[North Shore Nights] Chapter Three: Deepening Night.

To Valentine


"Still coming up dry, V-Man. So many of these bastards to sift through. Search is sixty-seven percent done. Still looking." Jimmy says in a sing-song voice, humming along with a radio or mp3 player in the background. "Hey, fuck off! Oh, sorry, Valentine, it's Gordon, he's being an ass." Someone laughs. "Dick."
 
Gavin


Suppressing a sigh, Gavin smiles, if a bit wanly. "So good to hear your confidence in my own humble capabilities, Vicky - truthfully, I should be fine, all going well," he continues, addressing himself once more to Belham and Lucrecia.
 
Valentine


Valentine sighs. "Keep it up, Jimmy. There has to be something. Somebody knows him. Anything else for me?"
 
To Gavin


"One does hope," Belham answers, his posture suddenly rigid.


Victarion glares at you over Belham's rounded shoulders before regaining his smirk. Of all the dead, even Victarion can unnerve his fellows by going through the motions. Humans usually caught on at a base level that a vampire, even one laying on the charm like a Daeva were just wrong. Victarion seems to do that for all his fellow Kindred.
 
To Valentine


"We'reeeee trying, boss man. Djomon's been crackin' the whip at my heels for an hour now trying to get me on that path too. He's got his Hand looking into this as well. Pembrose is very...eh, well, he likes to yell a lot. Good for morale, he always says. Stupid White Russian." Jimmy goes on muttering about banishment from the Kremlin and then something about Family Guy. No idea. "Any who, we're about to hit seventy percent. I'll call you when we hit ninety. Or if we get anything beforehand. Peace, man."


click


Not a second after Jimmy hangs up does the phone begin going off again. Shit. The white face of the phone shouts it out plain, "Sherriff."
 
Valentine


Valentine grimaces and answers the phone again. "Sherriff Musgrave, I presume."
 
To Gavin


"Lucrecia and I are going out tonight to simply get out of our caves." Belham chuckles. "End of the world or not, we cannot stay in here all the time. We grow hungry. Neither of us have really fed since the last Elysium. It would be best, some of our stronger ghouls will be with us. I think nothing of it. Stretching these legs to get the rigor out is a grand thing. That and a bit of snuff."


Lucrecia snorts, hugging him, "Old coot."


God, it's so bizarre to see vampires genuinely in love with one another, even if they are blood bound together. Well, it's been odd since Michael vanished.


The shuffling sounds of papers chime in with Victarion's smooth tones. "I think I'll be heading out to City Hall for my audience with the Prince, actually."


"You know the rules, nephew." Belham mutters.


"That I do." Victarion bows and throws a withering look at you, taking his leave.
 
To Valentine


"Don't. TOUCH. Any of it. Got it!?" The deep guttural bark makes you jump, before the Sherriff talks in his normal tones. "Valentine, get your pale ass and your crew down to the warehouses on Cunningham. I want you here five minutes ago. This seems to be your area of expertise anymore."


click
 
Valentine


"On it." He snaps the phone shut.


"Ladies, gentlemen, and beings of indeterminate gender, I have to go to Cunngingham. Blake, I'd like you to come with. Selene, Ouro, you're welcome to come too. I think something bad's happened."
 
To Valentine and Blake


"I'm always up for trouble." Selene gives the sky a glance and then shakes her head, "Cunningham's out by Conway and the Temple Church, right?"
 
To Valentine, Blake and Ouro


Shouldn't be much of a long walk, Blake and Ourobouros know the path well. The warehouses where the Unaligned are being bid to sleep during the day. Sort of a refugee camp situation, keeping them together to perhaps keep the troublesome nomads safe in these dark times.
 
Valentine


Valentine cocks an eyebrow. "The safehouses? Oh, this can't be good..."


Valentine leads the way in to the warehouse area, looking for Musgrave.
 
Gavin


Raising an eyebrow at Victarion's departing back, Gavin ponders their exchange absently, judging it impolite to pry...but still...


"I couldn't agree more - it does one good to get out and about," he says quickly. "That's the only reason I'm out tonight, really, as I was just saying to Lucrecia earlier."
 
To Gavin


"I'd stay well away from straying north of St. John's at least. Heading toward the station should only be done in a taxi, even for us. They say it's deadly serious further north than that. Whatever walks the hills north of the city and the howlers are out and about more and more. Killing, feeding, and more killing." Belham shakes his head. "What a world."
 
Garrison Blake


"Indeed." Blake's right hand slowly opens and closes into a fist. "So far, the...events have been outdoors. Primarily. If they have now invaded our havens...as you say, Valentine. This cannot bode well. Let's see the extent of the horror."
 
To Ourobouros, Blake, and Valentine


The walk is quiet, about twenty minutes to wend your way down Park and onto Cunningham.


Dead silence is the only thing that greets you as the group tramps up the block approaching the warehouses. Old buildings, hailing back to the fifties. Long since shut down and boarded up. Only a few roll doors allow entry inside and those are ‘blocked’ off by old chains with wooden “Do Not Enter†signs. Pair of SUVs is parked outside, the Sherriff’s men waiting along with a few of the Prince’s personal security detail.


They’re thralls mainly, but tougher than coffin nails and just as ugly, wearing their black SWAT gear. M4s and mini 14s, matte black and loaded, slung over their shoulders or at the ready.


The tension couldn’t be thicker. Each of them is quiet. The Sherriff is even smoking a cigarette. That alone boggles many a mind here. His large frame is half-hidden in the shadows of the two-story, like a giant wading out a dream and into reality. He’ll catch sight of you and simply waits.


“I ain’t seen shit like this in my eighty years dead.†The Sherriff tosses the cigarette away, careless, making his Deputy shriek as it spins in the air toward him. “Pussy.†With a dip and a blur of motion, the Sherriff rips the door of the warehouse open, nearly breaking the pulleys that keep the roll top in check. He’s agitated. Nervous. In the light filtering through the holes in the tin roof, you can see beads of dark sweat on his bald pate.


It’s getting darker inside. Selene draws breath into her old lungs audibly. “What…is that smell?†She coughs. “God, glad I gave up breathing long ago. Uncanny valley is better than this.â€


“You don’t know the half of it, Red Angel.†Tief, one of the Sherriff’s men mutters. “Someone hit the powerbox!â€


Bzzt-clang! Harsh sodium lights zap on overhead, creating a yellow mist. The dust filtering through the lights. And all around you can see the cots laid out for individual vampires, standard procedure. Each separated by plenty of space and sheets to give privacy. Some have little personal touches, painted pictures on the sheets, backpacks, shoes, extra clothes, or a pair of sunglasses.


Spatters of congealing blood cover the floor like something Jackson Pollock would do in his spare time.


Several of the little bolthole sleeping areas are torn to shreds, strands of sheets strewn about like bloody bandages, springs from the old cots here and there, a cast off shoe sits right on top of a cot, with a visible pair of bones sticking out with a rotting foot inside. A cut off hand, rotting and ashy lies off to the right. The blood isn’t all over the huge floor, but visible trails of it lead off to a corner where the lights flicker and the shadows grow deep.


“This ain’t what you need to see.†Musgrave says, motioning to the destruction. He walks toward the shadows. A few of the Prince’s guard and the Sherriff’s men advance with flashlights and one of the thralls walks away from you all with a magnesium flare in hand. He strikes it and tosses it into the shadows.


“Good God.†Selene whispers.


By the count of the cots, there were probably some thirty or so Unaligned who slept here. Their bodies now adorn this forgotten corner of the warehouse floor heaped in a pile. Blood and other unseemly fluids leak from the pile of corpses in little rivers that flow into a large pool in one of the lower loading docks. The feet and hands have all been cut off. Piles of rotting and fragile ashen bones have been arranged in neat little rows and piles by something clearly insane. Smallest hands to largest with largest feet to smallest. The rows form triangles.


Then there are the heads. The pyramidal stack of matte gray skulls comes waist high on Musgrave, staring out with empty shadows flickering and crawling in their eye-sockets. Dumb mouths lay open, teeth missing, some jaws broken. A small tooth falls out of the capstone skull bouncing off the one below it and skittering across the floor, landing at Blake’s foot.


No one speaks.
 
Valentine


It's hideous. it's enormous. It's beyond anything Valentine had imagined. There's only one thing to say at a time like this.


"Jesus H. tap-dancing Christ on a bike!"
 
Valentine


Valentine winces slightly, but otherwise keeps a straight face.


"So. Any evidence as to what did this?"
 
To Valentine


"None, really. But we can take a damn good guess. They were all cut up, so this is either your old boyfriend's work or the other one. Only thing I can think of that can take on a warehouse full of Kindred." Musgrave mutters, looking at the flare's brilliance.
 
Valentine


Valentine grimaces. "Why here, though? Why now? Unless.... oh fuck!"


Valentine pulls his cellphone, dialling Jimmy as rapidly as possible.
 
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