Collab with @AtrophyLater...
Little Lupine
Cafe Noir
"Jesus wept, Hurk. Could you have gotten into any worse trouble?"
"Shut up, Louie. I know what I did."
"Yeah? Then fuckin' hold still. I gotta finish up these stitches."
I was sprawled out on a low table, dressed in jeans but nothing else. Louie was working on me, or more specifically the five gouges in my chest. That Lediyah bitch had done me a good one, but not good enough to put me out. Louie had stitched me up pretty good, but I'd be in pain for a week or two.
Motherfuck. At least I'd gotten the girl.
Valorie was...somewhere in the cafe. I didn't know. During the ride here, I'd passed out. Woke up here. Immediately got told off by Louie about stirring shit I shouldn't have. Now one of Somabra's top assassins was dead. By my hand. Or claws. Asked me if it was worth it still investigating about Hahn, or my curse.
I didn't know. All I knew was that I'd gotten a junkie out from a relapse, and away from an early grave.
"Louie...where's the girl? Valorie?"
Louie looked at me and harrumphed. He pushed a needle through my skin and pulled the thread taut. Made me wince.
"She's downstairs, I think. Fixin' a drink for herself. Hopefully not messin' the place up. Now shut up, I'm almost done."
With a quick motion he tied a knot with the tiny thread and cut the excess off with a scissors. He tossed the bloody pair of tweezers onto a tray and wiped his hands on a towel.
"There, that should do it. Now don't go tanglin' with monsters again, doofus, unless you want to cough your lungs out through your ribcage."
I nodded and sat up. The pain was...bearable, at least. His handiwork was good, for an info broker. My guess was he'd done this before. Maybe to someone else. Maybe to himself. I didn't know, or particularly cared to know.
"Thanks, Louie."
"Eh, don't mention it. Now, what did you find?"
I shrugged as I pulled on a clean shirt.
"Just her. Lediyah. About to off Valorie. Val was about to relapse on the biggest drug binge I'd ever seen, but that's when that...weird monster bitch decided to show up. I had to wolf out to get the job done."
Louie tossed the bloody towel into a trash can and went back to his desk.
"You're tellin' me. Underground's in an uproar, Hurk. News spreads fast. Your altercation with Lediyah Gorman hasn't gone unnoticed. Peeps don't know who did, but they know someone offed her. Lotta nasty types looking for who did the job. You."
He sat and stretched.
"Half of 'em want your head on a stick. The other half want you to work for 'em. 'Cept, of course, they all don't know it's you. Now as long as you keep your head down and don't brag about it, you'll be fine. The fire'll die down. Eventually."
"Yeah, I guess."
As Louie chewed thoughtfully on a toothpick, I stood and rolled my shoulders. Got the kinks out.
"So. What're you gonna do about the girl?"
I glanced at him.
"Valorie? Well I'm gonna ask her a few questions about her dealings with the Rats. She knows she got marked by 'em, she'll spill everything she knows. It'll lead me closer to who offed Hahn."
He shrugged and gestured to the door.
"Knock yourself out. Just don't bleed on my counter."
Valorie had tucked herself into the corner of a booth, her knees pulled tightly into her chest as she leaned against the wall of some shitty cafe that Hurk had directed her to before slumping against her back. She only knew his name because the owner of the cafe had been cursing it under his breath when she had shown up at his door with the shirtless man slouched over his own bike bleeding all over the damn place. As the two men disappeared into the back, Valorie had busied herself by brewing tea and, in a fit of paranoia, closing all of the blinds and dimming the lights. After all, now that she was safe (for the moment) she had plenty of time to dwell on the fact that apparently the Rats had been out—were out—to get her. She could guess why, and she had an idea of who had set it all in motion. Now she just need to make sure they stopped. She had a thought; her eyes lingered down to her purse.
The owner of the cafe had reappeared and tossed her a towel, pulling her away from her dark thoughts as he bitched at her about not making a mess. She knew she shouldn't blame the guy, all he saw was some grungy junkie playing dress up drenched in blood (Hurk's blood, to be fair) that was seeping into his cushions, but she still gave him a sneer and a roll of the eyes as he turned his back. As if a little bit of werewolf blood would make this place any grosser than it already was, thought Valorie bitterly, despite the cafe's actually rather well-maintained appearance. Compared to the places she had generally hung out at in Santa Somabra, this cafe was more than halfway decent.
Valorie wiped up the blood despite her attitude, grabbed herself two mugs, draped the towel around her, and stuffed herself back into the booth. The first mug was full of freshly brewed, piping hot tea; the second was an empty, makeshift ashtray. Pulling out her phone and her cigarettes, Valorie began smoking as she started to compose a text to Quinn. She didn't know what she was going to say to the girl, only that she knew they were no longer friends. For all Valorie knew, Quinn had set her up to get mauled by that freak lady. She angrily pounded out a message, deleted it, smashed her fingers again against the screen of her phone, deleted it, loop forever. By the time the employee door opened up and Hurk stepped through the first mug was full of cold, placid tea; the second was smothered in ash and cigarette butts. Valorie put her phone down with a huff and gave Hurk a once-over, putting her cigarette out in the wrong mug.
"Fuck man, you look like shit," she said with a smirk, not looking much better herself. She wrapped her arms around her knees and gestured to the seat across from her. "I saved you a spot—look, I have like a million goddamn questions." Her voice broke into its usual, manic pace. "I'll start with the big one: what the fuck happened there?"
"What the fuck happened back there? I almost got my ass kicked, and you were the target for a major slaughter. Thank your lucky stars I was looking for you, otherwise you would've been the smear on the floor, not her."
I tossed the file photo of Lediyah Louie had given me on the table as he sat. Yeah, I did look like shit. At least we were both on the same boat.
"Lediyah Gorman. Monster. Apparently the stuff of some old Irish legend. She's a high end assassin, works for whoever pays her the most. Apparently you were on her hit list tonight. Paid for by the Rats. Don't know who, don't know why, but someone wanted you dead tonight. Funny story, now you ain't. Bet you're looking for revenge now, huh."
"Oh, no, I'm totally chill with people trying to fucking murder me," she said bitingly, tapping the butt of a cigarette against the table. Her other hand flashed about the air as she held a mock conversation with an imaginary Rat. "Oh, hey man, sick gag with that psycho leprechaun. Real good goof."
Her voice shifted into a poor valley girl impression as she tilted her head to one side and said, "Yeah Val! So we're cool?"
"Ha ha, totally man," she said, her head tilting the other way. "Why would I want to gut each and every one of you fucking shitty junkie fucks after you fucking set me up and took my goddamn money, you stupid, lying bitch. So glad we didn't go through with that fucking tattoo," she added as she shoved the cigarette into her mouth.
"Thanks for stopping that thing," she mumbled into her hands as her lighter burned the end of her cigarette red. A frustrated sigh escaped her mouth alongside a cloud of smoke; she cocked an eyebrow and gave Hurk a suspicious sideways glance. "Why are you looking for me?"
"Cause you worked for the Rats. Once. A bunch of 'em murdered my friend while I was deployed in Afghanistan. Led by a hitman, George Chin. Chinese, tall, always wore sunglasses everywhere. Chin's dead, gutted by that monster. Now she's dead too. You're the only lead I got."
I sighed. Watched her smoke. Man, she really deserved something better than this.
"Now, this was about three years ago, but rumours might've trickled through the grapevine over time. Legends or stories of how some gutter rats killed a werewolf by themselves. I was thinking you knew."
"I don't know, with silver?" she said with a shrug, ashing the tip of her cigarette into the makeshift ashtray. She rested her hand on her knees, the cigarette dangerously close to burning a tiny dark ring in the booth's cushioned back. "This might come as a shock to you, but when Rats hang out they don't talk about the good ol' days of three years ago. Hell, I doubt they are really even able to remember the good ol' days of last week. They just get high and try to find something to fuck or fuck up. It's kind of their main appeal. If a bunch of rodents managed to gnash and claw a pup to death three years ago it was probably because they were just high as balls and lucky as shit."
It was how she managed to get by so far. Only now, thanks to a combination of killer assholes ruining her fun and an ever-increasing guilty weight, Valorie just had her luck left—and she was pretty certain she had just cashed out the last of it tonight. Her head slumped forward onto her overlapped arms as she pulled her body tighter into herself, her teeth gnawing at her raw lips. She felt heavy. As she continued to speak the sharpness of her voice was quickly subdued by that of exhaustion, sounding as if she was still waking up or in the beginning stages of a minor cold.
"For all I know, the guys who killed your friend are probably dead now. Rats tend to never last long enough to get tenure, let alone a review. They are just an ever changing swarm of fuck ups that never learn their goddamn lesson before their necks are snapped in a trap," she said, more to herself than to Hurk.
She sighed and glanced towards the man. He didn't deserve to deal with her sulking. She unwrapped her limbs from her chest and turned so that she could sit normally and talk to him face-to-face, the cigarette still burning away slowly in her hand. Valorie pulled the second to last one out of her pack, gripped it in her teeth, lit it with the burning cherry of her cigarette, and held out the new one as some sort of offering-slash-apology to Hurk.
"Sorry about your friend," she said. "What was his name? I don't know, maybe it would jog a memory or something."
"Understandable. And it's Dagmar Hahn. He used to own this place."
I gestured to the café around me as I took the offered cigarette. I had my own lighter, though I barely used it. The harsh smoke made me cough as I took my first drag in a long time. Nicotine soothed my nerves.
"Nice place. Still is. He put a lotta money in making this place cosy. A lotta dirty money in exchange for keeping his mouth shut about literally every dirty secret he knew, but it was still money."
I sighed through a cloud of smoke.
"He was my only friend back then. Someone who understood what it meant to be cursed. Then I got deployed and I lost him. Now I'm just looking for closure. Been looking for three years. Nothing. The Rats have not been helpful. Never have been. Whoever ordered the hit on my friend was so high up the food chain, I haven't found a trace of him for three whole years."
"I, uh, never heard of him," she said. "Sorry. All of that? That sucks, man."
Valorie looked away from the man as the hollow words left her mouth. Her finger pushed down one of the blinds so she could pretend that she was checking outside for any potential gutter runners rather than just trying to avoid seeing the disappointment that she assumed was forming on the man's face. The only Rat she saw was in the ghost-like reflection of her face in the window. Damn, she looked worn down. Her face was a blotchy mess of bruises and streaks of makeup and her lips were creased into a slight frown, but her eyes burned back at her with a healthy dose of self-hatred. She had the answer to the man's problems. She let the blind fall back into place and turned her head back towards Hurk.
"Have you ever..." She trailed off, uncertain of how to phrase what she was going to say next. Fuck it. "Have you ever tried talking to Dagmar about who'd killed him?"
It clicked. She was a necromancer. The idea bloomed in my head.
"No I haven't. Are you suggesting you want to try and...raise him?"
It wasn't particularly...nice. I'd heard that Hahn was buried in Somabra Central Cemetery. Graveyard just outside town. I didn't know how he'd be, three years dead and rotting in a coffin.
But it was my only shot. If I couldn't find out who from anyone else, I guess asking him directly was the next idea.
"He's buried out in Somabra Central, just a few minutes out of town. Do you...have what you need?"
Valorie's fingers brushed her crumpled up, bloody blazer and frowned. It was already in the process of drying and would likely be no good by the time they got there. Likewise, it was much too early for her to be tapping into her veins again after the work she had performed this afternoon. Still, she did have her emergency blood pack she had tucked inside of her purse, not to mention the vials of Demon's Blood; that should be enough.
"Yeah, I'm pretty much good to go. I doubt I'd be able to fall asleep tonight anyway," she said.
The only place she would feel safe resting at this point was Cain's, and she had already told him that she'd be away for the night. He'd ask questions that she wasn't prepared to fess up to, not yet anyway. She slid out of the booth, drowned her cigarette in her tea, and smoothed her dress out as she began to walk to the door. However, Valorie hadn't even made it more than three steps before she turned back towards Hurk with a mischievous smile on her face as her palm shot out expectantly.
"Keys," she said, her eyes dancing with excitement.
I sighed and fished the keys out of my pocket, plopped them in her palm.
"If only because I'm in no state to drive. 'Sides, I need to make a call."
I stood and glanced upwards to Louie's loft apartment.
"Hey Louie! We're heading out! You can lock up now! And thanks for patching me up!"
"Sure whatever now scram I gotta clean up."
I chuckled and walked outside. I fished my phone out of my pocket and speed dialed a very familiar number.
"Hurk?"
"Andy, could you guys meet me at Somabra Central Cemetery? Got some business we need to settle. Together."
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