OD 6.17.2002 [11:37 p.m.]

scene w/ a shadow lord of mine and a lasombra of liz's.

==

Madeleine Brevard

Mon 06:44PM

He came early for his quarry, when the sun was still low in the evening sky. And though he knew the creature would not leave its lair so early in the evening, and though he knew that the creature would yet linger, moldering in some coffin, or perhaps merely a well-sealed tomb of a room, he did not seek to end its existence. Not yet.

Perhaps he believed he could learn from it, or perhaps he sensed a worse foe than this, some foul web of such, waiting to be exposed if he was patient, if only he was patient. Or perhaps he wanted to see if she would return. Perhaps he wanted to see what she would do.

She appeared two weeks ago, a silent shadow tailing his evening's quarry, distant and self-contained. She stayed in the shadows, and clung to the heights whenever possible, far out of the leeches range of vision, well out of his sensory range. The creature hadn't noticed her - and wouldn't notice her, still and careful as she is - but he had noticed her, and watched her as she crouched at the edge of the balustrade circling the roof of the commercial building overlooking the street on which the creature's old, tree-lined estate is located. Did he watch her as she watched their prey, with an infinite patience never derailed by dangerous impulse? Or did he merely watch their quarry, occasionally seeking her out from his so-well hidden position to assure himself that she was there, or see what she was up to.

Just after sunset she comes, relieving jowly man posted with a clipboard behind the crumbling brick smokestake of the building that serves as her base camp. He is a new feature, this sullen man who watches throughout the day, and to whom she speaks, and then dismisses summarily as she has since he appeared, four days ago. Last night, he waited for her long into the night, and it was well after ten p.m. when she came, at last, to relieve him. Every night when he leaves, he leaves with a pocketful of cash and vivid (or rather, dull and fading) memories of an afternoon spent surveilling a cheating husband half-way across town, though Joaquin is unlikely to know that. The Umbra is dangerous here, and when one's eyes are on the world beyond, one must keep a sense or two attuned to the spiritual.

An hour passes.

Two.

As always, she watches the driveway gate with the patience of a great cat, crouched on her haunches or leaning just over the lip of the rooftop to keep an eye on the target below like some sort of sleekly post-modern gargoyle. Tonight, though, something changes. The late-model sedan (a sedate navy blue) glides from the driveway and she makes no move to follow. Instead, she waits another silent twenty minutes and then swings herself down from the rooftop, easily onto the fire escape, and then the street itself. After circling the block once, she returns to the front gate. She waits another two minutes, then confidently presses a numeric code into the security keypad.

The gate swings open. She walks in.

Joaqu�n Monteverde

Mon 07:03PM

Across the wall between worlds, the vacant, solid-white glow of the man-wolf's eyes fade to their customary yellow as his vision passes from the other-side to this. The Gauntlet is thick here, and it takes a long time, and throughout the man-wolf is still as a statue. On his shoulder, the raven - or one should say, the Raven - riffles its feathers absently, its single black eye bright with an intelligence a bird should not be able to possess.

Then again, when the shoulder the bird perches on is furred in thick solid black; when the shoulder is corded with muscle and attached to a wolf's head; when the man-wolf is indeed a man-wolf, and in his halfstate form most suited to this halfstate world of greys and whites and blacks, of invisible webs and scurrying spiders of titanium and steel - when nothing is as it should be, anything is possible.

This is new. This could be interesting. He could follow the car now, racing along quickly enough to catch up, perhaps, with the aid of the few spirits still friendly so deep in the city. He could do that, and drop out of the Penumbra in the backseat of the car, reach forward with a clawed hand, and be done with it. There will be nothing left but a pile of ash and a few strand of black fur drifting slowly down.

He could. He could, but he would not, because vampires traveled in packs too sometimes, seeking the company of one another to ward off the damnation that must await them. And if he were patient, as he will be, Shadow Lord, Crescent-Moon-born and solitary, the one may lead to the rest, and he could reap the fruits indeed.

White fades to bright yellow; the black-furred Crinos rises from one knee and lopes easily, silently across the ghostly Penumbrascape. The fence that proved such a neat barrier to the physical world is no more than a faint rush of cool wind and the sense of a million fine, easily broken spiderthreads in this: a bare thickening of the air. He passes through this, and then through the walls of the ghost-house that has stood here long enough to make itself half a presence in the Umbra.

Upon his shoulder, the one-eyed Raven bobs and moves, but makes no sound. A large Pattern-spider, glowing eyes aggressive, crawls purposefully across his path and he lets it pass. He knew better than to provoke them here.

Mounting quasisolid stairs to the landing between first and second floors, the Shadow Lord stops where his view encompasses both stories. There, he stills himself, stills and looks inwards, and then slowly - slowly turns his gaze out, through, between -

- sideways.

Yellow fades to incandescent white.

Madeleine Brevard

Mon 07:33PM

The gate, the overgrown hedge, and the yard gone blowsy from neglect she covers easily. There are security cameras covering the whole of the approach, but these do not worry her. She would, perhaps, give her unlife to see herself again, even on his film.

The fence and house are encircled by motion detectors, which she has evaded by choosing the most direct route possible. It had taken weeks to find the security contractor, but last night he had been more than generous with the particulars after a little persuasion, and the promptly forgot the whole incident.

Quite and sure now, she follows the driveway to the walk that leads to the front porch and climbs the steps. Narrow-eyed with concentration, she circles the wide verandah for a better sense of the size and structure of the dwelling so that she will miss nothing, and be able to retreat quickly if necessary.

Five minutes after she entered the estate, she enters the house - almost boldly, really, but the front door. The alarm system is shut down with a code, as her black-gloved fingers dance quietly over the keypad. She glances up at the camera, and smiles briefly, perhaps even bitterly, before moving on.

Only after completing a circuit of the downstairs rooms does she turn her attention - unerringly - toward the greatest concentration of pattern spiders in the heart of the building, a little chamber cleverly concealed by a false wall in the side of the closet beneath the stairs. The little security closet is filled with monitors displaying surveillance pictures of the house's perimeter, and humming recorders taping each boring frame. Only one screen is blank, and into the VCR beneath it, she inserts the first of several sample tapes from the wall behind.

All except a few from that day and the previous night have been erased. She curses softly under her breath, then glances down at her watch.

Once everything has been replaced in the precise position in which she found it, she retreats and closes to the door to the security. After another cursory circuit of the bottom floor, she mounts the central staircase.

Her focused features are sharp, fine, and ultimately unremarkable. Lips thinned in a frown of concentration, sharp black eyes roaming and alert, black hair pulled back from her face and gathered into a net against her neck that serves, no doubt, both ornamental and practical purposes, she is garbed in a tailored menswear-style pantsuit, in some smooth-flowing, matte fabrics all dark and subtle grays and blacks.

Joaqu�n Monteverde

Mon 07:55PM

Ghostlike, he follows her from the other side of the Umbra, brushing off a curious Spider with a command uttered with the mindless ease of habit. Back; touch me not. Words spoken in a language no human - and few vampires - would understand, by turns fluid and harsh. Walking through walls as nonexistent to him and he is to her, he watches her insert the tapes, watches the images that appear as though seen through a thin gauze, masked with the static of the Pattern and the Wall.

Though he cannot hear anything through that Wall, he doubts very much there would be much to hear, even if he could. Her movements have the grace of silence. He knows this, because his are much the same.

When she rises, her eyes look right at him, and after years (how many? Eight? Ten? Twelve?) of hunting the hunters, of spying from across the Gauntlet, he no longer starts. He remains still, closing his eyes briefly as she passes through where he would have stood had he stood on her side of the Wall.

Turning, he takes the stairs in two great bounds, landing with soft clicks of his claws on the hardwood floor of the second-floor hallway. Because he does not like to move blind in the Umbra while his attention is in the Earth-Realm, he chooses a spot once more and stays where he is, crouched, eyes turning to follow her. It is becoming clear enough that vampires have enmities of their own; he will watch, and perhaps he will report on what he sees. Or perhaps he will simply remember it to satisfy his own curiosity.

Madeleine Brevard

Mon 08:07PM

Cool and calm and certain even in these foreign surroundings, she envisions herself as ghost, a not-thing in the world of the living. The guest rooms, the upstairs sitting room, even the bathroom she tours with an attention at once cursory and thorough. She pauses at each entrance, notes the position of windows and closets and passthroughs, the height of the ceiling and the width of walls with the same calm surety as if she were passing through the movie of another's life, the only two dimensional being in a three dimensional world.

No detail is ignored. Her steps are light and quick enough that she does not sink and make much of a mark on the plush carpeting in the rooms, but when she does she turns and bends and brushes the evidence of her passage out again after each and every step. When, at last, she locates the library, she begins a more careful search. First the volumes on the cherry bookcases, the state of the spines, and even the faint patterns of dust on the shelves, where intact and where broken. Then the chairs, the pattern of wear, the lingering scents, and the items left carelessly beside them. Then - at last - the large central desk, where she begins by making an impression of the indentations on the blotter with a piece of thin paper and a stub of a soft graphite pencil.

Joaqu�n Monteverde

Mon 08:23PM

The Theurge would loom in the doorway if he were actually there in the doorway, but he is not. And so his half-wolf form looms in the quasisolid doorway of the spirit-shadow of this house, arms folded loosely across his chest. Though powerful, to be sure, his musculature is elongated and, for his kind, supple. The silhouette he would cast is lean, not without a certain primordial beauty. Head cocked to one side, the blazing white eyes watch through the Wall as the she-vampire takes down the impressions in the blotter.

Perhaps not a hunter, then. A spy? A shadowy game of espionage, a thousand times the complexity of the Cold War, played out where no mortal - not even he - would ever see? For a moment the unseen possibilities of the vampire world hover before his consciousness, a web as intricate as the one the Spider is spinning on his -

Back! Away, begone!

- the Spider scurries away, and he flicks his tail, sending the last of the web shattering away like glass. Turning back, he observes for another moment, and makes a choice. A few long strides, a bound, lands him behind the she-vampire.

One clawed hand extends, feels along the emptiness before him for a chink in the Wall, a break in the Pattern. Finds it. He turns himself sideways. He turns sideways, thinning himself out enough to filter through the Wall. He is deep in the city, and the Gauntlet is formidable. But slowly, slowly, the light shining through the window behind her is blotted out. She may think the moon is going behind a cloud first, but - no. The moon set hours ago.

The air is suddenly filled with a pungent wolf-scent. Blood, humus, rain, dirt. A hand (paw?) closes over her shoulder, many times larger than a man's, the faint pressure of claws plain through the fabric of her shirt.

"Stay as you are." Words threaded through a growl, accentuated with a squeeze of the massive paw. "Do not turn."

Madeleine Brevard

Mon 08:32PM

More still than calm water, she is still as glass. The scent had drawn her attention, for her attenuated senses were straining to catch all that is, and all that is out of place in this place. She was already turning when his hand closed over his shoulder and his command unfurled in her ears.

And so - for the moment - she stills and stops as if it were her intention all along. Her hand is still poised above the sheet of paper, the bit of graphite still held delicately between thumb and forefinger. For all her startlement, she is startlingly calm.

And that is her only reply, the seemingly natural shift from turning to not-turning, from movement to cool stillness, almost looking to not-looking, for she says not a word.

Joaqu�n Monteverde

Mon 08:41PM

In contrast, he is not still. Half-wolf as he is, he is never quite still. The padded palm of his furred paw is hot, several degrees warmer than the human norm. From the changes in the air and scent, and the differential pressure of his hand, she can sense him moving behind her, craning his neck to scent, first, the air over their heads. Towering half again as tall as she, even half-stooped to accommodate his half-lupine legs, if he drew himself straight his head would bump the ceiling. The wet nose bumps her ear, then swings about to have a whiff at a nearby bookcase. It would be funny, if it weren't so very not.

Having taken measure of his surroundings, the lupine returns his attention to her. "This prey," he says, vocal cords forming the words with some difficulty, "is mine. Go now, do not return."

Hunter that she is - intelligent, cunning hunter - she would recognize this. Letting the small go to catch the large. Gambiting the pawn to capture the bishop.

Madeleine Brevard

Mon 08:49PM

She smells of shadow, and car exhaust fumes, and, faintly, of Ivory soap. And blood, of course, rich and coppery-red.

"He is yours," she agrees, her voice another little bit of quiet darkness, "but this prey," the opening of her hands, the shift of paper and graphite, "is mine. Let me hunt for what I seek, and I will disturb you not at all."

Joaqu�n Monteverde

Mon 08:58PM

The Silver Fang Warder at the local Sept would die of shock if he knew Joaqu�n had so much hesitated before dispatching the leech...much less spoken to her, spared her. But then, the Warder was an Ahroun, hotheaded, absurdly proud of his battle scars that served only to prove to Joaqu�n that the bastard had had his ass trounced more times than he'd like the Sept to think. The Warder would strike immediately and howl his triumph over the single leech he had managed to slay, but Joaqu�n...

He'd quietly turn the den of leeches into bloody chaos when he found it. And if it took speaking to a leech, sparing a leech, even aiding a leech to find it - well, one had to get one's hands dirty sometimes.

There is only a moment's hesitation. Then, "What do you seek?"

Madeleine Brevard

Mon 09:06PM

"Information."

She closes her eyes and opens them again, searching now for some reflective surface that might give her a glimpse of that which is behind her. To be sure, she has heard of lupines, and the possibility exists, she has not lived this long by jumping to conclusions.

"Where he goes, whom he sees, what he reads, how he dreams, and why, and what he believes, and what he knows, and what he tells and to whom."

There. There. She catches a glimpse of his reflection in the well-shined tape holder, of all things, and though it confirms his position his reflection is distorted at best. She would have to turn quickly or strike blindly, and given her vulnerable position neither choice holds much appeal.

Joaqu�n Monteverde

Mon 09:12PM

"Too much!" The reply is immediate, biting off the ends of her words. His reflection gives an impression, first, of size. Had they ever mentioned how large these damn things are to her? White teeth flash dimly as he speaks, pink tongue and lips wrinkled back struggling to curl around the human words. His hand tightens again on her shoulder, the claws threatening to pierce cloth, and then skin. "Go now. Now."

And he releases her.

Madeleine Brevard

Mon 09:21PM

The stub of graphite is slipped into an inner pocket of her jacket, and the half-finished impression of the blotter folded with a sheet of tissue to protect the delicate impression, and then she rises - quickly, but without the messy appearance of haste.

"As you say," she murmurs, turning to breeze past him, looking without looking lest she terrify herself. "...so shall I do."

Across the shadowy (...very...) library, darker now than he remembered. When she stills by the door it becomes different to seperate her from the shadows themselves. "Try not to track mud on the carpet, will you? He will notice it, and then he will leave, and then we will, both of us, lose our quarry."

And she slips out through the half-cracked door, as silently as if she were made of smoke, and not flesh after all.

Joaqu�n Monteverde

Mon 09:32PM

The yellow wolf-eyes stare back at her, unflinching, weighing, stolid - watching her waft her way to the door, silent as the shadows she dances with. But he would not know that; no, he senses the dimness of the room only peripherally, for in all his experience, the only source of danger was the leech itself, and that was usually a danger easily dispatched when one strikes unfairly from the back, out of thin air.

But the last words, scathing beratement almost - as though they were equals - draw a response. A tilt of the head, so very canine. His tongue darts out from between black lips and licks around his muzzle, just once. He does not move until her scent is gone from the air, and then only to shift down through his forms, one to another, until he stands as human as he will ever be.

Soren?

A patch of darkness sidesteps onto his shoulder from nothing, and together, man and Raven-Jaggling look at the few strands of fur, the indentation in the carpet where his mass had balanced.

(Perhaps Pattern-Spiders bribed with enough Gnosis will come across to do your housekeeping for you ...this time. The she-vampire is right about the mud, you know.)

Despite himself, one side of Joaqu�n's mouth tilts in a quiet smile. Man and Raven fade to nothing, and soon thereafter, a million tiny metal Spiders, each perfect beyond human ability, remove the evidence of his intrusion.