numenviscera (numenviscera) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-06-02 14:28:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | #group scene, #october 2017, lem, nic, vex, zania |
Who: Lem, Vex, Nic & Zania
What: Neighborly visit + bonus vision
Where: Ludlow Lane
When: Wednesday afternoon, 10/25
Status: Complete
Visiting the neighbors was not something Vex had ever been interested in doing but then he'd never known his neighbors to be real magic users before. Nic and Zania were interesting and they could be key to solving some of the puzzles he and Lem were facing, he could feel it in his bones. He was a bit at a loss for how to do this though, should they bring something? Probably. He bought some weird looking cake on his food run and watched it suspiciously while he and Lem chowed down on some burritos. "Neighbors bring pies, usually," he muttered. "That's where I fucked up. It looks tasty though, yeah?"
Lem was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room while they ate, on the other side of the coffee table. In spite of the weirdness of this town, she was feeling pretty at home now. She’d gotten laid, she’d played around in the cemetery with another guy, she was learning her way around. They were making friends, sort of, which was something they’d never come close to doing before. But she liked the Castells, and she was glad Vex was willing to entertain at least getting to know them. It would be nice to have allies for a change, especially when they faced down the beast. She eyed the cake on the table with her cheek full of food. “Don’t think it matters,” she said around it. “Looks good. They won’t care.” Lem went back to chewing.
Vex wasn't really worried. If werewolves and child torture didn't have him on edge a cake wasn't going to break his back either. Still he glared at it with its pink frosting and colorful sprinkles. "It better taste good," he grumbled as if it was a threat to the cake itself. Taste good or else. Not like they weren't going to carve it up either way. He washed down the last bite of burrito with a beer, paused for a moment and then patted his chest until he burped. "So fucking good," he muttered and up-nodded at Lem. "How's yours?"
If they couldn’t appreciate a huge dose of free sugar, no matter what form it took, there was something wrong with them, in Lem’s opinion. Worrying about what food looked like was the most useless thing in the world. You were just going to mash it up with your teeth and shit it out later anyway. So she wasn’t fussed. “It’s cake,” she said to Vex, like that meant it would taste good no matter what. She took another huge bite of her burrito and grunted her affirmation that it was indeed so fucking good. Lem polished hers off in quick order, then crumpled up the trash and drained her beer too. “Ready?” she asked once food was taken care of. She was a tiny bit nervous about going next door -- she had told Vex about saving Nic from the car, then tacked on just a perfunctory ‘then we bumped uglies,’ but they hadn’t met yet. Lem wasn’t worried, it was just a situation she’d never been in before.
"It's cake," Vex echoed with a little shake of his head. It felt like a reminder of just how young Lem was, that she assumed it was good just because it was cake. Vex had had plenty of awful cakes in his lifetime and it was a fucking heartbreak every time. "Ready," he agreed then and got up in one quick move, patting his shirt for the pack of gum he kept in the pocket. He was a little curious to meet Nic, the not-prophet - but it had little to do with Lem fucking him except maybe for how it would be the first time he actually met someone she'd fucked. She liked fucking people and Vex didn't care as long as she didn't get hurt. He couldn't always keep her satisfied so it was only fair she get it somewhere else.
Lem got up too, leaving their bag of trash where it was, to be dealt with later. She’d already had her boots on and ready to go when they started eating, so it was easy to just pick up the cake and head for the front door. The Castells weren’t expecting them, as far as she knew, and she hoped they didn’t mind the unexpected visit. That was what the cake was for, one of those oils that made the social wheels turn easier. But they all needed to put their minds together, the full moon was coming again soon, and there was a menace to take care of.
Vex locked the door behind them and let the keys jangle a bit as they walked down the to the pavement. It was terribly proper, not even going through the garden or anything but actually visiting the neighbors and knocking on their front door and everything. He stopped when they reached the sidewalk, furrowing his brow as a young girl out in the middle of the road caught his interest. It wasn't just that it was unusual to see a teenage girl with a large weapon out in the open, it was the fact that she was clear as day when he wasn't wearing his glasses. He found Lem's hand but the fact she had stopped too and wasn't giving him a curious look told him she could see the girl too.
The girl seemed to see them too. She turned, narrowed her eyes and raised her rifle pointing it straight at Vex. She opened her mouth and said something but Vex couldn't hear her, it was a vision and he wasn't used to having sounds along with those. "What are you saying?" he muttered more to himself than the girl who looked fairly freaked out by now. She was looking right at him and Lem, eyes darting back and forth between them and as she started fading she stepped forward again, lowering her weapon and saying something again.
Lem stopped when Vex stopped, experienced enough with the abrupt halt to know what that meant. She looked around them, not sure what he was seeing at first. Then the girl shimmered into clarity in the middle of the road. Lem arched an eyebrow at first, then frowned as she lifted the gun she had. She tensed and bumped into Vex a bit in order to put herself between him and the rifle by instinct, but visions couldn’t hurt them, so that wouldn’t do any good. The vision-girl looked filthy and confused, and obviously wanted to talk to them, but then she started to go away. “Huh,” Lem murmured once she’d vanished into the air again. She glanced up at Vex’s face to see if he had anything to add.
Vex wasn't used to his visions looking right back at him and now that the girl had faded he wasn't sure at all if that was what he'd seen. He echoed Lem's 'huh' quietly, then frowned down at her. "Did you just try to body-shield me?" That? Was ridiculous. She was tiny for one, she couldn't even cover him but also she was younger and - in his opinion - more important and she'd just tried to block him from getting shot.
“Uh yeah, you’re the prophet,” Lem informed him with an eyeroll, like he should know that. He did know that, but sometimes he didn’t know that made him way more essential to the fabric of the universe than her, so Lem had to remind him. Her brow furrowed again. “She saw us, didn’t she? That’s ... not usually how it goes.” In fact, Lem couldn’t recall that ever happening before. Every vision they shared, they seemed to just be removed observers, invisible to whoever or whatever they were seeing. It didn’t seem like it this time, though.
"Maybe we saw it through somebody else's eyes," Vex muttered but he couldn't be sure. She'd looked right at him, then at Lem and she wasn't one of the people he usually saw either nor was she anyone he knew. Another werewolf hunter? Would she recognize them if they met in the meatspace? "Maybe she's like us," he speculated. He could well imagine himself ending up looking that dirty and crazy if Lem didn't constantly tell him he was starting to smell bad and insisting on cutting his hair.
“Maybe,” Lem murmured skeptically. She continued to stare at the spot where the girl had been for a long moment, then shook it off with a little toss of her head and a shrug. “Anyway. Neighbors.” If the vision wasn’t coming back, there was no use in just standing there gaping. They had cake to deliver. Lem started walking down the sidewalk again, and then turned to start up the Castells’ walkway backwards. “That’s where I was a hero,” she told Vex with a tiny grin, nodding to the spot where Nic had almost gotten creamed by a car. She was still pretty proud of that.
"You're a hero everywhere, firecracker," Vex drawled but yes she'd been a hero out here and saved their non-prophet friend from certain death. He wished he could have seen it but at the same time she'd risked her life and that would have been upsetting in some ways. She wouldn't be gone if she died but she'd be gone from him and that couldn't happen yet. "I'm proud of you."
Lem beamed bright enough to be a lighthouse at that, dimples deep in her cheeks. Vex being proud of her was pretty much her favorite thing in the world. She turned to walk frontways again so she wouldn’t trip and drop the cake, heading up the porch steps in with a happy little bounce. Lem left it to Vex to ring the doorbell, since he had the free hands. She’d made sure Vex had a shower that morning and had fluffed his hair up herself, the sides freshly buzzed, along with her own head. Their clothes were clean too, so she thought they looked pretty damn presentable. Bringing food made them even more neighborly, so their witch neighbors had better be home.
It had turned into craft night at the Castell house, with both Nic and Zan sitting in the living room working on various projects. Zania had committed to making a Halloween mask for Liam Wolfe, mostly because it was a challenge and she'd already finished making her own costume. The teeth were molded from those of a shark, each one carefully inlaid into paper mache. Once she was finished with the teeth, she would have to paint it, but that was the easy part. Nic was still working on his crow, almost done wiring the second wing, but he kept picking up the soul stone and letting it hop around the living room. A documentary about nightmares played in the background, mostly forgotten, with both of the twins engrossed in their work. When the bell rang, they both looked up, then to each other.
"Are you expecting someone?" Nic asked, slowly rising from the floor as the crow hopped curiously towards the door. He snapped at it and it made a move to fly away, unable to without flesh upon it's bones, instead scrambling back into the room before he pocketed the stone and it went still.
"No," Zania said, staying put since Nic had risen. "If it's the little Wolfe, tell him I'm not done yet and to come back tomorrow." Seriously, the kid needed some practice in patience.
"It's our neighbors," Nic called back as he stepped towards the door, able to see them through the glass. He wondered then what this would be like, seeing Lem again with Vex, but swallowed back the nervousness before it could bubble up. She was chill, and so he would be too. There was absolutely no reason to think this would be awkward, unless he made it awkward. Nic opened the door before he could think much more on it, giving them both a smile. "Hey, what's up?" he asked, gaze jumping from Lem to Vex, a man he'd only heard of till now. He couldn't help but do a quick comparison, despite himself, immediately noting the way they both towered over Lem.
"Invite 'em in!" Zania called from the living room as she picked up the remote and turned off the tv. Whatever they were there for was bound to be more entertaining.
Nic laughed softly and stepped back, offering entrance. "Come on in."
"We brought cake," Vex said. "But we're here for the battle plans." Time was running out after all and they needed to get their hands on all the information available to them before the full moon. Witches would definitely be helpful. He glanced down at Lem who looked fucking delighted so he decided battle plans aside, he could be friendly too. "I'm Vex," he muttered, offering his hand. Nic probably already knew that unless both girls had completely failed to mention his name so far.
Lem almost never saw the guys she fucked ever again, much less introduced them to Vex, so she hadn’t been sure how she would feel about all this. As it turned out, she was just kind of delighted to see Nic again, being all tall and pretty even when he wasn’t almost-dying and had more clothes on. “Cake!” she echoed chirpily as she lifted the baked goodness in her hands a bit as if to prove they’d actually brought it. She walked inside, dodging around the handshake that was happening, and peered into the house to look for Nic’s pretty sister. “Hi Zan!” she called, assuming the lady-witch of the house was home.
“Battle plans?” Nic asked with a big fat question mark. Were they going to be fighting someone? Not that he was against it, but he felt like he was missing something. And why that went with cake. “Nic,” he said, giving Vex a smile as he shook his hand. Maybe this should be weird, but it didn’t feel near as uncomfortable as he thought it would be.
“For the werewolf,” Zania reminded him from the other room. She’d told him about the werewolf discussion and how Lem and Vex were planning on hunting it, but suspected that he hadn’t put that all together. Not after screwing Lem. His brain was probably mush at the moment, worried about her tall companion person, whatever he was called. A moment later she bounded into the entryway and peered around Nic, a bright smile on her face. “Hi lovely,” she grinned at Lem. “You brought cake. Come in. Sit down. We’re just hanging out. We can talk.”
It was definitely strange to be around people again in this capacity. Vex could easily imagine them all becoming a thing, a little clan of warriors, fighting for the oblivious. He didn't want to get ahead of himself, he knew damn well things didn't always work out the way he imagined. "Good," he told Zania. "I'll be having some of that cake." He might not look it but he had a sweet tooth on him on occasion, food was one of those luxuries he really enjoyed when he remembered to partake. "You got coffee? Vodka?"
Lem beamed back at Zan when she appeared, pretty much delighted with this whole thing already. She’d never had a lot of friends, not really. People tended to be freaked out by her and avoid avoid avoid. Especially in the institutions she’d been in. But these people didn’t seem like those people, not really. They were their kind of people. She headed for the living room that Zan had just been in, and found a place to put the cake down on the coffee table. Unburdened now, Lem bounced over to half-tackle Nic with a hug as the others followed her into the room. She gave his chest a friendly headbutt and looked up at him with a dimpled smile. “Hi,” she said, just for him. It just seemed right.
“We have coffee and vodka,” Zania grinned, giving her brother a tug as she led their guests back into the living room. The house was an eclectic sort of mess, bohemian with oddities as accents. If Zania liked it, it lived in their house, the decor mostly of her choosing. Nic’s contributions were less noticeable, usually bringing order to the chaos. His own sense of style was relegated to his bedroom and his work room. “Have a seat and I’ll go get something to cut the cake,” she said, assuming they’d make themselves comfortable while she wandered into the kitchen.
Nic walked back into the living room, eyes taking in the mess they currently had and decided it didn’t matter. Lem and Vex were there to talk about werewolves. They knew they were witches. That made everything easier to accept. Before he could say anything, Lem was wrapping her arms around him and Nic smiled down at her, fondness bubbling up. “Hi,” he said, laughing silently, a small shake of his chest. His eyes ticked to Vex, then back to her. “Wanna see something cool?” he asked, nodding towards the bird skeleton.
Vex was very used to Lem and how she didn't really have a filter with people. She liked hugging and touching and it had put him off when he first met her. Now though, it was Lem and he'd gotten addicted to it. Seeing her hug someone else was a little weird since they weren't at a club and they weren't wasted but it wasn't a bad sort of weird, especially since he loved seeing her happy. He still looked at Nic stoically, slowly chewing his gum. Did he want to be threatening to a witch? Not really, but there was still a core part of him that wanted to tell Nic to watch himself around his girl. Sure, he could fuck her if she wanted him to (though in Vex's experience it was usually Lem doing the fucking) but he couldn't fuck her over, that's where he drew the line. He arched a brow curiously and glanced over to the skeleton when Nic brought it up, stepping a little closer to take a look. It was good work, all those bones wired together, and not something he'd ever seen before.
“Yeah!” Lem said with enthusiasm. She always liked to see cool things. Especially when they came from cool people. She was fairly oblivious to the unspoken protective vibes coming off of Vex -- she felt like she could handle herself, and nobody in this house intimidated her in any way. She loved Vex, she really liked the Castells so far, so everything would obviously be fine. She bounced over to where Vex was peering down at the little bird skeleton and did some peering herself.
Nic expected a certain amount of protectiveness from Vex and decided that this was fine. He wasn’t threatening him. He was just weary, as he should be. If Zania started hooking up with some strange guy, he’d be weary too. And maybe purposefully creepy protective. It was so hard to say, since Zan could take care of herself, and he kind of got the sense that Lem was in a similar boat. Not the same one, but similar. He gave Vex a little smile, but then watched Lem as he pulled the little black stone out of his pocket and rolled it in his palm. Immediately the bird came to life, hopping around the living room, all wires and bones, but otherwise birdlike.
“You’re such a showoff,” Zania said as she returned to the room with plates and forks and glasses and vodka. She wasn’t really bothered by Nic’s display, aware that the number of people he could show was incredibly small, but if the knew the kind of magic he was messing with they might not think it was so cool. Or maybe they would. Most people assumed that if you were using necromancy, you were pulling bodies from their graves to take over the world. Her brother just wanted a pet. “I put the coffee on, but it’ll take a few,” she said as she started to cut the cake. “Everyone want cake?”
Vex crouched down when the bird started moving, staring at it in fascination. That was certainly not something he normally saw outside of his visions but even without his glasses the little bird was a little blurry and real. Real witches. It was beautiful. "Does it have a mind of its own?" he asked, glancing up at Nic, all attempts at being threatening and cool gone out the window with this new revelation. "Or is it just a puppet?"
Lem’s eyes widened when the bird skeleton started moving around. Hopping like a real live bird. She made a high pitched little sound of delight, following it as it moved through the room. She kind of wanted to touch it, but it looked delicate, and Lem didn’t want to break it by accident. She paused to give Zania a hug as she passed, giving her a big grin. “Cake for both of us, please,” she answered the question since Vex hadn’t. Lem knew he wanted it, he was just distracted right then. It happened. A lot. But that was okay. Lem peered at the bird again, then looked to Nic to give an answer. It was obviously his magic doing it, and it was just so damn cool. Lem wanted one of her own already.
“‘Bout half and half,” Nic answered. “If I don’t give it a command, it’ll just do it’s own thing. Like right now I’m not asking anything of it.” Which allowed the bird to wander around the living room curiously, inspecting Vex and Lem with the natural curiosity all birds seemed to have of the living. “If I ask it to do something, it’s compelled to obey, but I’m not giving it step by step instructions, if that makes sense.” He could tell it to go to the kitchen, but how it got there was its own decision. It was complex magic and dangerous in the amount of backlash a spell could generate, but when it worked it looked so simple.
Zania hugged Lem, the started to cut the cake as Lem and Vex looked curiously at the bird. “You should make a cat,” Zania told Nic with a smile. A cat wouldn’t be cuddly, but she thought it could do more. Hunt, maybe. At the very least, it wouldn’t be confused about it’s inability to fly.
Vex definitely wanted cake but Lem was right, he was far too distracted to think about that at the moment, his gaze fixed on the little skeleton moving about. He risked running a finger along one of the delicate bones as he hopped by him and if Nic could do things like that then Vex could easily see why Lem might want to fuck him again. "Can you do that with people?" he asked, neither a request nor really morbid curiosity, it was just the rational thing to ask of someone who'd brought a skeleton to half-life.
Nic looked to Vex, his lips turning up a little as he rolled the stone between his hands. It was a smart question, one that seemed to catch on to the dangers of the sort of magic he was messing with. “It’s possible, but certain conditions have to be met. To have this kind of command power, I have to have the creature’s soul. Without it, it’s a true puppet and not as useful.” Or as fun. Nic didn’t want to have to tell the bird to hop around the room, like it was doing now. “Human souls require a special kind of stone, and trapping them is far more dangerous.”
Vex was full of smart questions because he was smart. Brilliant, even. Lem was so proud of him all the time, even when he was freaking people out. Maybe even especially then. She was listening, but she moved over closer to Zan so she could take the first piece of cake that came off the tray, since the boys seemed too busy talking to care about it. Lem went to flop onto their couch, folding her legs comfortably under her before she started in on her cake. Nic was talking about trapping souls and everything and that was cool. It was sort of scary in a hot way, and Lem liked it. “How do you even get souls?” she asked. “Are they just like ... out there floating around? Or is it timing? Or what?”
Nic shared a look with Zania, well aware that they were getting into blood magic territory, even if their guests didn’t know it. He didn’t want to freak them out, but they were also there to discuss werewolf hunting, so he figured their tolerance level was different than most people’s. “The most common practice is to trap the soul at death, but human souls can be summoned back sometimes, if the body you’re working with has already died. It’s not common practice, since you don’t always get the soul you’re looking for, and it’s a lot more trouble if you end up summoning a demon or something.” They didn’t have any human skeletons walking around the house for good reason---Playing puppet master wasn’t a good enough reason to commit murder.
Zania left two pieces of cut cake on the table, then took her own and flopped down in a large armchair. “As cool as it might be, it’s not worth the price,” she said. “Not in blood and not in potential backlash.” Anything more intelligent than a dog was getting into dangerous territory as far as she was concerned.
Vex was still staring at the bird as the witches spoke but he straightened up a moment later and took a seat next to Lem to help himself to cake. His mind was still on the bird and all this new information. They didn't want to do something like that, but they could and that was sobering. He could only imagine what kind of things might hitch a ride back with a soul from that other layer of reality. He'd seen things in his visions, dark twisted things that had no right being on this layer of their meat space so it was probably a good idea not to go summoning souls. "You don't want a hitchhiker," he muttered as he took the gum from his mouth and plopped it down on the rim of his plate before he took a bite of the cake. It was good, Lem had been right to be optimistic.
Lem knew fuck-all about magic. At least the kinds of magic that these people seemed to do. It all sounded kind of dark to her, but that wasn’t a bad thing in Lem’s book. Very few things in the universe were sunshine and light, there was way more dark shit, so might as well know how to handle it, right? It made sense to her. At least it didn’t sound like they went around sacrificing people for magic stuff, so that was good. She shifted her position so she could stretch her legs out across Vex’s lap since he sat so close, happily digging into the cake. “It would be cool to have a skeleton bird ... or oooh, like, a skeleton lizard! I bet it’d be cute,” she said, looking at the hopping not-bird again. A little undead companion. “Is that the only one you have?”
“No, I don’t,” Nic agreed with Vex. ‘Hitchhiker’ was a good way of putting it. He might get the soul he was looking for, but he might also get another dark entity in the process. Honestly, killing the host was the best way to go, but Nic wasn’t going to murder someone just to see if he could raise their corpse. “I also have a rat,” he said with a little smile. “They’re the only two I’ve gone through the trouble of assembling their bones.” He really wanted to try a dog or a cat, but the timing had to be right. He had to find an animal that he was comfortable just killing, maybe because they were old or because they needed to be put down. It felt wrong otherwise. Maybe that made him too tender-hearted, but he liked to think it meant he wasn’t a psychopath.
“A lizard would be really cool,” Zania agreed. “Those are tiny bones, though. Not that bird bones aren’t tiny, but I guess it depends on the lizard.” It would be really cool though. Necromancy wasn’t really her thing, but she liked watching Nic perform the spells. If she wasn’t going to do it herself, it was the next best thing. She had all the knowledge and tools, just not the desire to try in this case.
"I'm willing to bet a Komodo Dragon wouldn't be too small," Vex murmured and he was also willing to bet Lem would like one of her own. "Can you puppeteer a living creature?" That would come in handy when they went after the werewolf, if Nic could control it for even a minute they could lure it into a cage. "We need to build that cage," he muttered to Lem as he was reminded of the fact by his brain's ramblings. "In case we get it alive." Topic changes like these weren't exactly rare for him and he didn't question for a second that Lem would know he was talking about the monster and not a hypothetical Komodo Dragon.
Lem was indeed following right along, and she nodded to Vex’s assertion. They needed a cage, needed to organize their weapons, needed a battle plan. Bone-pets were fun, but there was serious business on the table too. Life-and-death business. She still looked happy as she was eating her cake, and glanced between Nic and Zan. “You did know it was a werewolf, right?” she said to Nic. They’d already talked about it with Zania, but maybe those two didn’t share every bit of information like she and Vex did. “That killed Aunt Sarah next door? We’re gonna hunt it down.”
“A Komodo Dragon would work,” Nic nodded, but this his brow furrowed. “Taking control of another living creature is… difficult. It can be done, but it’s a different spell entirely, and needs blood from the host. I know there are people with abilities in psychokinesis and telepathy that would have an easier time managing it on the fly, but I’ve never met one. And, honestly, if someone could manipulate me that easily, I’d probably be wary of them.” He realized after his rambling that a yes or no might have been sufficient, but he loved talking about the supernatural possibilities as much as his sister. It wasn’t often that he got to engage in conversations like this. “A cage?” he asked, not following right away, but then Lem chimed in and he was able to follow. Zania had told him about their werewolf conversation. She didn’t tell him everything, but that was too interesting to pass up. “We suspected. Even though we didn’t see it, all signs pointed that direction.”
“If you want to take it alive, I’d recommend something big and sturdy,” Zania suggested. “Like that might hold a lion. And we can make some incense you can burn to help keep it calm. Or, well, make it weaker, at least until the moon passes.” She didn’t know what calmed a werewolf, but burning an incense laced with wolfsbane would definitely give them the edge they needed to maintain control. The trick was going to be finding the right level-- not too strong, so as to knock the creature out or harm it, but not so light that they could still rage.
Vex had been thinking about a cage fit to hold a bear, or maybe even two bears so he was plenty aware it needed to be strong. He nodded and perked up when Zania mentioned incense. Anything that helped was welcome and he looked at Lem with a pleased grin, slowly chewing his cake. Once he'd swallowed he pointed at Zania. "You've got good ideas, we're gonna need it before the full moon, any ideas on how to track the damn thing down?" His plan so far was to wander the streets of Point Pleasant and that wasn't terribly productive. His second idea was to spill blood all over Ludlow Lane. The beast might have moved on to a different town but if it hadn't it might come running when it smelled fresh meat. Vex wanted to get it close to their house if they were going to attempt to capture it.
“Thank you,” Zania smiled brightly, then stuck a bite of cake in her mouth as she thought about his question. She didn’t know of anything that magically attracted them. Most people were more concerned with spells to deter or kill them. To weaken them. But a Hunter… “I don’t know of any spells, but I’m thinking blood. Like, a bucket of it. Paint yourself a path. Drop a few dead rabbits. From what I hear, they’re completely feral in their monster form, which I think means they’re looking for prey. Blood in animals normally signifies injured prey, so that’s the route I’d go.”
Nic drummed his fingers quietly chasing a thought that he hadn’t completely worked out. “There’s got to be something that attracts werewolves,” he said, mentally going through all the herbs he could think of. “What about Frangipani?” he asked his sister. “That’s often used to bring things to you. Could we mix that with the blood? I feel like we’ve used a lure before, but I don’t remember why.” Pieces of the spell were fluttering through his mind, but nothing complete. He’d need to dig around a bit. “Do you have a place you’d like to fight it? We we could draw it to you?”
It was kind of amazing, listening to all this being said around her. They were actually making real plans, with people who actually knew what the fuck they were talking about. At least they sounded like they did. Lem grinned back at Vex when he looked at her, licking frosting off her teeth. She glanced between the Castell twins as they spoke to one another, then looked at Vex. “We ultimately want it in the basement, right? Locked up? Because it’s a person most of the time,” she said, looking at the others again. They’d talked about killing it if they had to, but since it was even partly human, neutralizing it some other way might be better. Like Vex had said at some point, it might not even know what it was.
Vex had been planning to kill the creature for months now but the closer they got and the more real it felt he was beginning to think maybe they shouldn't. He nodded at Lem, unmindful of the crumbs of cake in his beard. "Might have to shoot if if tranqs don't work." He reached up to idly rub the back of Lem's head, his focus on the twins again. He was every bit as fascinated as Lem. The Castells were chosen too and yet they were so different from him and Lem. He was sure their strengths would compliment his and Lem's pretty well and they'd make a great little army.
“If it’s you or them, shoot it,” Zania said in between bites of cake. “But otherwise, I think they probably don’t know what they are. I know there’s a possibility that they do, and they’re just letting themselves go on a murdering spree every full moon, but I think true psychopaths are rare.” Which meant that most likely it was a person who woke up very confused every full moon, covered in blood. Once they knew what they were, they could work out a plan to keep themselves locked up.
“Most people have a really hard time wrapping their head around the supernatural,” Nic said. “I’m sure it seems obvious to us, but they’ll come up with all kinds of things before they believe that they’re turning into a monster.” It was why witches survived today, where they’d been burned and hung in the past. People just didn’t believe anymore. In fact, those that did were usually considered crazy. If someone went to the police yelling about witches or werewolves, they’d be the ones locked up, not the other way around.
What Zania said was pretty much what Lem had been thinking, but there was no way to know for sure, of course. The world was full of evil fuckers. She wasn’t eager to kill anyone who wasn’t actually an evil fucker, just a confused and ill-informed fucker. She nodded to what Nic said as well, munching on her cake and bouncing her legs a little against Vex’s thighs. “We’ll need some silver bullets, just in case,” she said idly, just trying to think of things. “Where can we get that kind of cage in a hurry? Or build one?”
"We're gonna build one," Vex muttered and that meant they needed to get their asses to a hardware store and buy shitloads of metal bits. "You ever tried welding?" He had a feeling she'd get a kick out of that, they'd just have to try to not set the house on fire. "That's what we'll do, weld together a big ass cage, soundproof the basement." He gave Lem a lopsided grin before turning his attention to the twins again. "Any kinda help would be appreciated."
“I can make a mold for the bullets, if you have one to model after,” Zania offered. “I’ve never worked with silver, but it can’t be that hard. You’d just need to provide the silver.” Maybe there was some laying around their house? Good silver would melt down, she was sure and she could make a fire hot enough. “I’m making teeth right now,” she smiled, gesturing to the half finished Halloween mask on the table. It was too bad she couldn’t use magic to add to the gore, but that would be too much, especially for a high school party. “Welding sounds like fun.”
Nic looked at his sister like she’d grown a second head. “What do you know about welding?” Sure, she was good with fire, but making a cage strong enough to hold a werewolf didn’t seem like the kind of thing to experiment on in his opinion.
“I can weld!” Zania said, pointing her finger at him like a gun, a little flame spouting from the end. She grinned and blew it out as Nic shook his head.
“Possessing welding tools is different than knowing what you’re doing,” Nic pointed out, then looked at Vex. “We’d love to help. Just keep in mind we’ve never done this before.” And were totally experimenting, he thought. It would be fun to learn to soundproof a room, just in case they needed to know for the future.
Lem watched the exchange between the twins with great amusement. She could totally picture herself and Zania with those big welding helmets on, doing the hot and dirty work while the boys stood back to watch. In her mind, it couldn’t be that hard. They could figure it out. Lem finished off her cake and beamed around the room. “We can get silver!” she chirped. It felt like they had a real plan coming together. And two sets of extra hands -- magical hands! -- was going to be amazing. They were going to accomplish a thing and save some lives, and it was going to be great.
Vex laughed a little when Zania's fire flared up. "Now that's going to come in handy," he mused as he pointed at her hand then nodded at Nic. "First time for everything." He shoved more cake in his mouth, his mind already off on a little journey, compiling a list of all the things they'd need to buy in the next couple of days. Time was strange and hard to tame and they were running out so it was time to get started.