(Once again taken from play with Tina's mun. Weeeee!)
Even though there is no need to pull over, the tears themselves never happened as far as Mona is concerned...A fluke. A glitch. With the scent of Howie still hanging in her nostrils, like straw and dogsh*t and old pennies, she silently thumbs through the list of options presented to her by the Good Lady GPS. The glow from the gadget's screen bathes Mona's face, and one side of Nessy, in its dull light, draining color from each inch of reality that it touches. Once the GPS is placed in her cradle once again and begins belching out new instructions, Mona repeats the ritual of placing a small, long fingered hand against Nessy's chest ad pushing her back to get a better look at Tina.
"Obrigada, Martina, for driving and keeping me company during this."
Another poke secures Nessy more tightly in her tuck between the seatbacks. Tina thus far, has abstained from any mention of Mona's tears, even if their ghostly streaks still mar her cheeks. "No problemo, boss lady. I figure it's good for me to learn these things. And I kind of, you know, owe you I guess" So any ideas of what fresh Hell we might run into once the mechanical lady finishes singing?"
Mona simply eyes Tina for a second before looking once more at the road. "A trap," she says it flippantly, as casually as one might
point out a feral kitten in an alleyway. "It's a trap. Howie didn't set us up and I'm pretty sure Lana is like he said she is," she swallows and
her hands flutter briefly in her lap, "but I am pretty sure this Lucas knows we're coming. Word travels fast. It may just be him there or it might be an ambush. Either way, I am sure that he is paranoid."
Tina grinds fourth, double clutches, and gets it on the second try, the only sign that she might be rattled. She swallows, blinks, and responds with no apparent emotion. "Sooooo, a trap?" The 'Bird flies quietly now, just the low moan of the big eight playing counterpoint to the wind. "And I'm guessing you're not especially worried about this, 'cause you have faith in me and all?"
"I have faith that you can survive. You have that look to you, like the stripped end of a power cable. You and I aren't so different." She hides her worry with a sidelong look out of her window. "Correct me if I am wrong, but you fear what others take for granted. Where your next meal will come from, if the place you are staying in will hold up. You know that bite and you knew it before." Her mouth forms a straight little line on her face and she flips down the little rectangle hanging above her lap, checks her eyeliner in its little mirror and thumbs away the remains of the tears. "One or one hundred, what does it matter" It's the not knowing that scares me. It's always been that."
Tina eyes the road for a moment, a few flurries swirling in the lights in hyperspace parody. "Yeah, I'll be ok. And you can count on me. Truly. I may worry about stuff, but I've never let fear get between me and what I had to do."
Bless the GPS. The Rosco Sewage Treatment Works sits perhaps a mile away, off in a field made mute by winter's quick crawl. From this far out it looks like any other white brick and steel testiment to the modern world; an abandoned one, sure, one long defeated by some bigger and better facility, but still it is exactly what it is. Mona smiles, but it is gone as quickly as a candle's flame trapped in a draft.
"We'll both be fine then. We really have no other choice."
The GPS squak-speaks, and Tina downshifts before turning toward the facility. With a perhaps unexpected show of common sense, she flicks off the lights and navigates by the reflected glow from snow and cloud. When they're fifty yards from the concrete mausoleum, she shifts into neutral and kills the engine, and the 'Bird drifts forward with only the whisper of tire on gravel to mark its passage. Once it rolls to a stop, maybe thirty feet from the building, she unwedges the sea-monster and cuddles it in her lap.
"So, is there a plan or do we just sort of stroll up and be ready for whatever ass-kicking the situation calls for?"
Mona reaches into her pocket and removes a bunch of maybe five metal children's jacks, the same as the one that had taken Tommy's hearing back at the hotel. "Take these, okay' Speed equals power. It is the difference between bouncing harmlessly off of a car's bumper and being flipped over the entire thing. Do not throws these like you would your tennis balls. Aim and thump them. You can blow out the back of man's skull if you do it correctly." She offers them over to Tina, careful not to drop them onto the float's thin hide. "We make nice and then we unmake it if it comes to it."
Tina pockets the little missiles. "Yeah, that Kindred throw thing, I've been practicing it, even backhand..." Despite her apparent confidence, she pulls the door latch gradually and swings the portal open in near silence before, Nessy tucked around her neck, she slides out onto the frozen ground. "Ready when you are, boss lady."
"I am as ready as I'll ever be." Mona once again sucks in air that she doesn't need, a relatively new habit, and steps out of the car. A few
snowflakes fall upon her cheek but do not melt.
Up close, the building looms in a way that makes Howie's house look like a resort. It is flanked by tanks of all sorts, cracked pumps and shallow cesspools with ice forming on their moldering surfaces. Mona smiles once again, one of those odd quick lip tugs, and moves to the large steel door in front. Mona knocks despite the urge to just barge in, and something on the otherside opens the steel door wide. Looking over her shoulder to Tina one more time, concern finally flickering behind her eyes, she then disappears into the darkness. Tina positions herself behind her sire, hipshot in an attitude of teenaged arrogance, the inflatable around her neck belying that stance. Her right hand hangs loose, fingers curled just enough to create a cage for the jack that rattles in it, not so much held as cupped. The girl remains half a step behind her sire, Nessy bobbing happily with her pace.
Little pinpricks of eyeshine appear and disappear all around them, like Christmas lights set on blink. Mona doesn't look back at Tina again, takes her footsteps and the rubbery scratching sounds of Nessy as assurance enough. Tiny claws skitter across concrete, but Mona finds herself mindful of something much bigger and self-aware. There's something here, something else. It isn't angry, no, not yet. It's terrified and it's waiting. Mona licks her lips and carefully begins tying her hair up in the rubber-band nestled around her wrist. '
The air is stale and sour.
Suddenly the eyeshine and the skittering stops completely.
The silence is like a force, and as such vulnerable to its counter. Tina maintains her pace behind Mona, softly at first, and then with an abrasive sibilant authority, she begins to whistle. The first few notes might be unrecognizable, but soon enough the tune comes clear. It is "The Sunshine of Your Love." She rocks a little with each step, almost a dance, her great eyes probing the dim light of the room like tentative fingers.
Whatever is hiding shifts its position when the whistling reaches its ears, and Mona spins on her heels to face Tina, her own pretty white teeth complete with pretty white fangs ready to let loose a no doubt lovely and not at all profanity laden call via her tongue for her childe to just Shut The **** Up. But the air grows thick, cloyingly so, crushingly so, and barrels towards the both of them with all of the strength of a giant's fist backing it. It catches Mona off guard and sends her flying back against a concrete stairwell. When her head hits the wall, the room is treated to the sound of an egg shell cracking and the scent of strong, old blood.
Tina pivots and reaches Mona almost before she lands, tennis reflexes meet Kindred speed. There, she kneels in front of her sire, facing the unknown. Her left hand reaches up to her neck, twists plastic, and with a push to set her in motion, the sea monster wobbles through the air into the threatening dimness, riding a squeal of escaping air. With a hiss of confidence that she doesn't feel, Tina cheers it on its way. "Kill Nessy!" she hisses, "kill them all!"
The Invisible Thing shifts again, the little pinpricks of light returning one by one. Rats, not just one or two, but hundreds of them watch from landings and old pipes, bits of defunct electrical wire high above and through ventilation grates bolted safely into the walls. Mona shakes her head slowly, one foot twitching awkwardly and quickly, and she mutters something in a language other than English. A large metal barrel breaks free of its moorings at the far in the room and crashes to the floor, followed by another and another and another in a chorus of chaos.
Something dodges the wobbling inflatable, the sound enough to mark a location, and Tina backhands the jack towards the noise, and is rewarded with the meaty, hollow sound of a dagger striking a pumpkin. Before the first strikes she has another jack in her hand, just in time for the invisible fist to send her flying. A dozen rats are broken beneath her as she lands and rolls, but she doesn't drop what she's holding. There will be pain later, she knows, plenty of it, but for now she struggles to her feet. There are rodent corpses beneath her, the few not quite dead snapping at the air in instinctive aggression.
Nearby, a piece of pipe groans on its moorings and then begins to swing. One thick strand of wire snaps, and then the other, all in the span of three seconds. The pipe then sails through the air towards Tina, as nimble as a knight's lance in the hands of whatever wields it. The feeling in the air, that terrified animal fog, shifts into unbridled anger. More rats replace their dead and dying kin, but throughout the room there rises a cacophony of anguished, surprised squeaks.
The pipe is a target, a line aiming at whatever wields it. The second jack is flung overhand, a flick of the wrist at the moment of release. This one finds bone, and the sound if its impact makes it clear that it doesn't stop there. Flinging herself to one side, Tina scrambles to her sire, only to find that Mona is no longer there. The only trace her is what has been left behind; a pool of crimson and a fan of blood splatter to mark the skull cracked bit of concrete. Eyes flicking left and right, Tina growls a low rumble, jack in hand, elbow cocked, as the darkness clots and something seems to come for her again.
Somewhere the monster howls, but there is no longer even a hint of humanity to the sound. If it knows that its anger has caused it to slip up then it doesn't make such a thing known. Though it is still cloaked by the ether, little droplets of blood mark its path through the room, but it is old and mad and frenzied. Another rat squeals briefly in pain as a pale hand holds it to a white, bloodied mouth on a length of stairs trailing above, and soon the corpse, smaller for having been drained, is thrown with a sickening splat against the floor. Mona crawls after and quickly corners another rodent with the same results. Rinse, lather, repeat until there are no fewer than thirty exsanguinated little bodies dotting the floor, left to rot with those killed by Tina's fall.
Still hazy, still hurting, but better that than a muttering vegetable, Mona throws her head back and shouts blindly, "Tina! Follow the blood! Follow his blood before he heals!"
With her right hand still clutching the jack, Tina pushes herself off with her left. As she does she finds it resting on a length of pipe, barely two
feet long. She carries it as she rises, feeling its heft. Sometimes, when the opponent was unworthy, Tina would play southpaw just to stretch
the agony out a little. Heeding Mona's advice, she inhales deeply. There is blood everywhere; hers, Mona's, the rats', but another darker and sicklier than any of these, and the scent-trail is as clear as breadcrumbs. The source where it still bubbles out stronger than all. She whips a jack towards it, fishing another from her pocket, and charges forward, left arm cocked for a backhand smash.
The jack imbeds itself, backed by all of Tina's fury, between the beast's shoulders. Mona stares at the space where the jack has stopped and for a moment she spies Lucas, a tall and lanky creature made of more burn scars than actual flesh. Beneath it all, his face is still handsome, or was once handsome, and the hatred festering in his pale blue eyes is something no animal could ever claim; no animal other than human. Mona tumbles as she stands, lands painfully against the concrete floor below on both of her knees, and when it seems that Lucas will once again retreat- for he no longer has anything to lose, he stops and stares up at the older Toreador like a rat caught in the line of a snake's enchanting stare.
The anger fades slowly but surely and Lucas' scarred hands find purchase upon his knobby knees. Mona, still looking woozy, holds a hand out to Tina and crooks one finger in an attempt to call her wounded childe to her side. Tina's eyes follow Mona's, and for a moment she sees their enemy as well. She is wounded, yes, but she is hurt worse by the fact that her sire has been harmed, and Tina flirts with the beast, her own mouth leering and toothy, her eyes almost alight with madness. She is on the cusp of a rush forward, of a swing that she would intend to remove the creature's head from its body, but she sees Mona's beckon. The struggle plays itself out on her face, and she menaces alternately with the missile in her right hand and the pipe in her left, but she allows herself to be called to heel.
Mona can barely collect her thoughts, much less hug Tina, probably wouldn't anyway, but she manages to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. Lucas seems oblivious to the presence of the ferocious teen-thing that had placed the jack so deeply into his blistered flesh. The expression on his face is apologetic and when he looks up to Mona, its with all of the self-awareness of a child who has been caught doing something incredibly naughty.
Mona manages a smile for him, forced and exhausted but believable. It's a struggle to find the words, but she finds it hard to stop them once they have been freed. "You killed Lana, Lucas" It is a shame we have to meet under such circumstances. I have gotten along with most of your clan in the past."
The Nosferatu, no longer looking at her eyes, finally allows himself to stare at Tina out of shame. "I did what I had to do. They made me do it or they were going to run me out of this place. That poor girl," he moans, "that poor poor girl."
Mona nods her head in understanding, but there is rage bubbling up inside of her; jet black and far more terrible than anything Lucas could possibly know. He will get his end tonight, after all. Mona gets the booby prize of continued existence. She stands to her feet, motions for Tina to do the same, and glares down at the man. "You took her away from me." It's almost a wounded animal's keening.
Calming, if only a bit, Tina meanwhile finds that Nessy, now flat and despondent, is beneath one foot. Never taking her eyes off of Lucas, she
bends and lifts the float, a pinch of plastic in her jack throwing hand, and inflates it. Lungs that no longer need breath still serving effectively as pumps; air in-air out. In her left the length of pipe sways hungrily, eager to back whatever play Mona might make.
Mona is swaying unsteadily while her rage gains momentum. "You ripped her from this world because you're a coward, nothing more." Her head is pounding, her knees throbbing, but it isn't physical pain that sends her teeth to chattering. "She kept me sane and you took her away and, meu Deus, I'm never ever going to get her back."
Lucas is, in the very end, sorry for what he has done. It is the plight of those unfortunate individuals who get caught up in the grinding gears of a bigger animal's fear. Mona kneels down with effort, just long enough to drive the heel of her hand into his sharp chin. It does not decapitate him, not entirely, but separates spine from spine and rips the deceptively thin flesh of his throat open wide enough to view its inner workings. The rats, no longer in his thrall, rush forward, tiny nails skittering over undead flesh, and begin to feed upon their master quickly dissolving form while Mona watches, even as a few of them stumble over her slippered feet.
Tina drops the pipe, it simply falls from her hand as if her fingers had forgotten to grip it. She returns the fourth jack to her pocket and, with exaggerated gentleness, sets the again-cheery Nessy around her neck. She finds that for once she has nothing to say, and the leftover adrenaline—if adrenaline she still has—is sending deep shivers through her body, bucking her shoulders. She feels like she wants to cry but doesn't know why, so she watches the show at her sire's side, as awkward as a girl hearing about the birds and the bees too late.
"Go ahead and whistle now, menina. We won. We beat the monster."
Mona turns awkwardly, one hand reaching up to apply pressure to the slowly healing wound on the back of her head. Pieces of her own skull, blood, and a thicker substance greet her palm. It is completely possible that she isn't merely ignoring Tina's current state, but entirely blind to it. There is no triumphet strut to her limping gait, no hoot or holler to really drive home the glory of their hollow victory. She looks for all the world like a little girl, and there is a pain in her eyes that has nothing to do with her wounds.
"You'll learn that not everything is black or white," she calls weakly from the doorway. "Not everything is about who walks away from the wreckage. You'll learn because I will make sure that you will learn, Tina Shusberg." Because I care about you, idiota. Then she continues her march to the car, her head cradled in her bloodied hands, and she doesn't stop until she is once again silently seated inside of the Thunderbird.
Tina has no urge to whistle, even to sing "It's getting near dawn...." She follows Mona silently, only pauses briefly next to her door to vomit suddenly and violently onto the ground. Stale, sour blood splashes against the frozen ground. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand,
repeats until she feels halfway clean, and only then slips into the car behind the wheel, turns to Mona and whispers in a lost little voice, "It's
Martina. Please."
"Alright, Martina. Drive. You can handle that, right' I don't care where we go, just get us..just.." Mona's eyes fall shut and her mouth stays frozen around words unspoken. She slumps forward and the dash stops her falling any further. In the moonlight and snow glow, even through the blood darkened mess of her hair decorated with bits of her own skull and pale lumps of might very well be brain, the wound is made horrifyingly visible. She makes a sucking sound and her bottom lip trembles as if she's simply cold, but blood drips onto the 'Birds blue floormats all the same.
Her voice returns a moment later, pitiful and cracked. Whatever had driven her to that final stand-off with Lucas is long gone. "..a hotel. Just get it get..away from here, okay?" Mona manages to turn her head slightly to the side so that she is facing the girl and for a second she smiles. It is meant to be reassuring, but it is lopsided and lazy, and no sooner then it blooms does she, perhaps mercifully, pass out.