Chapter 2: My Brother's Keeper

Checkmate grips the table edge so hard his knuckles turn white and leans forward. "Is that what happened to Ray Watts?" he says thickly.

''Wait! Sit down.'' Taking a guess that ghouls prefer fresh blood, and fresh blood from an awakened being might even taste better, Lu takes the emptied glass and slices his wrist over it to fill it, then cast heal on the wound. He then pushes the glass towards cheese eye. "It's clear to me that you know something. If you tell me everything, I can make it worth your while..."

The woman looks at checkmate with a glare."Watch yourself." She says with little emotion.

Cheese eye smiles BIG. He reaches down and drinks deeply. A few other ghouls see and smell the blood and rush in. Cheese eye snarls baring sharp yellowed fangs. "Back off! This one is mine!!!!" The other ghouls seem temporarily mollified but they seem just barely able to control their hunger. Cheese eye says to Lu. "We better get out of here quick or you and your friends are gonna be meat."

"Oh, that's cute!" Checkmate snaps. "Sister, your friend ends up dead and all you do is drop cryptic hints about a nameless black hole that swallows up all you shining lights, so spare me the warnings and the badass cannibal routine. I'm not buying it. The kid and his girl thought y'all were misunderstood, but I understand you just fine – you're a fragging coward. I think Roy deserved better."

He stands up and throws some cash on the table. "Tip the bar for me, at least she was honest," he says.

Seeing his guess that awakened blood might taste better was right, maybe too much, Lu agrees with cheese eye that now is the time to leave. "Wyvern, we're leaving, get the others." Looking at cheese eye, "After you..." and Lu follows him outside.

Wyvern messages the others and then follows quickly after Checkmate, not eager to spend any further time in that place.

The woman smirks and walks away from Checkmate.Cheese eye leads you down a hallway into a dark room. He leads you into a small burned out bathroom with a broken mirror covered in black. Cheese eye moves aside a piece of corrugated metal revealing a hole in the wall that leads to an underground tunnel. "After you." He indicates you to enter the tunnel.

Lu turns his head to make sure everybody is following, and then enters the tunnel...

"Where are you taking us?" Checkmate growls, hand on his gun.

Cheese eye looks at Checkmate and smiles. "I'm getting you outta here. This is a back tunnel. We have a few of them just in case..." He points to Checkmate's commlink "Now everyone get out yer commlinks for light." He then plunges into the dark hole.

The tunnel is dark. The light of your commlinks is just enough to not trip and fall. The tunnel runs for about 100 meters before it rises up again. You find yourselves in an abandoned house somewhere away from the Red Eye. As you exit the tunnel you think you see out of the corner of your eye, two gleaming orbs down in the tunnel. Cheese eye says "Drek! We need to move." He hoofs it across an abandoned living room and through an empty kitchen and out the back door. You are in a backyard when you hear a bit of a growl and someone yelling. "Come on Jackal, share the food!" The backyard has a large tree with a kid's tree house in it. There is a woods away from the house where the voice came from. There are two houses on either side of you. the one on the right has a light on.

"I've had about a belly-full of these Barrens punks," Checkmate says, pulling out a flashlight and his SCK. "Can either of you figure the way back to the car? Right now I just want to get the hell out of here in one piece."

Wyvern pulls out a flashlight as well and heads for the treehouse, "C'mon guys, we can get some height on them."

Lu follows Wyvern, making sure everybody goes up first, then following. Once in the treehouse, Lu shifts his perceptions to the astral realm, trying to see how many ghouls are coming for them...