Chapter Text
It is well past midnight when Techno and Phil walk through the door to the Syndicate’s meeting room, tense shoulders and weary looks on their faces.
It’s been a rough couple of days.
Niki and Ranboo have been waiting for hours now, so it’s a relief to see them again.
Techno reaches into the cardboard box he has in his arms; carelessly, he chucks a blood packet to the table, and then another.
They slide along the mahogany wood, until they stop by quick hands with bitten nails.
“Ugh, finally,” Niki says, with a humourless chuckle.
She doesn’t thank her brother, but he doesn’t mind.
Centuries after their deaths, it’s moments like these that still make the thirst hard to manage, when nerves are high and there’s nothing (or no one) around to bite.
She knows that he understands.
She dives for the packets, already baring her fangs way before she can even get close enough to dig into the first plastic bag.
The blood spills and pours into her tongue, drips from her lips and along her chin, and she sighs, content. Ranboo stops typing to make a disgusted noise at her mess.
Techno only laughs, taking his seat by Niki’s left, a packet of his own in hands.
She downs half the packet in a single gulp, and makes a point to give Ranboo a sweet, wide, bloodied smile when she finishes.
Ranboo sighs, looking back to his laptop as Phil settles down beside them.
“Any luck with research tonight?” Phil asks, shifting his wings behind him so he can lean back on his chair.
“Dream’s new tech guy is awfully good at protecting their data, so not really,” Ranboo answers, tone the slightest bit anxious, “though there’s a lot of new files coming in, so they’re definitely onto something.”
Phil rubs at his eyes, tired and frustrated. It’s been a week of this. They don’t leave the house; they’re practically camping in the meeting room by this point.
Ranboo has been glued to his laptop, nevermind that he’s human, and a minor. Niki had half a heart to tell him inverting his sleep schedule couldn’t be good, but it’s not like he could do much else when Techno had asked that he stop going to school for the time being.
Speaking of which, Techno had been a mess too, in his own way. No one knew better than Niki how his hyper vigilance ran on lack of rest, not that he needed to sleep, but still. He followed Phil around everywhere, hovered over Niki when she went out to their backyard, even resorted to blood packets so that Ranboo wouldn’t have to drive them somewhere to hunt.
Arguably though, Phil was the worst of the three. He was usually already a huge pile of worries, being the head of the Syndicate and the one to tend to most of their operational matters. For as much as he could be passionate at times, he generally kept this level-headed grace that made him all that much powerful in everything he did, from diplomacy to witchcraft.
Now his magic crackled and hissed off of him- Niki could hear it fizzing and popping in the air, if she listened hard enough. Not even just her, all three of them could probably just sense it radiating, sitting this close to Phil on their table.
Niki herself hadn’t been doing great lately, but she usually kept herself busy with more practical problems: she’d bring Ranboo food so he’d eat for once, make a point to drink blood more often and in front of Techno, so he’d follow suit.
Though to be fair, Phil’s current problem was a very practical one.
Their problem, Niki likes to think.
But if Phil had been the most troubled, she wouldn’t fault him.
Afterall, it was his most prized possession that had been robbed - the gift he’d been given from Death herself, to be cherished, and kept close.
The Angel’s Stone - a small, black opal, which does just one little simple thing.
It makes you immortal.
So yeah, no shit other witches wanted it. Such a rare artifact, that even rarer few could hope to have.
Now stolen.
Pretty practical problem, Niki will concede. Because now Phil is vulnerable, his Lady is mad, and someone out there has what's his.
While Techno had more than taken care of any security breaches that made any of that possible, and Phil'd been spending the day doing who knows what spells to try and locate the Stone, the truth is that they are very out of options at the moment.
So they sit in silence, for what feels like hours, waiting for anything on Ranboo’s end.
Niki ends up biting her nails after finishing her second bag of blood for the day, which she knows is just spreading her mess even more around her chin and cheeks.
She looks up to Techno, who has his arms crossed over his chest and eyes fixed on the table, and his lips are just barely tinged red, the thinnest half-licked trail of blood down the corner and down his chin.
He likes to tease her about it, how she never got to contain her mess like he did.
Though, she is older than him.
(Even if he got turned a year earlier.)
As she bites off a chip off her nail, she wonders how he does it. How he keeps calm, stoic, even when she knows he’s restless. She knows he’s as impatient as she is, to do their part, and jump into action.
She knows way too well, how quickly that distant look in his eyes can turn sharp, fiery. How he can and will scorch entire districts down into the earth for even so much as landing a hand on any of the other three sitting here with him.
And oh, Niki knows. She would be the one to set it ablaze.
And yet. They’ve been sitting here. For hours- days. And Techno’s “calm”.
But she is so, so fidgety.
She balances her chair on its hind legs, back and forth, back and fo-
Ding, comes a notification, and Niki plops the chair backwards and onto the floor.
Techno’s the first to shoot up from his chair, already helping Niki up before she can really think of what just happened.
If her heart could still beat, she knows for certain that it would be up her neck.
As it is, her head pounds from where it hit the tile. She rubs at it, she knows she’ll be fine - vampire healing has its perks.
“You okay mate?” comes Phil’s old question, but Niki quickly laughs it off, already turning to Ranboo to know what the hell was that notification. The other two do the same, and neither she nor Techno bother to sit down again.
Ranboo’s eyes are running left and right at something on his screen, eyebrows increasingly furrowed, until his eyes suddenly widen at the end.
Techno runs behind him to read whatever it is himself, while Ranboo rakes a hand through his dyed hair, laughing hysterically in... relief?
“Ranboo?” Niki asks, cold weight setting on her chest.
“What is it?” Phil stands up now, but hesitates in following Techno to see it for himself.
“They sent out an email,” Techno mutters, face a mix of anger and confusion.
“Who did? Dream?” Niki presses further.
“With pleasure we announce… hosted in our manor…” Ranboo reads out loud, “an evening to celebrate… a reception...”
“A reception? What are they receiving?”
Techno looks up to stare at Phil. “A new member.”
“And they invited us? Why?” Techno turns back to the text over Ranboo’s shoulder, frowning. He inches closer.
“Dunno. My guess is that they have something of ours and want to rub it in our faces,” he all but snarls.
He’s got that look in his eyes, pointedly fixated on the screen, and he bares his fangs that way he does when he wants to rip Dream’s ribs apart.
Under him, Ranboo shudders.
“Techno,” Niki gives him a shove, snapping him out of it. He shakes his head a little, muttering a ‘sorry’ to Ranboo, who shrugs it off. Niki grabs Techno by the arm, and keeps him close.
“It’s okay… but really, what does this mean? Phil? Ideas?”
“I don’t know, it sounds weird… but it is our only lead so far.”
“So…” Niki eyes Phil warily, “we’re walking into a lion’s den, Dream’s manor, when they asked?”
Phil sighs. “Seems like it.”
“Not you old man,” Techno barks, pointing his finger at Phil’s direction, and then turning it back to himself and Niki. “We are. You’re not landing a feather there. Not with a ten foot pole.”
Phil scoffs, but says nothing. He only gives him a sharp look, but Techno doesn’t budge.
Eventually, Phil rolls his eyes. “Fine, you guys go to the reception. I’m making you both protection spells though, and I expect you to wear it.”
“Phil come on,” Niki retorts, laughing, “Dream has his witches too. He’ll have it so that none of that works there, you know that.”
None of them say anything to that.
Realistically, going was already crazy, when their rival coven had invited them, for no apparent reason whatsoever. Going without Phil, their only witch and perhaps the most powerful one to have ever lived, was insane.
Now going with Phil as fragile as a human?
Deranged.
So without Phil it is.
Niki sighs, and smiles. “We’ll be fine. We’ll get the Stone back, and everything will be fine.”