Reinforcements arrive

[melodymagic]

The car trip to the alley Cian had told them about was a little longer than usual, a roadblock having been set up and the closed-off street full of vehicles with flashing lights and police. Melody strained to see what the commotion was and it looked like there were screens raised in the middle of the pavement outside a bar or club or something. As she settled back into her seat she saw Jazz sniffing at the open window of the car, the witch's face crinkled in concentration.

Her eyes narrowed and her foot pressed a little harder on the accelerator once they were clear of the traffic around the scene. "That must be the market he was talking about," Mel said, pointing at the E-Zmart's lights, "and there's the alley." She was almost out of the vehicle by the time Jazz parked, the older witch puzzled by the young woman's keenness to get to the alley.

Mel had the backpack on her shoulder as she stepped off the kerb and looked down into the dark alley, eyes taking a moment to adjust after the lights of the market.

"Daniel? Are you here?" she called out, one hand on the corner of the wall, head tilted to one side as she took a step past the phone box.

Comments

[daniel_stacy]

“Ah… yeah…?”

Daniel didn’t mean to give such a hesitant response, but he wasn’t sure how long the statement would hold true. Not long after he hung up with Melody, the portal had produced a visitor to their plane and Daniel had spent the intervening minutes in a precarious position… under the razor-sharp edge of a tusk pointed right at his neck.

The creature had bounded into the world with the eagerness of a linebacker rushing the field. It towered over Daniel at a good eight feet to his six, six-hundred pounds to his less than two-hundred. Its body was muscle and sinew and armored bone. It saw him and growled, then charged, and Daniel – armed with naught but fangs and a tire iron – fought back by raising his weapon and wailing on the beast. He hit it and hit it and hit it again, each impact echoing in the alley, a sickening thud. But even when he employed the full force of his vampire strength, he managed nothing more than to stun the thing. “This… is not working!” He dropped the iron and ran for the phone booth and his butcher knife. Daniel whirled around just in time to get bowled over by the demon. Fortunately, he had the wherewithal to brace the hilt of the knife against himself, blade outward. The demon impaled itself. Down they went with all that momentum, Daniel on his back and the beast on top.

Now he was trapped under all that weight with a strangely jagged exoskeletal bone poised to behead him.

Re: Reinforcements arrive

[melodymagic]

"A vampire slayer?" Melody said, only just managing to stop herself from squeaking a little. She saw Jazz's head turn, paying attention to Daniel as she slowly straightened, a little slower than a younger person might do, but still quite agile. It sometimes surprised Melody how easily Jazz moved, knowing what she did about some of the things the older woman had been through in her life there in Las Vegas, and her travels that were brought about by her 'skill'.

"Rhiannon, did you say?" the older witch said, eyeing Daniel for a long moment. "And this vampire slayer, she knows you're here?" There was no doubting the interest in Jazz's question, her face giving nothing away as to the reason for her interest.

Re: Reinforcements arrive

[justjazz]

Jazz sighed, her lips tightening a little as she looked down at the blackness. "This isn't like anything that happened back then," she said, making her way down towards the opening again, gesturing for them to follow. When she was near the portal she pointed to the wall.

"See the paint?" she pointed out, indicating the outer edge of the portal. "It's been opened from this side, by someone, and they've done it on purpose. I've never seen anything like this before. Portals I've seen have been... " She paused, as if searching for a way to describe the difference. ".. they've been like a tear, a slash in the fabric of our world, and forced from the other side." Still looking at the opening, eyes tracing the edges again she indicated it with a slight lift of her chin. "This has been opened from this side, by someone, or something, on purpose. The easiest way to close it will be to find whoever did this and have them close it!" she finished, her tone almost a little frustrated.

Re: Reinforcements arrive

[melodymagic]

"I could have done that," Melody whispered to the older witch, eyes on Daniel, silhouetted against the backlight nightsky of Las Vegas. One thing about the city, the night sky was never black, the excessive lighting of the Strip always painting a grey swarth over the city's skyline.

Re: Reinforcements arrive

[justjazz]

"Yes, that's fine," Jazz said in reply to Daniel, head tilted back to watch where he placed them. She lowered it to look at Melody. "I know you could have," Jazz told her, her voice clear and soft, not trying to disguise it as she guessed the vampire would be able to hear them no matter how quietly they spoke.

"Idle hands, and all, he can put them to good use," she said to her apprentice. "Plus you get to see what he's capable of." There was no indication whether Jazz thought this was a good or bad thing, her tone giving nothing away as to whether she approved or disapproved, so Melody took that as a good thing. If Jazz didn't trust him, or want him around, she would have made that abundantly clear.

She was again pulling things from the bag and handed Melody a jar carrying some sort of salt, instructing her to trail a line of it across each end of the alley between the carved stones. "If you need more there's another jar in the trunk."