mm_clare (mm_clare) wrote in morningstar_mnr, @ 2008-04-17 22:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | cambion, manny3 |
Over the last weeks; Cambion and Manny; all over the place!
Cambion and Manny had been needling each other for. . . well. It felt like weeks and it probably had.
There was the first time they'd really spoken, of course, when Manny had cast aspersions on Cambion's relationship with his father, and been generally an ass - and Cambion had been rude back. Then a few days later Cambion had 'accidentally' knocked into Manny's table in the Mocha and spilled his coffee over his magazine.
That was when Manny started bothering to find out things about Cam Shaw -- and found there were some oddities. Shaw was, apparently, a rich slacker with an inheritance that wasn't quite explicable. Not even his birth date was verifiable, once you questioned the obvious. Manny suspected some sort of old European mafia, and disapproved.
But he decided that even well-laundered cosa nostra would not be something to be scared of -- who did the little fuck think he was? So the next time Cam Shaw opened his mailbox, it was crawling with roaches. Roaches which the half-demon was highly amused by, if somewhat annoyed. Amused, because, well - roaches weren't about to bother him, were they? But annoyed, because whoever had put them there presumably thought that they would.
He fished out his post, and incinerated the roaches with an off-hand thought. A few escaped the fiery death, and he scooped a couple up, nibbling on them thoughtfully. Mmm. Crispy. Only one person would do something so petty - and human - so what was he going to do to that Temminck brat? Well,what was a good answer to roaches?
The Temmincks had one of those organic fruit and veg boxes delivered - and the next time it arrived, the food would be rotten and crawling with maggots and fruit-flies. It was petty, but then, so had been filling his mailbox with cock-roaches. Cam would save invading his home for later.
The rotten, maggoty fruit caused a great, general domestic upset. Maude cancelled the old service with extreme prejudice -- idiots swore the fruit was all fresh!! -- and took some days, with Sasha, to find a new, interesting, all bio-dynamic service to deliver their vegetables. For a pregnant woman, that was important, Maude thought! She spoiled her daughter-in-law as much as she could.
However, nobody connected the debacle with Cam Shaw.
Cam was most disappointed- he'd wanted Manny to know it was him. So, when the next delivery was in the same state - he added some cockroaches, just for good measure.
Maude claimed it had to be paranoia on Manny's part -- but Manny swore it had to be something Cam Shaw had done, and he could not tolerate that, now, could he? He thought for a bit, then arranged for the delivery of some delicious creamy carrot cake, with a note that inferred it was from an admirer. However, among the nuts and spice that went into the cake were some that were apt to induce some severe belly-gripes and vomiting, if not anything truly damaging to somebody's health. Poison was something else entirely -- this was supposed to be an unpleasant prank.
Of course, when one isn't, in fact, human, but merely wearing a close approximation of a human body - well. Cambion was about half way through the cake before he realised it wasn't just a cake. Cam put the half-eaten piece of cake down on the table and eyed it thoughtfully. The Temminck brat, again. Funny he hadn't noticed it before but then, he was a sucker for carrot cake.
How about something traditional? He grinned, and took a hint from his ancestors and the next morning, every dairy product in the Temminck household was sour. As was the milk in Manny's coffee. His yoghurt with lunch. And so on. Perhaps he wouldn't realise it was Cambion, but Cam wasn't too bothered about that now. This was serious- and that meant he was going to do it old-style.
Manny suspected really bad bacteria, introduced on purpose -- things going wrong made him suspicious by now. Maude told him not to be silly, and had everything disinfected, and insisted they move to the house in the suburbs for a few days. The disinfectant, after all, had to be terribly bad for a pregnant woman.
Manny, still convinced that Cam Shaw the mafia brat had to be behind it, opted for the traditional as well: he crept down to the garage and wedged potatoes artfully into the exhaust pipes of the man's green sports car, cutting them off so the blockage wasn't visible from outside.
Well, that was something Cam didn't notice until the explosions, and after jumping, nearly incinerating his seat, and swearing for a full five minutes, he sat, fuming, and chewing on his fingernail. That evening, the faucets in Manny's apartment ran with blood.
Manny had had to stay in the Manor, for a late meeting had kept him in the City. When the taps ran red, he saw red as well -- and kept going. He finally called in some of the shadier Pangolin people that he should have asked right away; and a few of the rougher characters that had been involved in Atlantic City lurked for Cam Shaw the next day, to teach him a lesson. A proper one. Never mind the police -- the Euro-mafia brat would not dare go to the police, would he?
Besides, when Cam was finished with his 'attackers' it would be they who did not dare go to the cops. At first, he was interested only in beating the crap out of the thugs who dared attack him, but once he smelled the Pangolin stink all over them, well, that made it personal. Once they were pounded into an appropriate state of submission, he left them to bleed and puke all over Manny's tastefully decorated home office. With no memory of how they got there, of course - let Manny worry about how Cambion had managed to get three men into his home with no-one seeing, and no sign of tampering at doors or windows.
So when Manny returned home this Friday evening, he had to call a discreet doctor that sometimes did things for Pangolin, and didn't talk, or ask questions. And then, because the women were coming home on the weekend, he got the carpet cleaners in as not to worry him. This was getting really nasty now.-