Who: Ray, with an appearance by Flaming!Melinda What: Stealing item number 4 When: 3/13 around 10pm to 3/14 at 1am Where: Melinda’s Apartment Warnings: Language; fire-clad naked woman
Considering he had already stolen three of the five items, Ray was beginning to feel much more confident in his abilities. He might not know anything about the woman who hired him, but he certainly knew about the woman he was about to steal from. She had all items that were replaceable, but Melinda Melbourne was quite the target. She was a Creation, but he hadn’t a clue about her ability and it hardly mattered to him. He had planned to be in and out while she was out and about Seattle.
He had planned for this one to be fairly easy, which was why he slated her between Orin Monarch and Benedict Sablier. Walking into the Aubade lobby and getting passed the guards was slightly difficult, but he informed them that he was expected by Melinda. He slipped past them then, without leaving a name at the desk. He took the elevator up to the correct floor and used his lock-pick to gain access into the apartment. The water running in the apartment caught him off-guard, but it only made him pause for a moment. If anything, it only gave him another rush of excitement as he slipped into the apartment.
Given what he knew of Melinda, Ray went straight to the bedroom, figuring her for a typical sort of woman. He had his safe cracking tools, but merely as a precautionary measure. He was correct again, finding a simple jewelry box without any sort of extra protection around it. He lifted the lid and scooped out the requested pieces, placing them in his messenger bag with care. A peculiar feeling at the base of her spine was the first indication something was wrong. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was out of place, and it was rare she ever felt that way. The world was in her control, or at least her immediate world was; there was no reason for her to feel in anyway ill at ease. The fact that she did made her angry. It made her irritable. And those things together made her dangerous.
Leaving the shower running, she stepped onto the cool tile. Fire ran down her arms and legs, wreathing her body in ethereal light. The water evaporating off her skin as she couched herself in flame hissed and fizzled. She glanced at herself in the mirror and smiled. It was a ghoulish thing, her face, shining like a well-built blaze, the heat of her skin blue, with tongues of red and yellow light licking the air. A thing of beauty, a spirit of fire, she was a goddess. She was power. And someone was going to die.
She stepped calmly from her bathroom, and saw someone standing beside her dresser his hand in her jewelry box. Passing up pissed, she went straight to rage. No one stole from a duchess, dowager or not. With a strangled cry of affront, Melinda pulled back one hand and lobbed a ball of fire at him. It skittered over his shoulder, catching on his clothes, smoldering there, though the bulk of it sailed by him. Hissing her displeasure, she readied another globe of fire, intending to throw it at his head and turn him to ash.
“Seventeen hundred degrees,” she murmured to herself. Ray had only been half listening to the sound of the shower running, waiting to see if he would get caught. It sent a thrill of adrenaline through his body, one that was entirely welcome and something he had sorely missed in his life of domesticity with Peter. With the jewels safely tucked away in his messenger bag, he set about closing the jewelry box carefully just as something glowing sailed passed him, grazing his shoulder.
In the first instant, he didn’t register anything other than confusion, but when he saw the scorch mark on the wall, his eyes widened and realized his shirt was on fire. “What the hell?” he yelped, immediately patting his shoulder to douse the flame. Ray turned then, and caught sight of a woman covered in flames. He stood there, dumbfounded, just staring at her. “You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered to himself, wondering for a moment if this Melinda knew there was a fire monster hanging out in her apartment. He lifted his hands up, the universal sign that he meant no harm as he inched toward the bedroom door. If Melinda noticed the gesture of surrender, she didn’t react to it. Lunging forward, she reached for the man in her room, a snarl issuing from her mouth. The sound was strangely contorted by the heat. Her fire came just as much from the inside as it did from the outside, it burned within her, too. She hurled the globe of fire at his head, eyeing her jewelry box as her momentum carried her by it. Nothing in there was irreplaceable, but those were the jewels she liked to wear as opposed to the ones that could feed the starving in a poor country for a year. Those were her things.
“Thief!” she shouted, the sound garbled, but the word still recognizable. “I will kill you!” The flames masked her accent, made her voice like two rocks falling against each other and then grinding together. The tongues of fire consuming her body hid her features and the details of her face. Even if he managed to get away - she rather hoped he burned to death, writhing in pain on her floors - he wouldn’t be able to recognize her again. Another flame left her hands, coursing down his shirt. Ray hadn’t gotten far when she hurled another globe of fire at him. He ducked, but he could smell the burnt hair where it just skimmed the top of his head. Not quite enough to light his hair on fire, but it still made his scalp unnaturally warm. “Fuck! Jesus woman,” he growled, knowing she was serious when she said she was going to kill him. The sound of her voice alone was enough to make him move faster toward the door. Just as he was crossing through the bedroom door, she flung another ball of flames at him, this time truly lighting his shirt on fire.
“Shit!” he yelped, hastily pulling at his shirt to get it off. Small bits of his shirt fell to the ground, but he hardly worried about that. Ray was too focused on stumbling into the living room and patting out as much of the flames as he could. He could already feel the fire licking at his skin, and he wondered what kind of damage he would face once he had the chance to look at it. Finally, he was able to get the last bit of fire out, and his shirt was little more than tatters. “You crazy bitch!” he exclaimed, looking absolutely terrified by the woman in flames. Before she could throw more fire at him, he retched the front door open and stepped through the frame, slamming the door shut behind him, uncaring whether or not others heard.
He left just as quickly, slipping out the lobby and doing his best not to draw too much attention to himself. Ray immediately started walking and waited until he was a few blocks away before climbing into a cab. He took the cab to the Hamartia apartment and walked the rest of the way to the warehouse. After dropping off the package, he got into another cab and returned to his apartment. He patched himself up as quietly and as best he could, and passed out on his bed, exhausted.