maion instinctively claps his hands over his ears, which might have just put chocolate in his particularly luxurious hair. The words a vampire hunter out for your ichor vanish into the noise.
A number of the girls begin dancing very suggestively and whipping their own hair around with such violence that it must make them dizzy. Maion reflects sourly that he’s surprised they don’t save everyone some time and rip their clothes off.
…he hopes the record will show that he was not this catty when he arrived. There’s probably something in the chocolate. Yes, of course; the chocolate is full of… things.
He gingerly lowers his hands from his ears and tries not to look at Vincent. Vincent, for his part, mutters something that gets lost in the bass beat and then wanders off towards the table of hors d’oeuvres, where he starts sorting through the silverware. Maion loses track of his unwitting charge when one of the young women steps into his sightline and offers a hand.
“Greta,” she says, quite loudly. “Nice to meet you.”
Maion shakes. “I find it very odd that we should be acting so civil when we’re preparing to fight over a man who hates us all regardless,” he says. Greta stares at him. “And I’m… Maia.”
“…right,” Greta says. She frowns over at the girls who are dancing, one of whom has just drained a champagne flute without missing a beat. “Take a look at those bimbos.”
“Perhaps they were starved for attention in their youths,” Maion says. “Perhaps they were starved for attention and affection, which is why they’re willing to make fools of themselves on national television for a one-in-twenty-five chance of getting engaged until they realize the entire show is a game, and that’s no way to get to know a person.”
Greta stares at him a little more. “Who are you?”
“Maia,” Maion says brightly, emphasizing the syllables more clearly this time. It is awfully loud in here.
Vincent considers putting cyanide into the punch bowl. It would be very, very easy if not for the cameras that hound him every second of this hellish escapade.
After some consideration, he selects the longest and most serrated of the available knives, glides over to the stereo, and plunges the blade into the heart of the digital display.
Sparks spray everywhere, and the music stutters and fizzles its way to a stop. The girls shimmy a little more, aimless and confused, and then gear up for vicious protests until they see that Vincent’s responsible and dissolve back into giggles and coos.
No… cyanide would be far too quick and painless.
A morsel-er, girl-in pink sidles up to him, looking overbearingly unhappy.
“I could just go home,” she says before he can tell her he had better plans for that oxygen. “I’m not like them, and people never think I’m cute or fun.” She doesn’t give him time to mention that this conversation is neither. But there’s something nagging him, and he doesn’t like it in the least. “Honestly… I don’t think I’m ever going to fall in love. I only did this because-”
Oh, hell. Belial is dead quintessence.
“-my father said I should get out more. But I shouldn’t. I should go.”
Vincent’s trapped. If he offends the precious little princess, her daddy will immediately nix the biggest deal Vincent’s undertaken in almost three decades.
He racks his brain. Princess Cruel-World is young-and is mustering a smile that she seems to think is wistful and bravely tragic. She probably wants to go home so she can write sad freeform poetry about the past two hours and how no one understands the emptiness inside her. Vincent sets his jaw.
“If you leave me now,” he manages, “you’ll take away the biggest part of me.”
It’s probably better than her poems.
Princess blinks and then attempts to look attractively bewildered, which fails. “What’s the biggest part?”
The raunchy answer is obvious, but Vincent has to do this for his business.
“I’m about to get a new soul,” he says, and the fragments of the old one wither. “I’ll need someone to show me how to use it.”
Princess looks like she’s about to faint.
Vincent despises romantics.
He escapes back to the table with the drinks, but all of the wine is white. The moment he can get away from the flock of floozies that trails after him, he’s going to call Thompson and demand to be notified the millisecond his deal goes through, at which point Sad Poet Princess can do an Ophelia for all he cares.
Given the all-dayer he and Thompson had to pull last week after Vincent made a miscalculation, Thompson will almost certainly lie to him, then invade Vincent’s home and watch him suffer on his own flatscreen TV.
Maybe Vincent will poison all the drinks, including his own.
It takes most of Belial’s willpower not to cackle. His success is fortunate; his cackle has been known to send army generals into hiding.
They’ve congregated in one of the smaller rooms of the traditional Bridegroom mansion for the traditional Bridegroom decision ceremony. Since this is an unusual season which should be distinguished from its more ordinary predecessors-and since Belial is, after all, ever-so-slightly prone to sadism-each of the candidates holds a red lily before her. Vincent has a huge pair of scissors.
“If I decapitate your lily,” Vincent says disinterestedly, “you have to get the hell out. And no, you can’t take any party favors.”
One of the girls sighs loudly and starts unloading the stash of stolen bath soaps in her bodice.
Vincent appears to consider stabbing himself in the heart with the scissors, but he focuses on his task before Belial can get a humiliating word in edgewise.
“All right,” Vincent says, which is clearly a lie. He stumps up to the mandatory redhead-Vi-and makes short work of her lily. She looks more annoyed about the flower than the dismissal.
Belial would be more dismayed if this didn’t give him a perfect opportunity to “comfort” her later.
And the prospective other nine.
Preferably all at once.
Vincent goes around the half-circle, and by the time he’s finished, Belial’s figured it out: he’s chopping every second lily-making notable exceptions to the pattern for the heiress, Maia, Greta, and Jamaica. The first two are logical; the latter two are likely to get into a catfight that will end with one of them dead or paralyzed, which is presumably Vincent’s intention.
When the floral carnage ends, the floor is littered with petals, three girls are crying, two are sulking, four are pouting, and one is trying to sneak some soaps back into her dress. Maia is patting one girl’s arm and murmuring something about gorgeous Brazilians.
Belial has not been this happy in a long, long time. Millennia, maybe.
“Go ahead and get started, ladies,” he says, “and I’ll escort you to the limousines in a moment.” As they troop out, he flings an arm around Vincent’s shoulders again and grins at the closest camera. “There you have it, ladies-and gentlemen who are watching so that the ladies won’t make you sleep on the couch. There’s one question on everybody’s minds… Vincent Duval, are you prepared to choose one of these beautiful women to start a new life with you?”
Vincent purses his lips. Then he raises the scissors and chops off Belial’s tie.
“I’m dead,” he says. “Remember?”
[Episode 2]