Nate
[That is not okay]
Lux
So: when Nate got out of the hospital, Nate also got a visitor. Or Nate got a text from a was-going-to-be-a-visitor saying tonight is not a good night, but I'll be by another night. And it is another night, and Nate is out of the hospital, and he gets a text from x. dubois to the effect that she (his visitor) is near and would like to come by now.
Nate
And the text she receives in return says she's in luck. He's home. Come on by.
She knows the drill. She has to let herself into the alcove with the mailboxes and find his apartment number and punch the button and wait for him to buzz her in through another set of doors. This time of night there's a security guard sitting lazy at a desk in the lobby and she has to walk past him so she can get to the elevators or the stairwell. Nate is on the ninth floor so she has to pick one or the other.
Then she has to knock. Then she has to wait for him to let her in.
When Nate lets her in tonight he looks like shit. He always looks pale and tired but this is just-spent-a-month-in-the-hospital pale and tired. His hair is unwashed and his left eye isn't covered. He's holding his left hand up to cover it when he opens the door.
"Hey Lux," he says. "Sorry, Shithead must think my eyepatch is a toy, I can't find it. Come on in."
As soon as Lux is inside a ginger-furred comet streaks across the living room and disappears into another room.
Lux
The security guard receives a cool look -- a wide-eyed thing, steady and with a knife concealed in it. The knife is poetical; the knife is also real. The key-word was 'concealed,' and anyway, it doesn't matter, because one way or another (and there really aren't that many options: Lux cannot turn herself into a bat and fly up nine storeys, and that would undoubtedly be a waste of vitae), Lux arrives at Nathan's door, and he is well-prepared for her arrival, and when she drifts into his apartment looking like a million bucks couldn't buy that kind've je ne c'est quois but isn't it a good thing that it exists and Lucy the cat goes streaking for cover, well, when that happens, she gives him a quick sluice of a look-over, tucks a straying lock of hair back behind her ear and says, "Is that going to be a problem? I can call someone to pick another up and bring it by."
Nate
"Nah, it's fine. I got a pair of sunglasses around here somewhere."
It's not for his benefit that he's keeping his eye covered. Nate managed a one-handed securing of the door and all its locks and then makes his unsteady way into the kitchen.
Lux can see he was playing video games when she texted him. The television in the living room is paused on a menu screen and the console controller sits on one of the sofas. A beer bottle sits on the coffee table. A light flicks on in the kitchen.
On the counter separating the kitchen from the living room Nate previously eviscerated a newspaper and left a legal pad and a pack of cigarettes and a coffee mug on top of its innards. Hard to tell if he was working on this just before Lux arrived or if it's been sitting there since this morning. Nate is wearing gray sweatpants and an olive green undershirt. Nothing on his feet. Clearly wasn't expecting visitors today.
He does not ask her if she wants anything to drink. He's figured out by now that she won't drink anything even if it's right in front of her. Took him lord knows how many bar trips to figure that out. He rummages around the mess on his countertop with one hand.
"To what do I owe the visit?"
Lux
Lux has been looking around his apartment the way one does when one is in a place one hasn't been for a while and it is a place owned by someone who has just recently been released from the hospital. Her preternatural senses (acute [sharpened]) do her no favors in a bachelor's recovery room when that bachelor has been playing video games and not washing his hair. The line of her silhouette is graceful; her hair is a loose tumble of waves, a cup-full of darkness drunk, of lightlessness; except - except see?
There is one snow-flake and then another snow-flake and they're just beginning to melt in his apartment because of course she is not warm enough to melt snow [snow white was a vampire, sleeping in glass; and Lux is a glass-cut thing, put her in a box: No, no, no. Except she'd be really gorgeous in a box? Immobilized], and now they're melted, but it was a detail, something only someone sharp-eyed and quick would pick-up, not Nate on his quest for sunglasses. She drifts over to examine his books, the knick-knacks and pictures he has around, as if they might be more satisfying now.
He wants to know what he owes this visit to. "I promised you a conversation when you got home," says she, her back to Nate when she replies, although she turns to give him a lucent look. Turns? No; she just turns her head, so her chin is just touching her shoulder; something vaguely rebellious about the pose; the line of her, then. "So I came."
And then she seems to realize something; see how it passes, a bit more tarnish to the gaze?
"You can borrow my sunglasses," and now she turns, reaching with her left hand for the flap of her bag, withdrawing from it a case. Unsnap, satisfactory echo-y sound, and then: a pair of sunglasses which are probably not Nathan's style.
"How'd Lucy adjust to being home again? How'd you adjust?" - a brief, not-quite repentant curl of a grin; kiss of a grin, that thing, like of course I'm more interested in you than your cat who avoids me.
Nate
Those sunglasses are absolutely not Nathan's style. About the same time she is extracting them from their case Nate has found them underneath a pile of pocket-contents that wound up over by the microwave on the opposite side of the kitchen.
"Those are sunglasses?" he asks. Has to take his left hand away from his eye to unfold the earpieces of the aviators he just found. "I'm good. I found 'em."
If she happens to be looking towards him with her head turned just-so Lux can see why he had his hand up over his eye. Where the eye is normally white it has gone completely red. Not just the injury but everything they did to manage the injury. The injections and the surgeries. She cannot see from this distance but the pupil is completely dilated and is going to stay that way until the atropine drop the doctor put in it before he discharged the patient wears off.
All she can see is red. He ducks his head so he isn't looking right at her but Lux's senses are sharp and Nate's skin is pale. That red is a scream against his skin and then he's got his shades on and it's gone.
"We're fine. We're adjusting. I'm gonna be in trouble when I go back to work. I was the only person in the whole building who bet on the Broncos losing the Superbowl. Guess who doesn't have to worry about his medical bills this month?"
Both thumbs point at his chest. This guy.
Lux
"I've never been a big baseball fan," Lux replies as she slides those-are-sunglasses sunglasses onto her head. The smoked lenses obscure her eyes; make her seem, for a moment, more aloof; less immediate; they would dominate her face, but her face is such a lovely frame; it won't be dominated. There something smirk-worthy about the delicate filigree of gold roses framing the lenses, of the sharpness of the gold, the useless ornature; something to be said, some relationship to be drawn -- or there might've been in another crowd. The sunglasses don't stay over her eyes for long; she pushes them up over her forehead so they rest atop her head, imperfectly holding back her hair.
She sets her bag down near the couch; she sits on its arm, balancing herself with one toe. Her jeans have been written on graffitti'd on scrawled on over and over and over by a number of different hands, like those jeans are somebody's yearbook.
"Wouldn't mind going to Seattle sometime. How is work? Are you working on anything for it yet, or are you just," a languid half-gesture with one hand, "given over to the mercy of the sound and fury of your own free-time?"
Lux
ooc: Er. "However, I wouldn't mind going to Seattle some time."
Nate
"Even if the doc hadn't told me I'm not allowed back for two weeks I'm still on a truckload of antibiotics. Went in to talk to my editor yesterday and ended up booting in his wastepaper bin. Prolly a good thing I did, he isn't any too happy with how much work I've missed this quarter. Guy's a jerk."
There was a time when he would at least go outside on the balcony if he wanted to smoke. It's too goddamn cold for that now. Nate picks up the pack and taps out a coffin nail and sticks the filter into his mouth. Lights it lazy with a Bic he finds amidst the chaos on his counter. Tosses the Bic down just as soon as an ember's struck.
"And I had to drop out of the course I was taking because I hadn't been to a lecture all semester, so, uh. Job's in jeopardy, I'm a semester behind in school, cat hates me. Other'n that it's like a vacation over here."
Lux
He picks up the pack and Lux holds out a hand in a fashion that cannot be misconstrued. Give the lady a smoke, Nathan.
Lux is not really, by nature, a caregiver; it isn't even one of her demeanors, badum pum. Lux cares about people and about things; she loves them, too - or thinks she does. [A foam-blood creature, a love-fashioned thing; a compulsion, a command; it cuts both ways, you know,] Sometimes she makes Gary pancakes. Sometimes she draws somebody a picture or decides to overkill revenge herself. She cares, but she's not necessarily the greatest at it.
"On the plus side, you know a lot more about what a ghost'll do to a face it doesn't appreciate properly," and see, her mouth compresses; this vibrant snick, coolly radiant irony.
"Do you think they're going to keep you on crime or move you to another department? What about your blog, huh?" She leans forward, quick-thing, Lux, elbows on her knees, earnest, "D'you want me to beat your editor up?"
Nate
And he fumbles out two instead of just one for himself. He's not ordinarily a graceful creature but under the weather makes him less so. Goes ahead and lights it for her two. He can be a gentleman sometimes.
On the plus side. That makes him snort. Very fucking funny, Lux.
As they smoke and she asks question after question Nate opens up a cupboard and pulls out a glass ashtray. Shuts it with his wrist and comes back around so he can sit down at the counter. It takes no effort to ignore everything spread across it. He is normally a tidy person but his injury has given him permission to be lax.
With the gauze off his forearms and his sleeves short Lux can see the scars left behind from the possessed man attacking him. Supposedly the man went at him with his fingernails. Those scars look like they were left by claws. Pinprick holes run buddy-system along each red line of healing tissue. Human fingernails can't cut through leather and still go through a person's flesh.
"Nah," he says. "I'll just fantasize about it. Just because he's a prick doesn't mean he deserves to get beat up."
Lux
"I'm not very good at beating people up," Lux says, as if it's the truth; why wouldn't it be? One corner of her mouth deepens, carving out the suggestion of another expression - something sharper, more luminous. "It wouldn't be so bad."
And then her eyebrows both leap upward at the sight of those scars; she reaches out to take one of his wrists, and as always around Nathan Marszalek, her hands aren't cold (cool, approaching warmth; masquerade, masquerade). Pull his arm over for an investigation; if he removes it, she'll look at him - steady, steadying, a little wide-eyed; it is a wide-eyed look that has little to do with ingénue innocence, has more to do with stillness adorning vision.
"What the hell are those from? Not the Shade?"
Nate
If Nate had done that to himself one would think he would have covered them up. He certainly doesn't yank his arm away and try to hide the scar from the other woman. He isn't a 16-year-old girl.
"Yes the Shade," he says. He sounds annoyed. Like they're talking about Lucy acting up and not a vengeful wraith. "I'm not a hundred percent on what happened on account of it got pretty dark down in the basement after it blew out the lightbulb but, uh. Looked like it made the poor bastard grow, uh. Claws."
He takes a long drag off his cigarette and blows it towards the ceiling.
"Suffice to say if this were going to court I'd end up perjuring myself. I didn't tell the cops that part."
Lux
"Was this at night?" she asks. She hasn't taken another drag of her cigarette; the paper is burning, slowly but surely, ash gathering but not yet at the point of dissolution.
Nate
Even with the lenses of his sunglasses covering up his eyes and the muscles around them Lux can tell when he furrows his brow. His lips go taut and he shakes his head.
"Nah, it was one or two in the afternoon."
Lux
Her mouth shapes the words I see (or maybe just Oh) without her actually saying it; now there is a thread of alert wariness at the nape of her neck, like - maybe the Shade possessed a Lupine, maybe there was a Lupine in the city, maybe it was a Gangrel's ghoul who - or maybe it was just a Shade who could grow fingernails and make itself solid. Lux is far from an Occult expert. She leans back again, stretches herself out - long careless line of a girl, a stringed instrument strung-comfortably; she buries one hand in her hair, the other hides her mouth because it's the cigarette hand. She's wearing rings, not gloves like she perhaps should be; the rings are thick, metal, bulky; one looks like an Industrial snake.
Nate
"Yeah."
Confirmation of her unspoken show of understanding. Or else just something to fill the silence afterwards. Now that she's done examining his arm it just lies on the countertop. The other elbow props itself there. He's leaning heavy against the counter when he glances over at Lux.
"I had my arms up at first. He was swiping at my face and I ended up on my back with the guy on top of me. Went to push him off and that's when he got me in the head. It really was a good thing Amber was there. He would've killed me. Doc says if it was like a centimeter closer or something my eyeball would've smashed like an egg. Poetic, huh?"
Lux
"Poetic, maybe," she says, with a slight little incline of her head. The glasses slip down toward her forehead, but they don't actually fall over her eyes yet. "Where'd this guy get his degree?"
That must be a rhetorical question; she inhales, and then adds, a little formally - "I am glad Amber was there. Maybe in the future - " a pause. What does Lux think? Lux thinks Lux things. " - oh well, what do I know. I've never heard of a ghost with claws."
"Some vampires have them. The one you saw before you met my dark-haired pal." The insouciance is in full-force, now; the corner of her mouth wants to tug up again, though the smile isn't touching her eyes. Through his shades, maybe Nate doesn't notice.
Lux
ooc: make that 'The one you saw before you met my dark-haired pal did.'
Nate
He frowns again. He had no idea he had met another vampire before her dark-haired pal. The woman at the fountain maybe. He doesn't ask.
Less the fault of the sunglasses that Nate doesn't notice the nuances of her facial expression. He's tired and his head hurts and he feels about as swell as he looks. When he puts out the cigarette it looks as if that much movement takes a good amount of effort. He coughs into the side of his fist and goes back to leaning.
"I have no clue what happened down there. I've been thinking about, uh. Trying to find other people who have this problem. Not... ghost hunters or whatever, but people who can hear them all the time."
Lux
"Where would you start? Dazzle me, investigative journalist." Her tone is neither sarcastic or sardonic; she actually sounds rather eager to be dazzled.
Nate
"Christ. Lady, I'm a crime reporter, not an investigative journalist."
He rests his chin in the palm of one hand and blows out a breath.
"I mean, they've got psychic mediums in the yellow pages, but that's got Dead End written all over it. Couldn't hurt though, right? Having my palms read or whatever? Networking is pretty important."
Lux
"Journalist, reporter; it's like the difference between a mouse and a rat," she says, off-handed; indeed, she even makes a could-cut-crystal economic gesture with one hand, and that was just a place-holder to consideration.
She is still considering that phrase: Networking is pretty important. Hiding her hand behind her mouth again in order to inhale, a minute tilt of her head, an imperious angling of her chin, and the shades do fall over her eyes.
Nate
"There's totally a difference between a mouse and a rat," he says. "Mice are small and everything in the world can eat them without them putting up much of a fight. Rats are big ugly bastards and they're pretty smart."
Lux
"Mice have a good reputation, but they're cannibals," Lux says. "Rats, nobody likes much, but they're all right." She pushes the shades down the fine slope of her nose; looks over them, and the gold roses are sun-gilt against the tarnished-up sea-glass green-and-greener of her eyes, like: well we agree on rats at least.
"So what else'll you try? Might contact one of those professional skeptics; see what he or she has in their files."
"Maybe you could ask a Shade. A friendly one." Her tone is balanced; is poised; is meant to hide things, to be so neutral, so controlled: perfectionist.
Nate
"You've been watching too much television."
Sitting up is getting to be too much of an effort for him. Nate indicates the living room with a nod of his head and gathers up everything he thinks they'll need for the journey. Cigarettes and lighter and ashtray. His beer is still over there. As he shuffles towards the couches he continues his dissertation.
"All the Shades I've ever talked to in my life've been scared out of their minds. They don't know what the hell happened to 'em so they're just happy somebody's listening. You know? And most of the time they don't..."
He sits himself onto the couch with the controller and sets up the ashtray and the cigarettes on the coffee table by his beer. Picks up the bottle and tosses the controller onto his lap as he leans back taking up the entire couch. Lux has the option of the opposite couch or the cushion by his feet.
"Whenever I see one, like physically see one? That means shit's about to go south. They're old and pissed off. Anybody can see them. Like when you and Molly start seeing 'em, I'm like..."
He chews his lip.
"Maybe I should talk to a professional skeptic. Or one of those paranormal investigator lunatics. Make out like I'm doing a story or something. If I'm gonna lose my gig at the newspaper I might as well do this shit full-time. I could survive on the ad revenue I get from blogging." He sighs and takes a swallow of beer. "See, this is why you're not supposed to mix pills and booze. It makes you start talking crazy."
Lux
Their players do some quick re-blocking of positions; in the end, two couches are stretched out on; the end is all that matters, eh?
Lux, a languid-thing, just observes Nate a-shamble.
And:
"I didn't really see one -- either time. At the hotel, I just noticed that man was acting strange, and then -- who wouldn't notice when a wall started dripping blood? Walls aren't supposed to bleed."
"But what I'm saying is they can't all be unaware of what they are or solitary or -- that just isn't how things work. And maybe a more coherent Shade would know other people who can hear it and talk to it, if you really want to find those people."
She pauses; sucks on her lower lip.
Lux
ooc: not 'what I'm saying,' 'what I'm suggesting,' bah, tone and language
Nate
This is so college right now. Lounging on chairs and sucking on beer and arguing existentialism.
Nate didn't talk about his little gift when he was in college. Lux knows by the time he got to college he was 24, 25 and had already done three tours overseas. He wasn't even a freshman by the time he got to college. His freewheeling hanging-out-in-his-sweatpants-until-4-o'clock days never happened.
"I'm gonna maintain that coherent Shades don't exist. I mean, I'm only twenty-six. Maybe that isn't enough time. I don't know. But I think the ones that ever start to figure out what they are and what happened get super fucking pissed, pardon my French, and that's when you get shit start flying across the room and concierges trying to kill people and blood dripping out of the walls. How coherent can you be when you're dead and you don't have a body? I'd be pissed."
Lux
"Mm." She looks at her cigarette, then reaches out and over to ash it (she has trailed ash on her shirt and on her jacket and on her bag) in the ashtray, leave the butt-end of it there like a metaphor. "I suppose that would depend on how long you were alone. You can be angry at dying, but all the time, so you're just a froth of wrath? No."
"But maybe their anger is what helps them throw things around a room, and that's why they're able to do that. Envy and wrath."
Lux turns onto her side so she's facing Nathan, pillowing her cheek with one hand.
Nate
"I think I'm just speculating and don't actually have a clue how any of this works."
Nate sets the beer bottle down on the floor and pulls his sunglasses off his face. Blinks heavy at the change in light and holds the heel of his left hand against his face to block the sight of the eye from her while he figures out whether he wants to leave them off or not.
"They don't ever talk to me unless they want something. Is all I'm saying. The ones who start throwing shit and taking over people's bodies, they don't wanna talk. But I don't think the ones who've just died go straight to the throwing-shit angry phase. I really don't. Maybe you're right. Maybe one of the ones who wants to talk knows other people who can hear them."
Lux
A beat. Then: Lux grins - a sudden, surprisingly firm, curve of a thing; subtle on the surface, but it re-arranges the shadows. "I really don't know. I just know that - "
Another beat. "Ready to become less ignorant, Nathan?"
Nate
The reporter stretches a stretch that goes all the way down to his toes and slides the sunglasses back onto his face. Turns his head towards her but does not roll onto his side.
"I was born ready."
Lux
The mask has already slipped; allowing Nathan to live without ghouling or binding him with blood is the breach. What's a little more? Lux preserves a taut little silence. Her throat is taut too -- her hunger, which is a wanton thing, often present; it gets more of an edge and where someone unbounded by the prospect of immortality might count their heartbeats the tick-tock of their living clock Lux relies on her own thoughts. Her lashes rush to meet their own shadow on her cheekbones. Lux preserves a stillness, too, and then -- " -- heh."
"Very well. Prove it by asking questions. Now, off all records," another suggestion of a smile; shadowling thing, dark-edged but lovely. "This, ah, this society you've found yourself brushing up against is governed by tradition and by spite -- or by two governing bodies: the Camarilla and the Sabbat. They're the war I told you about last summer."
Lux watches Nathan now; her eyes open, and pensive, the sharp sweep of them un-hesitating, but not quite - more shadows, y'know, to frame what is light.
"But that is just the political order of things. The team you play for, the party you go to, what gang you choose -- as far as choice goes -- to run with. One doesn't get a choice about one's clan. One is brought into the fold as part of a clan; it is in your blood, it is who you are; it is unshakable, unless you were abandoned by your sire at the onset, and even then the blood will sometimes out."
Nate
At mention of the war she mentioned last summer Nate frowns and pushes himself upright. Puts his feet flat on the floor and knits his fingers together so they're contained when he leans his elbows on his knees. It takes him a few seconds to bring the conversation to mind. A lot happened in between drinks at the Cruise Room and this night.
In the grander scheme of things nothing of importance has happened. Only mortal dramas have transpired. But they clog up his circuits. By the time she writes this all off as political things he has a name for the Sharks and the Jets.
Even then the blood will sometimes out.
"So what's your blood say?" he asks. "Or is that like asking a lady how old she is?"
Lux
[Hide things activation!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Lux
[Man, f' you dice.]
Nate
[perc + subt: -2 dice because OW MY EYE]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lux
"Mine? Say? My blood is the demurest blood, the darlingest blood," Lux says, with a sharp smirk: dissolution. Her hand on her forehead: a delicate creature -- cool-skinned, carved out've the dark. It is still college. "It never had to say a word; my Sire raised me properly. All the benefits of a thorough education." Does she have feelings about that? Hidden. Or -- nearly. Sire. There is something in her voice: something that suggests for all her self-assured and quiet and steady delivery something Sire-y still moves her. Depth.
"My clan has a reputation for uselessnes and perception; interesting dichotomy, hmn?"
"But part of the reason I bring up clans is that there are two you might find yourself running across in your search for knowledge of the occult. Okay? They're the Tremere and the Giovanni. I imagine the Tremere would snap you up because of your potential, and I don't think you'd like being a Tremere very much. The Giovanni, they like to have their market cornered and quivering, hmn? But they have ways of talking to the dead and enslaving ghosts.
"The Giovanni claim to be neutral. They're only for the interests of their own family. The Tremere have decided to throw-in with the Camar -- oh, no, I'm telling this all wrong. Let me go back to the governing bodies, shall I?"
"The Sabbat embrace degeneration. They've made a religion out of inhumanity. They might've had a noble cause, once, but they are essentially blood-mad bastards who teach themselves to enjoy being monsters. The Camarilla embrace stagnation and tradition. They're the Authority, they're the Tyrant, they're civilization and an iron hand."
Nate
Off all records means he cannot jot down notes to keep track of names and explanations. That he can't glance down at it during the course of this interview to make sure he's keeping everything straight. She's picked a fine time to tell him all of this. Recovering from injury as he is Lux can probably assure herself of Nathan's diminished ability to retain every single fact she tells him.
The framework is there though. Names for the society to whom she belongs. Rules of that society. The fact that there are two factions and they are at war.
The fact that the Tremere and the Giovanni might like to snatch him up because of his investigation into The Way Things Are and the fact that he wouldn't like being a Tremere. And then back to the governing bodies.
Both sides are a 'they' to her. Lux can see Nate frown as he reaches out for the beer he'd set on the floor earlier. Grabs it lazy by the neck and holds it there a moment.
"I take it you're neither," he says.
And then: "Can we back up further than that? What... is the word 'vampire' politically correct? Like, is that what you call yourselves? How does one become a vampire in the first place? Are you born like this, or...?"
So many questions.
Lux
I take it you're neither. Lux snaps (precise [delicate]) her thumb against her middle and index finger. Snap. Ends on a point and an expressive lift of one eyebrow- the kindle of a smile, something surprisngly sharp and deep, Got it in one. Silk-throat shadow-sound of assent: "Mm." Becacuse he wants to back further than that. He wants to know -
He wants to know everything, doesn't he? Lux considers him as he asks his questions, one-eyed Odin or something, huh? and taps one finger against the cushion of the couch she sprawled so languid-lean (strung-like-a-violin-play-play) across. "Depends on which politics you want to be correct with. Cainite or Kindred or Lick." That last word's got a sensualist's pleasure in it, although there's a certain hushed gravity around the rest of what she's telling Nathan."
Pause; "It takes blood to make a Lick, and a Sire willing to go all the way. Nothing infectious about the bite, and ... There are some rumours about vampires who are ... Born, weak ones, but I don't know very much about that. It's doomsday cult stuff and I don't believe in doomsday."
Nate
The next question comes more quickly than the last several but not framed at all like a question. He can figure this out without hearing it. Without making this into some sort of personal quest for closure or even partial understanding. And yet for whatever reason he does need to hear confirmation of his suspicion.
"When a Lick bites someone. They're drinking that person's blood. Is that..." No. Wait. Here comes a question: "Why?"
Lux
"Why ... We call each other Licks, when we're being vulgar?"
"Why not 'Sucks' or 'Slurps'?" Deadpan.
Nate
No, Lux. You're not cute.
"Why drink someone's blood?"
Lux
[Hey! I am so frickin' cute. CHARM.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Lux
Some answers are better than others. Why eat a cow? is not diplomatic. Lux probably does not actively make that analogy in her mind, however fashionable it is to refer to the masses as kine. 'The lowing of the kine.' The herding of the kine. Lux is not quite so inhuman (yet).
"Because..." she says, and let's give Lux this credit: she is exactly the kind of beguiling forever-young shadow-thing one wants to imagine having this kind of conversation with, if one's going to get all imaginative and weird with it. Be in the moment. "We need it, or else."
Nate
Or else.
Nate likes to downplay his role in the world by saying he's just a reporter. He just tells the masses what happened while they were asleep. He just types words for 40, 60, sometimes 80 hours a week and doesn't do anything terribly taxing. But that takes skill and persistence and a certain degree of artistic ability. He has a strong imagination.
He doesn't need her to get into gory detail. If they don't drink blood they'll die.
"So..." Where were they. "The Sire turns a person into a Lick, and then the Lick ends up being whatever the Sire was, and there are two sides and they're fighting."
Okay. He's sort of caught up now.
"How many of you are there?"
Lux
"Unless the Sire abandons his or her Childe immediately, and it is a little more complicated than 'two sides,' but essentially correct. The Camarilla and The Sabbat are the heavy-hitters. As for how many..."
"I don't know. Well-populated areas tend to be more desirable real estate, for obvious reasons I'm sure."
Nate
"Yeah, small towns are bad enough when you still have a pulse, I can't imagine how boring it would be to--"
Well that's a little insensitive isn't it, there, Marszalek? He takes another swig of his beer and tries again.
"I guess I'm not understanding how this happens in the first place. If the bite isn't infectious then that means you have to decide to make another vampire, right? Why...?"
Yeah he's lost again. This is a guy who can barely understand why it is humans choose to reproduce with the world as overcrowded and shitty as it is. This is way outside his realm of comprehension.
Lux
"Sounds as if you understand," Lux says. "Somebody makes a choice. They want a protegé, or a moon-eyed sap with some oomph, an investment in the future. Maybe they don't want their friend to die. Maybe there's an in-clan reason to turn somebody, and it's all politics. Maybe the somebody's brilliant and if they just have a little more time and you're a philanthropist. Maybe you're Sabbat and you want something to torture that's not going to die as easily. Maybe it's a legacy thing."
Nate
"And you're worried that somebody from one of the more occult-minded... um... groups is going to run into me while I'm out learning about ghosts and try to turn me into a vampire."
That does seem to be the point of this conversation. He's slightly less ignorant than he was before.
"How can I tell if someone is a vampire before their teeth are in my neck?"
Lux
"Yes. That's what they select for. Or they could decide to ghoul you," but Lux would make certain that didn't happen to Nate, although she doesn't tell him this, still - a low-thrum of intensity: "Which is terrible."
There is a distinction there. It's a fine but, but it exists.
He wants to know how to tell if someone is a vampire before - and Lux shifts positions so she is lying on her back, pillowing her head in the crook of one arm, studying the ceiling. Her chest rises and falls just as if she were breathing like a regular person. Because she is breathing like a regular person.
"You can't."
"Sure, some Licks are less human than others. They've decided to do that whole 'embrace degeneracy' schtick, or they've been forced to, or - well who knows. Point is, some Licks are so far removed from having a heart that you can kind of tell, but there's no, like, sign. Hairy palms? Vampire! Sparkling skin? Vampire!"
Nate
"Man."
Nate is drinking his beer very slowly. He's tired and still feels like crap and could fall asleep right now if it weren't for the fact that Lux is here and now that they're talking about factions and all the ways a vampire could kill him before he even realized what was going on he's somehow more on edge than he was when she first came over.
So he leans forward and plucks his cigarettes off the coffee table. Offers her another one before he lights his own. Might as well start chain-smoking.
"So I can't just carry a clove of garlic in my pocket and call it a night, huh? If another Flood decides to turn me into a juicebox there's nothing I can do about it."
He doesn't sound despondent or paranoid. Just beleaguered. There wasn't a hell of a lot he could do about somebody deciding to kill him when he was in the Marines either but he still showed up for work every day.
Lux
Her answer isn't immediate. She'd reached over to accept that second cigarette without looking full-on, because she has become a Noticing sot of creature, and there's a certain unmeasured and careless elegance in the sweep of her arm out over and back.
"You could try invoking my name. It's not a guarantee or anything, but..."
Drag on cigarette; smoke released in circles. One, two, third through the center, dispell it all with a big exhale.
"And no, sorry," edge, "just as with any person who means to do harm, if you want to avoid it, the best thing to do is keep your eyes open."
Nate
Maybe it's the edge in her voice or the dead-end brick-wall nature of his line of questioning. Something has Nate choosing not to tack another one onto the series he just asked. He flops back down on the couch and rubs his forehead with the hand not holding onto the cigarette and makes sure he can still reach the ashtray with the one that is.
Nothing is a guarantee but her name is probably what has kept him out of trouble all this time anyway. He has no way of knowing that or what it means.
The kitten hasn't come out of the bedroom all this time. She tries to come out into the hall again, check and see if it's safe. It isn't. A tiny hiss comes out of the dark and then she scrambles away again.
Lux
Lux doesn't begin 'teaching' again immediately. Keep your eyes open, and then a little paw-tap adolescent cat hiss, and then silence except breathing, the sound of smoker's at work, until - and it doesn't stretch on too long, just a little while - Lux sits up, pulls a pen out of her bag, and begins to one-handed draw something on her jeans. As she does this, she looks over at Nate, shadow-flux crystalline eyes perhaps a touch inscrutable, but absorbant, a seeing sort of look, and says,
"All right. Back to the 'less ignorance' portion of this Q&A. Animals aren't always comfortable around Licks. They know we're bigger and badder than they are."
"There are laws to go with all that government. And even the Licks who aren't all that crazy about the current state of affairs follow one of them to a point. Example A, the Masquerade. It's the one where you don't tell mortals about vampires because mortals are assholes who burn things they don't understand. The Camarilla is the big supporter for the Masquerade, but the Sabbat doesn't completely ignore it, although they'd sure like to."
"We can enter somebody's house without trouble, as long as we have a key or know how to pick a lock or break a window or knock on the door. Invitation does not matter. Flood, yes, let's talk about Flood again, I suppose. Flood's people don't have reflections. Flood's people are not kind people, so if you find yourself talking to somebody without a reflection, be careful.
"Flood's all right. We're friendly, but we're not on the same side and we never were. I don't think we ever will be, which is a damned shame."
"You remember the night you met him? That wild woman you saw?"
Nate
He had to have figured that invitation doesn't mean shit. That that was an aspect of the collective Western mythology that could be debunked just as easily as the notion that vampires would be driven back by garlic or crosses. That upending a bag of rice outside one's window would keep the creature so occupied that they would be rooted in place counting the grains until the sun rose and set their body to ash.
They aren't having this conversation so Nate can embark upon a crusade to rid the earth of a scourge. Thus far Lux has done nothing to him and nobody else has really done anything to him. Flood is the only vampire he can claim to have a problem with and Nate is smart enough to have also figured out that Flood could kill him in a heartbeat.
The night he met him there was a wild woman present.
"Vaguely," he says. "What about her?"
Lux
"I think that was a Gangrel who sometimes comes out of the mountains. Gangrel - that's another clan. They're Independents now, as a whole, except for all the ones who were super invested in the Tower or the Sword of Caine. Those are other names for the Camarilla and Sabbat. Neater names, huh? More about who they think they are. Gangrel are loners, but they have claws and can turn into animals. Wolves, cats, bats, whatever else rhymes with cats - maybe rats? Or maybe it's just wolves and bats. When you told me about what the Shade did to your face, that its host had claws, I thought maybe you'd run afoul of another Gangrel or the Shade had possessed one, but I guess not if it was daytime."
Nate
Nate nods. Mild for the headache that still plagues him but he has to make a correction anyway. Everything starts to blur together when you're on so many drugs and he can't remember who he told what but he seems to recall Lux questioning him on the time of day that the attack occurred.
"Amber stabbed the guy in the throat," he says. "Even if it weren't daytime, wouldn't he have gotten back up later if he were a vampire?"
Lux
"Depends," Lux says. "Most of the time, yes. If he had been a Gangrel, almost certainly. They don't go down at all easily. They've got fortitude, the dirty bastards," insouciant, that, and casual. "Speaking of Amber, I don't know what she is. If she's a ghoul or if she's like you to me. Ghouls are a little stronger, sometimes a little faster, than your average Joe, and they're very loyal so watch out. Is it kung fu to feel responsible for a life you've saved? Or is it samurai?"
Nate
"That sounds like something out of a Kurosawa film. I'm white, I don't know anything about codes of honor."
He doesn't know anything about ghouls either. Or how what he is to Lux translates into the world of vampires and creatures who can grow claws on a whim. Dirty bastards who are tough and can take more than a knife to the throat without dying.
"She did come by the hospital a few times before I pissed her off again, so I don't know. Maybe you're right."
Lux
"She lets herself be ruled by anger," Lux says, of Amber and Amber getting pissed off. "You probably didn't do anything too bad. Just don't bring up Flood again, no matter how casually, huh? Hey, where's your phone?"
Nate
Nate gives a quick nod of compliance when she asks him not to bring up Flood again and then twists on the couch to try and locate his phone.
"Uh..."
Pockets. Check the pockets. Nope. Nate sits back up and rummages around the other crap piling up on his coffee table. Half-dead cigarette dangling from between his lips.
"It's around here somewhere. Why?"
Lux
"I want it," she says, and to help him find it takes out her own phone, thumb-scroll, thumb-scroll, type out a text, press send, go.
Nate
That strikes him as funny. While they wait for the data to find a tower so that the tower can find his phone and throw the message to it he shakes his head and takes a killing drag off the cigarette and stamps it out.
"That's nice," he says. "What do you want with it?"
A hard rattle comes from the mess on the kitchen countertop. Nate picks up his beer bottle and wanders that way.
Lux
"Well, first I'm going to play coy with it, you know, hold it a bit, enjoy the way it feels in my hand, then I'm going deftly avoid cat pictures and give you a number," Lux says, twirling her pen around once and taking another drag from her cigarette before ashing it. The sunglasses come down: the delicate gold lacery of roses casts shadow-lace on her pale-skin, and she twists around so she's sitting on her knee to watch Nate find his phone. The text is a line of French, translation of which is: “To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.” Go Baudelaire.
Nate
Nate reads the text message and then laughs a tired laugh.
"If you love Baudelaire so much why don't you marry him?"
This in reference to the fact that she quoted the poet once many moons ago in an isolated incident that he wouldn't even remember if it weren't for the fact that one doesn't meet very many women who speak French in Colorado.
He wanders back across the room not to his own couch but to hers and leans over the back of it to hand her the thing. It's new. He had to replace the one he had last year because it didn't survive the car crash.
"Don't worry," he says, "this phone is cat picture-free."
Lux
"He's in France," Lux deadpans. "Too far, so far, je suis désolé." Nate is leaning over the back of the couch, or was leaning over the back of the couch, and Lux diligently leans over his phone so she can program a number into it under the auspices of 'k. now,' and the glasses slide down the sharp slope of her nose, and she perhaps ruins (or adds to?) the deadpan effect by giving Nate the slant of a look from under her eyelashes. When she's finished with the number, she offers to hand the phone back or to put it down on the coffee table next to the ash tray.
"So if," she says, "anything ever happens, and you can't reach me -- you will try to reach me, won't you?"
Nate
Well that is an awfully broad set of parameters if ever any have been laid down.
They're both wearing sunglasses but Lux's are falling off her face and Nate's are designed to stay on their owner's face even if their owner has perhaps been ejected from a fighter jet a thousand miles in the air and has to parachute down someplace less than ideal. All Nate's are doing right now are keeping Lux from getting a good glimpse at his bloodshot barely-saved eye but that's still a tall order.
He does take back the phone if only so he can look to see what she's programmed into it.
"Don't I always?"
Lux
"Do you?"
Rhetorical question gets a rhetorical question. And then she continues, without missing a beat, "If anything happens, anything urgent, and you can't reach me, text that number and ask for help. Say it's for Lux."
Nathan Marszalek has acquired a number for Kali the Ravnos.
"And that's about as safe as I can make you. Got any more specific questions tonight?"
Nate
Nate shakes his head and puts the phone back down on the counter. Figures while he's up he might as well charge the damned thing. That takes some doing. He has to find his charger and plug it in. That keeps him upright for a few minutes.
If he had had any specific questions in mind when she showed up they were ones he had to pluck out of his confusion. Giving him a phone number to reach someone he has never met and could not identify from the name Lux gave the entry seems to be more for Lux's peace of mind than for his. He takes it anyway.
"No, ma'am. You taking off?"
Lux
[Eh, fuck it. First, Intelligence for something.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Lux
[Then: sketch, sketch.]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Lux
"Tired? You asked some okay ones. Things I never really thought too deeply about. Well, that's half-a-lie..."
And then, this compass-needle impulse of a smile, a head-shake, and the sunglasses go onto her head again, brightness against the gloom of her too-dark hair, and she pulls something out've her bag.
"If you're bright-eyed singular, I've got nowhere to be for a few hours yet. And if you still want to help a lady out, there's one more order of business," and the something she took out of her bag is a sketchbook and a charcoal pencil for-to sketch.
[Insert Nate's Quip Here. Or maybe he doesn't quip, maybe he's not quippy. Maybe he says something else. Maybe not.]
For a moment, Lux is completely still, balancing the sketch-book across her knees, looking off into nowhere, into the past, into memory; she does this with her eyes open, and intent, fixed; sharp enough to cut, when they're dreaming; better than glass. Her lips stay pressed together, until they part in preparation of a name; not a name. But she's got him now.
Her hand is certain when it compasses the paper, and Nate's seen sketches of suspects before. Maybe not sketches as complete and as full of character as this one, but c'est la vie. Draw, draw, sketch, sketch.
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Lux
[Er. Ignore that roll.]
Lux
[Well no, I guess if she sketches #2 else, we can use it.]
Nate
She's got nowhere to be and she needs help.
Nate steps over the back of the couch like his mother must have told him not to do a time or two when he was growing up and then sits down on the cushion beside her to watch her sketch. It comes with no quip. Maybe some sort of mumbled attempt at verbal concession to her request. But he's there beside her and he waits for her to sketch her sketch and she watches while she sketches.
"Are we playing Pictionary?" he asks. "What are we doing?"
Lux
"I need to find somebody. I know you're not a blood-hound, but I've exhausted most other potential avenues of information, and," Sketch, sketch, draw, draw, sketch, sketch, draw, draw, with one pause to dig into her bag again, this time come up with a coloured pencil, russet, for some fine detail.
"I just really need to find out what these guys have been up to. This is Simon Hodge. He is a ghoul, or was. He might be more-than, now," she sounds skeptical of the point. "He was old before. Older than me. Old enough that -- just really old, so really dangerous. Does he look at all familiar to you?"
He probably doesn't. Lux tears that piece of paper off, and hands it to Nate. She has captured some of the ghoul's personality, or at least how he presented himself. Close-cropped gingery curls, athleticism, athletic shoulders, a certain class, polo shirt because that's how Lux last saw the old Prince's thrall.
She does another sketch much more quickly. Smooth-voiced, Lux: "This one is Edward."
Edward is certainly more beautiful, lovely, handsome, choose-your-adjective here than Simon, tousle-haired in that this-is-the-edge-of-fashion's-fashionability your-tousled-hair-will-never-be-this-good.
Sketch, sketch. Sketch, sketch.
"Do you like Pictionary? It's fun."
Lux
[Yes, okay, one more sketch. +wp.]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
Lux
{i said +wp!}
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [WP]
Nate
He doesn't look at all familiar to Nate but that doesn't mean he can't help try and track him down. When he takes the paper from her he studies it as closely as a man can with one eye at his disposal and then he sets it down on the coffee table. Uses more care with the sketch than he had with anything else he'd set down tonight.
Neither does he recognize Edward. Any ghouls he's met he did not know they were ghouls. They just happened to cross paths. But Nate is better at finding people than one could think just by looking at him. Connections and access to government databases come in handy.
"Are those their real names or are they aliases?"
As for Pictionary:
"I don't think I've ever played it. You'll have to teach me sometime."
Lux
Lux is working, with care, on a third sketch; be precise and be perfect, nothing less is acceptable. "Those aren't likely the names they were born with, if that's what you mean. Edward's Edward Alexander Scott, III, in full, by the by. But it might be their legal identity, such as it is."
"You've never played Pictionary? Not even when you were a child? What about Twister? Or Charades?"
Nate
It doesn't matter if those are their real names or not. Nate doesn't appear deterred. Hard to tell with his eyes covered but the fact that he's sat down and has his feet up on the coffee table so he can better study and take in what she's saying. That's enough of a sign that he is actually listening.
As for games:
"I mean, we had board games at the house when I was a kid but my sister wasn't born until I was nine or ten. The only time I really remember busting them out was when I'd babysit her after she got old enough to not try and eat the pieces. And we'd play them at school sometimes, like when it was too shitty to go outside for recess. I don't remember Pictionary though. Like I've seen the box, I just don't know the rules."
Lux
"I'll teach you. What about Settlers of Catan? Have you played that one? Or Tannhauser?"
The last sketch is the most skilled and precise and that will to perfection really paid off. Nathan won't recognize the man in this one either. His name is Charles Léandre Séverin Vincent etcetra and Lux doesn't give Nathan his name. This one, she just says -
" - and if you see him, let me know immediately. But don't say my name aloud if he's still in sight. It's really unlikely," and she frowns down at the paper, taking the sunglasses off entirely, hair a silk-curtain falling, a sheath for her expression. Perilous. "Unlikely," she repeats, muse. Musing. "But who knows?"
Lux lets him take a closer look at that sketch, too. Says, "So -- questions? If you don't have any, prepare to learn Pictionary."
There's totally an App for that.
Nate
As for whether he's ever played those other two games:
"You do realize I joined the Marines right out of high school, right?"
That doesn't mean anything. There are nerds in the armed forces. Nate wound up in one of the nerdiest jobs there is. He probably would have spent the entirety of his time in service playing Magic: the Gathering and Settlers of Catan if it weren't for the whole getting-attached-to-a-combat-unit thing.
Don't say her name in front of Charles of the Very Long French Name. He can handle that.
Questions. He has to have questions.
"Yeah, Pictionary is definitely something you're gonna learn me tonight. But, uh... you have no inkling of where these guys might've gone off to? Do they have any mutual acquaintances that I could start with?"
Lux
Lux takes back the sketch of the-man-whose-name-she-did-not-give-Nate ("Léandre," if pushed), then pushes the sketch-book aside.
As for any inkling she has, Lux gives Nate a few ideas, based on what she knew of them Before Siege Began, what she knew of their sires and their tastes, their Domains, where they'd hang, and she also tells Nate that they've been hanging out with a rougher crowd, people they've been hanging with, people Lux doesn't want to cause trouble for, per se, but people who are closed-mouthed jackasses.
What she knows isn't very much, at all, and she's clear about that too.
And then, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to learn how to play Pictionary.
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