sunrise

"Ah yes the legal weedery,"

Thao allows herself to be comforted instead of shrugging Birdie's touch off her, somewhat surprised she'd gotten out of the car to be close enough to comfort her. When she finally has nothing else to bring up, she wipes at her mouth and offers her sire a thankful smile, "I know, that's why we need to get this out of the way, so that we can both put even more of him in our rear view mirror. I'm.. I'm good, thank you. C'mon, get back in, let's get going."

She puts herself back into the car, closing the door and waiting for Birdie to get back in, before driving to the second spot she had plotted out, a little closer to the outskirts of town.

"Yeah, this borders Warwick and Eventide turf, so... be careful."

That'd been why he'd set up here, she'd reckoned - any reasonable vampire is wary around werewolves, and Warwick is notorious for how much (or really, how little) it's thought of their kind, apparently. It's more old bad blood she's inherited from Nsilo.

"Another blood farm. Used to be a guy who ran some kind of blood works out of a fight club. Skinner was either trying to muscle in or rug-pull him or whatever."

She looks up - just a sliver of moon in the sky, so that's reassuring, at least a little. "I had you all cornered here, he was trying to stick a foot in any door it'd fit into."

Across the vacant lot, she leads Thao, looking over her shoulder. "When I shut myself off, it made it easy to just bait him. Didn't care who got hurt."

"Suit yourself." She lets out regarding the stake the other has fashioned being still held in hand.

"It kind of reeks in here. Half makes me want to go try my hand at getting through the blizzard. It's gotten worse if you hadn't guessed." Letting out a sigh and accepting this would be where they would both be staying, she watches the blonde as she checks her phone, bending at the knee as she lowers herself to sit on the floor, one knee up and other leg stretched out. When she's spoken too again her head lifts to look at the other and she lets out a hum.

"I haven't been out much, so this is like the first I've seen of this." Between Zakar and that woman who had blood that burned and soured, rancid on her tongue, save for a few outings, Madison had stayed mainly holed up in her loft.

She leers. If this is one of those body-snatchers, she doesn't have any way of telling. She tries to brainstorm some sort of half-assed litmus check - she knows she's Birdie, and that's all she's going to have to rely on.

She made her way to the car, opening the driver's side and setting the gun down in the middle of them, as Birdie had done before.

"I want to bring him back to life, tear strips of his skin and flesh off in the most unpleasant ways, and feed them to him, then let him heal and do it all again," she spoke, voice shaking with anger, "but yeah, I'm fine. We have two more places to hit." She was good at shoving the trauma down, but even as she started the engine of Birdie's truck, the tears stung her eyes.

She sits unmoving, the only sound being the engine idling, knuckles turning white with how hard she grips the wheel.

"They were unrecognisable, Birdie."

Unrecognizable Thao had said. Everyone who ever crossed paths with that man is unrecognizable in one way or another. He's filth is - was - is sticky and filthy and caustic. Irrevocable. She doesn't voice this, because Thao knows. They both do - but confronting it is different.

In its own twisted way, it's a lucky run that her family was taken away quick. Parents, sister, and then, when she'd emerged from that hell a vampire, she'd taken her lover in the throes of thirst. For all the misery and all the woe, having nothing left had meant having nothing to lose, and without that she wouldn't have taken Skinner off the board. Still, looking at Thao, she wouldn't go back to it. Having someone to lose has been nice in its own way, even if it means death for her peace of mind.

She's about to answer - that yeah, Vampires puked, and it sucks because puking blood sucks, but then Thao finds out the hard way. It's not the first time she's watched somebody spill their shit, and her jaw clenches briefly at the sympathy.

At first she stays not talking, and sits in pitying observation, but the passenger door thumbs shut as she exits to round the vehicle, and offers a touch of compassion in rubbing at the woman's back. "You know we... feel shit differently - heavier. What feels good feels... you know, great. What feels bad though..."

Thao had never been good with impulse control; even when they were younger, despite having big dreams and fighting for them, she would make dumb decisions at most turns based entirely on impulse. This was a dumb decision, she knew that, but she opened the file anyway.

The first page contained her basic information and picture, and the plans that Skinner had for her - he had executed them almost right to the tee, yet even he couldn't foresee his death and her turn. Upon turning to the next page, her jaw steeled, teeth grinding as she was confronted with pictures of what he did to them.

It was hard at first - Birdie wonders, if Skinner just stopped compelling people at some point - if that's the only reason Thao hasn't learned until now just what all had come to pass - what was intended.

There's a bit of envy in her at the notion, but nothing the supercedes the empathy or the guilt - like as not she'd have done Thao the bigger favor by leaving her in an open field to find the sun instead of leaving her in that apartment.

That guilt weighs heavy, heavy enough that Birdie turns enough to get out of the way and doesn't protest when Thao starts to douse the place.

She gives a quick scan about the place - considers stuffing as much of the files in that drawer as she can under her arm, but it's pointless - they're hurt or dead or something worse.

It's another hard lesson she gets to learn in a lifetime course on too little too late.

"Madison. Not sweetheart." She says simply, body starting to relax, a sign maybe that she isn't about to attack, a glance towards the door she had just come through. Though her ears stay trained.

"I have no idea. I was hoping if I got to the mansion maybe one of the others would. Can't say I've ever seen a firehydrant sprout legs outside of a fucked up horror game." She looks back to the blonde.

Her eyes cast to the stake in her hand, and then back to Madison. "I think I'll keep it."

She mentally cordons the space off between them - her side, the other person's side. The whole place smells like pepperoni grease and olive oil - in a way that might turn her stomach if she had a real, functioning stomach to turn. The wood does at least lower, even if it's still in her hand as she takes her phone out to check for missed calls or texts - cool on the outside, frantic on the inside as nothing really seems to be working right.

Every time she's thought about it for more than a minute, though, her mind turns to Birdie. Birdie's helped her heal, helped her through all of the insecurity. It wasn't easy between the two of them to begin with, and some days it was harder to allow herself to even be seen by her.

After a bit, she nods thoughtfully. "I think I don't like it?" She says, matter-of-factly, shrugging her shoulders as if to imply— 'what can ya do'? "But I'm jealous and I don't like sharing?" She never has - the concept is alien to her - maybe it's the romantic idea of devotion she holds on to too tightly, but it is how it is. "I thik if you did... want to, there's a talk there, and I don't know how it goes but... you know... it's a talk." She nods again - a little nervous. "A talk we can have. If you want to have it."

She smiles though, and stands, because the food is good, but it's the person behind it that means more, and she rounds the table to drape herself across Lara, pressing lips to her cheek - close to but not on top of the marks - in case its a bad pain day.

Her words process in their mind, connecting the dots on just what she is suggesting. "Guess I'm just faster." She replies and then there is a crack, the broom handle in the other's hands breaking in two. She tenses, shifts into the defensive.

"And I think I just worked smarter instead of harder. Careful where you point that thing, my clan isn't the most forgiving." A lie, she'd be an after thought in what had happened for the day at most. She doubts a family who has lived so long would bother with the disappearance of nuisance.

"Most clans don't do much forgiving, sweetheart." She says.

There's a really deeply annoyingly pregnant pause between them. The girl isn't making moves. She isn't either. Whatever passes for an adrenaline spike is starting to chill the fuck out now, as she doesn't hear whatever the fuck creepy shit is going on outside now.

"You know what the hell's going on out there?"

The stick stays raised - not exactly a threat, but a warning.

There was no pride in escaping the hell that had taken so much from her and starting over, only to find that the new house was just another haunted place. Months spent chasing spirits out of the walls and cleaning whatever leftover shit had been rotting in the basement. They'd put in the work, and it still hadn't worked. Assholes still chased after them, the dead kind and the living, waited with held breaths and weapons tucked behind their backs, only to drive the knife in the moment you got close enough.

But she liked to pretend it was better, that they were better, that she was better. For a while, she'd actually believed it.

"That's fucking bullshit." Anika leaned forward on the table and pushed the blonde's overly sweet coffee out of reach. "You ain't ever gonna say some shit like that." She studied her closely, eyes turned to slits. "You okay? You possessed or some shit? Who's in there?" She nudged her chin toward the vampire. Birdie was tougher than that. She'd never make peace with some bullshit storm. "Is Lara getting used to it?"

Then there's a sea change, and it's almost like she snaps out of a trance when Anika pushes the issue closer and the coffee and its distraction further away. Birdie nearly winces, blinking like she's woken up out of a dream.

"I..."

She shakes her head - Anika, for her part, keeps pushing.

"Look..." Would Lara? "She-"

It's like the questions have blossomed a headache, a migraine's spike driving into the connective tissue holding her brain together. She just hasn't thought about it - and here, thinking about it, the sense of it slips off her like oil. She can't really protest, but the idea of confronting it makes that drill-bit feeling worse.

So she stands up. "I gotta get going."

Birdie stalks out after smashing a wad of useless cash and coin on the table, and pulls her hood over her head as she skulks down the bit of sidewalk in front of the place, and around the corner towards her truck, moving quick. She has to get away from Anika - from her blunt-force questions and stupid appeals.

She's stopped though at the sight of somebody by her vehicle, somebody that looks like an unfinished sketch of her, weird trails of silver ink still filling in places. The way it moves isn't exactly human either, but she finds she can't stop looking at it - at herself.

She looks around, seeing nothing of worth, her nose filled with the scent of stale blood. It was something she had never smelled before, as a vampire; it was enough for nausea to rise up her throat. Birdie unshoulders the shotgun and Thao suddenly remembers danger could be lurking, clicking the safety of her own gun but keeping her finger off the trigger, for now.

Nodding, she starts towards the office, slowly. Thao does what they do in the shows, weapon steadied in front of her and checking each corner of the room before proceeding to the office door. It's locked, or jammed, she isn't sure which but with one swift kick it's open, hinges broken.

Probably worse than a blood farm, but Thao couldn't think about that. There was no one here now, no one they could save; whatever happened, it was done with.

The office was just that, papers strewn across the desk, filing cabinets along the wall and a half-finished bottle of whiskey on the desk. Clearly, someone had thought they'd be returning here. The papers on the desk were of no importance, invoices long paid for services rendered an age ago, so she moved to the filing cabinet opening drawers and flicking through the files until something popped out at her.

No bodies, at least, is good.

Birdie had done work to chase Skinner here, out of the Nevada desert, further north, further west. A dog chasing down a dirty hare, she had kicked the door in on many such places, always a step behind her target but just in time to run afoul of his cronies.

She hopes - maybe with futility - that the emptiness of this place means him being gone has wiped his smear off the map, but absence of power creates a vacuum; this she knows.

Thao's voice calls her name and she turns, a flash of recollection; needles in her skin, Birdie Birdie Birdie. It'll look so good. It'll make him happy, seeing his name on you. She shakes it away, stepping out of the room and into the office, sizing the file up before closing the space between the two of them.

A tilt of her head follows. She moves to the same drawer, fishing through, and finds another one, then another - names that are familiar, names that aren't.

She wonders if there was ever something like this on her - by now, it's all burnt away; her family, her old life, anything she might have ever been without all of this - dead potential.

"Really?" That surprises her, somewhat. She'd always thought that Birdie hated the idea of her at the Cabaret - then again, it's been a very long time since they've even talked about what she used to do. For Lara, it's still somewhat of a sore spot to think about, even with apologies and making up for it.

Sitting back in the chair, she shakes her head. "You thinking about the other thing?"

It's not news that some of the girls at the Cabaret do more than dance. It's part of the furniture at this point. Below mention. The workers there are free to do what they want to do so long as any mess gets addressed and any... untoward action gets dealt with.

"Mm, so I heard." The fledgling comments, stepping out of the car and making her way towards the alley. "There's a cellar entrance just up here, one of his less than finer hideouts, but it was close to town for emergencies, I suppose." She shrugs, not pretending to know what Skinner's true motivations for each of them would have been. Honestly, she didn't care to know either; she just wanted them gone.

Reaching down, Thao rips away the padlock and chain on the cellar door and looks to Birdie. She counts to three in her head, throwing the doors open and checking for any obvious sign of recent life. Not seeing any, she steps down, descending into the abyss. This couldn't take all day, she doubts either of them has the time or the energy for that, so it would be a quick look through anything left there to see if anything was remotely useful, then burn the place, she imagines. Make sure that no one can ever make use of it, or Skinner, again.

"Every roach has to have a hole or two to scurry into," she says.

Thao tears off the lock, and before they go in, Birdie holds the pistol from the truck seat up. "I get it, pea shooters don't matter, but they still hurt. Take it." An ounce of prevention or whatever. Birdie follows behind Thao, the contents of the gas can in her other hand sloshing about, providing their descent with an strange score.

The basement into which they descend is dank and dark. Couches dot the first room, an old TV, a desk littered with money bands, drugs, and viles of stale blood. Birdie tries a pull-chain for a light but there's no power. Setting down the gas can, she unshoulders her shotgun, flipping off the safety as she peers down a hallway lined with rooms, most seemingly empty. "Door at the end of the hall, probably some kinda office or safe-room or something. Probably check there."

She looks with some level of disgust at the small rooms lining the basement hallway. They look like small cells - most with little more than a rotten mattress inside. "Blood farm, maybe. Or worse." Memories - unpleasant ones - flood into her mind.

Better you than me.

Runs through her head. The only thing her is awkwardness, because now there is a possibility of a fight, and the urge to go home. Well the mansion. Feels top priority. Though a part of her does wonder if that'd be the best place to be. Zakar is back, she isn't sure if he resides in the mansion yet, but she does know he is in the city and that meant pressure. Pressure to perform, pressure to behave accordingly, the leash is tighter with him so near.

She turns to her. "But this is kind of my hiding spot." Birdie's shoulders shrug. "And I think its funny you're in here, looking fine, you know, your own words, but me I'm covered in the funk."

She foregoes a knife, because a knife isn't what she needs if the dead-head across from her is one of these fuckin' pod people. She breaks a broom-handle in half.

"So I think you're one of 'em."

She had admittedly left the other vampire to fend for herself as the most mundane objects began to shift and alter in the streets,Madison had never been a protector, her focus was herself. It was what ensured survival. There was only one group she had to be loyal to, and even then, it was to survive.

So sure, maybe it was a bitch move to wish the blonde luck when she saw an opening through the weird-ass creatures that had once been things as inconspicuous as a fire hydrant. But they didn't know one another. So no harm really, right? They'll never see one another again, and if she navigates the side streets well enough, avoids the freaky-ass creatures roaming through this fucking never ending snow she can make it to the mansion. The problem is that the snow isn't letting up and it's becoming more and more disorienting.

"Hey." She says, sucking air through the cigarette and pulling the fire with it, blowing smoke free from the corner of her mouth. Her smile is facetious and shit-eating.

Clapping her lighter shut, she cracks her neck and leans over, taking another drag. "So - asshole - fuck you, actually. You ever fight a rabid mailbox? I have, but only ever on some fucking primo-shit, I'll tell you that much."

"Kinda figured, considering you showed up." Thao teased, if only to ease the tension in the air. The trust wasn't totally there for either of them; you could feel it in the air, but there was also the want to trust. Thao didn't know if that was some fucked up version of a sire bond or something she actually wanted, but either way, Birdie was in her life - or death - whether she liked it or not.

Starting up the truck, she began to drive to the closest base of his, as her maker asked the same question that had been rattling around her head since she realised Skinner's strongholds still existed.

"I think I need to know. I may not want to know, and I already realise I'm not going to like what I read, but... I need to know what he did to them." If Thao were honest, she had a little sliver of hope that instead of killing them, he'd decided it would be crueller to turn them - she didn't see Skinner coming to that conclusion, but the hope still stayed.

"We need to be careful going in, looking around. Asshole probably had booby-traps or something, either set them up when he moved onto a new place, or so that only trusted people could get in and out." A beat, "either that or he was an idiot that set no traps because his ego thought that no one would dare try to go against him and gain access."

The subject changes as they near their first destination, something she's thankful for. "Most places I cleared out were pretty desolate," she says, opening the glove box and pulling out another pistol in a holster. She places it on the seat between them.

Birdie'd spent the years between her death and her arrival in Port Leiry as a traitor to her own kind, stalking vampires connected to Skinner and extracting information from them with a biblical prejudice. "I don't think he cared to trap most of them but maybe here he got more paranoid." She checks her phone one more time before turning it off. "Guy always preferred putting on a show, who knows."

"Who'd you piss off?"

Not Birdie specifically, as annoying as she was, Anika doubted she was capable of dropping a plague on an entire town. It had to be somebody else, or something else, maybe the kind of creature that liked to shit where it ate. At least everything else looked the same. The buildings, although buried beneath layers of snow, still looked the same, and the people wrapped up in thick coats and knitted hats, wore the same faces she remembered. It was the same fucking miserable town.

How much longer, Reid? He'd tried to convince her she had friends and allies here, bastards carrying the same kind of fate she did. Anika wasn't so sure, when Birdie looked perfectly content where she was.

"You don't look too bothered by any of this shit."

"Jim Cantore," she answers with glib sarcasm as the topic of the kid is abandoned for the elephant taking a big fat snowy shit on the town. Birdie dumps so much sugar in this coffee that, were she not already corpse, would surely make one out of her. When she sips it, she's unsurprised; dull as dishwater, and she's not so gauche as to dribble a slug of waitress blood into her coffee in front of Anika fucking Booker.

What she says next is a bit of a hammer to the side of her head. Birdie feels the truth worm it's way through the weird foggy layers of complacency. It's not normal, right? Sundown at three-thirty and endless flurries in the middle of, fuck, what is it, April? May?

"You get used to it," she says. If Anika can deflect, so can she. "Just. Port Leiry shit, I guess, you know."

The headache she'd started to feel spiking in her brain fades then, chased off by her indifference. Anika'll understand soon enough. "Some shit out there, got us trapped in here." It feels weird to say it. "Just gotta live with it."

[ sms — birdie ] are you busy? i need your help with something [ sms — birdie ] he has places left, hidden around town [ sms — birdie ] i want to burn them to the ground, and it seemed like a good trauma bonding opportunity.

Thao had only recently discovered that some of Skinner's little hideouts still existed around Port Leiry. She had wrongly assumed that when he had been killed, they'd destroyed all the old 'bases' he'd built. The young vampire was sure there would be some still existing outside of the confinements of the town, but they weren't her problem. Port Leiry needed well and truly cleansed of Skinner, and if she were honest, she was hopeful that she could find some information he left lying around whilst they did it.

But she needed Birdie at her side. Someone who knew what she had been through, that shared trauma, and could hopefully keep her grounded, and Thao could return the favour if it were needed.

She made it to the meeting spot they agreed on when it got dark enough, which was thankfully much earlier, with the storm clouding out the sun.

"So he has three bases here that I know of, some outside of Port Leiry too, but they're not our priority. I want to burn them to the ground after we look for information. I'm hoping... I'm hoping that he left notes lying around. I want to find out what really happened to my parents."

It doesn't take her longer than a few seconds to reply to the text;

>> thao ; be there. where am i meeting u

She rolls up in the same truck she'd hunted Skinner and his cronies across the desert in, and when she gets out, she's carrying a shot-gun in one hand, stakes laid in a strap around her thigh - the same kit she'd rolled into town with more than two years ago - and a can of gasoline in the bed for when they're done.

They dispense with the greetings and Thao explains. Birdie searches her expression, her body language - part of her is afraid to trust The Artist, even if she knows now that the why of it all, of what happened to and between them, boils down to manipulation and coercion, that they're both victims just as much as they're both perpetrators.

"I'll help," she says - that might have already been clear, but now it's out in the air.

Birdie'd cleaned out a few of these places during her war on Skinner, and she knows of more than a few of the ones outside of the city - down in Death Valley and the Mojave and Sonora. She tosses her keys to Thao, because her fledgling knows the way, but once their in the truck's cab, she turns to her, passing streetlights dancing shadows across a furrowed brow.

"You sure you wanna know?" She finally asks it. "Might not be... good."