#colt 01

The speed is what sends her for a loop. Crossing the street is simple reflex, something she does without thinking, even when she's being careful. But while the city's had its share of cold winters, this is worse than anything she ever remembers.

She's not the only one either, as the locals, not used to the conditions, seem to have forgotten caution. Autumn hears the car skidding before she has the time to turn and face it, she's shouting out as somebody is fling themselves around her.

The car skid-speeds past, honking to warn others, and as she hits the slushy, grime-colored street snow, her mind flares a thousand alarm bells, and instinct tells her to kick and claw as she scrambles out from under the person. Her mind wars with her thudding heart to calm her down. "What the..." She gets the wherewithal to tap back into actually perceiving more than threats, only to be met with somebody who looked like he's stepped out of one of Anish's rodeo books.

"Uh... fu-... thanks." Autumn stammers breathlessly as she picks herself up, as if she hasn't just been thrown to the hard frozen ground, face still writ plain with surprise. "That woulda been a shit day."

A stupid, ironic chuckle follows. She'd have been fine. Probably. Maybe.

Special episode tonight, because she's got it on reasonably good authority that this is farmland owned and operated by some sort of weird vampire cult who uses the whole thing as a front for harvesting human blood for sale to the local populace nightwalkers.

A little bit of on-sight reporting so she can feel something.

Of course, a whole lot of nothing is what she finds out here in the middle of a field, and so she takes her show on the road, trudging out of the clearing where she's parked her van and kit and through the woods bordering the place. What lies ahead of her is a vast stretch of grassy nothingness, with a few far-flung outbuildings rising up out of the pasture behind some fencing. She makes quiet work of traversal, winding up inside of some barn that looks a little more disused than the others; a perfect place to hide something, in otherwords.

I've got my eyes on it, guys - Red River Ranch; local stories talk a lot about how this whole place got torched to cinders once, and it's had a few wild stories circulating about it ever since. Now, you may be asking, 'Dread, vampires sounds like it's out of your wheelhouse, but I'd say to you-oh, shit-

She becomes, in that instant, suddenly aware of the blink of an approaching light through the open door, bobbing in her direction like a will'o'wisp. Holly takes a detour, dipping into a tangle of old disused metal to hide from approaching footfalls. In those last few moments, she hisses a whisper into the microphone clipped to her jacket collar

-someone is coming inside the barn; what you are about to hear is very real-

People-watching is one of her favorite passtimes, and it likely will be, until the sun goes out, or until she does.

It eases some of the lonely nature of the thing.

Tressa Shaw is the one who speaks for the dead, in both matters of hurt and heart. But she finds, in recent days, weeks, months, that the dead are her only remaining friends. Abandoned by her sire, left lonesome by hunters, and sworn to take revenge for none of it.

It's a lonely life, surrounded by the dead, but a quiet one.

The frigid sky and its clouds offer vampires respite from nocturnal life, but she'd escaped that prison early in her undeath. Witch's Walk had been a frequent haunt of her and Jude's in their youth, and she has seen to it that his family will be cared for, kept, unabandoned. She does not speak with them though. Only watches, only ensures they are well. It is an emotional flare-up she is not used to experiencing; and so she is here, to have a quiet, tearless sob among memories.

But there is an intruder. Intruder? Fellow soul.

Do vampires have souls? Is a soul a real thing? Answers that aren't clear cut these days. Immediately, she considers him food; this is the instinctual notion of her being now. People do not become people until ruled out as prey. The extra step is bracing as the cold. Is she hungry? No. And not here. And not in broad daylight. The rules are the rules, whether in her mind or writ down somewhere in some old book, things are done a certain way for certain reasons.