cian_oneill (cian_oneill) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-02-01 15:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | rhiannon lee, ~cian o'neill |
Our love is strange. Fire or dirt?
Who: Cian/Rhiannon/Headless vampire corpse NPC
What: Disposal
When: Dawn, Thursday 28th January 2021, after this
Where: CC/Searchlight/north
Ratings Language, arguing
The marina had a couple of vehicles, two of them utilities, which Cian regularly drove when towing boats up to storage in Searchlight. So it wasn’t unusual for him to be seen driving one, though some might have wondered what he was doing so early heading up to Searchlight in the pre-dawn, clearly in a hurry.
His phone was in his breast pocket, his eyes focused on the road. The text from Rhiannon carried all sorts of messages, and some warning. 'A hunter named Nina just dumped a vampire in my driveway. She hunts w/ my family.' He’d wondered why they hadn’t heard anything from her uncle. He didn’t seem like the kind who would take Rhiannon’s walking away with a simple shrug. That’s what Cian had hoped the man would do, but from what Rhiannon had told him, and from his own experience back in Chicago that night, Sean Corrigan wasn’t someone who took a great deal of notice of what others thought, except of course if it was that he was weak, or not ‘the boss’. And Rhiannon walking away from the family, from him, would be a slap in the face a man like that couldn’t turn the other cheek to.
The lights of Searchlight appeared on the horizon as the truck hurtled along the tarmac that cut a swath through the desert, connecting Cottonwood Cove to the small town. He only eased off the accelerator lightly as the street lights started flashing by, taking the corner into Montana a little faster than normal. He glanced at Gabe’s place as he started slowing for the turn into Indian Street. Turning into the driveway of 403 the tyres crunched to a stop on the gravel and Cian stared for a moment through the windscreen before climbing out of the vehicle.
The body was wrapped in a sheet behind her trailer. Rhiannon, who finally had on a pair of jeans and a hoodie, was near her porch steps shooing away a curious neighborhood stray cat. Usually she avoided these situations by calling on a disposal group she knew of, but there’d been something about ‘6AM’, ‘shorthanded’, and ‘hour and a half away’ mumbled into the phone. Meanwhile, the sun was coming up and there was a body in her damn driveway. She wasn’t above digging a hole.
At the sound of a truck, Rhiannon stooped and clapped her hands after the insistent cat, trying to scare him off before he started pawing at the headless body again, this time in front of Cian. It scampered away and she walked over to Cian’s driver side where he had gotten out. Her breath was a warm, gray cloud in the air. “Weirdest text I’ve ever sent you?”
“So far,” he replied, running an eye over her again now there was no glass in the way. He was satisfied there wasn’t any damage, at least none from as recently as a half hour ago. “Where is it?” On the trip up he’d figured out where to take it. The unofficial cemetery they'd discovered was the source of the ‘animal zombies’ offered a perfect location, and seemed appropriate for this.
“Propped up on my couch.” Rhiannon’s wry comment came with a smile. “It’s over here.” She thumbed past her shoulder at the side of her home that faced away from her neighbors. “I took him out of the road. His neck was seeping everywhere.” Rhiannon led the way to a sheet-wrapped corpse who’d lost some height. The arrow Nina had used to immobilize him was sitting on the ground nearby. The situation was serious — she was serious — but if she couldn’t find a way to ease herself into what it all meant, she’d tear her hair out.
Their reparte in times of stress was what kept them both in tune, always had. Since that first night, in the hall in the house in Chicago, they had always seemed to know what the other one thought, or needed, in times like this. Humour was just a way to use verbal communication while they got on with what needed to be done.
A quick glance over his shoulder and in the slowly lightning morning he could see where she’d already kicked dirt and gravel over the stain. “Gonna have to talk t’ y’ family about the types they’re bringing home t’meet,” he said as he crouched down and lifted the sheet covering the leaking end. The only thing he’d done before jumping behind the wheel was to grab an old tarpaulin out of the workshop and toss it in the tray. “I’ll turn the truck around and back it in,” he added, standing up again and heading for the vehicle. A few quick flicks of the steering wheel and the rear of the tray was soon edging closer to where she was standing.
“Cool.” Both of them were capable of lifting a dead vamp, but his way would make for less body fluid oozing onto them and she was all for it. When the vehicle was in position, Rhiannon squatted down and hefted the corpse onto the bed. She tucked the excess sheet around the shoulders and feet, placed her shovel next to it, and made sure she had her house keys before climbing in the passenger side. “All good,” she said. Rhiannon lowered the hood from her hair. She wanted badly to lean across and kiss Cian’s jaw, but on the off chance they were being watched, Rhiannon let it go for now and buckled in.
Once the vehicle was out on 95, headed north, Cian reached over and took her hand. “How’re you doing?” he asked, glancing over at her.
Rhiannon laced her fingers through Cian’s. She chewed her lip and played with the heat vents, just for something to do while they drove past the sand and pebble hills on the north side of town. When the vents were aimed up instead of into her eyes, she settled back and said, “I don’t know. Full of feelings.” The chaotic mix of them made her insides churn. It was a sharp sensation that reminded her of an insect sting. “Worried. Pissed off. Embarrassed.”
She looked at him. “You?”
He looked over at her, then back out to the road. “Glad,” he said quietly. “Been wondering when it would happen, now it looks like it is.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
“What did she say?”
That was not what she was expecting. Rhiannon watched him for a minute, wondering if Cian was glad the axe had finally dropped or if there was more to it than that, on a personal level. Then she looked back at the road passing beneath their wheels. “Not much. She invited me to drag a vampire around town behind her Chevy,” Rhiannon said. “She was trying to get a rise out of me. It’s something I’ve seen before. Things can escalate. When I told her to leave, she said Sean was right and she implied more hunters were coming.”
Rhiannon pivoted to check on the rolled-up body in the back of the truck. The sheet was rippling in the wind. “She kept the head.”
Cian’s eyes remained fixed on the road as she spoke, listening to what she said. From his time in Chicago he’d learned what it was for a were, especially a ‘bitten’ like him and the others in the house, to become the hunted through no fault of their own, other than the bite of fate that turned them. He’d been lucky at home, with the support and protection of Annie, Shane and Oonagh, but his journey to where he was now had given him the experience of being in someone else’s crosshairs. He gave Rhiannon’s hand a squeeze as the memory of that night in Chicago rushed through like a freight train. If it hadn’t been for her, if she hadn’t been there, with her uncle, in that hallway, he knew he would have met the same fate as the rest of the were that night.
He gave a soft derisive laugh and a small shake of his head. “They takin’ trophies now?” It was only just audible above the sound of the truck’s tyres on the tarmac beneath them.
“It’s a head count,” she said. “Literal. I don’t think they’ll be making any candelabras out of them.” Rhiannon took out her cell phone and checked it for return messages. It was early. She wasn’t expecting much. It plunked onto the dashboard. “For Sean, it might be personal, but for them, it’s a job. If they’re young, they’ll swallow any line he feeds them about what it’s like here and start shooting. If they’re experienced, they’ll watch the town for a while before they make a move.”
A dark thought occurred to her. “Unless they’re really motivated. Like if there’s money involved, someone paying them enough that they don’t stop to ask questions. But who could bankroll that?”
Cian’s forehead creased with a frown of concentration as he tried to think of someone he knew with money, and a taste for revenge that would send out a ‘hit squad’. From what Rhiannon was saying this was what they had coming at them now. He shook his head, unable to think of anyone.
“Could be anyone with a big bank balance and a thirst for revenge,” he replied, then added, “we know someone who might be able to ask in those types of circles.” Gabe’s family were of that financial strength, and it could be worthwhile having some feelers put out from far outside their own personal circles of contact. He explained this to Rhiannon. “His uncle who's down in Peru owes him a ton of favours right now, he could ask some questions, find out if it’s a contract job, or not.”
“Because that would be worth finding out, if this is a ‘family feud’ type of hunt, or a contract.”
“It couldn’t hurt, but that seems kind of far afield. Most hunters aren’t looking for six figures. In case you couldn’t tell.” Rhiannon wore a self-deprecating smile as she plucked at the cotton fabric of her hoodie. She flipped the visor and stared at the rectangular mirror on its underside. There wasn’t any make-up around her eyes, a quality that made her feel naked. It didn’t matter in front of Cian, but she didn’t like getting caught so off-guard. The visor snapped back into place. “It was a matter of time until someone else showed up. It didn’t have to be them.”
Cian nodded, glanced across as he saw her check herself in the mirror and returned his eyes to the road. “Someone else is one thing, but a team? Targeting and riling you up like that?” He shook his head. “This sounds like something personal,” he said simply.
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and let go of Rhiannon’s hand to reach in and pull it out. A text message was on the screen, “Mikey asking if everything’s alright,” he said and passed her his phone. The young were would have seen or heard the truck go through town, recognising its distinctive exhaust. “Can you reply for me? Just let him know it is, and I’ll be back at the dock in a couple of hours? I’ll explain then?”
“Yeah.” Rhiannon typed a quick note to Mikey and hit send. She passed Cian the phone. “I texted the weres after I sent one to you. Plus Tasha, Derek, and Katherine. I didn’t tell them about Sean, just that there were hunters around. Anything else seemed like a lot to get into for a six AM text.” She looked outside and watched the terrain passing. After a while she rounded on him. “Why exactly are you glad? I need to understand.”
He’d been wondering how long it would take for her to ask. He looked across at her for a long moment, a smile slowly turning up one corner of his mouth before he turned his eyes back to the road. “I never believed he would let things lie,” he said simply. “He proved he was prepared to take things down this road when he started interfering with your jobs, cutting you out, taking your money, sidelining you from afar, where you couldn’t get back at him.” It’d been hard, watching what he'd done, and not being able to stop her uncle from taking her livelihood, her reason for training, preparing, driving, hunting, only to find he’d been there before her and taken what was hers.
Even back then Cian had wished the man would get up the guts to show his face, but then it didn’t surprise him. He’d remembered that night in Chicago, and the reality of Sean Corrigan’s intent, the look of realisation in Rhiannon’s eyes in that hallway when she’d realised the truth, and the beginning of her battle against what her uncle had become. Fair fights were not a part of his game-plan, and collateral damage wasn’t something he bothered tallying.
“And at last he’s started to show his hand.” The last words carried the echo of a soft, but deadly growl, the green of his eyes highlighted momentarily by the flecks of gold that flickered within.
Rhiannon heard the sound and pushed a piece of hair behind her ear. “How do you think this is going to go? He’s not the guy who sits in a recliner in Chicago while this happens. He’ll want to watch, get his digs in, and he’s scared of exactly nothing. He’s not going to back up slowly with his hands raised and say, you know what? You’re right. My bad.” For the hundredth or so time in the last hour, Rhiannon pictured her cousin Rob. Her hands itched to text him.
Cian grimaced a little, shaking his head. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted, hating the sound of it in his own ears. “But we’ve got more than just guns, knives and stakes on our team,” he said, glancing across at her. “Remember that night back at the Blind Eye? It’s not just you, or Tasha, there’s others. James, Gabe, the others there. If he’s bringing in other hunters then seems to me it’d be fair call to send out a message to those that showed up that night. See if anyone wants to get aboard.” He remembered the texts that had been sent out during the ‘zombie animal’ uprising, and glanced across at her.
“He’s never gone after humans before,” she said. “That’s not what we do.” Rhiannon thought about the look of surprise on Nina’s face when she aimed a gun at her. Was that necessary, or had she reacted badly and screwed up when she saw the familiar vehicle? Like it or not, Sean was still family, and she was still a hunter, like everyone else who might — or might not — show up in Clark County. “The more people we get involved, the more likely it is that someone gets killed.”
He swallowed hard, feeling Siofra’s stirring at her words. His eyes narrowed, remaining fixed ahead. A sign showing the distance to the turn-off to Nelson flashed past. “How d’y’ know?” he managed to ask quietly, adding, “that he’s not killed a human,” for clarification, managing to keep the anger out of his voice.
“Because, Cian!” Rhiannon said. She was frustrated. Not at him, because his question was fair, but at the situation. “He’s my blood. I lived under his roof. I ate his food. He put the clothes on my back. He taught me for seventeen years. There are things about being a hunter you don’t understand, and about being a member of my family. Just like I can’t understand everything about being a cougar, or being from your family. But I trust you. I’m asking you to trust me.”
She was trapped in someone else’s moving vehicle when she wanted to be moving around, and she had nothing to distract her hands. Rhiannon pressed her palms down on her kneecaps. “I’m not excusing what he does to anybody else, and I can understand why you want to call everyone you know. And I can’t stop you. But I don’t want our friends hurt and I don’t want hunters hurt. Especially since it’s my fault they’re coming.”
“And all us non-humans?” he said quietly. “We’re fair game to your family?” The vehicle started to slow as they approached the turn-off. “Mikey? Brian? Nes? Katherine? Me? So long as no humans get hurt, is that the rules?” The click of the indicator punctuated his calm yet cold question.
Everything she never told Cian from her call to Rob hung in the space between them. “I just told you there’s no excuse for what they do. I’m not condoning it, I just don’t want to escalate things and make it worse.” Rhiannon stared at him as the signal blinked in the quiet truck. “I left them! Do you want me to kill them, too?” The truck had barely finished the turn-off before she opened the door and jumped out. The frozen morning air was a shock to her warm cheeks, which was a welcome distraction. Rhiannon scrubbed at her face.
Cian silently walked around the tray of the truck and lowered the side against which the headless corpse lay. A few tugs and pushes and he swung the tarpaulin-wrapped corpse up onto his shoulder, holding it in place with one arm, his free hand grabbing the shovel. He turned on his heel and walked across toward where the disturbed ground lay as evidence to whatever had erupted that night and attacked Searchlight. When they’d located it some months earlier, it had been his nose which had detected it first, the acrid smells attacking his sensitive olfactory senses and drawing him in to the location, confirming it was the site.
Now the smell was less intense, but still detectable, even in the cold air. Once he’d reached a spot behind a mount that gave at least some cover from the nearby highway, he lowered the corpse to the ground and started to dig in the upturned sods beside it.
The silent treatment? Rhiannon wasn’t going for it. She covered the bumps and divots of disturbed earth and broken grave markers in short order. “Hey!” She pulled the shovel out of his hand and tossed it on the ground. “I chose you over him twice. I will always choose you. I know you want to rip his head off, but there are hunters who don’t have all the information, like I didn’t have all the information, and they don’t deserve to die. Just like your friends didn’t deserve to die. And I don’t want anyone to die now.”
“And our friends? The ones your Nina wants to kill? Your uncle is bringing in more to hunt. What about them?” The anger was clear in the cold air. “They deserve to know, they deserve the chance to prepare, to get a game-plan ready. That’s what I’m talking about! Us non-humans have a chance to prepare and defend ourselves from an attack we’ve just been told is definitely coming,” he continued, indicating the corpse beside them.
“All I said is we tell them, let them know what’s coming and prepare for what might happen.” He bent and retrieved the shovel from the ground. “I’ll be telling Gabe,” he said firmly as he slung the shovel into the broken ground, levering it up and sending the sods into the steadily growing pile. “He’d kill me if I didn’t,” he added. “And the Marks, Brian and Nes.” He paused and looked at her.
“Remember, we’re not hunting them, and while they stay away from us, we’ll go about our daily business.” He pushed the shovel into the ground again, and looked down at the corpse again. “But from where I’m standing it looks more like they’re gonna bring the fight to us.” He paused, lifted the sods and looked at her, adding, “again. Only this time? I’ll be ready.”
“My Nina?” Rhiannon laughed. If Cian had any clue how insane that was, he’d laugh alongside her. “I just pointed a gun at Nina’s head and threatened to shoot her. And I already told you, I texted Mikey, Brian, and Nesryn. I also told Frankie, Katherine, and Derek. But hey.” Rhiannon spread her arms. “Go ahead, get everyone involved. Make sure to include that this is what I come from so your family can look at me like I’m untrustworthy all over again. Just do me one favor, Cian. Try to control the smile that creeps over your face when you think about my uncle and cousin showing up in this town. I know what that’s about, and there are some things that can’t be undone.”
Rhiannon stopped to gulp a deep breath. Her eyes were on fire. “Fuck!” To distract herself from the overwhelming fear of loss, she pulled a lighter out of her pocket. “Forget the shovel. Just set him on fire.”
He’d stopped as she’d raved on, wondering what the hell she was thinking, confusion crossing his face. “What is wrong with you?” he asked, “you’re acting like I’m taking out a bloody full page ad and tellin’ the world! Half the people I’m talking about you just named. What I’m talking about is bringing in a few others who might at least stand a chance of at least bein’ off your family’s radar because they’re human, not like us non-humans. Calling them in so we don’t have t’ kill t’ protect ourselves! We’re not hunting them, like I said, they’re the ones bringing the fight t’ us. And what you’re saying is no, no, no, don’t tell anyone because of how they might look at you??”
He shook his head, unsure what was going on in her head, or what she meant telling him to keep the smile off his face. She’d made it pretty clear she believed ‘humans are safe, they don’t kill humans’ but was getting pissed at him for wanting to make sure all their non-human friends were safe, protected, ready for whatever came down the road.
“What do you expect me to do? Doddle along like a bloody pet waiting at home while you go off and fight on your own, again? And then what?” He threw the shovel down and stood, hands on his hips, staring at her.
“You’re the one who said he isn’t going to throw his hands up and walk away. He’s bringing in others to kill us non-humans. What exactly is it you expect me to do?”
“I don’t want you to die, Cian! Jesus fucking Christ.” Rhiannon turned around and twisted her hair into a knot around her hand, one that she could pull as tightly as she wanted so the sting of her scalp might calm her down. Her breathing slowed. “All of this, all of it is my fault. It’s my fault for coming here, it’s my fault for pissing him off, and now everyone I know and care about -- on both sides -- is in danger. And I hate it. I’m ashamed. And I keep thinking, what if this feeling we have, you and me, it all just circles back to that house in Chicago, and we have to do it all over again?”
Now he understood. A huge sigh of relief exploded from his lungs as he stalked over to her and took her by her shoulders, shaking her lightly, his head bent as he fixed his eyes on her.
“Then we do it all over again,” he said, “but this time we’re armed with knowing what we’re facing. We’re not being caught unaware, instead we’re prepared.” He squeezed her shoulders gently.
“I don’t want t’ kill him. Or any of ‘em.” He paused for a heartbeat before adding, “Can’t say Siofra feels the same, given what happened that night, but I know how to connect now, thanks to you, thanks to that night, thanks to what we’ve learned, I’ve learned, about me, and him,” he said, referring to his were-self. His head angled as he looked at her still, his voice softening.
“And y’re not the same hunter we met in that hallway that night. You know more about him, about others, ‘ve done more, ‘nd have a team of friends around y’ that won’t look at y’ any different from what they do now.” He shrugged a half shrug with one shoulder. “Can’t speak for Katherine, she just… “ He shook his head before finishing the sentence. “She’ll just look at y’ the way she always has.” He tugged her to him, sliding his arms around her shoulders, holding her against his chest as he let out a sigh, releasing all the tension that had been built up in him and was now ebbing away, hoping they were now on the same page.
Rhiannon hid her face in his neck. This was hard. It felt impossible, and she didn’t have the right words to negotiate between the two perspectives, even though she’d spent enough time around both to see them clearly. Sometimes a thing was too personal for logical arguments; it lived in the gut, and you either felt one way or the other.
Often they found themselves looking at one another across a gulf like that, but for whatever reason, they always managed to reach over it.
“Tell Siofra I understand,” she said, running a hand over the back of Cian’s hair. “And listen.” Rhiannon eased back to see him. “The ‘us’ and ‘them’ part. When they hunt, they discover the worst of everyone, because that’s who they’re chasing, and that’s all they can let themselves see. When you meet one who’s harsh, they saw something terrible, and they think they’re keeping it from happening again, when actually they just became it. Most hunters can’t see you, Cian. They see the one who bit you.”
He nodded as he listened, memories welling up of things he’d done, that Siofra’d done, that he’d never shared with anyone. That he’d only just discovered himself, recently, on one of his lunar visits to Spirit Mountain. He understood what she was saying about them, the hunters, it hit closer to home than she could know. He still hadn’t told her.
Rhiannon shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m saying all this. I just… I’m proud to be with you. You’re not just human. You’re something more.”
He inhaled deeply, his arms around her shoulders tightening on her as he exhaled slowly. “I’m yours,” he returned simply, one hand seeking one of hers, drawing it up until the white gold ring he’d given her was between them. He pressed his lips to it, his eyes meeting hers. “One heart,” he murmured.
She stretched up impulsively to kiss him. His face felt warm against her nose. It only took that brief connection to dial her back to where she needed to be, still carrying around a lump of dread, but able to function. Rhiannon squeezed him, then made herself let go. She took a step back in the uneven dirt and looked at the rolled up body at their feet, then back to Cian. “Our love is strange. Fire or dirt?”
He shrugged lightly, looking down at the corpse then across to the road. “Fire might attract attention?”
Rhiannon sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.” She went back to the truck for the other shovel and brought it back to where Cian was standing. Unfortunately, she was no stranger to digging holes for headless corpses. Sometimes, one had to make do. “I’m going to need a lot of coffee after this.” The tip of the shovel cracked the earth.
“Breakfast at M&M’s it is,” the were replied, his shoulders already swinging into the task ahead.