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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 12:17:24 GMT -8
Nykolas stretched as he awoke, the sound of wind whistling through the trees had disturbed his deep sleep.
He walked to the bathroom and took his time showering, the hot water waking him up even more, and letting him think. In the few hours he had been in Portland he had met someone that knew off the bat that he was...different. He wasn't sure but he thought she was okay, hell even if she wasn't she wasn't bullet proof.....or claw proof.
He shut the shower off, stepping out of the steamy alcove like a Greek God granting a vision to an acolyte on some fancy mountain top. He snorted in humor and checked the mirror for a moment. He liked hot showers, but they made his scars stand out bright pink on his pale skin, and there were more than his fair share of them.
He left the bathroom and dressed quickly, no suit today, just a black collared shirt and tan BDU pants. He went to his gun safe and keyed in his combination before unlocking it with his key.
The safe was huge, the largest on the market that was feasible to fit in his house. He chose a Beretta 93R for his in-the-pants holster and a Smith and Wesson .357 revolver with a 3 inch barrel for his ankle holster. Three speed loads for the revolver, and two extra magazines for the Beretta went in his leg pockets, the weight equally distributed.
As a former Marine Master Sergeant, Nyk had encountered no difficulty being licensed for Class 3 firearms, also being a bodyguard he was licensed to carry anywhere except commercial airplanes, and he was working on that. The Beretta 93R was a selective fire machine-pistol, and one that Nyk felt very comfortable carrying around all day, the Revolver was just in case he had a jam in the Beretta, or for whatever reason couldn't use it. He believed in being prepared.
He laced up his black tactical boots, checking to make sure the 6 inch stiletto was still in his right boot, and pulled his pants down to cover them. He also added a Benchmade folding knife to his right pocket, the knife had a speed system on it that allowed it to open as he pulled it out of his pants by dragging it along his pocket.
Sure, he was paranoid, but that didn't mean he was unprepared.
He walked into the kitchen and got some coffee while awaiting the phone call from the girl.
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Delilah Sterling
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Post by Delilah Sterling on Dec 19, 2008 12:43:52 GMT -8
In her dreams, David visited her.
He did that a lot. They were very life-like.
"Hey there, Delilah," he said, mimicking the song with a smile.
"You idiot," she said in the dream, "can't you see I'm trying to sleep here?"
"You are impossible, Delilah," he said, mimicking yet another song. He laughed when she threw a pillow at him.
"I miss you, you big dummy," she said in the dream.
"You need to hurry," he said, his expression changing to one of all seriousness. She realized for the first time that his face no longer faded from man to demon. He was simply as he was without the Guise, with scaled, ashen skin, black eyes and lips, and twisting horns spiraling from his temples.
She sat up suddenly. "David, this isn't a dream, is it?"
He just smiled at her.
"Are you really there?"
He shrugged his scaled shoulders, still perched on the foot of the bed. "Do you want to touch me?"
It was a baited question, and they both knew it. She didn't want to touch him; she was too afraid she'd see his death from his eyes.
"Does it matter if I'm really here, in this room, or just in this room inside your head?"
"I guess not."
"You need to hurry, Delilah. They're coming."
She closed her eyes against the tears. She had read somewhere that her name meant, "Weak, languishing." She didn't know if she was strong enough to do this. She didn't know if there was anything she could do.
When she opened her eyes again, David was gone.
The clock said 7:07am. There was a pillow on the floor. Delilah cried and rocked herself in the shower until the water ran cold.
* * *
Dressing quickly in yesterday's jeans, a charcoal sweater and a striped yellow, red and black scarf, she tugged on her boots and palmed her keys, checking to make sure she had Nykolas' number in her pocket still.
Nykolas.
What an intrigue he was.
She wasn't sure why she had felt comfortable with him last night; it wasn't in her nature to trust easily, especially with all she'd been through since Albuquerque. But what was she to do about this situation all by herself? Nothing. There was logically nothing she could do alone.
Her plan was to find the city's Avandrya and enlist their help - well, he may not be part of the Avandrya, but he was one of them. She only wished he weren't mute so he could approach the others.
Her first stop of the day was a Verizon wireless store. She'd left her cellphone behind ages ago when they fled from New Mexico, and it was about time she replaced it.
The first number she programmed into the phone was George Watson's. He handled her inheritance money for her and kept up with her belated demon-father's business, and did a damn better job at it than she would have.
George was probably frantic, she hadn't called him since she'd left Los Angeles. Well, his worry could wait another day or two. There were more important things to do.
The second number she programmed into her phone was Nykolas' cell. She made him wait, too, but not for long.
She called him from a Denny's a few minutes past 9.
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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 13:08:02 GMT -8
Nyk had finished his coffee and was checking his email when his phone rang. When the dulcet tones of Rick Astley cut the still air.
He shook his head, he forgot that Matt had set that as his ringer before he left Alaska,cheeky bugger.
He answered with a cough and he heard Delilah's voice coming through the speaker, angels on the airwaves and all that.
''Nykolas are you there? Good. I am a at Denny's on....'' she rattled off an address as he listened and he wrote it down. He coughed again when she said bye and then he hung up, grabbed his keys and walked out to his truck, setting the security system on the house before he left.
He moved through traffic like anyone else, only louder and more menacing behind the silly little Priuses that littered the hipster town. He parked at Denny's and got out, adjusting his gun and untucking his shirt so that it covered it.
He entered the restaurant and sat down with Delilah with a nod. He ordered orange juice and toast and waited for her to speak.
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Delilah Sterling
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Post by Delilah Sterling on Dec 19, 2008 13:27:51 GMT -8
If he had known her better, he probably would have noticed that she looked distinctly rattled... but since they were practically strangers, it was unlikely.
"Thanks for coming," she said, her finely boned hands wrapped tightly around a steaming cup of coffee.
"The waitress says this pot was brewed fresh." She looked down at the cup she was holding onto like it was a life preserver. "I think she lied."
A brief smile was followed quickly by a sigh; letting go of the cup with one hand, she shoved her hair back and held it in place with sunk-in fingers, staring down at the brightly colored place-mat on the yellowed formica.
"Nykolas, I think that whoever - whatever - is doing all of this isn't far. I'm tired, I've been running from city to city, and every time I start to think I can get comfortable, something bad happens. I don't know what to do."
But her rant didn't end there. Oh, no. She'd been traveling too long with only her growling stomach to confide in.
"I don't even know if you can help me, or how. But I really, really hope you will. The killing has to stop. I'm so tired of feeling hunted."
With that, her voice cracked and she fell silent, a single tear splashing onto the counter top below.
"So," she croaked. "Any ideas?"
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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 13:52:32 GMT -8
He considered the problem and sipped his orange juice. He truthfully thought that they were stuck for the moment until they found some other leads. He considered his toast and carefully applied some strawberry jam before munching a piece.
He wrote quickly, in the same tight cursive. ''I don't know, I'm used to protecting those who are in danger, not finding who is causing the problem without a clue. I will offer my protection to you, for now, for free. However in the near future I will need to find a paying posting, hopefully someone in this....underground will need a person of my skills. If their goals coincide with yours, then we will probably be working together for a long time.''
He sat back and finished his orange juice, signaling for a refill. He mulled the problem over and over in his mind, unsure what he should do.
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Delilah Sterling
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Post by Delilah Sterling on Dec 19, 2008 14:04:05 GMT -8
It was probably a bad thing, being so young and coming to inherit money you'd never worked for. Robbed a person of all the chances normal people got to build character.
But Delilah had known she was not 'normal' since she was 12, and she'd had plenty of experiences at her age for building character. It was a small comfort knowing money wasn't an issue.
"I can pay you. Travel expenses, too." She just hoped he didn't drive that huge monster of a truck she'd seen in the parking lot last night. That thing probably guzzled fossil fuels like a bottomless beast.
"I guess our first priority is finding more like us."
She used the term lightly - even though she could see the others, she felt strangely apart from them. Even David had reminded her of that in her dream-that-was-not-a-dream.
The waitress stopped by to refill their drinks; as Delilah blew the steam off her coffee, she mused more to herself than to him.
"It wouldn't hurt to find out who, or what, is doing this. Know thy enemy, and all that..."
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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 14:11:14 GMT -8
Nyk brushed his long red hair behind his ear, a silver ring catching the light for a moment before the heavy curtain of crimson covered it again. He picked up his pen and wrote for a moment or two
''I will contact...someone...who is the only person I trust more than myself. He has his own ways of getting information and will let me know what he finds. I would not be surprised if who ever is doing this is using cover names and aliases. Probably good in depth ones too. I will get a hold of someone if you can tell me where this all started.''
He pulled out his BlackBerry and readied an Email to Matt as soon as she told him.
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Delilah Sterling
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Post by Delilah Sterling on Dec 19, 2008 14:18:08 GMT -8
She read his note, then looked over her shoulder, watching the waitresses weave around tables and past booths, the customers chit-chatting over the din of silverware and the occasional grating scrape of knife to plate.
What if someone was there, listening?
She looked back at Nykolas, waiting patiently with his Blackberry out, and she shook her head. "Not here. Let's go somewhere else."
But where? It seemed silly to go looking around a new city for someplace quiet, and she barely knew this man-- there was no way in hell she was taking him to her hotel room.
There was really only one place she could think of.
"Let's go for a drive."
She pulled the keys to David's car out of her pocket, dangling them over the table.
"Your ride or mine?"
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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 14:38:22 GMT -8
He stood up, pocketing the BlackBerry and paying his tab. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and signaled for her to follow him. He led her to the truck and unlocked it, disarming the security system. He helped her into the raised beast and then climbed in himself, starting the massive engine.
He let the bigblock warm up and shifted it into reverse, backing up and pulling out onto the roadway. He looked at her expectantly as he drove.
If she was to look around she would see the dash being taken up by a complex series of gauges, switches, and a couple of screens. He flipped a switch to his left, and a hum filled the air. It was a faraday cage and suddenly the car was the most electronically secure thing on the road. He wrote on a pad on the dash and handed it to her
''We're clear to talk''
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Delilah Sterling
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Post by Delilah Sterling on Dec 19, 2008 15:02:33 GMT -8
Great, she thought as he helped her up into the truck.
He drives .... The Beast.
Resisting the temptation to casually ask how many miles this thing got to a gallon, she instead sated her curiosity by looking at all of the interesting gauges on the dash, jumping only slightly at the weird humming sound.
Looking down at what he had written, she sighed deeply, bracing herself.
"It started in Albuquerque. I could see demons, but I was scared of them. I thought maybe I was going crazy or something, it's not... not easy to get used to.
Then I met David. He was one of them, but he got through to me. He told me about this society, about this thing they call the Guise."
She looked over at Nykolas.
"The Guise is their way of blending in with humans. Regular people look at them and see just another person. For some reason, though, it doesn't work on me. I can see the Guise, but I see who they really are, too. Or in some cases, what they really are. Like you, I see you as a man and a bear. David had these ridiculously long, spiraled horns. I used to tease h-"
She went quiet for a second, and when she spoke again, her voice was harder.
"We went to El Paso for a concert, for my birthday. We were gone for the weekend. When we came back, there was all of this crap on the news about a water main breaking in the heart of Albuquerque, club-goers all pissed off because some of the hottest clubs were shut down because of flooding.
David lived in an apartment above the club that was the main meeting place for the Underground. When we got there, we had to sneak in. It was a... they were... slaughtered. David made some calls. During the weekend we were gone, someone or something hunted down the members of the Underground and killed them all. Sometimes one at a time, some in groups of three or more. But David knew from the moment we saw the bodies in the club.
He made his calls from the road on the way to Phoenix."
Regardless of the hardness she forced into her voice, there were tears streaming unabated down her cheeks.
"I had been something of a celebrity with the Underground in Albuquerque, and they treated me the same way in Phoenix. I'm a Seer, I guess. That's what they called me. When we explained who we were and why we were there, they embraced us, gave us a place to stay, treated us like we were extended family come to visit."
Wiping her eyes, she leaned her head against the window and stared sightlessly through it.
"I was at the safehouse, reading a fucking Harry Potter book. You ever read those? I was an addict. I was halfway through it and I told David I wasn't going out that night. He went on to the club without me."
"That's the last time I ever saw him alive."
Clamping her eyes shut tightly, she pushed a knuckle into her mouth and bit down on it, hard, to muffle the sobs that were welling up in her chest.
"Same as in Albuquerque," she finally said with difficulty.
"So I took his car and I left. Drove to Los Angeles. Told them everything, and their Seer confirmed what I said through visions. She knew they were coming. They thought they could prepare for it. They couldn't."
Even her closed eyes couldn't stop the images from rolling past with painful intensity.
"Same thing in San Francisco. And they'll be in Portland soon, I know it. They're either following me, or they're just taking the same path I have but I'm one step ahead."
It was all she could do for now. The retelling was painful, and she slumped back in the seat, her eyes closed and face pale, withdrawn.
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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 15:22:28 GMT -8
He sensed that she was upset and pulled into an abandoned parking lot before shutting off the engine. He turned to look at her and mouthed ''I'm sorry'' it wasn't something he liked to do, but he felt it was more personal than writing it down. He turned off the Faraday cage and pulled out his BlackBerry, firing off an encrypted email to Matt with all relevant info. He also included that he would consider this a personal favor if he returned the info as soon as possible.
Nyk rolled down a window and lit a cigarette up. He reached a large hand out and patted Delilah's knee and smiled at her, trying to be comforting.
In reality Nyk had no clue what to say, he didn't build attachments to people because they were just going to abandon him or hurt him. So he lived a spartan existence without close people, just Matt, more of a business partner than a friend. They had met a long time ago when Nyk had just started his business, and had developed a relationship that had transcended friendship, almost a brotherhood.
Nyk took a long drag of the cigarette and waited for Delilah to talk again, he just didn't feel that he should intrude on hr inner dialog
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Delilah Sterling
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Post by Delilah Sterling on Dec 19, 2008 15:50:45 GMT -8
She sensed him looking at her when the truck stopped a short while later, and opening her eyes, she turned her head towards him as he mouthed his apology.
Managing a weak smile, she nodded. "It's alright. It just hurts."
Closing her eyes again, she wondered just how this man was going to help her. He looked strong and capable, technologically set-up to the nines, but...
Well, the problem was the threat just seemed so much bigger than a man-bear and some nifty gadgets.
She was starting to gain composure when he reached out and patted her knee. It was like having a bucket of ice water thrown in her face; she gasped and gripped the edge of her seat as her muscles involuntary tightened with shock.
She hadn't been expecting the touch, or the vision that came with it.
Not the future, at least she didn't think so. Images rushed by, an endless expanse of desert, women wearing floor-lengthed veils holding back children with dark eyes and hair, men with similar dark eyes holding rifles and glaring. There was a confusion of noise, of screaming and yelling, a close-up of a mob flailing arms and fists at some focal point in the center.
A salt-and-pepper haired man, face twisted in terror, reached out desperately for help.
And seeing it as though it were her own body, an arm snatched his wrist, yanked him bodily from the throng of violent people, while the other hand tightened on a firearm, laying down suppressing fire.
Her last image before the vision ended was the look of awe and gratitude on the rescued man's face.
Breathing hard, she looked over at Nykolas, her eyes wide.
"Please don't touch me again."
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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 16:11:14 GMT -8
He recoiled when she tightened up and backed away from her. He looked shocked, unaware what he had done. He wrote furiously and appologized to her. He flicked the butt of his cigarette out and fire up another one, rattled by her reaction.
He wondered what she had seen, or heard, or whatever. He wrote the question down and handed it to her curious.
He started playing with his hair, a nervous tic that he had developed awhile back when he was under some more stress. He took it out of the ponytail and started fixing it, putting it back and keeping it out of his eyes. The cigarette left a blue haze inside the car as he smoked and he thumped the ashes out onto the asphalt, awaiting a response.
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Delilah Sterling
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Post by Delilah Sterling on Dec 19, 2008 16:20:17 GMT -8
"God, give me one of those."
With a shaking hand, she took one of his cigarettes, lit it on the fourth try, and rolled her window down some. She held the cigarette and puffed at it like a person who didn't do this very often.
She coughed on the first inhale.
Even while the nicotine made her a little dizzy, it cleared her head a little, too.
She looked down at his written apology and nodded. "It's okay, you didn't know." She was just glad she lived in America; she had heard that in other countries it was common place to greet with a hug and a kiss on each cheek.
His next written message wasn't answered so quickly. She glanced over, watching him tug his hair into submission, and then looked back out the window for a second.
"Somewhere in the middle east, I think. You pulled a man out of a mob. You saved his life."
She looked over at him again. "Did you do that?"
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Post by nykolas on Dec 19, 2008 16:26:29 GMT -8
He nodded, his own mind flashing back to what was going on. He had been escorting the client to a private security firm and lo and behold the old man had to piss. Nyk had stopped outside the village and the fucking Haji had swarmed them.
Nyk could smell the cordite from his FN SPAS-12, the semi-auto shotgun booming as he pulled the trigger, clearing swathes of Haji after Nyk had rammed the Suburban into the crowd. He grabbed the Client and tossed him into the truck, speeding off and delivering him to the destination, He shook his head clear of any cobwebs and finished his own cigarette, lighting another and sucking it down just as fast.
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