It was a bit like dispatching a torpedo at a canoe.<br/><br/>Salace leaned back. It was always a good show. She moved like some of the old things that hunted in their Mother-Woods; in the birthing forest. According to their lore, him and Lil were from there, and that blood was plentiful in Lilith. Devana had said as much, and there were eerie shadows and echoes and full-out winds of that mother when the girl took herself from brother's lap all the way over to Kormir. Sal still lingered on how lovely she'd been against him, how she always was. He felt most at ease when she was coiled in his lap. Maybe she was still playing the part of pet, going at the other conversationalist simply because Sal had said Seek. He would have liked to play with her, that's all the brother ever wanted, but this was business, and Kormir was a potential partner, and Sal pitied and envied him at the same time. Yga needed loyalty, and that's what a girl like Lilith could garner. Mine it like ore out of the man. Nothing as simple as hips and tits, but just as quick about it, only deeper. And even if this was a group effort, it was her scene now. He just sat there and held out his fingers for Al, who deposited the rest of the cigarette between them. Sal had a swig of vodka and made it taste like ash with a drag of the burning roll before he swallowed.<br/><br/>Kormir was accomplished. What he lacked in sartorial prowess, he made up for in grit. Half self-made, half inherited, he had built his family business almost as high as the scrapers in this large city. He wasn't easy to rattle, but he got emotional over some things. It worked well, his work-ethics, and the legend of a boss that cried when he had to kill cousins pulled more followers into his ranks. He had his own ghost stories. But for all the legends he was writing for himself, and for all the apostles spreading them on the streets, he was no match for the priestess in his lap. Not when she brought up Katrina. The last of his heart. Sal saw it, and it was almost painful. The brother licked some vodka off the corner of his mouth at how the Russian first listened with irritated doubt, and then awed belief at her musings. That's the Lil effect for you. He could have shot the man right through his shit suit and it wouldn't have been as profound an impact as what Lil did. Salace had to swallow his own laughter. Poor bastard. Lilith was into it tonight. Alright. Just let her loose.<br/><br/>Of course, the more emotional bits of her story whipped up a storm in the bi-polar city criminal. Sal didn't move when Al was about to pounce. Big brother let her send out her own signals. Wasn't like Salace would let Kormir hurt her, but Al was too jumpy to realize. She spun her magic. It was effective. By the end of it Salace was engrossed too. Yatcha didn't stand a chance. If you could move him through his superstition, Kormir was putty in your hands. That was half his reason for trusting and respecting Salace, anyway. The music went on but the pitter patter of other guests died down, just like the ember haunting the cigarette. Eventually Kormir just sat there, under the witch straddling his lap. His arms were still trying to hold her, were still animalistic in their intention, but his heart was drained. She'd sunk her teeth into his old love and his current faith and made him into a puppet. Sal clucked his tongue and shook his head. That's all there was then. No need to do anything else. Lilith might as well have cut Kormir's chest open and eaten from it.<br/><br/>"You're a magic woman." Kormir breathed as he clawed at her, pulling her closer. It wasn't unlike what she wanted from her brother, to suck her up into his being, like he'd looked for her all his life, but not like a person - like a spirit, or a smoky moment. Drink her up like he was bloodless and she was a finished battlefield. He tried to kiss her but wouldn't reach. He hissed with frustration, not just over her but for the entire ordeal. He hadn't come to this place to have her speak to these parts of him. Katrina. Mother of his son; brought alive, wrenched from the altar - the last holy thing in a bad man. He dropped back as though he was going to try and assault her again; it looked like love and hunger and anger. She was hurting him, but it was heartfelt. "How do you know?" he asked but his eyes were still compromised, focus darting in and out, courtesy of her Khlyst. He didn't know what to do with himself but he knew this moment, this girl in his lap, was making him hard like a rock in his pants and soggy like wet bread in his head. That he needed her. Like he'd seen human wildflowers, fixed to the concrete, need his wares.<br/><br/>Behind her, her brother saw apparitions too. It was more nostalgia than hallucination. He was used to the mirage. It was fitting he was drinking tar with his lungs and wearing fur on his shoulders, because he was made out of the woods outside of Yga too. But male spirits aren't worth as much. He remembered that sentiment too when he looked at her. She had a cloak on, shape of their mother. With her legs parted and her hips kissing Kormir's like that, the phantom image burnt itself onto her perfectly. Davena had also talked like that, lied like that. Crocheting with his heartstrings and baking by making a furnace of his diaphragm; mother stuff. A darling mother. A mother's darling.<br/><br/>It was Alchem that notice his boss - the boss of their entire trailer-home and rusted up world - was vibrating. Sal cut the filter with his fingers like sheers but he still held those digits up like he hadn't notice, like he wasn't falling apart. Al touched a shoulder, and all the fine hairs of supposedly a Russian wolf that adorned it. Sal turned to his enforcer and shook his head. Not an angry No, but the kind of No that it spelled out with tears but not punctuated with shedding them. Like there was so much violence and love and vomit in him that it was making him powerful and anemic at the same time. And he promised it'd spill over even on a friend as beloved as Alchem if he didn't remove that hand. So Al did.<br/><br/>"Go get the stuff." Salace whispered. It was nothing, but it was also mercy. So Al went.<br/><br/>Yatcha wasn't the kind of man who'd let go when something was sweet. She'd given him everything and then taken it away. A sense of loss as deeply as his seed had been rooted in Katrina. And made his eyebrows gather in sorrow, and then in wrath. He stood up. This was all he ever did. When things hurt he tried to destroy them. Hard worker in the underworld. But there was something else there, and it reminded him of its place, and thereby his own, when it stood behind her, by the edge of their booth. Like a walking eclipse without a celestial body to obscure. He looked every bit the predator that his coat was made of, then. Just his intent was enough. A reaper come from places in the world that still had its old fauna. Just a slight hunch of his spine, hovering over the girl with all the honey inside her. Just a look in his eyes that were usually black but were now midday yellow. Three men in equally ill-fitted suits lifted nine millimeter reapers of their own, oiled and without numbers.<br/><br/>Sal didn't mind the guns, wouldn't be here if he did, and grabbed her by the arm. Petulant little girl. He pulled her like she was an object. She'd have no choice than to come along when he stuffed her behind himself. When she slid out of her seat, out of the booth, Yatcha reached for her, but his talons only cut out holes in the space she had occupied. He'd felt desperate when he lost her, and looked up at Salace with an insulted number of wrinkles on one side of his face. Sal looked back just as Alchem returned and tossed a bag on the table, upset their drinks and toppled the almost finished, expensive bottle. Salace tugged her out with him and when the suits wanted to follow Yatcha called them back. Al left when they tossed two duffels with bills into him.<br/><br/>"You just have to use your magic for everything dontcha." Big brother muttered as he had her by the elbow, wrenching her along and out the door. He tore the car open and flung her inside, got in hard after her and all but crushed her against the opposite door when he kept her between it and his seated body. Philip knew to drive when Al got in, shotgun. They were speeding back home soon and Sal was quiet, eyes ahead, giving Lil all his attention by ignoring her. Childish. Dangerous. All he saw was his mother and her bountiful tits and all he tasted was their sweet flavor and then blood and then mud. "That's not the kind of whore I want you to be." he muttered with a tired anger in his eyes - she could see one from the side - still yellow in the quickly passing streetlights, but the color was fading. He looked down and then moved about, irritated, to get the coat off  - almost elbowed her in the face in the process - and threw it at its own seat beside them, like it was on fire. "We don't NEED her!" he shouted and Philip almost swerved. Sal turned toward her and reached. Unlike Yatch he connected.<br/><br/>Big brother had one finger of one hand in her face and all the fingers of the other hand around her throat, pressing her head into the spring between the door and the leather. He had a very hard time remembering HE had been the one letting her lose at Kormir, and that it quite frankly had been an unmitigated success, as spelled out by the brimming duffels. "Just be y'self, Lil." he ordered but the finger was quaking, like he was about to be undone by something ballistic inside. "Don't fucking be her, okay?"