The building itself is redbrick, solid, three stories, foursquare, with stone lintels over the doubledoors leading inside and framing in all the oversized windows. An old elementary school transformed into low income apartments with grants and redevelopment. The money did not go all the way to ripping out the old asphalt playground and installing the parklike setting that was shown on the diorama presented to the Denver Housing Authority to show how beautifully the place would be finished out, so the building proper is surrounded by a weedy asphalt and the rusting A-frames of old fashioned swingsets. The swings long, long gone.
The lighting is shit and half the streetlights are out and dusk comes ever-earlier. It is already September, and once the heat of the day is gone there is a distinct chill in the air.
Saturday.
There are kids on the corner, two blocks down, young enough that they should be playing, old enough that in this neighborhood one is certain that they are doing no such thing. We'll call it work, instead.
They pull up in a mid-2000s Chevy, dark and completely unremarkable, slightly dented, the sort no one would care to bother with. Not even here.
Éva kills the engine, sits for a moment with her hands on the wheel, watching sunset flood the sky with its peculiarly bloodied light and gives Erich, in profile, the sort of smile that feels both false and absolutely real.
"I don't want to spook Ramón if we can avoid it. I don't mind company inside, but if he's in, perhaps you should wait outside while we talk."
ErichErich doesn't really know what he's doing here, truth be told. Which might imply that he's not pleased to be here, or that this wasn't his idea, or that he didn't come here for a reason, but none of that is true. He wants to be here. He's sort of even pleased that he is here, because that means Eva -- that paragon of Shadow Lord-ness -- has deigned to accept his help. He also came here for a very good reason, and that reason is simply:
Eva is going somewhere bad, and
Eva is his kin, and
therefore Erich should Do Something.
But therein lies the question. What, precisely, is he to do? He has never played bodyguard before. He thought perhaps he should stand over her shoulder and glower and generally look menacing, but then: no, she tells him that is exactly what he doesn't want to do. He thinks; he looks out the window at the building which was once a school and is now what might simply be termed A Project, as in A Low Income Housing Project, as in The Projects. He looks over at Eva, all cool and self-possessed and efficient and Thunder, Thunder, Thunderous.
"Should I walk you to the door then? Or just sit here? I think sitting here would make me pretty useless. If I'm supposed to be useful, I mean."
ÉvaErich's question makes her smile, quite suddenly. Quick and sure and unselfconscious. She slides the keys out of the ignition and turns them over in her hand. There are just three on the ring, and only one works.
She does not know why they keep the others there.
"Come with me inside. Be alert. Nothing's going to happen. I do this all the time. But you'll be close then, in case."
A pause. She is slipping the keys into the right pocket of her jacket.
She is opening the driver's door.
"All right?"
ErichHis door pops open as soon as the word inside leaves her mouth. Erich climbs out of the mid-2000s Chevy, which even Erich knows isn't her usual car, shutting the door with the heel of his hand as he stretches the kinks out of his legs.
"Right," he affirms. Then a quirk-grin: "Funny you're the one reassuring me that nothing's going to happen. Isn't that my line?"
Tucks his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and, unlikely duo that they are, follows Eva building-ward.
ÉvaPer + Alertness
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Erich[per+PU]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
ÉvaAt this hour even in the heart of the city there should be birds singing. Erich cannot hear a one.
ÉvaÉva takes in his quirking grin with a side glance that is composed enough that it could be taken as supercilious, quite nearly sly, except for the supple threads of humor that she allows to leak through, like light from inside a shuttered window, diffused and redirected by the slats.
And she is out of the car as well, pulling an attache case from the back seat before closing the door behind her.
The weekend. She wears sleekly fitted jeans and a soft white blouse with a pinstripe beneath a dark gray jacket, with menswear details and menswear styling. And books, a well-worn black, without much of a heel at all and just enough of a retort on the sidewalk that one knows that she is coming.
They walk in the building's shadow, following the line of the old fence, which was topped with failing coils of razor wire no one bothered to take down when this became a series of residences rather than a reform school.
Except for the retort of her heels on the pavement, it is quiet.
They climb the steps, from the sidewalk into the asphalt schoolyard. Éva's eyes narrow on the windows as they walk.
"Someone in there is watching us," Éva tells him, lifting her chin subtly in the direction of one of the blanket-covered windows on the second story. "Could be their cable's been cut, for non-payment."
A quick, subtle little smile.
"Could be they haven't sensed you yet, and we look like prey."
Erich"Like you're not a predator, yourself," Erich retorts,
which may just be the most astute thing he's ever said about Eva. They climb the stairs together. His sneakers do not click smartly on the pavement; they make little enough sound at all, cushioning his long stride, the agile animal motion coiled under his affable nebraska-boy facade. He knows well enough not to look right at the window as soon as Eva points it out, but he does, after a while, flick his eyes up that way. And again.
Then they're at the door. Erich's last step up is a bound, taking him ahead of Eva. He pulls the door open and -- apparently having forgotten all his mama's manners -- barges in ahead of her.
ÉvaA doorway.
A stairwell.
Industrial and clinical, made to be used. Wide-open steps rising a half-flight to the first floor and sinking a half-flight to the darkened basement. On the wall: a row of locked mailboxes that seems equal to the vintage of the school and must have been salvaged from a tear-down somewhere.
Flyers litter the floor. For cheap pizza and cheaper pho. Specials on plasma donations. Get an extra five bucks on every fifth visit!
"You have me wrong," she tells him, as she walks in after him. Her voice is quietly composed and her humor is strange and is dark and she means it too, though perhaps in this she is utterly incorrect.
A flick of a glance up the stairwell.
The old fixtures were taken out. Left behind: naked bulbs hanging from wires, an ugly wash of too-white light.
One of the bulbs is strobing.
"Ramon is on the second floor," she tells him as she starts to climb. Fingertips trailing on the balustrade.
A moment later, "You weren't born to us, were you?"
ErichA startled glance. If she'd meant to turn the spotlight squarely back to him, take it off herself, she's succeeded. If she's trying to make conversation -- and an odd time for conversation it would be -- she quite fails. He's so taken aback that he pauses a second, his footsteps faltering on the stairs. Then he trudges on, making no attempt to disguise his gait. On these hollower steps, he's quite audible. It's still moments before he speaks again.
"Nope." Forced-light, that. "Blond hair, blue eyes, and I hulk out like nobody's business. I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count."
They pass that strobing light. Erich thinks of smashing the bulb. Maybe a real Fenrir would. He, however, passes it; leaves it be.
ÉvaA sore point.
She apologizes with silence, you understand. She does not guess. They circle the first floor landing and glance at one of the fire doors, propped open, and keep walking. The noise echoes remarkably in this open space. Close to the railing and in the center as well, the hollowed grooves worn by thousands of feet into the stairs.
They have rounded the landing between the first and second stories, still in silence. Erich still leading the way, when Eva's voice floats up from behind.
"Ellie's father was - " a mildly ironic pause. Who knows who may be listening. "Nordic. I don't think he was born to them, either."
The firedoors leading to the second-story hallway are not propped open. They creeeeaaaak as Erich pushes them. The hinges want oiling.
Inside: a long hallway, dark and stuffy. One light at the end of the hall casts an ugly white pool of illumination on sickly sea-green paint. A door half-way down stands open, warmer light from within.
"We're looking for 2-C."
Erich"Huh." Interest, a glimmer. "What was he born to, do you think?"
They're looking for 2-C. Right. Eyes on the ball. Eyes on the prize. Erich turns around. He's gotten ahead of her again: because that's all he knows to do, see. Stand in front of the weaker. Shelter them, protect them, tear anyone that tries to get to them to little bloody pieces. He hulks out like nobody's business.
They pass 2-B. Loud music blasted out of shredded speakers. Erich rolls his head on his shoulders. He's wearing his throwed-rolls t-shirt again; thinks to himself he should've left it at home. Wouldn't want to get bloodstains on it. Eva says she's done this a thousand times and nothing's gone down, but Erich: Erich likes to be ready for trouble. Erich attracts trouble. Erich is trouble, sometimes.
Éva"Nothing," she says, quietly. There is a thread of speculation in her voice, a coil of it, which has the tincture of nostalgia and the weight of a rope. This is: far in the past, and yet the past is ever-present in us.
Not precisely a weight.
Perhaps it is even a lightness.
"That was always my guess anyway." Her voice contrapuntal against the bass blaring from that room. That noise, that too-human noise is not precisely enough to disarm her, but it does ease the tension that has crept in to the facet joints of her spine. "The truth is I don't know."
2-C.
The door stands open.
And Erich is going ahead because he knows nothing else; because that is what he does: he shields the weak. The weak-er.
"Wait," she says. "Let me."
And Éva knocks, lightly on the open door. It is hard to hear over the noise from the stereo in 2-B, so she repeats the knock, and then decides to let herself in.
The door is open, after all.
ErichOh the curiosity.
Oh the burning questions.
Erich's too polite to ask, but Eva's too astute not to notice the curious gleam in his eyes. Who what where why when how. Okay, maybe not the how. No, not the how, he doesn't want to know the how of Eva's acquaintance with the father of her first child, that would be way too much information. But still: the who what where why when. The why, especially; someone she knows so little of, not even a history, not even a birth tribe. A guess, that's all. Erich ponders, briefly, what it would be like to be born of that sort of skimming uncertainty. Erich ponders, briefly, what it would be like to be associated with that sort of skimming uncertainty. A one-night stand. Has he had them? He supposes he has, by definition. But they felt different; awkward and fumbling and few and far between. They weren't really one night stands. They were girls he liked who liked him until they were scared away.
Anyway.
All that in the past now. He has Melantha. Right? Only no one ever really has Melantha, except herself. She is free and wild as the wind. As honey harvested from the summer blossoms.
Now they are at 2-C. He has no time for questions, anyway. he is about to go ahead -- but she stays him. He pauses, turns his head, his profile so fucking -- how did she put it? Nordic. All deep brow and strong nose and those lean cheeks, that strap of muscle from zygomatic arch to angle-of-jaw. He steps back, and so she steps ahead. She lets herself in and he hesitates;
hangs back. For now.
ErichDice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
ÉvaHe has the briefest view of her profile as she slips past him. The sweep of her winged brows, the quiet slant of her gaze. The tension light and fine as it frames her dark eyes. The faint webs of lines in her skin, made more prominent by the angle of light coming from inside the apartment.
High ceilings recede into shadows. A narrow corridor illuminated a lamp at its end.
The watery reflection of an unseen television in the dark windows. The shifting sunset framed beyond.
Éva walks down the hallway. She is not trying to sneak up on her quarry. She does not want to be shot for an unannounced intruder. Her step is deliberate and she calls out the man's name - "Ramon?" in a fair approximation of its actual Spanish origin as she goes.
She disappears around the corner into what must be the living room, reaching a hand beneath her jacket to the weapon holstered there as she goes - just in case.
It feels so strangely quiet in here.
--
The air is still. Erich hangs back, for now. Watching.
The bass next door throbs.
The floorboards creak beneath Eva's weight as she moves. He notices something that he is just starting to process as blood smeared on the plate framing the lightswitch inside the narrow hallway when he sees Éva reflected in the windows sink to a crouch somewhere in the living room. Saying again, "Ramon?" this time with a very specific note of inquiry in her voice.
Something is wrong.
He knows, something is very, very wrong.
ErichWrong.
It beats in his blood like a pulse. Wrong: the silence. No birdsong. Wrong: the blood on the baseplate. Wrong: no answer inside. His kinswoman's cautious-confident stride, coming around, swinging around. If this were a horror movie it'd be time for the fast zoom. The close-up of some horrid murder, some terrible distortion.
This isn't a horror movie. This is his life, and something is wrong, and Erich, who never was one to stop and think anyway, shoves that door open so hard it dents the wall. Catches up to Eva in the space of three, four strides, inserts himself between her and --
whatever it is he might find.
ÉvaErich charges down the hallway, that wrongness beating a thread in his pulse that seemes to match the bass from next door. Cheap particle board bisecting the old classroom to make that hall, nothing on the walls except for stains, the smear of something just over waist high and he rounds the corner and finds -
- Éva, crouched over the body of a dead man, sunk down to her haunches. Weapon in her hand but held carefully, the safety still on, alert. Bloodstains on the cheap shag carpet someone slung over the linoleum, all the cheap cabinets in the kitchen open, the door to the bathroom open, dark inside, the television mute and inane, this hum hum humming noise coming from somewhere,
and nothing, nothing there. Nothing for him to shove himself in front of. Nothing at all.
She is cursing beneath her breath, trying to check his pulse, but she is no doctor, breathing out sharply as Erich comes in behind her, glancing up at him, as his shadow spreads over the scene.
"I think he's dead." Quiet. "Be careful what you touch."
Something is wrong. Something is wrong wrong wrong.
Erich"He's dead all right."
That at least he's certain about. He doesn't need to check a pulse. All Erich needs do is take a breath.
He sinks to his haunches. His knees don't pop. Garou genes. Jeans too, if we're being witty. He's reaching out toward -- something, maybe some speck of blood or something, but again Eva's word stays him. He withdraws his hand.
"Was he important? Any idea who did it?" The questions are half-assed. He's restless, craning his head around. What is that sound. "Do you hear that?"
Éva"You know Darling Annie?" He may know her; he may not. A bone gnawer kin, sometime stripper, occasional prostitute currently facing the death penalty for murdering a cop 2 or 3 years ago. "Prosecution finally turned over the logs of the investigators interviews. He was on it. I hoped he'd be able to corroborate her story that the officer attacked her. Because right now we're not getting any traction - "
And she is explaining, and she has no idea who did it, and she is shifting in place, frowning down at the body, then glancing blankly over the depressingly cheap apartment, speaking in that low murmur that slides beneath the hum hum humming and above the reverb of the bass next door, reaching back to reholster her weapon -
when the dead man starts to move.
Erich[inits! +17 cuz fostern ahroun]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
ÉvaRamon +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
ÉvaEva +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
ÉvaOrder:
Erich: 20+
Eva: 14
Ramon: 11
ÉvaRamon:
1. Bite Eva.
Rage 1: Bite Eva.
ÉvaEva: 1a. Dodge. 1b. Shoot Ramon.
Erich[-1 for resist pain!]
Erich doesn't know Darling Annie. Erich doesn't know the trial, doesn't know the story, doesn't know the sentence.
Erich does know, suddenly and with the fierce-bright burn of conviction:
that they are fighting for justice. So when the dead man starts to move -- well. He turns, rage crackles in the air like lightning, he falls on the not-dead man like a sack of bricks.
[3 rage.
1. tackle ramon to prevent chomping on eva!
R1. bite it!
R2. some more!
R3. he's not very creative: bite!]
Erich[oh i should have also noted: 1 rage to hispo.
str+brawl!]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 7 )
ÉvaRamon: uhm, str + ath to escape?
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
ÉvaEva: holds action b/c she is afraid of shooting Erich. He is giant and Ramon is small.
ÉvaRamon: change action to bite Erich! +1 dif to change action. +2 dif because held.
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )
ÉvaDamage!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Erich[soak!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Erich[CHOMP!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 9 )
Erich[dam]
Dice: 17 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 9 )
ÉvaSoak?
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
ÉvaRamon: Rage 1. Dif 8
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
ÉvaDamage!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
ErichDice: 2 d10 TN6 (1, 4) ( fail )
ErichDice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5) ( fail )
Erich[CHOMP MOAR]
Dice: 10 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 9 ) Re-rolls: 2
Erich[dam]
Dice: 17 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
ÉvaSoak?
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Erich[SRSLY, CHOMPING NOW]
Dice: 10 d10 TN3 (4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 13 ) Re-rolls: 3
ÉvaÉva is holstering her weapon, glancing up, canting her head (animal, you see, beneath her skin) to listen to that whining note of something that drifts above everything else in here and she wants to attribute it to one of those pulsing bulbs in the stairwell but the moment feels wrong and then the dead man at her feet is lurching upright, this schcliking noise as he does not so much inhale as he gasps out some lingering bubble of gas from the corpse and he is reading for her and opening a mouth full of jagged teeth and she is stumbling backwards, inelegant in this because avoiding those teeth is her first and absolute priority and then she is leveling her gun but before any of that has even seemed to happen Erich is in motion, suddenly wolfen, filling the room, snarling and jumping on the animate corpse and here is the battle, one to one, in bloody place. Two deep bitewounds in Erich's neck are the only source of bloodspatter. When Erich bites Ramon: he tastes the grave, and the blood inside the veins is already turning to dust in the Ahroun's mouth.
It has not been a moment; it has not been a minute. Three heartbeats have passed.
Instinct has Éva lifting her weapon from the fight between her tribesmate and the corpse to aim it at the darkened open door to the bathroom. Something comes shuffling out, staggered on a broken limb. She shoots a three-round burst. The bullets dot-dot-dot: the eye, the cheek, the ear.
The thing staggers. Erich leaps.
It goes down.
Another three heartbeats.
And still the whining sound. Something in the hallway outside the apartment.
"You're hurt. We have to get out of here."
ÉvaÉva is holstering her weapon, glancing up, canting her head (animal, you see, beneath her skin) to listen to that whining note of something that drifts above everything else in here and she wants to attribute it to one of those pulsing bulbs in the stairwell but the moment feels wrong and then the dead man at her feet is lurching upright, this schcliking noise as he does not so much inhale as he gasps out some lingering bubble of gas from the corpse and he is reading for her and opening a mouth full of jagged teeth and she is stumbling backwards, inelegant in this because avoiding those teeth is her first and absolute priority and then she is leveling her gun but before any of that has even seemed to happen Erich is in motion, suddenly wolfen, filling the room, snarling and jumping on the animate corpse and here is the battle, one to one, in bloody place. Two deep bitewounds in Erich's neck are the only source of bloodspatter. When Erich bites Ramon: he tastes the grave, and the blood inside the veins is already turning to dust in the Ahroun's mouth.
It has not been a moment; it has not been a minute. Three heartbeats have passed.
Instinct has Éva lifting her weapon from the fight between her tribesmate and the corpse to aim it at the darkened open door to the bathroom. Something comes shuffling out, staggered on a broken limb. She shoots a three-round burst. The bullets dot-dot-dot: the eye, the cheek, the ear.
The thing staggers. Erich leaps.
It goes down.
Another three heartbeats.
And still the whining sound. Something in the hallway outside the apartment.
"You're hurt. We have to get out of here."
ÉvaSTOP.
ÉvaÉva is holstering her weapon, glancing up, canting her head (animal, you see, beneath her skin) to listen to that whining note of something that drifts above everything else in here and she wants to attribute it to one of those pulsing bulbs in the stairwell but the moment feels wrong and then the dead man at her feet is lurching upright, this schcliking noise as he does not so much inhale as he gasps out some lingering bubble of gas from the corpse and he is reading for her and opening a mouth full of jagged teeth and she is stumbling backwards, inelegant in this because avoiding those teeth is her first and absolute priority and then she is leveling her gun but before any of that has even seemed to happen Erich is in motion, suddenly wolfen, filling the room, snarling and jumping on the animate corpse and here is the battle, one to one, in bloody place. Two deep bitewounds in Erich's neck are the only source of bloodspatter. When Erich bites Ramon: he tastes the grave, and the blood inside the veins is already turning to dust in the Ahroun's mouth.
It has not been a moment; it has not been a minute. Three heartbeats have passed.
Instinct has Éva lifting her weapon from the fight between her tribesmate and the corpse to aim it at the darkened open door to the bathroom. Something comes shuffling out, staggered on a broken limb. She shoots a three-round burst. The bullets dot-dot-dot: the eye, the cheek, the ear.
The thing staggers. Erich leaps.
It goes down.
Another three heartbeats.
And still the whining sound. Something in the hallway outside the apartment.
"You're hurt. We have to get out of here."
ErichHe's hurt. He's hurt? Erich-wolf laughs; it comes out a snarl. He struggles; so hard to speak like this. So much easier to bite-bite-bite-kill.
"I maybe hurt. He very dead."
Point made, he shakes out his fur. Takes a long damn time of it too, all that thick musk-pungent fur foofing out this way and that: head to toe he shakes, and as he does his pelt -- that dappled pelt, more grey than black, mostly grey with splashes of black, white, brown, cream -- takes on a glow, takes on a light of its own.
He chuffs his agreement. Well, sort of. He chuffs but he eyes the hallway and he wants to stay wants to bitebitebitekill but then he is not alone, and Eva has kids, and he has some sense of responsibility and so:
"You ... stay behind."
He starts toward the hallway.
[-1gn! for luna's armor. here is a roll.]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Éva"Wait." There is a degree of authority in her voice; she incises it into the moment. Tells him to: wait, you understand, - and she is on her feet now, still holding the weapon, scanning the space, licking her lips because she finds them - and her throat - suddenly dry.
"The window. We're alone and you don't now what's out there. How many.
"We can get out the window. You can come back with a pack."
ErichA low twisted-twisty sound in his throat, somewhere between whine and growl. Tastes so much like retreat, this. Tastes so much like tuck-tail-and-run. Erich wavers; Eva can see it. He looks between door and window and his body leans this way, then that.
Then he decides. He wheels around, massive, heavy, big paws lifting and body swiveling and big paws coming back down, one-eighty. He trots toward the window -- his passage is a small earthquake -- he noses it open or, if necessary, he dashes it asunder with his paws.
"How ... you jump?"
ÉvaShe has already started fumbling with the frame, which is badly hinged, reluctant, the sashes stiff as corpses when Erich comes back down the hallway to the wide, wide windows overlooking the dark, weedy asphalt that was once the recreational area for the juvenile delinquents. The metal frames of the old swingsets. All of it.
It goes up like a dream when he noses it open.
She is at his side, wary and aware, glancing behind him down the narrow apartment hallway, toward the yawningly dark opening beyond.
"I'll try to climb," she tells him, exhaling. "And if I can't climb, I'll try to fall as well as I can. The lower I am the less likely I am to break something badly. Alright? If I hurt myself when I fall, I'll need your help to get to the car. We don't want to be found here."
Erich
It crosses his mind to offer -- he doesn't even know -- a ride? Piggyback? Horseback? Crinos-back? Something. He doesn't. He wouldn't presume, he wouldn't dare, it would be so fucking humiliating for the both of them. He chuffs again, which is easier than speaking, and then
that enormous wolf-beast rears up on his hindlegs, paws on the windowsill. He looks out over the would-have-been playground, schoolyard. His ears swivel -- that noise behind, whatever it is that lies without. Violence and rage and death beckon him, but he doesn't turn around.
He jumps. Just as smooth-swift as that first time he met Charlotte, that first step-step-leap he took that launched him up, up onto that fountain. He launches himself out of the window, parabolic, reaching the top of that arc and hanging for an endless breath before he drops,
lands with a grunt on the pavement below.
ÉvaClimbing down. Str (2) + Ath (3). She needs 6 success to make it all the way down, and can have a second roll if she gets successes on the first.
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (5, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
ÉvaAnd again.
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
ÉvaFall damage the last 10 feet.
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
ÉvaSoak!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 10) ( success x 1 )
Erich[soak!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
ÉvaHe jumps. Falls, that perfect arc, that perfect, impossible atheleticism.
She does not have such gifts. She holsters her weapon and climbs over the windowsill and picks up her attache case and drops it over the edge, down into darkness.
Then she starts to climb, eases herself over the lintel, strains for toeholds against the brick. Feels the mortar crumbling beneath her fingers, cannot breathe and regularly reminds herself to remember to keep doing it.
Her fingertips are raw and her shoulders are number and her arms feel like water before they finally give out. She misses a hold and overcorrects and cannot hold her own weight with just one hand and so -
she falls, the last ten feet to the solid asphalt, twisting her ankle badly with the impact that sends her rolling into another prone corpse.
Which is: awakening.
This one Erich dispatches with one great snap of his jaws, quite literally tearing the head from the body and throwing it like a child's beachball, up up and away.
Eva has regained her feet - and her briefcase - by the time Erich wheels around. She is standing on her left leg, favoring the right. "I think you're going to have to drive."
There are: more noises from within, which she quite resolutely tries not to hear.
ErichOkay. One risen corpse: that's just a risen corpse. Two? Three, four, more inside? THE PENNY DROPS. They're standing on a goddamn zombie farm. Or something.
Erich is down there, giving little hops of his forepaws in excitement-or-something at the realization, when Eva slips-misses-falls and his heart goes hammering into his throat and in that split-instant when Eva is in the grip of gravity Erich's life is flashing before his eyes, or at least:
the images of Eva's little kids and the thought of going to them and saying I'm so sorry but your mommy died because she fell out a window oh god the inglory and then he'd have to tell them why he couldn't just give her a crinosback ride.
But then she lands, and it is not a pleasant landing, and perhaps there are noises of pain but regardless: she is moving. She rolls into another corpse and the corpse is moving too and Erich is dispatching it with brutal, nearly joyful efficiency, and then Eva,
Eva is getting up and he will not be telling her next of kin after all, and
he is so delighted that he headbutts her, gently, but it is still a headbutt from a direwolf. The top of his head solid and thud against her midriff.
Then they have an escape to complete. She thinks he's going to have to drive. He sniffs at her ankle, delicately, and then he turns and pushes off and flows upward and then he is an Erich again. A very hirsute, slope-browed, cro-magnon Erich, but close enough. There is blood oozing from two deep bites to his shoulder and neck, but already it is slowing.
There is no blood in his mouth. His mouth tastes of ashes and decay.
"I'll drive," he agrees. Very agreeable boy, Erich. "Do you -- uh. Need a shoulder to lean on?"
Éva"Please."
Her voice is tight from the pain, but beyond the mild, natural strain there are few signs. She swallows them. Maneuvers herself somewhat awkwardly as she pulls her keys from her right pocket and hands them to him and then - one arm draped around his hulking shoulders - hobbles with him toward the car.
--
She is a tall woman, but still, he will have to put the seat back once she is safely deposited in the passenger's seat and he has taken the driver's side. While they drive she pulls out her phone to call the Sept.
They will be met in the parking garage, underground though not so deep underground as the pit against which they are there to guard - the city and the world from whatever lies on the other side. A small pack ready to return to the apartment block with Erich, to clean up.
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