Rhiannon Lee (rhiannon_lee) wrote in free_form2, @ 2008-06-20 23:22:00 |
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Current mood: | infuriated |
Just Desserts
"For the laaaaaaaaand of the freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee..."
The display was amazing. Sparks across across the sky, scattershot explosions that threatened to rip more sensitive ears had they been closer to the action. And the screams. Oh gods yes, couldn't forget those.
By anyone's standards, the decrepit building was a tinderbox begging for a match. That it was a tenement abandoned by the previous owners and then Henderson city council (as part of their now-abandoned Beautification project) only added to the fun. Deanna could filter nineteen, maybe twenty separate cries for help.
Tonight was a celebration. It was all out in the open. Upon waking, Deanna'd turned on the television, expecting to watch Angelina Jolie promote her new film on Ellen. It had been pre-empted with a non-stop news cycle of a 'former' government spook going public on the existence of bogeymen.
That was enough to get the blood pumping (out of the neck of a hapless maid at the Wynn Hotel, and down the redhead's throat) and put her in the mood for an early Fourth of July celebration. It was Independence Day for demons everywhere. And that called for fireworks.
"And the hoooooooooooome, of the braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaveeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Why was Rhiannon in Henderson?
The old, black Nissan down-shifted and rounded a curve in the road. Its speakers were blown out, and they crackled on a muted bass thump. Behind the wheel, Rhiannon smoked a cigarette and waited for the office building that fronted the Project to come into view. She had driven down to get a visual; She was 90% convinced it would be boarded up or just plain gone, which would be good. If there was no evidence of the supernatural to be found on the premises, there'd be nothing to back up the media stories, and maybe this shit wouldn't get out of hand after all.
Traffic was bad on that block. No big surprise hours after Josiah Markowitz spilled his guts on network television. What she did not expect was the road blockade, or the press frenzy outside headquarters, which were still standing after all. The spotlight shone bright on Project Integration's exterior. Rhiannon knew it wouldn't be long before the interior, with all its hostages, was spotlighted too. Every cop in the county was out there, trying to control an enormous crowd of reporters and angry citizens. No doubt the National Guard was on its way.
Rhiannon cut onto a side street and drove in the opposite direction. No need to get any closer to see what was going down. Her route meandered while she searched for access to the highway. Eventually a sign pointed the way.
It also pointed to an orange haze rising above the rough side of town, where an old neighborhood was waiting for renovation. "Shhhhhit." The brunette jerked the wheel in that direction and sped up. She dug through the junk in her passenger seat, feeling for her cell phone. Her 911 call was brief and to the point.
Near the building, Rhiannon tugged the emergency brake up and got out of her car. In the street, neighbors banded together in a variety of housecoats and pajamas and blue-collar uniforms. They all seemed to be stuck in place, listening in horror to the pleas for help. One loud, out-of-tune voice rose above the rest. It was singing the national anthem.
Spotting the redhead, Rhiannon stormed up behind her and grabbed her arm. "Deanna!"
"Heyyyyyyyy, first responder!" The tires on gravel alerted the vampire to a new presence and, as feet touched the ground, Deanna caught the woman's scent. Why her guard hadn't gone completely up could be factored into the quick-step but not run from the Slayer, the alcohol she'd consumed earlier, or a combination of both. "Come to watch the fun?"
The vampire didnn't wear her demonic face. This was her true nature. While she could blend with high society, indulge her cultured upbringing to enjoy a serenade by Claude Debussy, weep at an early Van Gogh (and laugh at the failed post-impressionist who cut off his ear thinking it would earn him respect), underneath the ridges existed a woman with a cruel streak born from a time before fangs, when women were chattel, used and abused without recourse.
She put her hand over Rhiannon's wrist, fingers curled to grip but not apply pain. "What brings you to this neck of the woods?" Deanna giggled.
With nose burning and eyes watering from the acrid smoke of structure fire, Rhiannon gaped at the vampire. "Did you set this?" she demanded. It didn't make a difference. The building would burn regardless of who set the fire. But for some morbird reason, she needed to know just how low Deanna had sunk. Glorifying in the suffering of humans she expected. Setting an apartment blaze without provocation or any possibility of personal gain?
Lower than low. Pointless. Pathetic.
She kept an ear out for the answer, but she couldn't just stand around. Rhiannon dove into her car and grabbed a half-empty bottle of water. She ripped off a piece of her clothes and soaked it, then began tying it around her face like a handkerchief. The Slayer gave the vampire a derogatory look and said, "I'll deal with you later."
In the crowd of onlookers, she snatched the elbow of a capable-looking man in blue coveralls. "Grab a ladder or blankets or whatever you can. See if you can get those two to jump." She pointed at the second floor window where a woman and her son were crying for help.
Just like a hero, Deanna thought to herself. Throw herself into the fray, without regard for life or limb. Willing to suffer second-degree burns or worse just to save someone who'd probably step over the brunette if she were left bleeding on the sidewalk. The look Rhiannon shot at her before diving into the carnage held such contempt for the vampire.
Clearly the Slayer didn't know as much about subjugation. Being a second-class citizen. She was born in a more enlightened time. Rhiannon could go to school, marry whomever she chose, work in any profession, vote. She hadn't been raped and left for dead on a darkened pier in the south of France.
Deanna liked inflicting pain. It lessened hers. Rhiannon avoided. They were nothing alike....
Oh fucking hell.
She was really going to regret this come the dawn. Especially as she couldn't for the death of her figure out in the moment exactly why she'd changed her mind.
The redhead bolted to her car and cracked open the trunk. She kept a blanket stored in case she couldn't make it home before daylight. Heavy and expansive. Enough to cover herself three times over from the sun. She put feet to ground again and covered the terrain from her corvette to the gathered throng in seconds. "Don't say I never gave you anything," Deanna groused at her nemesis, dropping the blanket to the ground.
"Right, Deanna, you're a goddamned Samaritan," the Slayer snapped. She shoved the blanket in the man's hands and began to give the residents instructions. "Stretch it out tight and wide. Lots of hands. Don't worry about making it perfect, just break their fall." She nudged past the vampire and started for the building. The flames were concentrated on the back and western side. Probably that's where she started it, away from prying eyes.
At the entranceway a teenager ran out with blisters on his arm. Rhiannon clamped the handkerchief tighter against her airway and ducked in.
Ten blocks away, a fire truck's siren wailed. It was stuck behind a road block.
Flames licked the outer edges of broken windows, and caressed the timber inside. It was poetic, in a twisted, demonic way. But the redhead didn't pay it any attention. Seriously? Deanna monologued. Did Rhiannon actually run into a burning building? What, was she aiming for sainthood? Did she want to die? In her mind it's a better death than one at my hands.
Well. Fuck. That.
The older vampire ripped off a piece of her own shirt and used it to tie her hair back and away. And plunged head-first into hell.
The heat in the tenement was monstrous. Rhiannon was ten steps in and already drenched in sweat. She crouched low, where it was marginally cooler, and began to take the staircase. Each one ratcheted the temperature a little higher. She coughed into her hand and thanked God she could still see. Never looking behind her, she didn't know Deanna was there.
Even though she was closer to the cries for help, it was harder to hear over the roar. Somewhere overhead a dog barked, sharp and frantic. Rhiannon wished somebody would scream another time, just to give her a hint. She didn't stop at the second floor; she'd have to trust the residents would jump and hope they were conscious enough to do it. She kept going, squeezing past the bannister that was on fire at the landing, and launched herself up the last flight.
Now she could hear them, seemingly from every door on the hall. The Slayer stopped at the first and felt it. It wasn't any hotter than the hallway around her. Please don't let this end in a ball of flame, she internally wished and broke in with her shoulder.
Stairs moaned as she took them two, three at a time. Had to have been wood, Deanna reasoned. The building was old enough, and from what she could make out it hadn't been renovated or redecorated since the 1950s. Their means of escape could get cut off at any moment.
She avoided Rhiannon as the Slayer pushed herself into the nearest apartment, opting instead to work her way from the outside in. She'd kept her senses in tune with the brunette, however, just in case. The redhead found five vacated apartments before bursting into a unit with two elderly bodies sprawled on the floor. She bent low and showed no emotion at discovering no pulse. Deanna was turning to leave when she spotted a gold heart-shaped locket around the woman's neck. Slender fingers wrapped around the chain and yanked the object free, then slipped it into her jeans pocket.
In the apartment Rhiannon entered, the situation was different. A grown man huddled next to the sink, his kindergarten-aged daughter beneath his arm. The little girl flinched when the Slayer broke in. The ceiling was on fire, and so were the curtains by the only window. "Come on!" She waved her arm, but neither of them moved.
Frustrated, Rhiannon hunched down and hurried to a crouch in front of them. Closer inspection showed her that the man was unconscious. She didn't bother checking for a pulse. Whether or not he was dead, the guy was coming out with his daughter. No way was that little girl going to budge without him, and the brunette didn't like the idea of dragging a screaming, kicking kid down the stairs, sobbing for a lost parent.
She weighed her options.
Going low, Rhiannon leaned her shoulder into the man's midsection and hefted him across both in a fireman's carry. Bolstering the weight, she straightened as much as she could without setting the guy on fire. "Stay close to me!" She pulled the little girl into her side and literally brought her shirttail down over the kid's face, trying to protect her from the smoke. "Walk... come on!" In that bent-over manner she emerged in the hallway and started moving for the staircase. All the way, the girl stumbled over her feet as Rhiannon powered her along.
Outside, the neighbors rallied together and stretched the blanket between them. Three tenants jumped. All of them hit the ground in some fashion, but broken ankles and dislocated shoulders were small prices to pay. At least one tenant leaped from the third floor. Another one brushed past Rhiannon on the staircase and emerged outside.
They had a cat. The elderly couple, perhaps in their waning years needing company beyond the quarterly visit from out of town children and grandchildren, had filled their time doting on a ginger. Deanna missed it initially but caught the mewling from underneath the 1950s-era couch. She was about to abandon the tabby, but instead dove towards the furniture as a section of the roof came crashing down about the vampire's ears. A sharp shard of burning wood nicked the back of her ankle, taking a chunk of flesh with it.
Her howl was louder, and it spooked the cat who swiped at her arm with claws, digging into the redhead. On instinct Deanna pulled her hand back but Miss Tiddles (she imagined the feline would've received a name as equally if not more egregious) refused to let go. The redhead stood and winced as pain shot up from the ankle through her spine. Getting to safety was made that much more difficult. For some ungodly reason, she cradled Miss Tiddles in the crook of her elbow and hobbled back towards the entrance.
The whole banister was ablaze.
Rhiannon squeezed past it, keeping the man's shoes to that side. The little girl was coughing up a storm. She could feel her narrow chest rattling, a hack getting worse from all the chemicals poisoning the air. Staying bent over, Rhiannon hauled ass down the stairs, feet moving as fast as she could without losing her balance. She powered past the landing between licks of fire. A window exploded overhead.
The place was coming apart. There was no way she could get back in a second time; Rhiannon heard panicked screams over the noise, but knew it anyway. Apartment 3C was the only one she'd get to.
The trio burst out of the smoke into the street, just as a pair of firetrucks came around the corner with sirens blazing and lights doing a blinding strobe. Rhiannon went as far as the grass and unloaded the man's weight. The little girl emerged from the Slayer's shirttail covered in soot and sweating buckets, but completely alert. Rhiannon squatted down and checked her round face and arms for burns, but there weren't any.
Relief only lasted a second. People in the crowd were moaning and crying, pointing desperately at broken-out windows. They were Henderson's destitute residents-- uninsured, broke, and crowded into abandoned tenements. They had left elderly family members upstairs, and pets. Their whole worlds were going up in flames.
All because Deanna had a hard-on for fireworks.
Every agonized shout was a stab of guilt cutting into Rhiannon's gut. That redheaded waste of space was her responsibility. So this was, too. She wiped her face and went to sit on the hood of her car.
By the time Deanna reached the stairwell, more than the banister was lit. The top half of the platform burned bright red. There was no way down for her, not unless by some miracle a fire-proof blanket appeared that she could wrap herself into. Any attempt to dislocate the ginger tabby proved useless as well; at least one life used up, it clung to its remaining years via the vampire's flesh.
She had to exit the hard way.
Deanna barreled back into the apartment, hurdled over the octogenarian couple and leaped through the window. Shards of glass rained down as the figure in crimson firelight descended to the hard ground below. She attempted to plant her good foot on the landing but her injured ankle also hit hard and bent with a crack.
The gathered throng stared. And shouted. And backed away.
In the moments leading to her great leap from the apartment, Deanna's game faced made an appearance. She hobbled gamely past the frightened crowd and offered up the cat to a middle-aged woman.
Rhiannon watched the spectacle from her car in disbelief.
The whole tenement was on fire. The wind was up, so the building next door had caught a few embers on its pitched roof and begun to burn, too. The firetrucks had circled up near the buildings. Crews in turn-out gear dragged hoses and raised ladders and did whatever they could to bring the heat under control, but it was still too late. Nothing to do but waterlog the place and go back for the bodies later. They'd need dental records to sort out the carnage in there. Those were people. They didn't die so a vampire could feed and leech more years off the human race. They died for entertainment.
Now Deanna was throwing herself out of windows and gifting rescue cats to devastated neighbors, like some kind of martyr?
Rhiannon hated her. A ball of ugly rage hardened in her stomach. She pushed off the hood and made her way over. Each step ratcheted her need for revenge higher and higher. "So you're a hero now? Pulling cats out of danger, showing people that monsters have hearts, too? You think they're gonna tell stories about the demon who risked her life to save a fucking cat? Wrong."
The Slayer's slug came out of nowhere. It landed with a ferocity that stunned even Rhiannon; It was possible she'd broken half the knuckles in her fist doing it. She raised her voice for the dozens of neighbors who had poured out of every apartment on the block and congregated on the sidewalk. "I won't let that happen. You set the fucking fire! Did you stop to suck anybody dry while you were in there, Deanna?" She shook the numbness out of her hand and backed into crowd. "I think it's time you saw an angry mob first hand... don't you?"
The blow connected just above her cheekbone and turned the vampire on her heel. She didn't need to brush fingers against where the Slayer slammed her fist to know the bone was broken. White-hot pain flared behind the vampire's eyes; if her face hadn't shown before, it would've now.
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" came the bellowed reply. "Get everyone into a nasty frenzy, bring out the fucking pitchforks and roast me? Get them all riled up so they don't ask any questions about you? The girl with demon inside her as well, skulking the night, cracking skulls and breaking necks."
The redhead's fingers from both hands curled into tight little balls, ready to strike back. "At least they can see what I am! They'd be more afraid of you, Rhiannon. Since they could walk, these people--" she swung an arm towards the gathered throng, "--they were afraid of the dark. They read the stories. They wished vampires and zombies and the like didn't exist but somewhere in the back of their brains, they always suspected. At least now they can confront it.
"Who do you think they're really gonna be afraid of? You can walk in the sunlight. Have coffee with them." Deanna split blood welling in her mouth. "And they'll know your kind think you're better than them. When you run out of us, Rhiannon Lee," she spat the name out for all to hear, "they'll fear you'll start after them."
Standing fully entrenched in the band of spectators, Rhiannon crossed her arms and simply shrugged. "You know what I'm thinking, Deanna?" She looked around at the gathered faces. These people were like her. Rhiannon had driven up in her ancient, dented car, wearing ratty jeans, an old shirt, and cheap army-surplus boots. She was common, like them, a fact Deanna had gleefully thrown in her face a dozen times. She was a poor, city girl that grew up into a superhero. She didn't hesitate to save people.
Deanna was a fanged, yellow-eyed demon wearing Dolce and Gabbana. She was out of place. Out of luck.
Rhiannon said, "I'm thinking your argument would hold up a lot better if you hadn't just roasted their families over a rousing chorus of the national anthem. I'm thinking... That these people aren't stupid. They don't fear the woman who carries little girls and their daddies out of burning buildings. They fear the bitch who dropped the match.
"Remember that time you tied me up and beat the hell out of me?" Rhiannon turned her back on the circling crowd and walked away. "Your turn. Take it like a woman."