Rhiannon Lee (rhiannon_lee) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-03-02 09:34:00 |
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Entry tags: | katherine williams, nesryn rowan, npc, rhiannon lee, tasha sloan, ~cian o'neill |
Payback
Who: Cian, Katherine, Nesryn, Rhiannon, Tasha, and...
Sean (NPC, Rhiannon’s uncle), Rob (NPC, Rhiannon’s cousin), Henry (NPC, a family friend), plus Nina, Davey, Alia, and Xiaofan (NPCs, Sean’s hunters)
What: Fight (End of Hunter Plot)
When: 10:00pm (before the Feb. 26-28 full moon)
Where: Old Mission Linen Building, 1001 S. 1st Street, Las Vegas
Warnings: Violence, Language
It wasn’t hard to find Sean’s location. With a drop of blood, her mother’s knife, and a family photo, the spell lit up a small Days Inn hotel on Tropicana Avenue and the Mission Linen Building in downtown Las Vegas. One place for sleeping, another for home base - a long-term set-up. Hitting the hotel would attract attention, increase the likelihood of other travelers getting involved, and involve a stake-out to make sure they knocked on the right doors, so Rhiannon scratched that off the list. The abandoned linen warehouse was a safer bet.
The Mission Linen Building was a square structure at an intersection in the old part of downtown. An L-shaped portion of it was two stories high. The rest was one story. Built in 1950, it was now a concrete block covered in intricate murals and graffiti, one of several empty buildings in the area. On the north side, a painting of a robot loomed next to a decal of Chairry from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Near that, an artist had done a silhouette of a man on a cell phone with the words ‘teach peace.’ At the top of the building, rows of plate-glass windows let in murky light from the streetlamps. It was a relic awaiting a buyer to rehab it along with everything else in the neighborhood. In the meantime, it was a decent place for Sean’s inner circle of hunters to hole up, talk shop, and receive reports from loosely-affiliated hunters.
A short distance down S. First Street, Rhiannon waited for her own inner circle in an alleyway. The hunter’s dark clothes were suited for a fight: Boots, jeans, a close-fitting thermal crew-neck, and her hair in a braid. She had weapons because the other hunters would, but the idea of pulling a gun or a knife in this fight made her feel heavy. Hands on her waist, Rhiannon took a moment to gather herself in the doorway of a locked building. She mumbled a quick prayer and walked back out with a different set to her shoulders.
This wasn't the first time Katherine had ridden the hunter rodeo. It was how she had got involved with Rhiannon, in the first place. They held a curious sort of healthy respect for one another, considering they should be natural enemies. It was recent events, however, which had landed the vampiress with a reminder of how the other brunette's type should more often be treated. On one hand was worn a thin leather glove, black, like the rest of her clothing. She'd mentioned to Rhiannon how a hunter encounter had almost lost her an arm and the added protection was either because it was still healing or simply a psychological barrier.
Being asked to join in and get potential retribution was one thing. Being told killing or permanent injuries were a last resort... It made things more difficult, but also provided an interesting challenge. Murder was an old friend, but the other side would have to make the first move. Katherine had no desire to make a deliberate enemy of Rhiannon and taking on a family relative would likely result in that.
So, she had gone for a covert approach: A Kubotan was the very least she had tried to get Wren to carry around with her. An easily concealed non-lethal instrument someone could do a tremendous amount of nerve damage with, even as a human. As a vampire, more so. There was also the steel cord she typically carried on her person; hidden and capable of breaking a window.
The handgun, Katherine was ramming a fresh magazine into as Rhiannon was approached. The safety was on and she tucked it into the rear of her belt, under the small leather jacket. Long hair had been gathered into a ponytail, keeping it out of her field of view if she had to turn her head quickly.
"Call it an insurance policy," she excused before the hunter could object. "Don't worry, I'll aim for the legs. This is your show, but there's good odds they're gonna' fuck us over. Especially if one of them knows who I am."
Rhiannon raised her eyebrows at Katherine. Wordlessly, she lifted the hem of her shirt and briefly showed the vampire her own handgun and knife. They were walking into a potential arsenal. She’d be crazy to go in with nothing but her hopes and dreams. “No argument here.”
The chill of the night air wasn’t what made the Were pull the thin black beanie down on his head, it was more to hide the blonde hair which he knew could contribute to him transmitting ‘target’ to any who’d been given his description. Having completed a circuit of the area Cian grudgingly admired Rhiannon’s uncle’s choice of hide out. It was the tallest building within a few blocks in any direction, and afforded no-one the opportunity to set up a surveillance position that would offer any sort of useful information. It also told Cian he came to town intending to cause maximum damage with minimum interference, which made him grit his teeth as he remembered again what happened in Chicago.
He finished fastening his boots and tugged lightly at the buckle on his belt. Also now wearing all black attire he approached Rhiannon from behind the vehicle. He’d returned from the circuit of the location to where they’d parked her car and passed the information on to her earlier. He heard the voice of the vampiress and gave Katherine a nod in greeting, the humour of the situation not escaping him - this wasn’t the first time a hunter, a vampire and a Were walked into a fight… this time it just wasn’t in the bar at Lucky’s.
“Reminds me of our first date,” he said to Rhiannon with a soft chuckle, attempting to alleviate the heaviness he felt emanating from her.
“I liked the second one better,” the hunter mumbled.
Tasha hadn’t hesitated to take Rhiannon up on the request for backup. She was still annoyed by the fight in Lucky’s, particularly the chair against the back trick. She had come prepared, her own weaponry well-concealed. The hunter had taken it as an unwritten rule that extreme violence would be the last resort.
Besides, it was interesting to finally meet Katherine in person. “You’re going to tell me where you got that later,” she told the vampire, referring to the wicked looking weapon with all the keys on it.
For probably the first time in his life, Rob Corrigan was not looking forward to even the possibility of a fight.
His mood had ranged from astonished to worried to pissed off since his last text conversation with Rhiannon, and he had the feeling he was still missing a few pieces of the puzzle. He could entirely believe that his father would double-cross the people who were paying him, and if pressed hard enough he’d have admitted it wasn’t a terrible idea. Enough power in the wrong hands or the hands of someone who couldn’t use it responsibly was trouble even with humans.
What was troubling Rob was the lives Sean was willing to risk while doing it. He’d stayed to himself while the others gathered just down the street, though he thought he recognized one of them as a hunter from a distance. Henry had posted himself near an abandoned car that had already been thoroughly stripped, the tires and everything else valuable removed. He’d cautioned the older man twice - possibly three times - not to get over-enthusiastic. They had a loose idea of how many others Sean had called in, but not firm numbers. He figured Nina was probably lurking close by, though.
Shoving his hands into his pockets, Rob wished for a smoke, having left his pack in the car when he’d showed up. He was armed too; a police-issue baton he’d bought at a surplus warehouse back in Chicago dangled from a loop on his belt, and he was carrying a sheathed knife in addition. That and a weight of anger and hurt on his shoulders. He and Sean had never come to blows. But if he had to hit his father tonight…..he could live with it.
Nesryn kept her footfalls light. Her sneakers collided with the pavement, short legs carried her with grace around obstacles and through shadows. Brian had been in a real mess when he had come home; she could still feel that anger and fear sitting heavy in her chest. He had been a target. Someone used silver — that was not a coincidence.
The invitation via text had been welcomed. She nearly jumped at the idea of running the hunters out of town. Taking a bit of revenge on the black and pink haired woman who had gotten Brian’s name off of his shirt, had hurt him.
Fingers curled around the handle of the aluminum bat she had in her Kia. Nesryn never went anywhere without it. On bumpier roads she found comfort in the sound of it rattling around in the floorboards. And if anyone passing by observed her they may have noticed the rest of her attire seemed ‘athletic’ enough to make sense. A baseball cap that didn’t have a recognizable logo, a fitted tee shirt with a windbreaker to cover her arms, tight black jeans and her second favorite pair of sneakers.
Nesryn entered the location Rhiannon had given her cautiously. Familiar scents caught her by surprise and she felt instant comfort in them - Rhiannon, Cian - and a few she didn’t recognize right away. Biting at her lip, Nesryn almost danced over. “Hey,” she breathed softly, keeping her voice down. You never knew who would be listening and she didn’t want to blow their cover.
“Hey,” Rhiannon murmured. “The bat’s a nice touch.” Especially if it kept Nesryn from having to shapeshift. Using Were strength, Rhiannon figured the small brunette could swing the hell out of it. With everyone accounted for in her small group, she whistled, a low frequency her cousin would recognize, one asking him to fall in so they could talk. Henry was around somewhere... Henry, a hunter who could be described as a rowdy bull in a china shop. They hadn’t been within earshot of each other in years, but she could remember better times when she was a young girl, one vivid memory of standing on Henry’s shoulders like a cheerleader and climbing into an upper floor of a house while he groused about how much Sean was feeding her. Rhiannon had put her dirty shoe on his forehead and pushed off for good measure.
With a look at Cian, Rhiannon whispered something to him and took a step backwards out of the cluster to create space for two more, and put some room between herself and her boyfriend.
His face softened as he replied with a wink, his eyes showing flecks of gold in the green.
Katherine had only given a small nod of acknowledgement to Tasha. She had no idea if any of them would even survive this evening. A brief introduction of her name was given to the uninitiated before they went in, in case anyone needed to catch her attention if chaos broke out. Which, now that they were here, begged the obvious question… “So,” she began, looking Rhiannon’s way, then at the rest. “There some kind of plan? Or do we all just… Y’know… Hurt things if the talking part goes South?”
Cian stood silently beside Rhiannon, watching the two hunters join them, running an eye over Rob and Henry and quietly taking a note of their scent. It was the one way he knew for sure would give him and Nesryn an advantage if things went dark, they could tell who they were fighting without having to see them.
“They know we’re coming, if not already here.” Rob’s voice was a mutter, and he was very deliberately ignoring the scratch of something off on the back of his neck at closer range. Rhiannon had said she was bringing people she trusted, and at the least he knew he could count on her to be honest with him. Even if the people with her weren’t exactly people, he was there to back her play.
“She ain’t wrong about havin’ to maybe hurt somebody. If Sean’s half as rough as I recall, he might not even bother with talkin’.” Henry inclined his head in Rhiannon’s direction, a nod of respectful acknowledgement. He hadn’t been privy to most of the falling out in the Corrigan clan, but he’d picked up bits and pieces through the grapevine. It seemed like despite Sean, both of the kids had figured out how to stand on their own, just one slower than the other.
Rob cleared his throat. “So do we just wait, or…?”
“He knows I’m coming,” Rhiannon said. “I didn’t tell him when, or who I was bringing, so he’s guessing who’ll be with me at best. And he doesn’t know you’re in town unless you told him,” she added for her cousin Rob’s benefit. “I couldn’t get an up-to-date floor plan for the building so we’re going in blind. Everyone, take a good look at each other. Try not to accidentally punch the wrong ‘good guy.’ Whatever that means.”
Addressing Katherine’s question, Rhiannon said, “I called Sean last night. Talking already went south, so we go in ready to fight.” Rhiannon used her phone to pull up a Google map of the area. “There’s are two doors on the First Street side. There’s another door and a roll-up on the Casino Center Boulevard side. Unfortunately both are in full view of the windows on the second floor, but... If someone climbs the fence in the back, there’s a first floor window under the power lines and that one’s out of view. So we split up. Katherine and Henry,” she checked the time, “At 10:15, you’ll go in first through that window and create a distraction. Once they breach, the rest of us will take the side doors. Tasha and Nesryn, you’re with me on the Boulevard side. Rob and Cian, you’ll take the First Street side. Work your way to the center of the building. The goal is to disable anyone you find so they can’t engage. Injure if you have to, anything else is a last resort. They’re just hunters taking orders. We need to get to him.” Rhiannon held up her cell phone to show them a picture of her uncle. “He calls the shots. His name is Sean.”
Rhiannon pocketed her phone and avoided meeting her boyfriend’s eyes after pairing him with Rob. If she lived through the night, Cian was going to kill her. “Ready?”
While Cian at first bristled that he wasn’t with Rhiannon, the Were saw sense in what she had done with the groupings. Someone Sean knew was in each group, him with Rob, Katherine with Henry, and Rhiannon with Tasha and Nesryn. If nothing else it would give the older Corrigan something to consider before blindly taking out any and every one of them. Or trying to. And it distanced him from her, lessening the likelihood he would be immediately identified as her partner. The fact that Rob had contributed to the death of his friends in Chicago would be something he could push to the back for now. But would provide motivation if necessary. His main target was the man inside, his goal? To prove it wasn’t always the Weres who were the monsters.
He nodded his simple acceptance of her directions, eyes sweeping the outline of the building, for a very brief moment thinking it would have been good to have Gabe there. It would give them the advantage of accessing the building from above, something those inside would never have expected, but the sorcerer was on a trip to Colombia, chasing up a lead on his family’s lost Ring. He wouldn’t drag him back from that.
He lightly pressed his hands against the places where weapons were concealed, a pair of brass knuckles bearing small engraved runes slipped onto his fingers, and concealed by lightweight black gloves. His healing abilities were good, but avoiding something as simple as grazes or cuts during a forced entry into the building just made common sense.
“Ready when you are,” he said to Rob quietly.
Nesryn took a second to memorize smells; vampire, hunters, Weres. She did not want to do exactly what Rhiannon said and minimizing the violence to anyone thrown into this whirlwind was preferable. The less blood on her shoes, the better. When she had the scents registered to the faces of those around her, Nesryn fell into line.
She nodded at the pairings. Dark eyes would find the people she knew and she did her best to offer comfort. Her mind went to Brian, to Daisy their new dog, and while she felt afraid, the other emotions inside of her were strong enough to mask the aroma of it. The edge of the bat would lift, come gently down upon a flat palm and she curled her fingers around it. “Ready,” the Were murmured softly, bracing herself mentally.
Katherine didn’t say anything, but with none of the hunters mentioning so much as a possibility of access points being rigged with improvised explosives or magical warding countermeasures, she was a little surprised at how relaxed the security was, considering who was inside.
“This better not count as needing an invitation,” she pointed out, honestly not sure if a set-up like this was regarded as personal property or not. “Otherwise, I’m stuck outside. Woulda’ brought some tear gas and smoked ‘em out, if I’d known we’re assaulting Hunter HQ. Still, seeing as how we’ve no idea how many are inside…”
With that, she retrieved what looked like a cylindrical grenade from within her jacket. “Flash-bang,” she clarified, starting to move off towards the fence at the rear, assuming the big guy was coming with. “I’ll throw this in, first. It’ll confuse however many are closest to the window before we smash through. That’ll be your distraction.”
Her piece said, Katherine set off. Time to play SWAT team…
“If you’d known,” Rhiannon replied. “And here I thought you were ready for everything.” Rhiannon watched her leave and shook her head, the corner of her mouth quirking. That was Katherine, expecting hunters to behave like a paid government assault group.
Rob measured Cian up as the two of them started off, and this was the first time he’d been at really close quarters with someone he strongly suspected wasn’t fully human. Before, before they’d really started getting paid for their efforts, they’d dealt with vampires as informants, but he’d always kept his distance out of what he recognized as distaste. Now, though, it made sense, even if he wasn’t sure it was a sense he liked.
“Knowing my father, he’s keeping watch himself, even if he’s got other people on sentry duty,” he told Cian as they approached First Street. He’d transferred the knife from his pocket to the opposite side of his belt, close to his non-dominant hand. He hoped not to have to use it, though given how far this had already gone, there was no telling how much resistance they’d face. These weren’t just hunters taking orders, they were hunters taking orders from Sean, and his father had ways of making you wish you were dead without ever touching you. Around them, the street was quiet.
As they rounded the corner, the shadows thinned as the sodium glare of street lamps cut through the darkness. Rob could see two doors, one more to the right than the other. Better to go through one together, and it didn’t look as if he’d have to force his way past it this time. His shoulder was still a touch stiff from the last time he’d had to use it to ram through a door. He indicated the closest entrance with a hand gesture, unsure if Cian wanted to take point.
Cian silently nodded acknowledgement, a tiny flicker of amusement discernible through a twitch of the corner of his mouth. He wondered if Rhiannon and Rob realised just how much their training by the same man reflected in who they were, because Cian recognised the similarities in the smallest of mannerisms in this mode almost instantly. It also gave him fair warning that the one who taught them would also be similar. Forewarned is, after all, forearmed.
He settled, ready, on one side of the door as Rob positioned himself on the other, the Were focusing on his enhanced senses of hearing and smell, listening for movement, testing the air for telltale signs of occupation. He could smell the man opposite him, stale cigarette smoke, cheap hotel, and the body odour of someone who’d possibly spent too many hours pacing and questioning. He turned his head a little, leaned in closer to the door and cleared his mind of the man opposite him.
“Smoker, just inside,” he mouthed at Rob when he caught the man’s eye. Another odour untangled itself. “Another. Laundry,” he added as a whiff of popular detergent also reached his nose. This meant there were at least two somewhere inside the door as they waited for the sounds of the breach from the rear of the building.
Tasha didn’t know Nesryn, but she had heard about her from Brian. She shot the baseball bat-toting brunette a reassuring smile before turning to Rhiannon. The hunter took one last, surreptitious inventory of her weapons. It had been a minute since being a part of something that felt oddly momentous. Randomly picking off vampires in the park and impromptu bar brawls notwithstanding.
In a low voice, she asked her fellow hunter, “You good?” with a slight touch of irony.
Rhiannon gestured around the back of the block, suggesting they take the darker side with more cover. “My uncle might be watching the street through a scope and I just sent my boyfriend off with my cousin, who doesn’t know I’m dating a Were. Also, Rob tried to kill him a few years back. So yeah. I’m great.” She followed suit with her own ritual check of personal weapons and led the way into the darkness. “You?” She smiled at her fellow hunter and stepped off the curb to get them moving.
“Nesryn, once we break through the door, if we don’t get ambushed, we’ll sweep until we get to the center. Listen out for radios and weapons. You’ve got the best nose. Give us a signal if you smell cigarettes, alcohol, chewing tobacco, sweat, fast food... Eau de chasseur. Best case scenario, they keep things civil and we’re using fists. Worst case, they could have access to guns, knives, axes, batons, bows and arrows. A sword’s not out of the question. Bullets are the biggest silver risk next to a knife with silver inlay, but they probably won’t use those if they think you’re human or a vampire. They’re not cheap.” Rhiannon took one last look at Katherine and Henry making for the fence, then she cut through a narrow alley to bring them around the other side of the building.
With the request given, Nesryn nodded. It wasn’t an order; Rhiannon had more experience in this field and the werewolf had a lot of respect for her. She was happy to help, lending her skills where they were needed in an effort to get everyone to the destination safely. To Tasha, she offered a small smile. The click of the metal bat against pristine skin would follow. While she wasn’t sure she was ready, it was now or never.
Off of the curbside she went. Nesryn made herself focus on the sounds of her feet as they turned toward their side of the building. She stuck to the shadows, already picking up on a mixture of scents: Pizza, sweat, the tang of leftover beer in an aluminum can.
She tucked herself back behind the two hunters enough to give both women space to get into the building itself. The bat held at the ready just in case someone was waiting for them. “I don’t smell anything recent,” she added in a whisper. At least nothing fresh.
Rhiannon nodded at Nesryn’s observations. She crept around the far side of the building, staying close to the painted concrete wall. The hunter gestured at Tasha to watch their back, Nesryn in front of them, while she kept an eye on the roof and windows above. There was nothing except the noise of cars on a nearby road. She put herself in position to break the door and checked her watch. 10:15pm.
A comfortable distance behind Katherine, close enough to help if she needed it, Henry lumbered along like a bear that had just woken up. He was carrying a mid-weight truncheon in each hand, the plastic casings surrounding the metal interior having seen better days. The sight of the fence gave him some pause, but not much. He was agile enough for a man his size, could still run a good few miles even in boots.
He slipped one weapon into his belt, tested the fence with his now-free hand when they reached it. No gate, which he’d hoped for. Ah, well.
A lot of things were running through Katherine’s mind. Rhiannon’s observations, she couldn’t argue with and exactly how long it had been since those inside had been here was also unknown. Nothing could be taken for granted and that included the intentions of those like this Henry fellow, once all was said and done. The vampiress would be on her guard for the duration, even if they got through this in one piece - and suspected those same feelings were being returned in her direction. That could be the wildcard in all of this: Not what happened during, but how the balance might tip after.
“I can give you a boost if need be,” Henry told his erstwhile partner. “Then follow after.”
Eyeing Henry, Katherine made a quick once-over of the man before proceeding at the window. His weight, distribution of muscle, what he was wearing. His weapons. For now, he was a potential asset.
“Yeah, thanks. Do it,” she allowed, though was well aware that, if some kind of magical warding was in place, she might rebound like Wile E. Coyote hitting a painted tunnel at full speed.
Activating the canister, Katherine counted down and then hurled it with enough force to break through the window. Quickly, she nodded and accepted Henry’s boost, ready to do likewise. The steel cord hidden in disguise as a belt was already slid out and she waited for the flash-bang to go off, seriously disorientating those inside. It was loud enough to count as a signal and the cord noisily SMASHED through enough of the remaining glass to make a person-sized hole she could leap down into with Henry.
In the confusion, she grabbed for the nearest occupant, hoping to slam their head against something hard and knock them out cold.
On the Boulevard side, Rhiannon was about to count off when the internal pop of noise ricocheted. Katherine’s flashbang. “Two, three…” She aimed her kick at a flat space near the knob. Her heel struck it hard. The door wasn’t cheap, but the lock sure as hell was. The door bounced off an interior wall. Inside it was dark. The three of them advanced into the open space.
Tasha followed behind Rhiannon, checking their perimeter as the other hunter dealt with the door. A deep breath, and she plunged into darkness with the other two, blinking as her sight adjusted. She kept her ears tuned for the smallest of sounds, and her gaze watched for any sign of movement in the shadows.
Nesryn swore her heart leapt out of her chest when the flash bang erupted beyond the barrier of metal. Nesryn winced but tightened her grip on the handle of the bat and moved into the dark once the other two before her crossed the threshold. She fell into point. She kept an eye and her senses on the front of their pathway for any sudden movement or surprise scents in the shadows. Thankfully the trip to the little door was uneventful.
A flurry of scents flooded her. Nesryn swallowed the thick, stale air. “Cigarettes,” she murmured. There was smoke burning her eyes. She could hear footfalls, gasps of surprise. Crunch of glass.
On First Street, Rob heard the explosion of the flash grenade from a distance, picked up muffled noises inside the room beyond the door. How many, all told? It was impossible to even hazard a guess. He was angry and regretful, too much of both to decide which emotion was prevalent.
The hunter shoved his weight against the closed door even as he twisted the knob with his free hand, and the heavy object gave as he powered two or three steps into the room. There were two other men inside, faces he didn’t recognize. A third was just stepping past the threshold farther across the room, and Rob forced himself to shake off any regret he might feel. He charged towards the hunter closest to him, right fist already swinging.
If they were very lucky, punching was all that would happen, but Rob wasn’t counting on it.
Cian followed the hunter in the door, the acrid smell of the flashbang at first filling his nostrils, overpowering all other scents for a few moments. They were in what appeared to be an old office. The two he’d warned Rob about, the Smoker and Laundry guy were the closest to the door, another appearing and staring back over his shoulder at the source of the explosion. The sound of Rob breaking through the door finally registered with the three inside, and they came at them with knives drawn, reaching for weapons. Because who would raid a hunter HQ established by Sean Corrigan other than enemies and monsters?
The Were ducked along the wall, getting a better look at the scene rather than wildly running into it with fists flailing - fists never stood up to someone with a gun, believing their lives were being threatened, so he crouched.
Davey had been the third hunter entering the room, and had been caught unawares by the explosion set off toward the rear of the building. “Get cover!” he yelled to the other two until it registered there were others entering the building through the door. He reached for his weapons and figured the two hunters in the room were capable men, and turned to head back to find Sean.
Cian launched himself off the floor toward Laundry while Rob went toe-to-toe with Smoker, focusing his hit on the arm that was now carrying a handgun. He drove him back, finally connecting with a wall, and managed to dislodge the gun from the hunter’s hand. Laundry’s other hand was holding a knife, fortunately for the Were not inlaid with silver, and he felt it slice across his shoulder as the two of them slid down the wall.
A tall, salt-and-pepper haired hunter with a short beard jogged down the central pair of stairs, where he’d been afforded a better view of what was going on. His back had been turned when the flash-bang went off, so his ears took the brunt of it. He looked around for his second- and third-in-command, at least as far as the Nevada operation went. “Nina! Take the three on the Boulevard entrance.” He grabbed the pink-and-black haired girl by the shoulder as she pulled out a gun. “And don’t fucking shoot unless you have to. It’s Rhiannon. Davey!” He saw the hunter towards the base of the stairs. “Hey!” he said, louder. “Keep an eye on the back. Don’t let them past that hallway,” he said, pointing in the direction the stun grenade had come from. There was no telling what other tricks the intruders had up their sleeves.
Sean headed for the First Street entrance. In the dark, he couldn’t see who’d come in, but it looked like a two-on-two fight. He spotted a handgun on the floor and kicked it out of the way; it spun across the polished concrete, where it wedged under a metal desk. His massive hands grabbed the armpits of the first man in black he could get to, and hauled him roughly off his hunter.
“Get off me!” Rob felt hands under his arms, dragging him back and away, and he kicked outwards to see his booted foot land awkwardly in Smoker’s belly, trying to get leverage to break free. His unseen assailant was tall and strong, but the hunter had years of training and experience of his own. He allowed himself to go slack, becoming dead weight as his knees unlocked, trying to pull the other man down with him. Rob could feel sweat trickling under the neck of his shirt, and he’d taken more than one punch in addition to giving. He should really cut down on the smokes.
Sean’s right hand pulled the nightstick loose from its place, and he jabbed it in a hard strike backwards. The angle wasn’t great, but he felt it collide with a solid midsection. The soles of his heavy boots skidded across concrete, looking for purchase, and he landed another, heavier blow as he got one foot under him, finally managing to break the hold. Smoker was making his way to his feet, and Rob turned to get the other hunter in front of him, rather than where he couldn’t see him. Even a two against one fight could be manageable, as long as Rob knew where everyone was.
Across the warehouse, Rhiannon, Tasha, and Nesryn had broken through only to come face to face with machinery. It was a row of abandoned industrial laundering equipment. Other machines were scattered on their left and right, along with trash cans and wheeled carts full of decades-old linen. From this view, Rhiannon couldn’t see anywhere but up. The ceiling in this part of the building was high, but there was a second-floor landing opposite them. For a moment, a tall silhouette had been on top of it, lit by the broken-in windows. Then it descended the steps.
“That’s him,” she said. Rhiannon began to move, cutting around metal relics that still smelled like dust and mildew. As they came around, a dark-haired hunter named Alia (with a not-quite-healed thigh wound from Lucky’s) came out of nowhere swinging a thick, metal pipe. Rhiannon dropped and it hit the laundry machine instead of her head. The noise was almost as loud as the flash-bang in the cavernous warehouse. Before the hunter could swing again, Rhiannon stayed low and rammed her shoulder into the woman’s diaphragm, driving her and that pipe away from Nesryn and Tasha. Alia tripped over her heels and the two of them hit the ground hard.
Another hunter, Xiaofan, rammed the heavy-duty laundry cart at Nesryn.
Nesryn had been caught by surprise; the sound of the metal pipe hitting the machine resonated in her ears causing her to wince a bit. Normally she would’ve seen the motion in her peripheral but in the snag of quick movement she didn’t realize someone was there until it was too late.
The cart slammed hard into her, causing pain to shoot through her leg and side. Nearly dropping the bat, the Were turned and shoved the cart away, sending it spiraling off. The sleeve of her jacket was torn at the elbow from having been snagged by metal under cloth.
While her knee and hip hurt from being rammed into, Nesryn twisted and held the bat up. The hunter, a beautiful Asian woman with near perfect features, grinned coyly at her. “What do you think you will do with that? It is not baseball,” Xiaofan said.
Instead of giving a reply, Nesryn lowered the bat and shifted forward fast to drive the weapon into the woman’s stomach. Both of them tumbled over each other from the momentum and rolled.
Nina had waited until Sean was out of her line of sight before rolling her eyes at the directive not to shoot. She hadn’t been planning on it, but she also remembered how it had felt when Rhiannon pointed a gun at her. She held the weapon at her side, trailing behind Alia.
She briefly watched as Sean’s niece fought the pipe-wielding hunter, then turned her attention to the other two. One, she recognized from the fight at Lucky’s. Nina turned the gun and struck out with the butt of it.
Tasha saw the swing coming, followed by a flash of pink hair. Nina. It looked like they would finally have their Lucky’s rematch, and not a barstool in sight. She grabbed the arm that was attached to the gun, trying to twist it behind the other hunter’s back and loosen her grip on the weapon.
Nina, however, was prepared for that move. With her free hand, she leveled a punch that landed on the side of Tasha’s head, near the temple. She switched the gun to her other hand and descended on the short, bat-swinging brunette.
Meanwhile, Nesryn and Xiaofan wrestled for the bat. The hunter’s once short, styled blonde hair was mussed from the rolling. By now she had regained her breath though her diaphragm ached. Oxygen came in short bursts. But she wasn’t a hunter for nothing. Using the weight of her body, Xiaofan threw her elbow out and used it as a lever to roll the brunette with the bat onto her back.
A knee would push into the floor, hard concrete pressing against tight leather and flesh and bone beneath. Xiaofan’s hands gripped the bat at just above the handle and near the larger end. The hunter smiled with the advantage, moving the bat toward Nesryn’s neck. “Let me introduce you to my good friend, pain.”
Nesryn growled softly to herself and pushed forward on the bat as hard as she could, launching the hunter and the weapon into the air.
“Whoa, there, you’re not even going to say hello?” Tasha latched onto Nina from behind before she could insert herself into the fray between Nesryn and the blonde hunter. The surprise of being grabbed led to a fumble with the gun, which Tasha took advantage of, the weapon skittering across the concrete warehouse floor. It spun, the muzzle landing on the both of them like a bizarre game of Spin the Bottle.
“Get...fuck...off,” Nina grunted, pulling at Tasha’s arm that was around her neck. She jerked forward, pulling with all of her weight, rolling onto her knees and using the momentum to toss the other hunter off of her.
A few steps away, Alia had landed on her back, with Rhiannon tumbling on top. Normally, Rhiannon preferred it that way, except the other hunter struck her in the back of the head with the pipe’s end before she could wrestle for it. It was a glancing blow, but the pop reverberated in her skull. Her scalp stung and started to bleed. “Shit!” She put her hands on Alia’s biceps where they met her elbows and forced them down so the pipe couldn’t hit her again. They were both bloodline hunters, but gravity and body weight worked in Rhiannon’s favor. Squirming, she worked her way cross-wise on Alia’s torso and kicked at the pipe. She got it out of Alia’s hand on the second try. Alia took advantage of the break to slide out from under her.
Both fighters stood. A feint, a punch that connected, a duck and miss. The two went at each other hard until the air smelled like blood and there were spatters of it underfoot, streaked up by their shoes. They grappled sideways into a giant cleaning machine, came undone, and went back at it. Alia charged. Rhiannon deflected the attack and used the side of her hand to chop at Alia’s neck, near the carotid artery and vagus nerve. Alia lost her balance. Rhiannon got out a canister of pepper spray. She backed off and fired it into the girl’s face. “And now you’re fucked,” she said. A quick punch and she walked off, wiping her knuckles.
Davey had turned on his heel, the direction from the boss immediately setting him on a path toward the single story section at the rear of the building, the direction from where the original distraction for the breach had been set off. His ears and eyes were starting to recover, but there was a slight dullness to his hearing still, a legacy of too many years in the firing range without hearing protection, back when that wasn’t even heard of. He’d heard Sean’s instructions to Nina, ‘don’t fucking shoot, it’s Rhiannon’, and shook his head, a little to try and clear his hearing, a little in recognition of the ridiculous situation where family turned on family. With his gun in hand he slowly made his way toward the hallway that led out through the office section, figuring a gunshot to a lower limb would be acceptable if the bastards wouldn’t go down with simple persuasion.
As he drew closer to the door he felt a brush against his neck, that familiar old feeling he had when they were raiding a nest and a smile curled his lips. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he called, a familiar sound to any who’d hunted with him in the past.
The burn of the slice to Cian’s shoulder was momentary, the heat of the moment too great to allow it to distract him from what was taking place. Instead he let his body drop to the floor, using his legs to hook around the hunter’s and drag him down with his momentum, rolling until the Were was on top and able to land a clear punch to one temple, then a cross to the jaw. The crunch of the reinforced knuckles sent the hunter to sleep for the time being, and the Were wriggled his limbs out until he was able to again crouch, looking over to check what was happening with Rob.
Cian saw Smoker struggling to regain his feet, while the new arrival held Rob from behind. Rob dropped his body down, and his boots scrabbled at the floor to get purchase. ‘Two against one, sounds about right’ he thought silently, the bitterness of his memory threatening to rise up momentarily. Instead he pushed it away, the scent of the new arrival now affixed in his mind, ringing all sorts of bells, which he wasn’t really listening to right now.
While Rob was still struggling to get his feet under him, Cian headed toward the one who was still holding him when Rob broke free, his feet finding purchase and suddenly able to lever himself up, turning to face the other two.
Sean’s ribcage throbbed from that whack with the nightstick, but he was upright and breathing. From here, the broken windows cast light in their direction. It was dull with a yellow-orange tinge, but it did the trick for a guy approaching sixty who never needed glasses. Their faces came through just fine. He laughed once, a rough bark that originated deep in his chest. “You gotta be kidding me!” he said, staring at Rob. His smile, broad and white, played oddly off a body that could be wired with fury before his face ever showed it.
In a few seconds, Sean sized them up. He knew what weapons his son carried. The one in the beanie was sending off some kind of vibe. Maybe vampire, maybe Were. Not human. Rob was moving in new circles, wasn’t he? Sean pulled out a karambit. The Corrigans cut their teeth on concealable karambits and push daggers, even antique katarsfor close-quarters combat. This one fit his time-worn hand like he’d been born to hold it. He eyed the nightstick. “You planning to swing that at me, son?”
“You called the terms, remember?” Rob watched his father’s hands, the way the light through the smashed windows reflected off the blade. The baton was weighted at the business end with ball bearings. He’d modified the weapon himself, carefully adding the small metal spheres one at the time before using industrial glue to reattach the end. And he knew that smile, returned it with one of his own that was all teeth and no feeling. Sweat had plastered his shirt to his shoulders, his upper back.
He swung the nightstick in a short arc, aiming for Sean’s left wrist to at least make him drop the knife, maybe to break the bone. One of the hazards of his father’s training methods was that even sparring could be very rough, and he’d learned not to hold back because he’d get hurt if he didn’t. Rob struck out at his father’s right forearm next, his teeth still visible. Later, however much later, he would probably be horrified at all of this, but Later was not Right Now.
“Is that what she told you?” Sean arced away from the first swing of the baton. The con of fighting knife-to-nightstick was that Sean couldn’t block weapon-to-weapon. The pro was that he could take advantage of Rob’s swings and momentum, as long as he deflected and followed through with a slicing motion, which he did. The first slice got nothing but shirt. “Whew! Think I took a little off the top!” They went at it again, circling, swinging, punching, blocking. It might’ve been mistaken for sparring, except there was extra exertion behind each strike. The nightstick hit Sean’s arm with a sick thwack, dangerously close to his elbow. “Mph!” He shook it out and brought his hands back into a defensive position. The deep tissue in his arm ached. “Rob,” he said, “You’re starting to piss me off. You want to be on the outs with me?” The older fighter engaged again.
Rob felt the tip of the knife catch his shirt, score against the flesh of his stomach even as he tried to dodge. Shorter arcs, he told himself, an old lesson remembered. He could feel the sting beneath ripped fabric.
The minutes went by in a blur. Dodge, strike out, move forward or back depending on who was pressing their advantage. The shoulder Rob had hurt before was beginning to ache, but he gritted his teeth past it. Piss his father off? They’d gone past the point where he cared about that.
In the rear of the building, Henry bulldozed his way farther inside, following the noise of shouts in the building as he targeted anyone unlucky enough to try bracing him. He’d gotten grazed on the side of the head with a bottle somewhere in the middle of the fray, but he was clear-headed and steady on his feet. One fist collided with a smaller hunter’s jaw, because he’d lost one of his truncheons. He’d have to look for it later. You never left a weapon behind if you could help it.
He caught a punch in the mouth that surprised him and somebody else tried jumping on his back from behind. Henry pitched the offending party off of him with a grunt that echoed off the walls. It seemed like the tide was turning, but things were too chaotic to tell.
‘Come out, come out, wherever you are’...
The phrase had echoed off the walls almost as much as it had ricocheted out of the past for Katherine. She couldn’t even count the number of times she had heard something like that. A taunt for intimidation’s sake or made in hope of someone getting overconfident enough to make a wrong move. Other sounds, too, filled the air, but she had to choose her moment. Needed to strike, hard, from the side and barreled into the man, shoulder-first, hoping for inertia to help take him down.
When the woman hit him midships it punched the air out of Davey’s lungs, sending him backward into a piece of old machinery that was bolted to the floor. Fortunately for him the surface was relatively smooth where he slammed into it, without any potentially damaging protrusions, and the woman who’d hit him didn’t have the bulk of Henry, who he’d seen come through the doors like a freight train. He brought his linked hands down hard in the area of kidneys and lower spine, accompanied with a knee to her torso in a hope to knock the wind out of her.
Nesryn’s weapon spun in the air. Xiaofan tumbled backwards to land hard on her tailbone. Rhiannon lunged and caught the bat. She spotted something else: a small, dark stain spreading across Xiaofan’s pant leg. There wasn’t a sharp weapon around, so somebody had reopened an old wound from Lucky’s. Rhiannon kicked at it, hard enough to make a stab wound bleed like hell. Xiaofan howled. “Here,” Rhiannon called, tossing the bat to Nesryn. “Take her out.”
Nesryn was already on her feet when the bat flew toward her. She caught it with both hands. Her hat lay on the floor somewhere forgotten. The Were nodded.
Rhiannon saw Tasha and Nina fighting. Tasha could handle herself. Making a quick decision, Rhiannon took off running to look for Sean.
Nesryn stalked over to the howling hunter, though instead of using the bat, Nesryn drew back a fist and let the knuckles of her hand connect with the spot on a jaw that would knock someone out cold. A rush of adrenaline coursed through her. She took a breath and watched the downed woman slump over. A nod of thanks to Rhiannon, Nesryn gripped the bat properly and began to make her way toward the center of the building.
Tasha was thrown forward just as Nina intended. She tucked into a roll last minute to try to get seamlessly back on her feet, but the other hunter was ready. She was on top of Tasha, a knife materializing in her hand where the gun once was. She eyed the weapon, the metal glinting and flashing even in the limited light.
Nina brought the point of the blade down, its trajectory heading for Tasha’s upper arm. She reached up and grabbed Nina’s wrist with one hand, and aimed a strike at the other hunter’s face with the remaining hand. The blow landed, but not super effectively. Nina threw her weight into it and managed to bring the knife down, where it sank into an area near Tasha’s hip.
“Fuck!” Tasha swore between gritted teeth as the blade pierced her clothing and the flesh beneath it, easily. But as a result, Nina was off her center of gravity. Tasha twisted so that her torso moved sideways and brought her knees up to her chest, then used her feet as a lever to push Nina off of her.
Tasha got back into a standing position, despite the pain from the stab wound. Before Nina could react, the hunter struck out with her foot and caught her in the head, and the black-and-pink haired assailant fell unconscious. She pulled out her own knife and set off in the direction Rhiannon had gone.
Katherine, it could be said, was worse for wear. Getting pummeled from behind and getting kneed in front was no picnic. She might not need to breathe, but that did nothing to prevent it hurting. At least it prevented her cursing the roof off. Disorientated, she went on impulse and lashed out with her Kubotan, driving the point of it into the nearest of Davey’s legs. It wouldn’t penetrate flesh, but it would be an unmistakably painful action.
And as if guided by a ghostly hand seeking retribution, her jab zeroed in on a large bruise, a souvenir of a fight with a vampire two nights earlier when they were taking down a nest. Davey swore loudly, questioning his attacker’s lineage, his knee buckling as he tried to wriggle free of her and the pain Katherine was inflicting. Davey’s fingers found her upper arm and wrenched on it, not able to get a good purchase to enable him to inflict damage, but squeezing hard to try and lever it away from his leg. His other hand drew back to land a punch to the side of her head.
“Hey. You.” Henry took Davey off of his feet with a football tackle that sent them both crashing to the floor. Henry was bleeding from a wound on his shoulder he’d picked up when one of the hunters got lucky with a knife, but he was big and strong and pissed, if not born to this. He’d also lost his second weapon, made up for it by landing several punches in the other man’s midsection, one more to his face. His weight held the other hunter in place as bruised knuckles made contact with Davey’s jaw. It was not the first time what he happily referred to as his hibernation layer helped out, probably wouldn’t be the last.
Katherine might be undead, but receiving a blow like that to the skull caused her world to ring like a bell and start to swim. Above her, the pair went for one another in a bear-like brawl and a dim memory of a saloon teased somewhere at the back of Katherine’s mind. She had slumped down in the chaos, trying to regain a sense of balance and… Yeah, this wasn’t working. Not being able to inflict serious bone-breaking injuries was making her second-guess everything.
She needed to do something decisive...
Meanwhile, on the First Street side, Sean and Rob kept trading blows. Sean blocked an attack and ducked low, reaching behind Rob’s body, hoping to shred his hamstring with the talon-like weapon. It was a precarious position.
What happened next happened very fast.
Cian had ended up wrangling with Smoker once Laundry had started his nap and the two Corrigans faced off. The Were had finally managed to wrangle the hunter into a choke-hold, when he saw the flash of a knife heading to Rob’s leg. Rhiannon’s uncle’s lunge at his son had Cian lash out with his legs in an attempt to send one of them off balance.
The karambit cut through something -- whether it was Rob’s flesh or just his pants, Sean couldn’t tell because a foot hit his knee. It knocked him off-balance enough that he had to roll to regain his feet. It was the man in the beanie, who currently had his hunter in a choke-hold.
Rob felt the point of the karambit sink into his leg just above the knee. He yelled with pain, the limb threatening to buckle.
Livid, Sean reached for an old, fixed-blade, family weapon, one with silver in-lay, which he always kept sheathed on his belt. Cian was too far away to lash out at effectively, so Sean took aim with his better throwing arm.
“No!” Rhiannon ran toward the cramped cluster of the fight. “Sean, stop!”
She wanted to knock his arm out of alignment and make him miss. It might’ve worked, except she tripped on somebody’s foot and got there 0.2 seconds after he let go. Sean’s short knife went into her triceps. Rhiannon stabilized it and looked at the injury from her spot on the floor. “Motherfucker!” she yelled, clearly in no mortal danger.
The sight of a family heirloom sticking out of her muscle was the icing on the cake of this whole situation. Rhiannon should have stayed there, holding onto the knife, but she was furious. Before Sean could do or say anything, her fingers felt along her own belt. From the floor, Sean raised an arm to deflect what he thought was coming for his torso. Instead, she stabbed it through her uncle’s shoe.
Rob had heard Rhiannon shout something. He made his knees lock, support his weight. The baton came down on his father’s closest shoulder, hard. He could feel a trickle of blood on his calf beneath his pants, winding down to his shoe.
The flash of light on the blade of the knife was all Cian had needed to see to know why Rhiannon threw herself (or so it had looked from where he was under the hunter he had in a choke hold) to stop her uncle from throwing it. The fact that it was now buried in her arm had the Were toss the now unconscious hunter aside and launch himself at the older Corrigan male, what could be mistaken as an angry roar reverberating around the room. Rob’s swing hit Sean’s shoulder as the Were hit him below where his arms were raised to deflect the expected attack from Rhiannon. Cian and Sean, with Rhiannon’s knife lodged in his boot, went down hard, the Were’s shoulder driving into the hunter’s midriff as they made contact with the floor.
Even in chaos like this, it was natural instinct to take notice of the miniature thundercrack of gunfire. A loudly reverberating noise of muzzle velocity and firepower, sending a round somewhere into the ceiling.
The woman responsible, a vampire named Katherine, now held it pointed squarely at who she was estimating to be Sean. If wrong, well, here’s hoping it was someone he gave a damn about. It was a clear signal to everyone who looked not to push things. The blood running down her face didn’t exactly paint the best picture of stability.
“Since you guys turned up, I’ve almost lost an arm, got staked and now I’m feelin’ all woozy, thanks to Gentle Ben, over there,” she sarcastically growled with a nodding gesture in Davey’s direction. “So, you want to escalate this? I’m ready, man… I will napalm all you bitches with a fucking butterknife if I have to. But I made a promise to play nice. So… Your move.”
All she had to do was squeeze that trigger and the hunters would be down at least one member. Perhaps their most important.
For a split second… the tiniest fraction of time… Rhiannon wished Katherine’s finger would twitch and pull that trigger. Even though she’d called for no major casualties. Even though she’d stuck her own knife through Sean’s foot instead of a major organ. But he was her uncle, one who’d had a major hand in raising her and everything to do with Rhiannon knowing how to fight, and her cousin would have to watch his dad die and spend the rest of his life questioning it. So she put up her hand and cried, “Wai--”
“Alright!” It took a lot out of him, but Sean shoved the man off his body. He sat up. He was sweating from exertion and pain. His shoulder throbbed. The level of pain coming out of his foot was stratospheric. There was blood all over the floor, some of it his, some of it Rhiannon’s, some of it Rob’s. Hunter’s blood. Nobody’s injuries looked critical to him. He squinted in the darkness at the vampire pointing a gun at him, one who claimed she’d been asked to ‘play nice.’ Other figures were coming closer, people who’d broken in alongside his son and his niece.
Sean looked at the man in the beanie. He shook his head, addressing his niece. “That knife... could’ve hit you anywhere. And then he comes in like a linebacker. This must be him.”
The Were looked from the uncle to the niece and back to the uncle, the distrust and dislike of the man clear in his eyes.
Rhiannon’s shoulders lowered, not saying anything, leaving it unsaid because she didn’t know how Cian felt about anyone knowing his identity. She reached across and pulled her knife out of her uncle’s foot. At least his tight boot would keep some of the blood in.
She wanted Sean’s knife out of her arm. Rhiannon looked around. There had to be a medic kit around somewhere, but there might not be enough supplies to handle this many wounds. Everybody looked like shit. Slowly she got to her feet and walked to the nearest deserted piece of linen. She started to rip a strip off with her good arm and her teeth when Cian joined her to help stem the bleeding while she eased out the knife. They left the rest of the cloth for whoever needed it. Rhiannon sucked air through her teeth while the Were wrapped her triceps. She distracted herself by looking at his injury. They were going to need courses of antibiotics after this.
“I can’t control how you run things in Chicago,” Rhiannon said, speaking to her uncle. “But things aren’t that black and white here. You should leave Nevada to us and go home.”
Breathing hard, Rob finally dropped the nightstick with a clatter, and later he would probably thank Rhiannon for not letting Katherine shoot his father. At least once he’d made sure he wasn’t going to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. He tried to lift the leg of his pants enough to look at the wound, but it was stuck to his skin with blood. He looked at Sean with something that was dangerously close to contempt. “You stupid son of a bitch. Henry? Henry, you okay?”
“I’m alive. I think.” Henry was sitting on his considerable duff on the concrete floor, his left hand covering the stab wound on his shoulder, feeling light-headed. Davey looked unconscious, but he couldn’t really tell. Body armor would have been a good plan, but at least it was over. “I call shotgun for the trip to the E room.”
Rhiannon was relieved that gruff, old Henry was still alive and kicking. She looked around for Tasha and Nesryn and they were on their feet. Way across the room, she could see other hunters begin to stir, but nobody was in a hurry for round two.
Nesryn had been peppering blows with her bat here and there in an effort not only to distract but to try to break up the tussles. Any blow she landed would’ve been direct, non-lethal collisions meant to give her friends time to get an advantage. She’d promised Rhiannon not to kill anyone - she didn’t want to kill anyone - but things happened.
The sound of surrender was enough to make Nesryn pause. Somewhere along the way she’d gotten a scrape on her forearm. Probably during the fight with the Hunter. Though she lowered her bat slowly and waited to see what would happen next for resolve. “I’ll take anyone who needs a ride to get help,” she offered quietly. Her Kia could hold a few and it wasn’t new to blood.
Tasha was still holding her knife when she froze, gaze sweeping over the damage. The smell of blood was in the air, almost stifling. She had forgotten, somehow, about the wound in her hip and she looked down at the trail of red that streaked down the leg of her jeans. “Is this a truce?” the hunter asked with a backward glance at her adversary, who was slowly stirring into consciousness on the hard warehouse floor.
“No.” Rhiannon was firm. “This was a warning. We have more friends.” She glowered at Sean. The knife cleaned on her shirt hem, she turned it handle-outward and tossed it to its rightful owner. Sean caught it. The way he held himself, with his chin higher than horizontal, made his arrogance plain, but something was different in his expression, something only Rob and Rhiannon would’ve picked up on. It wasn’t defeat. It was the look he got when he needed to chew on something for a while and come to his own conclusions about it.
Alia was too blurry-eyed to be useful to the cause, but Nina and Xiaofan hauled Sean up and made themselves into a pair of crutches.
Cian made Rhiannon let him check her over quickly for any other wounds, having seen what the uncle had done to both his 'family' and was about to do to him. He took what was left of the make-shift bandage over to where Rob was, indicating the wound on his leg Cian had tried to prevent. He crouched down, took a quick look and didn't bother to try and remove any of the clothing in the way. For all he knew it could be helping stem the blood loss. "Need t' get Doc do some stitching in there," he said, suspecting muscles had been damaged from the look of the blood flow. He looked up briefly at the man before wrapping the remaining linen around the leg and securing it.
Looking around with suspicion, Katherine raised her firearm, clicking the safety back on. “Anyone bleeding out or need stitches, I know a guy,” she called, glancing over the faces she had entered there with. If anyone wanted to take her up on the other, she would hand them Radek’s number. If not, the militant vampiress had no desire to hang around any longer than necessary. This time, however, she would be exiting via the door.
“I need a bar,” she muttered, figuring Rhiannon would be going with her other half, but if someone else wanted to join, she wouldn’t object. “Later.”
Rhiannon nodded at Katherine.
To the others, she said, “Let’s get outside, then figure out where everyone’s going.” She had no urge to end up next to Sean in the waiting room of an emergency department.
[Credits: Named NPCs Written by Cathy (Davey), Kate (Sean, Alia), Jess (Nina), Rae (Xiaofan), Stargazer (Henry, Rob)]