Molly Toombs
A side-entrance pushed open, and Molly Toombs and René Jacobs exited St. Luke's Hospital together. Molly had stepped out first, and only barely bothered to keep the door pushed wide enough open for the doctor behind her to pass through comfortably as well. They left at about 2:00am, when the swing shift ended and gave over to the next. The good doctor had stayed late, breaking hearts by keeping himself an extra two hours to handle one particularly tough patient that had come through the doors.
Molly wasn't talkative, she just walked with her hands in the pockets of the black peacoat she wore, chin and jaw nestled into a cream-colored infinity scarf for warmth. The temperatures were in the mid-thirties at this point, and while it could easily be much colder it was still chill. Her brow was furrowed into a thoughtless frown, as she was no doubt remembering and dwelling on the pair of nurses she'd spied watching openly, curiously, when Jacobs had called after her to ask if she was leaving and then caught up to her to walk with.
She swore he was doing it on purpose. He had to be.
As they walked, Molly's sneakers quiet by default on the pavement that cut across the parking lot, the nurse cast her eyes aimlessly through cars and up roads. Looking anywhere but sullenly straight ahead, or up at the doctor that walked alongside her. Looking all around was habit, anyways. She was a woman who walked home alone most nights, after all.
René Jacobs
[dex + stealth: istván you are not sneaky what are you doing. +1 because celerity.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
René Jacobs
[perc + alert: notice something rené. -1 diff because auspex.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3: Don't make yourself look hapless!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
René Jacobs
Nurses are strange creatures and of course Jacobs hasn't made anything of it. It's almost as if he has no cognizance of what's going on around him ever.
Ever since the night he told Molly to meet him at Next Door Lounge the other nurses haven't been behaving any more hostile towards her than they normally do. This isn't middle school. They're professionals. The more mature among them have rationalized that he's just looking out for her. Molly is brash and loud and has being an asshole to him ever since he showed up. Maybe she reminds him of his daughter or he's trying to build a rapport with her since she's the only one here who's giving him any resistance.
The ones who don't have hangups or moral scruples have started flirting with him even harder than they were before. He didn't seem to notice that Stephanie kept touching his arm and laughing whenever he said anything even remotely amusing tonight. But Stephanie also said something that made him laugh at one point.
So Molly isn't the only person the other nurses are jealous of. It's just that the pendulum swings awful fast when he's walking her out to the parking lot or giving her rides home because of the creep who's been following people around the parking lot lately. And as willing as she is to keep to her silence he is just as willing to keep to his. He doesn't take pains to keep pace with her either. She knows where he parks.
René Jacobs
Halfway down the sidewalk a shadow joins the other shadows and loses the shape of a man. Molly notices the shadow but cannot make out any details.
René though sighs. Before she can say anything:
"That's my..." And if she's not looking at him she won't make anything of his tone. "... associate. Over there. Keep walking."
Vex
[This is none of y'alls business.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Molly Toombs
There are a handful of things that Molly is good at, and another and equal hand of things at which she is not. For instance, while she is good at practicing the medicine that she's learned, she is terrible at parallel parking. She hasn't driven a car in a few years, as a matter of fact. Some other things she's terrible at include (but are not necessarily limited to): building birdhouses, unclogging toilets, photography, and picking locks.
In return, though, there were two things that she was specifically good at that were a blessing to help her navigate and survive this world of shadows and supernatural mists that she descended further into as the weeks rolled on. She was very good at picking up on and retaining knowledge (smart girl), and very little passed by without her noticing.
Up ahead, Molly noticed as a man's shadow blended in with others up ahead, but no man came around the corner on the sidewalk to follow up. Whoever it was she'd seen, he was skulking about now. Before Molly had much of a chance to narrow her eyes suspiciously or open her mouth to mention what she'd noticed, the man that she walked with sighed and offered an explanation.
Molly's eyebrows raised, but she didn't look immediately scared or worried. Rather, she peered suspiciously up at the side of René's face. "What makes you so sure that's who it is?"
And then, to follow up (because of course she realized only after asking the question that he may have been able to see something from his taller vantage point that she hadn't seen), she asked: "What's he doing here?"
But she did keep walking-- the woman had no motivation not to.
Vex
[You don't see me.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Vex
[Not breaking into a car.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception + Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
René Jacobs
[ISTVAN WHY THE FUCK DON'T YOU HAVE ANY DOTS IN ALERTNESS -1 diff because auspex]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (7, 7, 8) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Vex
There is a boring, sedate car, what some afficionados might call a piece of shit, or in the French, merde, and nobody is lurking at THAT car. However there is a car next to it which is a sweet piece of mechanical ass it looks like it's come straight from some man's wet dream about cars as women as better than women as pretty much better than men pretty much better than anything this car is fucking gorgeous an F-type Jaguar Coupé and it is let me tell you a piece of wonder.
And next to that car, which belongs to one of the surgeons, there is a young man with dark hair, busily plying the trade of getting the fuck into a beautiful car like that and taking it away to a better world. István notices him. Molly notices him, too. Maybe just sees the flicker of a shadow, or hears an under-the-breath sort of air-only humming, because while the carjacker is trying to be quiet he's not that quiet. His actual appearance is hidden by the fact that he's kneeling between cars and keeping his head down.
Thanks, ugly boring dull car, for providing this cover.
René Jacobs
[jesus christ rené pay attention. the auspex/distraction modifiers cancel out.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
István
[istván sneak-up-on-you mode: ENGAGED. i'm gonna say he dropped a blood point into his dex pool because YOLO.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Vex
[?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
René Jacobs
What makes him so sure that shadow over there is his associate, and what's he doing here.
Neither of those questions are particularly easy to answer but Molly is looking right at the taller physician. It's dark and his features are dark and he wears a beard that offers up camouflage for all but the most obvious of expressions and everywhere but his eyes. Eyes have given away better liars than René before. He's a passable liar but he is not an actor.
The way he looks at the shadow is a deeper stronger more permanent version of the way the women in the emergency department look at him.
When he answers her his tone is as dark as the rest of him.
"What do you think he's doing?"
Since she knows so much about vampires.
The shadow decides it does not want to hide behind a dead streetlamp anymore. It makes an amateur attempt at sneaking from the streetlamp to the shadows cast by the empty parking lot attendant booth. Its shoes make no sound but creatures with a fine-honed sense of self-preservation can tell when they're being hunted. He's not as sneaky as Lux thinks he is.
Molly Toombs
Astute a creature as she was, the way that René was looking forward, to where they'd both seen someone lurking and waiting, did not go unnoticed by Molly. She didn't scowl at him in disgust, though, or call him out on it. Rather, the cast to the frown that she seemed to always wear in one fashion or another around the doctor shifted, looking thoughtful and maybe even a touch sympathetic.
She was remembering a conversation in the passenger seat of a car, with a man who was significantly older than he appeared to be, but still boasted a pulse.
They call this state ghouldom. When a living human drinks enough of a vampires blood to halt the aging processes, to give them powers and a few other things besides.... Problem is, it affects your mind too. Especially if...say, you drink to much of one vampires blood. It makes you want them, makes you trust them...makes you love them.
Her attention was snapped away when the doctor glanced down and asked her what she thought he was doing. She didn't want to be caught staring up at him, anyways, so she resumed her cautious glance about. This time it yielded another skulker about, and this caused her to slow her steady pace down some.
A man, she presumed, or perhaps a woman-- leaned down, cloaked in the shadows of dark between the rows of parked cars. It was fiddling with the door handle and lock. Soon after, she noticed the figure of Dr. Jacobs's 'associate' slipping from one spot to the next. She saw where he was headed, and frowned and slowed further-- distracted, watching, and worried about not being able to see what was going to happen next. It was important to know if she should worry about running or not.
Vex
The movement of shadows suggestion of a reflection (isn't that re-assuring?) ceases. The breathy thumming, that ceases too. Between the cars, the shadowy shape of shadows who is naught but a shape a carjacker bad news but oh what kind of bad news isn't that the question pivots on the heels of his falling-apart sneakers and splays a hand on the cold cold ground and his head comes up, his eyes narrow.
He ducks beneath the car. The ugly piece of shit car; pops up on the other side of it, putting space between himself and the other Thing That Sneaks, although this leaves him closer or with easier access to a pair of approaching St. Luke's employees, and look how spider-crawl slow hand-over-hand he creeps up over the glass and peers toward whatever-the-hell is coming his way.
And look, René. This guy attacked you from behind, but you remember, maybe. You got away because you fought (LOL, no, that's not how it works; but you did fight, good job), and there is definitely something familiar about that pointed Latinate face, something familiar about the jittery wiry energy leashed just barely to muscles and see look he is twitching a little if you (Molly, you are observant) are observing, fine tremors here and there and here and there and
glare. Glare at István. Glare, glare, glare.
René Jacobs
[ah, what the hell. perc + med for dr. jacobs]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Medicine 3: Why not?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Vex
René and Molly are both professionals, after all. And given this moment of leisure (heightened paranoia, sharpness, care), when Vex [let's call a rose a rose] slips underneath that piece of boring shit car and presents a profile while glaring at that Something Else, they can tell that those shiver-shakes aren't just to do with addiction (aren't just, aren't just), that there's something wrong with the man (who is not a man), that he unconsciously hunches over a little in a way that'd indicate something wrong with his abdomen, that the something wrong might be (might be) Mental, is indicative at least of painpainpain.
René Jacobs
Dr. Jacobs is unlike the creature who is responsible for enthralling him in more ways than can fit into a paragraph what with Molly knowing absolutely nothing about the creature beyond the fact that he has managed to get by without ever having to truly become one with the night. That when his reflection or his scuffing soles or just the paranoia present in the carjacker catching his attention he doesn't think the jig is up. That he's blown whatever chance he had.
Neither of them can tell what the shadow is thinking even when he is no longer truly a shadow. Or if Jacobs can he keeps it to himself.
One of the ways that ghouls are unlike vampires is in their vital signs. Their cardiopulmonary systems continuing to function. Their hypothalamuses and their pituitary and adrenal glands continuing to function.
The creature between the cars must have been the one that grabbed Jacobs last weekend. It doesn't matter if he's been part of all this for a month or a century it seems. Molly can hear him draw a deep slow breath like to calm himself and can feel the slowing and altering of his course. It's not terribly comforting that the creature is outside his car. Even if he's trying to bust into the one next to it and not his.
Molly recognizes his car though.
"Come on," he says.
Glaring as he is there is no point in the creature hiding from Vex anymore. Jacobs' domitor steps out from behind the attendant's hut and reveals himself. He clicks his tongue in mocking sympathy when he gets a look at the state his new friend is in.
Molly Toombs
Where the two medical professionals wound up stopped, they were placed about seven feet away from one another or so. Molly had slowed down, and the doctor had continued forward to get nearer to his car for a few moments longer. For this, Jacobs was closer to this Vex figure, the man with Latin heritage that was curled and hunched around his stomach as though it was paining him-- who was shaking with some kind of addictive need.
Molly's eyes were stuck on this fellow at first, wide and cautious. He was up against the car that she and the doctor were supposed to be getting in. Blocking their safe, sheltered, easy escape. René told her to 'come on', but Molly saw how he was staring at the junkie(?)and found herself worried. Then the skulking figure, a man clucking his tongue scoldingly, sympathetically, as though he were in perfect control of the situation had stepped forward.
The swing-shift nurse was clever and smart, she could conclude that the man against the car was worth worrying about in ways beyond despiration and a stolen steak knife. The doctor told her to 'Come on', but Molly was already starting to walk backwards, back along the sidewalk toward the hospital once more. She didn't move fast, not wanting sharp movements to draw sudden attention to herself, and certainly wasn't giving this trembling, shaking, pain-addled man her back.
Vex
[Dominate 1, which isn't going to work anyway but Vex is still trying it.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
István
[perc + aware: that's cute]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4) ( fail )
Vex
[Oh, a strength roll for flavor.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Vex
It'd be a lie to assume that Vex doesn't know there are Others Around because he does because they weren't trying to be quiet they usually don't try to be quiet they come in groups and that's why it's easy to ignore the groups or easy to find the solitaries and to and to and to well that's not important is it. Is it? It is not. Vex runs the tip of his tongue over his teeth and jerks a quick look over toward René and Molly; his eyes are wide, his eyeballs limned in gunk that he should blink away, could blink away, doesn't blink away, it'd be a pathetic look if it weren't so - there's something wrong. See?
The eyes are the only steady thing about Vex, who goes back to glaring, glaring, glaring at René's associate, manipulates his natural ability to intimidate, shakes as he does so, shakes harder, fingers biting into the piece of shit car, beginning to dent, and he says in a scratchy voice, "Fuck off. Run."
And though there's Power in the voice, it would never've touched the Tremere anyway.
René Jacobs
Jacobs grabs Molly by the arm and makes a noise sharp between his teeth to keep her from heading back towards the hospital. They're leaving. High Street with its patrolling cops and its out-after-last-call bar-goers and its bright lights and no place for someone to drag them or corner them or sneak up on them is right there. If they go back inside and something goes wrong then it won't take a desperate sick-looking creature long to track them down.
That could be his thinking. Or he could just be thinking that he wants to get as far away from the person who nearly killed him as he possibly can.
He can't tell what exactly just happened but maybe later he'll sort it. When he's not trying to steer Molly towards escape rather than potential entrapment he'll make something of the fact that the monster who grabbed him tried to intimidate his domitor.
For the time that she lays eyes on him Molly can form and keep an impression: tall, well-dressed, well-groomed, young at the time of his death. 30, maybe 35. He's about the same height and build as Jacobs but his hair is dark blond. Hard to tell his eye color from this distance in this light. His skin might have had a peasant's tan in life but it's pale and bloodless now.
When he laughs at the suffering creature it's a hollow heartless sound but his accent makes it ring. Bells don't have hearts. Bells are hollow. Bells are pleasing to the ear. His laugh is not a bell but it isn't an awful sound either. It's just not strictly human.
"That was good," he says. His accent is more eastern than Jacobs' is. German or Polish or Hungarian. Depends on how good Molly is at identifying European dialects. People think Jacobs is French, for fuck's sake. He's not French. He's Belgian. "Want to try again, or would you rather stop with this foolishness?"
Vex
[Okay, I will try again. Presence 2.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 1, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Molly Toombs
The plan had been to vanish into a building that was full of lights and people and monitors and cameras-- where she knew there were often police officers able to be found throughout the building at any given point. She would have hoped that the shelter of a crowd and ever-seeing eyes would have kept them safe. But Dr. Jacobs grabbed on to her arm and made a sharp sound at her.
Molly cut her eyes up to the man and gave him a look as sharp as the noise he'd made at her. But her eyes are wide and worried, and she doesn't pull at his grasp or open her mouth to yell at him.
He wanted to take to the streets? That was fine by her.
The two that by now Molly presumed (accurately) to be among the Undead were having a back-and-forth at each other verbally, growling and challenging and scoffing-laughing-mocking. Molly glanced to them cautiously, but did not watch as an enthralled person might. She wasn't going to stick around to see how this turned out. She could figure that out later.
For now, she started a brisk walk toward the outer edge of the parking lot, toward the street, and if Rene wasn't in the same set of mind to move quickly then she would be pulling on his arm, either to free herself from his grasp or drag him along with.
Vex
Vex tightens his jaw. There's a popping sound, like bone: like a dislocation just occurred. He wheels back from the car, and this.
This is terrifying. This is striking, what Vex does, and it drags at István, although it does not quite go deep enough, go far enough, to send him running, fleeing, clawing through walls and cars and streetlamps and flesh and whatever's in the way to get away. This is terrifying, this:
This is Vex skimming his lips back from his teeth; this is War, in his eyes, this is a Nightmare, in his eyes, which gleam with eldritch fury, that hisssssing sound.
Housecats hissing can make a grown man step back and decide not to get involved.
Even a junkie-shaking-something's-wrong-something's-wrong guy like Vex, Presence licking through his shape, transforming it: is enough to make an Elder pause.
"GO AWAY GO AWAY GO AWAY."
René Jacobs
[perc + aware]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
István
[seriously istván why the fuck don't you have any alertness]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 4) ( fail )
Vex
If István had any doubt that this was him, this was the guy, this one right here, his doubt would leech away now (get it?). His preternatural senses go hunch, hunch, hunch, hunch, hunch, hunch, hunch, oh yeah, this guy is something supernatural, this guy is Other, something Unusual's going on with him. That, coupled with the sudden strike of terror -- well. Brujah? Ventrue? Toreador? Other?
István, he is suddenly quite sure that this one isn't alone. That he's being snuck up on. Was that a footstep over there? If he looks, it's only René and Molly, but he could've sworn: yeah, something coming from that direction. Or no?
René Jacobs
Intact sense of self-preservation and a drive to protect the nurse who hates his guts or not: René does not want to leave the blond creature.
It's nothing so overt as his heels grinding into the sidewalk. He needs to get away from the leech that nearly killed him. It's a muscle memory of fear as much as anything else. He can think back over the course of his life and recall many instances where he ought to have died. The most recent instance would have been in a fucking parking garage. Nobody deserves to die in a parking garage.
And yet Molly saw something in his eyes that nobody else has seen from him before. In the glare of the fluorescent lights he's intense, sure, but that's the passion he has for the work that they do. The intelligence he has and the spine and the fire that drives men like him through life. Everyone has seen that. That's why so many of the women who work in their department have developed schoolgirl crushes on him.
To say he would be devastated if anything happened to the creature they're leaving behind is an understatement.
After wheeling Molly around he does hesitate. But it's a fleeting hesitation. His hand doesn't leave Molly's arm. He glances back only once and then he's hustling down the sidewalk at a pace to match her quick clip.
István
Haughtiness will get a man killed. Even if he's already dead. István quite likes continuing to have his cognizance. To sharpen it over the decade. It isn't quite the same as continuing to live but that's a semantic argument for another time.
When the creature in front of him makes that unnatural noise with his jaw and hisses at him István does still. He looks at him and he has to stop and consider just how badly he wants to approach the other Cainite in the state he's in. A quest for vengeance is all well and good but this one looks to be in a worse way than René had expressed to him.
But René for having sharpened senses and increased strength is still very much human. Overtaking him is hardly a herculean effort.
Whether this is the creature isn't a question. It's whether he's alone and whether István wants to take his eyes off of him to check and make sure those footsteps aren't anything to fret over.
"I will do no such thing," he says. His tone distracted. Tensed in preparation for an attack from Over There. "You are unwell, yeah? I think I can help you in this."
No sir he does not wish to take his eyes off of Vex.
He glances anyway.
Molly Toombs
René's holding on to her forearm while they hurry away. The brisk walk soon turns to an outright jog that has Molly's plump self half-bouncing her way toward the cement stairs that run up an embankment, three small flights of them, up the side of the hill to meet the street above. She didn't like his just hanging on to her arm, so she twisted it and instead grabbed on to his hand. It was an easier, more even way to pull and keep track of one another. More natural, really, for the human to want to do.
She felt René dragging, though. The nearer they got to the stairs, the less focused on moving forward he seemed to be. She noticed his distraction, that his eyes refused to loose track of the situation happening behind them. So as they came upon the stairs, with their thin rust-crusted iron railings that climbed up the steep hill to the street, Molly spoke quiet and urgently to him, half-hissing her impatience.
"Jacobs, come on. They're crazy fast." She's been told, at least. "If that sick one gets it in his head to come get his fix, we're fucked."
István
[manip + subt: you can totally trust me dude. -2 dice because you're a scary fuck.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
René Jacobs
[perc + alert for the road]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
Vex
This is not the moment when Vex flings himself with a snarl over the car and scraping up some preternatural speed to go with how completely terrifying he is (you are a vampire [vampires are predators] predators are not the kill they are the moment before the kill they are anything and everything that could happen which is bad they are not death and see all that is a halo around him) and rip out István's throat: or try. Appearances are deceiving, on both ends, hm? István looks over and after his ghoul and the nurse. He can see Molly break into a jog; he can see the stairs. He sees nothing else lurking, no, not really, although perhaps it's just really well-hidden now, perhaps it's stalking him now, huh?
By the car, Vex is still. He gets no less scary, but he gets no more scary, either, teeth clicking together, a spark of -- uncertainty, maybe? -- appearing in his eyes.
"You... you don't," rational, that, sure, totally rational. "You don't know what the..." Twitch. "You don't know what you're talking about."
But maybe Vex hopes that István does. There he is: clenching and unclenching his fists. Not yelling.
Vex
Molly and René at the stairs. They can hear muted conversation behind them, across the sprawl of parking lot; the echoes of Vex yelling, yelling, yelling has been swallowed up by asphalt and by winter. They don't hear any screams. They don't hear the sound of glass shattering. They don't hear a fight.
They do notice somebody that they are perhaps familiar with in passing, or - and why not - perhaps they've had a couple full conversations with her. Dr. Rameena Guirguis, one of St. Luke's resident general surgeons, trauma thank you, someone in her thirties, late thirties perhaps, brown skin with a hawk's nose and arching eyebrows, a demure-mouthed cheschire smile whenever she smiles which is never when she's actually on the clock, though she's all right otherwise, though she really really likes her car. One kid, an eleven year old boy. Divorced for ages, but her ex died recently and gossip has it she's getting the kid again soon.
She has a cellphone to her ear but the air of someone who's waiting for somebody to pick up, not somebody who's actually talking to anybody yet. 2 am isn't the best time to make a call, but it was pre-arranged, right? She looks tired because that's what happens after a long shift but she smiles faintly at Molly and René, nodding, as she goes down the stairs, clearly intent on heading to her car and going home.
You know, the car that's currently in the middle of two vampires who may be about to fight.
René Jacobs
He doesn't want to leave.
Even though the ghoul--let's call a spade a fucking spade here--lets Molly jerk her arm out of his grasp to replace it with her hand and he does hold onto her hand like he isn't so far gone he can't remember simple things like this once they get to the stairs the fact that they're about to disappear from sight comes upon him.
That's what he was trying to have happen in the first place. They need to get the hell out of here. They're not safe here. He trusts István with his back but now he stops at the bottom step to look back again. When he opens his mouth it's to protest but he's smarter than that. Whatever he could possibly say to Molly would only further convince her that he's too entangled in this shit to make her life anything more than a nightmare.
So he doesn't say anything. He looks stricken for a moment and he doesn't move right away but he doesn't try to reason with her.
And then Dr. Guirguis comes down the stairs.
Putain de merde, Jacobs does not nor have to say. Molly can feel it in the way his hand jerks and immediately yanks out of hers.
"Doctor Guirguis!" he says but not in a panic. His voice is light. This is one of the few times Molly has probably ever seen him smile. He doesn't do anything as blatantly suspicious as block the way down. That's an amateur stalling tactic. "Hi, hello, I have a question for you, do you have a moment? A small moment. I know it's late."
René Jacobs
[cha + subt i can be charming. right? right?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
István
[OH DON'T I? perc + subt -2 dice because you are still scary]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Vex
Vex: certainly hopes that István does. Because - and perhaps István begins to get an inkling of this - Vex doesn't seem to really know what is 'wrong' with him. That twitchy air of wrongness of something that jitter-bug ball of energy that way he sort-of hunches (and oh, now István's auspex picks up on: a wound, an unhealed wound, a never-healed wound, that's what he sort of hides on his abdomen), there's a certain - what the hell about it. Like maybe he doesn't know either. Tension is not ebbing, paranoia is not leaving, but he wants to believe.
István
And Vex for all his raging and all his fear and the paranoia strung through him like too many uppers or a psychotic break or some spell someone cast on him that hasn't worn off yet is starting to hope that he knows what the hell he's talking about even as he accuses him of not.
The elder vampire is cautious. Not entirely quailed yet but that's because he unlike any hapless helpless mortals who could blunder on through here has an idea of why he's cautious of this creature. It's the blood and its magic. The paranoia come with age.
"You bet this?" he asks. Poor English. He seems as though he's being sincere though. Lifting his eyebrows as if he can't believe an offer of relief has come along and Vex is willing to throw it away. "You are in pain, stranger, anyone can see so. Look where we are."
A hospital parking lot. Yes. Good. István actually gestures to the landscape around them to illustrate whatever point he's trying to make.
"In life I was a doctor, eh? I did keep on studying. Nothing to do but study. This is luck for you maybe. You don't wish to go on like this, do you? Suffering so?"
Vex
[Squint.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
István
[Squint.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Vex
[Stealthstealthignorethis.]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Molly Toombs
There's a suspended moment of tension, where Dr. Jacobs looks at Molly but doesn't quite have words to say to explain his hesitation. Like he may tell her to go on without him, but doesn't know how to justify that just yet. She's staring at him bewildered, looking increasingly like she's overwhelmed by his insistance on making stupid decisions (like hanging back around this atom bomb potential for violence and death, for vampires would be hungry after fighting one another, or use them like hostages, or, or, or).
Then the trauma surgeon Dr. Guirguis comes walking forward, and while Molly doesn't recognize that she's headed for a car between where the vampires were left Dr. Jacobs sure does. His hand yanks quickly from hers, and Molly blinks once, startled, then quickly tucks her hands into her coat pockets and turns to face the doctor as well.
The nurse hung back, nervous, anxious-looking, while René laid on the charms and purred through that accent so thick to gain Dr. Guiruis's attention and favor. Molly watched them both for a couple of seconds, looking somewhere between impressed and bothered with René (but this wasn't abnormal, really).
Her attention would soon shift back behind her, though, back to the parking lot.
Paranoid. Cautious.
Prey.
Vex
There is a moment when whatever István says looks like it is possible to draw more fury out've the creature. There's a sharpening, a heightened (paranoia) attention to the glare. And then, and then, and then Vex curls one hand around his gut, pressing in, and perhaps that's vitae seeping through his shirt, and his frown is almost lucid.
"In life?"
He shakes his head suddenly, like a flea just bit his ear. His gaze darkens; "I wish to go on you just, man, you fuckin, you just gotta," another twitch, "Do you know them?" He steps closer to René's car, staring at István with fixed attention. "Do you know the w-wall do you know Them, man? Them?"
T-t-wi
itc-ch-twitch. "You aren't a fucking doctor!"
Vex
Doctor Guirguis!
Rameena Guirguis's attention returns to René and she is about to hold up a brisk and commanding shut up not now I'm listening to a phone ring finger. His hi, hello is charming enough that there is less briskness than there might otherwise be, and she slows, and her gaze doesn't turn cold and aloof, and she doesn't continue walking to her car.
Instead; she holds up the shut up not now finger, and she turns so that she is angled more toward René Jacobs and Molly Toombs, less toward the parking lot and what she might see if she were to look ahead and past a few other parked cars toward her own. The little island of light there-at. Whatever she hears on the other side of that cellphone causes the corners of her mouth to pull down, and she pockets it with a sigh, and then looks expectantly at the pair. Yes, the pair.
"Evening, you two. What can I do for you, Dr. Jacobs?" Her voice is full; throaty. The kind of voice to soothe a patient.
[Does Guirguis notice Molly's attention is divided? We'll do a Percept + Alert here.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
[Wits 4 + Alertness 3: Are you looking too much into what I'm doing, Doc? (Cool-Headed Spec.)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Vex
This is a moment for cool heads, isn't it. Molly; she knows the moment that her attention-elsewhere draws the doctor's attention. She knows, too, because when she looks back across the parking lot (there's a bit of distance, a light-pole or two and maybe a big truck between the St. Luke's employees and the vampires now, but nothing is hidden), that whatever's going on there hasn't boiled over quite yet. She can perhaps read the tension still in the dark-haired vampire who is grabbing his gut now, hunching (what's happening?), though the blonde seems very still, and she knows because it's one of those moments, a moment of clear-sightedness, of cunning, that whatever balance is at work over there: the doctor's presence will upset it; the doctor will, arrogant as any surgeon, sail into that situation and make it worse as soon as she sees it, because she will be suspicious of people so near - well. Her car, but maybe Molly still doesn't know that. She knows, perhaps, or suspects that René will get involved, or who knows what, and it'll be a mess, a total mess.
She knows this all so clearly she probably has a good feeling that she can deflect it from happening, too. Because she does have an opportunity.
Molly Toombs
[Manipulation 2 + Subterfuge 2: Play off paranoia as hiding sekrit hand holdings. WP!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
István
[WP! diff 4 because Elemental Mastery 1.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Molly Toombs
There's a moment while Molly's looking back out over the parking lot where she sees the figures that they were fleeing, and has some strange, clear understanding of what she was seeing. How the power was swinging in the stand-off, how much was left to unravel still in that battle that had yet to come.
Then, soon as it happened, Molly felt suspicious eyes fall upon her. The surgeon had asked René what he had to say, but her attention soon slipped to the nurse who stood behind him with her hands in her coat pockets and her eyes intentionally back, away, away from the handsome doctor who stood between the two of them.
Somehow, apparently because she felt compelled to perform well under pressure, the nurse was able to blush on demand. It was probably thanks to her complexion-- a natural redhead, it didn't take much for her face and ears to flush bright anyways. She twisted her posture uncomfortably, made herself look embarrassed and on the spot. Caught. Discovered, red-handed.
Holding hands with the doctor who walked her to his car-- no, walking her home now. Molly said nothing, but skimmed her eyes briefly to the pair of doctors before looking away again.
Nothing to see over there, just a nurse and a doctor and nothing else going on worth looking into.
István
[DROPPIN WP TO IGNORE THE -2 THAT'S ALREADY THERE
1a: ignore me preparing you for your doom! dex + stealth -2 because split, +1 diff because he doesn't have stealth wtf istván.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN7 (1, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Vex
[Vex: ?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )
René Jacobs
Think fast, Jacobs. Your associate is about to do something terrible.
When the other doctor holds up that quieting finger Jacobs continues riding the wave of pretend-charm to affect an air of contrition. Oh. Right. Phone. Sorry. And he waits with his hands in his pockets and his brow furrowed as if he's caught in thought. Mind whirring even though he just got off a shift that ran two hours over because he decided to stay to help with that nasty car crash that came in at 11:52.
Lightbulb. Molly might be able to see a moment of inspiration as she glances over the bearded man's face. Or else he's just perking up at having been drawn out of his own thoughts by Guirguis's putting away the phone and asking what's going on.
"That, ah, that open femur fracture I sent up this afternoon," he says. Like that's going to jog her memory. They can't give names out here anyway and names don't mean shit in emergency medicine half the time anyway. It's the viscera that sticks. "Did the social worker ever make it in to talk to him, after? I didn't see a, ah..."
Shit, what's the word. This wasn't Molly's patient. His thick accent is paying off now. It's not such a stretch to think he really can't remember the English if Guirguis doesn't know how long he's been in America.
"... in the computer, you know, with the flag next to it...?"
He looks back at Molly. It's not that fucking hard to remember the word for Consult Note but maybe he's just tired. Or maybe he's really just looking back across the lot out of his periphery to see if anybody's getting stabbed.
Vex
[Does Dr. Guirguis pick up on Molly's BSery?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
István
[1b: manip + subt! -3 dice wee.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
"Consult Note," Molly adds quietly, patiently. Still playing at pretend and glancing back to the surgeon and smiling politely.
Molly Toombs
[Manip 2 + Sub 2]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Vex
[?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
René Jacobs
"CONSULT NOTE." Thank you! He turns back to Guirguis and shakes his head. How silly of him. "Fuck me, it's a long day. I didn't see the consult note, so I was wondering if Jill didn't see him or if she just didn't type it in yet."
István
"Shhh..."
It ought to be a soothing sound. He tries to make it a soothing sound. Like instead of an inquisitor and his subject they're two creatures cut from the same rough cloth. Like he isn't taking his cues for how fast he ought to move to wrap this up from the rise and rise-again of the voice of the man Vex attacked last weekend.
As he comes forward he has his overcoat shucked back from his hips. Hands planted on them. Like if his chest is unprotected as he approaches then what harm can he possibly be. Drifting closer to assess him better. Offer comfort from proximity maybe. Definitely not to harm him. That's the first oath a doctor takes is not to harm people.
What his right hand does when it's fallen into the shadow of his jacket, Vex can't see. What it grips or what it readies. What the rest of him intends to do.
"My name is Doctor Stephen Andrássy, huh? I am a friend. You are hurt. My car, it is right here. This little gray one. Sit down, tell me what did happen. Who They are. Yeah? I will help you."
Vex
Dr. Guirguis is charmed by her new colleague. Finds him, in this moment, charming, yes? But Dr. Guirguis's eyes are sharp and when Molly's attention begins to stray, Guirguis's attention begins to follow that path. Molly sees it. Molly is quick. Deflects: look at that blush -- look how red she turns. Look at how awkward, how embarrassed, she gets. Guirguis doesn't finish following Molly's gaze to whatever it was the young nurse was glancing toward. This, again. There is no sympathetic look or headshake, but she doesn't exacerbate an awkward situation by referencing it. No, her attention returns more completely to René, who begins to lose Guirguis' interest as soon as he says open femur fracture. Why is this important at two am in the morning, when she's on her way to her car? Is it because he's from -- where was it, Chicago? Is this what passes for chitchat in Chicago?
"I don't think so, no, but I'm not sure. Listen, Dr. Jacobs," a pause, because she herself does not want to be rude. Briskness is just a habit.
"That's the kind of question I don't want to be stopped for after a long day of work, okay?" Speaking of okay, Guirguis offers a demure and cheschire smile to them both, as if distantly conscious that she might have sounded -- oh who knows. The point is: a brief smile, and she turns back to the parking lot.
And her car.
And the vampires, right? They're still there. Maybe Molly and René, given a moment to look, would see the blonde one slow-ly closing on the other one, briefly out-of-sight behind a car, and then --
But hey wait, Guirguis is pausing, with a frown. "Is everything all right?" Who knows why she's asking? Oh. Because of how embarrassed Molly looked. Maybe.
Molly Toombs
Molly glanced briefly toward René, watching that his face was, in that moment, aimed back toward her-- but really his eyes were flitting from her to the parking lot to absorb what was happening. She tried to gauge what was going on based on the expression he wore, but couldn't make too much out.
The surgeon had deflected Dr. Jacobs, charming though he may be, and started walking toward her car again. Molly had swallowed nervously, but before she had a chance to bluster or sweat about it Dr. Guirguis stopped, looked back to the pair, and asked if everything was okay or not.
Molly blinked like a deer caught in the headlights, then cleared her throat and moved one hand from its pocket so she could adjust the infinity scarf around her neck. The pale cream of the soft knitted fabric only called to notice the red of her face all the further.
"Oh, uh, yeah. Dr. Jacobs was just being a good samaritan and helping prevent a nurse from walking home alone at two in the morning."
Contrary to the fact that she's openly disliked the man since the first week he arrived.
Vex
As István approaches, Vex does not look away from the other vampire's face. He doesn't seem to find anything alarming or startling about István's hand and what it is doing inside of his jacket. There is a cluster of mortals over there by the stairs. There is a cat somewhere, under another car, perhaps the one between the jaguar and the grey, hunched and completely silent, a raggedy scrap of nothing. None of these things are remotely interesting to Vex. Vex just gazes at István and his jaw pops again.
Makes that bone-pop sound. He turns so that his back is closer to the car, this little one, sit down, tell this Stephen doctor guy all about it, isn't that tempting. Vex looks off into a distance that does not compass this real world, as István shushes, as István closes the distance between them, and he wets his lips and says,
"There was fire and darkness. And the Lamb said. The Lamb said, S-stephen. The Lamb said, and now I-I," his face twists, anguished. He stops, and of course he doesn't pant. But tension takes him completely, puppets him into rigidity and he presses his fist into his stomach. Wariness creeps back into his eyes, or just fury, fury, fury, when he looks again at István, István who is right there.
"Couldn't breathe."
René Jacobs
Is everything alright?
"Eh?"
Like he has no idea what she's talking about. Molly fields that one. But Molly's about as smooth as a woodland creature encountering traffic for the first time.
Good enough spot for a bit of redirection. He really does look very sorry to still be talking or to have held her up like this for this long or:
"I'm sorry, I thought you were on-call or I would not, before, with the shop talk. You're okay? To walk to your car? Because we can walk back with you." A quick glance to Molly. He at least doesn't appear to think anything weird or wrong was happening just before Guirguis showed up but why would he, smug bastard. "I don't like to walk to my car alone this time of night, but I am a big scary person, yeah?"
Oh yeah Jacobs you were real big and scary when the guy who's hanging around by your car jumped you in the parking garage last weekend. Maintain the poker face, Molly.
Molly Toombs
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3, spending WP!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 6, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
René Jacobs
[perc + alert, auspex eats the +1 diff]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 8, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Vex
René notices everything.
The everything that René notices: István, closing in on Vex, oh so close. The angle isn't conducive to seeing everything, not where René is standing with Molly and Guirguis, but he can see. He knows. He can see his regnant take something out of his jacket, see that Vex is talking, talking, hear it distantly tick-tacking on his senses.
Molly does not notice everything.
Molly does seem to notice that maybe the two vampires over there are going to have a nice and diplomatic talk. No yelling or anything. The cars, and the angles, make a clear vision difficult, and so does not attracting Guirguis's attention that-a-way.
István
Still with that air of sympathy. That air of giving a shit. That air of honestly intending to help him. Nodding and furrowing his brow. Fire and darkness that sounds terrible. Terrible for you poor little one.
And it would be terrible for anyone who had a sense of compassion for their fellow creature. Who had that sort of luxury to feel empathy and pain and a desire to help. Nobody has that luxury anymore and the ones who think they do are running up a mighty steep debt.
He closes in on the poor suffering creature. His face is a mask. A warm and you-can-trust me mask. He looks harmless in the way all well-groomed young-faced creatures look harmless. From a distance.
"Let me see, yeah? Take away your hands. I won't hurt you."
He's not going to have a chance to answer but it's a distraction thinking he will.
István
[charisma + leadership LMFAO HE DOESN'T HAVE THAT EITHER YOLO]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
István
[another one for shits and giggles]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
[And then Jess retracted her nice offer to let it be -1 instead of -2 and the botch went away; it was late, yo.]
[And then Jess retracted her nice offer to let it be -1 instead of -2 and the botch went away; it was late, yo.]
Vex
"Oh. Do you need a ride?" That to the nurse. Guirguis will blame that one on exhaustion. Her eyes are half-hooded now, her eyelids purpled with weariness and caffiene abuse. Those arching eyebrows have arched still more. Her motivation: why, who knows if one isn't looking?
Then René. Guirguis offers him another cheschire smile. This one is less cool than the other, and she inclines her head. Her throaty honey-soothe voice is a lot more cool than her smile when she says, and again, there seems to be something she's politely concealing, "It's fine, Dr. Jacobs. I carry a taser and I've had to use it before, so rest assured I'm a deft hand. I rather like the night."
A pause; a space for them to say more or maybe for Molly to accept her offer of a ride or who knows what. And then, clearly, the intention is to
go home. Go to her car. She's not looking in that direction yet.
René Jacobs
[perc + subterfuge: what are you politely concealing there dr. guirguis?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 4 )
Molly Toombs
The surgeon offered her a ride, and Molly blinked in surprise. Put on the spot, she defaulted to shaking her head and declining the offer reflexively. "Oh, no, thank you, I'm not a far walk away."
Besides, to play with the act that she sold, she wanted to sneak way with the other doctor, remember?
Molly could see the vampires still over there, it seemed they were just talking now, though. Still, she couldn't be sure it was safe to be over in that direction yet. She couldn't just let the surgeon get caught up in that mess, but she couldn't make herself too obviously be trying to hold the woman up. She looked tired. She would soon grow aggravated with the interruptions. She no doubt just very much wanted to go home.
She didn't want to get too much on the surgeon's bad side. Molly had her job and workplace persona to worry about. So she glanced anxiously to Dr. Jacobs, seeking help.
You're the smooth charming one, I'm just bookish.
Vex
Guirguis is in a hurry to get away from work, but she isn't necessarily in a hurry to go home to whatever it is she's going home to. Whatever's there is bad. There's a certain tautness, weariness, shadows around the eyes. She just wants to drive it out.
Her motivation for asking Molly if she wanted a ride -- well, she seems to perhaps think that Molly is in an uncomfortable situation and is being menaced/flustered by René.
Vex
Vex doesn't trust István. He doesn't. He doesn't trust the doctor coming near, but he is not paying attention, and his trigger-jerk temper isn't about to buck out of control. He eyes István without blinking, rooster-mad, and he swallows. He swallows and his adam's apple bobs and he takes a harsh breath but that's all. Vex does not take his hand away from the wound that will not heal, the wound he has been concealing, that has begun to seep through whatever the fuck he stuffs it with so it won't seep through before he goes out to haunt the hospital and attack prey (mad, mad, mad [frenzied]), and when he attacked René he probably got distracted and stopped Kissing the ghoul for a moment and that's why René didn't get completely drained, was able to fight, because look at Vex.
He is quite frightening. He is a vampire. He has so much energy. He left dents with his fingers on René's car (so maybe he is a Brujah - ?), and he does not remove his hand from the wound. He just looks furious. Like he's working something out.
René Jacobs
The lift of her chin and the flash of her throat catches Jacobs' attention. It's almost as if he's standing outside in the presence of an intelligent successful attractive maybe-available woman his own goddamn age and hey wouldn't you know it he has a pulse too.
But he's sharper than he looks. A lot sharper than the Bumbling Harmless Foreigner act he puts on when he's pretending to be charming. He isn't charming. He is in good spirits usually and he genuinely loves the work that he does but he's terrible at small talk and he's even more terrible at whatever the hell this is supposed to be.
Molly is acting like a schoolgirl who was interrupted in the act of attempting something inappropriate and Jacobs is completely fucking oblivious up until he catches something in Guirguis's gaze that makes it dawn on him.
Oh shit. It definitely looks like he's trying to get in the pants of a nurse who's almost half his age. He might as well keep acting like he's oblivious. He turns to Molly like why on earth would she rather walk when someone is offering her a ride.
"You're sure?"
István
[dex + melee: SURPRISE BITCH -2 dice fuck you Presence]
Dice: 6 d10 TN9 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
István
[damage]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
István
[lol i forgot to add successes from the attack derp]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
István
[SON OF A BITCH]
István
[dex + melee: jiggle the handle, buddy]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7) ( fail )
István
[REROLL THAT SHIT WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU]
Dice: 7 d10 TN9 (1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
István
[you're about as useful as a paper asshole, istván. damage.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
Vex
[Soak.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (4, 6) ( success x 1 )
István
[good job stealing all the successes rené you fucking cocksucker]
István
[preemptive DON'T LOOK AT ME stealth roll]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
René Jacobs
[perc + alert]
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 2, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 3 )
Molly Toombs
Jacobs looked surprised, asked if she was sure when she declined the car ride that the surgeon offered home. Molly looked at him as though a screw had come loose in his head. Gee, why could she possibly want to avoid walking back into the parking lot, where vampires lurked and could possibly be creating mayhem and danger?
She wanted to keep Dr. Guiruis from becoming entangled in that circumstance as well, but that desire only pushed so far. There was only so much she could do short of physically barring the doctor from continuing further, and as we've already established Molly wasn't quite willing to go that far. She didn't want to create too many waves-- she had a job to hold down, rent to pay and all of that.
"Yeah...," she said slowly, after a second, and adjusted the strap of the tote bag that she always carried about instead of a regular purse where it sat on her shoulder. "I'm pretty sure. I don't want to be a bother or anything, and the weather isn't all that bad. The walk isn't awful."
That parking lot might kill you, though.
Molly Toombs
[Perception + Alertness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Vex
How well the Tremere timed his attack. How strong he made himself, too: and how fortuitous that was. The whatever-it-is-he-is vexatious young man never got past that moment when he was working something out. Never got far past that moment, that is, because István: He strikes.
And it is difficult to strike a heart. Difficult to aim so precisely, so carefully. But István is a scientist, isn't he? Is calm, is calm, and if Vex is a storm waiting to happen, what is István? The center of it? The point? The point: He strikes his stake at Vex's heart and pierces flesh and bone and burrows into muscle but not enough to freeze Vex where he stands. He can feel the surprise and pain lick through the creature, the Fury preparing to return in mind. He can perhaps even see, or will be able to examine later, the look in Vex's eyes, but István is also quick:
Quick enough to, before Vex gets a chance to do anything, to reply, to make a minute adjustment, to scrape that stick against Vex's heart, and now - now Vex is frozen, unmoving, it cannot even be said 'like the dead,' because even the dead are not so rigid.
And István, he does this quietly. Very, very quietly. He can even lower Vex down underneath the car without any of those mortals seeing a damned thing.
Vex
There is a very small sound. Who knows what it is? Nobody by the stairs, although it does come generally from the direction of the two vampires.
But if anybody at the stairs looks, perhaps they won't see the two men (vampires) standing any longer. In fact, they very likely won't, not from the stairs.
"I understand," Guirguis says to Molly, with another faint and cheschire smile. She reaches into her pocket and takes out her phone again, checking for a text that hasn't come. They'd've heard it, sharp a pair as they are. She seems to be checking more out of anxiety about a return text or a call than because she wants an excuse to get away from René and Molly. Guirguis doesn't need an excuse, after all. "Like I said, I rather like the night."
"...And I'm..." A brief frown, looking at her phone. She swallows a sigh. "But I'm going to head out now." A brief grin; like, come on, seriously, you gonna stop me again? "Be careful." She taps the phone to her forehead, and then turns to go to her car.
Again.
René Jacobs
Brief grin back. No, ma'am, he is not going to stop you again.
"Goodnight!" he calls after her. No point trying to smooth out the awkwardness now. Just ride it all the way to the end.
As soon as Guirguis has walked far enough away to give the two of them her back Jacobs' eyes go wide and he holds his hands out to Molly like to ask What the fuck was that?! without opening his mouth. Lets go the breath it seems he had been holding ever since he started pretending to be capable of normal human interaction before he plunges his hand into the pocket of his overcoat and rummages for his cigarettes.
He can't see either vampire anymore.
Worry comes across his features but he doesn't move.
Molly Toombs
As soon as the surgeon turns her back, Dr. Jacobs gesticulates his exasperation toward the swing-shift nurse that he was supposed to simply be driving home because they had a shaky understanding and unspoken mutual agreement-- he would be a good person and help look out for her while a vampire stalked these grounds attacking and wildly draining victims, and she would relax some and stop being so aggressively difficult to be around for him, and also leave the fact that he was Less Than Normal alone (as far as sharing that information goes, at least).
This didn't mean that they got along any better, though.
The gesture was returned almost in mirror. His hands went out toward her, open, and hers went up toward the sky instead, as though asking some greater being what she did to deserve being saddled with him as a partner in lie-weaving and distraction-generating. They were both awful at this, and it made it easy to blame the other.
Molly started taking steps toward the stairs, and made it halfway up the first of three steep concrete flights before she noticed that René, her unfortunate companion, wasn't following. Instead he was fumbling for a cigarette and frowning in worry and staying put. It looked as though Molly were ready to start yelling at him, but instead she just hissed quietly: "Are you running to safety or what? Jesus, what happened to 'come on'?"
Vex
Rameena Guirguis doesn't look over her shoulder to see what happens in her absence. She is far, far too polite. Does one of her co-workers hiss at the other? Rameena Guirguis tries calling whatever number she was calling just a short while ago again, phone to her ear as she cuts past a truck, going the long-way around so that she can reach her car.
Her car which is unlocked. Ah well. Maybe she forgot.
The driver's side of the jag is the side that's nearest René's car.
René Jacobs
Molly is right. If they hang around then Guirguis might notice them and it's already a good thing she doesn't know which car is his or that they could have very easily gotten into it and Molly could have been dropped off and home already. Even that's not the greatest of their concerns. She was a blip they had to stall as long as possible because if she had kept on going she might have been the latest victim of a frenzied vampire.
Too many other cars are in the way and too many lamp posts and too much darkness and shadow for them to really see what's going on. For all they know the skittish black-haired creature overtook the blond one and is running through the shadows right now in preparation to throw himself at them.
If the noise he makes in response to Molly's inquiry was the start to an English word it isn't one he finishes and if it's in another language it isn't one she speaks. One syllable caught in his throat and then he's snapping himself back out of it.
The ghoul turns away from the parking lot.
"Okay," he says voice pitched low so as not to carry as he hurries up the steps behind her, "go!"
Molly Toombs
Relief washes over Molly's freckled face, and it's probably the least negative expression that René has seen upon her face to date. She was holding on to the iron railings when she was turned about to look down at him, and let go with her right hand but kept hold with her left when Dr. Jacobs started after her. She hesitated, just long enough to look back out into the parking lot, toward the Jaguar coupe and the modest little sedan that René drove, hoping to catch some glimpse of activity, to see what was going on with the trembling addict and her companion's 'associate'.
Whatever she did or didn't see, René was coming up fast and urging her to go, so Molly turned about and started a quick-paced climb up the stairs toward the streets.
István
By the time the trauma surgeon has made her way over to her gorgeous wet dream of a car the blond man is coming up from a crouch on his own side of the piece of shit Volkswagen that has been parked in the lot all day. Like he'd been coming out of the hospital at the end of his own day and fumbled his keys to the pavement.
She hadn't heard them drop but she's off in her own world by now. Distracted and wanting more distraction.
As he gets back to his feet the blond man doesn't pay any attention to her. The Volkswagen chirps its inane chirp that announces to everyone within earshot that the doors are now unlocked and he gets behind the wheel.
Two minutes later Jacobs' phone buzzes. He has a text message.
Vex
[Dex + Drive, I'm outta here says Dr. Guirguis. -1 diff because this car is a dream, baby.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Vex
You'd think somebody like Rameena would probably drive carefully. She does not. As soon as she has a moment of why is my car unlocked, as soon as she checks the rearview window, squinting toward the stairs and then looking at her own face, dissatisfied, tired, click-sound of disgust in the back of her throat, she puts the jag into gear and
oh, it purrs. Purrs, as it turns into lightning and turns so-so sharply streaks picking up speedspeedspeed taking a corner more speed speed speed
maybe a cop'll pull her over. Maybe not. The streets aren't all that full, and she wants to go.
Exit, one surgeon who gets to live another day.
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