VALENTINE CONRAD BELMONTE.
NICKNAMES: (NOT PREFERRED) VAL, CONNIE
SPECIES: HUMAN / LIFESPAN: MORTAL / MAGICAL ABILITY: NONE
SUMMARY: A predator in the guise of a companion. A man with a penchant for pretty things, or perhaps more accurately, for taking them apart. Intent upon following the river back to its source.

GENERAL: Valentine (who usually only gives his first name) is lacking. Some fundamental thread that was never tied, something in his heart that wasn't put in the right place — or perhaps broken somewhere between now and then. He's fundamentally cold and calculating when it comes to putting his life in order, and in interacting with others. He has an eye — and a taste — for delicate, pretty things (for things he can break). In combination with the belief that magic is an abomination (something inherently rooted in jealousy and desire), it has metastasized into a sort of obsession.

His personal history is a mystery. He will not bring it up on his own, though he'll answer any questions put to him. (Whether or not he's telling the truth is another story.)

He operates as a hunter, choosing a single target and then focusing all of his effort and attention upon them. It's the kind of attention that's easy to misinterpret as friendship or love (especially since that cover is usually his aim, if also something of a liability given how twisted his sentiments towards the supernatural are), which is usually what he uses to try to compensate for how detached he can otherwise seem to be. This is, obviously, a rather time-consuming method, but he's a patient man.

Usually, the tipping point is reached when that thin line between infatuation and obsession is too closely tread; when he becomes too consumed by jealousy, and by what he perceives as his own emotional weakness.

Then the dismantling begins.

TL;DR: Sociopath, extremely bad boyfriend.

VERSE-SPECIFIC: There's a house down at the end of the lane, with no address and no apparent owner, either. (Families have lived there before, but each time, things ended so very terribly.)

The siblings (for lack of a better word) call the house "Mother." They are born in the house, apparently made out of nothing, and remain there until they have grown to the age that Mother deems fit. Then, they leave, left to make their way in the world as best they can.

The house teaches them everything they need to know in order to survive. Paramount among those things are their respective powers. Each girl or boy (boys are rare, in keeping with Mother's penchant for pretty things) is given one gift. (It's a potluck, the children will tell you; you never know what you'll get. It all depends on the part of the house you were born out of.) The years they spend in the house (usually between ten to somewhere in the mid-twenties) are used to learn to control and hone those powers.

Now, the children may have no natural predators, but Valentine could probably pass for one where the house is concerned. As a young man, he was taken as a companion by one of the girls. But as time passed, something became clear: he was aging, she was not. Still, he stayed with her for five years.

At the end of the fifth year, he took her apart.

Continuing to hunt Mother's girls — in an effort to get to the house itself — has been a precarious effort given how interconnected the siblings are. To date, he has only successfully been able to kill one girl; his first love survived based on the old caveat to bring the bones back to Mother. But he's learned better, now.

Between "hunts," as it were, he will take apart things (people) that do not necessarily possess any magic. Appetites must be whet, after all.

He has also made a couple of attempts at living a normal life, but the curtain's already been drawn back. There's no going back for a man like him.

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AN OFFSHOOT OF VENUS
♪ / VISUALS