Spiegelung
Don't Molly and Jack see one another (oh, there is irony) now and then?
Don't they plan these things out, their discussions of things real and ephemeral, and those places where they intersect? A little club of two, one Jack, one wild card, checking their hands. Reshuffling the deck. Seeing what comes out.
Perhaps one of them has a cup of coffee, perhaps the other grabs a newspaper, but whatever the exactitudes of time and space that is the scene they find themselves inhabiting: together, in the night and more than set pieces, the entirety of this show until...
Within that dramatic structure, after such exposition, rising action must eventually take place. Must? Maybe not, but it does. They both feel it. Telltale. One heart might skip a beat, the other might feel its vitae come alive with the livewire current of the supernatural, and they both know that something is that should not be.
Molly
Of course Molly and Jack see each other now and then. It was odd if a full month went by without them hanging out at least one time. These days, since they'd been doing their research and actively planning the continued hunt of this missing reflection, they were likely seeing each other even more often than that. Molly's focus in reading had shifted into the subject matter of alternate dimensions and other planes of existence.
Tonight, they'd met and walked a little, then stopped at a coffee shop that Molly had discovered and liked. It was an odd-shaped building, like an 'L' with a long hallway lined with chairs down the side of the establishment. Molly had selected the table in the back of that hallway, so they could talk comfortably without worry of being overheard. Molly preferred to sit with her back to the wall. She liked to be able to see if anyone was approaching-- we can thank this past year's experiences for that.
Molly was dressed in a light floral tank-top and dark jeans, with her hair left down to land on her shoulders when she leaned forward over the screen of her tablet. She had it propped on the table and was navigating for something that she'd wanted to show Jack when an all-too(uncomfortably-so)-familiar sensation crawled over her skin and wriggled its way into her bones. It was getting to the point where she could almost smell the energy fizzling in the air.
The red-haired nurse/occultist swallowed and stilled her fingers on the tablet's screen. She jerked her chin up to look up the hallway, then to the wall to her right, before she looked across the table to where her homely companion sat, looking suspicious and surprised.
"Did you feel that?"
Jack
Jack is a busy Jack but never too busy for Molly, his investigator, his investigatrix, his untrustworthy and un/reliable trick-up-the-ol'-sleeve, because how is one to use that trick-up-the-ol'-sleeve if one doesn't slip it there? Doesn't practice with it? Doesn't let the trick explicate the con? And what is Jack busy doing? He talks about unburying old stories and mythologies. He speculates, when he is with Molly, Molly who has made her hair that unlucky flag of red, they used to say redheads have no souls, remember, remember?
He speculates when he is with Molly and perhaps more of his personal view of the world bleeds into his words and stains the hypotheticals. There are worlds which overlap one another. Which rest inside one another like matryoshka dolls except they are not truly separated for all they are separate. This business of alternate worlds: he hopes that she never knows that Harald isn't part of her day-bound kingdom, but he also hopes she won't wander further into the kingdom of darkness and night and look at her. Molly wanders. The point is: Jack is a busy Jack but never too busy for Molly and sometimes when they don't talk occult occurences and troubles they talk dog training, Florence, Game of Thrones, why not? His lack of fashion?
So they're at a coffee shop and Jack has a book he's writing in, wearing his Harald-face, pigeon-chested, weak-chinned, Werewolf-eyebrowed young man without much fortune, clothes that don't quite fit, lanksterness, a C, a bookworm, dark blonde hair on the backs of his hands which are broad or are they blunt and he's writing with a pen not a pencil when that trickle of strangeness plays a song in his veins and in his marrow, and all Jacks come to attention when the dark kingdom sings its warnings and its heraldings, and so it is that he has straightened (as much as a pigeon-chested youth can) and is looking around like the man left behind once all the pigeons are scared away when Molly asks her question.
"Er, yes," he says. Molly knows that 'Harald' is not, shall we say, as cautious as she might wish (oh, the irony). That he likes to go towards the danger, so to speak, investigate dark places, etc. etc. "I do. Something's up, er, afoot."
Spiegelung
A place of strange construction and architecture is a place for conversations such as theirs (tucked away) and for occurrences such as this (obscured around said corner). A shadow stretches strangely from around that corner, negative space caught within ambient light, though only its caster is alive and not the shadow itself (no summoner or shadow puppeteer the likes of which they are both familiar with, not here, not in this story). It is a sliver of a shadow, misshaped in its borders and unaccustomed to sneaking well, but it skulks nonetheless and it is only their detection of the esoteric and unknown that draws their attention to it. Someone listening to them, someone watching, someone eavesdropping.
They are suddenly looking around, Jack straightened and Molly's chin lifted from the secrets she has unearthed to share, and the sliver is shaved away to nothingness as it notices. Withdraws. Retreats hastily.
Movement elsewhere, though, and concurrent. It becomes obvious from whence the shadow had been cast, the face of a pastry chest, the large curved glass showing off confections and reflecting the quaint little salvaged sconces that illuminate the coffee shop from its walls. A shadow cast from within that reflection, and something peeking at them from not behind or beyond, but inside that thin sheet of glass. Existing within the angles of refraction and reflection, of light bending and catching something not there, and retreating at their noticing what should not be possible.
Within him Jack can feel the twisted cursed thing buck. Something that has eluded him, sudden motion, taunting all coupled with the insult of being spied upon, whatever it does to the Man within, the Beast is a terrible reflection as it always is. For Molly? One might guess her curiosity is again piqued, when she notices that same movement, and for her it is familiar to what she'd seen in her own apartment and perhaps even described to Jack. All before confronting a monster in her apartment's water closet.
Again it bolts, shy, timid, and from outside whether Jack knew his trusty feline minion was patrolling or not (cats so often do as they like) Jack can here Boots whine and yowl loudly, decibels likely high as the ghoul's hackles are raised.
Molly
When you spent as much time up to your hips in supernatural business (or so submerged you'd become one with it, in Jack's case), you became attune to when it introduced itself into the otherwise mundane world around you. Molly and Jack both took notice when that vibration of Something's not quite right pulsed through the coffee shop.
There. Molly saw it first, this was the whole reason she preferred sitting with her back to the wall. There was a shadow stretching curiously into the air, where it shouldn't be really. She focused in on it and nodded to indicate to Jack what she was seeing, where to look.
As he no doubt twisted to get a look himself, Molly turned off the tablet and closed the cover of the case it was protected by. She lost the shadow, found the reflection, and she went sharp and tense-- ready, reactive. "He's here," she said to her companion, and hastily proceeded to tuck the tablet into her messenger bag.
The reflection vanished again, tucked away, ducked away, shy of being seen like this (or so Molly assumed). She started up to her feet and slung the bag strap over her shoulder, but paused to see how Harald would take the lead. This was his quest, after all, but on the hunt for the unknown Molly was like a foxhound quivering for the horn to sound.
"Shouldn't we follow?" she asked, and glanced away only for a moment when she heard that terrible yowling start up. Probably the reflection-- that was how her pets had acted when it appeared on her balcony.
Jack
Not until one's lost one's reflection does one
realize how (in modern nights) difficult it is to go somewhere there is
no sign of one's loss. The windows know and silverware knows and the
just-mopped floor knows and the napkin cannisters know. The lightbulbs
know and, here, the refurbished-salvaged sconces know, and the lenses of
reading glasses know, the cellphone cameras know, so of course does
rainwater and anything that has polish. But the dreamy world of mirrors
and reflection is a world that distorts as often as it shows the truth:
smearing one shape into a slick of brown, say, bending, folding away,
concealing. Jacks know that the mirror world is untrustworthy. Jacks
know that mirrors are untrustworthy because the eye is untrustworthy
because the truth is malleable (except for the truth of the quest, of
course of course, but even that has lead him to this dark place that the
him he was once upon a time would never have wanted to go - or would he
- ?).
Jacks also know how to slip into the invisible gloom that
is ever-present but invisible. Jacks know, this Jack knows, how to be so
stealthsome that they are never seen, not even once, not by anything,
'lest that Anything has fearsome powers of perception and augury, could
foretell who knows what mad hunches: Jack is not often spied upon. He
was sweet-tempered once upon a time and in truth he is still
sweet-tempered, for what he is. But even the sweetest tempers curdle,
don't they? Curdle under the force of the curse, 'lest effort is
imparted, and in the shock of realization and revelation -- something,
Jack, some Thing you were not so canny to notice right away! Some Thing,
some Thing from Over There Perhaps, was Watching You Two -- his fingers
grip the table and his hairy knuckles tauten, red lines.
Then
movement. He braces himself against the table; begins to stand. Outside,
Boots yowls. Boots: monster, destroyer of rats, 'lest they be in a
certain swarm and even then what Jack doesn't know won't hurt him -
Or
will it? Jack doesn't know doesn't know doesn't know so much he wants
to know needs to know must know and he doesn't know whether to follow
the sliver of diminishing shade right up against reflection or call it
an echo and whip around to follow (a lick of anticipation, of anger
sublimating into curiousity and fear and amazement) a reflection he
hasn't seen for years.
And when he sees it, he flinches with surprise.
"Perhaps
not, but let us do so regardless," Jack called Jacky called Harald says
to Molly, whose voice gives him a needle-compass sliver of focus,
coupled with a grin that is not unfamiliar to her. Hideous; ugly. A face
only a mother could love, but eh: isn't there some charm in Jack's
readiness for adventure? Sure.
Let us do so regardless: "Did you see which way?"
And
off they go, chasing a reflection after being startled by a shadow
while a cat growls and spits and howls and will indeed be getting quite a
lecture later on if Jack has anything to say about it.
Molly
Perhaps
some patrons cast their eyes up when the two in the back corner
suddenly stood. Molly had found her feet as though she'd been startled
or shocked from under the table. Soon as all her belongings were dumped
back in the bag, soon as that bag was secured and tucked near the round
of one broad hip, she was ready to go.
This was something Jack
and Molly had in common, one of several threads that tied them
together-- her sense of Adventure. She didn't know how Jack came into
this world of the Supernatural and Things Beyond Mortality-- it could
have been involuntarily, by simple sake of circumstance. Whatever it
may be, the fact was neither of them turned away from what they saw and
knew. They may as well be standing leaned into the headwinds of dark
and shadow (and reflection, refraction). So, when he stated they
probably shouldn't pursue but suggested that they did in the same sentence, Molly saw no flaw in the logic and questioned no motive.
The
beauty of coffee shops was that you were paid up as soon as you stepped
away from the counter. There was no tab for them to pay off, no lines
for them to wait in impatiently before they could be on their way. The
door swung open with a clang-clang of an old brassy bell, and Molly
stepped briskly out onto the sidewalk first.
She didn't know where
to go, not right away, so she slowed soon as she was out in front of
the shop (forgetting in the moment Jacky's aversion to large pane
windows). Her head turned slowly from left to right as she scoped the
streets before them. The last time the Reflection had come, it had come
to lure. She imagined it may do the same this time around as well.
Molly
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Jack
[Oh oh. Also Perceptive (perhaps) and Alert? + Hidden Things, if that's a thing.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Spiegelung
The
glass door is propped open to waft that roasted bean smell out and
customers on in, only a recovered and refurbished wooden screen door in
Molly and Jack's way. It had served to send the sounds of Boots'
disturbance echoing down the corridor to them, and now cracks the
tinkling of bells to announce their departure. No horns to sound the
hunt, but good enough.
The cat that yowls (and is still yowling,
purr-growling, snarling and snapping) outside the cafe stands on the
wrought iron bench in front of the establishment.
Despite his
frenzied attentions Boots balances perfectly on the top tier, a ballet
dancer on a tightrope of wood, pacing back and forth and looking up the
front window pane for a moment. Over to glass door. Over to the street,
and yes, across a puddle, and leaps down to the curb winding its way
around newspaper stands, telephone poles, lamp posts and assorted
obstacles as it pursues its quarry down the sidewalk.
It draws
Molly's attention enough to spot what needs spotting: A broad back
deflated on one side, a slight hunch that doesn't keep it from standing
upright, clad in a trench coat wet with rain, and a deformed head atop
it that is visible as such even from the rear. Like the villain in some
film noir it retreats into the dark urban wilderness.
Jack gets a
clearer look. Jack sees a familiar sight, one he has not seen since
nights long-past, and about to slip from his grasp yet again.
Boots is dutifully in tow to run it aground.
Its
image flicks and flits: across the front of the florist next door to
the dry cleaner with its lone florescent light waiting for the last
customers, across to a Chinese restaurant, and on down the block toward
the corner's turn.
Molly
[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2: The Chase!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Jack
[Jack be nimble, Jack be quick?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Jack
[At least there ain't no candlesticks.]
Molly
[Wits 4 (Cool-Headed?) + Empathy 2: So that cat looks pretty familiar.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Spiegelung
Molly
picks up on a confluence of events and reactions, from Jack biting his
proverbial tongue at the cat screeching and tearing his way down the
sidewalk, to that cat's sheer and utter purposefulness. Hadn't her own
animals balked at the image projecting itself from its otherworld to her
own? This one seems to have a goal in mind instead as it goes after the
thing on the otherside of those windowpanes. And that pattern of fur
and scars on a weathered veteran of a feline is familiar, the growls
echoing in her mind from the present back to a past encounter with the
strange and unnerving, stacking to write an odd story on the back of her
neck in raised hairs and sweat.
Molly
Out in
front of the shop there is a cat. A cat of war-scars and grizzled fur.
A cat of the streets, a tough tom. He was easily spotted, for he still
spat and hissed and focused intently on something that she didn't see
at first-- up, above, in the window. Molly's eyes followed up after the
cat's initially, spied the strange misshapen back against a trench
coat, a head that wasn't shaped the way it was supposed to. All of this
distorted and stretched by the nature of reflections themselves.
It
was off, darting to a puddle, and the cat gave another rumbling start
of a growl, drawing Molly's attention again. From cat to Jack--
lingering on his homely and so familiar face for a second before the
feline took off running, the reflection flitting and flashing forward
within her range of notice and perception as well.
When deja vu is
realized and morphs into an actual memory, there's an instant of
glory. It's like a gulp of clean air after coming up from the water,
like a burst of sunlight to help you see into the dark of a cave. She
remembered a battle in a backyard, a pit dug into the earth and
Something Strange within it. Kali had been there, some others she
didn't quite recognize as well. This cat, though, this cat had
absolutely been there as well. Hadn't it appeared over or through the
fence slots, hissing and screeching and driving her back and away from
what she had seen? It had purpose then (keep her away, keep the prying
eyes from seeing), and it had a purpose now (chase, herd, pursue the
reflection!).
This recognition and moment of 'Aha!' was put on
pause when the cat and reflection whiped around a corner. Afraid to
lose them, Molly's flat shoe soles squeaked on the pavement to announce
her pursuit. She bounced while she bounded, but Molly was healthy and
under soft padding there was health and vitality, and this carried her
quick (enough) around the block as well.
Jack
Boots
is hunting the reflection too. Good Boots. Prince of Cats. King. Best
Cat. Better than a dog, Cat. The Cat. Jack's Cat. Good Boots, Good.
Jacky called Harald has a hat tonight. Didn't we mention he had a hat? A
beat-up old fedora of a thing, something a hipster discarded in
contempt and disgust. It was never good enough to be fashionable,
something meant to be abandoned and lost (perhaps at a laundromat). It's
perfect for holding onto after smashing onto one's head, left hand
clamped down firmly a-top it, knobby knuckles and long fingers and
hirsute wrist a-working, before Jack takes off at an acceptable pace,
pigeon-chest suffering itself to fall into an easy rhythm. Molly
half-looks back from the cat to Jack, an epiphanic moment, and Jack
raises his eyebrows at her, flicker of a smile that makes him look
astonished but only a flicker because
The Chase
Is Motherfucking
On.
Jack's a bit quicker tonight to see,
but Molly's a bit fleeter of foot, and Jack pounds the pavement behind
her, one hand still holding his hat in place. It's a shame to lose a hat
to a pursuit.
He looks quite ridiculous, lanky gawky C-shaped
thing that he is, tongue tucked at the corner of This Face's mouth
because that is how This Face hurries. With all due intentness.
He's
trying not to run blind, is Jack. Don't run into an open mouth, Jack.
That's one of the first rules Jacks learn, that and how to be so quiet,
that and how to disappear although the truth one learns after learning
how to disappear is that one doesn't disappear, one is still oneself no
matter how much vanishing one vanishes into. But not running into an
open mouth: that's an important rule. So he's trying not to run blind,
puzzling at reflections and puddles and windows that The Reflection ran
through, as if there might be a left-behind trail, a sign, a distortion,
some prophecy of intent-
Around a corner.
Molly
[Wits 4 (Cool Headed)]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
Jack
[WITS.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Spiegelung
[ Cunning. ]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4) ( fail )
Spiegelung
[ Almost forgot Boots. ]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5) ( fail )
Spiegelung
Molly
is nimbler and hot on the bristle brush length of Boots' tail. They
form a strange trio making their way briskly down the sidewalk after
their eavesdropper. A caravan of seekers following a hideous star only
they know to look for.
Around that corner is another row of
storefronts, apartment lobbies, and ground floor windows for the
reflection to glide across, but it does not. Down one, two, it doubles
back to hop across to the windshield of a truck parked in a loading
zone, intent on getting away. There is the eerily silent appearance of
shadowy footsteps into the street across the sheen of rained upon
asphalt.
Jack knows to look. Jack sees, though they've rounded the
corner, because he is looking for the open mouth of a trap or the
dropping of a shoe. Molly's pursuit is controlled and she also knows-
some memory instilled by a caring parent or kindergarten teacher- not to
leap out into the street without looking both ways.
Boots is on a
mission and would not think twice to sacrifice another of its nine
lives for his master. In the lead, the unnaturally intelligent feline
might have been able to warn them, but does not see what is coming.
Molly
knows they are already within the beast's gullet. She has seen it rear
up and swallow the city whole. Around that corner comes a city bus. The
footsteps stop, as if noticing they no longer have their own shadows in
the form of their pursuers, and take an instant to recalibrate. And
then? Disappear only for the creature to again appear across the side
window of the bus, slamming balled fists upon glass, ever silent trapped
on the other side.
Boots was not the intended target. Molly was
not truly either. Boots darts out into the street after what looks like
(but is surely not) its master and instead of becoming a puddle of bone
and furry entrails beneath a wheel, its loyalty saves it.
The
terrified driver veers the bus away from the phantasmal gargoyle
clinging to its side and toward the patch of sidewalk where Jack and
Molly are stopped.
Molly
[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2: DIVE DIVE]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Jack
[Jack: O_O -1 BP to stamina. Also: Save the cheerleader halpful push! With WP, because ack.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Jack
Boots
goes streaking across the street, an unwary cat, and Jack hisses out a
not-quite-word of warning, a sound which becomes quite sharp. The bus is
veering now, and it is happening very quickly: how it pulls up and away
from the grotesque reflection (reflect on the nature of the beast, huh?
It's like the reliquary every Nosferatu needs must have to remember),
coming straight for Molly and Jack.
Jack has been hit by a car
before. Jack has not been hit by a bus before. Once upon a time, there
was a Jack. He could fall from very tall heights and be barely bruised.
He has not tried this with a bus. He doesn't know, not really, what the
Curse will do to protect him, but he has a certain Quixotic faith in his
own destiny. It is not fatalism; fatalists don't try to make things
happen. It isn't a philosophy he thinks of now, but it is internalized,
this certain belief that he is lucky but sometimes one has to make one's
own luck and sometimes one just has to sit down and play with cheaters
and even cheaters can be outplayed. By Jacks. By nobodies.
(Soldiers, you know. Once, always. In some respects.)
He doesn't have time (probably) to jump away. He has time to push Molly towards safety (perhaps),
and that's what he does, with precision if you please, with surety,
taking the hand which was holding his hat away (and the hat knocks askew
and at a ridiculously rakish angle in response to the jarring motion;
Jacks are not graceful) in order to do the deed. His eyes are already
crinkling, physiological response, bracing for impact. Eyes crinkling
like half-moons tension whispering through his cold dead muscles along
with a jolt of blood-fueled hardiness, and don't his eyes just gleam
with concern.
Boots DID get away, didn't he?
Molly
More
windows and storefronts wrapped around the wall of buildings when Molly
turned the corner with a squeak of rubber soles. She was glad she'd
opted for jeans and flats today-- even for 'friend dates' with a
werewolf-ugly young man, it wasn't uncommon for Molly to dress in skirts
and heels. Wedges or stilettos would have made keeping up well enough
to keep eyes on the thing fleeing them difficult. But she's there near
the curb to watch as the hunched-and-twisted once-Jack stopped and
skipped to a parked vehicle instead of continuing up the street.
Molly
stopped and twisted around to watch where it went, glanced left and
right rather than bolting out into the street because she'd seen too
many auto-peds roll through her doors to let that mistake happen.
Then,
all at once, there was a wall of metal and glass and headlights coming
their way. The phantasm reflection bared its monstrous visage to the
bus driver, threatening and flailing from where it was trapped in glass,
and the massive vehicle banked hard enough that the suspensions cried
out loudly.
Ever quick-on-the-uptake, Molly did not take pause
even for a moment to allow the shock to make its natural progression
through her system. Survival instinct still whirling some of its gears,
despite all the poor decisions she's made before, she had no desire to
die under the front grill of a bus. So Molly leaped aside, propelled by
strong legs and the aiding hand of a friend-- a hand that caught her
shoulder and arm at just the right angle to make the most use of tossing
Molly's weight ahead and getting her moving faster.
The extra
momentum sent Molly in an actual dive, and she landed on her side on the
sidewalk pavement. The impact shook her bones and probably scraped an
elbow, but that was the least of her concern. She was more wrapped up
in the fact she didn't feel Jack beside her, and opened-adjusted-focused
eyes just in time to see the bus overwhelm and plow him over.
"HARALD!"
Spiegelung
Jack
steels himself physically for what is coming and then turns to throw
Molly out of the way of the bus. She seems to have the same idea in mind
and leaps along, the helpful push from Jack propelling her out of the
way as well. The brakes on the bus go screech, whine, groan, but its
broad metal front still slams squarely into the space that Jack
occupies.
Squarely into Jack.
A hair to the right. Say if he
had tried to save himself instead of Molly? A drop less of blood burnt
in offering to Caine and his own hide to harden it. A brick wall instead
of a pane glass shopfront window, the kind he might usually avoid,
behind him to shatter as it breaks and breaks his fall. All these things
might have left Jack's body broken beyond saving, but it only knocks
him into the comatose dreaming of torpor instead.
Molly lands on
her side, though the momentum leaves her rolling. Forward onto her
knees, the palms of her hands skid onto the biting sidewalk, until she
stops on her elbow in a bit of a heap, bruised and bleeding.
Alive.
Only the living bleed like that.
A
different Jack, yet familiar in his hideous appearance, is what lands
inside that health food store into a display of coconut oil jars, bags
of exfoliating shavings, bottled nectar from the tropical palm. He has
become the monster that his reflection had revealed itself as. The mask
of Harald falls away. Boots is first on the scene, licking his face,
vitae barely trickling from where that telltale tusk has punctured
through his melting wax puddle of a cheek. Where broken bones protrude
there is no gushing blood. No spurting arteries.
This must be how
the undead bleed, because there is vitae on the air. A scent that is now
familiar to Molly wells up from where those wounds are. Something
inside, that augury that now gives her awareness a sharpened contrast
and direction, tells Molly that while Jack is bents and broken, he is
not gone.
Molly
Blood screamed in Molly's ears.
Thumped and hammered and she wasn't sure at first if it was this loud
because of what Abraham's blood had done to her, or if it was because
fear for her friend and grief struck such awful chords in her soul (on a
level woven and bound deeper, tied down with knots). She felt
that her palms and right elbow had been torn up, that she was bleeding
from where her denim and sidewalk had both scraped and torn at her knee
when she landed.
She was bruised and bleeding, but hardly in the
state that Jacky was. When the bus had come to a screeching and
screaming halt that matched what was happening in her ears already,
Molly scrambled to her feet and clambored through the shattered glass
store front, one hand braced on the hot and still bus to carry her
across.
When she came upon the fallen body in the store, crumpled
between two aisles on the tile floor, what Molly found caused pause and
startled horror. A hand flew to and grasped against her sternum and the
other went over her mouth. "Oh my god," she muttered, and her mind
processed both that the monster she'd seen in her mirror was now solid
on the ground in front of her, and that it was also battered and damaged
and bleeding, but not fatally damaged and dying.
The cat had come
and was licking blood from a wound in his face, and Molly's new
sensitivity to smell let the scent of vitae carry into her nostrils. A
supernatural cord rang in her, like rusty and taut (uncomfortable) wires
that trembled and wobbled and jangled and sent off sparks of want.
She
was a smart girl. Molly put pieces together quickly, and the hand over
her mouth was soon joined by the second. Fingertips pressed together
tight over lips to hold them still, keep them from trembling. She
glanced hastily over her shoulder to the sound of the people who were on
the bus that crashed, then hurried to Jack's side to feel him along his
chest and shoulders, making sure she wasn't about to jostle broken
bones, then shake and push him urgently.
"Harald," she said
again, pain striking the same rust-wire tones in her voice as she
crouched there on one knee trying to jostle awake a Dead Man.
"You asshole, wake up!"
Spiegelung
When
nothing comes from out of Jack's jagged cut mouth, twisted mandible
still, other sounds need to cut through the rushing pulse of blood and
the still-tinkling bits of glass being dislodged by the bus shuddering
under a labored engine.
Those sounds are other people. People who
are or will soon bear witness to what the bus hit. The groan of the bus
driver as he raises his head comes first. The sound of feet echoing
through the hull of the public transport toward the back door. One lady
screaming and a man trying to quiet her down, asking if she is okay, in a
thick North African accent. The interior of the health nut store is lit
by one headlamp of the bus. The other has a wall of shelving toppled
over and spilling out over it.
Any moment now people will be surveying the damage. The sounds of cars stopping and people getting out on the street comes next.
"Call the police, I'm going to see if everyone's alright," said yards and yards away, but clear as a whisper in her ear.
Spiegelung
Boots
laps, licks, until Molly gets close. He looks up at her, hackles
raised, like he might again give her that signature Tom-snarl, but
instead his tail drops.
Boots looks up at her with an intelligent
eye, and even the lazy and slightly milky one seems aware of something,
then pads around Jack. Grabs onto the shoulder of his shirt, fabric
between needlepoint teeth, and tugs as if in a futile attempt to drag
Jack away from this place where eyes and ears and sirens may soon bear
down upon.
A tug. Another. And then a rather telling glance up at Molly. Expectant.
And
if her hands were to come for him rather than his domitor, that snarl
and hiss would finally come, and those teeth might even show themselves
effective at at least one task.
Molly
There's no
response from Jack, and the voices made it clear that people were
getting off the bus, and that others were coming to see the spectacle
from off the street. They had very little time before people would
discover them in the aisles, behind a mess of inventory that had been
strewn about from the collision.
From what she knew about
Vampires, he probably needed blood to heal himself up. The cat,
perhaps? It had been tugging intently at Jack's shirt, she presumed it
was some kind of attached to him, a servant or familiar or something
like that. Molly had reached out for it, but the animal was smart and
sensed the intention in those fingertips. All it took was a pinning of
ears and baring of needle teeth and Molly got the point. She withdrew
her hand and looked at the hideous face. Grimaced, reached out, and
pulled his misshapen cheek from the tusk.
Resisted the urge to lick her fingertips. Balked at the fact that she had the urge in the first place.
There wouldn't be time to supply blood even if she thought she could handle having that
happen a second time in thirty days. With her voice crackling under
the stress, Molly whispered harshly to Boots: "Oh, fine then!" She had
a feeling the cat would understand her exasperation-- it seemed smart
enough anyways. She moved to Jack's head and shoulders and gingerly (at
first) grabbed under his armpits and tried to haul him up and start
dragging him away. It took her about seven feet of dragging to realize
that this wasn't going to get them very far very quickly at all.
So,
swallowing hard and bitter, Molly reached deep for a strength passed
through blood consumed, adjusted her grip on the monstrous visage, and
made way for the back of the shop.
[Spending 1 BP for Potence]
Jack
The bus the crowd the broken glass:
yet in the panic none think to ask
What of yon brave and dapper hat?
The fedora perched so jauntily 'pon yon Jack?
Did any note how high it flew and far?
Before dropping to ground, as like a star
pushed from the Heavens by uncaring god?
None did. Poor fedora. There it lies:
abandoned yet again, loosed of all ties.
Spiegelung
The
sack of rotten and ugly potatoes budges once she is carrying him right,
arms hooked under his, heels dragging on the linoleum floor of the
shop, but her muscles quickly begin to fatigue. It isn't until she gives
up some of that different ugliness worming its way through her veins
that she can really move him with any haste.
It puts some necessary and immediate distance between them and the ripped open storefront.
The
back of the shop leads out to an alleyway it shares with the rest of
the block. Thankfully it is uninhabited. A parked white van behind (by
the smell of its dumpster and kitchen exhaust fan) the Chinese
restaurant. A smart car with decals for cupcake shop. A few more
dumpsters. A circle of overturned milk crates and empty beer bottles
where workers must take their breaks.
Boots follows. Boot waits
behind, but is not lagging, instead watching to make sure none are
following before slipping through the last few inches of the closing
back door of the health food store. It clicks soundly shut behind them.
Boots looks around. Boots is thinking, but looks anxious, first to Jack
who gives no solace or answer, and then up to Molly again.
Is
Molly a thief? Of bodies? Of automobiles? Would she toss a Jack in a
dumpster? Would she risk one of the many doors lining that alley? Or
carry him out onto one of the parallel sidewalks to risk being sighted
with a monster's apparent corpse?
Molly
The alley
offered shelter, but Molly knew that was much too temporary. Boots
hovered there as well, anxious to see what Molly did with his master.
Molly didn't go far, because after finding shelter in the inky shadows
against the side of a dumpster she deposited Jack on the ground, propped
him leaned back against the stone wall. Crouched down in front of him
with her knees out and spine curved forward.
Once more fingers pressed over her mouth, now as she considered her options. She should
deposit him in a dumpster and just let what happens happen. Really,
wasn't that fair for him pulling the wool so far over her eyes? For
letting her love him, letting him into her home and mind?
But no.
If he survived, he would know where to come for her as revenge for
simply abandoning him. But would Harald seek revenge? Was Harald even
his name? Probably not.
Beyond that, more than it even, she couldn't just leave
him there. She couldn't even get her knees to flex so she could get up
and start walking away. She knew that her heart would suffer too much
to just abandon him someplace to be found, to be harmed. She didn't
know what it would take to wake him-- may have to pull that information
from someone when she had time. But one thing was for certain-- she had
to find a safe place for him.
By now tears were rolling over
round and freckled cheeks, down over fingertips as well. A confusing,
supernaturally-charged surge of betrayal and pain and worry and disgust
and adoration had her nearly sick to her stomach, but Molly found
resolve. After taking a minute's break to process and plan, Molly
leaned forward again to gather the monster up, this time dragging one of
his arms over her shoulders and hefting her hip and flank into his.
Supporting
him this way was slightly less suspicious than just dragging him by his
armpits. Perhaps it could hide attention enough for her to hurry the
monster to where she'd parked her car-- back through the alley and
toward the small parking lot for patrons of the coffee shop.
Spiegelung
Around
the corner where a bus is buried headfirst into a storefront, in a
compartmentalized city such as Denver and late on a week night such as
this, might as well be a world away. The coffee shop is calm. It had
been calm since the two weirdos in the back had gone running out after
some cat. People around the corner are milling about, and perhaps an
onlooker or two had wandered over from around the corner to inspect the
carnage, but the parking lot is accessible enough and Molly is smart
about how she carries Jack out and over to her car from the alleyway.
In he goes. In the trunk? In the passenger seat? In. In
any case that is where he ends up, staining her interior with vitae,
and where he resides. Boots that leaps in alongside to cast sideways
glances at Molly while she drives them away.
How long since Boots
has tasted cat food? Isn't whatever Boots eats cat food? Met a dog he
liked? These are the questions Boots seems to be pondering as he sniffs
at the stray hairs and fibers, the scents and sniffs, all inside Molly's
car.
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