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 Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 6:12 am
((Sorry, I'm back! I was at Animazement, the con here in Raleigh! *cuddles her new Sephiroth*))
Lucretia came back to an empty clinic. She must have missed the vampire and Horatio. It was almost a relief, as she hadn't really wanted to deal with any more Inhumans. Her next thought was of the blood supply in her fridge. She always kept very close tabs on it, as 'spare' blood was hard to come by. Most humans didn't want to donate, thanks to mandantory Feedings, or couldn't, also thanks to the Feedings. She herself donated as often as she could, though her type, A, wasn't as useful as type O...
Type O...
There was one unit missing. A perfectly good unit of O Positive, now gone. She was going to kill someone. She was going to drain Horatio dry.
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Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 2:01 pm
"Well," Spooky paused to tap her cigarette against the edge of an ashtray and grinned. "That suits me perfectly well, honestly. I was wondering... but if people have no idea, it is certainly safe enough," Spooky said with a shrug, and stretched lazily, like a cat napping in a spot of sunlight. Then she frowned, and took a drag of her cigarette while shaking her head.
"But it certainly sounds rather strange, what with being this close..." Shaking her head again, Spooky stopped herself from thinking out loud. Blabbing to the bartender was never a good idea; you never knew who would pay him off for information, and what information he would be paid off to reveal. better to keep any musings private, and investigate as she would, alone.
Dee had taken a detour back to her own hired apartment for a quick bite and an irritated glance at the calender; next full moon, she was going to have to spend out in the wild. The apartment was nowhere large enough for her full beast form, unfortunately. She'd probably not even be able to breathe without sending something crashing to the ground. On top of that, she wasn't sure any level above the ground one in any of the houses in Cascade were sturdy enough to take the weight of that form...
Dee shook her head and left, stalking over to the clinic, which she had studiously avoided since it was the human (only, really, what with Cascade simply not having enough of an "inhuman" population to justify a clinic for them) clinic and she hadn't wanted to stir up trouble so soon in her stay. But if Lucretia had invited her herself, Dee saw no problem.
Dee had to pause outside the door she'd opened to supress her stupid grin, rather sure the too-wide smile wouldn't do anything for the doctor's calm. People were so nervous every time a known werewolf smiled at them with too much teeth...
"Hey, doc. Looking a bit bloodthirsty, are we? Not keeping secrets?" Dee called from inside the door, a might too cheerfully perhaps, as she caught sight of the side of Lucretia's face, and her expression was certainly not charitable. Somebody had been lifting valuable plasma, it seemed.
"So," Ash twirled the glass in his hands as he glanced up at the pale vampire seated in front of him with a smile. "You understand what this whole assignment would be about?" He wasn't exactly sure while this rather thin and frail-looking vampire had been chosen for his task, but Ash was sure Stephen was effective and resourceful, otherwise he wouldn't have been sent. After all, the secrets kept by the demons were the issues of the whole of vampire-kind.
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Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 2:47 pm
Ruka nodded, and then bowed low, so much so that a good portion of her hair was touching the floor. "Thank you very much!"she said, obviously feeling extreemly grateful to him.
After he headed back downstairs, she wandered around the rooms once more. The larger had a small, dusty table with two old chairs in it, an elderly coat stand, and two book cases that looked like they would need a little help before they could support anything. Also, there was a counter with a sink along the wall, and a slightly cracked and very dusty mirror next to it. It really suprised her how much this place actually looked like an appartment would.
She looked down at the floor, also coated in dust, save for where their feet had landed clearing it away.
Ruka made her way over to the coat stand, and took off her cloak to hang it up. Her outfit beneath it looked like something a gothic doll would wear...She hated it. She caught sight of her fogged over reflection in the mirror, and immediately looked away.
Unfortunately, it was all she had...Her sire family for some reason seemed to think she might have actually been a doll, and dressed her accordingly. Fortunately, it was getting a bit ragged. With any luck, she could go out and buy something less...Lacy.
"No time to worry about that now, though..."She said to no one in particular. She slipped off her shoes, and placed them near the stand, then removing her bag and the silver rapier that had been hidden beneath the cloak and putting them on the metal structure as well.
She made her way back over to the counter, and started to rummage through its cabnets until she found some old dish rags. She took them out, and brought them over to the sink. As she turned the water on, at first it ran slightly reddish from rusty disuse, but eventually it ran clear and cold.
The vampire wet the rags, and then began running them back and forth accross the floor, clearing the dust away quite quickly, before she began dusting off the furniture. In no time at all, the larger room looked worlds better, save for the book cases which she couldn't really help until she got her hands on some nails and a hammer.
Once the larger of the two was finished, Ruka turned her attention to the smaller room. Aside from another book case, some shelves, and a small table that should have gone next to a bed, the room was baren. There was an empty space that seemed rather like there should have been a bed, but it was absent. The windows still bore drapes, despite their borded up state. In here was the old dumbwaiter that Horatio had borded up. Also, there was a small closet to the oneside of the room.
She looked at the dust-laiden room, and thought to herself 'one down, one to go!' With that, she set to cleaning again. If she was going to be staying here, the least she could do was keep it clean.
((I felt like doing a cleaning sequence.... sweatdrop ))
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Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 3:46 pm
Entering his store once more, Horatio immediatly got to work. There was a lot to be done if this foolhardy gesture of his wasn't to land him in a lot of trouble both economically and (he thought with a twinge of regret) with Cascade's doctor. She was a good woman. He had been acting rash, on an impulse, but, he had to admit with grim satisfaction, he was not yet wishing he hadn't.
He set a SALE-- SELECTED GOODS 25% OFF! sign in one of the windows next to the front door. He had been exaggerating slightly to Ruka when he spoke of his position in Cascade. While he would hardly go bankrupt over inviting her to stay, he did need to maintain a certain amount of profit and a certain percentage of the population needed to continue to do most of their shopping at his store. He hoped this would intice them to continue over that first rocky period, at least. He had enough of a surplus that he could take the slight dip in profit.
Horatio then, walking about the shop and setting little orange tags next to specific goods to designate them as the ones for the sale, started thinking on the next problem. He had only a few minutes to prepare for it, but fortunately Ruka was upstairs and out of the way; he didn't want to get her involved in what had been his doing.
He glanced at the calender behind the counter and did some unnecessary math: he already knew the answer. Horatio muttered a curse under his breath and gave a resigned sigh. So be it. He wasn't yet so weak that he would be in danger. Hopefully this would be enough to soothe Lucretia's nerves. Horatio entered his storeroom, flipping on the light switch and locking the door behind him. There were a few medical supplies scattered in with the items for sale: Lucretia had been having him hold onto what didn't fit in her smaller storage space. Sitting on an extra cot, Jesse lying at his feet, he opened one of the dusty boxes, pulling out a relatively thick plastic bag with a needle and tubing, rubbing alcohal, a bandage, and a cuff. Horatio glanced at his watch. He was really cutting it close now. He quickly rolled up his shirt sleeve, wiped a swath of skin on his arm with the alcohal and cuffed it, closing his eyes briefly as he inserted the needle, letting his blood flow slowly into the bag. The minutes passed slowly as he sat there, the bag on one of the boxes on the floor so that gravity would drain the blood on its own. Horatio felt fortunate that he had gone through this proceedure enough times in the past that he had known how it worked. Of course, those times had been under the florescent lighting of a medical center and it had been someone else who had stuck the needle into his arm. When the bag was full, he removed it, sealed it, and leaned against the back of the cot for several long seconds, the room spinning slightly. Taking away the needle, he pressed the cuff to his skin as he tried to stop the ceiling from swaying. Horatio wrapped a bandage tightly around the cut and pulled his sleeve over it, gingerly sitting upright and then standing, holding tightly to the edge of the cot. Leaving all of the supplies to be disposed of later, he walked carefully back out of the room with the sealed bag of blood and Jesse at his side, fumbling slightly with the lock.
Now, for the more difficult part. All of this was a gamble, of course, but Horatio hoped that he had enough luck still on his side to pull it off. Horatio crossed to his counter, taking a glass bottle of cider off its shelf as he did so, and rummaged around in the drawers underneath it, bending down slowly and gripping his chair hard to keep from falling over as his vision flickered momentarily. He straighted up with a thin packet of papers and, sitting down, began to fill them out. He sped through them with the obvious ease of someone who had had to perform this task many times before and was soon done, save for two lines at the end left blank. All this accomplished, he opened the bottle and took a long drink before picking up his knife and piece of wood and continuing his work.
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 9:32 am
The doctor jumped. She didn't mean to. She knew Dee was coming. But she did anyways.
"Dee!... No, just a little...annoyed," Well, maybe more then that. "I didn't get back soon enough to designate with units they could have. I would of given her an older unit, of a different type. Instead, they took a fairly recent unit of O positive."
Was she babbling? Why the hell would she be babbling? She was nearly 30! But you wouldn't have guessed it, from the way Lucretia felt like she was acting now.
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 12:24 pm
Dee tilted her head, pressing her lips together momentarily to keep from relasing the silly smile that wanted to come with the flood of word from Lucretia.
"I'd offer to donate, since that's actually my blood type, but, while, as anyone knows, werewolf blood isn't contagious other than during the full moon, I'm... a bit of a special case. Executioner, and all that," Dee said with a lopsided grin and a quick shrug.
It wasn't the whole truth, honestly; her being an Executioner had nothing to do with the possible unsuitability of her blood. Rather, it was the result of Mistress' little "experiment" that made Dee rather err on this side of caution when it came to, for example, donating blood. Who knew what demon essence bonded to her, as a werewolf, would do to her blood? She certainly wasn't going to risk anyone, if not her Mistress asked, of course.
"If it's recent, though, shouldn't you have someone in town that donated it?" Dee leaned against the reception counter, curiously looking around and taking it all in as they talked, trying to appear nonchalant in the face of what obviously was an attractive woman she was... uh, attracted to.
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 8:57 pm
Once finished, Ruka took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she admired her work. Both rooms, cleaned from top to bottom...and she herself, coated in dust.
"That was...A lot of dust..."She said, laughing a little to herself. She walked back over to her cloak, and put it back on, before heading carefully downstairs. She didn't want to scare away anyone who might have been nearing the store.
The vampire crept in through the back, as quiet as a mouse, and then knocked on the door frame lightly to get Horatio's attention.
"Um...I was just wondering...Is there maybe somewhere I could wash my clothes...? I was cleaning, and I got them a little..." She stopped mid scentence, and gave him a slightly worried look. "I can smell blood...Are you alright?" It wasn't a lot of blood, obviously, and she didn't know quite where it was comming from, but it certainly was no papercut. She didn't say it in a way that made it sound like she was hungry again, but she sounded genuinely concerned for him.
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 12:19 am
((I'm done with exams! biggrin ))
Horatio looked up, startled. He hadn't expected Ruka to come down again so quickly.
"Try the bathroom upstairs, if you don't mind washing it by hand. There's a washing machine, but it's broken at the moment. I should get it working again in a day or so." This wasn't quite true. The machine was indeed jammed, but it was just something Horatio had not gotten around to seeing to. He would have been able to have it fixed in a matter of minutes. "You can hang your clothes up to dry on the balcony, if you'd like," he added, glancing casually out the windows by the main door. Good: Lucretia wasn't in sight yet.
"I'm fine," he said reassuringly, edging his chair forward so that the bag of blood in his lap was completely hidden from sight under the counter. "I was just doing some cleaning of my own in the back." Well aware that this wouldn't be a satisfactionary answer to Ruka's question, Horatio quickly changed the subject back to her laundry. "There's some detergent under the sink in the bathroom. I've got some soap and shampoo you can use, too," he said, gesturing to where the items sat on their shelf. "If you want anything else, I'll have to take it out of your paycheck; the next shipment isn't scheduled to arrive for another month and I'm starting to run low." He shot a glance at the street outside once more under pretense of brushing wood shavings from his lap. "I'd get started with your laundry now if I was you. The sun's at a nice angle right now for drying it."
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 2:41 pm
"Oh! Um, alright. Thank you,"She said, bowing again. She could tell he seemed rather busy, so she took the items he had gestured to, and with another hurried word of thanks, scurried out of the way.
After going back upstairs, she opened the door to the bathroom.It wasn't huge, but it wasn't exactally small either; certainly big eneough for her needs. There was a small soaking tub that looked like it hadn't been used in a while, and also a shower off on the far end. To the right, there was a rather large sink built into a cabnet.
There was the bottle of detergent Horatio had told her about, right where he said it would be. Ruka filled the sink with warm water, and a dash of detergent, hung up her cloak, and then removed the outer layer of her outfit...It was really the only dirty one after all...She put it into the water and started to scrub it, almost as though she hoped she could just wash it until it dissappeared.
Once finished, she put her cloak back on over the underpart of her dress, and then hung the top part outside to dry, careful not to be hit by any sun on her hands again.
She went back into the bathroom, feeling quite good about how things had transpired today...Someone was being kind...She let out a relieved sigh, and then decided that considering her last was a while ago, it was time for a shower.
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Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 1:25 pm
Lucretia's expression immediately softened into a look of appreciation. It made her appear younger, less worn.
"...Thank you, anyways." If there was one thing Lucretia liked, it was willing donors for her causes. "Blood donation is difficult. You can only donate safely every 52 days. But then there are all sorts of other factors, too. Feedings require more time to recover from, and a person who has been Fed on cannot safely donate for nearly 75 or more days. Whoever donated that unit will still not be ready yet..."Chibi_baka "So," Ash twirled the glass in his hands as he glanced up at the pale vampire seated in front of him with a smile. "You understand what this whole assignment would be about?" He wasn't exactly sure while this rather thin and frail-looking vampire had been chosen for his task, but Ash was sure Stephen was effective and resourceful, otherwise he wouldn't have been sent. After all, the secrets kept by the demons were the issues of the whole of vampire-kind.
"I think so," Stephen replied coyly. "I need to simply hang around Cascade for a while, and keep an eye what Maya's up to there. Why she's interested in a boring little town like that is beyond me." He yawned theatrically, making sure Ash got the point that he wasn't thrilled to have been woken up in the middle of the day.
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Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 3:43 pm
It was a little embarassing that she hadn't know that. Not that she had any sort of medical education, but... she wanted to impress. But at least she'd gotten something like appreciation for her offered willingness, however impossible it was - she didn't want to be responsible for, say, people dying in agony, after all... - for her to donate. Dee stretched out slightly where she was leaning against the counter, a brief, wide smile accompanying her shifting postion in quiet victory over having gotten something positive out of Lucretica.
"You couldn't find it anywhere else?" Dee was farily sure she'd read/heard somewhere that that particular blood type was rare, but even if she came across as stupid in this area, it would keep the pretty doctor talking.
Ash raised an eyebrow and shrugged, sipping on the liquid in his glass as he tilted his head, in agreement or disapproval of Stephen's behaviour was hard to say.
"That is, of course, why I, and my fellow Masters agree with me, want you to 'hang round' in such a 'boring little town' like Cascade," Ash's cool, cultured voice could clearly be heard using the air quotes around part of the words that Stephen had used, and the ice in voice was easily heard.
"And while Marya's the one having asked me to keep out of the town, I believe you wouldn't catch the woman dead in such a town. No, while you're going to keep an eye on the general events of Cascade, of course, it's Marya's operative, Executioner Dee, that you should pay most attention to," Ash paused to raise an eyebrow at the other vampire and titled his glass slightly in Stephen's direction.
"I hope you are ready to move around, and, if needed, tangle with, an Executioner. And in this case an Executioner that is the personal pet of a demon."
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Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2007 2:55 pm
"Therein is a problem itself. My clinic is not the only clinic in existance. There are other doctors out there who need blood for their patients. So there's competition amongst ourselves, too. But we manage to get by. Somehow..." She trailed off, giving Dee a much wamer smile. One part of her mind couldn't believe she was warming up to the Inhuman, and yet, she didn't really mind. In fact, most of her was more intrigued than anything else, an ever-present curious mind rearing up again.
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Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 7:30 am
"Shouldn't there be enough people in Cascade to keep you with a relatively topped up supply of blood?" Dee asked, straightening a bit further under that smile, feeling like preening. Dee knew how may people there lived in Cascade, but she didn't know anything, really, of donating blood, and how much you'd need for all eventualities a town like Cascade could fall into... or how many people would be needed to supply that blood.
At least she didn't really have to do anything in particular while here. She was just supposed to keep a general eye on things... and report when the inhabitants of Cascade started to realize what they sat on.
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:44 pm
Lucretia just sighed, shrugged, and fixed Dee with a small smile. "It's all up to the volunteers," Her heels clicked over the linoleum floor as the doctor turned on a fan to cool the air. She was sweating underneath her labcoat, but she didn't dare take it off. She wasn't sure if her necklace was well hidden enough. A quick glance in the mirror caused Lucretia to adjust her hair clip. Was she...preening? The second she realized this, she immediately turned away from the reflective surface, her cheeks hot. What was wrong with her?
Immediately, she busied herself with arranging some boxes. It was very hot in here, all of a sudden.
"Well, that makes things more interesting," Stephen sat up a little straighter. "Anything else I should know of?"
"No," Ash waved him off. Stephen was clearly dismissed.
"I'll leave at dusk, then," Stephen stood and bowed slightly, enough to show some respect, but not to be even remotely mistaken for groveling. Appearances were always so very important to vampires.
Back in the darkness of his borrowed room, Stephen stretched and yawned again. Awakening him in the day?! Hmmph. At least he had a few hours left to relax and doze. He dropped onto the plush bed, prodding lightly at a second form still resting. "Mmph. Scoot over. And tell your boss to have regular hours, like any decent vampire."
Stephen's bedmate stirred and blinked sleepily. "Tha ********? Mmm... Shaddup and go back to sleep, then..." Light glinted off several earrings as he turned over onto his side opposite from the other vampire. Noisy b***h. Good lay, but whiney as all get.
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:20 pm
Ash frowned down into his glass, throwing back the rest of the blood and placed it on the side table with a harsh clink of crystal against wood. There was only one reason he was so concerned with the stupid little town of Cascade; he didn't like potential enemies at his back or inside his lands. Cascade should be under his control. It wasn't as if he took bad care of anyone inside his reach. Rubbing his pale face (Ash didn't really have any cause for calling Stephen pale, as he himself was such) tiredly, Ash amended that he had taken care of his city well. "Had" being the operative word, and Ash no longer had any idea of how to get back control of the situation.
He'd kill whoever, or whatever, stood in the way for his duty of protecting and taking care of his city; he'd clawed, bitten and torn himself to the position as one of the Masters of the Cities in the new world, and not just for the power, but also because he had a (probably very obvnoxious) "need" to make things right. Of course, "right" by his opinions might not be "right" by anyone else's, but before he'd made his mistake, only those who habitually WANTED something to complain over, or were just rebels against the way things were now had protested in any way.
"I was stupid," Ash muttered, dragging a hand through fine, ember-red straight hair.
"Sstupid? No..." the laughter made the crystal of the glass crack, and then splinter, leaving a perfect, glittering ring of crystal shards on the dark wood of the side table, around the stem of the glass. Ash gasped, back arching as shadow pooled out from folds of his clothes, out of creases and shadows of his skin; winding around, caressing down.
"Merely... no idea of what you were doing... Like any mortal being." The laughter turned into a smoky bass-drawl, reverberating in the wood, concrete and steel in the room, sending the shiver back into Ash. There were fine drops of sweat on Ash's forehead now, and inside his perfectly well-shined, well-made leather shoes, his toes were curling. The red hair, stark and unreal against his pale skin, was starting to plaster against said high, smooth forehead and his cheeks, long having slipped from the velvet ribbon that held it earlier.
"As... a-any mortal being, I make... mistakes," Ash hissed, voice soft and ending on a sibliant note, melding together with the mocking hiss of the bodiless voice. Somehow, Ash still managed to sound coolly reproaching, despite his body shivering ever-so-slightly with barely contained sensation.
"Mistakes, my darling, that will lose you everything you ultimately were hoping to gain." Legion whispered as two twin points of blood bloomed of Ash's pale neck, making him throw his head back, every muscle in his body tensing with the climax. The shadows receded back from whence they had come.
"Oh, I see," Dee tilted her head, fingers tapping against the counter she was leaning on, wanting to do something, but sure it would be too much, too soon. But she'd nursed her little attraction since her second day in Cascade, which was when she'd gotten a glimpse of the doctor, as she was getting lunch.
"When do you close up the clinic for today?" The question slipped out of her mouth like a live mouse, and Dee's hands fisted, fingers digging into her palms hard enough to leave crimson half-moons after them.
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