Paying the Price (RP)

- Emma -

"Wha??" Bev sounds muzzy, like you work her in the middle of a dream. It takes her a moment to wake up enough to understand what you are saying.

"A 'starving' vampire?" She asks, sounding calm, though you can hear her moving around and doing things on the other side of the line. "Not Benji?!" She exclaims in concern, incidentally revealing that she knows Benji, a detail that had not come up yet in your conversations and could make things interesting.

You hear a door close —that was quick, but then she is an emergency nurse— and from a distance, her face clearly away from the phone: "OK. I have the address you sent."

It will take time for Bev to get to you.

What do you do in the meantime?

- Persephone -

"Really?" Chablis says pathetically when you promise her food. She is surprisingly compliant, though your appearance helps, of course.

As you close the closet door and lock her in the dark she becomes quiet, an almost sub-audible 'panting' sound she was making stops, as does any sound of breathing. The dark, confined space seems to help calm her somewhat.

"Where's Sarah?" Chablis pleads, that being the only part of your conversation she was able to register.

What do you do?

After Teddy leaves, Benji locks up Jacob’s shop again and heads back to his apartment to get some sleep before Miriam visits later. His good mood from helping Fawcett earlier has been somewhat spoiled by the news about Ravenhall. He wonders if he should pay her a visit, to swear loyalty to her and try to get on her good side, or if it would be better to keep his head down and try to avoid drawing any attention to himself at all…

- Benji -

Lady Ravenhall herself has not gotten directly involved, she has left it to her lieutenants to squabble over who gets what. Aligning yourself with any one of them will make an enemy of the others. If you go that route, maybe make sure you pick the right one. They all have underlings to command, but their Status is very tentative and conditional on the tides of Ravenhall's favour.

---

From inside your flat comes a raucous squawking and the rattling of a gilded cage. Probably Snowy trying to escape again? But no, this time the bird is mounting a defensive action against a trio of invading rats —maybe after the food you left in the cage in the vain hope something would get eaten. They don't seem to like each other. Hermes stoically watches the proceedings from inside the safety of his armoured shell.

What do you do?

Benji opens his door to a screeching flurry of white feathers and gnashing yellow teeth. "Snowy!" he cries, dropping his umbrella on the ground near the door as he rushes over to break up the fight. He quickly lifts Snowy’s cage up out of harm's way, hissing at the rats to try to scare them away.

- Persephone -

Chablis goes quiet, listening to your promises of food...

"I can smell the food!" She whines. 'Sarah' and 'food/fed' (but also a little bit of 'bite') are the only words she has comprehended from your monologue.

As you return to human form the pain in your shoulder becomes intense and you feel blood trickling down your chest... your human blood!

"Why won't you feed me!"Chablis slams against the closet door. For such a slight woman she packs a hell of a punch. The door shudders and the bed moves a little ways away from the wall.

She is 'listening', but you will need to do more to keep her contained long enough, and she is not in much of a state to have visitors over for tea (these Bits use 'tea' to mean 'lunch', or is it 'dinner'... amounts to the same thing, here).

What do you do?

- Benji -

The invading hoard of rats don't seem at all scared by your wordless hiss, instead they look on, puzzled as to why you interrupted their assault. In their ratty little minds they were winning!, though the the raven is unharmed and the rats are bloodied. The rats watch you, waiting for you to incinerate the bird so everyone can eat!

What do you do?

Benji frowns at the rats, puzzled that they haven’t scurried away in fear. "Go on, shoo," he says, waving a hand at them. He doesn’t want to hurt the dear little creatures but he can’t let them stay if they’re going to attack Jacob’s raven.

- Benji -

The rats blink at you, obviously disappointed that you are going eat the whole raven yourself. But they turn and, with a scurry of feet and slither of tails, vanish into the wainscoting. Small, bloody footprints being the only indication they were ever there. The mice are going to have competition.

What do you do?

- Persephone -

You ram the bed back in place. There is a mewling sound from the other side of the closet door, it does not sound anything like human. Then a ripping sound that is probably the end of your shirt, followed by ... suckling sounds?

The effort really makes your shoulder hurt. Looking down at yourself for the first time since the injury, and with your shirt off, makes it worse. You can see that it is clearly a bite... a vampire bite.

What do you do?

- Emma -

After what feels like ages of you standing outside in the cold and worrying about your friend inside, a black cab pulls up and Bev exits, umbrella first to keep the rain off her already-frizzy ball of hair.

Bev reaches back and slings a gym-bag over her shoulder, then heads quickly over to you, clearly not liking the look of this place.

"What's going on?" She asks, sounding surprisingly professional, all things considered. "What's the plan, here?" You know that she was rather giddy about the single feeding she had participated in, but you don't know the details, surely it was nothing like this, and the details here might frighten her off.

What do you do?