The city is all around you, a hungry, embracing darkness, it is an insatiable machine that draws in lives and grinds them to ruin. We dress it up with parks, with developments, with fucking shopping malls, but that dosen't change what it is. Beneath the glitz and glamor, behind the broad defensive walls of the suburbs, beneath the feeble glare of streetlights, the city is a relentless monsotorous beast, gorging itself on a cornucopia of flesh and corruption. And that is just the humans.
Beneath the streets dark forces are at play. Coven's of vampires move through the night, stalking their next victims. Strange fae courts dance to music no mortal can hear, granting gifts to mortals that twist in their hands to destroy their very souls. Dark things from the infernal realm ride behind the eyes of inconspicuous business men and leering insane wizards plunge daggers into the hearts of their sacrificial victims. Worse yet these forces move against each other, grinding mortal and magical alike between their titanic metaphysical mass.
A storm is coming.
If you want to survive the storm, you had best get busy...
This could not be happening. Hieronymus Mauser stumbled blindly down the alleyway. The cool autumn wind tore at his naked flabby body and he cried out in pain as fragments of broken glass dug into his bare feet. He was a flabby man, soft from decades of complacent power with thinning hair and a sagging gut. Although he appeared to be in his fifties his real age was closer to thrice that. Wizards aged slower than regular mortals, though the march of time would claim them if no worse fate rose up to swallow them.
Such a fate intent on swallowing Mauser. Limping along he turned back to look down the alleyway, the shadowy form of his pursuer flicked across the graffiti covered tunnel, a flash as quick as moonlight. Mauser hurled a torrent of spell fire back down the alley, the golden fire igniting everything vaugle flammable. Trash burst into ugly black orange infernos and a lone trash can melted to slag before the onslaught of arcane violence. There was a momentary silence broken only by a distant dog howl and the wail of a car alarm, then there was a sultry feminine laughter which dripped with cat like cruelty.
“Who are you!” Mauser screamed, his voice high and tiny with panic. There was a flash of movement to his right and he turned and fled blindly down another alleyway. Mauser was the head of the Council of Seven, a coven of powerful wizards who kept the peace in Detroit. He was accustomed to being in control, to having power of the situation, it had been decades since he had felt physical danger the reminder of the sensation made his guts curl. Even for this area of economic wasteland the streets were suspiciously empty, where were the vagrants, the homeless, the drug abusers who haunted these desolate stretches of the city? How was it that he found himself alone amidst hundreds of thousands.
The naked wizard ran wheezing over a section of cracked asphalt that had once been a parking lot, unsure of where he was running save for a generalized desire to find some other living soul that might ward off the terror that was stalking him. Something whipped past him on his right and he spun and unleashed another blast of arcane fire, blowing in the front of a boarded up convenience store. More mocking laughter sounded, sourceless and devoid of humanity. The wizard could feel the things malice as a cold choking terror around his heart, pushing in on his arcane senses. Could it be that the vampires knew he had stumbled across their little game? Surely they wouldn’t dare come at him directly and this thing, whatever it was, was like no vampire he had ever felt before.
LImping on his injured foot and leaving bloody footsteps the naked wizard ran across the street and into an abandoned park. It must have once been a place where children had played and bored parents had flirted with one and other but years of neglect had taken their toll. Tall trees reached up like skeletal fingers from beneath the ground. The grass, brownish and unwholesome, brushed his calves as he ran across the overgrown flower beds that had long ago choked on weeds. Rusted playground equipment creaked in the wind. Even through the burn of adrenaline the cold was getting to him now, searing his lung and burning at his nose, ears and genitals. How had he ever allowed this to happen. He tripped and stumbled down a small incline hitting something unyielding, freezing and hard enough to bloody his nose.
“No! No!” the wizard shrieked as he tried to push himself up. He realised that he was on a sheet of ice. Perhaps it had once been a duckpond at the center of the park. Slipping and sliding he pushed himself to his feet and then froze. A figure was moving down the gentle slope of the ponds bank.
“No, no, no,” he repeated though now it was a desperate whisper rather than a terrified scream. Mauser shook his head as though he could deny what was happening by sheer force of will. Desperately he began to incant the only spell he could think of that might save him but it was already too late. It had been too late for a long time he realized as the figure stepped onto the ice. She was beyond him. THe figure stepped close, fingers as cold as ice reaching forward and touching the wizards lips with a gentle shushing sound. The incantation faltered and failed. Again there was silence. In the clear winter sky a shooting star streaked overhead, vanishing into the darkness as quickly as it had appeared.
“Please,” the wizard blubbered, hot tears running down his face.
“Shhhhh,” the figure said in a catlike tone, and then, with an almighty crack, the ice gave way, plunging Hieronymus Mauser, head of the Council of Seven and Hierophant of Detroit, into the ice blackness below.
The Head of the Wizards in Detroit is found naked and frozen to death in a pond by the mortal authorities.
The word Thaum has been carved into his chest. @Sophrus He had been investigating the criminal dealings of vampires. @Hour Error A certain fae is rumored to have recently had an argument with Mauser @POOHEAD189 There are very few beings who could kill a fully fledged wizard @Fetzen
The bow slid over the Violin strings in a glide, giving off a coarse yet smooth rhythm that spoke of lost centuries and the lamentations of a far gone way of life. The fetching, youthful looking fellow played with a passionate ease, as if music was the stuff of the very air he breathed. Before the gathered crowd, a tall, red headed beauty sang with the very soul of the Emerald Isle.
"Oh it's meetings a pleasure and it's parting a grieve. And an unconstant lover is worse not a thief. For the thief he will rob you and just steal what you have But an unconstant lover will follow you to your grave.~"
The pub was full tonight, and there was little else Caber had felt like doing rather than playing an instrument and relieving others of inhibitions. Those that had at first been annoyed at the interruption of their drinking conversations were soon enraptured by the merry, forlorn tune accompanied by the bold and honeyed voice of the mystery woman. They all pulled up seats and enjoyed their drinks as they watched. A few men began to tear up, obviously having taken solace in their drinks this night, fleeing from their own lover quarrels.
"Oh they'll buy you fine trinkets, fine garments and flowers And they'll call in at tea-time to pay their devours They'll swear that they love you by the light of the moon! And propooose (beat) marriage? No, sherry cobblers at Taylor's Saloon!~"
So at ease was Caber, that his mind went the way of the wandering doe, searching back to earlier in the day as he remembered his argument with Hieronymus Mauser. The fat human had only sympathies for Montego, laughing at Caber's story of betrayal and having the nerve to call Caber petty for wishing to seek justice. It had been all he could do to not tranform into his wild state and slit the wizard's throat there! It was because Montego was now a wizard like he, demon patron or no. Men today, even wizards, had forgotten the price of the Iron Word.
He had only been lucky that he had found this woman walking home. Tall and supple like a tree, it had taken a very short amount of time to beguile her. Even now, she was under his enchantment, singing with a passion that had been incited by the fey's eyes. A dark blue void she had inexplicably drowned in, and it brought out her deepest, most passionate feelings now directed by he. Oh, the spell was not permanent, nor was it hard to break out of. But only if you were aware of such things. A normal mortal woman could be ensnared as easily as a hare.
He would not use her. Such a thing there was no sport in. Instead she merely served to sing as he played, and attempted to cheer himself up with a song. But even as his mind wandered into old paths and rooted streams of thought, did his acute hearing pick up a familiar sound. A sound he had heard innumerable times in his many years on this earth.
It could have been such a nice end of the work day. Or well.. end of 'work night' would suit the situation better: Working as a doorkeeper for a rather prominent club more often than not implied that one could already see the reddish glow of the next day's sun creep up on the horizon by the end of the shift. Anyway. Neither had any of Othen's 'customers' tried to beat him up this night nor had anyone spat out his or her stomach's primarily alcoholic contents close to his shoes. By his standards that was enough to consider things to have been a very calm and relaxing night.
The scenery unfolding in front of his eyes was anything but relaxing though. Even well before going around the last corner one could see the flashing blue lights bouncing off the glass walls of the adjacent skyscrapers. Supernatural or not there were only very few authorities in this city who were allowed to pull off such a show -- and for none of them one could say that its presence was a good sign.
The scene around the pond had been cordoned off already and quite lavishly so. Having pushed his own enormity as close to the center of it as possible without violating any rules, Othen could see very well what was going on. Divers had been sent into the pond. One was gently pushing the body towards the end of the water where others were already standing and expecting it. The other apparently searched underwater for anything that might have fallen off the unforunate... Hieronymus Mauser ?
Well that was beyond unfortunate. Othen could see the yellow press crying out scandal in letters as big as they could fit them onto their humble papers, but that would probably still be no match to what would go on in the supernatural community. That man hadn't taken a bath in the open world at midnight and then suddenly found out that his old heart couldn't handle the stresses of cold water, had he ? So what might have happened to him ?
Othen tried to inspect the body from where he was standing, hoping that if the usual shot wound was to blame he'd be able to see the blood stains. There were none though. The body seemed rather pristine. Then a rather disgruntled police officer approached the gargoyle, telling him to move away as he had already and quite literally bend the rules. In his need for information Othen had to agree that he had indeed tested the ductility of the crime scene tape without noticing.
He most likely wouldn't be able to find out any more here. But where else ? If this was a crime the press couldn't reliably trusted in. Not in this particular city where special kinds of people were pulling the strings more often than not. Too bad that he himself had managed to sever the good connections to his own community. At least for a while...
Thaum was snapped out of a research fugue as his cell phone rang, he glanced away from the 200 year old tome he was painstakingly translating. The phone said four missed calls from Marcus, one of the few in the local magic scene that would actually be called a friend. he casually tapped the phone to answer the call. "hey Marcus, whats up?" being called at odd hours of the night was not surprising as several spirits or particularly nasty vampires had to be dealt with sometimes.
"Thaum, what the hell happened?" answered Marcus Thaum was about to return to reading the tome, but his tone was nearly accusatory. "What do you mean by What the hell happened?" "You dont know?" asked Marcus this time almost accusing Thaum of stupidity. Thaum spent several heart beats trying to think of something like, having missed a night at the pub or something but this sounded much more serious. "Uhm no Marcus, what are you talking about?"
"Mauser"
Thaum grimaced at the name. He wasnt exactly popular with the local magical hierarchy but he wasn't breaking any of the rules, If severely bending a few. That being said, he didn't think that those at the top would have known or cared about him. "What about him?" asked Thaum cautiously. Marcus was tied to the magical society much more closely than he was and might be giving him a heads up about some sweeping rule change or a crack down on his kind of magic.
"He is dead.. your name was carved into his chest." said Marcus. Thaum had half a mind to start laughing at the ridiculousness but how Marcus was talking made him sure that this was no prank. Thaum stayed quiet for several long seconds trying to think how or why such a thing might happen.
"Wh- what? when? how?"
"He was found a few hours ago, i have a few friends that give me a little info on things like this.. Look, i shouldn't even be talking to you, I'm probably going to get into a hell of a lot of trouble over this.. b- but i know you man. You wouldn't have killed Mauser. Hell, I doubt you could have even if you wanted to. I mean, I'm just calling to let you know that the Guardians are coming to collect you so that you don't do something stupid when they do."
Thaum stayed silent for another moment, "Oh shit..." he finally said as the weight of the situation dawned on him, and that weight threw him into a panic. "Right, thanks uh- for letting me know" He hung up on Marcus, later he might realize that ending the call probably made him sound guilty as hell but that didn't matter. There was going to be a proverbial witch hunt that probably started minutes after finding the body and reading his name.
Which meant, the witch hunt started hours ago and he didnt have time to prepare for it. Thaum snapped the book closed and dropped it on his desk thinking furiously as to what he might need and not realizing he was muttering aloud "ok.. chalk, rosemary, belladonna, candles, some silver and gold, iron, charcoal..." he continued muttering ingredients for most common summoning rituals. His little collection grew into a messy pile before he realized he needed to stop because he didn't have time to make a real plan. "Ok ok, stop it Thaum, basics for an emergency case. That's all. Except that emergency case is my own survival." He clenched his teeth and calmed himself like he would before a ritual which due to practice only took several moments. Once calm he ran through what he needed much easier only collecting what was vital: a hat, jacket, a simple sturdy cane, a pack with simplistic ritual components, some cash, his dinky little handgun, and finally his little black book of demons.
With all that in hand he left his apartment and locked the door behind him and thumbing the rune etched into the door activating his magical defenses as pathetic as they where. He set off down the street hat pulled low.
"Nice shades," John said with a nod, and a voice heavy with sarcasm.
"Thanks Detective," Vera returned loudly enough to be ensure that the bodies around them suddenly found new places to rest. Behind her newly acquired mirrored sunglasses the young vampire rolled her eyes, purely for her own sake.
"They got Mauser," John continued, waving down the skeletal bartender.
Drunk, irritated, and not just a little bit lonely Vera snapped back at the detective, "What Mauser?"
"The Mauser. Hieronymus Mauser, Head Wizard of Detroit, himself."
"Well, shit."
"It gets better."
"Does it?" Vera replied halfheartedly staring into alarming empty glass of blood slurry that she had forced herself to drink. It remained the closet thing to beer that she could drink. She ran a hand through her freshly cut hair, it would buy her a few seconds, enough hesitation to bring her gun to bear on any old friends. She hated it already. She'd never liked her hair short. She never wanted a pixie cut. She never wanted to be every drunken hipster's manic pixie dream girl, but here she was, looking the part with freshly dyed hair. Wearing a leather jacket she'd stolen from some biker, and fish-net stockings dressed with holes. Slumming it with the dregs of supernatural Detroit and the mortals that had enough wealth or favors to their name to avoid being turned into the latest midnight snack. She'd hated the Necronomicon since her turning. It was a garbage bar, full of garbage people, and worse undead.
"He had opened up an investigation."
"So, all the Robes do is investigate."
"Sure," John smirked "But how often do they risk investigating the dealings of kindred?"
"Almost never," Vera said with growing interest.
"Exactly."
"Why are you telling me this? You know I'm out, I'm an exile. None of this concerns me. Not anymore."
"You might think that. If you were the impulsive sort," John said with a grin. "But you don't get out that easily. Not unless they want you to."
"I have no idea what you are talking about John," Vera hissed. "You're drunk, go home. Go home before someone here finally shuts that big mouth of yours by tearing out your throat."
"Whatever you say, sweetheart," John laughed.
"Fuck off, John," Vera sighed, rising to her feet. She could feel a pleasant buzz course through her as she drained the last of the blood from the glass. It did little to mask the panic, and sudden nausea that bit at her stomach. She felt a wave of disgust. At herself. At the bar. At everyone in the bar, especially the weathered the detective that sat across from her. She stumbled into the cold embrace of the dark night with an audible gasp of relief. A cigarette finding its way to her lips, before butane fueled fire found it.
"Fuck," Vera muttered, as she began to walk down the empty street. She sensed her sire's hand in the detective's words. She could feel the soft hand tightening around her neck. She had to talk to Strauss. He'd want to know, he'd know what to do. The goblin had his uses. Hideous and terrible as he was.
@POOHEAD189 The woman Caber had ensnared screamed again, her register rising from flat fear to piercing agony. The bar seemed to recoil from the unexpected sound like a living thing. Glass shattered as the slipped from the hands of started patrons and jostled serving staff alike. Several chairs went over backwards as people jumped to their feet in startled shock. The woman staggered back into a corner hunching her form over, the tracksuit black against the old country dimness the pub cultivated. Her hands and face in contrast shone with a burning green-white light as spiraling sigils of ancient ogham script seemed to carve themselves into her flesh.
The few people who had moved to help her, probably imagining her to be having some sort of medical emergency or other mishap, fled before the flickering witchfire. The panic spread quickly. It was beyond natural panic a cold a visceral fear swept through the assembled mortals like razor sharp ice.
“Fire!” someone shouted and there was a general stampede for the door. Even those that would ordinarily have been made of sterner stuff fled before what could only have been magically induced terror. The woman continued to scream, clawing at her face in a frenzy of pain and panic. Long gashes appeared in her handsome face, the blood blue black in the weird illumination.
Some other fae magic has been used to subvert Cabers charm and will kill this woman. After she dies her corpse will impart a cryptic message.
___________________________ @Fetzen “Mister Othen,” came a steady cultured voice from behind the gargoyle. Behind him stood a tall man of indeterminate age in an expensive suit of grey white european silk. A slender cigarette hung from between his thin pale lips and his oddly colourless eyes moved constantly behind a pair of rectangular gold framed spectacles. As the gargoyle turned the man removed the glasses and polished them with a cloth which vanished back into the breast pocket of his coat as soon as it had appeared. He never removed his cigarette during the entire process, a thin stream of smoke twisting into the chilly air.
Sadjic Trioulscar was a well known figure in the murky underworld of the arcane. He claimed to be a vanilla mortal but there was a sense of power and menace about him which left others wary. Although he had a Cypriot passport, inquiries into his past either lead nowhere or the people asking the questions conveniently vanishing. Sadjic made his living as a broker of sorts, moving between the various factions of the supernatural world dispensing and collecting favors.
“A great tragedy to lose Herr Mauser,” Sadjic said with a glance towards the flurry of police activity.
“And at such a delicate time,” he made clucking sound as though it were indeed a great pity. Behind him, half concealed by the early morning light was a black luxury sedan. The driver sat with his hands on the wheel, eyes staring straight ahead as though a mannequin rather than a man.
“Not a good time to be an outcast with few allies, not so? Once the finger pointing starts, who knows where, or on whom it will land?”
Sadjic wants to offer Othen a deal that will sound like it will help him but will actually backfire
Thaum had no sooner moved off down the street than a large panel van with the stenciled legend ‘City of Detroit’ on both sides turned onto the road. As rare as public works were in the city these days the vehicle should have aroused attention but no one so much as looked at the van as it pulled up to the curb and a half dozen figures, mostly men but a few women stepped out. Each of them wore city of Detroit utility coveralls and carried a large duffel bag. With calm almost bored efficiency they headed into the apartment building.
The Guardians of the Peace, more commonly known simply as Guardians, or be less pleasant nicknames, were the shock troops of the Council of Wizards. Functioning as something between police and paramilitary death squads few groups were as universally feared and hated as Guardians. All Guardians possessed latent magical ability, the sort of thing that in ordinary circumstances would never amount to much beyond a miraculous escape, or an unexplained streak of luck. Recruited by the Council a Guardian underwent a ritual of empowerment and was subject to a series of geas which made them something more, or less, than human. They were completely loyal and incorruptible and, although not wizards themselves, were capable of feat of magic which made them a threat to almost any member of the supernatural community.
The first Guardian to reach the door, a bulky main with neat dark hair, extended a hand toward the door jam and paused. After a moment he withdrew a rune inscribed rod and bought it down firmly against the latch plate with a flash of amber light. There were a few people on the street, a mother pushing a stroller and a few joggers but none of them seemed to even notice the unusual event. Thaum turned the corner on the strange scene and hurried on, as he passed an alley however he felt a presence behind him and something press up against his back.
“Fancy meeting you here,” came a husky and decidedly female voice. Whatever was pressing into his back clearly wasn't a gun, but that wasn’t necessarily a good sign.
“Everyone out looking for the man who killed Mauser and he just happens to walk past.”
Whoever this is wants to here Thaum's side of the story but wont hesitate to turn him over to the Guardians
________________________________ @Hour Error The air outside was unseasonably cold. Wind heavy with moisture but not quite ready to bury the city with snow whipped through the streets. Even to the dead it was cold and for mortals it was reason enough to keep off the streets. Years of indifferent maintenance meant that the pavement was undulating and uneven beneath Vera’s feet. Of the lights meant to illuminate the dark streets perhaps one in three still functioned. Some had been smashed by thrown rocks, others buy bored gangbanbers with handguns, hell there were even a few genuine electrical faults.
As Vera turned off the street that the Necronomicon claimed as its own a car began to slow behind her. It was a beat up ford that might once have been blue but years of indifferent maintenance had left black or grey. One of the doors had been replaced at some point and no one had ever even pretended to match the paint and a blow, either a boot or a minor fender bender had dished in the back door almost to the wheel well. The passenger side window rolled down, the result of old fashioned handle rolling rather than an electrical type. A man with a crew cut and a flat unpleasant face leered at her.
“Hey baby, wanna keep me and my friends company?” he called. There was something brittle about his tone that might have gone unnoticed to a regular mortal but rang hollow to a vampire, even a slightly drunk one. There were two other men in the car, though they were concealed behind tinted windows and by the angle that the vehicle made to her. The wind shifted ever so slightly bringing her the subtle wiff subtle whiff of cordite and machine oil.
The car contains a group of vampire hunters who are about to try to put a hit on Vera
Othen turned on his heels, his attention having been drawn by the calm voice that had addressed him from behind. By the latter he could already tell that this was no other policeman, but someone else. However the gargoyle wasn't prepared for the sight of that particular man and one could quite see it written in his face even with only a basic understanding of body language. The clothes, the cigarette, the gold around his eyes... As silently as he stood there the guy was crying out 'I'm a snob!' loudly.
Othen made a step back -- not out of respect for the probably several thousand bucks clinging to the body of this man, but for the sake of his own lungs who wouldn't be fond of inhaling any smoke. Only after a little more time of inspection the gargoyle was actually able to identify whom he was talking to with great certainty: Sadjic. It was like adding another massive layer of slime onto an already quite respectable one. He tried to find a decent answer that wouldn't make him slip on that.
"Something tells me it might very well not be you."
He spotted the even more pompous vehicle, it's driver looking as if waiting for his client to return.
"Looks like you're busy and in a little bit of a hurry, aren't you ?" Othen continued, his eyes' focus returning towards Sadjic. "It happens I am as well. Would it disturb your schedule too much if you made a slight detour and dropped me off at my place ?" Othen knew that his request was close to complete bullshit. Not even the average businessmen would offer a ride to half a stranger that spontaneously, but the way Sadjic had spoken it was pretty clear for Othen that it essentially was Sadjic requesting for him to get into this car. At least Othen hoped so... He could already sense a bad feeling rising inside him.
"Huh?" Vera gracefully replied, managing to turn around in the direction of the car with only moderate difficulty. The sudden tension in the air did not escape her, she could smell the fear emanating from the man that had propositioned her. In the chill of the night, it tasted sweet, and welcoming. But it was the familiar, lovely smell of cordite that tipped her off to the trouble her new friends promised.
She knew that could run. She knew she should run. She knew that she could easily duck into an alley, jump some fences, and make a grand escape across a rooftop. But she didn't want to. She wanted a scrap. She wanted a fight. She wanted blood. Smiling, the young vampire approached the car. As she leaned against the battered driver's door, her hand moved inhumanely fast to the small of her back. She drew her pistol in one fluid motion, and pointed it lazily at the driver.
Licking the tip of her fangs, she smiled a Cheshire Cat's grin,"May I have this dance?"
Caber recoiled in shock and rage, the witch-fire causing his hair to stand on end. His honey sweet voice turned into the rolling cry of a goat for a fraction of a moment, though he willed himself not to flee or attack. Millennia of being among (and attuned) to the mythical told him this was no major threat to himself. But the poor girl began to claw her eyes out, finger nails digging into skin and retina as she screeched.
It was a travesty. Such a beauty wasted! Oh, she was not the loveliest woman he had seen, but every beautiful woman was to be cherished, for they were a ripe crop from a farm of weeds. She a fine singer to boot. But alas, all he could do was watch as her body was ripped asunder, and the ogham script was cut into being. It was just as well, as most of the other bar patrons had fled into the night, and those that hadn't were finding an exit through the back.
As the woman's body slumped, the life having been torn out of her, Caber hopped up on the bar stood in a crouch and leaned down to view the script. He breathed the ancient language as he read it aloud. "dair eadhadh beith tinne" he said, and he felt a fittingly cold chill down his spine. "Debt" was the translation, and he had a distinct feeling on why and from whom. The overall slant and depth of the cuts indicated it was from fae magic of the Winter Court. An ill omen, if ever there was one. Even early humans knew to tread lightly around them, for they regarded all mortals with disdain; as playthings to be used and discards, just as this beauty here.
He knew his brethren overseas would hold grudges, but it had been three centuries since he had made off with the hidden jewels of the northern Sidhe. Did they expect him to pay off the debt? Did they wish for him to be bound by word or blood? A sudden realization hit him like an iron pole. What if the Asgardians had contacted the Winter Court!? He fell back dramatically. "No, no, NO,
NO!"
Caber stumbled back into the wall as if struck, clawing at his own face in abject annoyance, and a ferocious fear only a cornered and rabid animal could exert. A serving wench that had hid behind the bar counter poked her head out slowly, and she bore witness to the once handsome figure shimmering into a satyr-like being and letting out a scream of the old world, before his very corporeal form became immaterial and flew out of the open window like a popped balloon.
Caber needed to meet with another wizard or fae contact. If the Winter Court was looking for him, they would bind him to their will for as long as they saw fit he owed them, or would force him to marry that swine of a fae Siabha!
@Hour Error The driver of the car grinned, though the sheen of sweat on his sunburned skin and the white flesh of his knuckles on the leather wrapped steering wheel betrayed his fear. There were four men in the car, all were armed with a variety of weapons, all were the parched brown of men who spent long months on middle eastern battlefields.
“Babygirl, I thought you would never ask...” the driver abruptly slammed his foot down on the accelerated, driving the worn pedal into the rusting floor and wrenching the steering wheel to the right. There was a squeal of tires and the reek of burning rubber as the battler vehicle vaulted the curb and shoved the vampire back. Someone screamed but it was a dull tinny sound compared to the roar of the engine.
The car might have smashed the vampire into the boarded storefront of a defunct radio shack but, by chance a fire hydrant blocked its advance. The car struck the rusting hydrant with a crunch of deforming metal. The airbags didn’t deploy, either disconnected or never functional, which was to the advantage of the hunters for they would have been pinned in place for vital seconds if they had gone off.
The impossibly loud crack of automatic gun fire ripped the night. One of the men in the back seat had opened fire with his AR-15, shattering the windows in all directions from the concussion, spraying pieces of safety glass in all directions. Water gouted from the shattered hydrant, falling in a mockery of rain. The hunters might have been good, but no one was good enough to hit a moving target from a crashing car. The rounds flew high, raining masonry dust onto the floor below as they shattered the ancient red bricks of the store front.
Three of the hunters rolled out of the car with impressive speed, the fourth unable to open his ruined and deformed door, scrambled over the steering wheel towards the open door.
“Take her down!” the leader screamed, his own attachment adorned rifle rising even as he spoke.
Sadjic smiled, an expression that conveyed no warmth for all the perfect ivory teeth he showed. With a roll of his wrist he made a gesture to the car, that was both courtly and theatrical.
“I would be pleased to provide you with a ride,” he said in his oily, too smooth voice. He dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath his immaculate and doubtlessly expensive Italian shoes. The door to the car opened and a man in a neat black suit stepped out and opened the door for Othen, waiting for the gargoyle to take his seat before moving around and opening the other door for Sadjic who gracefully took his own place, crossing a leg to his calf and leaning back into the corner as though lounging at a cafe.
“As for your question about finger pointing,” Sadjic said, returning to the previous thread of the conversation, “I don’t think any will land on me no.” The car pulled away from the overgrown park jouncing over the decayed roadway for all the drivers attempt to be careful.
“I didn’t do it and it isn’t worth anyone's time to pretend like I did,” he said with a secret smile.
“I know where too many bodies are buried you see,” he explained as the car made a gentle turn onto one of the major roads. Although Sadjic hadn't asked where Othen was headed, they were clearly on their way to the gargoyles domicile.
“But you… well who knows. You were, afterall sighted near the scene of the crime as the Americans say.” He held up a hand as though forstealling a response.
“And no, not just by me. Still, I hope that you have alibi that no one can question. That won’t be a problem I trust,” Sadjic went on, his eyes suddenly growing considerably more intent.
“Afterall, its not as though you can teleport from one place to another now is it?”
There were many glades in the world with power. Most were in archaic and out of the way places, concealed in the bosoms of wild woodlands or primordial forests. But as cities decayed, nature, eternally patient returned. Caber found what he was looking for in the crumbling suburbs. A large, once well to do house sat empty, a forlorn for sale sign was rapidly being devoured by the unmowed lawn and notices of foreclosure were pinned to the door. In the backyard grew a great oak tree from which hung an ancient tire swing, its rope fraying and the bottom of the tire filled with brackish half frozen water. As they fae approached the winter wind shook free the last of the autumn leaves, which fluttered slowly towards to ground.
The tree itself remained majestic, its roots sunk deep into the soil and its bark gnarled and armored against the worst the winter could throw at it. Ivy grew up around its base though it was brown and dormant, its leaves shriveled as it girdled the oak like a shroud. Around the vast oak trees and bushes grew with an unusual vigor, clustering and reaching towards the mother tree like supplicants to an ancient priest.
Despite the strangely primal aspect of the place, there was a sense of wrongness about it that Caber had not sensed on his previous visits to the glade of Silvanus. There was a spike of cold iron, ever the bane of the fae, driven into the trunk at about chest level. Oak sap already freezing ran from the strange wound like blood. On the end of the spike was an even stranger sight. A barbie doll, dressed as tinkerbell, complete with green dress and gossamer wings, hung in the process of scattering fairy dust, the mockery all but dripping from the plastic toys lips.
Silvanus can still be contacted if you remove the spike somehow. This Glade is located close to where Mauser was murdered. The murder happened only an hour ago.
If Othen had been a magician whose spells became reality as he thought about them, Sadjic would have found himself nailed against the side window of his luxury sedan with the window lifter turned on in order to make the nails stuck in his flesh hurt even harder. What an nasty, arrogant, slimy scumbag! If the latter paid attention he would be able to see how the gargoyle's eyes narrowed almost to slits for a moment as a cold surge was silently hurling down along his back.
"Teleport ? I would consider that art to be seriously broken. And if I would still be willing to engage in such a lethal endeavour I'd probably not sit here and ask you for the favor to taking me to my place, would I ?"
There was a slight pause as Othen considered what to say next, weighing one possible answer against the others.
"Aside from this, even if I could teleport, how would I have been able to take that poor fellow resting in the pond along with me ? And everyone who has seen me at the scene will also have seen how I hopped into this beautiful car and drove off with you. Helping in a crime is a crime in itself, so I'd say that, at least to a considerable degree, my alibi is your alibi. Or vice versa if you want to replace 'alibi' with 'being suspected groundlessly'."
Then Othen turned his head, allowing himself a few moments of looking forwards out of the front window instead of sideways into Sadjic's face.
"I'd still be very eager to find out who the culprit is, now that we know that it is neither of us. Who'd have any interest in killing one of the leading wizards in this city. I mean... you have excellent connections I'd guess. You probably have access to information the cops don't have."
Caber shook with revulsion at the very sight of the grisly wound. By the Sidhe and the ancient Gods, he could not imagine that even the Winter Court damaging such a venerable oak in this shameful fashion. He would shriek if it didn't cause attention, so instead he looked around the broken backyard, eyes glinting a golden color now that he was within close range to a rod of iron.
"Filthy despoilers. I will sacrifice their bones to Morrigan to build her Raven's nest!"
He needed to calm himself and think. The foliage had been shriveled and slaughtered like pigs. He didn't know what to do? Briefly he began to zip around the backyard, floating like a ghost as he searched. His nose drank in deep whiffs of the grass and rankled oak, trying to find a tinge of something else he could use, or perhaps to inhale enough of the life essence to gain the strength to remove the blasted iron rod.
During his inner monologue where blood flowed and the carnal pleasures of torturing his enemies eked out of his muttering lips, he noticed something. Something made of aluminium on the ground. It had a strange sensation to its presence, but it was not iron. Upon further inspection, it was what the humans referred to as a bike. A recent invention used the past two centuries.
With hands that held an otherworldly strength beyond their physical size, Caber swooped in and lifted the bike, a devilish but simple plan in his head. He gingerly approached the iron that had been so stabbed into the ancient oak, and slid the tire of the bicycle down its length, before twisting the wheel, locking the wheel and the iron bar together.
With a great tug, he reluctantly ripped the metal rod out by the bike wheel. Sap flowed outwards. Caber placed his hands under the sap and lifted it to his lips, drinking greedily, a sense of power now thriving in his limbs. A portion of the tree's wisdom and strength now ran through his body, and he used it to seal the wound on the tree as he chanted, placing his hands on the trunk and reciting an incantation on a language so ancient that even the celts only knew it in legends and myth.
Soon, he would feel the trees life returning. It's presence and attention now on Caber, as if waking from a long coma. @Penny
