first_born_son (ex_first_bor754) wrote in low_tide, @ 2010-01-27 17:18:00 |
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Entry tags: | connor reilly, john abbott |
The Sheriff of Duval Street
The streets of Key West were quiet, and Connor was ambling home from the grocery store with a plastic bag in each hand. Now that he was fully settled here, he had the route to the grocery store worked out, having traced his footsteps back from the shopping center often enough that he remembered the route home. All in all, he felt like he had a good handle on things.
The Destroyer rounded a corner, watching a bicyclist cross the street ahead of him. He was glad for the mild weather. It was a relief to shake Chicago's cold out of his bones. He hadn't figured out all the trouble spots yet, but in a place this small, he didn't suppose that would take long.
Trouble often found people on Duval Street. The long, rambunctious strip was home to hotels, cafes, bars, restaurants, and shopping outlets. Even a few art galleries were tucked between the rowdier places. It was a street that came alive after sunset. Groups of women stumbled from place to place, intoxicated and sunburned, their arms linked as they strolled under the awnings. Motorcycles roared. Laughter bubbled from patios where people drank margaritas and beer on tap. Everywhere, there was music.
John walked the block from Sloppy Joe's to Fat Tuesday's. His physical appearance didn't stick out. He was better dressed than some, but the mop of messy, black hair kept him casual. It was his quiet observation that was noteworthy, the slow gait and lack of friends or a lover on his arm. He kept his hands to himself and his remarks to a minimum. He held open a door for a couple of happy women and kept going.
Connor was checking the few dark places between the brightly lit establishments on Duval, making a mental map for later. Bars were always a hunting ground for vampires, the intoxicated making easy prey, and even while carrying groceries it was obvious he was watching his surroundings. You never knew when you might run into something that needed to be handled.
Even amid the scents of perfume and cigarette smoke, he picked up the smell of something dead, and the hairs on the back of his neck stirred faintly. He looked up towards the lights, started separating the odors. Places like this always attracted vampires, it was a law of nature. He needed to investigate a little.
At the corner of Caroline Street, the vampire put his back to a building. Bass thumped in the bricks and mortar, an incidental back massage. Inside his open jacket, a pocket held newly purchased cigarettes and a matchbook bearing a logo. Willy T's. He placed a filter in the crook of his mouth, lit up, and looked around. John was a social smoker; it was one of few habits he dabbled in that didn't become addictive. He had done a stint with coke in the 1980s that nearly opened a hole between his nasal passages. Nicotine was poor consolation.
While he stood, he noticed a girl's feet in platform shoes, a tattoo of cherries dancing on her ankle as she walked. Another woman's ass, like two perfectly round fruits bobbing beneath a cloth. A man's backwards way of holding his cigarette, in towards the palm. He pictured extinguishing the cigarette there, the red circle of blistered flesh. Burns had a peculiar taste. Shaking his head, John pulled out a money clip and counted the bills it pressed together. He had enough to pay for the next night's hotel room and the door fee to a club, if he decided to scout for entertainment inside.
Connor found the source of the smell lounging against the wall of a building as if he were holding it up, and he parked the grocery bags nearby. He'd bought canned goods this trip, nothing fragile like eggs or squishy like bananas. The vampire was taller than he was, and the Destroyer put both hands in his pockets as he took up a spot on a different section of wall. Downwind of the smoke.
"Busy night. Didn't expect to find so many club-goers in mid-January. Guess the weather doesn't keep everybody indoors."
John looked up at the man. His eyebrows raised, so that they nearly touched his hair. "On the contrary," he said, the cigarette dancing between his lips. Fearing he might drop it, he plucked it out. "I imagine that is exactly what they're doing. Escaping the weather. It just happens to be the weather elsewhere." He turned the matchbook between his fingers and tucked it in his shirt pocket. His voice, low and honeyed even when speaking to a stranger on the street, had a hint of old-world London, blunted by twenty years in New York.
The grocery bags caught his eye. John glanced between those and the younger man's face. He didn't think it unusual for someone to strike up conversation while waiting for a bus or the like, but there was no bus stop here. "Cigarette?"
"I don't smoke, but thanks." An older vamp, probably, since the man displayed no unease at being accosted by a stranger. The older ones could be more dangerous, if only because they bid their time better. No need for Connor to take action yet.
"Waiting on somebody inside?" Pointing over the guy's shoulder at the club. Music still thrummed inside. "Sounds like the night's just started. It might be a while."
Wariness was slow to creep into John's posture, but his eyes showed a glimmer of it, crinkling at the corners. While he smoked, he strummed through a list of possibilities in his head, amongst them attempted mugging and sexual advancement. Of the two, he leaned towards the former. Nothing in the boy's posture suggested flirtation, though it would hardly be out of place in Key West, which courted alternative lifestyles the way the rest of Florida courted retirees.
"No, as a matter of fact, I'm not." John held up the cigarette, inspected the filter. "I'm afraid this is as far as I've gotten. It isn't much of a plan, but it will buy me a couple of minutes to think of something else." He gestured at the stranger. "What of you?"
'What of you?' It was an old-fashioned thing to say, sort of, and Connor mentally added at least seventy-five years to the vampire's timeline. There was only a slight difference in their heights. The Destroyer lifted one shoulder casually, indicated the bags where he'd set them down. "I was wandering back from shopping, taking the scenic route. Since New Year's, things have been kind of quiet, but you never can tell what's going to happen next."
He tucked his left thumb into the corresponding pocket, wondered if this vamp was the social sort. The earlier sighting of Avery had put him on alert, reminded him that this reality had no knowledge of the things that crept around in the dark. Vigilance in the face of general ignorance was important. "Does this 'plan' of yours include catching a late-night snack?"
"I hadn't decided, as yet." John frowned and entered into a full-fledged sense of caution now, for he doubted the man was referring to hamburgers. "I hope you're not about to invite yourself along." A yellow taxi cab rolled past and his eyes ticked to the back window, where three people had squeezed inside. The window was rolled down and their conversation carried to his ears. It was something about changing clothes back at a hotel room. For fuck's sake, John. If you're worth a damn, you'll focus this once. He cleared his throat and straightened his posture.
The younger man smelled unusual, though John couldn't place it. And he had a certain energy, didn't he? A buzz that contradicted the placid way he stood there.
Connor shrugged again, a tiny motion of his shoulders that barely moved the sleeves of his shirt. "I'm not into liquid diets," he said deliberately, and he took a half-step into the dark-haired man's space. Up close, the smell was worse. The guy was bathed, but dead was dead; all the Dial and hot water in the universe couldn't cut through that. The frayed cuffs of his jeans made a whispery noise against the tops of his shoes as he settled his weight on the balls of his feet. Female vamps were dangerous, that much he knew. He wasn't sure about this one yet.
"I think you're trespassing." He said it very quietly, because there were too many people right now, a knot of partygoers making their way past. Depending on how things proceeded, though, yelling might be the least these people had to deal with. "Actually, I know you are."
John laughed, not arrogant so much as incredulous. "On what, exactly?" John's empty hand made an open-palmed gesture at their surroundings. "The deserted corner of a public street? I can think of far worse places for my kind to be, and for that matter, for more intrusive ways to behave in them. You'd be wise to recognize that and spend your energy somewhere useful." He took another drag of his cigarette.
So he fancied himself a demon fighter, did he? For all John knew, he deserved the title, since he'd identified a vampire easily enough. He had hardly called attention to himself by standing there, holding up a wall.
"Recognize this."
Connor swatted the hand out of the air with a casual gesture, his posture loose and relaxed. He could be incredibly militant on the subject of vampires, the absolutist he'd once been peeking out from under the more civilized person he'd become. "I didn't ask you for a lecture on civil rights, of which you have none. It's only a free country if you have a pulse."
Behind them in the street a truck full of older teenagers went roaring past, the engine of the vehicle battling it out with the radio for which could make the most noise. The engine won, but only by a few decibels. It made him wish he had his earplugs in. He focused his attention back on the taller man. "I see you, even if they don't. I consider that a problem."
"'Recognize this?'" The turn of phrase struck a chord with John. It was American pop culture, the words of an adolescent coming from a grown man's body. John waited to see if he would snap his fingers, too, but there was only belligerence and a tremendous lot of attitude. He dropped his cigarette and faced his accuser head-on. "It was hardly a lecture on civil rights, but since you've brought it up, by the smell of you, I question whether or not you have them, either," he said, looking Connor over. "What it was, was a piece of advice regarding what you see in this town and what's crawling underneath." He walked his fingers through the air. "Those of us standing about on a street corner are hardly the thing to trouble yourself over."
He looked at the grocery bags. "You might want to get those into a freezer."
It sounded good, but the problem was that if you waited until a vampire acted on their basic nature, somebody usually ended up dead. Connor was into prevention, pre-emptive strikes, not cleaning up the mess afterwards. And he'd been about as diplomatic as he cared to be due to the crowded conditions of the street beyond him. A blue stare fixed on the dark-haired man's face as he took another half-step closer, and two fingers made a dent in the fabric of the vampire's shirt as he poked them at the spot over that unbeating heart.
"Find another street corner," he said evenly. "I'm sure you can crawl your way a few blocks someplace else. Maybe the people there will be more to your liking."
John looked at the fingers. He hadn't planned it, but a subtle growl rolled out of his throat. His face remained human. "So all's well for eating people as long as it's out of your sight, is that it?"
He wondered how far the demon fighter was willing to go to back up his point. Was he making empty threats or promises he intended to keep, if John called his bluff? "Listen, I don't intend on going anywhere. So what happens next depends on whether you're foolish enough to try and put a stake in my chest, right here, on this corner," he pointed around at the people walking past, who would be drawn to watch a skirmish as all curious creatures were, "With all the amateur videographers carrying cell phones and vacation cameras."
God, he was not in the mood for a brawl. Never was, really, unless he had a couple of pints in him. But if it came down to it, John would. He was not without his abilities.
Connor's smile turned cold. His fingers curved, and he moved his hand to hook them into the neck of the vampire's shirt, intending to haul him off balance. He kept forgetting that diplomacy didn't work. Well, he'd tried.
"What happens next depends on how long it takes to break your neck." He would have to be quick with it, too, there were way too many people here. If it had been a few hours later, the street would have been deserted. But he couldn't back down now, not in front of this thing. If he turned his back, it'd be an admission of defeat. Connor's narrow shoulders squared, and the hand latched onto the vamp's shirt turned into a fist. And then he pulled the guy forward.
Since he was hurtling forward anyway, John used his newfound proximity to slam his head into the demon fighter's. The discomfort caused his facial features to morph into a monster's. Snarling, he grabbed the other man's wrist and twisted it off his shirt. "Someone's spoiling for a fight." He shoved off to create space between them. "When you're done proving yourself, you might want to consult a book, mate. Last I checked, decapitation had a different definition."
A car was coming, its timing perfect. John waited until the last moment to launch his weight forward and try to knock his assailant off the curb and into its path.
Knocked off-balance by the head-butt, Connor took two steps backwards to clear his vision, then let out a grunt as the vampire's solid frame crashed into him. His shoes skidded on the sidewalk, and he backed up further before snagging the cloth of the other man's shirt again. He used the grip to spin his newfound opponent hard to the right, out of the street, and there was the dull clang of metal as the vamp's back made contact with a mailbox. The driver of the passing car blared his horn at them, cursing them for drunken idiots.
"There's what I was looking for." The glare of the streetlight threw the bloodsucker's ridged forehead into sharp relief, and the Destroyer tried to wedge the heel of his left hand under the guy's chin. The spinal cord was tough, but he'd broken necks before. Connor's tennis shoes would have dug ruts into the concrete if they could have. People were already looking this way.
John's neck strained with the push. Right then, a bit stronger than I anticipated. The mailbox behind him made any backward evasion impossible. "Sorry to... disapoint." He drove his knee into Connor's crotch, a hard, sharp jab designed to make a bruised mess out of things, should it hit paydirt. He lurched to the right and got away from the mailbox. A metal trash bin was stationed nearby, a huge and permanent thing made of iron and painted aqua. Nonetheless, it wasn't fastened down. John grabbed the circular rim and, grunting over the not-insignificant feat, swung the weight of it around to try and collide with his enemy. It was practically a battering ram.
Beer bottles inside the trash can rattled together as the container was lifted from the ground, and Connor ducked underneath the swing just in time to avoid having his head bashed in by the thing. The inside of his thigh had caught most of the knee jab, and he powered forward with his legs while the vampire was still dealing with the weight of his makeshift weapon. His knuckles thumped against ribs, then followed that up with a punch meant to meet up with the vamp's spine through his stomach. Beyond the grappling pair, there were raised voices. Connor ignored them. A street brawl, that was all it was. Nothing to see here.
It was fortunate that John needn't breathe, because Connor's fists would've damaged that capability. But he had size on his opponent and his body absorbed the force while they struggled for control of the grapple. Instead of focusing on the midsection, he curled his arm higher and tried to make mincemeat of the younger man's face with repeated blows. A well-aimed punch to a jaw could knock a human out. At the very least, he might get blood on his knuckles.
Cars slowed. People hedged on the outskirts of the fight. If they couldn't see John's face in all the violence, they heard the inhuman snarls.
There was blood in Connor's mouth, and a cut had opened up above his right eye near the rapidly purpling bruise from the earlier headbutt. The adrenaline was pounding through his bloodstream, and he spat before reaching into the trash-strewn gutter to find a discarded Budweiser bottle. Glass shattered, and brown shards peppered the street, leaving him with jagged edges protruding from the neck. He swiped it through the air, catching the sleeve of the vampire's shirt and ripping through the fabric. A woman screamed.
"All right." His voice was a snarl too, not that much different than John's. "You want it? C'mon!"
"Do I want it?" John's laugh was ugly. Blood oozed out of a cut on his upper arm, dampening the sleeve of his coat. "I think this is a clear case of misguided heroism." He scrubbed an arm across his face and when his features came back into view, he had purposefully forced them into human guise. No easy thing, considering the trickle of Connor's blood he could not only see, but smell. If someone was to spot his fangs, though, the resulting hysteria would not go in his favor, and they were growing quite the audience. How long could he hold his temper in check? How long could he think, as was his wont, rather than let the demon turn him into a salivating wreck?
In the brief span of seconds between punches and swipes, he considered options.
John took a prowling step sideways. Then, instead of giving attack another go, his arm snaked out. He grabbed the nearest bystander by the hair, yanking the girl into the middle of it. He wound the brown strands around his palm and cocked her head to the side, exposing her throat. "If I kill her, it will be your fault, you know."
He'd been waiting for another spring, had been counting on it, but the girl's sudden inclusion into the equation made his stomach knot up. This was what he'd been trying to avoid, a random grab. Gawking idiots. Did they think this was some kind of avant-garde production of Hamlet? Connor brushed a drop of blood away from his eye with his free hand, listened to himself breathe. He could try a lunge, but it might get the woman killed. Her eyes were big and scared. The broken bottle in his hand had already warmed from his touch.
He pushed oxygen out through his nose, and the pieces of glass on the sidewalk crunched under his feet as he stepped back and then away. His gut churned with humiliation. The neck of the bottle was used as a pointer, indicating a sudden gap in the crowd that had parted when John had seized hold of the bystander. The yellow light from the streetlamp turned the protrusions of glass a mellow amber color. Vampires, one, hunters, zero.
"Go. Get out of here." And watch your fucking back in the future.
Another vampire might have hurt the girl, anyway, or departed with a self-congratulatory chuckle. John was more put out than anything. He didn't see his inclusion of a bystander as a small victory; It was a convenience. He pulled his hostage to the edge of the crowd, in case the demon fighter had second thoughts, then released her. Before he turned away, he gave the man and his sacks of groceries a last look. The demons had come to Key West, and so had those who felt obligated to protect against them.
No matter what he had told Elfleda, if a veritable war was to come, he wanted no part of it.
Connor dropped the broken bottle into the displaced trashcan. Listened to himself breathe. He probed his teeth with his tongue, then the insides of his cheeks. The cut his incisor had opened up was still bleeding. He wanted to kick something, but instead he picked up his groceries and went in the opposite direction the vampire had taken. Over on the next block, he could hear the approaching wail of a siren. He would let the cops' questions be answered by someone else.
Next time, he would not pick a fight on a street corner.