Kane Owen (sellingsouls) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2022-12-10 15:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | #july 2018, adrian, adrian x kane, cecilia, kane |
Who: Adrian, Kane, and Cecilia
When: late morning into afternoon, Sunday, July 8th
Where: Portland, car, Cecilia's farm
Status: Complete, Part 2
He led the way up the ridge, ducking down a bit as the trees started to thin. Kane moved along the ridgeline until he found a good vantage spot, then crouched where they were partially screened by the underbrush. He pulled out the small pair of binoculars he’d pocketed from the back of his car. Sucking his bottom lip between his teeth, Kane put them to his eyes and started scanning what he could see of the farm. There was a house, a barn, several smaller outbuildings on the immediate property ... Kane saw pens with goats and chickens, a couple of dogs trotting around. There were a handful of people too, he couldn’t see them super clearly from this distance, but he could tell they were doing work and not anything nefarious. There was hay and buckets and a tractor parked near the barn ... just a farm, like Cecilia had said. “No human sacrifice yet,” he muttered to Adrian.
Adrian was just following his lead for now, ducking when Kane ducked, crouching when he crouched, staying a foot or two farther back than he was. It was kind of laughable to think he'd gotten so into some of the war games he'd played that he felt like he was good at them, all that illusion shattered when there was even a whiff of real danger. "Can I see?" he whispered and when Kane handed him the binoculars, he wasn't sure what he'd see but the very average farm he was looking at was not it. "You sure this is the right place?" he asked but then again, Caius D'Onofrio lived in a very normal house and not some witch's castle so he knew looks could be deceiving. "I mean, I think those are llamas, they're fucking evil, right?"
He squinted off to their left while Adrian looked through the binoculars, examining the cow field as much as he could from there. There didn’t seem to be anything to see over there either. Kane wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed. There still could be awful things going on here, people trapped in cellars, torture chambers in the barn, shrines to fucked up demons hidden away, who knew. But there was nothing in the open to indicate it was anything but a farm. Which did make all of this paranoia seem kind of like overkill. “Yeah, this is it,” he answered quietly, his gaze coming back to the side of Adrian’s face. It had been brave of him to come, and Kane admired him for a moment while he was unobserved, letting his hypervigilance slip a bit. “Pretty sure they’re alpacas though, dummy.”
Adrian huffed softly, the dumb insult putting a small crack in his sour mood. "Okay, farm boy," he murmured with a hint of a smile, still squinting through the binoculars as if he might see some signs of evil. Something Kane missed, a small altar or symbol, anything. He was a little too focused on it so the sound startled him more than it should, making him feel like his heart had frozen for a second before he registered what it was. A song, some dumb pop song with a perky beat and a girlie voice singing. It wasn't far from them either and he put down the binoculars and looked at Kane with much the same expression as he would have if he'd heard a monster roar. The music went quiet almost as fast as it started and in its place a child's voice saying hi. It came from somewhere on their side and Adrian was tempted to crawl out of there but he didn't seem to be able to move. He mouthed 'what the fuck' to Kane and maybe if they just stayed still this kid would wander by without noticing them. If it wasn't some abomination with a child's voice and a smartphone.
The sudden music had given Kane a start, his position shifting into something more coiled and defensive as his head whipped around toward the noise. One hand fell to the butt of his pistol but froze the second he heard a child’s voice. Fuck, was he about to pull a gun on a kid? Adrian didn’t actually make a sound, but Kane put a finger to his lips anyway and shook his head very slightly. It was impossible to tell if the kid had spotted them yet, but if they stayed still they might be overlooked. The last thing he wanted to do was alert anyone associated with this farm that they were there. There had been nothing crazy to see, but Cecilia still might take offense to the snooping, and who knew what that would mean.
Adrian had similar thoughts in his head. That kid might not even be a kid and even if it was, it might get them in trouble for being there. Kids weren't as stupid as most grownups hoped they were, though this one sounded pretty young so maybe they could make up some bullshit about why they were there. For now all they could do was stay quiet and listen. Another voice chimed up with an impatient 'what?' as the first voice spoke on the phone with nothing that told them what was going on. Just 'yeah' and a not so enthusiastic 'okay' and then he could hear two pairs of feet moving through the grass near them. "Grandma says there are silly men in the bushes and she wants them to come in and have some coffee," the younger of the two said before obnoxiously sucking snot up his nose and then two children no older than five or six appeared between the trees, a boy and girl, staring at them blankly. "Hi," the boy said. "You're supposed to come in for coffee."
The girl - who was either a little older or just looked like it like most girls that age did - looked less impressed and far more skeptical. "Why are you hiding?" she asked with a little frown and Adrian thought he could feel a cool breeze against the back of his neck, sending shivers up his spine.
"We're not," Adrian said, now far more terrified that Kane would actually pull a gun on a couple of kids even if maybe that wasn't what they really were. He still didn't want to see it. "We're just playing." He raised the binoculars and wiggled it like it was just a toy, hyper aware of Kane's gun and not much else.
Goddammit, there were two of them. As they came closer, Kane hastily pulled the front of his jacket together and zipped it halfway up, not wanting some kid to catch a glimpse of his piece and make a big deal about it. He was well versed in kids-that-weren’t-actually-kids, but these two little ones showed no signs of being anything but real human children -- their eyes weren’t black, their voices sounded normal, they were staring at him and Adrian like they were idiots, the way human children had a knack for. They were weirdly young to be out wandering around by themselves, especially in Blackwater woods, but maybe that was just how growing up on a farm was. If Cecilia had any power at all, they were probably well protected here.
He glanced over at Adrian, then tried to give the kids a little smile. “Yeah, just some hide and seek ... guess you found us,” Kane said with a chuckle. He felt too big and awkward already, never sure how to act around young children. “Is uh, is Cecilia your grandma?”
"You're doing it wrong," the girl said after nodding dismissively at Kane's question and the boy chimed in instantly. "Yeah, one of you should be looking and if someone's looking for you you shouldn't hide in the same place, that way nobody wins. Unless you don't want anyone to win, like my auntie, but that's no fun, there's gotta be a clear winner. And the people looking for you should know they're looking for you or it's not a game, we didn't even know you were out here until grandma called."
He was still talking as Adrian got up slowly, nodding along because this was clearly a monologue and not a conversation. It had been a long time since he dealt with chatty kids but at least this still felt like somewhat familiar turf, being told he was doing things wrong and getting a lecture on how things actually worked. Nobody knew things better than a child, before all that doubt set in with adulthood. "She lives there?" he asked the girl and gestured down towards the farm and while he kind of wanted to just fucking leave, he was curious now. Maybe the old lady had cameras or something all over her farm, or maybe she was something else and she knew they were there as soon as they stepped foot on her land. Accepting an invitation for coffee was probably insane, but he wanted to see that face now, find out if they were on the same side or if she was really a mass murdering witch. The girl told Adrian that 'yes, that's where grandma lives' before ushering the still babbling boy to start moving, clearly expecting the silly men to follow.
Kane stood up when Adrian did and felt even more like a bull in a china shop. How did humans start out so fucking small? It was kind of amazing, and not something he thought about much because he rarely crossed paths with kids. He’d never gotten anyone pregnant that he knew of, Bailey didn’t have any, Kane didn’t exactly have any friends, especially not any with normal lives and families. He shot Adrian an uncertain glance, subtly adjusting the holster under his jacket so it was sitting further back on his hip. The last thing he needed was Cecilia thinking he was there to threaten her grandchildren or something. Fuck, this definitely wasn’t what he’d been expecting to find. He started to follow them, keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open, glancing up into the trees as they walked, checking for cameras himself.
Adrian could practically feel the awkwardness radiating off Kane and in that sense it was almost like the tables had turned. Adrian was pretty sure these kids were just human, the boy was still rattling on, though his focus had shifted to kung fu and Adrian wanted to say he was pretty sure a monster disguised as a child wouldn't talk this much - or have the sense to appear this snotty. The kid kept sucking that same gunk back up his nose and Adrian wished he had a damn tissue to offer him. At the same time he felt like they weren't the only ones there and he wasn't sure if it was just his paranoia or some wendigo sense tingling, but he felt watched by something, something that warned him from doing anything stupid.
The kid's droning on was actually kind of nice in a way, it gave the two adults space to just walk and look around without having to keep up a conversation and Adrian was feeling a little less apprehensive about the whole thing as they walked past normal looking animals that looked well taken care of, unafraid and not possessed. Little bells chimed when the girl pushed the back door open and they were greeted by three cats, moving up to sniff them and rub against their legs. The kids ran ahead inside, yelling for their grandma and Adrian stopped there in the doorway, giving Kane the same kinds of uncertain looks he'd gotten from him earlier. This didn't feel like the lair of Evil and he half expected this to be the wrong place.
Where Adrian got more relaxed, the tension in Kane’s back and shoulders grew and grew as they passed by all the farm normalcy. He wasn’t sure if he was feeling more and more sure that something was wrong here, or if it was anticipatory unease. If everything they were seeing was all there was, and this was a normal-ass farm owned and operated mostly by normal-ass people, then Kane really didn’t want to have to explain why they were there. Or why he’d broken his own terms and brought Adrian along, why he had a gun, all of the shit Cecilia would probably ask him. The kitchen they were left peering into looked homey and inviting, completely ordinary in a way that made him even more uncomfortable. He didn’t get invited into people’s homes very often, and the more normal everything seemed, the more out of place Kane felt. He belonged out in the woods, dirty and strapped for a fight, not here where pies got baked and children played. He stood stiffly next to Adrian and waited, glancing briefly down at the cats as he slipped his hands into his jacket pockets, not sure what else to do with them.
Under any other circumstances, Adrian would have given those cats the petting they were so obviously requesting but he couldn't shake that feeling that they weren't really cats. Accidentally patting a fae or a demon or whatever the fuck could pretend to be a cat was not really on his to-do list. It felt weird though, like he was being an asshole, breaking social norms, offending animals left and right. His focus was mainly on the kitchen in front of them and the voices that carried as the kids yelled and babbled and if they weren't really kids, they sure were staying in character.
Cecilia appeared in the doorway just a minute later, drying her hands on a towel and giving Kane a bemused smile. "You're early," she said. "And you brought your friend. Well, come on in then, you two. May as well have some coffee before you're on your way again."
She didn't really look like anything Adrian had been picturing, neither a hard looking witchy stereotype or a too-goodly fairy tale grandmother. She just looked very human, like she made decent coffee and could be a bitch if she wanted to be. He glanced at Kane quizzically, squashing his urge to give her some awkward hello or bullshit up some explanation for why they were there. This wasn't like anything he was used to dealing with and he still felt like he had a lot of experience with weird shit.
Kane wasn’t exactly used to dealing with this exact situation either, he’d never encountered someone like Cecilia personally in his business, but he knew he dealt with a lot of middle men most of the time. Maybe there were more innocent-seeming grandmas out there in the world, creating monsters to collect tons of souls for sacrifice or whatever the hell was actually going on. Trying to keep in mind that this woman had basically told him she would facilitate another mass murder, Kane shot Adrian a very brief glance before he stepped inside the house. “Cecilia, this is Adrian. Adrian, Cecilia,” he said to officially introduce them. Kane just didn’t know what else to say, feeling caught red-handed doing something shady.
"Finally, a face to the name," Cecilia said and clasped her hands together as she beamed at Adrian but then she waved them on into the kitchen and headed for the coffee maker. "Keep your boots on, the house is a mess right now with these kids running in and out like wildlings. Can't complain though, at least they're going out and not spending every waking minute on their smartphones."
As she talked, Adrian cautiously followed Kane inside, scanning the kitchen for something off but it was all just kitchen things, pretty old knick knacks, kids' drawings on the fridge, cute cartoonish anthropomorphic animal pictures, dishes in the sink. It looked so normal. Everything looked so normal. He was itching to just blurt out why they were there, ask her if she was really going to murder a whole bunch of people if Kane didn't help her, if she was really somehow responsible for killing all the people who'd held him captive. She might not look like she was capable of that but she did somehow look like she was capable of summoning that creature that did. Old bohemian witch lady with monsters in the woods and children in her house. Why she was involved with it all was beyond him though and he clamped down on all those questions and stood awkwardly by the kitchen table.
Cecilia turned, looked them over with a patient smile and then gestured at the kitchen chairs. "Sit down, I'm making coffee. You can smoke in here if you want, there's an ashtray next to the toaster."
Kane was also subconsciously looking for something out of place, but nothing stuck out to him either. It just looked like a run of the mill kitchen ... which might as well have been a foreign country to him, but Kane knew he was the outlier. He did want a cigarette but he didn’t want to seem that relaxed, so he just pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down without grabbing the ashtray. Kane kept his jacket zipped and stuffed both hands into the pockets, all too aware of the hard rectangular shape pressing into his hip. Maybe he should declare it, make Cecilia aware so it didn’t seem like he was trying to ambush her or something. Kane didn’t know the protocol here. “Thanks,” he murmured belatedly, shifting a bit in the chair as he watched the woman bustle around. “We uh ... didn’t mean to intrude.”
"Oh no, you were very sneaky," Cecilia told him. "I wouldn't have been able to invite you in except the kids were right there, light and quick on their feet." She brought three cups, milk and sugar to the table while the coffee maker churned and garbled, shooting Kane a little smirk.
It didn't feel malicious but it still made Adrian squirm a bit, knowing they'd been sneaking around on her land and she fucking knew about it and was this casual about it too. She didn't seem worried at all about having them in there, two grown men - arguably both of them monsters - and one of them armed. They could kill her and the kids within minutes if they were the types to do that and yet Adrian couldn't see any hint of nervousness in the way she moved and talked. He was pretty good at seeing that stuff too, people acting casual and unbothered often had little tells they couldn't hide, but not Cecilia. It was like they were old friends who'd stopped by for coffee and not... whatever the hell all this was. It all made him itch a little, wanting to cut through the niceties and get to the grit of it, but he'd promised to follow Kane's lead and he guessed that went for conversation too.
Cecilia grabbed the pot when it was ready and poured coffee into the cups before fetching a pack of biscuits from one of the cupboards and haphazardly dumping the contents onto a plate she then brought to the table. "I might have even baked something if I'd known you were coming," she said, but it was clear she was joking about that.
This was definitely the weirdest feeling cup of coffee Kane had ever been given. He’d dealt with a wide variety of people in his career -- if Cecilia hadn’t seemed so damn normal, he might have had a better idea of how to handle her. It all just felt so incongruous. Kane took a moment to add some sugar to his coffee and took the first sip. It tasted better than he wanted it to. He was feeling a similar restlessness as Adrian, the antsy desire to get to the point, he just wasn’t sure where to start. “So I decided, I’m gonna do what you asked,” he said finally, sitting back in the kitchen chair, his eyes on Cecilia. He knew that was the answer he’d settled on even before they’d arrived, he’d just wanted to see what he would be walking into. Now he knew, he just hadn’t expected to be having this conversation yet.
"Oh!" Cecilia said, her eyes widening as she smiled. "That's good!" It was the first real change in her expression that wasn't carefully controlled and it seemed like pretty genuine joy. She sat down and poured milk in her coffee before nabbing a cookie and nudging the plate closer to the two men. "That is so much cleaner, these people are already dead, someone's already cleaned it all up. I wouldn't be surprised if they sent more people here, rich men aren't exactly known to give a shit about human lives." She sipped her coffee and hummed softly before speaking again. "That was terribly vague. I know you must worry, Adrian, but everything in that lab was destroyed. Recordings and hard drives. I can't promise there wasn't something in the cloud but nobody is going to stumble into that building and find your files." Her smile turned a little cheeky before she tacked on a, "You're welcome."
Adrian felt both relieved and antsy hearing that because it was one thing to know some strange lady knew everything about everything, and another completely different thing to witness it first hand. He'd been raised 'right' so a part of him was dismayed that she was so casual about the slaughter at the facility, but the feeling that it was deserved was stronger and with his checkered past he felt like he had to keep those emotions in check. He couldn't really judge, he could only try to do better. "How do you know all this?" he asked, even if he had a feeling he wasn't about to get any straight answers out of her.
He was right of course, Cecilia just crinkled her eyes at him and sipped on her coffee again as she contemplated the question. "Maybe one day I'll tell you all about it and you can tell me all about how you survived a wendigo."
Kane could see in Adrian’s expression that he was experiencing that same weird feeling Cecilia had given Kane the first time they’d talked. Being in her super-normal kitchen only enhanced the surreal effect. It was bizarre when a stranger knew seemingly everything about you, especially for people with secrets like they had. His jaw slowly tightened as he listened to the exchange between them, more uncomfortable by the second with Cecilia’s interest in his boyfriend. Kane was sure she knew that too, which was even more irritating. “Let’s stay focused here,” he cut in, a bit of grumble in his voice. “I’m gonna do this, and then we’re out of it, right? This settles it?” He didn’t want to have anything to do with whatever came next, it all sounded like shit he definitely didn’t want to be involved in.
Adrian had a feeling she already knew all about how he survived and that maybe she even knew more than he did about everything he'd been through. It made him want to pick her brain - or try to at least - but Kane's tone stopped him from asking more questions. Maybe Cecilia was more evil than he thought, she drew him in rather than repelled him and wasn't that what true evil did? He wished he knew, that he could be absolutely sure, because he was already itching to come back here alone to have a conversation with her uninterrupted and he had no idea if that was a terrible idea or not.
"Yes, that settles it," Cecilia replied, straight forward for once. She pressed her hands against the table to push herself up to her feet and wandered back to the counter, this time to fetch the ashtray Kane had left behind. "Honestly, you weren't really 'in it' to begin with," she reminded him. "But hunters are going to hunt." She sat down again and pulled out a box of thin, minty cigarettes from the pocket of her dress. "I'm afraid it has to happen on the waxing moon, the supernatural is all terribly cliched if you ask me. So that's... not for another four days at least."
Kane just wanted reassurance that she wouldn’t come knocking on his door again, needing more from him, or implicating that he owed her more than this or something. Maybe she was evil, maybe there was a higher purpose behind all of this, or maybe she was in some gray area in between, like most people. Kane wasn’t even sure if he cared or wanted to know. “Waxing moon,” he echoed, sounding equally unimpressed. He pulled his phone out of a pocket and opened the calendar to see precisely when that was going to happen. “Fine, so ... waxing moon. I go out to Blackwater and ...? You said you had something to give me, like a beacon?”
"Yes, you come here and pick up the beacon on the waxing moon, take it out into the woods nearby where you uh-" she paused, glancing over to the doorway, aware that children tended to have very big ears and very light feet. "Met the other collector. Now, do you like or hate Friday the Thirteenth or are you indifferent to it? People have their superstitions and rituals, I can respect if you do. I can have the beacon ready by Friday if you want to go out that night, but any day after that in the first quarter would be fine."
Adrian wasn't sure he'd ever heard of people liking Friday the Thirteenth but then he was relatively new to all this supernatural shit. He wanted to say he was indifferent but the thought of going soul collecting on that night wasn't very tempting to him.
“It don’t mean shit to me,” Kane said, shaking his head a little. The ‘cursed’ date might legitimately mean something magically, but Kane was no magic user and he tended to think superstitions were only as powerful as you believed they were. “So I’ll be here Friday.” He would have all kinds of time to be nervous about it and overthink, but that wasn’t really anything new to Kane. It was normal for big hunts to inspire some nerves, and he’d never done anything quite like this before. What if Cecilia’s beacon drew in more than he bargained for? He supposed he would just have to be as prepared as he could be. Kane reached for a cookie and popped it into his mouth.
"Wait," Adrian blurted out before he could stop himself. "It's not more dangerous, is it? I mean, a lot of people think it is." He felt almost childish for asking, like he was interrupting the grown-ups talking but the last thing he needed was for Kane to go get himself killed because he was too stubborn or proud to avoid a common superstition.
Cecilia didn't seem annoyed by the question at least, she just shook her head. "There's truth to everything but in some cultures it's Tuesday the Thirteenth that's the dangerous one. In others, the number four. A lot of new age wiccans celebrate their goddesses on Friday the Thirteenth. It's really all in how your own faith manifests. You can will a lot to happen, just by believing in it, so I wouldn't recommend going if you're actually scared of the day. Fear is one of the most powerful emotions, you know." She gave him a knowing look before looking at Kane again, cocking a brow. "So if it means nothing to you, you'll be fine."
Kane didn’t really want to appreciate anything she said, but all of that was pretty validating to hear. It was always nice to know that he was on the right track with shit he didn’t actually know anything about. He wasn’t stupid all the time, at least. “I’ll be fine,” he repeated, looking at Adrian. He hoped the implied and only me was clear enough in his tone. Kane wouldn’t be surprised if Adrian tried to argue, but he was going to be firmer this time. This recon had turned out okay, but this wasn’t the actual risky part. The shit in the woods might go smooth as silk too, but he didn’t want to put Adrian on the line if it didn’t. Kane returned his attention to Cecilia. “You got any special vessels you want them in?”
"I'll have it all ready on Friday the Thirteenth," Cecilia replied with a nod, shooting Adrian an amused smile like she could hear his internal screaming about how he was coming too. She didn't bring it up though, leaving it for the two of them to argue about later. As long as it didn't impact Kane's job, it really wasn't any of her business - although it was funny.
Adrian felt pretty seen and he narrowed his eyes at Kane in silent protest that would probably be very verbal later. If he didn't just show up. He was listening in on the planning anyway, although neither of them had mentioned a time yet. God, he probably had work that day, maybe even that night. This was all so annoying. The simple fact was that he was terrified of Kane's hunting now that he actually gave a shit about him. Kane might have been doing this for a long time, but Adrian hadn't known him then and it'd be just his luck to meet someone like Kane only to have him torn to shreds by a monster in the woods. "How dangerous is this?" he asked a bit tightly, his gaze still on Kane in a stubborn protest.
"It's Blackwater," Cecilia replied. "But I'll do what I can to make it as easy and painless as possible." She turned her attention to Kane again. "You already have some powerful magic working for you, so you might not really need me for that."
“It’ll be a breeze,” Kane said, though there was no real way for him to know that. He’d never scooped up loose human souls like this, and they’d been simmering in the dark soup of Blackwater, possibly full of rage about what had happened to them ... “It’s not even hunting, it’s just collecting.” He paused, ignoring the way Adrian was glaring a hole in his head as he studied Cecilia for a beat. “You can sense the magic?” he asked her. “Is it still strong? Some of the ink got fucked up recently and I just ... there’s no way for me to know.” He hated asking anything that sounded remotely like a favor, but if Cecilia could confirm that he was still fully protected by his tattoos, Kane would feel better.
Cecilia didn't answer right away, watching him for a few seconds as if assessing him before her gaze drifted aside and she looked a little distracted for a long moment. "It's very powerful. Do you have a reason to believe it's lost some of its potency?"
Adrian felt that same chill on the back of his neck as he had when the children first found them and he sat up a little straighter, looking between Kane and Cecilia. He almost asked if there was something else in the room with them but it felt like a bad idea - or at least bad etiquette. He'd ask Kane about it later but for now he just stayed quiet, stupidly relieved to hear Kane's protections were still active and that Cecilia didn't seem to know everything.
Hearing that was a relief, even though she might have been lying. Kane could reluctantly admit he couldn’t think of any reason for her to do that, or fuck him over. He wasn’t ready to see her as an ally yet, Kane had to see how this little arrangement ended up working out. He didn’t miss the odd way she came to that conclusion, like she was listening to a voice only she could hear. Cecilia had said several times she was just a messenger, after all. Kane didn’t know what was talking to her, but if it was being truthful, he was grateful. “Just an injury that cut through some of the tattoo piece,” he explained. “I wasn’t sure if that fucked it up somehow, that’s all. Nothing’s happened yet to make me doubt it, but ... I ain’t been out much.” Kane glanced over at Adrian, the cause of his distraction fairly obvious.
Adrian could feel faint heat flare up his neck and it was weird, being out to someone who had no right in knowing that he was gay. It wasn't Kane's fault and Cecilia didn't really strike him as the type to go to church and gossip, but it was still uncomfortable. He tried to swallow his discomfort and smother any reaction, feeling a little guilty for feeling ashamed in the first place, as if Kane could read it in his face and get his feelings hurt.
To her credit, Cecilia didn't smirk at them this time, she simply nodded, looking a little distracted still. "Maybe it was more powerful before, maybe it's missing some components it used to have, it's hard to tell. Might be worth looking into getting it fixed. It's foreign, isn't it? It feels... exotic." She rolled her eyes a little. "Is that a bad word now? I can not keep up anymore."
Kane chuckled faintly. “Hell if I know,” he admitted. Being super PC wasn’t really his thing, people could get their panties in a bunch about damn near anything. “But yeah it is, I got it overseas in Iraq. Some fuckin’ djinn magic, I dunno. Might be impossible to find someone stateside who can touch it up, but I’ll keep that in mind.” As long as his tattoos weren’t completely drained of magic, they were still useful to him. Maybe he could talk to Brianna about finding somebody to have a look at them someday. Plus he needed to be more careful not to let the ink get fucked up any further.
"Yup, I knew I liked you," Cecilia said with a grin as she finally lit her cigarette and then nudged the ashtray a little closer to Kane in a silent invitation. "Try being scolded by a five year old for saying the wrong word. I'd say it's intent that matters, not the choice of words. God damn snowflakes." Her eyes crinkled playfully so it was pretty clear she didn't mean that quite literally but there was some seriousness to her words anyway. "Iraq is exotic to me, at least. I've never been there, I don't know the culture or the magic there. Europe was exotic to me in the seventies in the same way. Hell if America isn't a bit exotic to me today, everything is just a bit off everywhere."
Adrian supposed he was the most in touch with what was or was not allowed. It had been years since he last had sensitivity training and it hadn't been very thorough at all, but he had known the lay of the land. Maybe he didn't today, things changed so fast, but he knew how to navigate language cautiously, especially at work.
The mention of Europe in the seventies made Kane question just how old Cecilia was again. She didn’t look much older than in her fifties, but that would have made her a kid in the seventies. Did she travel a lot as a youngster or did she just not look her age? It wasn’t polite to ask and it wasn’t his business, so Kane just left that curiosity alone. He glanced down at the ashtray and had the itch to pull out his smokes and join Cecilia in having one, but he was starting to feel antsy to get out of there, he didn’t want to relax too much. “I didn’t know much about it either, and still don’t, I just ... needed some guidance, and I found it, I guess,” he muttered. “The ritual hurt more than anything I’ve ever felt in my life, so I’m not eager to repeat the experience. Glad to hear it didn’t get totally fucked.” He slurped down a bit more coffee and glanced at the ashtray again.
"You're lucky they didn't curse you as well while they were at it," Cecilia pointed out. "Magic is tricky that way. Never really trusted witches and this town is just brimming with them." She glanced at Adrian, as if she knew he felt the same, but it was hard to gauge just how much she knew and how much was just in the way she looked. She had that air about her and a mischievous twinkle in her eye that set Adrian on guard a bit, unsure if it was knowing or teasing or both. Maybe she just looked like that though, perpetually amused, gears always turning.
"They can be useful," Adrian said, though it wasn't because he felt like the witches needed defending, she hadn't exactly sounded accusatory there and while he'd gotten magical help, he still felt a bit wary of the witches he knew. Maybe he hoped she'd say something more about witches, shared a little of that 'knowing' if he engaged her.
Kane took that to mean she wasn’t a witch herself, unless it was just a sideways way to say she didn’t fully trust her own kind. The only witch he knew on any real level was Brianna, but Kane definitely wasn’t going to bring her up here. Maybe the fuckers in Iraq did curse him in some subtle way, Kane had no idea how to know for sure. His life certainly hadn’t been easy breezy since then ... or ever. Fuck, maybe he’d been born cursed. He glanced between Adrian and Cecilia as he snagged another cookie and lifted his coffee mug. The two of them talking to each other made him a little edgy, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Sadly for Adrian, Cecilia didn't really say anything else on the matter, she just nodded along to the fact that yes, witches were useful, though her expression said there was more to it than that. Adrian didn't think that was exclusive to witches though, everyone was self serving in some way and finding people who were trustworthy and actually kind was no easy feat. He felt much the same way about Cecilia, itching to ask her questions about all sorts of things in the hopes that she might know something but at the same time, it felt a bit like throwing an unknown ingredient into a bubbling witch's brew. What if he brought up Westin and it made her angry? What if he asked about the tunnel and it somehow drove her mad? His imagination was probably getting the best of him but this whole situation felt weird. Cecilia was likable, but not likable enough that he'd forgotten why they were here in her kitchen. This was a woman with some questionable power and he had a feeling that if she wanted to, she might be able to tell him all sorts of important things. For example about his curse, about his sister, about his unborn niece - and yet he was terrified to ask.
"You've both got powerful magic working for you," Cecilia said as she looked between the two quiet men, practically hearing the gears turning in their heads. "So I guess you got what you needed out of the witches you dealt with.” She moved her cigarette to her other hand as one of the cats hopped up on the table with a little chirp and got the petting it demanded before gingerly making its way across the table to demand some from Kane too. "He won't bite," Cecilia said. "Dumb as rocks that one, but sweet."
Kane brushed cookie crumbs off of his fingers and reached out slightly to let the cat smell them as it approached. He got a headbutt and purrs instead of a simple sniff, and Kane rubbed at the ginger cat’s ears. “Is he a little spy?” he asked, his tone light. He shot Cecilia a glance that was halfway amused but still on the wary side. “How did you know we were here, anyway?” Kane didn’t seriously think that any of the animals told on them, but he was curious to see if Cecilia would give him anything close to a real answer.
The first question made Cecilia laugh, almost cackle, and she shook her head, blowing smoke up in the air to spare the cat. "He'd be the most useless spy of all. I'd get daily updates about the comfort of my couch and the quality of the cat food. No, the cats don't tell me anything. They're just cats. They're cuddly and their purrs are good for your health. As for how I knew you were here..." She leaned forward and even wiggled a little playfully. "It's just more fun when you don't know, but you weren't exactly subtle."
Adrian felt somewhat encouraged to pet the cat now that she'd said it was just a cat and she was right, the purring was very soothing. Her answers were not though and he sighed, giving her a disappointed look. "So what are you? You're not a witch, your cats aren't spies, we didn't see any cameras..."
Sensing the frustration, Cecilia reined in the playfulness and sat back again. "I have a friend," she said. "A powerful friend - I believe I told Kane this already - and the forest is very chatty if you know how to listen."
Kane felt a bit disgruntled at the criticism of his stealth, like it wasn’t fair to say they hadn’t been subtle when gods knew what kind of supernatural surveillance Cecilia was capable of. Maybe the cats weren’t spies, but maybe the kids were, who the fuck could really know? Kane doubted she was going to be completely honest with them ... but he probably wouldn’t have been either. He couldn’t exactly blame her for being secretive when there were so few people he was fully transparent with himself. Really there was only one, and he was sitting right next to Kane.
The delight she obviously took in it was a mixture of endearing and maddening, so Kane was glad she revealed at least a little. “And it’s your friend who just ... knows all this, about everything,” he concluded in a mutter, not really making it a question. He glanced around the empty air of the kitchen as he lifted his coffee again, pretty sure this spirit ‘friend’ was hanging around at that very moment.
"Not everything," Cecilia corrected him. "A lot though, yes."
"Do you know where the wendigo is and how to kill it?" Adrian asked, deciding not to hold back on that. There were a lot of things he was afraid to ask, but this felt justified. If Cecilia's friend liked the wendigo, that was his problem, not Adrian's. That damn thing had killed his friends and ruined his life. "Can it even be killed?"
His bluntness took Cecilia by surprise in a very visible way as she inclined her head and arched her brows. "Well, that seems like a reasonable question to ask," she said and shook her head slowly. "I know it's very old and I know it's sleeping now. Might be due to wake up again soon, might not. Is that what you two want to do? Go hunt it?"
She sounded and looked skeptical and Adrian couldn't really blame her. Part of him did, but part of him wanted to leave it all behind him and hope it was a problem that went away on its own. He felt somewhat duty bound to try to get rid of it, to spare others from his fate, but at the same time... Hadn't he been through enough? "I just don't want it killing more people," he muttered. "If there's a way to get rid of it, I'd like to know it."
The question startled Kane too, his gaze shooting to Adrian as his lips pressed into a thinner line. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to bring up, a topic that had crossed his mind to ask Cecilia about himself. He’d just intended to be alone when he did it, and not tell Adrian a goddamn thing until he could toss the wendigo’s bloody head at his feet. He didn’t even know if he could really do it, but that was why he’d wanted to consult with this woman. He didn’t feel it was something Adrian should have to take care of himself, or ever see again -- and the more caveman parts of Kane wanted to kill it for him, to prove his love and his power to be a protector. Maybe that was foolish when Adrian could turn into a better killing machine than he could ever hope to be. Kane didn’t cut in, because he wanted to know the answer too, but his jaw flexed as he finally pulled his cigarettes out to shake one loose and get it lit.
"And after you kill it, you'll go punch God in the face for letting it all happen," Cecilia said and her meaning was clear; wanting to kill the wendigo was hubris and she wasn't particularly interested or impressed. "I don't know how to kill it. I suspect you'd have to wake up something even worse to get the job done, something more powerful. You're strong but right now it seems like the unstoppable object meeting the unmoveable one. You wouldn't be the first to try and you wouldn't be the last to fail."
It was the opposite of what Adrian wanted to hear. She said it was sleeping, he wanted to hear that Cecilia knew exactly where it was so he could sneak up on it, set it on fire and watch it burn. He didn't try to hide his disappointment either, though it was laced with a healthy dose of skepticism as well. "So that's it? It's just gonna stay out there in the woods forever, killing anyone who comes out there?" he asked bitterly as he nudged Kane in a silent request for one of his cigarettes.
"If it's awake, yes," Cecilia replied. "Luckily for us, it's not awake very often."
It definitely wasn’t encouraging. Kane knew there were many monsters that were beyond his ability to kill, but that didn’t mean that nothing could kill them. There was always an answer. At Adrian’s nudge, Kane gave him the briefest of glances before he offered the cigarette he’d just lit. He pulled out another one for himself. “So what wakes it up? Is there a schedule or a trigger?” he asked. He might as well ask whatever came to mind, now that they were on the subject. He had to assume the wendigo would be easier to kill when it was hibernating, but the more information they got, the better.
"The chatty things in the forest aren't well versed with calendars or the concept of time in general," Cecilia said with a faint smile. "You'll have to make do with vague answers and - at times - outright nonsense. I've found that most of the time it's better to mind your own business and not ask too many questions if you don't want everybody's attention on you."
Adrian didn't like the sound of that. Blackwater wasn't something he wanted the attention of, he'd had it once and it had nearly killed him. Should have killed him. He reached over for the ashtray to pull it closer and took a deep drag of the cigarette, letting his mind fog up a little for a short moment.
That sounded on track from what Kane had always heard about non-human spirits -- cryptic and secretive. He’d never had much opportunity to deal with them personally, but he’d heard things from other people like Cecilia he’d met in passing in the course of his work. Kane wondered vaguely if he’d already caught the attention of some of the denizens of Blackwater, if he had a reputation for more than sneaking onto private property and getting caught by children. It was too early for it, but Kane wanted a drink all of the sudden. He exhaled some smoke toward the ceiling, reaching over to knuckle-rub the cat again. “We definitely don’t want attention,” he muttered, just to say something else.
"No, you don't," Cecilia said empathically, shaking her head as her piercing blue eyes widened a little. "But not everything out there is malicious, maybe that's why people keep going out there despite everything. Hoping for a boon instead of a curse."
It wasn't exactly a surprising reaction, they all knew what Blackwater was capable of. The dense woods seemed to stretch out forever inland, hiding all manner of strange things. It often made Adrian wonder why it was like that, if all the witchcraft in town had awakened something or if it was the other way around. Or if he was confusing causation with correlation. He had a feeling they'd already brought attention to themselves though, that one hunt he'd joined Kane on had been anything but subtle and he had no idea how many things Kane had killed out there already.
Kane couldn’t imagine what kinds of boons people thought they could get out of this cursed place, but it sounded damn near delusional. He let the lull in conversation stretch for a few heartbeats, then sat up straighter and stubbed out his cigarette. “We oughta get going,” he said, glancing at Adrian. This hadn’t at all been what he was expecting when he had the idea to come out here, but it had definitely turned out better than it could have, and he didn’t want to overstay their welcome. That ‘gotta go’ feeling was starting to buzz in the back of his brain.
Adrian still had so many questions buzzing in his head, some he didn't dare ask, others he wasn't sure about, but all of them urgent and angrily flaring up at the idea of leaving. He was still smoking and it struck him how differently they treated their cigarettes, him taking a little puff here and there while Kane's ran hot and fast, done already. It was weirdly fitting for their personalities, he supposed. "Just one more thing," he mumbled, taking a purposefully bigger drag of his cigarette than he would otherwise. "The tunnel. It's man made, it's not some ancient curse of the land... Do you know if destroying it would do a damn thing?" He glanced at Kane with a wry smile. "No, I'm not taking a bunch of dynamite out there, I'm just... I'm curious."
"You just want to destroy everything, don't you," Cecilia tittered as she flicked the ashes of her cigarette and took a final smoke before putting it out. "I don't really know anything about the tunnel except to stay as far away from it as possible. And before you ask me something else, I'm not an encyclopedia of handy hunting guides." She managed not to sound rude saying that but Adrian still gave her an awkward and apologetic smile. "I know what I need to know and that's about it."
"Yeah, I didn't mean..." Adrian muttered and half done or not, he stubbed his own cigarette out as well, leaving the three very different stubs drifting off smoke in the ashtray. "If you did know, would you tell me?"
Cecilia's face said it was a good question but no, she wasn't going to answer that. She got to her feet instead, idly toying with her long necklace of wooden beads as the men stood up as well. "This was nice," she murmured. "I'm glad you decided to work with me, Kane."
Kane knew exactly why Adrian was curious, and it put more bad feelings into his stomach. The tunnel itself may have been man made, but what was inside of it was likely a whole different story. Who could even say if dynamite would do anything? Someone could collapse the tunnel completely and then come back the next day to see it re-made like nothing happened. Kane was accustomed to dealing with threatening powers he didn’t fully understand, but he wanted Adrian to stay far away from them, even if that didn’t make logical sense. It all felt so much closer and more real in Cecilia’s kitchen, like Adrian really might take these risks that could get him killed or worse, and Kane really wanted to leave before his resolve to keep his mouth shut broke to pieces.
“Sorry to show up like this,” he muttered, giving Cecilia a small nod. He appreciated that she hadn’t freaked out about their trespassing when she would’ve had every right to. “I’ll see you Friday.” he glanced at Adrian’s face before he turned to head for the door. They had a bit of a walk back to the car, but at least they could take the driveway this time.
"I guess it makes us even," Cecilia said casually and she had showed up on Kane's doorstep unannounced first, so it did seem only fair. It was understandable too, being wary, wanting to know what he was getting himself into, it wasn't something she could really fault him for. "I can get Reggie to drive you to your car, if you want," she offered.
"Nah, walking's fine," Adrian replied even if he hadn't really checked in with Kane. He just really didn't want to be in a car with another stranger right now, his brain already felt like it was exploding with unanswered questions and mysteries and walking actually sounded nice to him right now, especially since they could stick to the road.
"Suit yourself," Cecilia murmured. "So, Kane. I'll see you here Friday night. After nine, shall we say? Or were you hoping for a dinner invite first?"
Kane didn’t want a ride either, he wanted to walk to clear his head and just be alone again with Adrian ... or as alone as they could be on Cecilia’s property. Her spirit would probably escort them all the way out, unseen. He turned to look at their hostess as he pulled the door open. “After nine,” he answered with a slight nod. They may have just had a nice enough cup of coffee together, but Kane still didn’t want to get any more entangled with her and whatever she worked for -- worked with? -- than he had to be. He still didn’t know if trusting her was the smartest thing to do, but he would do this thing and see how it went. “Appreciate the hospitality. See you then.” Kane stepped out of the house and down the steps, glancing back once his boots hit the grass to make sure Adrian was following.
It was weird to walk away, knowing something might still be right behind them, listening. Could it follow them off Cecilia's land? Could it listen to them in the car? Adrian tried to remind himself that the only thing that had changed was that he now knew about it so changing his behavior was kind of a moot point. He glanced back at Cecilia as they walked away, feeling like the way she watched them leave was part hospitality but far more so some calculated move. Eventually she headed inside and that should have made him feel more at ease with speaking, but it didn't. He just kind of hoped that them walking in silence for a few minutes got boring enough for anything that might be watching to go do something else so that's what he did, studying the farm as they walked, all the little details of the way it was lived in, what was new, what wasn't. It was a nice place, it absolutely passed for just a farm so maybe it was and whatever Cecilia was up to was just a side thing.
Kane stayed silent as well, his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets as he also looked around the farm as they walked through it. He knew for sure now that they wouldn’t see anything out of place -- even if it existed, Cecilia was obviously savvy enough to have it well covered up. If she had some fucked up sacrificial altar to this ‘old friend’ of hers or something, it was probably deep in the woods, or glamoured to be invisible. What difference would it make now anyway? Kane had to prevent more death if he could, that part was pretty straightforward. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t worked for worse people.