John Barrister

[machado] Hyperextended needles of rain hiss from the seething clouds and shatter against the buckled pavement. Oil makes gaudy smears of the traffic light reflections, lurid neon scrawls of redorangegreen. Cars slice along the roads, windshield wipers working furiously, futiley. The tops of the project buildings seem to gradate into oblivion, lost in the heavens, making of the world an immediate place. This block. This pool of toxic orange light beneath the lamp. This bottle of beer, this bag of smack, this one quavering cigarette tip glowing cherry red under a cupped hand.

Somewhere, Skadi's cell phone rings.

[Skadi] Late night; late late at night, and Skadi is swinging in the hammock in Barrister's front yard. The half-moon is at mid-point in its path across the night sky, tinged red - but maybe that is the illusion of tint, manufactured by the screen of her pale eyelashes as she stares up at the night sky, half asleep - no, not asleep, just midnight fugue, the sky and the warm night, the motion of the hammock between the two trees to which it has been lashed in the interval since she made her gift and re-appeared, to test it out. Her fingers are laced around a beer, the butt of the glass bottle rests on the hard plane of her stomach. Then the phone - left behind on the porch with the keys to her truck and the rest of the six pack - rings. Sweet home Alabama - )which isn't precisely true, and is also true enough - blares tiny through the speakers. Skadi upends herself from the hammock, startled, and scrambes for the phone before it wakes the neighbors.

Not, mind you, that the creature gives a fuck about the neighbors.

[machado] The phone rings and rings and when she answers it, a stranger's voice: "Is this Skadi? My name is Reggie. We ain't met, but I'm a friend of Susan's out of Hill House? She gave me your number, told me to call you if shit ever got real bad."

Something off about his voice – something discordant, a note of near hysteria bubbling near the surface, of unease melting into fear and disgust.

[J.B.] In the kitchen room, where the sound of rain patters through the open windows in the breakfast nook, J.B. doublechecks the month's expenses and profits in his pawnshop's ledger. The real deal, this: a big, leatherbound book of narrow-ruled, columned pages barred in paler and darker green. The earlier pages are filled top to bottom with cramped, careful script, his normally expansive handwriting forced within the rules. The latter leaves are gloriously clean, devoid of writing.

He gets to the end of a page and straightens up, reaching behind his neck to massage sore muscles. Then, turning the page -- the sound is crisp in the wet silence -- he bends to his task again, all big shoulders and bushy forearms, brow beetled like a schoolboy in the middle of a particularly difficult test. There's a big accountant's calculator beside his left hand, a pencil in his right. He employs both with thoughtless familiarity. The phone call barely nudges upon his consciousness.

[Skadi] "Tha fuck's goin' on?" Keys jingle and the floorboards of the porch creak beneath Skadi's weight as she gains it, havig taken the steps leading up to it all at a go, one long sweep of her long, powerful legs. "'N where tha fuck are ya?" Dashing the rain out of her eyes, she wipes the phone off - a smear of translucent dampness on her t-shirt, rubs the display, then slides it back to her ear again. The voice crackles in her ear, distant and distorted: in front of her, the street is peaceful, the rain slides like lightning, made silver by the streetlights on Barrister's quiet street.

[machado] "Something bad's happened that I can't get into on the phone, you know?" There's music in the background, distant and dull, rhythmic like some techno beat endlessly spooling itself out into infinity. "I'm at a club. A place I help run. Over down by Bronzeville, entrance's down the alley between 37th and 43rd on 17th Street."

The voice is of a man in his thirties, one unused to overt fear, unused to it being cracked by quaverings. "Listen, please, you gotta come over here, you gotta help me figure this shit out. I don't fuckin' know who else to turn to."

[J.B.] Something about Skadi's tone penetrates the haze of numbers, red and black. Barrister looks up in the kitchen. Rubs his brow with one inksmudged thumb. Frowns. Yawns. Then sets the pen down and blinks at the page of numbers, all of them getting blearier by the second.

[Skadi] "Gimme them fuckin' directions again - " the girl counsels, her voice low. When he repeats them - the streets and the cross streets, the alley, the functional markers that will help her to find it - "down a fuckin' alley?" she repeats once, incredulous, peering through the sheers that filter light from the interior on the porch, knocking once - a quiet rap - before she opens the door and ambles in. "You sure?"

Her footsteps echo down the hall; she's barefooted and her feet and damp from the rain - slap slap slap - on the worn hardwood until the shadows of the long hallway disgorge her at the entrance to the kitchen. The phone still on her ear, she covers the mouthpiece (rather than - say - hitting mute) just likeher mother would, catches Barrister's attention, and mouths at him. "Hey - I don't mean ta be a pain, but kin you gimme a ride?"

[machado] The directions are repeated; a sudden voice sounds urgent in the background, Reggie's voice, muted in response, and then urgent on the phone once more, "Yeah, down the alley, no sign no nuthin', just a door, I'll be out front waiting for ya, ok?"

He begins to speak to somebody else in the room again, and hangs up midsentance.

[J.B.] Barrister's bent determinedly over the ledger again by the time Skadi comes in; but, hearing her coming, and hearing the cadence of her steps that means business, he's looking up at her. The lighting in the kitchen is bright and incongruously modern in the homely little house -- tracklights and spotlights -- and it picks out the blue in his eyes.

She doesn't mean to be a pain, but -- and he cuts in with a wry little smile, "You want a ride?"

She confirms. He pushes the ledger back and closes it, marking his page with the ribbon sewn into the spine. "Sure. What's going on?" -- he takes his keys out of the kitchen drawer closest to the door and his comfortable leather coat off the rack directly beside the front door. Tucks one into his pants pockets, shrugs into the other. Last, he steps into his shoes (the double-stitched, tough, suede ones with big thick soles, half hiking shoes, half workman boots, heavy and made to last) and grabs a flat cap off the top and rumples it into the pocket of his coat. She's hardly the sort of lady one opens doors for, but habit or something like it makes him pull the front door open for her anyway.

[Skadi] "Ya heard'a Hill House?" Skadi doesn't wait for confirmation; she plows through to the explanation thoughtlessly, steamroller. ": - s'this Coggie-run place, fer bums'n shit, git 'em off tha street I guess. Guy on the phone says bad shit is goin' down at his fuckin' pub; an' that this kin I met - name'a Susan - give him my phone number, told 'im ta call me if bad shit went down. Said he couldn't get inna it on tha phone - " This as she steps out onto the porch, toes over her boots and steps into them, pausing once to squeeze the rain from her hair. She doesn't have a coat, just her (all-too) familiar clothing - the old jeans, the old tee, the boots into which she wiggles and worms and stomps on the porch.

Skadi passes on the address. "Said it ain't got no sign - " and flashes Barrister a grim smile, one that bares white teeth in the darkness. "Preciate it. Yannow - you got a fuckin' knack fer this shit - "

[J.B.] It's raining, and hard. As soon as the door is locked, and the big Chevy unlocked with a characteristic beep-booping of the remote entry system, he pulls his flatcap out of his pocket and jams it on his head, pulling the brim low over his eyes. You hardly ever see anyone wearing these things anymore; short-brimmed, soft-crowned, wedge-shaped, old-fashioned. It fits him, though, the same way the dark casual slacks, the thin-weave sweater, the button-up shirts and the comfortable old leather coat fits him.

He ducks his head in the rain, trotting out to the truck and climbing in. Skadi's exposition is briefly cut off as doors open and shut, and then she continues in the shelter of the truck cabin while he starts up the mighty towing engine, turns around, puts his hand on the back of her seat and backs the double-rear-axled gasguzzler out. The big cushy springs jounce as he accidentally clips off the edge of the curb, oversteering the edge of the narrow driveway by a few inches. The streetlights plane in through the wet windows, casting beaded shadows across his deep-cut brow, his lean cheeks. She compliments his 'knack' for this 'shit' and he shoots her a wry grin.

"For what -- " turning forward, putting the truck into Drive and, well driving, " -- giving rides at 2am? Think I should start a cab business? (Between 43rd and 17th, did you say?)"

[machado] The drive is slow going. The rain picks up, boils across the windshield, Barrister's wipers fighting a losing battle with each vain pass. Cars are but brake lights ahead of them, dismal strafings of headlights to their left. Traffic signs barely caught as they drive by, directions tenuously followed, until perhaps twenty minutes later they find themselves delving deeper and deeper into Bronzeville proper. Less traffic. The night dark and smothering, the occasional homeless man braving the storm to approach their car while they pause at a red lights, face a beleagured mask of misery, mouth calling silently for a dollar, a quarter, anything.

They drive. 17th Street. It's narrow, hemmed in on both sides by looming three story monoliths who's ground floor units are all stores. Tiny corner deli's, laundromats, adult emporiums, Korean supermarkets, windows grilled, entrances covered with corrugated iron rolldown curtains. A handful of bars, open at this hour, their interiors lit up like the hearts of fires, shadowed shapes laughing and drinking and moving sinuously to the music that plays silently within.

The alley, finally. Too narrow for a car to drive down, long and dark. A solitary man standing by its mouth, shoulders hunched, face obscured under a hood of his raincoat.

[Skadi] "Cab service - " she confirms, somewhere in the middle of that long drive, her face backlit by the dashboard lights, covered in striations of shadow from the rain pounding against the windshield, the rivulets of water dripping down her dry brow, a silvered line across the high curve of her cheek (emphasized by the answering grin, too full to be wry or rueful) down to her jaw, where the water pools and pills and then drips. Gravity's work, that. Her grin is charged, anticipatory; the emotion evident is more than human. " - fer Garou. See? Ya'd need someone ta cover dayshift, though - "

Then the rain picks up; and homeless man is rapping filthy knuckles on the passenger's window and the rain is roaring. Except for the tick of the windshield wipers, the cab is silent. Or: at least, Skadi is silent until they arrive at the crossroads. She frowns - rolls down the passenger's window and reassesses the passage; notes the man standing outside the door. "I thank this is my stop. Y'ain't gittin' tha truck down there. S'too fuckin' narrow - "

The window hums, cutting off the sound of rain against the pavement as the modi closes it before opening the door and sliding out, leaving a train of damp smeared on his leather seats in the pattern of her body, the mass of her hair, the shadow of her hips and thighs and knees. "Gonna hafta run between tha raindrops -! " Skadi calls back before slamming the door closed. She ducks her head against the rain, frowns up at the buildings on either side, shielding her line of sight against the rain with a hand against her brow - then jogs toward the man in the alley.

[machado] Skadi runs across the street, rain pelting down about her, and the man sees her coming, is standing alert and watching as she approaches. He reaches up to tug at the hem of his hoody, pulling it further out over his face, and then steps forwards, once, as she gains the pavement.

"Skadi?" The voice pitched the carry in the weather. He's dark skinned, skin dusky, perhaps Puerto Rican, perhaps Phillipino - it's hard to tell anything beyond his narrow profile, sharp features, slash of a mouth. He's not tall, but rather angular, boney.

"Thank fuckin' god you're here! C'mon!"

Turning, he begins to move into the alley, with purpose, legs extending out with the urgency of his stride.

[Skadi] "You wanna tell me what tha fuck's goin' on?" Her brow knits with a frown that is woven into a scowl by the punch of rage beneath it; she can feel it, the moon above the clouds, fifteen degrees past its highpoint now, feel it the way the ocean feels the moon, sure of its tidal pull. Then he's charging purposefully back down the alley. She snaps a rubber bands from her wrist and pulls her damp hair back, elbows splayed wide, the hem of ehr old t-shirt riding up to expose the remais of old scars in the dispigmented flesh ag her waist, twisting and twisting her soaked hair as she follows, before securing it with the rubber band, keeping it well away from her face ad eyes.

[machado] No; he clearly doesn't. Not out here in the street, not out here in the rain, exposed to idle traffic. He moves into the alley, not running, not jogging, but hustling, head low as the rain splatters across the plastic texture of his coat and hood, perhaps fifteen yards into the darkness. The alley is broad enough that it doesn't get dangerously dark; he remains visible, a silhouette before her as he goes.

Stops, turns his head to check on her, and then pounds his fist on the wall. A moment later and the realization - a dark door, set into the brickwork, without sign or light or any other indication that something may rest beyond.

But Skadi can sense it. Can sense the thrumming of distant, chthonic bass coming up through the soles of her shoes. Can feel something in the air, some tense, tingling sense of unpleasantness. Reggie pounds once more, and he turns an earnest, scared face to her once more, face scrunched up as the rain runs down it.

"We'll talk inside!" he says loudly, pointing even as the door cracks open, and faint red light from some crimson tinted bulb filters out into the night.

[J.B.] Barrister watches the Modi jog through the rain, bemused. Then he pulls out of the narrow sight of the alley, looking for a place to park. Correction: looking for a place to park where his hubcaps might not be stolen.

In the end he settles for the parking lot of an all-night convenience store. It wasn't much, but at least it was well lit. He parks the big truck right in front of the door, as though he really thought the storekeep might call the cops if someone came to jack his car. Well; hope springs eternal.

The engine goes quiet. He wonders what's up. He wonders if he should stay in the car. He wonders if his gun is loaded. He leans over the center divide, pops the glove compartment open. There it is: black and heavy, nestled between his registration and proof of insurance, under his roadmaps and his 2006 Chevrolet Silverado owner's manual. He had a shotgun too, under the counter of his pawn shop, and permits for both. Homemade security system, you might call it. His hands are familiar on the gun. It's been a while since the last call -- not one of Skadi's, but the other sort -- but it's like riding a bike. You don't forget. He finds himself checking the clip, the action, oiled metal clicking and snapping under his fingers. He wonders if he has any extra ammo, and discovers he doesn't. Of course he doesn't.

He double-checks the safety and then tucks the gun into his belt, behind his back. Wishing he'd brought an umbrella, or maybe a raincoat, Barrister pulls the brim of his cap lower on his brow and gets out. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he walks the block or two back to the alley, keeping a good clip the whole way. He gets to the alleymouth just in time to see the door crack open. "Skadi!" he calls; doesn't slow, enters the alley, halfway down it now.

"Want me to wait in the car, or...?"

[Skadi] "Huh - " the girl is frowning, her eyes narrowed against the rain as it sluices down from her brow over her eyes and cheeks, her nose and mouth, streaming. It was gentle before; she was damp, not soaked. Now she is soaking wet, her t-shirt is plastered translucent against her torso, her jeans blue-black at the hips and hem from running through the rain and splashes through the puddles littering the ruinous alley. Skadi has her right hip against the door frame; somewhere between Reggie turning the knob and the door swinging open a crack, she has inserted herself in the space between this stranger and open door. Barrister appears at the alley's mouth and calls her name; she looks back, frowning over her shoulder, momentarily confused by his appearance, or her name out of the darkness, illuminated and contained by the streaking rain.

"You wanna watch his ass - ?" The decision hardens in her eyes as her attention swings back to Reggie. "Git him back ta tha truck?" She is alert, now, alive, her skin crawling, her heart hammering in sick time to the bass that seems subphysical. A shotgun appears in her hand as she ducks into the relative shelter of the door frame, and then Skadi pushes through, into interior, washed with crimson light.

[machado] Skadi insinuates herself between Reggie and the door, sliding in lithely so that half her form is bathed in blood red light, the other still dark in shadow, and then her name is called out, and Reggie turns in surprise, a knee jerk reflect of shock at the intrusion.

"Huh - ?" He takes a step back, looks to Skadi, hears her words, sees the shotgun. "Wait - hold up, you can't just go in there like that - "

Skadi pushes her way within, and sees a tall man bathed in that crimson glow before her. Bald, face lean and hard and pockmarked, eyes almost black in the strange light, wearing a black shirt, black jeans, black shoes. The door opens into a stairwell, that descends out of sight, the walls bare but for a few black and white prints of women bound in leather, long, sensual curves of white contrasting sharply with the gleaming black, the links of chain, their mouths open as they gasp or cry out -

"Hey! Hey!" Calls out Reggie, desperately trying to arrest her progress, the tall man within looking surprised, angry as he hears Reggie's voice, but backing away from the shotgun -

[J.B.] "Come on." Like your standard stereotype bouncer, J.B. lays a hand on Reggie's shoulder. The tone is coaxing; the hand is not. "You heard her; back to the truck."

[Skadi] "Sit down - " The shotgun is leveled familiarly on the bald man in the middle of the bar; the frown that swept across her mouth (not thoughtful; but perhaps considering) has deepened into a patented scowl. Adrenalin spikes through her arteries, teasing the ragged edges of her rage. " - sit yer fuckin' ass down. 'N wait up, with this fucker. Reggie." Her voice whips over her shoulder; she turns just enough to make it so, without taking her attention from the bald man at the mouth of the staircase leading down. "You gon' tell me what tha hell is goin' on here? Why tha hell you done called me?"

[J.B.] John pauses as Skadi speaks to Reggie. His hand stays on the man's shoulder, but he stops persuading him out of the alley. And let's be honest: curiosity pricks at him as he looks in through the open door at the rather interesting decor, the crimson lighting, the bald man and the Modi suddenly carrying a shotgun.

[machado] The tableaux is frozen. Barrister's hand firmly on Reggie's shoulder as he watches Skadi wide eyed through the open door. The tall, hard faced man backed up against the wall, large hands held open and easy before him, large enough to palm a basketball, his face composed, almost somber, leaden. He looks to Reggie, and then slides his back down the wall, his shirt rustling, until he's sitting on his ass, knees against his chest, hands still raised.

And the music. It wells up from the stairwell as if it were a throat, dull and pumping and repetitive and insidious. Makes you want to dance, but not with joy; rather, it makes you want to shuffle rhythmically, just sway, zombie dance.

Reggie angrily shrugs Barrister's hand away, and the kin can feel the tense fury that suddenly surges through the boney Reggie; the fierce snap of the shrug, the slide step away from him. Reggie rakes the hoody off his head, head, and stares at Skadi, at the shotgun, at the man now seated before her.

"Fuck!" his voice is a crack over the night. "What the fuck is this? Huh? What the fuck? Like - like I don't have problems enough?" He turns his head and stares at Barrister. "And who the fuck are you? Who - "

He stops. Takes a breath. Visibly, with great effort, restrains himself. Turns back to Skadi. That music pumping. Pumping. "Ok. Skadi. The situation is that there is a dead fuckin' woman downstairs in one of the rooms, and I want you to take a look at it. Ok? I cain't call the police, and this is the third time this happens that I know of, so I'm calling your fucking wierd voodoo spirit ass in here to help me out like Susan done said you would."

He takes a step forwards, and he's near trembling. "Now put that fuckin' gun away before you really make a fuckin' mess here."

[Skadi] "He's my fuckin' driver." Skadi huffs; a snarl twists her wide mouth, but the words are too low in her chest, in her throat to be touched by the shape of her mouth. Cut that sentence from the rest of the setting and it sounds like the punchline to some endless, post-modern joke. This is no endless, post-modern joke; this is a crimson-lit room with pictures of bound women leading down the darkened staircase. "Gitcher ass in here." She ambles forward, easy, slow - each step is deliberate, and marked by a restraint that seems almost painful. "Reggie. Why doncha tell me what kinda fuckin' place this is, 'n who tha fuckin hell that is. 'N then I'm'a consider takin' my spirit voodoo ass downstairs ta see ta yer dead girl."

Her skin is alive; her breath is hot, and her eyes spike with fury that otherwise remains chained and bottled inside her body, inside the core cavity of her chest, a hard, burning coal lodged midway down her esophagus.

[J.B.] Who the fuck are you? Who - ?

John looks evenly at the man. Noncombatatively; steadily. While Reggie takes a breath, while he explains -- sort of -- the situation, John is looking around the room, standing in the doorway.

Skadi orders them in and he steps over the threshold, pulling the door shut behind him. The monotonous beat drifting up the stairwell starts a matching throb behind his eyes. It's the sort of music that would literally induce a headache if you listen to it too long. Barrister looks for a long time at the pictures on the wall, but not out of interest.

"If it's something -- 'weird' -- I can help you get rid of the evidence." He says this quietly, to Skadi. "But if it's just a drug overdose, some S&M game gone sour, it's probably best if you don't get yourself involved at all."

[machado] Reggie stands, irresolute, his anger turning brittle, ashing before the deeper purer rage that is Skadi's. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, darting a resentful glance at the calm Barrister, and then finally scowls and ducks his head and moves in out of the rain with the Kin, through the doorway to stop a a few feet within, not having enough room to move past the guantlet of seated man and shotgun toting woman.

The bald man seems almost complacent. He simply watches Skadi's face, his heavy, slow eyes undeterred by her fury, her rage. He watches her face, not even the muzzle of the shotgun pointed at him, and sits there quietly, waiting.

"This is Petey, alright? Doorman. That's it. Waits up here, makes sure the customer's are legit before letting them through."

He pauses again, and then rakes his hand through his dark hair, slender face twisted in a scowl. "This place? It's a fucking shit hole, is what. It's the last place I'm involved in, and as soon as I can get my ass clear, I'm done with it. Susan's been - fuck." He refocuses, returns to the question. "It's a brothel. Girls come in, illegal immigrants, and they work here for a year, get their Green Cards at the end. The guy who owns it has connections, see? A senator, or a congressman or something pulls ropes for him. The girls work here for a year, do whatever the clients want, we make the cash, they get to fucking live in the States. Everybody's happy."

At this Petey just snorts, and Reggie looks down at him. Barrister, speaks, and Reggie looks at him, "Yeah, it's plenty 'weird' alright. You think we can't handle some accident? This is all ritual shit and creepy ass fuckin' disturbin'."

[Skadi] "Fuckin' hell - " Skadi swears low, beneath her breath. In someone else it might be a mark of outrage; for her, it is something else, the valve on a pressure cooker, flipped to relieve the initial pressure of thinking about all of that shit, or responding to it with some kind of fucking coherent thought. The young woman flashes a narrow look at Reggie as his explanation folds into itself, then expands into a life history - Green Cards, he says, and congressman.

She snorts; like a fucking bull, she snorts, her attention swinging from Reggie to Pete, and back again. The muzzle remains trained on Pete. "Fine." Her assent is sharp, brittle and pungent. The decision is clear in the expanation of her spine, the orientation of her body - torso and hips - back to Reggie as he responds. "Show me."

[J.B.] There's a certain unruffleable calm about Barrister. When Reggie snarls at him, plenty weird, can't handle some accident? -- he returns the wiry man's look, evenly as before, perhaps wearily. He keeps his silence. His eyes, which are not blue in this light at all, but a strange shade of black, flicker between Reggie, "Petey", and Skadi. And back.

Fine, says Skadi, her decision already clear when Barrister speaks up abortively.

"Wait." There's a hint, just a sliver, of urgency there. He draws himself a little straighter, big, tall, broad through shoulder and chest: good breeding stock. When he clears his throat the bass of it comes straight from the diaphragm. "Could I have a word in private?" -- it's almost apologetic, the look he gives Reggie, even as he's putting out a hand to Skadi's elbow.

He draws her aside to the alcove by the door. The crimson light makes her look bathed in blood. She's a tall woman and he's taller, but he'll never truly dwarf her. There is no rage to speak of there; nothing to clash and spark against her own even when he's barely half an arm's reach away, well in her personal space, keeping his voice down. They'd eavesdrop if they wanted to, but he wasn't going to make it easy for them.

"Do you even know this guy Reggie?" He still has his cap on. It's drawn down until the brim barely rides over his eyes, leaving the orbits shadowed, accentuating the jaw that has, since his last shave this morning, sprouted quite the crop of burgeoning beard. "Just because he dropped a name doesn't make him one of ours. Look at this place. You're really going to walk down there without backup?"

[machado] Petey watches Skadi as she steps back and away, and there's a tightening about his eyes as he gauges distances. He doesn't move otherwise, keeps his hands up, fingers perhaps slightly incurled, relaxed. His face remains hard cheeked, without expression, the expression of a Native American Indian in a 19th century photograph. Inscrutable, quiet, knees against his chest. His feet push out slowly perhaps an inch, the hiss of heels on cement inaudible under the music.

Reggie remains by the door, hands hanging by his sides except for when they flicker up to scrawl his hair back, to rub at his face with the back of his wrist, to smooth back the hair over his ear with the palm of his hand. Water drips from him, from his loud raincoat, puddles about his feet. His face is set in a permanent scowl, and he keeps glancing down at Petey, then at the stairs, then back to the two strangers.

Both of them wait. Watch.

[Skadi] "I don't know 'em," she looks up; her gaze catches and flashes on his own. The color is lost; she is just a lurid reflection in the kinsman's dark irises, a shadow against the crimson-laced depths of the room. "I know tha girl he mentioned, though. An' s'tha only way he could've gotten my phone number. Ain't like I give tha out ta everone. So either he's legit an' his problem is real, or tha girl they's gon' show me is one'a ours." Half an hour before, she'd been grinning at him; sidelong, sly. Now her features are scrubbed clean of mirth; her face a taut mask of awareness. The shotgun's muzzle is pointed down, direct at the ground, she holds it there with the casual carelessness of long familiarity. "Don't see that I got much choice."

The corner of her mouth hooks upward; the right corner. The wry expression just seems hard in this light, her features ridged in diaphenous crimson, charged with rage. She flips the shotgun up, offering him the butt. "Ya said ya kin shot, didn't ya?" She drops her chin at the weapon, if he accepted it. "Her name's Princess."

[J.B.] He's not comfortable putting his back to the strangers, but it's a necessary sort of gambit, to let Skadi face them. She's more effective, anyway.

They have their brief, muttered conversation. She makes her choice, again, and he glances down at the weapon. Princess. My name's Pr-- Thaney, Thaney had said once. Precious? he'd asked. Princess? he thinks now -- but nah, couldn't possibly be. No parent would be that cruel. Anyway, it didn't matter: he looks at the shotgun and he smiles, small and tight, shaking his head.

"I have my own. Toss that one to me if you -- " shift. " -- don't need it anymore."

He lets go her elbow and steps back, turns. And he follows her down the stairs.

[Skadi] Before the small conclave breaks apart, Skadi plants her hands on the kinsman's shoulders and uses his body as leverage, lifting herself up until her mouth is level with his ear. He can smell the rain on her skin; her hands are dry, but her face and hair are streaked with water, and her clothig is soaked through. "Shouldn't hafta say this" her voice is low; her eyes are stark over his shoulder, leveled on the two other men i the room. " -but I'm gonna. I tell ya ta run, you git on. No fuckin' dawdlin'."

The modi releases him, then, skirts around him. "You kin show me." A peripheral glance at the bouncer. "'N he's comin' too."

[machado] Reggie leads the way with ill grace, near stomping on each step as he goes, abusing his joints so that he judders down, the impact of each foot richocheting up his spine, jarring his shoulders. Petey remains seated as Barrister and Skadi follow; he doesn't come down after them, at least, not immediately enough to remain in their line of sight. The last thing they see of him is his head turning to watch them go, his eyes calculating still, his expression blank.

The music grows in power. Insinuates itself into their minds. It throbs and whirls and repeats and pounds, a live thing, stupid and powerful, a beat that resonates in the walls, that echoes in their chest cavities, that is almost more felt than heard. Three turns of the stairwell, and Reggie pauses, looking over his shoulder up at Skadi.

"You're going to freak the shit out of people with that shotgun. Hide it or something, will ya?" And then he takes the final turn, and leads them out into a hallway.

Money has been spent on this place. Money without the guidance of refined taste. A corridor extends away, perhaps ten yards long, two doors set on either side. Polished cement floors, the walls of the corridor designed as modern shoji screens. Near translucent cloud plastic hemmed into squares by broad, black lines. Vague shadows can be seen moving within, people dancing slowly, langorously, or just the sharper lines of furniture. White cotton sheets hang from the ceiling, split down the middle, artfully placed fans blowing them open, apart, so as Reggie leads them down the corridor and towards a distant central room, they pass by their fluttering butterfly touch.

The corridor opens up into a room. The light here is dark blue, everything tending towards shades of black, the center of the room dominated by a raised dias on which two near naked women slowly writhe, chained to an axial pole, their heads encased in leather with bug eyed metallic shells covering their eyes, and no other features on the smooth, leather masks. Wide belts about their waists, and leather skirts reaching down past their knees, slit down the front and back like the curtains in the passageway to reveal glimpses of of flesh within the shadows between their legs.

Couches line the walls, heavy, leather things, with a few men draped over them, smoking, watching the women, talking to girls of their own. Eyes raise to admire Skadi, assess her, and then grow cold, hesitant, cowardly.

Reggie leads them through this room, takes a left. Corridors extend from it like spokes, and he pushes through another heavy curtain into a second hallway, this one long and very dimly lit, the lights pulsing in time to the music, blips of red and muted electric white, enough that you can make out the shape of a person, have it impinged on your retina long enough to last for the moment of darkness, and then exposed again.

Women stand in this hallway, talking to each other. Perhaps four of them, tall and statuesque, beautiful. Faces streaked with bizarre makeup. Hair done in extreme styles. Two of them are simply naked; a third wears dominatrix gear, while the forth wears a Marlyn Monroe dress. Reggie pushes past them, still walking determinedly, and then pauses at one of the doors that lines the walls. Two large men stand on either side of it, faces tight, eyes fierce as they stare at the strangers.

"In here," says Reggie, and nods at the door.

[J.B.] Barrister doesn't keep in shape quite the way he used to, but his shoulders are hard, slabs of granite under the Modi's hands. He bends his ear to her, and then makes some sort of agreeing grunt.

They descend.

For all his size, it seems John is capable of some amount of stealth when required. Or, at least, he does not thunder down the stairs like a pack of elephants. Reggie makes most of the noise. The music grows pervasive, enveloping. It seems to serve as a conduit, drawing them into this netherworld that John Barrister, for one, did not even remotely belong in. He is calm -- this is as natural as saying, he has two eyes and one nose -- but nevertheless does not know quite where to put his eyes. He glances briefly at the women; finds the men scarcely easier to look at, but some amount of pride makes him meet their eyes, if they look his way.

They file through the corridors, the room, the corridors again. In here, and the door is indicated. Barrister half-expects to see Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here written over the door. His coat is still on, heavy, worn, hanging from his shoulders in a way that speaks of quality. He resists the urge to put his hand under the coat, on the grip of his handgun. Instead, he steps forward to open the door, intending to draw it back and allow Skadi to enter first.

Ladies first isn't exactly chivalrous in a situation like this, but Barrister doesn't kid himself. He was only barely backup here. Mostly, he was what she said he was: her driver.

[Skadi] Skadi lowers the shotgun when they hit the hallway, the the room beyond. The double barrels are pointed at the floor rather than ahead of her, or behind, the length of the weapon obscured by the familiar drape of her long left arm along its wake. Both men - the one ahead of her, and the one behind - can hear her cursing, again beneath her breath, as their path cuts through the first room. The curve of her spine straightens as she registers the sights down below, pulling her up through the center back of her skull and down through the tailbone, making her walk straighter, taller, more confident. The first man who looks at her receives a shunted smile, all teeth; thereafter, Skadi bestows those bared-smiles to any and all on their path who might look too closely.

In here. - Skadi frowns at the door, shoots a close look at both men flanking it, then reaches to push it open.

[J.B.]

[machado] Barrister steps forwards, cutting across with that overextension that marks any man's deliberate move to open a door without passing through first. His hand closes on the knob moments before Skadi's, and then he finds that it doesn't open out, but pushes in, and so it's a push he gives it, yawning it open, and he steps aside.

Skadi moves in first. The smell in the room hits her. A heady mixture of honey, resin, smoke and blood. The room isn't large, a bed room in truth and name, a kingsized monster dominating half of it, white sheets tousled under the body of the butchered girl.

It's hard to tell if she was once beautiful. She must have been, to have worked here. No longer. Somebody had worked on her for quite some time, with what must have been care and precision. The blood has congealed. Still gleams in the soft, ambient lighting, but is no longer running. Caking the mattress, splattered across the headboard, up the walls. Streaks and beads and flicks and heavier blobs that then ran upon hitting the vertical surface.

Over the coppery stench of blood is the heavy incense that burns from several thick candles set around the room. Strange runes are carved into the bedposts, painted in blood on the walls, chalked on the floor around the bed.

There are numerous wounds, mutilations. Both of her breasts have been sawn off, savaged muscle beneath. A large section of her thigh has also been removed, down to the bone. Her stomach lies open, splayed like a flower forced to blossom, a pool of blood and missing organs. Several fingers have been cut off, and litter the area about her head. Her cheeks have been removed, revealing teeth, torn gums. Her hair is a bloodied matt about her head. Long, black, still lustruous.

Something is written on the wall, several lines that read like poetry:

We shall know what the darkness discovers,
If the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
And our fathers of old, and our lovers,
We shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
We shall see whether hell be not heaven,
Find out whether tares be not grain,
And the joys of thee seventy times seven,
Our Lady of Pain.

Massive black candles are set on a baseboard that runs along the length of the wall opposite the bed. Their flames flicker and dance as the air moves in through the open door.

[J.B.] (wp not to barf!)

[J.B.] Inward, then.

The door opens inward, which means -- he has to step in first, to step aside. Which means -- he has to look on the bed. It's a terrible instinct, when confronted with something beyond the confines of ordinary life; an evolutionary advantage, but hell on the nerves.

John looks. His face twists and his stomach revolts. The backs of his jaw ache from the narrowly-averted vomiting. He puts the back of his hand to his mouth, his nose, involuntarily -- to stifle the smell, or perhaps to hold in the regurgitory reflex. "Holy Mary," says Barrister. His back hits the wall. He hadn't realized he had backed up at all. But he's there now, and it seems reasonable, wise, to turn around, away from the sight -- to grab the doors and swing them shut.

They are heavy, expensive. They swing easily on oiled hinges. Soundlessly. He hears the tongue click into the groove. And afterwards, he holds onto the sleek metal handles a moment. Takes a breath. Turns around.

This time, quite deliberately, he doesn't look at the girl. He reads the lines on the wall, twice, and then he pats down his pockets until he finds a scrap of paper (some receipt: romaine lettuce, carrots, canned peaches, brisket steak, and dog food). Quickly, his gaze intent, he starts copying down the verse. Roughly anapestic; strange; not unlovely. Our Lady of Pain. This last part, he underlines twice.

[Skadi] The door swings open; Skadi shoulders her way in, index and middle fingers splayed wide open as she changes her grip on the shotgun, levers the muzzle up from its current target - the ground. Her mouth flattens, then twists at the sight and the stench; the sight or the stench, the mutilation, the careful precision of the butchery. She blows out a short, sharp breath through her nostrils to clear her senses, then circles forward, stopping some feet from the wall with its verse. She frowns at the words, reads them, her lips moving unconciously as her mind snaps each symbol to its meaning.

"Fought somethan' with that name once- " Skadi informs Barrister when he has recovered sufficiently to fid his receipt and pull out a pen. She has made it top the end when he is inking the first few words. "Lady'a Pain." Then, and this may not be comforting, "She kicked my ass."

Careful, now, of hte pooled, congealing blood, the blonde picks her way through the room, stopping at the first and second candles long enough to blow them out. "Cain't believe that no one fuckin' heard this. Even with that fuckin' music."

[J.B.] "She might've been drugged." John's eyes are on the wall as he doublechecks all the words. Other than the initial reaction, he seems to have collected himself admirably. There's a hint of rust in the bass of his voice, however. "Though if she was, it was probably a paralytic agent, not an analgesic. That would seem to defeat the purpose."

John folds the note over once and puts it in his pocket. Later, he will photocopy it for Skadi and whomever else she might want to give it to. For now, Barrister steels himself and walks forward, careful not to step in any of the stray puddles of blood. He comes to the edge of the bed. The girl's abdomen is a mess of blood and torn tissue. He's looking to see which organs are missing, though his grasp of human anatomy is coarse at best, half-remembered from sophomore college biology courses. Heart, lungs, stomach, liver. That's the level of his understanding.

The stench of the lower bowels is thick in the air. No one, no matter how lovely or not, smells like roses on the inside. However, he does remember one thing from bio101 lab. If her intestines were even slightly torn, they'd know. They'd smell it, ripe and awful in the air.

(and pause!)