Tommy

Eva

Some few weeks after the sort-of warmoot, Tommy receives a telephone call from an unfamiliar number. It is after business hours and the sun is setting because autumn is gathering all around Denver. Summer is leaving, holding the remaining few weeks in its teeth, raining down brilliant sunshine when it is not drenching the city and state in apocalyptic deluges. Whether the call goes to voicemail or he answers, the initial salutation is the same:

"Mr. Cruikshank." A woman's voice, formal, resonant. One that he has not heard enough to likely recognize. "Éva Illésházy." Precise with her own as with his. The syllables have a foreign tinge that her accent lacks, the memory of a second or third generation immigrant, who still hears her name on her father's tongue, for all that she does not share it. "We met in the California Room at the Red Roof Inn some weeks ago." Which he will recognize as the location of the sort-of-warmoot, if he is given to remembering such things. "We have interests in common, and exchanged numbers.

"I have some information for you. We should meet to discuss it."

--

They make arrangements. No point in meeting for drinks somewhere. What she has to discuss with him should not be talked about within human establishments, within range of human ears. She gives him instead: an address, a moderately anonymous low-rise office building on Federal Boulevard, within a half-mile or three-quarters at least of downtown. At the intersection with W 38th Street. A 7-11 on one corner. A KFC on another. a Jiffy Lube with se habla espanol on its sign on the other. There is a Jackson Hewitt office downstairs advertising TAX SCHOOL STARTING SOON on the lower level, and another small-time bookkeeping service. A dry cleaner's, too. FLUFF AND FOLD.

Suite 203 is anonymous. It is merely billed as LAW OFFICE in small capital letters beside the buzzer that must be rung to permit him in downstairs.

The kinswoman meets him in the hall. She is a rather tall woman in her late 30s or early 40s, with dark eyes and dark hair and a quiet mien, dressed in a dark Ann Taylor dress beneath the indulgence of a rather understated Chanel jacket, wearing sensible Italian leather heels. Something about her licks at the senses; recalls the sky and the storm and the brief-white-heat of lightning and he knows that she is a Shadow Lord.

It is in her blood and in her bones.

The brief twist of a smile by way of greeting does not rise to her eyes. No, they are perfectly sober. Introductions are exchanged once more, and the kinswoman shakes his hand, then lets him into the office. Which is small but efficient. Three or four rooms, including a small conference room with a window onto the street and a view of West 38th. The combination KFC/Long John Silver's framed in the middle view.

She ushers him to the small conference room, where a number of documents, maps, photographs, newspaper clippings and other documents are stacked in an array by the leather seat closest to the window. The overhead light is harsh. Her heels click sharply on the hardwoods underfoot with every step she takes.

"I apologize for the setting. I do have an office in 1999 Broadway, but I did not feel entirely comfortable discussing this there. I hope you do not take this as a slight.

"Have a seat. Can I offer you a drink?"

Tommy

The man who answers the call is terse in response, and quiet, as if he weren't in a position to speak freely. He gets the information on where they should meet quickly, and except for a low but clear 'I'll be there' its almost unclear whether he was actually still interested.

The man who shows up at the assigned address is clearly still interested. He was actually there early, waiting at the KFC, a small bubble of empty space around him as the patrons, teenagers and mothers corralling small herds of children, gave him ample space to sit by himself and stare out the window. In the time it takes him to slowly sip a large Dr. Pepper (and the melted ice) he apparently decides that its safe to approach.

None of this is told to his host, of course. If she found out, good on her. If she didn't, better for him.

He has no breeding to duel with her own, but enough of a True Born to react to it ever so slightly. A slight dilation of the pupils, perhaps. A flare of his nostrils. The only thing to mark the Glasswalker was her knowledge, and some signs of what one might expect from one of his tribes. His clothes were, in a word, urban. Construction boots with no sign of really having been near a work site, no scuff of rebar or cement dust. But not clean either. Jeans that had either been re-worn this week or were permanently abused. The T-shirt he wears is not a white wife-beater. At least there was that. Instead it was a fitted blue...something, following in line with the apparent aversion for buttons that people seemed to have. And of course there was the hair. Only he'd tamed it, apparently, into tight corn rows following the contours of his head. The beard still bristled over his face, but seemed to have been shaped and trimmed.

Again he is abrupt in his introductions, but not rude. Simply direct.

"Have a seat." She says. He doesn't, but instead stands, perusing the documents laid out, which is what he says he prefers to do.

"Can I offer you a drink?" She asks.

"No." he says. No she can't or no he doesn't want one?

"What do we have here?" Right to the point then.

Eva

"We," there is a strange, wry humor embedded in her voice, though he does not know her at all and the tone is mild, curving. " - have more perhaps than we wanted to know.

"You're new to Denver, I think." He remains standing; and so she does as well, watching him with a steady reserve that feels meticulous and remote. There is a quick flicker of her dark eyes over his garments, enough to note the boots. Then back to his face, searching the frame of it as she makes that assessment.

She does not know every Garou in the city, no, nor even most. But, she has been in the city for years; her youngest children were born here; her mate was a Guardian. So: she knows many, and some still know her.

"I'm not sure how much you know about the history of Cold Crescent. The Nation was not involved in the construction of the building proper, it was acquired in the mid 2000s and the Sept became a reality thereafter.

"Here," newspaper articles: about murders, deaths, strange sitings. The construction of the Denver International Airport. Plans and blueprints, historic photographs of the 1999 Broadway proper, before and after. And on and on are arrayed beneath his fingertips. "The Holy Ghost Church was built on the site sometime in the 1940s. The congregation sold the church lock-stock-and-barrel sometime in the 1980s so that a high-rise could be constructed, but there was a recession and the original developers reneged on the sale, so the Church congregation and the developers reached a deal whereby the Church would remain intact.

"Eventually the property was developed. The architect, Curtiss Fentriss, also designed Denver International Airport."

She finds, particularly, clippings about DIA. Controversies, conspiracy theories, rumors: some of them outlandish. Taps on a few clippings and a few plans and a few arial photographs.

"I don't expect that you've heard any of the conspiracy theories about the airport. And if you have, you may well have dismissed them. The underground tunnels. The occult - resonances. Except: the guardians and other Garou of Cold Crescent have indeed encountered - grotesqueries in the tunnels beneath the DIA. Reptilian creatures, alien and wrong, single encounters - all I have are rumors, but there are enough rumors to put together a larger picture.

"Some have speculated that the whole of the airport - every feature - is some sort of beacon or portal for these things, but no one has ever really gone looking.

"And the same man who designed the DIA designed Cold Crescent." Here she pauses, dark eyes rising from the rather comprehensive array of research to find his profile. "You see, I think, where this is going?"