[Ashley McGowen] Ashley has been surprisingly attentive with Alice while she's been lying across the couch in the Hermetic's apartment. While not chatty, she's been making sure the other woman has pain medication (what she can supply, at least) and checking to make sure she has enough water. If she's awake, that is. If she continues sleeping, Ashley doesn't really bother.
Jarod finds himself in front of a brick walk-up just off the Mile, an older building that has been renovated mostly for the purpose of housing grad students. It isn't difficult for him to get inside, despite the card reader that is supposed to act as a security device in front; most of the students are willing to smile and hold the door open for just about anybody. Even this late at night.
The apartment itself is decorated in warm tones, lots of brown and cream and dark red, and the walls are literally lined with bookshelves. Each shelf is stuffed with an eclectic selection of hardback titles - literature, general fiction, books on sociology and social theory, occult studies, and there are even a few science fiction books scattered among the rest. The furniture is brown leather, somewhat aged but still comfortable, and the apartment smells of said leather and herbs: the Hermetic appears to be a tea aficionado, judging by the boxes stacked on a shelf in the kitchen.
Ashley's dog, a lean shepherd with humongous ears, is a rather friendly creature and occasionally noses into Alice's hand for attention - though Ashley has been trying to keep him out of the main room while Alice is sleeping, bringing her back to her bedroom or to her study, which are both off toward the back.
[Alice MacIntyre] Alice had requested to, as she put it with a twisted sardonic kind of smile that was more a bloodied grimace of pain than anything else, be put to sleep by the Hermetic. Comfort was impossible, the only option was unconsciousness really. Her insides were torn asunder, bruised and ripped and bleeding, causing her to cough (and twice vomit) blood. It was a wonder that she was still alive at all, really. And then Paradox accumulated by the deceased Marauder had made her body fragile like tissue paper, and the cut that she'd made in a typically sturdy arm had hemorrhaged, gushed blood that doused her coat and pants and left a bright stain on the sidewalk and only slowed to a sluggish seep recently.
Ashley helped her to sleep, and Nate escaped soon after, loosing himself from the two eerie feeling women and fleeing to lose himself in liquor and himself. Alice was still like death, though her chest still moved and her heart still hammered with the strained effort to keep her body going. A dog would push at the hand that fell off the couch, cold nose nudging into palm and puffing concerned whines against the cold, clammy skin. Alice's fingers would curl under the animal's chin, she'd hum something languageless through the haze, and then be still again.
Not much time had passed since Jarod had received the message, number reading as Alice's, but with a man's voice that he's likely never heard before. Ashley's apartment, someone dead, Alice needed help now. That was the gist of it. He would respond swiftly, and the roving bloodwitch wouldn't have the opportunity to wake up on her own before he arrived.
[Jarod Nightingale] When Jarod had given Alice his contact information, he'd done so with the express instruction that she not give it out to others, and that she only call him if it was necessary. Someone else had left him a message from her number, so either the younger Verbena had not listened... or she was seriously hurt. Given what he knew of Alice so far, it seemed reasonable that the latter option was more likely.
There were very few people in the world who could claim to instill in the wintery, aloof creature a sense of panic when their safety was threatened. Alice... was not one of those people, but then, neither could she be classified along with the general masses as someone he really didn't give a shit about. No, there was obligation here, and concern. So when he'd received the message that the unknown stranger had left, he did not simply frown and hit the delete button. He'd gotten into his car and driven over to the address he'd been given.
It wasn't too long before the gentle purr of his BMW pulled into the lot, then silenced as he cut the engine. He rang the buzzer for the correct unit, and after Ashley let him in, he took a moment to glance briefly around the Hermetic's living space before moving to the couch, where Alice lay.
"What happened?" he asked, though he probably had a fairly good idea in his head already.
[Ashley McGowen] "Dylan," Ashley tells Jarod as she lets him inside. She herself appears unhurt, and - though he wouldn't know it now - had to shower twice before he arrived to rid herself of a coating of gore and blood. She's quietly pensive, eyes a bit reddened and a slight rasp to the usually sweet soprano of her voice.
"I don't know what happened, exactly. By the time I got there Alice was already hurt. But she pretty much took him down."
Her breath hitches a little on the inhale as she glances down at the Verbena asleep on her couch. "He's dead now."
[Jarod Nightingale] "Good," was all he had to say to that. Dylan was dead. Finally. And Alice had been a large part of the reason for that. Evidently, she was a tough girl, but then... that hardly surprised him. She was stronger than she looked. He knew that from experience.
"Anyone else get hurt?" he asked, because it was a reasonable question, even if he had no particular desire to offer up any more healing services than were absolutely necessary. It was an off-hand question, spoken quietly as he bent down to kneel next to Ashley's couch. The dog, nearby, received a brief glance, in much the way that cats and dogs tended to regard each other when there was no hostility felt toward either party. Aloof, in a lazy sort of way. He had more important things to deal with right now than making friends with Ashley's pets, though, so he looked down at Alice's sleeping, damaged form again, and put his hands out carefully to touch her: one at the side of her face, and the other on an arm.
[Life 1 - body scan - how badly are you hurt? - Diff 4 -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 3)
[Ashley McGowen] "No. Not that I know of," Ashley says, leaning her back against one of the bookshelves opposite the couch as Jarod reaches his hands out to touch his Tradition mate. She folds her arms and stands there, head slightly bowed as though she's exhausted. Penitent. Grieving.
"You should know, though. Kage Jakes and I had a look through Marla and Jackson's stuff at the chantry. They Fell...had plans to make the whole city Fall. They're the reason Dylan became what he was." And she might leave it at that; her throat is raw from screaming earlier.
But then: "If we'd all been in touch more with each other this might not have happened. It's something to consider."
[Jarod Nightingale] It said something to the experiences that Jarod may have had in his life that Ashley's news did not strike him as particularly surprising, or that he took in her advice (such as it was) without voicing any opinion one way or the other. Mages fell. And they betrayed. Everyone had their own agenda. It did explain, though, why the warning he'd left about Dylan at the chantry hadn't been passed on.
So Ashley gave him the news, and he nodded. He didn't say anything.
Instead, he focused on what he was there to do.
[Life 3/Prime 2 - healing - vulgar w/o witnesses - diff 7 -1(focus) -1(going slow) -1(practiced), spending 1 quint to heal agg]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 5, 7 (Success x 4 at target 4) [WP]
[Jarod Nightingale] [Extending effect]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[Ashley McGowen] Jarod doesn't answer. Well, he does. He nods. He nods as though the news isn't that surprising or isn't that worrisome or as though he doesn't care. A month ago, Ashley's response would have been very similar. Something about the Hermetic is not what it was, though - not less, necessarily. But different.
She watches Jarod do his work in silence and does not interrupt him further.
[Alice MacIntyre] Alice had been still and silent on the couch, a blood-caked mess with a gash on her arm that had been bandaged up by a concerned Ashley while the Verbena slept, bandages wet with blood that simply refused to stop seeping out. Her hair was longer than what Jarod remembered, stiff and stuck in funny angles from the gore that was a physical manifestation of the dragging, crawling, horrific aura that wrapped about her all the time. The smears along her chin and mouth were particularly thick, she had been coughing up and swallowing back blood in her sleep from the internal injuries.
Jarod had arrived and analyzed the damage to discover that it was, in fact, dire. If she were to have gone a handful of hours more without skilled life-weaving attention, chances were high that she would have died.
Luckily, though, no one would have to know the truth behind that. Jarod laid hands upon her face and arm, bowed his head a touch, and focused. He knew what he was doing, had done this plenty of times before (not often without invested reason, but intent mattered not, only practice and result here). He felt her energies strengthen, knew full well that the gash under that bandage on her left arm was closed, that her insides were put right, that the blood was put back where it was supposed to be inside veins and arteries rather than pooling in lungs and stomach and liver.
Work done, Alice healed, no longer pale and clammy and sweating and flinching (but still grotesque in the amount of blood she wore like a crimson scaled second skin), the Bloodwitch began to stir.
[Jarod Nightingale] [Jarod takes 3 paradox. Rolling now. *cringe*]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] [Soak]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 5 (Failure at target 6)
[Jarod Nightingale] For someone who professed to care so little for the fate of others, he was very good at helping them, when he decided to. A human body was to him what a software program might be to a programmer. Not code, but some organic version of that. A pattern. A web. And it could be unwoven or pieced back together at will. Changed. Manipulated. Healed.
Because life... was beautiful that way. It pulsed and struggled to exist even in the harshest of circumstances, and unlike many other things, it adapted. A heart beat was music, to the verbena, and for Jarod, each and every one played its own particular tune. And he knew so many of them by heart, now. He could call them up sometimes, those rhythms. He called Alice's up now, in his mind. He remembered, not what it was now, but what it had been once... healthy and strong and pulsing against his own in the dark of a moonlit bedroom.
But she had been very, very hurt, and it had taken a great deal to make her better. He risked much, in doing so. And as the effect finished and he let his hands pull away from her bloody but healed form, he felt the effects of the paradox hit him with a jarring burst of pain somewhere beneath his skin, where bruising welled up of its own and painted purple marks down his chest. (But he was dressed, and no one would see them right now.) Only a tiny little hiss of breath through teeth would give indication that he'd been hurt, and all things considered... it could have been a lot worse.
"Feel better?" he asked of Alice with some dry humor.
[Alice MacIntyre] "Flls lk..." Alice grumbled as though she had a mouthful of cotton before she was fully conscious, and lifted her hand from where it was hanging off the corner of the couch, rubbed at her face, then dipped her finger into her mouth to clear something that was probably red, clotting and thick from the back of her throat which she promptly wiped on the leg of her pants. No shame, no embarrassment, no modesty in that. Tongue smacked against the roof of her mouth, and she tried to speak again now that she was more able, a little more awake.
"Feels like th'worst hangover 'n the best cold shower I've had..." Pale colorless eyes opened, half-focused, and she licked at the blood along her lips and chin, sucked at her teeth to try and clean them white, then rolled her head to look over to Jarod. Her eyebrow lifted, and she reached out with a hand that had veins of dried blood flaking off of its exterior to touch his cheek lightly.
"Aw sugar, you came." That hand tapped against his cheek in a way that was too sharp to be a pat, but not nearly hard or painful enough to be a slap. "Figured you would, since I got this fucked up doin' somethin' you was s'pposed to."
[Ashley McGowen] There's a part of Ashley that is very concerned about her couch. Blood stains are hard to clean out no matter what the fabric, and they are -particularly- hard to clean out of leather. But clearly she couldn't be -that- concerned about it, or she wouldn't have offered the couch up to Alice so quickly. Or perhaps she's having regrets now that those initial moments of concern are out of the way. Who can say, really.
"Hey, Alice," she says, and Zane rouses himself from his corner, his blunt toenails clicking against the floor as he reaches Alice's hand and presses a cold black nose into it. She watches the two of them, watches Alice's hand come up to tap against Jarod's cheek.
And turns away for a few moments, padding over to the kitchen that is joined to the living room. There's the sound of rushing water, slurring itself into a glass, and a few seconds later Ashley emerges. She leans over the back of the couch near Alice's head, extending the glass forward. "Here, that'll help."
[Jarod Nightingale] Jarod smirked at the implication, and there was a bitter tone to it, but whatever he thought of Alice's teasing remark, he didn't voice it aloud. That wasn't really his style, after all. Instead he brushed a fleck of her dried blood off of his cheek, from where she'd touched him, and stood to his feet. The bruising on his ribs ached, at that movement, but he ignored it, for now. He'd had worse, and was likely to have worse again some day.
"I'm not a Euthanatos, and I have no desire to become one. Naturally, my skills lie in other areas." As Alice could well attest to, on both the mundane and magical fronts. Though... to say that he was not capable of killing someone would have been inaccurate. Dylan had simply proved rather obnoxiously difficult to kill.
"Anyway, you're welcome. You have my number. For now, I think I'll be heading back to what I was doing. Good night."
And then... for all that trouble, he was out the door before any of them could really talk. Maybe he had no interest in talking right now. Maybe he needed to rest. Maybe he was loathe to listen to further admonishments of what someone else thought he should or shouldn't have done in a given situation. Or, maybe... he just felt that he had no further reason to stay.
In any case, he didn't.
[Alice MacIntyre] Ashley had greeted her, and Alice flicked those pale hawk eyes toward the homeowner, the person whose couch she was leaving stains all over, unintentional but unrestrained as well. She batted one eyelid, a brief flutter of a wink for the older girl, then dropped her hand when Jarod straightened up and wiped his cheek with a bland expression. His job here was done, and he was going to leave now. Alice watched him go, called to his back almost lazily, in a way that sounded rather like someone who was going to roll over and go back to sleep as soon as the other person was out of the room.
"See you 'round, sug."
The door closed behind the tall and absurdly attractive man, and Ashley appeared at the head of the couch with a glass of water. Alice pushed herself up to sit, scrubbed at her face and flaked a considerable amount of blood (her own and Dylan Willis's also) onto her stained pants, then nodded and took the water, tipped her head back, and drank deep. The glass was kept with a bit left in it, held on her knee with one hand, and she leaned forward to look absently at the bandage wrapping her left forearm.
"Well, thanks for not leavin' me in the street. Where'd tall blonde 'n smartassed run off to, anyway? He crashed out in your room?"
