James Hutchins (0roborus) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2020-12-14 19:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | james hutchins, tal rainey |
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Who: Tal, NPC Vampire, James
What: Tal Encounters a Vampire in a ‘77 Ford Granada
Where: Highway 95 and Hutchins Auto, Searchlight, NV
When: Night
Ratings/Warnings: Reference to Violence
It wasn’t uncommon for someone to have car trouble and pull off the road. Tal had seen it and helped a few of those travelers in the last few years. He was in his truck returning from Las Vegas to go back to his almost permanent residence at the El Rey when he saw a dark maroon 1977 Ford Granada pulled off the side of the road with it’s hazard lights on. There was someone leaning against the driver’s side door. And the hood was propped up.
This time Tal pulled his truck behind the car and hopped out. But it wasn’t a simple motorist needing assistance. As the burly mechanic bent over the engine, the motorist attacked - grabbing Tal and sinking their teeth into his shoulder so quickly he didn’t know what was going on until he felt the stinging pain of the vampire’s bite and their hand gripping neck and left arm.
“Shhitt,” he exclaimed and twisted in effort to get the blood-sucker off of him. But he was latched on. Then Tal’s foot slipped, bringing him down to a knee before he growled and used his telekinesis - flinging the vampire off of him and across the highway. Then the mechanic ran back to his truck and raced into Searchlight as blood continued to drip from the ragged twin wounds.
Reaching the auto shop, Tal turned off his truck and ran to a door. Unlocking it, he got inside and locked the door behind him. He grabbed a shop towel as he slipped into the work bays and pressed it to his shoulder.
Then a wrench fell from a shelf and Tal stopped. Paranoid, he used his mind to keep the doors shut and locked. Who knew if the vampire followed.
He breathed, feeling light-headed as he held the doors closed and the shock of the bite remained. Then Tal pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped James’ name.
The phone vibrated on his coffee table. James saw the lit screen through a beer bottle that he picked up to read the display. ‘Tal Rainey’. He wasn’t expecting a call from the mechanic that late at night. James got up and looked out the blinds in the direction of the shop. “Hey,” he said. “Everything alright?” The back of the building looked quiet and secure, a security light not picking up any movement in the lot. His mouth still tasted like the IPA he’d been using to chase down a late dinner.
James let go of the blinds and turned to look around his living room. He spotted the keys and picked them up, thinking he’d go outside to talk and avoid waking up Celeste, who had crashed ahead of him. The front door eased open and shut. Outside, it was cold enough to see his breath at the top of the steps.
At first Tal could only breathe into his phone as he blinked, his eyes looking out towards the parking lot, the street, and his truck. Then he gulped as he felt his head start to hurt. “No, James. I got bitten by a vampire, posing as if their car was broken down.” The muscular man tried to slow his breathing as he pressed the towel tightly against this shoulder. He wasn’t sure if the bloodsucker had followed him, but he couldn’t risk it. “I drove back to the shop. I’m inside.”
“Shit. I’m on my way.” James locked the trailer and walked across the lot to the back entrance of the auto shop. It took him a second to shake the right key loose, but he let himself into the office and called out, “It’s me,” while he flipped on the lights. There was a first aid kit on the wall of the service area, but he had his own stashed in the bottom desk drawer, which was his go-to when somebody was bleeding and a band-aid wasn’t going to cut it. James grabbed it and headed down the hall towards the kitchenette. “Tal… Can you make it in here?” There was a chair Tal could sit on and a sink, and the kitchen was about as clean as an auto shop got. He got two drinks out of the refrigerator, flipped on the hot water, and started scrubbing his hands with the soap.
“Okay,” Tal breathed and tapped his phone before putting in his pocket. He slowly turned, the headache slowly increasing, and listened for James as he entered the office. “Good, good.” Tal sighed as he looked down the hall to see his boss. Yet he was still holding the doors on the front of his shop closed with his telekinesis. “I think so,” the larger man cautiously walked down the hall to join James in the kitchenette. Blood soaked the collar of Tal’s shirt and dripped from the wounds. As soon as he sat down, he let go of the bay doors and they rattled like thunder as they settled and relaxed. His hand still rested over the shop towel he held over bites.
James looked in the direction of the hallway, getting a mental picture of the service area. He knew every sound in that building by heart, and with no vehicles parked inside for repair, the echo was louder. The metal-and-glass noise was unmistakably his doors. He cut his eyes back to Tal, sliding a pair of gloves on from the kit. “Alright, let me see it.” He’d seen bites that looked like puncture wounds and bites where a chunk of flesh had been ripped out in the struggle. While he waited for Tal to take the towel away, he checked the man’s color. “How much blood do you think you lost?”
Nodding, Tal pulled the towel away. He bunched up the soaked portion up and wrapped the clean corners around it. The air made the wounds sting and he turned his head away so James could get to it. “Maybe a pint, I’m not sure. It took me a few moments to get them off of me. Sorry to disrupt your evening.” Tal was silently berating himself for not paying attention to the vampire, not realizing what the person was. He didn’t realize that he was still trembling from the shock, fear, and adrenaline.
“I was sitting on my couch.” James carefully prodded the inflamed skin near the punctures to see how much blood came out, to get an idea if it was on its way to closing. “It’s not too bad,” he said, leaning close to look. “Two clean punctures, looks like they missed anything that’s gonna bleed you out.” He got the bottle of antiseptic and soaked a gauze pad with it. “I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and guess you didn’t ingest anything. How’d you fight them off?” James laid the wet pad on the open wounds. The gauze turned pink, so he wet another and cleaned it again.
Exhaling, Tal closed his eyes. The headache was going to last a little while. He flinched a little at James’ prodding. “Good.” But the other man’s next two sentences made him open his eyes and lightly bite on his lower lip. Tal trusted James more than the majority of people in his life, and there were few. Time to come clean after three years. “Telekinesis.” A wince was visible on his face and in his posture from his confession.
James pulled the stained cotton away and tossed it in the trash can. He opened a packet of antibiotic ointment and smeared it on the punctures, then put a clean bandage on. “Hold pressure on this... How long have you known you had it?” When he had a free hand, he reached beside the refrigerator and pulled over the bottles of water and a gatorade. He slid both on the counter next to Tal. James began tearing pieces of tape off a roll and took back over holding pressure on the bite. “Start drinking.”
He did as he was told, reaching up with one hand to press down on the bandage. “Since I was fifteen,” Tal answered as he turned his head to look forward. The answer brought up terrible feelings and memories he wished he could forget. But he had let it direct his life. But Tal had been careful to use his ability sparingly to limit anyone reacting like his family had and also the physical effects on him like the headache he was experiencing now. Letting go of the bandage, he picked up the gatorade, opened it, and began drinking.
James watched the expression on Tal’s face. “How much control do you have over it?” It must be pretty good if Tal had hidden it all this time. He was thinking this might explain the mechanic’s reclusiveness, his resistance to sharing information about himself, and why someone with a talent like his for mechanics would find Searchlight appealing. The magic user stepped back to make sure the bandage wasn’t going to seep through, then he took a small, brown bottle and dropper out of his kit. It had a homemade label, the lettering done in inked capitals. He pulled a few drops. “This is herbal. It promotes healing. It goes under your tongue.” He offered the dropper to Tal.
Downing the gatorade but not chugging it, Tal soon nodded. “A good amount. Sometimes emotions cause problems. I don’t...I don’t use it often.” It was the exact reason along with the negative effects his first use of his ability brought. Since he emerged from that basement after two years of betrayal and confinement, Tal let his old life and identity die, creating a new one. But he still hid out of fear. Setting the empty gatorade bottle, he breathed. “Okay,” Tal replied as he took the dropper from James and carefully released the drops of liquid under his tongue. Then he returned the empty vessel to the other man. Swallowing, he nodded, “Thank you.”
“When we don’t use a muscle, it atrophies,” James murmured, dropping the tube in the sink for later washing. He capped the bottle and it rattled into place in the tin medical kit. “I don’t know if it’s the same for things like this. It might be more like pressure without a release valve.” He backed up and sat across from Tal in the opposite chair, kicking back into a relaxed position. “You don’t have to hide it here. You know about me, right?” James assumed Tal had figured out some of it, but they didn’t talk about it in depth.
“I agree,” Tal nodded as he picked up the bottle of water and drank it slowly. “It can be at times.” In all honesty, he sometimes wished he didn’t have the ability. He watched James as he sat down. “I know that you can do things, magic. But I don’t know exactly how that works. I...don’t know now how to not hide it.” Tal frowned.
“Start small,” James said, lifting his shoulders. “Only with people you trust, or only with people you know have something about them that makes them different, too. I’m glad you can do it. It’s why you’re still sitting here, and I don’t need to find a new mechanic.” His smile was small but warm. “You know how to take them out?” He gestured with a finger at his neck.
“Thanks. I will try.” Tal smiled slightly and finished off the water. “Oh? Yeah,” he tipped his chin up at James’s gesture. “The one that got me is probably still kicking then. They flew over to the other side of the highway. And be on the lookout for a maroon ‘77 Ford Granada. Uhm, and doing what I can do...it isn’t without its setbacks. If I use it for too long, I get headaches.”
“Makes sense,” James said. “That’s not so different from magic. It’ll wear me out if I do too much. And if I take too much and don’t give anything back, that tends to have repercussions, too.” He leaned forward in his chair and stripped the non-latex gloves off his hands. Once balled up, they made an arcing descent into the trash can. “You know, this is the second time this week someone mentioned telekinesis to me. I don’t know who it is, but I don’t think you’re alone.” James pushed up to a standing position and packed up the med kit.
Blinking, Tal listened intently to James. Magic, anything beyond the ordinary did interest him. Yet he focused on the simple things - the sky and mechanics. He looked at his blood-stained hands and frowned for a moment before looking back up at his boss in surprise there was another person with telekinesis here. “Really? That’s….that’s something.” Tal pushed up to stand as well, moving over to the sink to wash his hands.
“How are you feeling?” James got out of the way of the paper towel dispenser. No matter what Tal said, he was going to walk his coworker out when he was ready to head home, to make sure the parking lot was empty and the mechanic could walk or drive without passing out at the wheel. There was no way to know how much the vampire drained out of him. The safest thing would be a med check. He thought about giving Radek a call, but with Tal being nervous around strangers, this was the best bet.
“Better, but the headache will probably last the rest of the night,” Tal answered as he grabbed a couple of paper towels and dried his hands. He was sure he could make it back to his room at El Rey. But he wouldn’t protest an escort back. The mechanic wasn’t sure just how much blood he had lost. The fear and shock of it all was all he could recognize. To tell the truth, he didn’t want to be out in the open or as gullible as he was to have put himself in the situation he had. Trust was something he didn’t give out freely.
“Probably not the kind of thing that responds to Tylenol,” James guessed. He washed up and made sure he had his keys to lock up. “Come on. I’ll walk you back just to make sure you don’t pass out behind the motel. Don’t come into work until you’re ready,” he added. “I don’t have to be at Curiosities tomorrow, I can cover. I’ll call for back-up if I need it,” he said, referring to a young part-timer who would have to be roused from sleep if James called any earlier than 10:00am. A long night of gaming turned him into a zombie before lunch.
He started down the hallway towards the front of the auto shop, keeping in mind what Tal said about the make and model of the vampire’s vehicle as he shook out his keys and looked out the front window. If the vampire got thrown far enough by Tal’s secret weapon, they’d probably high-tail it out of the town limits.
“Yeah,” Tal spoke as he checked his pockets and found that he had stuffed his keys in his right front pocket. “I hope to be good in a couple of days.” He was a workaholic and it would take some stern talking to and perhaps a push to keep him away.
“Thanks, James.” He rasped as he stopped near the window, his eyes looking out for any suspicious individuals. His truck was sitting there untouched.
“No thanks needed.” James led the way out the door into the parking lot. Between a telekinetic and a spellcaster on the lookout for trouble, a lone vampire would have to be both brave and stupid to mess with them. He locked the door behind Tal and they set off to get him home safely.