The Dark Era GPSL

Fletcher had become a regular face around her bar, staying upstairs - there was conversation about him having a room if he needed space, but the idea lasted as long as it took Fletcher to get his pants off. Not that she minds. She's actually finding she looks forward to sleeping against him, wake up warm and held. The sex is a large bonus. Today, it's sleeting outside. It's cold, sharp, and nearly painful to be outside. The roads were icy. It kept most everyone home, and Cora's was too expensive a place for those that wanted rot-gut, so it's an empty, quiet day.

The girls are upstairs, the occasional peal of laughter being heard as they entertain themselves with one another. Fletcher is downstairs with her, playing poker and betting coins behind the bar, drinking juniper-heavy gin. She's in the middle of deciding if she's going to call his raise when the door opens and the bell tinkles. A new one, finally replacing the old one that did nothing better than a dull thunk.

It's Drew and someone Cora hasn't seen before. She's small, but Cora can feel some kind of energy coming off her. Like calling like, but she didn't know that.

Drew gives both Cora and Fletcher a smile, then straddles a stool across from where she and Fletcher are set up. Cora isn't overly fond of Drew, but doesn't have personal problems with him. She offers them both a greeting smile, standing up from her stool. "What can I get you?"

Drew answers for himself. "Whiskey." He turns his eyes to the girl, and gives her a questioning look.

"Morgan!"

Owainn's head comes up from the pile of reports on his desk just as a heavy, battered, dirty letter strikes his chest, pitched at him by O'Connor. He lets out a small 'oof' when it lands hard in his lap. It might as well have been a package.

The writing is vaguely familiar. His name is in script, address is exact. It's taken its time to get here. No return address. Oversized, paper folded many times and waxed closed to create an envelope. Curiosity piques, and Owainn tears it open. Inside are reports, much like those strewn across his desk relating to the rash of murders he's working.

Keep an eye out.
-Tosh

There are two extremely detailed drawings, and the faces are unmistakable. The soft profile of Cora Erickson, and the harsh, cutting edges of Marceline. His eyebrow ticks up, surprise and curiosity colliding together. The drawings are set aside carefully, left where Owainn can see them. The reports are separated, one for Cora and one for Marceline. Owainn had no real reason to bother with Cora; she ran a clean business, kept her nose clean, and had one of the largest shotguns he'd ever seen behind the bar. His arrangement with Marceline means he looks the other way with what she needs to do to keep those less alive functioning.

But they'd worked together. Had a business together. And were suspected of offing a ranger headed west on the trail of a gang of robbers. Important man, reported his last location as Scorched Gulch. Never seen again. Cora and Marceline claimed he had been there, beaten up on a girl, and they chased him out. Sounded believable.

When Tosh and his partner Will had shown up, a year later, Marceline and Cora split town.

He flips through everything twice, then sits back in his chair. It creaks loudly. How long had he been hunched forward? His back objects, and Owainn stands up and stretches, then starts organizing the mess of his desk. Order is needed.

Owainn runs a list in his head. He needs a recent map of London. He needs to speak to Marceline - though that one immediately slips down the list, because he doesn't want to go to Wytchwood other than his midday runs every two weeks where he spends a maximum of five minutes at the bar and leaves again. Task someone with keeping an eye on van Tassel. Go through the pile of information on van Tassel. Begin mapping the deaths with patterns, because though others believe Owainn is grasping at air, he knows in the pit of him that there is a pattern to the 'lesser dead' murders happening.

For now, though, he rolls a cigarette and heads up to the roof the precinct building. He'll write Tosh back, once he figures if he's going to tip him off to Cora and Marceline. Better to see what those two had to say, or had to pay, first.

Such a strange day. It's been hard and Letitia sets her own feelings and faults aside. She needs a distraction and her distraction is usually the twins. That's what she calls them, knowing they aren't twins at all, or even brother and sister. They might as well be. Their connection is just as strong.

There are very few that Letitia allows herself to care for. She's usually so good at separating what she needs to do and what she shouldn't do but sometimes emotions bake. Love is something that often just happens. There's no stopping it. It's a large, unwieldy force and to try to control it is to have it destroy everything.

That's how it had been with Rebekah and Miles when she found them in the snow. It had been love at first sight. She had wanted to protect them, unaware that some magic might be an influencing factor. It didn't matter. She didn't care if there was. They were an anchor. A reason to keep going.

Out from the carriage she jumps, not waiting for Drew as she hurries into the Wytchwood and up the grand staircase of the whorehouse. When she gets to Rebekah's room she doesn't even knock. She just hurls open the door and tarries in, worried and excited to hear how it went, to make sure that she is alright.

"Are you alright?" She looks around the room to find her, "I would have been here sooner but I got caught up."

my lips they are as cold as clay, my breath smells earthy strong
& if you kiss my cold clay lips, your days they won't be long

Something. A splintering light over the top of woolen hats dusted in a smatter of softly falling snow, over shoulders clad in balding riding coats, shivering. Laughing at their coldness, at the feel of being human.

Something, a lucent streak. Striking, like a match. Something staggering. A scent. A feeling. There was once a brunette girl he’d strangled to death while he took what he’d wanted from her. The sensation of her heart can still be felt underneath his palms in times of reverie. She peeks at him from death, as if through black gauze, a sore, blue shadow in the back of his mind. She was the cunt whose family created him. That gypsy whore, with her vipers’ eyes, alive, somehow, from the grave.

Something, a tickle on the back of his neck. Not a chill, he is all hoar, insusceptible, a traipsing, rimed monument in this wintry white. A dark blot, prowling. Blight in the wonder.

He sees her. He knew he felt something, and this was that something. He watches her, her head down, her generous smile when others glance at her. Her small shoulders. Her neatly tied back hair. He is instantly sick with rage.

He watches her, follows until, with a precise knowledge of these parts, she walks across the mouth of an alley. He is a terrestrial spider holing in its borough, snatching her like prey, yanks her in. His arms wound tightly around the slight waist, a hand over her mouth.

go fetch me water from the desert, & blood from out of stone
go fetch me milk from a fair maid's breast that a young man has never known

“Don’t scream.” He says.

And starts to drag her deeper in.

After Fletcher had come to claim the little girl she'd found, Letitia was put in a rare moment of seriousness in public. Her brow crinkled, fingers brushing her chin as she staved off the impulse to go into the room and tell Fletcher he better behave like a gentleman. It was out of her hands now. She'd been the one to push her to this point...and in her mind, sincerely, she didn't see any other way to be for a girl like Rebekah. Women only had a few things to work within this society dominated by men, and this was one way for them to have power, money, and any hope of a semblance of independence.

If Letitia didn't believe in this life, she would have never pushed so hard. It still didn't stop her from worrying. Rebekah was so...unused. It would be easy for anyone to take advantage.

But then there was a knock again, and she knew it must be Owainn. She straightened her spine and gulped the last of her blood aperitif as Drew directed the customer where she sat waiting.

There was no doubt that it could have been worse for Letitia too, this bargain Marceline had struck with the detective. He was still in his vital years, even if he wore his trouble like a collar. Sad. Angry. She could smell the grief.

Still, it made for an interesting evening...usually.

Fingers stroked down her left earring. It swung on her lobe like a shiny beckon when Owainn came through the door and instead of looking delighted that he'd come for her, she appeared hungry.

"Should we away, sir, or would you rather sit for a spell and have a libation." which could be anything from drink to opium depending on what pleased him.

"You could have done worse for your first time." She tells Rebekah, who is on one side of the obscene red velvet couch in the parlor. She doesn't say that once the bloom is rubbed off, it would get worse. Not every one that stumbles into Marceline's is young, handsome, and well scented. Most are old and dried out like prunes.

There was nothing worse than a horny raisin.

Fletcher had been coming to Wytchwood for a long time. He was tall, broad, and exceptionally pleasant to look at, but she hadn't brought this up. Rebekah might remember him if she'd decided to describe him, but she thought it would be better for the girl to be pleasantly surprised.

The glass Letitia holds seems like it is filled with red wine, but is not. It is a sherry glass half full of the new blood that had just arrived. Not too much, just enough to pink her pretty places. She's waiting for her own cull to come claim her, and she doesn't want to fill up before he does.

"Don't worry, dearest. You're a spool of lovely. He'll want to unwind you a little at a time. He'd paid a great deal for having you. Let him." There's a knock at the door, and she wonders if it could be either Fletcher or Owainn early for their appointments. She fusses with Rebekah's hair just in case, wanting her to present perfectly, hoping that Fletcher is as kind to an innocent than he'd been with her.

Sometimes too kind, but that was a lifetime of experiences biasing her for the more extreme measures of her sexual pleasures.

Vampire cunt was his favored means to loaf. It didn’t quit. It didn’t get tired. It was dead, like him. They did not faint from fear. If there was one thing he despised, it was swooning. He wanted them awake.

There is a scarlet-haired woman who isolates herself at Wytchwood, crystal-white and dainty-wristed. She is ethereal; he likes ethereal. It reminds him that not all the creatures of this earth are tainted as he is. That something can still be soft, exquisite. The first time he’d knocked gently with a split knuckle on the bulging stomach of her thin door, he had stole in once she’d answered. Obstructing the door, a snarl in his eyes, a startling glint, too quiet. Her own eyes went immense and magnificent, verdant, Galway green, asking him question after question. He answered none of them. He had paid behind her back. He wanted the shock of it to put fear in her. That a hushed, dangerous stranger was coming in and taking it. And took it, he did.

The lamplights of London are sickly yellow. They palpitate, akin to how he’d imagine her heart might have, if hers still beat. He had just left from his scarlet witch, a bright memory of her begging throat, the salty taste of her weeping. He thrilled in the over-perusing of these obscene, burnt images and sounds, a collage of his misdeeds, parading against the back of his eyelids.

People move out of his way as he prowls over cobblestone, heavy in his footfalls. People recoil.

The pier is nearby, aglow. The moist wooden planks coated in a fine dust of snow. Vince is a phantom in black, eyes watchful, waiting.

He is early.

The woman is a knife in human form, eyeing him over the pulse of a blue candle flame capped in a gloaming, perishing yellow. He feels revulsion toward her, a strange twitch of affection. She is the dark mother, the sharp arms he never had to hold him. Not that she’s ever held him. Or touched him. Or spoken to him, before now. He is just imaginative, preferring this lace, this pushed up, ghostly cleavage to be his matron over the sour-milk scent of the nuns, their scratchy wool fabric habits, who would embrace him only when he’d skin a knee.

Marceline doesn’t like Miles very much. He’s keenly aware of this. She doesn’t have to say it. It is in the cavalier way that she grimaces up at him, scowling like a watchful, capricious cat, narrowing. In the brusque manner in which she chats at him, rather than with him, being wildly articulate with all other people in the house. This is why he likes her. He must overcompensate; he must make her like him.

“Miles, is it?” she had said, knowing well his name. He remained flat. This was a show! He could act, just you watch! He is unaffected by her deadpan, imperious feline grin, just now, in this flicker. He is as stone, as she is, a marble boy in the abyssal, watery dark. Grinning back. Overhead, the pounding of a headboard, moaning.

“Indeed.” He confirmed.

“Garçon inutile,” she had said softly, as if it were a term of endearment. He knew what it meant; he played along. She continued, “At dawn, I’d like for you to tramp over to Cora’s, offer your services with her. I hear she’s in need of somebody of your impressive… talents.”

This was Marceline’s idea of a joke.

“My talents?” miles said, scintillating, knowing he had MANY talents. “Which one, specifically?”

Marceline beamed, “Why, all of them, boy! Now, wash yourself. Iron your workshirt. I’ll inform the theatre on your behalf that you’ll run a bit tardy for rehearsals this eve. Get some of your most impressive stanzas at the ready. Go.”

&&&

It was easier to be somebody else. Miles was someone he wasn’t aware of. He was a foundling, could be anybody. When he meets somebody for the first time, when he is nervous, he is someone else. Anyone, but that moonstone pale child, black-haired, abandoned.

MILES the magnificent breathes in, puffs up, tall and proud, chin UP! He brushes into the smoky, woozy bar. He raises his long arms, he bows. He is reasonably clad in a winter-white, clean workshirt, a cotton, intricately patterned cravat (that he’d ‘borrowed’ from someone who had left it behind last night on the staircase) black trousers. He has no funds for a frock coat, thus upon closer inspection, one might see a shiver in his limbs. It was frigid out.

“Direct me to the lady of the house, kindly!” he announces, akimbo.

The Lone Wolf, The Decoy, & The Vampire ( King )

( Owainn and Senne )

( Vi and Colin )

( Louella, Colin )

( Selina and Jack )

Now with the mist gone, posters begin appearing all over town...and curious newspaper articles too

( Omar & Ophelia )

( Esau Wiliams & Sadie Owen )

( Sebastian and William )

( Sadie, Renee & Open )

And miraculously and all at once the fog retreats...runs. It looks as if a giant is sucking the whole bowl of it through a straw.

It is Spring but the incessant fog has delayed the green and everything else that should be blooming proper come May 1st. It doesn't matter when the beautiful blue frames the first peek of sunlight the city has had in weeks.

No more curfew!

Be WARY Londender, it doesn't mean that the feeling of dread has disappeared along with the fog. It also doesn't mean that shadow creatures no longer lurk in the darkest splotches. In fact. It's only gotten worse.

Things are out there waiting.

But, waiting for what?

( Omar & Sadie )