Haunted Roads

Who Bastian and Hope/Alyssa
When: Monday Night
Where: The Barking Spider
What: Reunion

Nox had found out a lot. Well, perhaps not a lot, but enough to make Hope wander if her instincts that told her to come here had in fact been correct. There was a girl reported missing, daughter of the owner of this Tavern, fifteen, nearly sixteen, years ago. The hair, the eyes, it all seemed to add up, but how had she, as a teenage runaway, or was she perhaps abducted, able to get all the way across the country to New York? That was the one question she could not answer, well, one of many. But it was time to stop delaying it and see if it were possible that she was, in fact, Alyssa Veniamin.

She had been working up the courage to step inside of this bar since the first day she had arrived in Seattle and had yet to do so before now. But one foot was inside the door, and soon the other followed, and without much reluctance, she was crossing the barroom floor to the actual bar itself, situating herself upon a stool as her eyes glanced around the place for anything that might seem vaguely familiar. There was nothing.

A hand moved up to push long strands of dark hair back out of her face as she slipped off her jacket, the same one she had had on the night that she had watched the woman die. The blood stains had come out easily at the dry cleaners though she now lacked the belt that she needed to keep it closed. Eventually she would track down something else that would work, but that had been the last thing on her mind since she had arrived here.

In her well-tailored, dark-wash jeans, and her deep brown sweater and brown boots with a small heel, she looked more than a little out of place in this bar. But she was here on a mission and she hardly noticed though she couldn't say there wasn't at least a small bit of intent there. That last thing she wanted was to garner any unwanted attention from drunken bystanders. She was a beautiful woman, this she knew, and attention generally came easy if she dressed herself up, but she hoped that dressing down would alleviate this.

The bartender made his way down to her but she didn't look up immediately, eyes instead focused upon the beer menu in her hand. "Let me have a Beck's Dark." She looked up as she spoke. Nothing too heavy for her tonight. Things were potentially going to get heavy enough as it was.

Who: Hope and Nox
When: Saturday Night
Where: The lobby of the King's Inn

Ever since being witness to a murder, Hope was having a very difficult time sleeping. When she closed her eyes, she heard screaming, she saw that.. that.. glove? The more she thought about it the less she thought that it was really a glove. It was like.. nails, or claws rather, and she couldn't get the image out of her head. She had remembered something, two things actually, though whether or not they were actually real or just figments of her overactive imagination, she couldn't be sure. But that was why she had asked the Detective to meet her. Maybe he would think she was crazy, but then again, maybe what she remembered now would help. Maybe it would be similar to someone, or something, that they were looking for.

Hope didn't think that 7pm was ever going to arrive. She had been ready and waiting since 5pm, dressed in a nice, retro-inspired, black dress that looked like something one would wear out rather than something they would wear for a formal meeting. She was supposed to have gone out, to dinner, with Ginger and her father, but they had canceled at the last minute and Hope had been too tired to bother searching through her wardrobe for something a little more casual to wear. She had spent the two hours of free time sitting on the edge of her bed instead, listening to her I-Pod, to music that helped relax her. She had very old-school taste in music. She enjoyed things like Argent and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. She was also a huge Eric Clapton fan. She adored the Moody Blues and Bob Seger. It helped. She felt far less stressed when the clock finally struck five minutes till seven.

Slipping shoes into feet and grabbing her purse and jacket in case they decided to leave the lobby, or in case she decided to go somewhere for dinner after their meeting, she glanced once into the mirror to make sure she looked okay. Skin was pale but cheeks were flushed. Her dark brown eyes seemed troubled, as they always did, her thick, brown hair framing her face with soft curls. Good enough. She took the elevator just because the stairwell scared her a little. It was almost exactly seven when she stepped off into the lobby, eyes scanning for a face that was familiar enough even if she'd seen him only once.

Who: Hope and Nox
When: Late Evening
Where: A Crime Scene on the streets of Seattle

The past two days had come and gone and Hope still had yet to manage to go into the tavern. She had come close to it. She had sat out on a bench across the road from it once for a couple of hours, but she still couldn't bring herself to go inside. It was daunting, to say the least. But she had made up her mind that tonight was going to be the night. She was going to go in, order a drink, and see what happened. Fate, however, had other plans.

She had opted for a walk due to the fact that she needed the fresh air in order to prepare herself. She had dressed simply, a pair of dark wash jeans, black heels, a nicely tailored dress shirt that was black with a few silver pinstripes, her hair up in a loose bun on top of her head, a few strands hanging down to frame her pale face with flushed cheeks.

She was tucked into a black jacket, one cut in the short trench style, hands in her pockets, heels clicking upon the pavement on her way to her destination when she had heard the sound of someone screaming. Being a nurse, it was impossible for her to turn her back on someone that needed help, so she hurried towards the sound just in time to see the woman from whom the scream had issued crumple to the ground, blood gushing from a wound in her side, and a tall man, dressed in black, fleeing the scene, a trail of blood left in his wake, dripping from his weapon, whatever it happened to be.

Hope was one that worked well under pressure. She had never served any time in the trauma department, but she was no stranger to blood. No time was wasted in phoning the authorities, giving them a brief synopsis of what had happened and where she was. The cell was tucked away in her jacket pocket as she moved to the aid of the woman who lay bleeding, dying if truth be told, on the pavement.

Having no gloves was certainly an inconvenience, but in spite of that, hope did all that she could. The belt was tugged from her jacket to serve as a makeshift bandage, bunched up and placed upon the wound, Hope putting as much pressure as she could upon it in an attempt to stall the bleeding.

When her breathing stopped, CPR was performed, Hope using a knee pressed hard against the woman's side to keep the pressure tight while she compressed her chest and breathed into the woman's mouth. She had barely started when she heard the sirens of the ambulance.

Seconds later, the paramedics arrived and Hope moved out of their way to let them do their thing. Her hair was disheveled now, cheeks flushed even more, hands covered in blood. It all happened so fast that she had just now had the chance to digest what had really occurred. She was shaking a bit, trying to focus on her breathing as the woman was placed upon a gurney and loaded into the ambulance.