An Evensong (open post for hammer_helsing)

[dossiered]

Alani is the last one awake, listening to Bucharest sleeping around her.

Blood oozes sluggishly through the dressing pressed to her side.

Solomon was the last one to finally give up and get sleep. He hummed half-remembered folk songs in his old-man baritone as he dutifully checked and re-checked the hoard of Mossad equipment in the safehouse. Mischa and Sinclair drilled in hand-to-hand until exhaustion crept in on silent feet and took them both down. Renaud retired with the Dossier. It's for the best; Alani's hand still stings from when she struck him full across the face.

She sits cross-legged on the floor staring unseeing at her laptop screen. The news feeds are a blur of light in the darkened safehouse. She rubs her eye with the heel of her uninjured hand, trying to focus. The words still blur a moment later. Bucharest sleeps around her. The world spins on.

(Somewhere on the rooftops of Bucharest, a sample of her blood remains spattered across the stone. Her fingerprints remain on an empty crystal drinking glass in a nightclub. Fibers from her shawl cling stubbornly to the joints of a drainage pipe.)

(The eyes of EDOM remain fixed on Bucharest. Dracula's minions still haunt the city like a waking nightmare.)

She shivers. Tugs her jacket on. A walk in the cold night air will clear her head. A walk around the block before sleep.

Comments

Sorry for the delay, I didn't know this had gone up. :P

[hammer_helsing]

He did not care for Bucharest. He never had. A century ago, true, it had been a beautiful place - but the 20th century had been hard on it, from his point of view. Between the War, then the Cold War, it had been essentially walled off from him for decades.

Hidden from the hunters by the Iron Curtain, vampires had flourished here. And yet, he walked the streets unafraid. He had knowledge, and he had faith - the greatest weapons in the fight against the vampire and Dracula. But he had not come seeking them, not this time at least. In the night air, his cane clicks against the stone. In his other hand, a small valise. Wrapped tightly against the cold, he marches on.

He knew he would find them here, somewhere. Over the long, far too long, span of his life, he had spread webs far and wide. Once, long ago, an ally had compared his network to that of the fictional Shadow, a network born of obligation and repaid favors. His presence was never showy - never, ever that - but in the right corners, generations of functionaries knew that when the man with the aqualine face asked them questions, they were to provide answers. Their grandparents and parents had told them to.

He knew they were here, that the vaguely-understood EDOM was looking for them. He hoped to gain a better grasp on the former, from them. Modern government was beyond his purview, unearthly and slowly failing.

He knew what they looked like, and that they were thought to be here, that was all. But he had faith. He would find them, or they would find him. And then, perhaps, the pieces on the board could be re-arranged.

No worries! I totally spaced on saying anything like a doofus.

[dossiered]

Three generations of analysts and agents, spymasters and bonebreakers, know what it means when the man with the narrow face appears. It means danger is on the rise, and whatever answers they give him may be enough to stave it off for another day. The world has survived this long thanks to that network. Files in MI5 are carefully preserved of every interdiction. Her Majesty's servants do not forget. Institutions have a long memory.

(Even those suborned in the service of another. Even after the blood has drained, there are those who remember his name and curse him.)

But now, the shadows in Bucharest feel oppressive. The air is brittle and cold, a single breath away from shattering into ice. Alani shivers. Tightens the scarf around her neck. Hurries her pace as she rounds the corner.

Then stops dead.

(The memory is almost completely faded, but she remembers the man talking to her fellow agent, Daniel Biggs. She remembers the bead of sweat trickling down the side of Biggs's face as they talked. She remembers the two of them turning to look at her desk. The memory ends there as if snipped by a pair of scissors.)

She swallows around a throat suddenly gone very dry. The only blessing is that her voice does not waver in the slightest as she speaks.

"...Afraid you're a long way from London."

What's one more ghost of the past to contend with?

[hammer_helsing]

He'd been scrupulous, over the years, to use different names. Even today, he doubted more than a handful suspected who he really was. So it would be Mr. Lorrimer. Mr. Freidkin. Mr. Samuels. Montcalm. So many others, one every ten to fifteen years, on average. He wasn't even sure which one she'd know. If she knew any.

The upside, of course, is that he thought this process might take days.

But he inclined his head, very slightly, in acknowledgement.

"I think you'll find we all are, Ms.McNiven."

[dossiered]

They all use different names. Sometimes, it gets difficult to remember which one is the real name.

The street is quiet. Empty. The streetlights cast a sickly yellow glow across the pavement. The buildings are dark. Down the block, her team sleeps the sleep of the exhausted. Whatever nightmares haunt them in the waking world are forgotten for the moment.

Would that forgetting this was as easy as forgetting her past was.

"Mister Samuels." One foot shifts back, prepared for any sudden move on his part. The corner of Alani's mouth twitches as if she isn't sure whether to smile or snarl. "Did... did the Service send you? You came alone, didn't you? No Biggs?" There's no mistaking the way she glances past his shoulder for a split-second. "This seems a little less than coincidental."

"Coincidence" has rapidly become a meaningless word.

"If- if you need me for a job, afraid I'm not working for MI5 any more."

[hammer_helsing]

He arched an eyebrow at that movement. He hardly looked a threat. He appeared to be in his late fifties, at best - which, in many ways, he was. But perhaps the reputation was more than even he knew. But in a world used to shadows, someone who maintained their mystery was different, he supposed.

In the distance, he heard church bells, and his head turned, slightly. He wondered, off-handedly, what it meant. He didn't believe in coincidences, either. He pulled his pocket watch out, glancing at it. Two minutes to the hour.

The watch was returned smoothly and he faced her again.

"Yes, I came alone. I usually do. And I'm not with the Service. Never have been, in fact." There was a brief smile at the last. "As it happens, I'm not even one of Her Majesty's subjects - but that's neither here nor there."

He took a few careful steps closer, leaning on the cane a bit more than he needed to - the last thing he wanted was her going for a gun. Either he'd get shot or - from the looks of her - she'd fall down from blood loss.

"I have come for something akin to a job, and it's because you no longer work for MI5. We both know MI5 is useless to our common purpose."

He doubts he needs to say that much more to let her know, that he does.

[dossiered]

It might be the blood loss. It might be the fear. It might be the hour of night.

(The memory that arrived in that moment, vanishing just as quickly: the stench of antiseptic and the look of blood on hospital linens.)

She paused there for a moment as the words sank in. Then, finally, her shoulders dropped the slightest bit. Another shift in posture, less towards "flight" and leaning forward. She put her hands in her pockets. The church bell ran again in the distance to mark the top of the hour.

"Then you know."

About the vampires. About Dracula. About the forces arrayed against the few trying to bring an end to the monsters in the night.

About the gaping hole in Alani's memory.

"-He's close. Sent a message to one of ours. His lackeys nearly pulled a snatch-and-grab on us earlier tonight." A shrug of one shoulder. "I... don't know how we got away clean, to be honest."

"Maybe we didn't. But he's here."

Dracula.

[hammer_helsing]

"Yes, I do. Most of it, at any rate. There are still details to be discovered. But yes, I knew he was here. Not for long, and on what business I could not tell you. He has begun to make moves in the game for the first time in decades. Thus, I must as well."

He wondered, for a moment, if she was about to fall down. He set his bag down, and worked at pulling off his gloves.

"You did not, because a fundamental fact you must understand about Dracula is that he works at the mind more than the body. Oh, he kills and maims, yes - but his true strength lies in what he can do to the minds of those around him. No-one comes away from any encounter with him unscathed. The question becomes whether it breaks the mind in question, or tempers it."

He offers a small, kindly smile.

"But you and your team are alive. You escaped a trap that he himself set for you. That is a victory. And it's time to make more of them. There are things you need to know...but not here, in the street. And not until I've had a chance to make sure your wound isn't worse than you're letting on."

He's experienced enough to know the signs.

[dossiered]

Escaping was not easy. A desperate flight across the rooftops of Bucharest in the middle of the night took every scrap of training Alani ever had back in MI5 just to make it clear. And even then, it wasn’t without blowback.

She brushes one hand across her shirt and winces as it comes back with blood on her fingertips.

“He was toying with us. Like we’re just- toys to him.”

(The glassy look in Renaud’s eyes will haunt her to her dying day.)

Her mouth tastes sour. She staggers, winds up leaning against a light post for support. The night has been a long one. Life is no longer as clear-cut and simple as it was a month ago.

[hammer_helsing]

He moves then, putting his case down in front of her, and fishing inside, ultimately taking out a carefully folded handkerchief in a small wooden box.

"That is what he does. Killing you is not the power he craves - but the corruption of your souls, your degradation. Death is merely a grace note come the end of it, to him."

He pauses a moment, letting her inspect the clearly dry handkerchief.

"I'd like to see your wound, please, because we're of no use to each other if you bleed out in the middle of the road. This handkerchief is imbued with waters from the shrine of Rita of Cascia, latterly known as St. Rita. It will heal you."

He leaves unsaid the corollary to that - it has to be used by someone whose faith is very strong. But his is - it's hard not to, when you know with certainty that there is indeed a God. If nothing else, the night creatures busily trying to corrupt or undo creation are proof enough.

"She also has lesser-known associations," he added, moving towards her, "such as being a patron of seemingly lost causes."

Apt, he thinks.

[dossiered]

Alani’s chuckle is utterly without mirth. “Not filling me with confidence with that ‘lost causes’ thing, sir.”

It feels like a lost cause. Outgunned, outnumbered, harried like the fox running from a pack of bloodhounds, and all they have to show for it is... a packet of old letters, a heavily-annotated file, and a flash drive full of stolen medical information.

And, of course, enough waking nightmares to fill a lifetime.

She hesitates for a moment. Just a moment. Then, gingerly, she pulls up the hem of her blouse. The attempt at medical care is passable, more akin to a soldier patching up a friend rather than a doctor treating a patient. Blood has seeped through the gauze and left a red smear across both skin and fabric.

“Gunshot,” she adds lamely after a moment. “Probably meant to incapacitate instead of kill.” The implication is unpleasant.

“...They wanted me alive.”

[hammer_helsing]

"Faith, Miss McNiven. You must remember that. In yourself, and your compatriots, if nothing else. Hold onto that, no matter what. Keep that ember alive. Just because a cause seems lost does not mean it can't be found again."

He nods at her explanation, looking carefully. Bullet likely still internal. All to the best he has the handkerchief, then. Otherwise he'd have to extract it, and he doesn't trust his hands to that sort of delicate procedure anymore.

"As I said, degradation and the destruction of the soul. What good is simply killing you, after all? Now, hold tight. I can't promise this won't hurt."

And then the handkerchief is applied. He closes his eyes, muttering a silent prayer. And the sensation of burning will spread across the wound site, lancing out in different directions suddenly. He presses it into place, a hand moving, snake-like, to her shoulder to keep her from pulling away. It will hurt, considerably, for the better part of thirty seconds.

But when it's done, and the bloody handkerchief is pulled away, all that will be left is a small scar, as if it had been there for years. And a deformed bullet, sitting in the middle.

[dossiered]

It hurts like hell.

She doesn’t scream. She bites down on the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. Thirty seconds feels like a lifetime. It isn’t until the pain ceases that she allows herself a brief yelp in response. But the proof is there: a faded scar, a bloody handkerchief, and a badly-deformed slug from a 9mm handgun. She stares, blinking.

Looks up at his face.

Then she laughs low in her throat. “That’s one hell of a trick.”

The bells peal. Fifteen minutes past the hour. She cocks her towards the sound as it echoes through the darkened streets. As soon as it fades, she turns back to Van Helsing with a grace expression on her face.

“Listen, Dracula’s not the only one with boots on the ground. I do t know if you knew that, but we’re talking pros. Lamplighters.”

British.

[hammer_helsing]

He carefully folds it again, putting it into a pocket for disposal. The bullet he offers to her, either for a souvenir or to toss away - whichever she wants.

"Not really a trick, but one of many tools in the fight against evil."

But he nods, reaching into a jacket pocket.

"Then no time to chat, right now. Here." He hands it over, bending with a sigh to retrieve his case. "You'll find instructions there, on how to escape Bucharest unseen. In essence, a chicken truck. But the driver is trustworthy." His grandfather owed Van Helsing his life, after all. "From there, the rail lines will get you as far as Luxembourg."

He tips his hat to her.

"Meet me in Cherbourg in a week, at the address listed there. Oh, and make sure to destroy that note, hmm?" 'Address' was a misnomer - manor was more like it. But the upside to lurking in France was there were old buildings simply everywhere, that nobody ever thought to pay attention to.

One week. Should be enough time for her to convince her fellows, whether she comes alone or with them.

"If you're wondering why," he said, as he started to turn away, his face shaded by the street light, "I'll say this: there are many secrets I have to share with you. And between us, we will destroy Dracula forever. A good night to you, Ms. McNiven."