Avery Adlam (averyisgone) wrote in city_limits, @ 2009-04-28 14:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | avery adlam, deanna |
When Avery chose to do something, he really liked to get into it. For instance, breaking into the coroner's office meant, to him, that he'd need a suitable outfit. Lamenting his rather blue wardrobe, he found the single pair of black jeans that he owned, a black hoodie and work boots. On his unruly brown hair, he had put a black ski cap. Not the kind that covered his face; the vampire found those itchy.
After jimmying open a first floor window, Avery slipped inside quietly, crouching low. He had lucked out; he was in one of the office areas off of the lit corridor that led to the morgue. His shoes squeaked quietly on the linoleum tiled floor. Pulling out an office chair, he fired up one of the computers. He was now grateful for the limited computer skills he had accrued in the past few months.
Now came the tough part. The vampire didn't suppose it would be like Google, where he typed in his second cousin's name and a whole host of results came up. He frowned in concentration as the machine booted up. Maybe he should have worn gloves.
Password Protected.
The words popped up on the screen. Feebly, Avery typed in 'password'. He had read in a book that people, feeling clever, liked to make that their password. No such luck for him. He tapped his fingers on the metal desk, the cogs in his head turning quickly. Then it hit him: paper files. The city still had to have things in hard copy, and a filing cabinet lock was a lot simpler to bargain with.
The vampire stood from the chair and began walking down the corridor. Trying the first door on the right, it swung open and he was affronted with harshly bright light, a sterile white room and...a woman in a lab coat?
The ammonia offended her nostrils. Antiseptic cleaning fluids, bleach... it was worse than being stuck in a Japanese garden in full bloom. If you wanted to disorient the undead, throw them into a greenhouse. Not that she needed to breathe, but Deanna liked presenting a 'human' face in unfamiliar territory. You never knew when someone might walk in on you while cadaver diving.
"I thought I asked for a little privacy!", she hissed, turning around, fully expected to see the aging security guard who'd nearly obstructed her access five minute earlier. She stopped when she caught the figure staring back at her. "Oh great,", the redhead moaned. "Is it take your whiny brat kid to work' day?"
His brow furrowed, trying to suss out exactly what he was witnessing there. Something was off, but he, too, was thrown off by the combined olfactory assault that was the room. Was she talking about him? Avery knew he looked young, but he had been nineteen when he was turned; a little bit older than someone's 'whiny brat kid.' "I didn't know coroners worked after hours," he said, stepping further into the room.
And then it hit him, taking a moment to process. She was a vampire, too. He took off his hat, trying to peer over her shoulder, all previous thoughts about finding his cousin's death records forgotten.
"Oh for the love of..." Deanna's voice trailed off as she realized. "This is my scene, Edward," she grumbled. She took her hand off the handle of the cold drawer. She took a few steps forward, high heels clacking against the tiled floor. "You're not gonna find your Bella in any of these drawers."
Avery had a stake in his sweatshirt pocket, the one Connor had returned to him, but he was trying to assess the situation first. After the incident a few months back, he was reticent to cause yet another stir in a public place. For one, the restraining order that he had presented the news anchor, Carly Gaither, was expired.
"My what?" His gaze flickered to the stainless steel compartments, then back to the red-haired vampiress. "Trust me, you can have this 'scene.' I'm fairly certain I'm not into whatever it is you were doing."
As an afterthought, he added, "And I don't know who you're mistaking me for, but my name is Avery, not Edward."
Wow. Wow. Deanna had met some ... different vampires in her time, but this one ... "How long exactly have you been a vampire, Edward? Do you normally go out of your way to give up such personal information to everyone you meet because ... wow."
The elder vampire turned around and walked over to the metal table. The cool steel sent a shiver as her fingers traced its length. So many bodies had been opened up and explored, hearts removed and weighed, spleens severed and bagged. This, she made a mental note, is the kind of room Victoria needed back at Fang Noir. If she ever desired to rebuild.
"Oh gods, this is..." And she stopped herself again. "Avery? Avery, the vampire from the news?"
"I suppose I don't consider first names a precious commodity," he replied easily, watching her. The room brought back a long-dormant memory; his roommate at Princeton had bee npre -med, and was taking an anatomy class. Late one night, Avery and his friends had had a round or two, and his roommate suggested he give them a tour of the medical lab that contained the class' cadavers. The then-human had thrown up on the floor, the combined factors being the smell of the room and the alcohol in his system.
He didn't suppose he'd be so afflicted this time.
"From the...oh. That." He wondered how many vampires had been angry over him killing one of his own on live television. He remembered Grace's disgust over the fact that the vampire he staked had been one Avery himself sired. It wasn't exactly endearing to the undead population.
Deanna reached upwards to fondle the water hose. The imagery wasn't lost on her, but anything that played in Avery's mind was entirely misplaced. "You've gotta have giant, brass balls to make yourself a target like that. Most vamps wouldn't think twice about showing how to kill one of us, let alone the betrayal underneath it all. Very Lord of the Flies, if you ask me."
The redhead turned her attention back to the task she'd been interrupted from, opening and pulling out a body from a nearby cooler. She pulled back the sheet and grimaced. "Ugh. Too clean."
Avery rolled his blue eyes, hands resting in his hoodie pockets. If she thought he was bizarre, that was nothing to what he thought about her, poking around dead bodies like she was Tom Petty in Mary Jane's Last Dance. "It isn't exactly a huge secret," he informed her. "Insert sharp piece of wood into heart, lather, rinse, and repeat." He shrugged his slim shoulders.
The vampire raised an eyebrow at her comment. "And you're looking for a...dirty corpse?"
"Noooooo, a gruesome corpse!" she giggled, closing the drawer and opening another. "It's for a friend. She's not quite herself at the moment and I wanted to find just the right gift, you know? Something that says 'thinking of you'. And flowers just won't do the trick."
She peeled back the sheet of an older, bald man. "Nope, not you." She slammed it shut and opened a third. This body was of a young female with signs of heavy trauma. Possibly a vehicular accident. The right side of her face was caved in. "Perfect..."
The redhead turned and scanned the room. "Now if I were storing body bags, where would I put them?" She began her search and paused, turned back to Avery. "Hey, I once sired three -- or was it four? -- bikers to go on basically a suicide run, so I don't care what you do. Unless you wanna help me look around, that is."
He wondered about the ethics of watching and doing nothing as the female vampire rifled through the bodies. Sure, they were already dead, but she couldn't be up to anything good; something told him this 'friend' wouldn't appreciate the gift, especially if she was of the human variety. But Avery didn't want to arouse the attention of security before he got what he came for. While it was true he could call up his cousin -- who already treated him with unadulterated contempt -- somehow he suspected asking Zach how his son died wouldn't go over so well.
Partly because he had the paranoid fear that he may have been the culprit, back when humans were still part of his diet. Irrational, yes; impossible, no.
"Well, I always keep my Hefty bags under the sink, and those are kind of like body bags, right?" Avery walked over to an industrial sink, noticing a locked cabinet beneath it. He pulled off the padlock with ease, flung open the doors. "Mmhm."
The elder vampires sighed mournfully. "Tell me you don't body dump with hefty bags. I mean, first of all they leak, and second, ew!" The new generation had so much to learn...
"Look, Avery." Deanna perched herself on the edge of the steel table. "We're vampires, and better still, people know we exist. Their not trying to hide it any longer. So what's wrong with just leaving your food after playing with it? It's not like they're going to create CSI: Vampire Squad any time soon." She reached up then to take hold of a microphone beside the hose. "And if Jerry Fucking Bruckheimer thinks he can steal that idea, I'm coming after him for the royalties!" she shouted into the mic.
"No, Avery. Body bags as in the coroner arrives and stuffs the body inside the zipper bag to take the stiff back here." She shook her head.
He was busy inspecting a bottle of industrial-grade disinfectant and wondering if it was more effective than Lysol. One of the many traits that had carried over with him as a vampire was his slightly short attention span. "What? No. I don't dump bodies." Avery stood up and tossed something heavy and black at her. "Well, except this demon awhile ago, but that was so kids wouldn't stumble across it. Like, you know how they'll play with abandoned fridges and stuff? The kids, I mean, not demons."
The vampire pointed at her. "Okay, now your turn. Where would you keep death records?"
Deanna hopped off the table and began unfolding the bag, yanking the zipper until it spread open like a butterfly. "Probably in the records office next door? You did look at the sign plates as you were passing through."
"Actually, I just went into the first room I found," he admitted. "Then you distracted me," Avery accused, crossing his arms indignantly. After everything he had experienced lately...mystically becoming a high school student again, being stabbed through the heart with a letter opener, and being confronted by an elderly version of someone he had grown up with, he still had never expected...this.
The vampire put his cap back on, tufts of hair sticking out over his eyes. He began turning toward the door, then hesitated. Maybe ignorance was bliss. "Not like he'd ever accept my apology," he muttered to himself, momentarily forgetting the other vampire's presence.
The redhead hefted the corpse from her temporary resting place and dumped it on the table, taking little care to stuff the legs into the black bag. "We're vampires, Avery, we don't apologize. Jeez, wet behind the ears much?"
"I'm not wet behind the ears," Avery insisted, frowning at her. "You try getting shoved temporarily into a body with a fully functioning soul, and not have some residual guilt. Even if it's possibly imaginary and/or misplaced." The vampire sighed an unnecessary expulsion of breath. "Not that you'd understand. You're obviously perfectly content, robbing morgues and being snippy."
With that, he turned the silver doorknob, throwing her one last look over his shoulder. "Also, I wouldn't wear that coat for too long. Unless you want to smell like formaldehyde for days. Although, as a signature scent, it kind of suits you."
"Typical," Deanna snorted as the boy passed out the door. "Thinks he knows how the world works. Try going a few centuries and then come talk to me."