Night Moves (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

It was late at night in late November when the thing entered the Freedom College library, a smile on her face as she pushed back her hood. The short haircut she'd died with was in fashion among college students again, letting her blend in and still feel fashionable. Red lips pulling past white teeth, she walked up to the reference librarian by the front gate, among the few people still around at this hour, and smiled sweetly. "Hello," Claudia whispered. Undead ears pricked, finding every human heartbeat in the building. "Could you tell me where I could find Taylor Chun?"

She looked him in the eye. In a few moments, the balding old gentleman had happily told her exactly where to find the promising grad student. A few moments more, and she had a perfect description of what she was wearing and what book she'd checked out. Several minutes after that, she left him unconscious amongst the French history volumes, walking away with a swagger in her step and considerably more color in her pale cheeks. She hadn't come for the death of that little man, no indeed. She'd come here with just one person in mind.

[alderwitch]

Taylor tapped her pen against the thick book in a staccato rythm that seemed unnaturally loud in the empty library. This late at night, the place was nearly empty but Taylor actually enjoyed the solitude. Three years off odd hours had left her decidedly nocturnal, something that moving in with Jack had not aided in the slightest.

Leaning over the table, Taylor's long black hair was pulled up in a pony tail that made her look younger than she was. She wore a sweater as a nod to the inclement weather outside but had shoved the sleeves up to her forearms while she worked away at the archaic text. A battered hat and equally battered jacket were tossed haphhazardly in one empty chair.

She jotted her notes down rapidly, her manner bored as Taylor translated the greek to english for another assignment. Taylor looked like any college bookworm might, cute if a little frumpy as she shifted the large heavy books around on the table and intermittantly checked her notes.

[Avenger Assembled]

When Taylor found herself leaving little inky prints on the tabletop, she got up to wash the blue coloring off her hands. When she got back, someone was in her chair. The lady in question was short, no bigger than Taylor herself, with a short pageboy haircut, perfectly-manicured fingers with short nails painted red, dressed in sensible librarian shoes and a sweater and skirt. There was something about her that made even that outfit look sexual, as if she was at the beginning of a sexy librarian skit. She looked up inquiringly at Taylor's approach, but her eyes were absolutely hard. "Yes?"

[alderwitch]

Taylor didn't recognize the woman, which gave her pause. She'd worked at the library long enough to know most of the librarians on sight. At the hard, challenging look in her eyes, however, Taylor automatically jerked her chin upward.

Without concious thought, she settled her feet braced slightly apart, her hands rising to about waist height automatically. She met the woman's gaze with dark, unflinching eyes as she asked politely "Can I help you?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Chosen of Heshem," Claudia said with a slow, deliberate hiss as her hand landed on Taylor's notebook, "I believe you have something of mine." Her fangs exposed, briefly, like a snake's threat display. "I'll give you this, you know your Greek. Jack always did prefer women smarter than he is."

[alderwitch]

Someday, Taylor really hoped they'd let her back into the library. Reacting to the threat, Taylor automatically phased, her hands curling into fists at her sides. "Somehow, I am very certain that I don't want to give you back anything that I might happen to have."

Her hands were outlined in eldritch energy, but Taylor was somewhat reluctant to fire. Vampires were a pain to hit and she was pretty sure that blowing a hole in the stacks was going to not only out her, but likely get her banned for life. Not only that, but the crazy vampire had her almost finished final. Taylor made a cutting gesture with one hand and sent a heavy tome whizzing at the woman, hoping she'd release the notebook. She knows about Heshem. That's probably a really bad sign.

[Avenger Assembled]

Claudia moved with blinding speed, catching the book inches from her face. It had been close, and Taylor hadn't put her best into the throw, but it wasn't a pretty picture. She eyed the book, eyes moving in a face gone dead and immobile for a moment. "So that's it," she said with a sneer. "We move straight to the violence part of the evening. You people are all alike."

[alderwitch]

"Please, spare me the victim routine." Taylor said flatly, her fingers curling into the palms of her hands, "You've postured and posed with deliberate intent to illicit my flight or fight response, even down to that very elegant flash of teeth. You're a predator. Its what you do. I've postured back. Trust me, when we move onto the violence portion of the evening, I'll be throwing things a little more potent than Homer."

Taylor curled her fingers and the notebook that Claudia had taken her hands off flew neatly into Taylor's palm and vanished. Her Greek final safe in the Void, Taylor arched a brow and asked with exaggerated politeness, "Would you like to get on with that now, then? Or shall we trade insults instead?"

She's faster than Jack. I would have hit him with that. I bet she hits like a truck Taylor was careful to keep her face blank of her reservations.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Leave Jack alone," Claudia replied, her voice icy. "He may be powerful, but he's too young and too stupid to realize his relationship with you is going to get a lot of innocent people killed. I don't know what _you_ see in it. You people are supposed to know better than to cross the line. Especially the Chosen of Heshem. Oh yes," she added, "I'm sure that came as a big surprise to Jack. He never had any interest in learning what I had to teach him."

[alderwitch]

Why does she keep saying that like it means something more. Jack's not interdimensional. He's native to this plane, just like she is, or my senses would be going berzerk. Taylor's long, slow blink was her only outward sign that Claudia was rattling her, as was the pause before she spoke.

"I fail to see what my personal relationship with Jack has to do with my other duties. And whatI see in it, frankly, isn't any of your business. If you want to warn me off, I'm afraid you're going to have to do a good deal better than vague threats of death and doom for all and sundry. I hear that an awful lot in my line of work." Taylor replied, forcing her hands to relax before she left little half moon imprints from her nails into her palm. She didn't deny the charge of crossing the line, her memory of summoning Moira too fresh for that to have any ring of truth in it and somehow Taylor rather thought this vampire could smell the doubt in her words. She knew the woman would take advantage of it if she did.

[Avenger Assembled]

"When they come to kill Jack, which they will as soon as they think they can do it without bringing your kind down on our heads, the fight will rip the city's underworld in half." She obviously wasn't talking about organized crime. "Vampires will die. Their families will die. Their allies will die. Innocent bystanders will die, screaming. Kill us all in our beds, as is the style of your kind, and more will simply fill the space. I would think you would know something about the dangers of crossing the line between the human and the inhuman. Guardian of boundaries indeed." She put her hand over her dead heart. "Did he play the troubled boy with you, the damaged young thing who only needed a tender heart? All the dead boys can all do that, Taylor."

[alderwitch]

"I suggest you study your arcane lore better. If you think that I'm still anything like human, you are dramatically mistaken," Taylor's voice rolled like thunder, her shoulders squared up. Claudia had succeeded in wounding her, but in the anger that simmered, Taylor spat out a truth that she preffered to ignore. There was a reason she belonged with the Midnighters. She walked through all the worlds and all the places in between without ever being a part of any of them.

Her hands flexed and she banished the power leaking around her fingertips with a sharp gesture. Her spine ramrod straight, Taylor gave the other woman a cold look that made the youthful appearance the lie that it was. Claudia was not the first, or the tenth, or the hundreth person to blame Taylor for the cruelty of the world. People who had begged and pleaded to not be returned to their own world, their own sorrows. "I grow weary of your accusations. If you have a point in this farce, I would make it now if I were you. How, pray, would my presence in Jack's bed make or break your war?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Yes yes yes," said Claudia with a waggle of her fingers, for all that her hand had twitched for her collar when Taylor's magic had flared, "you are the guardian of darkness and the light, empowered by arcane magics I could never possibly understand. I've heard that before. From all I've heard, Jack seems to think you're human enough." Once again, the dead eyes were lasers. "You people murder us in our beds and you wonder why your being in Jack's is a problem? Do you have _any_ idea of the holocaust the superheroes of the world have inflicted on us? And you take one of us to bed," she spat. "It's disgusting. And _I_ am the least of your worries, woman. This is no mere usurpation; this is blasphemy that attracts the powerful. For the Dragon has walked the streets of this city before, and you well remember what came afterwards."

[alderwitch]

Taylor made an impatient noise, stepping forward as her eyes narrowed. She shook off the personal attacks that stung and the vampire partyline nonsense. Taylor would dearly like to point out that the leading cause of death for vampires was other vampires, actually. Honestly, Taylor couldn't remember the last super-hero that had made vampire killing his big thing. The cosmically empowered tended to fight aliens and most of the mystics were concerned with navel gazing these days. That all fell by the way side as she zero'd in on Claudia's final salvo.

"Dracula? For all of our sakes, I hope this is just an additional flare for the dramatic on your part." Taylor said with deadly intensity. "If a war erupts between vampires and the guardians of Freedom City, it will be because that bloodthirsty madman starts it. He'll bring every hero scuttling out of their headquarters to be the one to take down that vampire legend once he starts ratcheting up his inevitable body count."

[Avenger Assembled]

"You think I can control my grandsire's will?" Claudia hissed back. "I was here when he came before, woman. I know the carnage it meant for human and vampire alike. You think that because I lack Jack's scruples I have no feelings? I have no wish to see our children burning in their beds, or yours turned to feedstock. But when the Dragon learns that his blood has taken this city, and that his blood is commingled with the living? With the ridiculous joke that is the superhuman? The holocaust will burn the sky and fill the streets with blood!"

[alderwitch]

"I don't give a damn what your feelings are," Taylor shot back, striding forward to collect her things quickly from the table. The few things she'd brought with her vanished into the ether between her fingers, "You're a fool if you think changing anything now is going to make one difference. I may not have stood and watched blood turn Freedom City red twenty years ago, but even if Jack becomes a model vampire scion, it isn't going to prevent Dracula from doing what he has always done."

Taylor straightened and looked at Claudia, her lips set in a flat line, "For the warning, I thank you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to return to the man that I happen to love very much, and try to help him keep everyone alive. Humans, vampires, and everything else in this blasted city."

[Avenger Assembled]

With his girlfriend out of the apartment for school, Jack was doing what most unemployed dropouts did at this time of night: consuming the blood of the living while plotting the overthrow of human civilization. Well, of a small portion of human civilization, anyway. If the Dusk-to-Dawn C's kept operating in the cemeteries of the West Side, eventually they were going to stumble into a nest of angry young turks who would probably object violently to their territory being violated. But if Avenger went in and chased them out, he could take care of everything.

Drinking from the open coffee cup he used when Taylor wasn't around, he hmmed as he made a few ticks on his big map of the city spread out on the coffee table, plotting out where he'd be going in a couple of nights.

[alderwitch]

Taylor teleported into the living room in enough of a hurry to actually cause his paper to rustle when she crackled into existance. Living with Taylor, Jack had gotten to see that her teleportation spell varied depending on her mood. There was the 'I stayed out past my physical limits and its a good thing I'm intangible because I just teleported myself into the couch', the 'I hate that professor so much crackle of power', and not the least of which was 'Landing on my boyfriend's lap because I feel frisky'. Sadly, this was definately not the last one as Taylor showed up with an audible crackle of a showy corona of energy and her lips compressed into a thin flat line.

Pulling things out of the void with quick, agitated gestures, Taylor dropped her notebook on the couch and followed it with her jacket and hat as she announced, "Some blonde vampire showed up in the library tonight while I was studying for an exchange of threats and warnings."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Blonde vampire?" asked Jack, concern sharp in his voice as he set his cup down hard enough to slosh slightly onto the table. "Short with old-fashioned hair, likes to hiss and use lots of fancy words when she's mad?" He muttered a bad word. "Claudia. I'd heard she'd made it back into the city after her unceremonious departure."

[alderwitch]

Taylor nodded sharply at each question, finally dropping everything on the couch, her dark eyes troubled as she turned her face up to him. "Jack, she says Dracula is coming. Here, to Freedom City."

It should have sounded melodramatic. It was like the line out of one of the bad B movies that Taylor enjoyed but she was both worried and serious as she looked up at him. "I couldn't read her well enough to say for certain if it was truth but she seemed very frightened. Also, very grossed out about our relationship. She seems to think that's the whole reason that Dracula's coming, which tells me that after several centuries of life, he clearly needs to find more hobbies."

Her tone was dry and sarcastic, although she didn't try to use it to cover the fear she felt at the entire idea of it. Taylor hoped it had just been another scare tactic, but the sinking feeling in her chest made her doubt it.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh my God," said Jack, looking appalled as he dropped back onto the couch. Taylor had seen him white-faced before, but this was something else. "Did she say when He was coming?" he asked, still looking faintly stunned. "Is He already on his way?" He ran his hand through his thick black hair. "Maybe it's just an idle threat," he said hopefully. "Claudia always did love playing up our connection to the Dragon. Especially hers. Maybe she's just trying to scare me."

[alderwitch]

"She was less than forthcoming about any details, just, let's see," Taylor sat down next to him, her gaze turning in ward as she tried to recall the nuances of the conversation. "Something about when the 'Dragon' heard his blood had taken over Freedom City and was comingling with the living, that his wrath would be legendary. Which is really more than a little hypocrtical considering that his fascination with human brides is a well documented occult fact."

The last was almost an aside to herself as she curled her leg up under her. She reached up and began unwinding the thick bun. It wasn't that Taylor was taking the threat lightly by any means, but panic never did her any good. Especially when it could be an empty threat. Or at least unsubstantiated.

"As she opened with 'you have something of mine' and 'sharing Jack's bed is disgusting and the Chosen of Heshem should know better', I do think she was pushing a certain agenda if that helps?" Taylor looked up at him at that.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Well, yes," said Jack with a little shrug. "That's natural for his..." He caught Taylor's eye and hrmed. "Um, moving on, Claudia certainly has no issues with commingling her blood with human herself, no more so than the, than Dracula does himself. It's because you're a superhero that's the problem. If I'm dominating you, if I'm in the process of converting your soul to darkness, that's one thing. That's what our relations at high levels are supposed to be about. But if it's going the other way, or seen to go the other way...well, that's a sign that I'm corrupting myself by bedding the worst enemies of our people. Or who they think is the worst enemies of our people anyway."

[alderwitch]

Taylor couldn't help flashing him an impudent grin as he skirted around things carefully with his chosen words. Her dimple flashed in her cheek as she teased, "So I should have informed her that I corrupt you regularly with my wicked wiles? And twice on Sundays?"

She tucked one leg under herself and twisted to face him, making arcane gestures with her fingertips that Jack knew full well were nonsense. As grim as she could sometimes present herself, that didn't mean that Taylor didn't have a sense of humor. Considering the reaction to their relationship by both communities, Taylor could either laugh or cry, really.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I'm sure that would have gone over well," said Jack with a little smile. "Not that she has any grounds for jealousy after the way we parted." He leaned close and kissed her, his hands going on hers. "I'm yours now, not hers. You don't need to have any worries on that score. And as for You-Know-Who...well, we'll deal with that. I doubt even he would come to Freedom City now, not with the League so powerful," he said hopefully.