Abigail isn't nervous, not at all. In her green sweater with the letter 'K' stitched on the front in gold thread, jean shorts and multi-layered tights, Abby's smug smile seems strangely at home. The redhead moves along, stepping in fish guts and silently patting herself on the back for remembering to wear shoes.

The big man is leaning against a lamp post, as if he had been cast in bronze there. Unconcerned by the obvious risks of the area, undeterred by its odors and undercurrent of threat, he whistles softly as he waits, one mitt wrapped around a small bouquet of lilies-of-the-valley. For as calm as Abby appears, there is genuine surprise in the smile on her face when the man comes into view. Like some lovestruck teenager just arriving to meet a much older lover, Abby hurries towards the fellow and for all intents and purposes, looks flushed.

"Oh you darling man!" She cries, her tone properly atoning. "I apologize for the delay. I hope you haven't been waiting long."

Bob pushes himself up easily. "Not at all, Abigal, I've been enjoying the ambiance. A curious place for a first date, isn't it' Not exactly the malted stand or the county fair?"

She blushes, a task helped along by borrowed blood.

"I'm not exactly a conventional kinda girl."

Brazen, Abby steps closer and mechanical eyes whir to the flowers in his hand. For a baby eating monster, he has good taste, and how strange it is that that thought springs to the forefront of an army of others.

The sound slips out of the background and asserts itself, like a leitmotif swelling on one chord to take over the symphony; rhythmic, high pitched, a squeal tapered at both ends. It swells from a single warped wheel on a covered carriage, pushed by a wraith painted in black cotton and white flesh.

Meanwhile Bob is in the act of offering the flowers, with a charmingly clumsy little half bow, when the noise reaches him...and something else. He inhales rapidly through his nose, eyes canting around like a pointer casting for the scent of a quail.

Abby's ears perk up beneath that thick nest of red hair; a pair of scents plucked from the air and committed to memory. She almost reaches for the flowers, for they have not eaten anyone, when she notes his reaction and tunes her own to something resembling concern.

"Mr. Roberts" Are you alright?"

The noise swells, and the white of the figure semaphores in and out of shadow, steadily, casually, approaching. He shakes his head, glances at the redhead, his voice tightening.

"You weren't...you weren't expecting anyone else, were you?"

Abby looks appalled. "Only a bit of moonshine, poppet."

She keeps her eyes trained on him, keeps them from straying to the white blur of the shadow-weaver.

At a dozen feet Artsblood stops the carriage, toes closed the pivoting wedge to lock one back wheel. The sounds ceases, but she approaches again, clear now, her white hair still stylishly spiked, but back to shorts and tee for the occasion. Something glints, like moonlight on dirty water, in the palm of her right hand.

The man glances from Abby to the newcomer, the scent from the carriage clearly unsettling him, and tries to bluff it out.

"Hold on there. Unless you're a friend of Miss DeKker's, I think you better not come any closer. I don't want to hurt anyone here.?"

Abby has trouble hiding the sudden rush of glee that rips through her, her smile wavering as if viewed through a heat haze. Cybernetic greens dance from the monster in Midwesterner's clothing to the sky.

"How dreadful!" She tuts, soft and amused. "How utterly dreadful.

A ruined voice drags from Arstblood, like a knotted string swallowed and then drawn out slowly.

"Dreadful, Missy Dekker" I suppose it is, but only for a short time now..."

And she turns to the man, moon eyes empty holes swallowing the reflection of light off the water, and hisses the words for all the help that naming magic might avail them.

"And greetings to you, Bauk! ," before plunging the iron corkscrew deep into the left side of his chest.

The reaction is instantaneous. The man swells upward like a blossoming cloud, meat and muscle, claws and teeth, as if Grendel bore a child upon a yeti. It is soon one and a half times its former height, massive and long armed, and it strikes at its attacker with one of those thick limbs, a blow fit to topple a streetlight. The woman is swept up and away, as if she were weightless. She rolls three times before she uncoils onto her feet again.

"Happy birthday, Missy Dekker," she hisses.

In that instant, Abby is almost fleet-footed, the birthday declaration drawing a laugh from the redhead. With a few feet between them, she springs from the ground like some sort of jack in the box, the creature's back centered firmly in her cross-hairs. At the same time Artsblood drops to her hands and knees and crawls, a horrid rapid scurry, all spider and rat, sweeping over the ground to come in from his front, under the great arms, intending to drive her corkscrew into a knee. The creature bellows its anger, but the voice that follows is not bestial but sentient, and certainly not dull.

"How dare you? You two are little more than human, and would even be toothsome were you not so old. You've brought me my dinner and started a fight you can never finish!"

Abby's laughter continues and only spikes at the beast's words, a psychologist's worst nightmare, until something else takes over, a monster dropped of its chain. The miasma of madness that surrounds her is almost palpable. Headache thick, pea soup dense. Upon drawing closer to his back, Abby disappears and reappears tumbling from the air towards him, as if she has been dropped from a cloud.

Their speed may have surprised him, because the white haired woman reaches his leg even as Abby is falling like a sword of vengeance above. Arts drives the corkscrew beneath his kneecap, twisting it, and liquids hiss and bubble within at the touch of cold iron. She twists it again before the Bauk has her by one ankle.

What goes up, must come down and Abby slams into the creature's back hard enough to wrench her left shoulder. Sideways she lands on the ground and, careful of Artsblood and her little toy, she sends a kick flying into his side.

As soon as Arts realizes she is held, she strikes for the area between his legs, claws more rapid than any cat, only to find the skin there is smooth and devoid of organs, and thick as rhino hide. She has time to mutter "Oh my," as she is lifted and swung. The Bauk laughs then, though he staggers from Abby's kick, and it is the intelligence in that laugh if anything that terrifies. This is not old Bob Roberts, but an ancient and clever and powerful enemy. Almost casually, he swings the white haired woman across his body and uses her to swipe at the redhead.

And batter f*cking up.

Abby is knocked back as soon as Arts collides with her, the blow sending her ears to ringing and her jaw to rattling. Dizzy but for a moment, she leaps to her feet before her rear can ever touch the ground and, with her fangs bared, she cuts a zigzaggy trail for the arm that holds the Toreador with her teeth gnashing and snapping.

The creature's skin may be tough, but Arts' cupped hand is as deadly as a garden trowel when driven with all the force in one skinny arm. She kicks against the grip that holds her, breaks free as Abby attacks it, and drives her palm through his skin and under a rib, spinning like a crocodile when she does so. He bellows again, pain in it, anger, surprise, and lurches toward Abby, throwing a heavy kick at her as Arts savages his side.

Like a pinwheel, Abby throws the rest of her body up and around the limb, her teeth digging in and driving deep with a series of rabid pit bull head shakes. Blood like raw sewage hits her tongue, streaked through and through with power and that, combined with each kick that lands, loosens her grip.

Artsblood croons, singsong now. "Oh yes, you are a terrible and mighty thing. I can't wait to see you die."

She drives her other hand into the hole now torn in its side, sending the corkscrew in search of an organ to skewer. Strangely enough, the Bauk pauses, looks down at Abby savaging his arm and Arts rooting in his innards, and speaks slowly, as if addressing children.

"I am a boogeyman, fools. I move from dreams to reality at will. Your dead meat is as useful against me as a prayer against a tiger."

As he says it, his arm and his side become insubstantial, and the women struggling with them fall away, only to be met with reformed arms that swap at them with the force of a swung sledge.

Abby flies through the air, the monster's words a vicious prayer in her ears. His rotten, ancient blood pours from her mouth and streaks the sides of her face, only to puddle beneath her chin when she smacks into a nearby street lamp. It's a crash hard enough to crack and splinter the wooden post.

Artsblood takes the blow across her chest, and is aware of the driftwood snap of a rib. What he said could not be true, for if it were they are helpless and she has delivered the child to him. She flings herself forward again and passes through him as if he were smoke, only to be stomped upon by a very solid foot as she lands. Almost lazy, he regains solidity where Arts had passed through him and turns to face the baby carriage.

Dazed and deathly quiet, Abby twitches. It would have killed a human, that collision, but the gingersnap hasn't been human for a very long time. Suddenly she is drawn to her hands and knees as if she's being pulled up by some invisible hand, and with her head lowered to the ground, she drags her tongue across the cobbles until not a drop of blood is left. Grimacing more than grinning, her head jerks up and around, mechanical eyes darting from Arts to Bob. It's the latter she runs for.

Artsblood is panicked now that he has turned toward the carriage. She barks taunts in attempts to turn him, charges again, his flesh falling through her hands, in hopes that the distraction will at least allow Abby to strike something solid. He is not fast, but one step follows another, barely a glance as Arts's strikes through him again, and the carriage is almost in his reach.

Abby has to speed up, and finally her arms and legs work together against the filthy ground until she's plowing through night with her pale limbs stretched straight. A blur of white and red that passes in and out of sight, a carbon copy running on two legs ahead of her. The doppelganger leaps into the air and aims for him while the genuine copy waits for the moment when he turns solid again to strike.

It is a clever ploy, and it works for a fraction of a second; the doppelganger moves through and for a moment Abby has meat beneath her hands, but then that too softens and parts and dances like ashes above a fire. The creature steps again, the carriage beneath it, and reaches out a taloned hand towards the blanket there, scornfully oblivious to the women behind it.

The sound is rhythmic, repetitive, a blend of the hiss of steel on a whetstone and the hot whine of August cicadas. In the darkened corner of a Spartan cell'sink and toilet, a thin mattress on a wooden plank?the pale woman crouches, limbs all tangled angles like a spider touched with a match, and strokes a length of something yellow-white against the abrasion of a scrap of sandstone.

At intervals she holds it up to examine it, tests its edge and point on the pad of her thumb. When these meet her expectations, she tears a strip from the turned hem of her black Triumph Bonneville tee and wraps a tight handle on its nether end.

Satisfied finally, she slips it through one of the belt loops on her cotton shorts, twists it once to secure it there. The weapon, a marriage of filet knife and icepick, was formed from a long splinter of her own shinbone, worried free of the mushed meat where the Bauk, in its final frenzy, had gripped her leg and crushed both flesh and bone.

The wound is healed now, though the repaired skin is still a slick and angry pink above the knitted and regenerated bone. No metal detector will find this shank (the name ironically accurate) until it has had the chance to pay back her humiliation in full.

Ready now, she marks the time by the shadows of the bars on her window, crouches with ill-concealed impatience, waiting to see if the Horne brides summon enough courage to repay her sacrifice with rescue.

They will, she believes, and when they do other debts incurred during her period of incarceration will come suddenly and painfully due.

Audrey is suddenly aware of the stares of the other inmates. It's as if Arts' voice has rendered them speechless. She joins them and watches Arts, her eyes the only thing giving up her confusion, the tremble of her bottom lip outing her relief. She casts a sidelong glance to Magenta, a question dying on the tip of her tongue. As the rapier thin woman approaches them, Magenta's eyes go wide, her voice stutters.

"You, you should be half asleep by now...they gave you the medicine, didn't they?"

Artsblood smiles her snake smile and lets a hand trail over Magenta's shoulder as she passes her and steps into freedom beside Audrey.

"Oh please, missy dear, do you think I've been foolish enough to let you hold that weapon over me all these years" Where there are drugs, there are counter drafts. I anticipated your concern. But surely I cannot allow myself to be taken out of here all helpless.."

And here she slips a sharpened length of bone from her waistband, its handle wrapped in tee shirt before continuing.

"No dearies, Artsie doesn't plan to leave without getting back at those who put her here."

Audrey balks. "If you do that, it screws all of us."

If the bone concerns her- and surely it does- she doesn't show it.

"You can get them back by escaping, Arts. Think about it. Knowing that they had you and that you escaped with two people in costume" That'll chafe."

She doesn't step away from Artsblood, merely moves closer, and looks up to Magenta from beneath the snubnosed black brim of her hat, her expression suddenly pleading. Magenta shakes her head in the negative; she is without ideas, still stunned that her precious drug has been so easily circumvented. Fingertip to her mouth, Artsblood turns from Horne to Horne.

"Oh, I see, well I wouldn't want you to get into any trouble on my account. Perhaps if we create a distraction?"

Moving quickly, she steps from one cell to another, pulling the doors from them as easy as a child opens a cardboard box. As the freed inmates mill briefly in indecision, she turns her great eyes on them and hisses softly.

"There is only one way out, away from me. If I see any of you again you'll dearly wish I'd left your bars in place.."

Audrey watches as a majority of the inmates scatter, the color draining from her face. It's not exactly what she was gunning for, but it will have to do. They'll chat before they're captured again, a few of those criminals; spread stories of that strange night on Cellblock D. A good chunk of them file out of the door, as listless as sleepwalkers, and Audrey cants her head to one side.

"Okay then. We have about three minutes until all hell breaks loose."

Two and a half, really.

Gunfire fills the air on the other side of the door, anarchy blooming, but lo there is a light at the other end of the hallway. With a curse, Magenta takes Arts" hand and leads her down the open hall, leaving Audrey to bring up the rear; to provide what lies might be needed to protect them from behind. And for Artsblood's part, the Tor allows herself to be lead, with a wry smile on her thin lips. She does not, however, resheath the bone weapon; it is swung casually in her free hand, and she purrs.

"Perhaps you two should chase the inmates out and make your escape. I assure you I'm capable of getting out from here. All I wished for, really, was the proof of your gratefulness, of your affection if you would...."

Nerves cause the brunette to snap. "Leave the officers alone, okay' Don't kill anyone unless you have to."

She has a soft spot for coppers, deep down. Her heart feels heavier with each step to the door. It's not regret that slows her stroll, but something else entirely. As the sounds of the riot surround them, Audrey pauses.

"If we go out there, we're done for. They're done for."

Because she knows how capable Artsblood is of escape.

In answer Magenta increases her pace, knowing that at any moment Arts could pull away, could stop still and pull her shoulder out of its socket without effort. But she does not, and the end of the hallway approaches. As they cover the final yards, however, an adjacent door opens and a huge tiger-morph in Watch costume steps into the hall in front of them, his yellow eyes immediately upon Artsblood. He blurts out "halt!" and raises a whistle to his lips.

The little brunette flinches at the whistle and quickly fumbles her badge from her top, a case of nerves that could surely be blamed on the mayhem in the other room.

"We were given orders to lead this inmate to another cellblock, my companion and I.."

She nods her head to Magenta in Scath's clothing, the hat casting just enough shadow to hide her eyes.

"So if you would please let us do our jobs, that would just be excellent. If not, and my friend here is hurt, then you can deal with the aftermath."

But the catman recognizes the prisoner, realizes that she is neither in custody nor in chains. The Tor recognizes him, as well, and while Audrey's explanation is enough to slow the rise of that whistle to his fanged mouth, it does not halt the flicker of her skinny wrist, or the penetration of bone blade from nostril to brain.

She slips it out as she falls; bone is brittle after all, and does not take to bending well. She wipes it on her shorts and steps ahead of the brides toward the door at the end of the hallway, whispering a simpered "oopsie" over her shoulder.

Audrey doesn't have time to do anything but nearly climb Magenta as the opposite doors burst open, a passel of very peeved Watch officers pushing prisoners haphazardly into cells while behind them medical staff tend to the wounded. A few start for them, hands and paws reaching for guns. Audrey finds her footing, grips Magenta's hand and shuffles for the door, her heart beating a mile a minute in her chest. Arts can deal with it now. Guilt can come later.

The blonde looks helplessly back at the Tor, who in turn answers with a smile and turns her attention toward the growing disturbance behind her. Snapping out of it, Magenta squeezes Audrey's hand and rushes forward, shouting at the top of her lungs.

"This is a Scathachian emergency! We are in pursuit of an artifact of the most desperate importance. Do nothing to impede me and my Watch escort!"

Screw it. If Audrey makes it out of this godforsaken place without a bullet wound, she'll thank her lucky stars. By the time they reach the door, there are tears in her eyes and she mouths a silent prayer for Artsblood and, oddly, the approaching officers.

A dragonfly's wings beat slowly in comparison to Artsblood's dance as she weaves through Watch and prisoners, wounded and medics, on a pirouette course that leads the pale woman toward the entrance opposite that pursued by the Hornes. When it is over, no one will know whom she had wounded, whom she had killed; they are lost in the ruins left by the earlier aborted escape, and in the rumors of monsters and Scathachians, and an unknown Watch heroine who stemmed the mayhem before disappearing into the night.

Audrey doesn't breathe until they reach Edith. The car may have metal for brains, but the fact that she meets them mere feet from the back door is a credit to her intelligence. She is silent and she stares up at Magenta, the fingers of her free hand working belt end from buckle. Sliding into the driver's seat, Magenta slaps her palms on the steering wheel, though not so hard as to hurt dear Edith, and turns to Audrey big eyes.

"She played us, lovergirl. This whole thing, the drugs, the weapon. She could have escaped at any time, but she wanted us to get her...she wanted to know that we forgave her. I'm sorry, ladylove, I should have known. I mean, if anybody ought to be able to read that spooky bitch, it oughta be me."

The little brunette keeps her eyes on the dark up ahead, unshaken when pedals are pushed by phantom feet. Edith knows where she's going. That calm cop act fades away in an instant and uncovers an emotional storm brewing.

"She saved Susie..so..so..we owed her a good turn."

When they're out of gunshot distance, the Caddy stalls behind a grove of city grown trees and Audrey hangs her head and sobs. Magenta wraps her bride in her arms, cuddling her against the softer portions revealed by the Scath costume. She says nothing, just holds her, while Edith dials in some lazy jazz on her antique radio.

"I don't care, Mags," mutters the girl. "I don't care that she did what she did. It doesn't surprise me. We fell for it and we're stupid for doing that. I just..I just feel wrong, okay?"

She grips her wife's forearm, upset and perhaps just a bit spooked. With tears painting the skin of her cheek, Audrey turns her eyes to the windshield and to the world slowly crawling by them, the jazz music providing a strange soundtrack.

Not concerned in the least that Edith is driving herself, Magenta perhaps feels that the grand old car knows better than either bride where they had best go now. Her hands on Audrey unconsciously follow the rhythms of the jazz, and she speaks in distant saxophone tones.

"If it helps at all, lovergirl, she would have hurt as many or more if she freed herself. She didn't have to pass through quite that sort of a crowd thanks to everything that happened."

Edith is only a car, sentient or no. Whatever pilots her equates upset humans with copious amounts of liquor, and that is where the vehicle goes. Audrey is still pumped full of adrenaline and she's grateful for the words, for the touch.

"You're right, I guess."

If she remembers it, plays it over in her head, then maybe she'll believe it.

Magenta's reply is soft. "And we did forgive her, didn't we" That's what this was all about I think. How very strange that it meant so much to her, isn't it??

And, Edith rolls to a silent stop, dust settling over her from the cloud she's raised in braking, in front of the Red Dragon Inn.