#dean walker

Still, Dean reasons, if anyone was going to jump them to keep them from going further, they'd have done it by now. He waves his hand.

"Alright, you know the plan. I'm going to try and get to the offices up there, you-"

"Go for the cameras! I know, Dean!"

Dean hisses as Rigby's voice bounces out across the wide open of the grand hall, accusing, miffed, and above all else, loud. He swings about and lands a hand on the smaller vampire's face, palm smack over his mouth.

"Does the word 'stealth' mean anything to you?" He grits out between elongated fangs.

What he gets for his troubles is a hand wet with cold, pink Kindred spit.

"No one around," Rigby says when Dean's taken back his arm and is furiously wiping it on his shirt.

"That we know of," Dean sighs. "Look, as much as...we have to trust that she's got her reasons for doing this, Parthena is still technically going against her sect here."

"Stolen books for stolen magic from stolen blood," Rigby nods.

Something like that. If they were going to get anything, it was going to be from the Tremere and it wasn't going to be easy. Parthena had told them Sturbridge had made that more than clear, as intrigued as she was by the (totally hypothetical) notion of something like Sammy.

Dean casts a last look out at the room, just in case something had changed, which after a minute it appeared it hadn't, and then nods to Rigby.

Like a baggy-coated flash of light, the Malkavian was off, making for the stairs that would lead down to the security offices and other electronic control centers for the building. As much as the art was kept under so much lock and key, Dean knew there was other, more precious things to be had that employed defenses far more effective than a simple magnetic strip lock on the door. Keeping the mundane authorities away for even a few minutes could mean the difference between finally getting some answers, and. Well.

Dean just wouldn't think of the possibility of failure.

-

"One door, two door, grey door...more grey door..." Rigby hummed to himself as he trawled the labyrinth of corridors and hallways. The building above was much nicer, with much more natural lighting. Everything looked the same.

Floor one, exit. Stairwell, emergency exit. Exibibits 1-5.

Rigby blinked at the words as they cast their shadows and seared lines into his vision. Could mean anything. Could mean nothing.

"One wire, and no stress, wire me a line, 'cause I've got a ticket to ri-ide..." he sighs, rounding another corner.

A sound reaches his ears, and Rigby is suddenly still as the living dead. They won't see him if he doesn't move, and Rigby has no intentions to. Eyes sweep from side to side. to his destination - nothing. To the hallway just past - nothing there.

Like a strobe in front of his eyes, green and red and electric and leaving trails in his vision, Exit. Exit. Exit. E x it x. T iTexit EEEEEExiExtii-

"Soon," Rigby says to the sign in the reflection of the shiny floor.

It settles it enough to find the door he needs.

Unlocking it, and pulling it open, he is face to face with a room of circuit breakers in metal cages of chain-link. Dimly lit, thankfully, just a few halogen security bulbs keeping the place only just navigable by mortal eyes, casting long, orange streaks between the shadows. The floor was concrete and bare, cables snaking here and there (all in orderly fashion, of course.)

Rigby steps in an closes the door behind him.

Exhibits 1-5, Exhibits 6-11, EEEEEExhibits 12-13-

Ah.

Rigby pauses in his wandering and reading. His foot just above taking another step.

On the ground before him, in possibly the darkest shadow yet, was something....something. It gleamed wetly, slugishly. Long lines, fading away into the concrete ground in rounds and shapes. Rigby blinked hard, and Looked.

Those long lines now formed an even wider shape, with even more inside. A circle. Drawn in dark, thick, old vitae.

Rigby tilts his head.

He bites his thumb, cold blood rising in a dot to the surface, and he reaches out.

-

Dean had been told where he'd find what the head of the Chantrey wanted, but it seemed finding that was going to be its own adventure. He darted from corner to corner, using his passcard as often as he was able. The offices of the Met were as lovingly (and expensively) decorated as the rest of the place, and Dean more than suspected that some of the art that likely should have been out on show or kept in the archives was in fact adorning the walls and hallways of the desk drudgery of people with too much time and money on their hands.

He was no Indiana Jones, though. It was all technically in a museum, and he didn't really care either way. Not what he was concerned about.

Finally, he came to a door. This door was just like any other door in the winding mess of office space, save for one, tiny detail he'd been told to look for.

Near the bottom, almost touching the floor, scratched into the wood of the door, was a little symbol.

A half-circle, the open end of it facing down, and from that a cross.

A little, line-art ankh.

If he could breath, he'd have huffed out a relieved puff. Good. The Tremere hadn't lied. Yet.

Dean reaches out and grasps the handle of the door, lifting his keycard to open it, when something,

happens.

All of a sudden, it's like all the air in the building is gone. No, it's - it's like it's inverted, like Dean is breathing backwards rather than even as his dead body still can, and, in each, the taste of blood - Kindred blood - coats his mouth.

Almost as quickly as it had happened, it stops. Dean blinks, but

then something else.

He's in the air. He's suddenly unmoored from the bounds of gravity, as though it had simply stopped working. Dean flails, a cry at his lips he barely suppresses as he writhes in the air, only managing to flip himself around. Around him, nothing else has changed, it's just him, though, as he watches, a potted plant in the corner begins to, before his eyes, wither and die, and the leaves crumble to dead, dried dust.

And just as before, suddenly, it stops.

Dean does let out a too-hearty "fuck!" as he's suddenly dropped five feet back to the floor, landing almost on his own head.

Growling, he stands, panic felt in every follicle of hair and every nerve end.

"That crazy fucking Malk is gonna get us-"

Dean doesn't have half a moment before there's long, steel-enforced, bony claws smashing into the wood where his head had been less than a second before, the both of them inhumanly fast.

Dean whips around, fangs out, reflexes on edge and powered by his own blood as he rounds on his attacker.

They're a woman -at least, he thinks so - who stands hunched and glaring at him. She's wearing clothing that one could call 'streets-chic' as having known Rigby, this is a rich man's imitation of the fashions of those without means to buy clothing often. Fitted black hoodie, long dark cowl hood that frames choppy, short blond hair, jeans that look like their pockets and belts might pack a bit more heat if the kevlar vest she was also wearing was anything to go by.

One arm, the one she'd extended to attempt to impale his head with, retreated and he could see the massive, hooked claws that sunk back into the skin. The knuckles of that hand were adorned with metal claws to match.

Her eyes, narrowed in rage at her miss, were slitted and green.

Cat. Animal.

Dean didn't have a chance to rattle off anything scathing about a Gangrel playing housecat to the Camarilla before something

happened.

Suddenly, the world was black. A humming, dark abyss that surrounds them both, that eats the world. If there is anything beyond this, it's impossible to tell. And from the sounds of it, the harsh cry almost lost in the living void around them, the Gangrel woman is feeling this too.

-

"Not that, oh bad Rigby! DON'T WORRY DEAN I GOT IT!" Rigby shouts to himself as he Sees beyond Seeing in order to even find the circle again in the Oblivion he'd accidentally inflicted upon the building, biting his hand for the third time and starts re-re-writing what he'd changed.

-

Dean wonders if this is what it's like to see for the first time when the endless, choking darkness was suddenly gone as though it had never been there, because shit, even the office hallway looked like the light of fucking God after that.

For a moment, Dean and the Gangrel can only blink stupidly at each other.