Re: Carinval - Carrick and Samandriel (and Mitchell later)
Carnivals were not exactly Carrick's favoured haunts, but the autumn equinox festivities had left him in a more mellow mood than usual. He wandered aimlessly, people-watching for the most part, tuning out the sounds of electronic jangling and the screams of customers on the thrill rides.
He was walking through a quieter area off the midway when he caught the scent of something that cut through the smells of greasy fried food and rusting metal... something that smelled delicious and different with every breath. At first it was the scent of olive groves on a Mediterranean summer night, then the scent of wine and oil and barley cakes, then a heavy and resinous incense. He had caught a scent like this before, and not long ago.
Carrick followed the scent further from the noise of the crowd, moving noiselessly over the crushed grass.
There he was. Samandriel; angel, Muse, ancient and youthful at the same time. A fallen one, a slave he had met on the street and drawn into a darkened room, where he had forced the boy to submit to him, offering up both his blood and his body for the vampire's pleasure.
The slave stood surrounded by a group of shabbily-dressed men; werewolves by the sharpness of their gazes and the hungry, feral expressions on their faces. They loomed over the slave, threatening and vicious, cornering their prey and pressing close about him. Carrick regarded them silently from a distance, tracking every movement they made with his pale, shrewd gaze.