Two: Blood

Blood
When God is gone and the Devil takes hold… Who will have mercy on your soul?…

Oh Death…

---

The door of the ground-floor apartment swings inwards, as Martin ushers you inside and out of the hallway.

"Make yourselves at home. Like I said… wasn’t expecting company."

The house is a hoarder’s paradise; stacks upon stacks of newspapers cover every inch of the floor. It battles for territory against the pizza boxes, the beer cans, and the general filth of the man. You may not see the roaches scurrying for cover, but you certainly feel them.

He sees your faces as you shuffle in. Sheepishly:

"As without, so within… Isn’t that what they say?"

Whether the man is talking about himself and the apartment, or the apartment and the city, he doesn’t say.

"The good stuffs through there!" he points to a closed door off to the side. "Vamps will be going to ground in a few hours…"

"Oh, come now. The pizza delivery boy. How coarse." comes a delicate yet mocking voice from behind the door.

"Yes, yes. We can hear you in there… skittering about. Aren’t you going to open the door?" the voice is like silk. Enticing… and yet there’s something like a threat behind it.

Martin only grunts, and shunts himself towards the door, as the others take up their positions inside his apartment.

"Can’t say that I recognize your voice…" the man calls to the figure outside as he approaches the front door.

"Well then aren’t you the lucky one?" the voice shoots back instantly.

Martin merely blows air out his nose at the retort, and opens the spy hole he has situated about half way down the door. Looking back at you all for a second, he turns and places his eye up to the lens.


"Aren’t you a handsome one?" the voice calls, already peering into the lens from the outside. Then her voice changes, and she’s more business like:

"The Lady will see you now. We think you’ll find the meeting to our mutual benefit." she says with a wave to Martin as he watches on.

"Come, come. Open up."

Martin looks to each of you once again, and nods finally to Galaine.

"Not your first rodeo." he grunts, with a wink. It’s a grisly sight, that wink; face and hair still slick with grime and blood and sweat.

"Can’t let you in, sweetheart. Sorry to disappoint." he calls out as he unlatches the door and swings it open, wheeling back slightly as he does so.

In the door frame is Marianne, as close to inside as she can be. She cranes her neck to look inside, before wrinkling her nose.

"I love what you’ve done with the place. Really quite charming." she says, not at all genuinely.

Out in the hallway, you see the large vampire than you had encountered earlier at the bar; blood still covering his hands, face and clothes.

"Your friend there… with the sword… has a very distinctive scent. Did you know?" she says, perhaps by way of explanation as to how they followed you.

Without a word, but with a bow to Marianne, the large vampire from earlier turns to leave.

---

A moment later, Marianne steps aside. She bows to a person as yet unseen. In a matter of seconds, a woman is filling the frame of the doorway - impossible tall, thin and angular. Undeniably beautiful, though in an odd, ancient way.

A creature from another time…

"How barbaric…" she starts, and the accent is hard to place. "… conducting business in a place like this." she says, throwing her hands up to denote the hallway.

"And yet…" she looks inside the house, perhaps deciding that it might be better to remain here.

She catches the tooth effortlessly, sparing not even a look at the thing as it sailed towards her. Once it’s in her palm, she brings it up for inspection:

"Oh, yes! We had been looking for that, hadn’t we? From that rabble at the bar! And look how small it is!"

She looks back to you, with those ageless eyes; eyes that have seen a hundred… a thousand men like Brydon, and had the better of them:

"Its agreed then. Something for me…" she remarks, pocketing the fang "… something for you."

She weaves her hand around, and then turns to leave. In her place, Marianne steps into the doorway.

"The Art Gallery." she remarks simply, betraying the lair of her vampiric kin in a few words.

She turns to leave herself, but comes back, with a finger raised. "The Caravaggios. Dreadful things. That’s where they keep their lair. Just pull the lever. You’ll know it when you see it.

A pleasure doing business with you, hunters. We’ll be in touch."

Night falls I'm cast beneath her spell… Daylight comes our heaven turns to hell… Am I left to burn and burn eternally?…

---

The day had been wet; the rain washing away the bloody aftermath of last night’s skirmishes in the streets. The city had been on edge all day. No one said it, but you could feel it. Nothing could be proved, and yet the atmosphere was heavy and foreboding - not unlike the clouds gathering above as the sky begins to darken.

You sit in the car; pulled up a little ways away from the Dark City Gallery. You watch as people scurry from their office jobs into buses, taxis and cars as the darkness moves in over the course of an hour. No one wants to to be on the streets tonight, it seems.

From your vantage point down the street, you see the changing of the guard just outside the main entrance to the Gallery; an older man with salt and pepper hair clocks off, only to be replaced by a huge skinhead man almost twice his height. You watch as the first guard makes his farewell; and then hurries straight to his own car, and peels off into the gathering night.

Xavier surreptitiously exits the van through the back doors. He gently forcing the things closed behind him with deliberate, though muted power.

Watching from inside the van, it’s clear to the others that this is a man familiar with his craft. Heavy plops of rain cover the man’s thread; and yet it’s unneeded. The gangly bulk of a man guarding the door scans this way and that, with an air of cockiness; his presence more of a spectacle than a necessary feature of security.

After all, who would dare attack this place of Romani power…

You watch, as the assassin creeps forward, before finally reaching the trio of large black vehicles belonging to the demon-mayor. Xavier slips underneath, his suit the only casualty of the deed, and gets to work on the vehicles.

He attaches a device to the underside of one, before crawling on his back to beneath the middle car, and finally the front-most car in the cavalcade. It’s the work of several moments, while the others watch with bated breath as the man starts to re-climb his way back the way he has come.

He crawls out from underneath the last car, and slips away from the scene, confident that the deed had been done!

---

You drum your fist against the black, metal door. You’re conscious of how heavy the rain is, as you wait for someone… anyone to answer. Dumpsters, trash cans, and bags of trash all patter in the downpour. Cardboard turns to mulch before your eyes, slowly giving way to the inevitable.

You wait, as Dark City tries to wash you out of its gutters. Another moment and you pound again.

"What? What?!" comes a pissed off voice from beyond. "What the fuck is it?" the voice says, pounding back in frustration at you!

"That depends!" comes a mocking voice from beyond the door. "The last batch were ugly as sin. Where’d you find those blood bags? The new boss only wants the best of the best." the voice continues. You can practically hear the licking of lips on the other side.

"What have you brought us this time, then? Something a little younger, I hope!"

"Ooooohhh." comes the voice from behind the door, putting as much pleasantness as it could muster into the sound. "Have you brought us Greek?" the tone is one of you-shouldnt-have!

"Nice taste of some young Greek blooodbag sounds lovely!" there’s a mocking menace in the voice again then.

You hear the bars holding the door shut from the inside sliding open, and the door opens up an inch…