shellyharmon (shellyharmon) wrote in birthrightrpg, @ 2021-12-09 15:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | npc, shelly harmon |
An Admirable Performance
Who: Shelly/NPCs
Where: Las Vegas, Dante's Casino
When: Present
Content Warnings: Violence, Language, General Creepiness
At one of the many bars inside Dante’s Casino, a young woman with long, wavy blonde hair held up her phone and angled it so that her head and shoulders were framed and reflected on the screen. In her other hand, she held up an elaborate, almost neon concoction in a large hurricane glass. A skewer of cherries, pineapple, and orange slices bobbed up and down as she recorded a video of herself. “I’m here in fabulous Las Vegas, enjoying my third or fourth…” And here, she broke into a series of tipsy giggles. “I lost count, but oh my god, they are amazing.” Pink lips wrapped around a green straw and took a long sip. “I think I’m in the mood to gamble. What’s that game called where people blow on the dice for good luck?”
A man sitting next to the babbling tourist spoke up. “Craps.” He leaned across the bar. “Add another one for her, on my tab.” He had light brown hair, close-cropped on the sides but voluminous on top. His suit was almost a shimmery silver-gray, unbuttoned to showcase a fitted charcoal Oxford shirt. His name was Tate, and he worked for Dante’s in a special capacity. Basically hired to look good and scout the floor for pretty people that would be ushered into VIP rooms to keep lonely, rich people company as they gambled away more money than the average family in Nevada made in one year. “Why don’t you put the phone down and live in the moment, um…” Tate had forgotten her name.
“Lauryn,” Shelly replied, clicking an onscreen button and ending the video. She tucked the phone into her crossbody quilted bag that could pass as a real Chanel from a distance. “With a Y.” She smiled sweetly at him. “This suit is amazing. I can’t believe people actually look like you in real life.” She reached out to touch his shoulder and feigned a tipsy stumble over stiletto heels. He caught her with an unnecessarily lingering arm around the waist of her bandage dress, which actually was an Herve Leger, a lucky consignment shop find. “I’m so embarrassed.” His hand slipped further down her hip and she fantasized about cutting it off while her sweet smile remained plastered over her face.
“You know, you don’t have to spend your time out here with all of the riff-raff,” Tate told her, the wink practically audible in a voice so smooth, Shelly was sure he had practiced it for hours. She arranged her features into something resembling breathless intrigue and leaned in, her eyes shining as she waited for him to continue. “We have these VIP rooms, they’re like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” he added confidently. “Anything you can possibly imagine, the people who run this casino can acquire it, like that.” He used his free hand to snap his fingers. And then he really did wink. “Well, for the right person.” He gave her an appraising look, one designed to make her feel self-conscious. She dropped her gaze on cue, willing her cheeks to flush ever so slightly. Her lips parted infinitesimally. It was a masterful performance, if she did say so herself. “Are you the right person, Lauryn?”
Her eyes drifted up to meet his, slightly wide and shining as she set her empty glass on the bar before grabbing the replacement, though she just held it instead of actually drinking it. “I can be anything you want me to be,” she told him, injecting just the right amount of pathos into her wannabe-ingenue persona. It was very ‘small town girl’. In Shelly’s experience, men like Tate ate that stuff up. Tipsy girl all alone in a big casino, in over her head. A drunken Snapchat video sent to all of her girlfriends to establish that she had been partying and overly exuberant. The kind of person it was easy to lose track of. She knew all of the notes to hit to get his guard down, and it was working. “I’m looking for the right kind of people to meet,” she continued, and hooked her high heel against the bottom rung of his stool. Her leg brushed against his as she held eye contact and took another drink through the colorful plastic straw.
There was a moment of silent deliberation on his part before he stood up from the stool and adjusted the lapels on his suit jacket. He turned his face upward toward an unseen camera and gave a small, curt nod that one might have missed if they weren’t watching Tate closely. “Come on,” he told her, gesturing with his hand toward a path that ran through rows of blaring slot machines. Shelly took one last look at the bar, her abandoned drink, and the bartender who she caught watching her with something that looked almost like worry, then trailed after him. Her hand slipped into the purse strung around her shoulder under the guise of grabbing a tube of lipstick. She was reassured by her fingers grazing over the Vipertek VTS-989 taser that took up most of the real estate inside the bag. The handheld weapon promised to deliver 230 million volts, and would instantly shock any attacker who tried to grab it away from her through electrified plates on the side. It was a worthy investment. She had learned her lesson after the Porter incident. She studied the back of Tate’s head as she followed him, her high heeled feet gliding over the low-pile carpeting that blanketed the casino floor. All around her, slot machines chimed and cups of quarters rattled.
Shelly feigned a bored expression and pretended to not be watching as Tate punched in a four digit code on a numerical keypad next to a locked door. 8283. An electronic beep sounded and the locking mechanism disengaged, allowing the door to be swung open. “After you,” he told her, and she only hesitated for a second before stepping inside what appeared to be a long, dimly lit hallway. She was aware of him hovering behind her, and she turned to look over her shoulder at him. He had been watching her, and she caught a hint of something cold and calculating in his eyes that quickly fell away when he noticed her looking. Her hand went to her purse, her thumb pressed against the metal clasp that kept it closed, and tried not to let doubt creep in or deter her from her purpose.
“Which way?” Shelly asked him, her fingers running down the length of the braided leather-and-chain purse strap. There were several doors on either side of the hall, but this stretch, she noticed, contained no visible surveillance cameras. She was certain that it was by design, and tried to look at that fact optimistically as being in her favor, and ignored the small voice in the back of her head that said this whole endeavor was a huge mistake.
His hand brushed over her shoulder as he gestured up ahead. “It’s the third door on the right,” Tate told her, his head inclined toward her ear. Shelly successfully repressed a shiver of revulsion and nodded. There was no carpeting here, and her high heels clicked rhythmically against the floor as she approached the solid black door, Tate’s spit-polished loafers complementing each step she took. She noticed there was no keypad lock on it and raised an eyebrow, wondering what that could possibly indicate. His hand reached out again to grab the polished silver handle, turning it and pushing open the door. The first thing Shelly was greeted with was low, thumping bass from a sound system, the music loud enough to spill out into the hallway, but unassuming enough so as not to overwhelm. She crossed the doorway into a room bathed in a soft yellow light cast from a half dozen or so expensive looking fixtures. The furniture was very modern, a lot of dark leather and reflective chrome. People milled about idly, some holding glasses full of cocktails that were being concocted in the corner by two bartenders; on one side of the room were a few tables where various forms of gambling were going on. Shelly’s eyes widened slightly when she realized they were betting with large stacks of cash instead of the usual plastic poker chips. The door clicked shut behind her, and when she turned around, Tate was nowhere to be seen. There was, however, a lock on this side of the door.
A few heads turned in her direction when she entered the room, but most went on as they were, ignoring her. She approached the bar area, the twin clinking of ice and liquid inside cocktail shakers an addition to the soundtrack of music and conversation. Her attention was caught by a man standing alone off to the side, scrolling through his phone with a look of bored disdain. He didn’t even look up when a martini glass was set before him. There was a strong vibe of arrogance and Shelly hated him on sight, surprised by the feeling this complete stranger elicited in her. She decided then and there that he would be her target. She sidled up to the bar, and after a few moments one of the bartenders noticed her and came over to take her order. “I’ll have what he’s drinking, please,” Shelly requested in her normal inflection, gesturing to the amber liquid sitting in a glass in front of her object of interest. The Lauryn persona had served her well in getting through the door, but she could tell by intuition and experience that it wouldn’t be enough to hook the bored looking man with the phone glued to his hand. The bartender’s neutral expression was replaced with one of nervousness, as she shot a sidelong glance at the man standing off to the side. “I’m afraid that’s earmarked solely for Mr. Hartley, but I can offer you something almost equivalent.”
Mr. Hartley. That sounded like a Jane Austen character’s name. Shelly raised an eyebrow cooly and looked over at him, pleased to see he had finally torn his gaze away from his cellular device and was studying her closely. Finally, he spoke up. “This is from a $20,000 dollar bottle of single malt scotch purchased at auction,” he told Shelly, and his voice was precisely as she had imagined it. If Tate had obviously practiced his, Mr. Hartley’s came completely natural; supercilious, condescending, and entirely self-assured. To the bartender, he added, “Pour her a glass.” The Dante’s employee obliged, and while she turned her back to prepare the drink, he slank over next to Shelly and tucked his phone out of sight. Her gaze immediately went to his left hand to check for a ring. Nothing. He might have noticed, because he broke into a smile. “Elias Hartley,” he introduced himself, removing that hand from her line of sight. “I’ve never seen you here before. Are you a new recruit?” The glass of whisky was set on the glass-topped bar and Elias slid it toward her pointedly. “Let me know what you think.”
“A new recruit,” Shelly repeated archly, wrapping her fingers around the glass. The liquid inside was room temperature, cool to the touch but not cold. There was about two fingers’ worth. She did some quick mental math; she was holding about 1500 dollars worth of whisky, otherwise known as one month of rent and utilities for her apartment. “So we’re just calling a spade a spade, then. I can appreciate that, Elias.” It must have been an open secret around the casino, or Mr. Hartley didn’t intend for Shelly, or Lauryn, to blab about the goings on inside the VIP lounge. She wondered if she would be asked to sign an NDA, which a more naive person would believe nullified the right to report any criminal activity. Unless they had some more nefarious methods of keeping people quiet, which wouldn’t surprise her at all. She lifted the glass to her lips and took a sip of the alcohol before setting it back down and running her tongue over her lower lip. She met Elias’s gaze and smiled caustically. “I don’t really care for it.” Shelly nudged the tumbler away from her. “What else would you like to try to impress me with?”
A slow smile crept over Elias’s sculpted features and he reached into the lapel pocket of his jacket. With a sleight-of-hand flourish, his fingers reappeared clasping a sleek black plastic card with a glossy finish. There was an embossed logo for the casino on it, a flame inside nine thin, concentric rings. This man was obviously someone, the I in VIP. “I might have something you would be interested in seeing,” he told her, raising a carefully curated brow. “It’s just through there.” He gestured to another shorter hallway that branched off near the card tables. It was difficult to see down from their vantage point by the bar. And of course Shelly didn’t trust this man, but she also had a weapon and she knew that Elias supremely underestimated her. She wondered if she could get the keycard away from him somehow and what else it might give her access to before its loss was discovered and the locks were reprogrammed. “It would just be me and you,” he added, as if that were somehow reassuring. There was a stab of satisfaction that she felt as he turned into a glorified car salesman, trying to convince her to wander off with him when before, he couldn’t be bothered at all.
“Lead the way,” Shelly told him. His smug smirk grew into a full-fledged smile and he picked up her discarded glass of whisky and tossed it back in one go. He gestured with a nod of his head in the direction of the hall and took her hand without asking. As he led her in that direction, she tried to keep her features neutral and not glare at the back of his head, as she was tempted to do. Elias really was a piece of work, but if the thing she had come for was where she thought it was, it might all be worth it. No one seemed to notice or care where they were going. It must have been an entirely common occurrence. There was another series of doors and at the end, the word ‘exit’ glowed in red and a sign warned that it was alarmed and for emergencies only. So that wasn’t a discreet way out if she needed to escape quickly. Elias waved the plastic card and a mechanism near the handle beeped. He ushered Shelly inside. The room was an extension of the main lounge, featuring the same kind of lighting and furniture, though on a much more intimate scale. It looked like a typical expensive hotel suite. She could see a bed through an open doorway. “Are we impressed yet?” he asked, letting the door swing shut behind them.
Shelly walked up to the mini bar and picked up a jar of mixed nuts and shook it appraisingly before setting it back down. “Mmm...no,” she answered, her tone bored. She continued her visual inspection of the room, which featured a sitting area and a 70 inch flatscreen television on one wall. Her reflection stared back at her in the blackness of the screen. Over her shoulder, she could see Elias watching her with an inscrutable expression. “I’ve seen hotel rooms before. I’m staying in one right now,” she told him idly before drifting into the bedroom area. If her path was suggestive, that was only partially the point. He followed her as surely as if she were tugging him along on a string and he slid his suit jacket off as he walked, slinging it over the back of an armchair. She watched curiously as Elias crossed the room to a set of sliding closet doors and pushed them open to reveal the door of a safe built into the wall. It was about three feet tall in height, maybe two feet wide. Shelly took another step toward him as he crouched and inputted a number into the touchscreen, twice. It swung open and he moved out of the way for her to see, a smirk on his face.
Oh. Shelly’s hands fell to her sides and she didn’t even bother to disguise the look on her face. The safe was full of neatly wrapped stacks of cash, jewelry boxes, and a few manila envelopes that were stuffed visibly full. “Okay,” she conceded. “Color me impressed.” And then she smiled softly, the look in her eyes shifting as she nodded toward one of the boxes. She crossed the room to stand near Elias, who followed the length of her legs upward with his gaze. “What’s in that one?” she asked, her voice breathy, and reached out with one hand to graze her fingers teasingly over his carefully coiffed hair. Her other palm rested flat against her purse. His eyes flicked back up to meet hers, and he turned toward the safe and picked up one of the larger, flatter boxes. Shelly took the opportunity of his distraction to open the flap on the handbag and remove the taser, her thumb flicking it on and to the highest setting. No half measures, after all. She silently counted to three and pressed the weapon against his neck. Despite the videos she had watched and the research she had done on what it would do to a person, it hadn’t been enough to prepare her for the reality of the situation.
She knew it wouldn’t knock him unconscious, but seeing Elias fall back onto the ground once she pulled back onto the taser was a sight she wouldn’t soon forget. But there was no time to stand there and philosophize about it or regret it, she needed to get to work. After bending at the knees to grab the fallen black keycard, Shelly stepped over his twitching form and looked for a bag. Luck seemed to be on her side tonight; there was a black duffel sitting toward the back of the closet, in the corner next to the safe. Grabbing it and zipping it open, she began indiscriminately stuffing cash into it. It was more money than she had ever seen up close. Shelly elected to leave the jewelry behind in case any of the pieces were engraved with a traceable serial number. It was too much hassle to try to sell and came with too much potential heat. Once that was full enough to be worth it, but still light enough that she could sling it easily over her shoulder, she quickly crossed from the bedroom back into the main part of the suite. Elias let out a pained groan and she nearly froze and turned around, but instead she swallowed and gripped the strap of the back tighter before pressing her ear to the front door to check for any activity in the hall. When she was sure that it was as safe as it was going to get, she turned the handle and slipped out into the hallway.
It was about fifteen feet to the end of the hall and the emergency door. There was a black metal box with a tiny red LED light. Shelly silently prayed that the keycard in her hand would turn it green. The door clicked open and she breathed an immense sigh of relief when no alarm sounded, and pushed through. The blonde found herself on some kind of enclosed loading bay. There was a parked box truck, the cab of which was dark and empty. The area was lit by a few bare lightbulbs, and some hidden machinery hummed quietly in a corner. The only viable exit appeared to be a rolling metal door like the kind on garages, and it was closed and padlocked shut. ”Fuck,” she whispered to herself. And then her ears twitched at the sound of footsteps over the hard concrete, a door somewhere clicking shut as Tate emerged. He was smiling at Shelly, his gaze dropping curiously to the duffel bag slung around her shoulder.
“That really doesn’t go with your outfit,” he told her, stepping toward her. He held out a hand, cufflinks glinting in the low light. “Why don’t I take it for you?” Shelly stared at him, her face impassive but her heart thudding inside of her chest. Several options lay ahead of her, and none of them were particularly appealing. She could try to taze him, but the only exit besides the rolling door was wherever he had come from, and that seemed counterproductive. She could play stupid and try to bluff her way out of the situation, but it was likely by now that someone had already found Elias on the floor. Or she could hand over the bag. Shelly willed her insides to stop turning to jelly and lifted her chin slightly, turning away from his outstretched hand.
“This is my payment,” she told him, her voice measured, even as adrenaline screamed at her feet to move. She shifted the strap higher up on her shoulder as if to physically emphasize that particular point. “You can hire me, or think of me as an independent contractor,” she continued confidently. “Because I think you need me.”
Tate let his hand drop back down to his side as his eyebrows raised just enough to keep his forehead from wrinkling. “And how is that, exactly?” he asked, not bothering to hide the amusement in his voice and his body language. He didn’t take her seriously. It was why he had come out to deal with her alone. The way he rested his hands in his pants pockets and the way he balanced over the heels of his dress shoes. Shelly wasn’t a threat. Just a nuisance. Her fingers tightened around the strap, the fibers of synthetic nylon itching at the skin of her palm, and her eyes narrowed. She reached a hand toward her purse, but in a flash that was too quick for her to even comprehend, Tate’s hand was around her wrist, gripping and holding it aloft. His fingers were cool against her, and she could tell that he wasn’t even putting his full strength into it. “And without the taser, please. You’ll just embarrass yourself.” With his free hand, he reached into her handbag and removed the weapon. Casually, he tossed it across the loading bay where it skittered to a stop against one of the concrete walls.
Shelly followed its path with her eyes before looking back at Tate. There was something bloodthirsty in his expression, now. He wasn’t just bait to lure people like her, she suddenly realized. He was one of the people in charge. His fingers jerked open and released her wrist, and she resisted the urge to rub it. Not in front of him. “You had no idea what I was capable of when you first saw me,” she told him, her skin stinging hotly. “And look what I was able to do by myself. I didn’t even put that much planning into it.” He was watching her intently, listening, the amusement absent from his eyes. “I could work for you. I would be good at it.” Her eyes flicked downward to lead his to the bag, not moving her hands in case he decided to grab them again. “Think of this as an investment into a successful employee,” Shelly continued. “I can talk a lot of people into doing a lot of different things.”
There was a long stretch of silence. He seemed to be listening to something that Shelly couldn’t hear, because his gaze was lowered and he nodded to himself. Finally, he looked back up at her. “Are you sure you want to work for me?” Tate asked, and when his mouth split open in a smile, much sharper teeth appeared than had resided there before. Her eyes widened and her heart seemed to skip several beats. She took a slightly tottering step backward and he reached out to steady her by her shoulder, still smiling. A vampire. He was a vampire, and she was alone with him, and no one knew where she was. She kept backing away until she felt wall. There was a surreal quality to the way he moved toward her, as if she were a detached outsider watching from afar.
“Yes,” Shelly answered, her composure the only thing she had to hang on to. She tried not to look at his mouth. “I can’t make money for you if I’m dead.” She would have felt remiss if she had not pointed that simple fact out. “And I know I can make you a lot of money.” The blonde searched Tate’s eyes for that telltale moment that she had become very good at spotting; the moment when the tide turned and she had successfully changed someone’s mind or persuaded them to do something. Something sank inside of her and collapsed when it didn’t happen, and she went from detachment to being overly aware of her body. For the first time, she realized it was cold in this solitary concrete-enclosed room, her skin prickled with it, and felt too tight on her body. It seemed to be shrinking around her. What seemed like a small infinity stretched out between them. For the first time that day, what her mind had been skirting around became unavoidable; she could die. A wave of something like nausea hit her hard, and Shelly had to resist the urge to double over. Maybe if she threw up on his shoes, that would distract him. As this thought floated nonsensically through her head, something began rattling loudly across the room.
The sensation seemed to intensify as both she and Tate looked in that direction. It was the large metal padlock, bouncing and shaking as if some invisible hand were trying to wrench it open by force. There was a grinding sound of metal on metal that made Shelly wince, and the vampire backed away from her, the expression on his face shifting from predatory to dumbfounded. “Are you doing that?” he asked. She forced herself to remain upright, even as tendrils of aching pain seemed to press into her forehead and temples. When she spoke, she managed to keep her voice even and imperious. “I am,” she told him, even though the blonde wasn’t entirely sure that she was. But it felt imperative to convince him of that fact in order to save her life, so she clung to it with everything that she had. “So we can come to an agreement and I can walk out of here with this money,” Shelly continued, “or I can demonstrate what else I can do.” Her gaze dropped to his chest before moving back up to his dark eyes. “On you.” She pushed off from the wall, though not trusting herself to take more than a few small steps forward.
Much to her surprise, the vampire broke into a grin. He stepped out of her way as he studied her with much more curiosity than he had shown before. “Okay,” Tate said with a slight shrug of his suited shoulders. “You’ve convinced me.” Shelly tried not to telegraph the equal parts shock and distrust that were coursing through her as he spoke those words. Was he really going to let her leave? As if in answer to this silent question, Tate produced a small ring of keys from seemingly nowhere and approached the lock, which now lay still. Glancing at her over his shoulder, he crouched and fiddled with it for a moment before straightening back up, the padlock held in his palm. He punched in another code next to the door and flipped a switch, and it was then that she realized how truly fucked she had been because even if she somehow had gotten the lock open, of course there was another layer of security to get through. Her stomach dropped as he looked at her knowingly. As shafts of daylight broke through the slowly lifting door, Tate moved out of the way of the light. She could see the ramp that sloped upward, and beyond that some empty parked cars presumably belonging to employees of the casino. The vampire gestured for her to walk out. “We’ll be in touch.”
Shelly pressed her slightly numb fingers against the strap of the duffel bag as she walked forward, her eyes glued to Tate in case this was some kind of trick or ploy, even though there wasn’t much she could really do if that were the case. She wasn’t sure why she paused at the threshold, but she did. “How will you know how to contact me?” the blonde asked with a dash of fear and morbid curiosity for good measure.
His smile remained plastered on as he leaned casually against the wall, part of him in shadow as he spoke. “Don’t worry about that,” Tate told her, in a tone of voice that very much made her worry about that. The blonde stepped out onto the ramp, still half-turned facing him. Being in the sunlight without walls confining her was only a little comforting, and didn’t do much to calm her rapid heart rate or the insistent buzzing in her ears. She didn’t have time then to reflect on anything that had just happened except for the fact that she seemed to have just narrowly avoided an untimely death, and if she focused on that too much right then, her legs might collapse and give out beneath her. “You have a good day, now,” the vampire added before flicking another switch. There was a grinding noise as the door began to slowly close and she watched, frozen, as Tate retreated from view.