Heil and Madison walked side by side through the rubble in a trace and find for any remnants of the burned down theatre. While they walked and the sun began to set, Madison began to think to herself of Zeal's and whether it receiving a similar fate wouldn't be so bad? If left as it was, it was sure to become a den of some sort for one of the ugly crowd and that would kill her to see Charlie's pride and joy become ruin. Maybe she should.. and then her trail of thought was spliced as Heil came up short and swung a hand back to her forearm, warning her not to walk on. Looming before them in the shreds of twilight was an angry Andy Jacob, smoking and prowling their way like a rat. His dirty eyes and make-shift smile hung off his face - the Grease had done him in, and whatever was paying his way to salvation was doing a helluva nasty job. Madison couldn't stop the gasp that rose in her throat. Heil's face tightened.

"Andy Jacob, good afternoon Sir. Out for a walk?"

Madison watched the Detective's jolly good cheerio with a puzzled face as the bad seed drew closer, grinning like a fiend. "Hey toots, hey Watchman." The technie walked a circle and stepped on his smoke, began to roll up his sleeve. Heil could feel Madison tense from where he stood. She got bridled like that all too often, since Lofton, ready for anything even if nothing was right there. A nothing such as Andy.


"I don't know whether I sho' spit on you bot' or set you bot' on fire."

"Neither sounds particularly great, Andy", drawled a wry Rye with a smirk. Hand on hip she waited for him to come out of himself, finding a hollow sadness growing in her chest as she noticed the scabs on his face and the missing tooth. How far one man could fall.. Exhibit A. There were worse depictions, including Madison herself, some would say. Sometime she herself. Red woman. Vampire. Mongrel of life and death. Just a bitch in perpetual heat ready to tear the jugular out of anyone who stepped too close to getting her beyond the pale...


Again, Heil's sober voice crashed in on her daydream and Andy was now staring at Madison in puzzlement.


"Ya look different, Rye. Hear tell you was dead."

"It's a past time of mine", to echo Elison. It brought a smile so violent and beautiful to her face that Andy flinched. "Jesus."


Heil tipped his hat and tugged Madison's hand along, urging them out of the defamation and dereliction, back to the light of town. There work was done. No need to traipse over the past. The humiliation of others who had once had it all and were now debris in human skin.

Meanwhile..

A car tears by outside, screeching around the corner, sounds like it's got some panther in the gearbox. Andy was sweat and screams as he twitched and flinched and shivered tied to a seat in the back of renovated Zeal's, tied down for a second time, not by the hand of a bluesman but a iconoclast with a syringe in one hand and a bottle of Stolichnaya the other.


He couldn't see her now though, said her name was Sasha, dragged him in here after that Bunny stole him away. He could only smell that cloying, musky perfume she doused herself in, the smell of cigarettes and old stains and plum. She is slowly asphyxiating him with her very presence.


That passing car rumbled on outside in the darkness. Teasing him. How he wanted to make a getaway. What he wouldn't do for a lift, for a way out... But then again, it had been a lift with a stranger that had gotten him here.


Then it all goes bright and he can smell the angel, see her silhouette through the cotton pulled over his eyes, just. Just make out the fine line of her frame. Then her hair is in his face, baby-fine and tasting like cotton candy where it gets in his mouth, and her fingers are in his belt and he feels another round shoot through his thigh shortly thereafter. He gurgles. He goes limp.

The car echoes its passage, soon a silent dark dream in the distance of a very strange and achingly fateful night.