Blood Stained Legacies (Montgomery/PM to Join)

[Evelyn Montgomery]

A warm, excited tremor stroked the spidery nerves in Evelyn's body as the Manor came into view through the wispy darkness feathered before her eyes, engulfing her limbs as she flew through the air and over towers that stabbed victoriously at the sky. The moment her filthy, bare feet touched the cool grass she felt bones and muscles grow stiff, eyelids stretching wide over the soft, white meat that bulged from the sockets, obscured by tousled, wild black tangled curls. The splendor before her eyes overwhelmed her so greatly that the burn of fresh, tormenting tears scorched her eyes. She was here. She was home and everything looked as if nothing had changed. The grounds were kept neat and trimmed, vines left to crawl over the stone like the veins of the Manor itself. The trickling of fresh water in a fountain in the garden could be heard, the familiar breath of the land, of the halls from within made her shudder with familiarity, horrid familiarity. The slightest rustle in her frigid silence made her whirl like a crazed animal with lips pulled back over bare ivories, fingers curled into dangerous talons.

"My Lady." There standing with a watering pail in his hand was a certain Mister Jonathon Brice. He had aged since he was a boy and even moreso since he had taken over his father's job as grounds keeper of the great manor. There was surprise in his sunken brown eyes, but the lines of his lips were not pulled down or up in any direction. He simply stared into Evelyn's wide blue eyes for a moment before lowering his gaze with a bow of his head. Never in all of his 48 years has he seen such a horror, but he knew better to have one day expected her return.

"Welcome home, My Lady."

Evelyn's wild stare never wavered as the crazed curl of her lips stretch upward, those lips parting, wet with saline streams and dewy saliva that dripped from her chin, and she began to laugh, the sound echoing shrill and inhuman across the grounds of the Montgomery Manor. She was home. She was finally home.

[Robin Stevens]

Sunlight had just cracked over the horizon and Robin was already tying up her hair and straightening her blouse. Her reflection looked sharply at her, knowingly as she brushed her teeth and pressed studded earrings into her ears. It was a new day, the same old routine. Galen was out of school for the summer, but her trips to Hogsmeade did not stop there, not since she took over the old Three Broomsticks Inn there. There was work that had to be done and diligent, hard working miss Robin Stevens had to be the one to do it.

One lonely, useless little sigh fell from her lips before she left her reflection to go to her room and slip on a pair of comfortable shoes for the long hours she would spend mostly drifting the tavern floors on her feet balancing food and drinks and escorting weary travelers to their rooms for rest. Her only help would be the cook, who never left the kitchen, but she didn't feel so content with that today and thought it best to take advantage of her resources.

Already in the working spirit, she rolled up her sleeves and marched from her room down the hall of the Lazarus home in which she was living as a guest, and found herself to the door down the hall. As to not surprise the occupant inside...yet, she quickly turned the doorknob and let herself in. Her footsteps were quiet over the carpet and she was soon looming over the barely alive lump of sheets and blankets and limbs poking out from the mass. Legs were pressed into the pillows, arms dangling over the foot of the bed. When did he get so big? she had to wonder just then, before she reviewed her task, then yanked the blanket and covers from the sleeping form without any kind of subtly to speak of.

"Rise and shine, my little helper! It's time to start the day!" After she dumped the mass of fabric onto an empty desk chair, she took the liberty of pulling apart the curtains to the blaring, morning summer sun that flooded into the room and bleached her son in its rays.

[Galen Montgomery]

He was dreaming dreams that shouldn't be mentioned, Galen. Dreams that couldn't be mentioned without the average brow rising in question and possible disgust, even moreso that the star of such dreams was son of the home he resided in. If any were to ask, he'd say, 'Why not dream these dreams?', such dreams about Auriel Lazarus in the most compromising positions imaginable. One would be surprised, but shouldn't be so surprised as he was a growing, hormonal teen much like the average growing, hormonal teen. So, he dreamed warm dreams, but this particular morning would have his dreams turn cold and he shivered in his bed as the cool morning air doused him, his mother's voice shattering the visions in his drowsy mind.

The moment those eyes cracked open, he was blinded by the brightest light in existence and he groaned painfully, shielding his precious retinas from what he was sure to be certain death had he looked any more boldly into the morning.

"Mum, what are you doing?" he managed to ask with clumsy lips that were still very much asleep as he wanted to be. "Summer just started. It can't be time to go back to school so soon."

With his eyes closed, he simply turned from the open window and the silhouette of his mother to comfortably grasp the drifting tails of sleep, drifting right along with it back to his dreamland where Auriel awaited him wearing very little on a white sand beach on a remote island. Mmmm...

[Robin Stevens]

Her face fell flat as Galen simply turned over and went back to sleep so easily, and her eyes rolled up to the ceiling as if addressing some unknown force in the universe. "The things I have to put up with." She sighed and looked down at her son with. "I've got no other choice, I suppose."

She approached the bed and the room was soon filled with a loud bang and crash that made Mihail's cat Salem jump from his perch where he slept and find refuge in his master's room, most likely to snuggle up in his arms. Robin had a lot to do today and she would not let her day fall behind schedule for a bought of laziness.

[Galen Montgomery]

::::::An Hour Later::::::

"Order up!"

Galen rose from the seat he had been occupying at the corner of the bar with his chin propped in his palm, eyes hooded low. His mother had been tossing him warning looks whenever she caught him about to fall asleep and he soon found that slowly the urge to sleep was slipping away from him and his dreams of sleeping in were indeed officially shattered beyond recovery.

He sauntered behind the bar to pick up a breakfast tray in one hand and a tray of orange juice and water in glittering cold glasses in the other so that he may drift through tables of early birds with little enthusiasm, paying no heed to how they shoveled their food into their mouths quickly to fit their time constraints, their schedules, to be at their workplaces to clock in at the correct time and fit into the neatly packed box of life.

Sighing, he found a bit of enthusiasm before he reached the appropriate table, given to him by the sheer idea of his mother's wrath if he didn't do this right. So, he gave a crooked grin and began, "French toast, one large omelet, and a cheese danish with orange juice, milk, water, and tea." Plates and glasses were set individually before each person at the table and he gave the complimentary 'Let me know if you need anything else' before he was allowed to escape back to his seat at the bar.

His idea of summer vacation was not spent at The Three Broomsticks waiting tables for free.