Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

8 - Chapter VIII: The Meeting with Goar

The inn was much changed from how Lucian remembered it. Back then, almost ten years ago, there had been a quiet warmth...

...a few servers staring curiously from their place by the wall, a farmer nursing his drink, and Hajna, the white-haired innkeeper knuckling her back as she lumbered out of the kitchen. Once the flaxen-haired innkeeper's daughter, she had been a rose to the eye in her youth.

Only now he saw cobwebs and dust, the wooden rafters of the thirteen-foot ceilings covered in smoke stain and ash. Clean rectangles on the wall where framed pictures had once hung. All the tables and chairs gone, the fireplace empty and the iron lamps unlit.

He passed through the main room, through the open doors to the back, the private cobble-stone courtyard where weeds grew. Most of the garden was dead, the rose bushes gone wild. Goar was sprawled on the ground, his hands folded on his chest, staring up at the night-sky. In many ways, the lycan resembled the weeds. Faded brown hair hanging almost to his chin, brown eyes beneath the lycan-glaze, neither tall nor short. The kind of man that could pass unnoticed through a crowd and slip a dagger in your back. He did not turn his head as Lucian approached.

"You smell like a Blood."

"Tanis has that effect on people," Lucian frowned, taking his coat off and dropping it on the ground. The grey waistcoat followed suit, and he began undoing the gold cufflinks along his wrist. There was more red on his shirt than white. Blood, blood, everywhere and not a drop to drink. He focused on the gold. "I am sorry to hear of Hajna." He was more than sorry, but Goar had been a fool to start the dalliance. Few survived the bite.

"It ended before she died."

"All the same."

Friend or lover, mortals always died in the end. His fingers kept slipping on the right cufflink. Considering tearing into the sleeve, he almost growled. He should never have started using this trend. Fastening sleeves...it was ridiculous. Constricting. A shirt was a shirt. Finally he got the clasp unhooked.

"Did you kill him?" Goar's eyes suddenly flicked towards him.

"No." The cufflinks went into his pockets. He knelt by the waistcoat, removing the gold watch and pocketing that as well. Not bothering to unbutton the blood-stained shirt, he pulled it up and over his head. "The deal went through. The terms are the same, though for a longer stretch. Do you see any trouble?"

"If I do, I will deal with it." Goar shrugged, his teeth showing slightly. It was not an expression of challenge, merely the languid movements of a hardened wolf.. "A tenth of the kill for every week. He will have to store it himself. Guards will be harder to come by."

The bloody shirt fell to the ground and Lucian snapped his fingers.

"Shirt."

Undisturbed by the request, Goar sat up almost gracefully and pulled off his shirt, handing it over. The moment the cloth exchanged hands, the man was back down on the stones again, bare back upon the cold ground. "Food supplies are in the cellar. Most of it is dried, but there is fresh meat as well. It should last you the whole journey."

Lucian grunted in acknowledgement, pulling the shirt over his head in one motion, arms through the sleeves. The material felt good. Faded wool, cold from the stones but cleaner than anything he had worn in the past three days. "You have blood?"

"Some."

"Enough for two days?"

"Depends on the vampire. Man or woman?" There was a lazy smile on the lycan's face. He was fishing for information, already aware it seemed that the deal had involved something more than books or history. The man could fish to his heart's content. Eventually, all the pack-leaders would be informed of her presence.