Shiny new places (OPEN)

[Everleigh Mason]

Well this was it, her new "home." Yeah right. Everleigh hasn't had a "home" since her dad died. Places like this are more like extended stay hotels with room service...if the place was nice. Her last foster family paid so little attention to her that she didn't eat on a daily basis. Thankfully her new case worker was a good one and she was pulled from that place after only a couple of weeks.

It was situations like that that made Ever wish that she could be honest about her ability without sounding like the crazy girl. She can "feel" when a situation is gonna be bad for her but she obviously couldn't tell that to her case worker. "Hey yeah, I could tell that place was going to be bad when I walked in because I could 'feel' the badness." Uh huh...suuuuure. And then she gets sent to a psych hospital until she's eighteen. The end.

Everleigh sighed to herself as she dropped her bag on the floor of the room she was going to share with some fifteen year old slut named Jackie and looked around. It was clean and at least she had a bed so she couldn't complain. She knew that these foster parents weren't drunks and didn't have psych issues. She could "feel" that much already. But that didn't mean anything. Bad people come in all shapes and sizes. She rummaged through her bag, putting away the few pieces of clothes she possessed and shoving anything valuable to her into her backpack. Her backpack went everywhere with her. The kid had trust issues.

After settling as much as she could she made some mumbled excuse about checking out the neighborhood and slipped out the door. It was surprisingly easy to do this. No one really paid much attention to kids that weren't really theirs. As she wandered down the street she was careful to stay alert to her surroundings. She wasn't that dumb. She didn't want someone to get a jump on her or anything. This town didn't seem any different than any of the others that she's been in. Typical neighborhoods fenced in yards and people that would wave as she walked by. Nothing new.

She came to the corner of the street finally but didn't know which way to turn, right or left. Left seemed to continue into another boring neighborhood like the one she was just leaving. Right seemed to take her onto the main street and into town. Well right it is then.

As she turned the corner and headed onto the main road she found that the center to town wasn't all that big. There was a corner store, some other buildings and businesses but nothing too exciting. She decided to check out the corner store. A kid had to know the best candy places, after all.

The bell on the door jangled as she entered and she was relieved to feel nothing out of the ordinary upon entering. The cashier just seemed bored and there really wasn't anyone else around. Everleigh figured that most people were in school and still at work right about now. That was fine with her.

She looked up and down the aisles for the candy and found it in the fourth aisle down on the right side. They had a pretty wide selection so she settled herself down on the floor, scanning the selection of merchandise. It wasn't like she had any place else to go.

[Zee Pritchard]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i52.tinypic.com/27zjc40.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #a0978c; width: 500px; height: 600px; padding: 0px;, bTable] All right, Samil, Zee sent the thought skyward without having any idea whether it would actually be heard. I got this one, so do me a favor and keep your feathery butt out of it unless I'm actually gonna die, huh? A pause, and then, If I'm going to die though? Feel free to show up. Another pause. Amen. She stepped out of the car and stood in the shelter of the opened door for a moment, first checking that the Hi-Power and the silver-plated combat knife were well-seated and could be reached easily and then tugging down the hem of her hoodie to make sure it covered both the weaponry and the slight baby bump that was only starting to be visible at eleven weeks because the girl was so very small and skinny to start with. A quick check on her reflection in the Challenger's side mirror and yeah, she was good. Zee was aware, very well aware, that she needed to get her scrawny ass to Vegas, and sooner rather than later. The plan had originally been to head there straight from Englewood after she'd gotten the all-clear from the PRC at Swedish Medical, but her RSS searches had picked up the trail of this wraith and she'd talked herself into stopping off just long enough to take care of it. One last hurrah, so to speak, before she had to admit that she was going to have to dial it way back on the hunting, that or find herself a reliable partner. The trail she could find said that the wraith was doing its hunting in one of a handful of places, the likeliest of which was this small independent grocery store. Three of the four vics had had receipts from the last hours before their deaths from this place. So time to take a look around. She stepped inside, picked up a plastic shopping basket as cover and started cruising the aisles. Mostly what she was doing was finding the curved mirrors mounted high on the walls here and there that were meant to cut down on shoplifting. Wraiths show their true face in a mirror, and the wide-angle mirrors in this place gave good coverage if you knew where to look. However, one full pass through the store and Zee wasn't finding anything. A second pass up and down the aisles and again nothing. She was just about to give it up and come back later when she spotted a stockboy coming out of the back pushing a cart laden down with brightly-colored candy boxes. She checked the mirror and oh, yeah. Dude was either a wraith or he had the worst case of adult-onset acne in the history of dermatology. A quick sideways jog and she started moving down along the aisle that had candy on one side, coffee and tea on the other. There was a kid sitting on the linoleum in front of the candy display, probably trying to decide where to spend her allowance. Shit, that complicated matters. Zee picked up the pace a bit, trying not to rush so fast that it clued in the wraith. When she got more or less even with the kid, Zee hooked her basket up onto one arm and murmured, "Hey kiddo. Guy's coming with the cart, he catches you sitting here he'll chase you out. Might wanna move along." It was weak, but all she could think of on the spur of the moment. [style=padding-left: 35px; font-size: smaller; text-align: left;] Location: Carini's Grocery Store, Olympia WA Outfit: Her usual ensemble of jeans, t-shirt and a hoodie, with a slightly heretical bent because that amuses her lately. Music: Monte Cristo - The Noisettes Notes: Action sequences are always a good choice. [/style]

[Everleigh Mason]

Everleigh could sense the woman that entered the store before she actually entered. She didn't look up but she could hear the woman wandering the store, obviously searching for something or someone. Ever could feel that she seemed tense and she wondered what was going on. It wasn't like there was anyone but the stock boy and the cashier in the store so she didn't expect the woman to find who she was looking for. Maybe whoever she was looking for wasn't there yet. Ever had the impression that whatever and whoever this girl was looking for wasn't a friend.

Before she could get up and investigate the woman was in the aisle with her. Hey kiddo. Guy's coming with the cart, he catches you sitting here he'll chase you out. Might wanna move along This kind of surprised the girl since she didn't see why someone would chase her out for just sitting there. She blinked up at the girl before slowly standing. As she did her hand lightly brushed the woman's finger and she got a vision of the woman strapping on a bunch a weapons before coming into the store.

Everleigh couldn't help but gasp in shock before she managed to compose herself. She involuntarily took a step back. Why would anyone need weapons to go into a grocery store? It was then that she heard the stock boy coming down the aisle with a cart of boxes and she turned in his direction, frowning in confusion. She had no idea what was going on but she was starting to get freaked out.

[Zee Pritchard]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i52.tinypic.com/27zjc40.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #a0978c; width: 500px; height: 600px; padding: 0px;, bTable] The kid didn't take off, which was a problem. With the stockboy coming up the aisle (he looked so normal to the naked eye, a pudgy guy in his late twenties, already thinning on top and with faint acne scars on his cheeks, a bumpiness around his chin that suggested he wasn't past it yet, and then she looked in the curved shoplifting mirror and she could see the rotted-away maw and leathery skin, the lank and brittle hair wafting out around him) her options were shrinking rapidly. Doing her best to improvise, Zee pulled two heavy cans of coffee into her basket and handed it to the kid. "Hold on to this." Then she stepped over in front of the little girl and reached up like maybe she was pulling down a jar of nondairy creamer, though mostly what she was doing was twisting such that she both sheltered the kid behind her and was turned so that she could reach the knife under the hem of the hoodie. No reason for the stocker to suspect anything, people bought much stranger things than lots of coffee and creamer. The quivering tension down along Zee's spine was mostly hidden by the drape of her hoodie. The moment stretched out, a low grating squeak of one wheel of the stocking cart seemed unnaturally loud to Zee's ears as he stepped closer. Closer. Closer. Now! She swiveled on one foot and chucked the jumbo-sized jar of nondairy creamer directly at the stockboy's head. It hit hard enough to split open the plastic jug, sending a cloud of powdered creamer all around and blood trickling down the stockboy's cheek. And maybe more to the point startling and hurting him (it?) enough to drop the illusion and show its true face as it hissed at her. The silvered knife was in her hand, Zee kicked the cart at the creature in hopes of shoving it off-balance and darted forward around the cart, looking for her chance at a chest shot. [style=padding-left: 35px; font-size: smaller; text-align: left;] Location: Carini's Grocery Store, Olympia WA Outfit: Her usual ensemble of jeans, t-shirt and a hoodie, with a slightly heretical bent because that amuses her lately. Music: Monte Cristo - The Noisettes Notes: Nothing like entering the story in media res. [/style]

[Everleigh Mason]

What was the deal with this woman hating the stock boy? He was just a guy. What was he, some horrible ex boyfriend? None of this was making any sense to the child. And now it was just getting weirder as the woman shoved a basket with two heavy cans of coffee in it into her arms. But Everleigh did what she was asked and held the stupid thing, all the while watching the woman like she's lost her dang mind.

She watched as the woman reached for the nondairy, wondering if this lady just had some serious caffeine addiction. There was something weird about how she was reaching though. It was like she was waiting for something to happen...some queue to act on. Then it happened. The woman turned suddenly and launched a package of nondairy creamer at the stock boy so hard that the package broke in half. The stock boy gave an inhuman snarl that sent shivers down the child's back.

It took a moment for her to be able to see the stock boy clearly through the cloud of creamer but when the fog cleared she screamed. She stared in terror at the stock boy...thing in front of her. What the hell is that?! She screamed in panic. She didn't take her eyes off the stock boy. She was afraid to. The woman kicked the shopping cart at the monster and the child watched as the thing went down. Now Everleigh still didn't know what to do. She just continued to stand there, staring with wide eyes between the woman and the monster.

[Zee Pritchard]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i52.tinypic.com/27zjc40.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #a0978c; width: 500px; height: 600px; padding: 0px;, bTable] Luckily, and it really was luck and no particular skill on Zee's part, the wraith seemed to be totally surprised by being attacked by a random gothy girl in the middle of his shift and was slow about pulling himself together. Zee had no real intention of letting him gather himself and so slammed another can of coffee down at his face (this one was hazelnut flavored, the smell of sweet nutty coffee filled the air and the next time Zee walked into a Starbucks she would have to make a mad dash for the bathroom to puke up everything she'd eaten in days. She'd think it was morning sickness, not connecting it to the smell of blood and coffee and fearsweat, the sight of blood flowing onto powdered creamer and congealing into a foul pink sludge) and then dropped to a knee and slammed the knife into the center of its chest. The wraith screamed, higher than a woman and multi-tonal, like a locomotive's steam whistle. Well, like a steam whistle that was dying an agonizing death. Unpleasant. And it thrashed, spattering red-black blood all over Zee, the floor, the shelves full of coffee, and unless Everleigh was particularly nimble the little girl as well. The blood burned where it hit Zee's wrists and cheeks, and as soon as she'd twisted the knife blade in the chest of the fallen wraith to be sure that the heart was all the way destroyed she leapt to her feet and bolted for the door back into the stocking area so that she could get to the bathroom, wash the crap off of her. So far as she knew wraith blood wasn't toxic or caustic, not like some other creatures' fluids, but who wanted to walk around with stinging monster blood all over them? It was instinct to catch at the girl's sleeve as she started toward the back of the store, Zee had protected her because she was there, but she wasn't all the way safe until she was out of the situation entirely. As she ran, it occurred to Zee that Samil would probably laugh his ass off if he were watching her right now. [style=padding-left: 35px; font-size: smaller; text-align: left;] Location: Carini's Grocery Store, Olympia WA Outfit: Her usual ensemble of jeans, t-shirt and a hoodie, with a slightly heretical bent because that amuses her lately. Music: Monte Cristo - The Noisettes Notes: You finish what you start. [/style]

[Everleigh Mason]

The woman launched another coffee can at the injured stock boy and Everleigh didn't make a move. It was like she was watching the whole thing from a distance, like she wasn't really there. Whatever was happening if finally clicked to the child that the stock boy wasn't human. No person could make the sounds he was making or look the way this guy looked.

The poor kid could only stand there in terror as the woman killed the stock boy. Everleigh had never seen anything like that before, not even on t.v. The blood that splattered on the side of her face stung and burned a bit but at first she barely noticed. She couldn't take her eyes off the dead...thing on the floor. What was that? She asked again. Her voice came out a bit hollow and low. Shock must have been settling in.

It was a surprise when the girl grabbed Everleigh and pulled her into the back of the store. She just stared at her, blinking like an idiot for a few seconds before the stinging pain on her skin finally broke her out of her haze. Holy crap! What is this stuff? She knew very well that it had come from the body in the aisle but blood has never caused pain before. This was new. She just watched the girl clean off the blood from herself without making a move to do the same thing. Who are you? The child whispered. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to be afraid or grateful.

[Zee Pritchard]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i52.tinypic.com/27zjc40.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #a0978c; width: 500px; height: 600px; padding: 0px;, bTable] Zee got the blood off her face before she really glanced over at the kid, and when she saw the all-gone-inside look in the young girl's eyes the hunter spoke more gently than she might have done otherwise. "That was a monster." There wasn't really any point getting in to classifications, not unless the kid asked. "And my name's Zee, I kill monsters." Again, why get into details? The broad strokes were fine for the moment. She wet down a paper towel and put a squirt of the sickly-sweet smelling hand soap onto it, held it out to the girl. "Wash that stuff off you, okay? It won't actually hurt you, but you don't want to be running around with it on you." Only when the girl seemed to understand did Zee go back to cleaning herself up. "I'm not going to hurt you," Zee watched the kid in the mirror as she worked to scrub her hands clean, up her arms aways because she'd had to get down and dirty with the wraith. She hated hand-to-hand work, she really did. "I just wanted to get you out of there before anybody noticed exactly what happened. Are your parents out there in the store somewhere?" A little blood had splashed on the wrist cuffs of her hoodie, she scrubbed them clean with water and hand soap, then wrung them out and rolled them up so that the wet cotton wasn't against her skin. [style=padding-left: 35px; font-size: smaller; text-align: left;] Location: Carini's Grocery Store, Olympia WA Outfit: Her usual ensemble of jeans, t-shirt and a hoodie, with a slightly heretical bent because that amuses her lately. Music: Monte Cristo - The Noisettes Notes: It's a logical assumption [/style]

[Everleigh Mason]

Yeah, I figured that. There's no way that was a human... She sighed. Honestly the sting of the blood on her skin was kind of a good thing. Without it she would have been waiting to wake up. This just didn't seem real. I'm Everleigh. She took the paper towel with the soap on it and started scrubbing her face and her hands using the little bit of mirror that Zee wasn't occupying.

You do this for a living? There must be a ton of those things out there then. It wasn't like Everleigh was completely unfamiliar with monsters. It was just that the only monsters that Ever was familiar with were the human kind. The thought that there were other kinds, kinds that could blend in and look so human really made the kid shiver.

I'm not worried about you hurting me. I'm worried about there being more of those things out there. She gestured over her shoulder to the front of the store. hey, do you think the cashier guy is ok? I mean, he's not one of them too, right? That was the last thing she needed, getting sprayed with monster blood twice in one day.

At her question about her parents she frowned a bit. I live down the street. I was just here getting some candy. She finished cleaning herself off and threw away the paper towel. I just moved here. Welcome to the neighborhood, she thought as she stood there and waited for Zee to finish cleaning up. So now what do you have to do? They couldn't just leave the store looking the way that it did now.

[Zee Pritchard]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i52.tinypic.com/27zjc40.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #a0978c; width: 500px; height: 600px; padding: 0px;, bTable] "Yeah, it's kind of my job." Her unpaid, deeply illegal, gonna get her killed someday sooner rather than later job. She shoulda been a bank teller. "And there are some. Not so many that there's one in every store, or even every town. But enough to keep me and people like me busy." She was cleaning her knife with a wad of paper towels, then pulped up the paper towels in the sink before dropping the sodden mess into the trash can. She'd prefer it not be obvious that somebody had cleaned up blood in here. "The cashier's just a cashier, at least as far as I know. And what I have to do now is get you out the back and send you home." Zee hadn't been a whole lot older than this kid when she got sucked into the monster world, but that just made her more determined, not less, to keep this from touching Everleigh more than it had to. "When you get home, don't say anything about this to your folks. If anybody talks about it, pretend not to know it happened. If somebody can prove you were here, shows you a video surveillance tape or something, burst into tears and say you were so scared and that the murderer threatened to come back and kill you if you talked. I won't, I hope to never come through this town again, but it's believable. Got it?" Kids, in Zee's experience, were born liars, and she was hoping that Everleigh would see the sense in doing things this way." [style=padding-left: 35px; font-size: smaller; text-align: left;] Location: Carini's Grocery Store, Olympia WA Outfit: Her usual ensemble of jeans, t-shirt and a hoodie, with a slightly heretical bent because that amuses her lately. Music: Monte Cristo - The Noisettes Notes: Laying the groundwork, here. [/style]

[Everleigh Mason]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; height: 600px; background-image: url(http://i862.photobucket.com/albums/ab190/kortluvsummer/c-3.jpg); -moz-border-radius: 250px; border-radius:100px 100px 100px 100px; border: 3px solid #ffffff;] I can feel you, all around me. Everleigh never thought that being in one of her foster homes would be safer than being out somewhere else until that day. She was at least relieved that the stock boy was the only monster around in the store that day but the little girl would never look at the world around her the same way again. From now on, everywhere she looked and everyone she came across she would look at and wonder if that was really a person or could that also be some unknown being or monster. So then there are other people like you? If there is more than one hunter in the world than obviously there are a lot more monsters out there than Everleigh wanted to know about. She watched Zee clean her knife and waited for the girl to lead her out of the store. The child figured that it was safer to be with the hunter just in case. Even so, Everleigh would be looking over her shoulder for a few days, if not longer now. She couldn't believe that she actually wanted to go home. When Zee told her not to tell anyone, Everleigh wanted to laugh but she didn't. That won't be hard. I mean, who would believe me? Getting a kid like me to believe this stuff is one thing but getting some adult to buy it is different. She couldn't imagine heading back to a foster home that she had just moved into that day and tell those complete strangers what had happened at the store. They would definitely send her back and tell her social worker that she was nuts. God only knew what would happen to Everleigh then. NOTES:

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[Zee Pritchard]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i52.tinypic.com/27zjc40.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #a0978c; width: 500px; height: 600px; padding: 0px;, bTable] "A few more." Zee pulled a small spray bottle out of her pocket, it was actually trombone slide oil, but it worked just fine to spray down the blade of her knife before running paper towels over the blade a few more times before sheathing it again. Paul had raised her to treat her weapons with respect, and she'd never put a wet blade back into a sheath. "Not a ton of us out there, but maybe a few dozen in the United States." It didn't even occur to her to lie to Everleigh, Zee was close enough to being a child herself to remember resenting the gulf between what she needed to know and what 'grown ups' thought she needed to know. Maybe if she'd known about monsters when she was ten--no. Don't go there. Nothing good comes of playing what-if. With everything stowed again, Zee turned to check Everleigh over, the girl looked okay. Pale, maybe a bit shaken, but not bloodstained or like she was about to burst into tears. She smiled at Everleigh's assessment of how people react to difficult news. "That's about the size of it. Everybody's so sure that 'little' means 'idiot.' C'mon, I'll get you out a ways from here so you can head home from a different direction. Better all around." She led Everleigh out through one of the open loading docks, the store was already in a bit of a tizzy what with the dead zombie-looking dude in the candy aisle so it was easy enough to sneak out the back. Zee got them out to the parking lot, well away from the action, before asking, "Which way's your place? And how far?" [style=padding-left: 35px; font-size: smaller; text-align: left;] Location: Carini's Grocery Store, Olympia WA Outfit: Her usual ensemble of jeans, t-shirt and a hoodie, with a slightly heretical bent because that amuses her lately. Music: Monte Cristo - The Noisettes Notes: Transitional posts, always awkward somehow. [/style]