|as sure as night is dark & day is light|

[zooka]

"Oh, I will absolutely get into trouble for not going to training today," Lennon informed him bluntly. "The next time I do go he's probably going to want to, I don't know, train with daggers or something and he's going to stab me in the neck." That was a dark joke to make, but he really did tend to take things out on her.

"I'd be lying if I said it hasn't made me better over the years, but... I feel like all I do is get the shit kicked out of me, day and night."

She took a sip of her own concoction. Gracie kind of made it up for Lennon as she went. Today was some kind of dirty chai, she was pretty sure, with some flavor to it. Lennon would never complain. She didn't mind sweet coffee anyway.

"I'm weirdly excited to spend a day in some dusty archive room with you. Somehow, I still don't think it will be boring but.. it'll be a nice change of pace." She gave him a small, sincere smile. She wasn't usually this open with people, but... well, they'd already crossed a lot of boundaries, so... might as well.

 

[manatee]

“Well, at least that’ll get you off my back,” he teased, bumping his leg into hers as he eyed her over the rim of his mug. As much as every single inch of being inside of him was telling him to get rid of her, he knew that was going to be almost impossible at this point. There was no way that he was going to be able to get rid of her. There was something about Lennon. And the dumb part of him wondered if she was feeling the same way. Clearly a part of her was, she was right here again.

At her comment of being in the room alone with him, Cohen laughed, before composing himself and giving her a seductive glance. “Oh is that a turn on of yours? Dusty rooms?” He was joking obviously, or maybe he really wasn’t. Leaning into her, he took in the way the smell of her blood mixed with the smell of her shampoo and just the smell of….her. It was intoxicating, it was hypnotizing. It was going to get him killed. He let his lips brush against her lips before he whispered. “Have you ever made love in an old archive room?”

When he pulled back, he raised his eyebrows at her before looking around the cafe like nothing was going on. He wondered if that was too bold of a move in front of her friend, but then he didn’t really care. Being with Lennon made him feel as if they were the only two things that existed. Everything sort of faded away when he was around her. Cohen wouldn’t have minded if they would have gone back down to their apartment building and locked themselves away for the rest of the day.

“So this training thing,” he started, trying to change the subject back before he got too involved in thinking of other things that kept them off track. “I’d never be allowed to go?” Being around Devin might be risky, but it would at least give him more insight into what the people who were protecting this town knew.

 

[zooka]

Lennon's eyes closed when his lips brushed against hers, her smile remaining until he pulled away. When she opened her eyes at him, however, she gave him one of those flat looks.

"Make love?" she echoed. "What are you, a hundred years old?" She chuckled lightly.

She was teasing, too. He was still thinking about that even after the time they spent together last night and this morning. It would seem he rather enjoyed himself. Her tongue moved across her lips to capture a bit of the lingering sweetness there from their coffee, but she focused on his other question soon after.

"Well, if you know about vamps, he might let you train. Have you ever trained before? I mean, you move around a lot, you know about things... it would add up that you're some kind of hunter. Are you?" She took another drink of her coffee while she watched him. There was still a definite air of mystery around him and she felt like she probably should have learned a little more about him before sleeping with him. Twice. But. There was no time like the present, right?

 

[manatee]

Her comment, meant to be funny, stilled him for a moment. He knew that she was joking, but it still sent a bit of fear into him. She was laughing soon after, and he joined in with her - knowing now that she was just in it for the teasing. It was nice, sitting with her like this, pretending that everything was just normal. It felt so nice just to feel like a normal man for once. Cohen knew that he was here to find out some information, to figure out some things, but a little bit of just being normal wasn’t going to hurt anyone.

Training with Devin wasn’t something he was really interested in. He didn’t want any sort of questioning or scrutiny from the man. It was just added trouble, or hassle, and honestly it was putting himself in more danger than it was worth. It was nice, to look interested, to look like all he wanted was to make sure that the town was safe from whatever monster had attacked them last night. Honestly, Cohen didn’t mind killing off a few of his own, especially if they were just mindlessly eating, but he couldn’t exactly say that to Lennon.

“Yeah, some kind,” he mused, taking another sip of coffee for a moment to slow his response. “I wouldn’t say hunter,” he began, running a hand through his hair before he looked back to her. Well, it technically wasn’t a lie. “But the family I grew up with, they’d always just know about that sort of thing. “ Because they were vampires. “I definitely have encountered a thing or too in my moving around.”

Well, none of what he said was a lie.

 

[zooka]

Lennon was, truthfully, a little frustrated by Cohen's vague answers. She'd been pretty forthcoming with him. Entirely, in fact, but... then again, that was probably kind of stupid. Maybe he was just the smarter out of the two of them.

Regardless, she could take a hint as far as not asking him anything else. She might find out anyway, right? They were going to go look stuff up together.

"Come on, let's head over to city hall," she told him. She gave Gracie a wave goodbye and got a very enthusiastic one in return along with some kind of motions that were not suited for public regarding what Grace assumed the two of them were off to go do. Lennon put a hand on Cohen's shoulder to make sure he was facing forward and leaving the coffee shop.

They only had to walk across the street to get to the city hall, so Lennon led them over and inside. They received some looks, but no one said anything to them until they reached the rotund security guard near the elevator.

"Hey, Benny," Lennon said.

"You've got company today," he said in lieu of a greeting. He was a rosy-cheeked fellow and pretty friendly to Lennon, at least if only in contrast to the others who mostly just ignored her or gave her slightly dirty looks. She got plenty of those among the older generation, though they'd never say anything. They knew she had something to do with Devin and his group and that they were important around here in ways they didn't want to think about so they kept their opinions of her clothes and her tattoos to themselves.

"Yep," Lennon said simply. He was swiping a card for them and, when it opened, he held out a hand to gesture them inside.

"Don't work too hard," he said. He didn't know what they were researching, but Lennon did have to come here every once and a while if the vampire she fought ended up being an old one.

 

[manatee]

The city hall was still nestled where it had been when he’d first lived here, and it looked exactly the same from the outside. There was some comfort to find in this for Cohen, something about things staying the same for as long as he had. It was nice to know that people still appreciated the buildings, the history of it all. It made him wonder if his house was still standing, that grand victorian mansion situated back from what used to be a dirt road, sprawling fields of trees and grass separating his family and he from the town.

Cohen offered up a smile to the security guard and followed in behind Lennon. It was easier if he just kept a low profile, just kept himself and stayed quiet. There was no point in causing a scene or even really making himself known to people. When he made himself known to people, the more people really saw him, and then the more people would become suspicious of his every move. Cohen needed to stay under the radar as much as possible, and he’d already screwed that up with Lennon. And even he was too much of a gentleman to back out of that now.

Once they were past the security guard, Cohen looked over to Lennon in amazement. “So they just let you in here whenever? They know about,” he paused for a moment, waving his hand absently as they walked. “You know.” Everything was growing much more interesting. What sort of knowledge did the people of the town know? Cohen figured a majority of them didn’t know anything, because there would have been mass amounts of panic, but there were certainly a decent amount who knew something. That shocked him. And also let a slow sense of fear crawl across the skin of his neck. This town was more dangerous than he had ever imagined.

Following Lennon down the marbled hall, Cohen looked around for anyone watching them curiously. Any open office they’d walked past, no one even gave them a second glance. Some people even gave Lennon a knowing wave. “How often does this kind of thing happen around here?” There was clearly something going on besides his stroke of bad luck, a vampire passing through the town. He had had his suspicions on that though, from the very beginning. Something was going on in this town that was attracting vampires, like a moth to a flame.

And look at him now, he was one of them, drawn back in because he wanted to take care of some business that really wasn’t going to change anything. Killing the woman who turned him wasn’t going to turn him back.

 

[zooka]

Lennon looked up at him, giving him a smile that said now he was asking the right questions. Yes, this kind of thing happened a lot. Yes, people knew something. But it was more complicated than that.

"They let me roam free because Devin vouched for me and his family helped found this town. And now that they know I'm helping him, they want me to know as much as I can so that they don't have to know as much. Ignorance is bliss, right? People here want to keep living a normal, petty, small-town life. They have since the beginning. This place? It's been fucked up for a while."

They were well into the archive basement by now so she could speak pretty openly.

"The vampires here aren't your normal vampires. Not all of them, at least. Of course, some are still made the old-fashioned way, but a lot of them are bodies that have been dead for a while. There's some kind of... magic or curse on the soil here is my best guess. Reforms bodies, wakes them up as vampires. However long they've been dead seems to determine how... feral they are. I think if they were left alone long enough they might regain some cognizance, but it's hard to say. I try not to let them live that long. I mean, I get it, if I was dead a hundred years, I'd probably be a little crazy when I woke up, but I can't really spare much empathy. They will eat everything in sight."

She shrugged. It was probably weird, even by his standards. He might know a few things about the vampire world, but this broke all those rules.

"That's why I'm down here sometimes. Have to look up older records."

 

[manatee]

Cohen listened to Lennon as they walked, and while he knew she was killing his kind, he got it. He understood that he was the exception, not the rule. He found that the majority of people who got turned into vampires didn’t get set up with someone who could explain to them how to survive without killing. It had taken him a very long time to find someone to help him. Cohen considered himself one of the lucky ones. There was a huge part of him that wished he could explain to Lennon and tell her everything. He could show her that clearly she had spent time with him and he hadn’t tried to drink her blood or kill her. It was too risky though, he knew that before he even finished explaining she’d be turning around and trying to stab a stake through his heart. He couldn’t exactly have that. Maybe after all of this was over and he finally had revenge on the woman who’d turned him.

She was going on about how the vampires here were different, and Cohen stilled for a moment. “Wait, what?” If that was true, that meant it was all just a waiting game to see if any person was going to wake up in a few days, ready for blood. The thought was terrifying, even to him, that people were truly being turned without any knowledge of it. They definitely didn’t have any guidance from another vampire, especially if it was the ground that was turning him. “How did you figure that one out?” It was a genuine question, one that he truly wanted to know the answer to - as Cohen - not as a vampire. He wondered if that had been going on when he’d been alive.

They entered the records room, and Cohen decided it best if he stuck at her side. Going off on his own would probably be a bit suspicious, and he also could monitor what she was seeing. He didn’t know how far back these documents went or how far back she was planning on looking, but he didn’t need her to find anything about him or his family - if there even was anything.

“So what are we looking for exactly,” he whispered, then he shook his head and laughed. “I don’t know why I’m whispering, it just feels like something one does when they’re in an old records room.”

 

[zooka]

"That's libraries, Cohen," Lennon informed him in the same, hushed tone, but then she smirked at him. She was just teasing. She liked to do that. He brought out a much more playful side to her than had existed in quite awhile. Lennon enjoyed connecting with people, obviously. She spent a majority of her time around orphaned soldiers with a serious chip on their shoulder, her trainer who put it there, or undead ferals trying to kill her in a graveyard. When she had the opportunity to actually... be a person? Around other people? Well, she took it.

"We're looking up some stuff about your family, right?" she asked. "Harroway. It shouldn't be too difficult."

She set to looking around, meanwhile, taking the time to get back to his other question.

"Well, I see it happen every night," she confessed. "People turning, some from new graves, some from old. There are still some legitimate turnings around here, too, don't get me wrong. With this many vamps, it's bound to happen, but this added a whole new thing on top of it. I have some theories about it, but... I don't know. I don't know if I ever will. I mainly just get to deal with the symptoms, I don't really have time to... figure out what the problem is."

Devin worked on that, she was pretty sure. He just hadn't been too successful yet.

 

[manatee]

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“Oh right,” he whispered back, grinning back at her. He knew though, that he had to somewhat focus here. He had to make sure that whatever information that they found on his family that none of it was enough of a dead giveaway. Cohen believed it nearly impossible that there would be a picture of him, but there was always that chance, and he highly doubted that someone as knowledgeable as Lennon would believe that genetics were really that strong. He couldn’t give himself away, mainly because as much as he had lived, he did want to keep on living.

“That’s sick,” he muttered, trying not to think about how it would feel, literally raising from the dead. He couldn’t even begin to understand the sheer panic, the complete chaos that was caused in a human. It made sense now, the amount of attacks that were happening here. These people didn’t have a clue what was happening to them. It made Cohen feel a lot better about how he’d been turned, even though he still held onto that bitterness.

There was no telling how this had started happening, what was causing the soil to bring the dead to...sort of life. Cohen had never heard anything like that before in all of his life, and that was a very long time. He studied Lennon for a moment, watching her dig through files. He wondered just how much of her life had been taken up by this sick obsession, this need to kill vampires. Had she ever had time to just be normal? It made him sad, a part of him wishing he could be that normal for her. Cohen knew though, he knew that was an impossible thing. He was the furthest from normal.

Finally he set to work as well, opening one of the filing cabinets behind her and sorting through the papers. There were a ton of older documents, but Cohen was beginning to think that anything from the 1800s was long, long gone. “Any luck,” he questioned after a bit, looking over his shoulder at her. She was used to doing this, maybe she’d found something before he had.[/DIV]

 

[zooka]

Things were quiet for a bit while they searched, though there wasn't exactly a lot of places to look. Things were alphabetized here, so once they made it through the "H" cabinet, they were shit out of luck. She did look in a couple of other places within the letter, however. As he had guessed, she had done this before. She knew a few things about looking up old names. Sometimes, if they were old enough, they were still in their more "original form" but that didn't seem to be what was happening here.

"No luck," she confirmed, but she closed the drawer that she was looking in and turned her silvery gaze up to him.

"But I know of one more place we can look." She had that small smirk on her lips. He didn't think she'd give up that easy, did he? No, she had plenty of resources in this town.

"It involves a super fun trip to the public library."

After that, Lennon was leading him on another little adventure. The library, being another public service building, was only about a block over, so she walked with him to the old brick building. It had probably been there nearly as long as the town itself and the collection inside showed it. The librarian took quite a bit of pride in that, too, because his family had apparently been among the founders of the town. Most of the founders still lived there in big houses, territorial and stubborn. It was part of the reason families stuck around here. Like there was something special about it that they wanted to stay for.

It was special alright. Just special in a way that meant they should all pack up and run.

"Hey, Lennon!" There was a male around their age behind the front counter. Behind him were books to be sorted and returned and he seemed to be working on it, but when door opened and set off a little twinkling bell, he turned and his face lit up. "Back for another history lesson?" It actually took him a few seconds to notice that she wasn't alone because most of his focus was on her. "Oh, uh... you brought a friend!" He tried to sound excited again.

"This is Cohen. We're looking some things up about his family."

The male had been looking at Cohen with a bit of a narrowed gaze, like he was trying to remember something, but he snapped back to reality. "I'm Anthony," he said, holding out his hand for Cohen to shake. "What's your family's name? I'll try to help you out."

"Harroway?"

Something dawned on Anthony at that point. "Right!" he said, snapping his fingers. "I knew I recognized you. Come look," he said. While he walked them over, he prattled on about the origin of the name, Harroway. Something about how it alluded to a road that went past a place where heathens gathered.

"He is a heathen," Lennon teased.

Soon enough, they arrived in front of a glass case with plenty of pretty well-preserved photos.

 

[manatee]

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“So now we whisper,” he joked as they made their way to the library. They hadn’t had any luck at the courthouse, and Lennon had told him that she knew of somewhere else they could look. Honestly, Cohen had felt a little relieved, because that meant he hadn’t had to make up excuses for anything else that they might have stumbled upon. His biggest fear was her finding a picture, he was fairly certain that his explanation of genetics being wild wouldn’t work - those pictures of him would be nearly two hundred years old.

Cohen shook the hand of the man working at the library, offering him a friendly smile. “Nice to meet you,” he responded, watching the way he really focused most of his attention on Lennon. This wasn’t too shocking though, he totally got it. He felt the same way, and he’d only just met her. He had a feeling that she had known this guy for a bit. Lennon was certainly beautiful, but there was also something else about her, something that he could tell drew people in.

The man was back to studying him, and he felt himself grow slightly uncomfortable, but brushed it off as paranoia. Coming back to his hometown was probably a terrible idea, but he had wanted to know answers, as well as get revenge - if the woman who turned him was still around. Time wasn’t a factor, as she had been a vampire, but he didn’t know if she’d stayed or if she had left like he was. But now that they were walking towards something and the librarian was saying he recognized him and Cohen knew that this wasn’t going to end very well. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach as they arrived at the glass display case, and Cohen’s eyes scanned the case quickly, searching for what he knew was waiting.

And there, to the left on the middle shelf, was his face. The only saving grace that he had was that pictures during that time were terrible, so he looked slightly different - if only from the development of the photograph. There was no way Cohen could steal this, it was locked up behind a piece of class, so instead he squatted slightly, trying to make himself look as normal and as shocked as he could. “This is weird,” he stated quietly, glancing up at Lennon before he pointed out the picture of himself. Maybe she’d believe it. Maybe. But he knew that she knew entire too much about the things going on around here.[/DIV]

 

[zooka]

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Lennon had built up several years of instincts around these things. She knew that if she saw a picture of a person from two hundred years ago and then someone standing right next to her looked exactly like that, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that they were just.. the same person.

However, that would mean Cohen was a vampire, and Lennon was quite certain that he was not.

For... a plethora of good reasons. She'd seen him out in the daylight, right? She'd heard of a couple workarounds for that but she'd never seen one, so maybe that wasn't the case.

And she had slept with him, so she was just really hoping that he might have mentioned if he was dead or alive before engaging in certain activities with her.

And she'd been alone with him... several times now and he hadn't done anything. She'd bled around him and nothing had happened...

No, Cohen was fine.

"I'll say! Look, that's my great, great, great, however many greats, grandpa right there," Anthony said, pointing to a picture of his own family member. To be fair, they also looked quite alike. "It's nice to meet someone else from one of the founding families!"

Anthony seemed pretty legitimately excited about this, so Lennon cracked a smile. "I didn't know I was walking around with a celebrity all day," she teased.

"Hey, you don't think I'm a celebrity," Anthony pointed out.
[/DIV]

 

[manatee]

[Class=textMain] margin:auto; max-width: 650px; text-align: left; line-height:155%; [/class] [DIV class=textMain]

Staring into his own eyes was unsettling, knowing just how much time had passed from that picture to currently. His only saving grace was the obvious tattoos now, and the edge that he currently had did make him look a bit different.Cohen had come back to town knowing this kind of thing could happen, but thankfully one of the pictures near his own was a man that looked very, very similar to Anthony. He could feel himself relaxing, feel himself thinking that he had possibly avoided some sort of confrontation for today.

Cohen was stuck between deciding if he wanted to act as if he knew that he was from a founding family or go with the thought that he had no clue. He figured that they were both extreme, and he knew that Lennon might have questions with both, and so he decided that maybe a middle ground was a safe territory and was the safest place for him to stay. Of course he would have the luck of quite literally finding himself with a literal vampire hunter. It was just his luck, and now he couldn’t exactly distance himself from her. And honestly, Cohen wasn’t too sure that he wanted to just stop talking to her altogether. There was certainly something between them, something that kept him unusually drawn to her.

Lennon was joking about him being a celebrity, and Cohen grinned, nudging her with his shoulder as he straightened himself back to a standing position. Running a hand through his hair, he looked down to Lennon, shrugging slightly. “I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t want to have to deal with all of the side effects of fame,” he teased, looking over to Anthony as the other man spoke.

“It’s only because I’m new,” he teased, looking back towards the other pictures in the display case for a moment before he turned back to Lennon. There was a bit of guilt that was setting in, the fact that he hadn’t been honest with her from the start was setting in. There was not really a way to do it though, Cohen wasn’t just in the habit of walking around and mentioning that he was a vampire when he first met people. Most people would think he was insane, and then there were the people like Lennon who knew the truth and well, he would have ended up in a very bad predicament.[/DIV]

 

[zooka]

[Class=textMain] margin:auto; max-width: 650px; text-align: left; line-height:155%; [/class] [DIV class=textMain]
Anthony helped them out a bit more, seeing if there was anything specific that Cohen wanted him to look into. Anthony didn't mind doing research, obviously. He would probably do it anyway.

"I'll get you hooked up with a library card," he offered.

Lennon had to roll her eyes, though she was smiling. "Who has a library card anymore?"

"Literally everyone who uses a library," Anthony pointed out.

"So no one?" Lennon had a smug smirk on for her teasing. She was in a good mood that day, that was for sure. That was also about to change.

After they had left, she was proposing a bit of lunch, though it was not that much later when Anthony gave her a call. "Anthony, I'm not getting a library card," she answered immediately, though that probably wasn't what he was calling about. Probably.

"No, Lennon, listen. I have to tell you something. About Cohen. Are you still with him?" Anthony asked. Lennon glanced up to Cohen for a second.

"Yes?" she answered, a bit curious now.

"You should leave, Lennon. I can't tell you right now, but -" He launched into a bit where he was pretty much begging her to return to the library but be subtle about it and he seemed a bit urgent so Lennon thought that maybe she should indulge him. He was also insistent that she came back alone. She rolled her eyes a bit, though she did have to stop by the police station anyway with the previous night's report and she figured she shouldn't drag Cohen along to that.

"Let's, uh, take a raincheck on lunch. I need to get my report to the station about last night," she told Cohen, but she did promise to meet up with him later if he wanted. "I won't show up bloody on your doorstep tonight. Promise. Probably." With Lennon, who knew?

After that, she circled back to the library to have a bombshell dropped on her. She didn't really believe it. Or she didn't want to. Anthony was pointing out the similarity in the photos and the fact that it was the same name. Lennon reminded him that it wasn't possible because they were in the daylight. He had looked into that, too. Daylight rings. Cohen had a ring, too. It couldn't all be a coincidence, but... Lennon just still didn't really believe him and asked Anthony to drop it.

However, some of the seeds of suspicion had been sown and she didn't end up meeting up with Cohen again and decided to just go do her patrol and try to clear her mind a bit. There was really no way he was... what Anthony was saying.
[/DIV]