[Eli Booker] Eli doesn’t quite laugh. Rather, he huffs out a breath of air that would of been a laugh if only he had more energy to behind it. Roman helps him and he is accepting of it.
“Those kids ok?” He asks, dark eyes shifting around the room. That’s when his eyes light on Kora’s face for a beat. Just a beat, because he can’t make himself catch her eyes and hold them.
“You’re alright in my book Roman…I’ll paint the fuckin’ city for you if you need it…” He groans and shifts, plants the sole of one heavy boot on the ground for leverage as if he’s testing his legs to see if he can stand. Instead he just sips the orange juice and tries not to throw it up as his stomach churns.
[Drew Roscoe] The Kin doesn’t rush over or fall so her knees crack the floor so she can drop down beside Booker once he’s sitting up and talking, she isn’t one for those kinds of dramatics. Instead she walks over, sneakers quiet save for the occawsional squelching noise when she steps in a bit of carnage, and remains standing while Roman helps Eli sit up and get propped so he can lean back against something sturdy. First the Kin’s fingers push through Roman’s hair, a quick and thoughtless gesture.
“Thanks, Roman. Two of our lives you’ve saved now. Can’t thank you enough.”
For Eli, she fishes his gun out of her pocket and leans down, tucking it into the vest pocket she knows he tends to keep it in. “Janis and I, we’re gonna see those kids into the right hands. I guess you, Kora and Roman have clean-up duty.” A bruise is already blossoming about her neck and throat, up close to her jaw as well. That she’d withstood the beast of a misshapen man trying to squeeze the life out of her so well was a testament to her ancestry, really, or just her stubborn determination to live. That didn’t mean she’d escape without any marks, though. Frankly, she considered herself lucky that she could speak and it only hurt a little to breathe.
[Roman Turner] “We’ll get ya home. Maybe I will call a cab this time. And get ya some rest, you’ll do ok. But them youngins are gonna have a hard time and will have to be kept sheltered while working through this stuff.
[Roman Turner] ‘Just doing what I was born to do Miss Drew. I had a little more in me I could tend to ya too, but gonna take a bit to recover.”
[Eli Booker] “You ok?” It’s spoken to Drew, quietly, as a heavy hand reaches out and touches her calf. She was bruised, she’d be sore, but she saved his life and Eli is more than aware of this. There’s a familiarity to his touch with Drew, it lingers for longer than it should
Eli’s face falls when Roman speaks. There are lines at his mouth, creasing his brow. It ages him considerably. He is worried after the trio of youngsters and it couldn’t be more obvious on his expression.
“Thanks Roman…” He says again and uses his back against whatever he’s against to try and leverage himself to standing.
[Janis Ian] Janis tilts her head in a nod to Roman, her hand falls back to her side, nearly disappearing under the cuff of the sleeve to her leather blazer. Her shoulders roll back once, straightening her frame as the Rotagar turns her head at the sound of her name coming from Drew. Her throat ripples, swallowing quietly – “Aye,” is all she can say about the task to handle the children.
She shakes her head, casting her head down as a fall of red bangs shadows the expression of her eyes. She steps away to move back towards the apartment where the children were waiting – “Best get them out of ‘ere while we can, Drew.”
[Drew Roscoe] “Goddamn peachy,” is her answer to Booker, accompanied by a grin that was as warm as ever, accented with a bit of wild that makes teeth look sharp and lips stretched a bit too far– adrenaline was kicking in, and she was smothering the sort of hysteria that followed nearly dying, others nearly dying, and the rush of victory to boot. Booker puts his hand on her calf, she lays her hand on top of his, then moves it and tucks her other hand under his armpit to help him regain balance while he tries to stand. She can’t lift him, no, she’s not nearly so strong, but she can at least help with balance until he finds it on his own.
Once he does, she nods and lets him go with a squeeze of his hand, and flashes that grin to Roman in turn. “Nah, this is nothing, just a mugging story for work and extra foundation is all.” She sounds like a battered wife– Kin usually do when trying to explain battle wounds no matter where they came from.
From there, her attention is on Janis, and there’s a solemn kind of nod before she moves to join the No Moon, to go with her wherever she’d taken the children.
“C’mon kiddo’s, we’re gonna get some hot chocolate and meet one of the nicest ladies on earth.”
[Kora] Kora cuts a glance back over her shoulder as Janis comes back into the apartment. Steps back, turning to following the curl of gunsmoke through the half-finished rooms, considering the next room. Corpses – human or otherwise – laid out on the floor. She holds herself just apart here; that sense of inhumanity sharper in this moment than it ever is on an ordinary day. There’s nothing close to a smile on her generous mouth, the sense of the animal is clear, alive underneath her skin, the monster in her – now – not just the wolf.
“She’ll recover,” Kora corrects Roman with a quiet sort of stillness, after a narrow, critical sweep of Drew’s bruises; the way she moves. There’s a question subsumed in the statement, which Drew is left to answer or not as she pleases.
“They’ll live.” The Skald tells Eli, taking a step back into the hall, watching the next room over as Janis returns. Her arms are crossed, beneath her breasts, over the swell of her stomach, underneath that is a feral tension imprinted on every muscles of her body.
“We’re not calling a cab here, Roman.” She contradicts her packmate, brief, quiet. “Don’t want someone investigating this scene finding about a cab run. Call the Doc and Izzy. See if the Detective can run interference with whatever investigation comes next.” She’s still talking as Drew and Janis leave to round up the children, but she steps them both for a brief, quiet look. And a serious, direct, “Thank you.” – before she lets them go.
[Roman Turner] He nodded, listening to his Alpha and makes the calls. First to Imogen, then to Izzy.
“This is Roman, we could use a ride and some help on clean up if ya could come.”
[Eli Booker] The apartment is a ‘shotgun’ style unit. When you enter the door you’re in the living room. Were you to turn to your left, you’d be faced with the dead and crumpled bodies of two middle age, middle class parents. They’re dressed nicely – a wrong turn, bad directions on the GPS, probably brought them to this place. Most might say fate. Eli would just say their luck was just fucked today.
Turning to the left is a hallway. A bathroom is on the right. The kitchen is straight ahead. Kora and Roman and Janis can smell death. This place stunk of it. Nothing here, in this space, has died naturally. Not even the rats.
The strongest stench seems to roll from the bathroom…though neither Drew nor Eli had managed to venture that far into the unit.
Janis and Drew are taking the children to the nicest woman on earth. He watches the two Fenrir, then looks at the children before nodding to what Kora has said.
“I’ll be fine.” He says. And he would, because he had too.
[Roman Turner] If Eli wanted a ride with him, he’d beg it off Izzy or Imogen to get them back to the church. Either way, he would come back to help clean up. And they’d have to get hold of Linus for a cleansing.
[Roman Turner] ((And I have over stayed my sleep time. Sorry so short, but appreciate the play. Thanks folks!))
[Eli Booker] Thanks Blu!
[Janis Ian] The Rotagar can hear the rumble of noise in the back of her mind, the questions that want to know answers to what just happened, how Kora was going to handle the mess, the clean up, and then there are others when she peers back at the faces of the three children Drew and Janis must sneak three blocks to the kin’s house to take them to Hill House.
A part of her is relieved that death does not have to come to such young faces – that she doesn’t have to kill them.
She stops when Kora stops them with a brief quiet look. “Any time, rhya.” She replies and leaves with Drew.
[Detective Montoya] It’s an odd thing, really. No one would guess that she would answer such a call, let alone make her way to come to their aid when it was asked. No one, of course, expects her to do anything but be trouble. Of course, she fosters such beliefs with her attitude, because it works for her. It keeps them at a distance. It makes it easier – for her.
She does, however, say three words into the phone. “On my way.”
She’s already in motion, getting the directions as she slips on her coat, long strides carrying her down the hall, out and too her car. By the time she’s unlocked the door and settled inside, she’s already flipped on the radio, to dispatch, to hear if she’s going to have to do any interference before arriving, pulling out into traffic smoothly to head toward the apartment in question.
[Kora] “This place is deserted, yeah?” Kora asks Eli, dark eyes flickering ever so slightly up at Eli when he makes it to his feet. The height different between them is negligible, and she has a way of standing – a way of looking up – that makes her seem taller than she is.
Roman is dispatched downstairs with a moving though to await the arrival of reinforcements necessary for clean-up. She herself remains in the room, walking down the hallway toward the kitchen, feeling her gorge rise with the scent of death in the air. It’s enough that she lifts a hand to her mouth, presses the back of her hand against her lips as she walks, puts her free hand on the door of the foul-smelling bathroom and listens as she holds herself away from the foul scent that comes from underneath the door.
“You and Drew heard something and came up?” A glance back down the hall at the kinswoman, dark eyes in a pale face, reflecting the ambient light spilling in through the windows. Head tipped then, meditatively considering whether the sirens she hears in the distance are coming here or just part of the urban landscape.
“I’m trying to figure out whether this is a rush job,” that twist of her mouth, dry and distant. The clean up, she means. The inevitable grotesquerie of it. “Or if we have time to take our time.”
[Eli Booker] This apartment building houses two units – one up and one down. It’s empty and by the looks of it has been for some time. Every window is covered with plywood and the only light that bleeds in comes from cracks and gashes in the wood. She walks into the kitchen and there are dead rats, sucked dry of their blood and discarded like so much trash across the kitchen floor.
The bathroom, where Kora has to hold a hand to her mouth and nose to keep from taking in the reeking smell, is awful. There are two bodies in the bathtub – both pale with a lack of blood, their once dark brown skin faded, their mouths twisted into a grotesque grin. They are young men, dressed in common street attire and complete opposites from the family ambushed in front of the building.
Eli is standing, broad shoulders pressed to the wall bracing him up. His palms are rubbing his face as he listens to her walk …bears her gaze on him and processes her words.
“Heard screams…then a car crash.” Roman left him juice and Eli drinks it now finding his throat dry and sore. “We made it here but…we were too late for their parents I think…” Dark eyes cut toward where Kora should be, down the hall at his left.
“No one was here…this street was like a ghost town.”
[Detective Montoya] There doesn’t seem to be anything on dispatch – but that doesn’t mean their won’t be. She calls in and tells dispatch she’s going to dinner, is thus off duty for a while, perhaps even the rest of the night. Then, she lights a cigarette, and takes a round about route toward the place in question. Just in case.
Soon enough, however, she arrives at the building in question, dark eyes sweeping the area as she parks the car. She pulls out a pair of gloves from the glove box – latex, blue [hands of blue, two by two] – and takes a final drag off her cigarette. She gets out, pausing to tuck the gloves into her pocket, before heading up the walk.
[Kora] Kora gives a dry husked laugh. There’s no humor in it, nothing light. Just that grim certainty as she walks back down the hall, careful of the debris in the room now, alert but not rigid with it, as she steps over the debris, booted feet making a quiet, solid noise on the floor with each careful footfall.
She’s back in the room now, at the end of the hallway, hands in the front pockets of her jeans, arms close to her body – mostly concealed by her dark gray hoodie. It’s cold in here; the night coming in through the plywood boarding over the windows, cold enough that they can see their breath. Not cold enough to keep the dead from rotting, though. Sinking into themselves, deliquescing in the stark, cold air.
“Probably for the best,” she says, of the parents. A winnowing sort of certainty there. “The parents would’ve been a problem, if they’d lived.” Another flicker of her gaze – not precisely to his eyes, but over his face; the lines of care in it; or rather, the lines of care underneath the skin, evident only from this angle. From that expression.
“I’ll have Izzy give you a ride back to the church, then. See if you can can get the parents’ car out of here. Find someplace to dump it so this disappearance doesn’t come back to this neighborhood, yeah?” A flickering look, up and sidelong, gaze shearing away toward a shuttered window. sO there aren’t implications. So there’s no investigation – not a close one, anyway.
“That tow truck of yours will come in handy.” She pauses, quiet – that hint of a far away look – before she refocuses on the immediate. “You’re alright, then?”
She pauses, waiting for the affirmative that is sure to follow. “Good, I’ll have Linus check you out. We’ll do a cleansing if necessay before the night’s over. I’ll want to hear the story too, you know.”
A twist of her mouth, straightening her head as hidden communication writes itself across her face. “Izzy’s here.” Roman tipping her off.
[Kora] alright darlings, I need to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep. :) but lo! there is a scene where izzy and eli can keep playing and/or hook up with drew/janis later. while kora roman and NPC imogen clean up.
to Detective Montoya, Eli Booker, Peek
[Eli Booker] Thanks Liz!
to Detective Montoya, Kora, Peek
[Detective Montoya] [Sleep well! :) ]
to Eli Booker, Kora
[Eli Booker] Kora speaks and Eli responds – he’s okay, he’ll be fine. They could use his tow truck and to this he nods, understanding and agreeing expressed in that brief, slow movement. When she leaves Eli is left alone, hands digging in the front pocket of his hooded sweatshirt for his cigarettes and lighter. He was exhausted. His body drained and spent from the trauma it only just supernaturally recovered from.
It’s lit, the Marlboro Red, and he takes a drag only to lift his chin and blow smoke at the ceiling.
Izzy’s coming. Something in his recollection said Izzy was a cop. Eli never had good luck with cops.
[Detective Montoya] She pulls on her gloves before she touches the doorknob. They said there would be cleanup, but it’s too easy to miss something, to make a mistake. Izzy never makes such mistakes. Not anymore.
She talks briefly with Roman, getting the lowdown on what he wants her to do. It’s followed by a nod for Kora, and another brief conversation. Her shoulders are tight, her jaw set, her lips holding back any sense of rising gorge as the smell hits her. This is what she deals with every day – day in, day out. She handles it far better than most.
She notices everything – little details here and there, things that might go unnoticed by anyone else. The way the bodies lay, the way the light filters through holes in the plywood, the debris and any footsteps. She surveys it all as if it is a case, her case, though she doesn’t go so far as to listen into what happened here. Instead, she finally meets Eli’s gaze. “Need a ride, I hear.”
[Eli Booker] Eli isn’t overly tall at 5’10. Nor is he built like the majority of Garou or kin in Chicago. Eli is an everyday man. His head is shaved into a neat, low cut mohawk. Lightning bolts are tattooed on either side of his skull. He’s wearing a hooded sweatshirt, black, and who knows what else under it. He’s bulky, solid and by the looks of it not the kind of boy your mother would want you fraternizing with.
She’s heard he needs a ride.
Dark eyes shift to meet Izzy’s gaze head on. Eli isn’t a man that has the time or interest in playing games. Thankfully, Izzy’s time seems less than his own for such things.
“Yeah..” Roman healed nearly all of Eli’s damage – though not all of it. He is unsteady on his feet, his stomach churns. Still, he manages to stand up straight without the aid of the wall or another person’s hands.
Eli walks toward the bedroom, straight ahead of where he’s standing, and casts a hardened look at the two bodies lying in a heap, dead. He says nothing, though his furrowed brow speaks volumes.
“Thanks..” He says to Izzy, then, and starts toward her and the door.
[Detective Montoya] He meets her gaze, evenly and without hesitation. Thats a point in the pro column. Nothing to be excited for, considering most start out so far in the con file, it takes a lifetime to climb out of it. Her reputation of a hardass is well known.
She watches him as he walks, taking in the way he moves, how he favors what remains of his injuries, marking the weaknesses with a steady eye. It’s what she does, how she survives, how she knows where to shoot when she draws her weapon. She’s not very tall, really, at 5’6″, but her presence, her persona makes her larger than life, makes her impossible to ignore – when she wishes it.
She steps back toward the door as he comes toward her, letting him lead the way back outside. “Don’t mention it.” Somehow, there’s the sense she means that literally, too, but he could be imagining it.
[Detective Montoya] [have to pick up my son from work – brb]
to Eli Booker
[Eli Booker] Were this any other day, Izzy would hate Eli. Right now, he’s a speed bump in her day. A problem that comes with the purity of blood that roars through her veins. Were this any other day – any other place – Detective Montoya might be giving Eli a beautiful pair of silver bracelets – courtesy of the CPD. She wouldn’t like him, and he’d despise her.
But it isn’t any other day. It’s today.
And Eli has lost his swagger for a moment. He is still inside and his expression – his dark eyes – reflect this.
He takes the stairs carefully and one at a time. When he hits the bottom he’s almost done with his cigarette. It’s flicked away as he stalks toward her car. She said don’t mention it, and Eli doesn’t.
“If you can drop me at the church, that’ll do.” He can figure out how to get the tow truck on his own.
[Eli Booker] (ok)
to Detective Montoya
[Eli Booker] (Hey ..I gotta crash. :( If you care to play hit me up – my aim is f00d4w0rmz! :) I’d stay but I”m falling asleep at the PC LOL
Thanks!)
to Detective Montoya