Unfinished Fic Wednesday
Jun. 19th, 2013 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sienamysticThis is why none of the half-hearted attempts at novels I've started will never become anything - I generally can't plot for beans. Here is the unfinished bit of sequel to I Act Out And You Act Tough, a Leverage/Buffy crossover featuring Eliot and Faith and their encounter somewhere on a lonely back road. I wanted to have Faith meet the rest of the Leverage crew, and I have, but now I need to come up with some sort of con the team can pull on the vamp crew they've called Faith in to cope with, and my brain resolutely refuses to provide one. Maybe I should just start looking some up and cram one or two in to get me writing something, anything, to wind this story up. Or maybe they can start an elaborate con and Faith gets impatient, says "fuck this," and starts killing vamps. Except that would sort of diminish the Leverage side of the story. Arrgh. Suggestions or comments gratefully accepted.
Two pm on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and Faith was sitting beachside with a very large, and very girly red drink, testing out her theory that woman cannot live on Scotch alone. It was not what you’d call the most likely place to find her, kicking back in a little Florida town, but this particular assignment had been a rare opportunity to mix business and pleasure. Two baby slayers in the area had been struggling to put down a vamp with more savvy than the average, and Faith had been dispatched to lend assistance. Once things had been tidied up, Giles told her to stay and relax a bit, as there was apparently no urgent world-ending terror rampaging at the moment. So she pushed the baby slayers through a few training sessions and otherwise did nothing more strenuous than the occasional game of Frisbee on the sand. The first week was utter bliss. By the middle of the second week, she was bored out of her skull and getting itchy underneath her skin. Thankfully, Giles phoned up just before she started pondering bar fights and dodgy sex as a means to breaking up all that leisure time.
“Faith?” Giles’ voice was as it always was, precise, slightly comforting, and, well, tweedy. “I’ve gotten word about a case that needs looking into. Would you be able to get to Boston by tomorrow?”
“Boston?” Faith sat up, pushing her drink to the side. “I don’t go to Boston. Too many bad memories. You know that, Giles. Why ask?”
Giles hemmed a bit. “Well, I do know, and if you want me to send someone else, I can. But you’ve been asked for personally, so I thought I’d best let you know. I was contacted by a man you apparently assisted at some point in the past. He said his name was Eliot, and that he’d encountered you and learned a bit, let’s see, how did he put it? He’d learned about your expertise in certain difficult matters. I take it he was a bystander in something that came up?”
“Eliot, Eliot...wait, I know that name. I was passing through bum-fuck-east a while back, some place in Colorado, I think. It’s been at least two years, maybe closer to three. I stumbled over what turned out to be a sweet little setup for a vamp with a taste for bikers. Purely random, bad luck for her. Eliot was pretty handy in a fight, and he had a great...”
Giles cut in hastily. “That’s all I need to know, thank you. Anyway, he says that he has an issue in Boston that’s more along your lines than his, and wants to know if you will meet him in there and give him your assessment.”
Faith was quiet for a few minutes, and Giles was silent while she thought. Finally, she said, “All right. I’ll go check it out, at least.”
“If you find yourself...distressed,” Giles’ tone was sympathetic, “let me know immediately. We have other people in the area, and there’s no need for you stay there if it’s uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, yeah. No worries, if I get freaked out, you’ll be the first to hear. What the hell. Might as well test out the scar tissue, see how it holds up.” She hung up and sipped her drink, toying with the blue paper parasol that topped it. “Fucking Boston, huh? Fabulous.”
*******
Giles had texted her Eliot’s contact number, and she in turn had let Eliot know she was arriving early the next morning. He had sent her the address of what turned out to be a bar that was doing its best to straddle the line between “deliberately shaggy young professional” and “authentic lowbrow.” She pushed open the door and made her way into the dim interior.
Eliot looked up as she walked in. He was the same guy she remembered - compact, muscled in a non-showy way, and doing the whole leashed aggression thing that she found so hard to resist. He was sitting a table near the bar, talking intently with an older man with rumpled dark hair. Eliot stood up to greet her, his face creasing in an understated but welcoming smile.
“Been a while, Faith. Glad you could come assist on this.”
“Yeah, I’m the genuine good Samaritan.” She returned his smile, refraining from shading it with any sly innuendo. Best to keep things professional until she got more info. “What’s the word?”
“Let me introduce you, first. This is Nate Ford.” He gestured at the older man, who was regarding her intently. Aha. Boss man, had to be. Had the Giles aura, and she was willing to bet it came complete with the slightly dodgy morality. She shook his hand, smiled charmingly at him, and pulled up a chair at the table. The two men followed suit.
“I work with a team, based here in Boston. During one of our...operations” (Eliot stumbled slightly, as if unsure of what word to use) “recently, a team member saw something that wasn’t right. She reported it to the rest of us, and I wondered if it might be something more...” he hesitated.
“More in my ballpark?”
“Yeah, exactly. Your very weird ballpark.”
The older man dropped his chin slightly, and Faith realized that he was not convinced about any of this, up to and including her presence. She looked over at him. “I’m guessing you don’t buy it, huh?”
Before he could reply, three more people walked in from an adjacent doorway. An older brunette woman, very swank, led the way, followed by a tall black dude and a teeny blonde with a hint of crazy hovering around her. Aha. Dollars to doughnuts it was the blonde who saw the weird stuff. Thus, the disbelief.
Eliot made quick introductions all around, and got them settled around a table while he closed and locked the bar’s front door. He came back to the table and sat down.
“Parker, can you tell Faith what you saw?” He looked expectantly at the blonde, confirming Faith’s guess.
Parker huffed exasperatedly. “I’ve told you guys this a million times, and I still think you don’t believe me. I was being a waiter. So I was in the kitchen, because I needed a tray. There was a little office back there. Closed door, but a little window and blinds on it that were broken so I could see through part of it, so of course I looked. There was a big guy there. And he was talking to two other guys. And the big guy said something and the other guy totally grew fangs and a gross smooshy face, and bit the third guy. And there was blood everywhere. And I left before he could see that I saw. And I told Eliot that I had just seen somebody eat somebody else, and he turned a weird color, and then we called you. So I guess Eliot believes me, and I guess that means you’ll believe me, but I still think the rest of you don’t.”
She trailed off, scrunching up her face in an aggrieved manner.
Hardison, sitting next to her, made a placating gesture. “I believe you, Parker, it’s just that...it’s a weird story, that’s all.” Parker folded her arms and scowled at him. “You believe in UFOs. Don’t know what’s so hard about this.”
“Eliot suggested you’d have more expertise in this arena,” said Nate. “Would you mind letting us know what, exactly, this arena is?” The entire table turned to look at Faith, who shrugged. Best to get all the incredulity out of the way up front.
“Sounds like you got a vamp problem.”
Nate’s confused, “what?” was overshadowed by Parker’s triumphant crow. “I TOLD you guys it was a vampire! I told you I told you I told you!”
Eliot raised his voice to be heard over the confused babble that broke out. “I know you guys don’t believe it. I didn’t, until I saw one kill somebody. And then I saw Faith kill it. So can you all just shut up and let her talk?”
The room quieted down in a hurry and everyone turned back to Faith.
“So, yeah, vamps.” She made pointy teeth using her pointer fingers and grimaced at them. “It’s pretty funny, right? Except they’re real, not just made-up monsters. Killing them is what I do, basically. They’re not quite like what you’d see in the movies, but not too far off, either. They’re faster than people, stronger, heal quickly unless you kill them the right way. So you need somebody with some extra oomph to fight back.” She gestured to herself. “So you got moi. There used to be only one of us, but you’re in luck - these days we have a bigger team to field.”
“So your job,” asked Sophie, “is finding these creatures and killing them?” She was clearly having trouble with the concept but was trying her best to be polite.
“Yup. It’s what I do. Comes with a nifty title - slayer - and a lifespan that skews more to the short but glorious. However, I can bench-press a Buick. So, tradeoffs.” She pulled her backup stake from her jacket pocket and let it clatter on the table. Everyone looked at it, silently taking in the fact that it did indeed look like a stake for vampires, right out of every B movie ever made. Sometimes the props guy did get things right.
“It sounds like you have a power player here, a vamp who has enough strength and smarts to start running a gang. Nasty. People start dying just because they have no hesitation about killing like an ordinary crook might. They get greedy and all bloodlusty. So I’ll stick around and help you clean house.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” said Sophie, “but how do we know this isn’t some elaborate hoax? We’ve seen most of the cons out there,” (“Hell, we’ve run most of them,” said Hardison sotto voce behind her), but this all seems a little difficult to take in. I don’t know. I’d love to say that because Eliot vouches for you, it’s fine, but...this is a pretty big thing you’re trying to get us to accept.”
Faith leaned back in her chair. “Let me remind you folks that you called me here. I was sipping fruity beverages on the beach yesterday, I didn’t have to return to the blighted city of my birth until Eliot called in the favor.”
“I tried to tell them it was vampires,” said Parker. “Nobody listens to me.”
“I’m not going to patrol for vamps with the bunch of you yapping at my heels,” said Faith. “Want me to find a vamp and bring him here? Kill him in front of you? We could do it that way. Or you could trust your teammate. I did, after all, save his ass.”
Nate cleared his throat. “OK. At this point in time, I think we can just agree to accept your story. Frankly, if this is a con, it’s a lousy one, because...vampires, really? It would be aliens if you wanted to be more believable. There was a smothered protest behind him that involved the words “Roswell” and “government conspiracy.” Nate squelched Hardison with a glare, then turned back to Faith. “Please know it’s nothing personal, it’s just difficult for us to take in.”
“You can say ‘I told you so’ once they see real vampires,” offered Parker. “It’s almost more fun that way.”
“I think I just might,” said Faith.
***
They went back to the hotel kitchen where Parker had seen the vamp. Eliot flashed a badge from the county health inspection department, and barked at the poor assistant manager until he left them alone to roam through the kitchen. There was the office, broken blinds and all, but there was no sign of any blood, and nobody resembling any of the men Parker had described.
The rest of the team fanned out to look at the rest of the kitchen and question the staff, while Nate and Faith stood in the middle of the small office.
“Parker doesn’t lie,” said Nate. “She just doesn’t always see things in a straightforward way. But she must have seen something here.”
Faith knelt and pushed a small, two-drawer file cabinet away from where it stood on the wall. “She sure did. Somebody didn’t clean up quite well enough.”
A smear of dried blood stained the wall.
“So. Someone was killed here. According to Parker and this blood, anyway. And then whoever did it disposed of the body and did their best to clean up the place. What does that tell us?”
“Tells us they want to keep using this place,” said Eliot, who had arrived in the doorway. “So they’ll be back. And they have to be a little careful, because other people use this office that don’t know what goes on, but they’re careless because they could have just killed the person off-site somewhere instead of having to scrub the place down.”
“Vamps are usually not really good with the self-control,” said Faith. “He may be smart and powerful enough to tell other vamps what to do, but he may not be able to keep himself in check even when it would be better for him. Basically, bossman got mad, killed the guy who pissed him off, left the cleanup job to the underlings.”
Nate slipped out of the office, and returned with Hardison. “Can we keep ears on this place? Our best bet is that they’ll be back here later.” He turned to Faith. “Will they sweep for bugs?”
“Not likely. If he’s old, he may have problems understanding technology. If he’s young, he may think to do it, but young vamps generally don’t have the mojo to push other vamps around. There’s a pecking order, new vamps tend to get killed off quickly unless they find a stronger protector to glom onto. Or sometimes they get lucky. But odds are that he’s older and dumb about tech.”
Hardison placed tiny bugs in several spots through the office, while Nate found the assistant manager and concluded things. From Nate’s gestures and the assistant manager’s expression, he was praising the guy for a well-functioning and clean kitchen space, which had to be the first time a kitchen inspector (even a fake one) had ever said those words. He patted the guy on the shoulder, and the team left, leaving a pleased kitchen staff in their wake.
***
“So, the likelihood is that they’ll not be back using that office until late tonight. After sundown. Even later, maybe.”
“Do they burn up in the sun?” asked Parker. “Like bacon?”
“They do, actually. Although more like kerblooey, cloud of ash. So they operate at night, or sometimes in the daytime but underground. So we listen in, find out what they’re up to, and I go in.”
“And?” Hardison looked a little unsettled. “What do you do then?”
“Well, Hardison, I think the plan is for me to kill as many of them as possible. That’s why you called me here, I’m pretty sure.” Faith stepped away from the group. “I’m going to go take care of a few things. I’ll be back at your bar just before sundown.” She was off before anyone could object.
Nate turned to Eliot, his expression sardonic. “I’m still having issues with all this.”
Eliot shrugged. “She staked a vampire in front of me. I know what I saw. Looks like you’ll have the chance to see it too.”
“Hmph.”
****
Boston had changed. She had too, so it was fair, but parts of the old city were almost unrecognizable, what with new streets where none had been, old streets gone, neighborhoods changed. She actually got lost a few times, finding herself places that were almost familiar but just different enough to throw her off. It made her feel itchy.
Southie is all upscale shops and watering holes and a funny accent they bust out for gangster movies now.. Everything is spruced up, painted, the ugly spots smoothed over. She can still feel the rough patches on herself, but the setting doesn’t match anymore. It doesn’t look like a place where a mom would hit the shit out of her daughter in a drunken fury, where a woman could be torn to pieces by a demon, where a frightened girl would come into a whole bunch of power and a raft of trouble to go with it.
Faith gets a slice of pizza and heads back to Eliot’s bar. No more of this nostalgia trip bullshit.
****
Hardison must be some kind of tech genius, because the voices that crackle out of his speakers sound like they’re standing in the next room.
“Tell me what Lucas is doing,” demands the first voice, almost too high-pitched to register as male. “I’m assuming he doesn’t need another object lesson in what happens when I don’t get what I want.”
The other voice, a basso rumble with a thick Boston accent, is placating. “I’m sure he understands, Costas. He saw what happened to Sean, he wouldn’t disappoint you.”
“He’d better not. Have the men finish the move to the secondary warehouse. I want things wrapped up by Friday. I need a buyer in place by then.”
“Buyer?” mouthed Eliot to Faith, who shrugged. On a sheet of paper, she wrote, “Could be anything.” Nate frowned at both of them, concentrating on the voices.
Two pm on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and Faith was sitting beachside with a very large, and very girly red drink, testing out her theory that woman cannot live on Scotch alone. It was not what you’d call the most likely place to find her, kicking back in a little Florida town, but this particular assignment had been a rare opportunity to mix business and pleasure. Two baby slayers in the area had been struggling to put down a vamp with more savvy than the average, and Faith had been dispatched to lend assistance. Once things had been tidied up, Giles told her to stay and relax a bit, as there was apparently no urgent world-ending terror rampaging at the moment. So she pushed the baby slayers through a few training sessions and otherwise did nothing more strenuous than the occasional game of Frisbee on the sand. The first week was utter bliss. By the middle of the second week, she was bored out of her skull and getting itchy underneath her skin. Thankfully, Giles phoned up just before she started pondering bar fights and dodgy sex as a means to breaking up all that leisure time.
“Faith?” Giles’ voice was as it always was, precise, slightly comforting, and, well, tweedy. “I’ve gotten word about a case that needs looking into. Would you be able to get to Boston by tomorrow?”
“Boston?” Faith sat up, pushing her drink to the side. “I don’t go to Boston. Too many bad memories. You know that, Giles. Why ask?”
Giles hemmed a bit. “Well, I do know, and if you want me to send someone else, I can. But you’ve been asked for personally, so I thought I’d best let you know. I was contacted by a man you apparently assisted at some point in the past. He said his name was Eliot, and that he’d encountered you and learned a bit, let’s see, how did he put it? He’d learned about your expertise in certain difficult matters. I take it he was a bystander in something that came up?”
“Eliot, Eliot...wait, I know that name. I was passing through bum-fuck-east a while back, some place in Colorado, I think. It’s been at least two years, maybe closer to three. I stumbled over what turned out to be a sweet little setup for a vamp with a taste for bikers. Purely random, bad luck for her. Eliot was pretty handy in a fight, and he had a great...”
Giles cut in hastily. “That’s all I need to know, thank you. Anyway, he says that he has an issue in Boston that’s more along your lines than his, and wants to know if you will meet him in there and give him your assessment.”
Faith was quiet for a few minutes, and Giles was silent while she thought. Finally, she said, “All right. I’ll go check it out, at least.”
“If you find yourself...distressed,” Giles’ tone was sympathetic, “let me know immediately. We have other people in the area, and there’s no need for you stay there if it’s uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, yeah. No worries, if I get freaked out, you’ll be the first to hear. What the hell. Might as well test out the scar tissue, see how it holds up.” She hung up and sipped her drink, toying with the blue paper parasol that topped it. “Fucking Boston, huh? Fabulous.”
*******
Giles had texted her Eliot’s contact number, and she in turn had let Eliot know she was arriving early the next morning. He had sent her the address of what turned out to be a bar that was doing its best to straddle the line between “deliberately shaggy young professional” and “authentic lowbrow.” She pushed open the door and made her way into the dim interior.
Eliot looked up as she walked in. He was the same guy she remembered - compact, muscled in a non-showy way, and doing the whole leashed aggression thing that she found so hard to resist. He was sitting a table near the bar, talking intently with an older man with rumpled dark hair. Eliot stood up to greet her, his face creasing in an understated but welcoming smile.
“Been a while, Faith. Glad you could come assist on this.”
“Yeah, I’m the genuine good Samaritan.” She returned his smile, refraining from shading it with any sly innuendo. Best to keep things professional until she got more info. “What’s the word?”
“Let me introduce you, first. This is Nate Ford.” He gestured at the older man, who was regarding her intently. Aha. Boss man, had to be. Had the Giles aura, and she was willing to bet it came complete with the slightly dodgy morality. She shook his hand, smiled charmingly at him, and pulled up a chair at the table. The two men followed suit.
“I work with a team, based here in Boston. During one of our...operations” (Eliot stumbled slightly, as if unsure of what word to use) “recently, a team member saw something that wasn’t right. She reported it to the rest of us, and I wondered if it might be something more...” he hesitated.
“More in my ballpark?”
“Yeah, exactly. Your very weird ballpark.”
The older man dropped his chin slightly, and Faith realized that he was not convinced about any of this, up to and including her presence. She looked over at him. “I’m guessing you don’t buy it, huh?”
Before he could reply, three more people walked in from an adjacent doorway. An older brunette woman, very swank, led the way, followed by a tall black dude and a teeny blonde with a hint of crazy hovering around her. Aha. Dollars to doughnuts it was the blonde who saw the weird stuff. Thus, the disbelief.
Eliot made quick introductions all around, and got them settled around a table while he closed and locked the bar’s front door. He came back to the table and sat down.
“Parker, can you tell Faith what you saw?” He looked expectantly at the blonde, confirming Faith’s guess.
Parker huffed exasperatedly. “I’ve told you guys this a million times, and I still think you don’t believe me. I was being a waiter. So I was in the kitchen, because I needed a tray. There was a little office back there. Closed door, but a little window and blinds on it that were broken so I could see through part of it, so of course I looked. There was a big guy there. And he was talking to two other guys. And the big guy said something and the other guy totally grew fangs and a gross smooshy face, and bit the third guy. And there was blood everywhere. And I left before he could see that I saw. And I told Eliot that I had just seen somebody eat somebody else, and he turned a weird color, and then we called you. So I guess Eliot believes me, and I guess that means you’ll believe me, but I still think the rest of you don’t.”
She trailed off, scrunching up her face in an aggrieved manner.
Hardison, sitting next to her, made a placating gesture. “I believe you, Parker, it’s just that...it’s a weird story, that’s all.” Parker folded her arms and scowled at him. “You believe in UFOs. Don’t know what’s so hard about this.”
“Eliot suggested you’d have more expertise in this arena,” said Nate. “Would you mind letting us know what, exactly, this arena is?” The entire table turned to look at Faith, who shrugged. Best to get all the incredulity out of the way up front.
“Sounds like you got a vamp problem.”
Nate’s confused, “what?” was overshadowed by Parker’s triumphant crow. “I TOLD you guys it was a vampire! I told you I told you I told you!”
Eliot raised his voice to be heard over the confused babble that broke out. “I know you guys don’t believe it. I didn’t, until I saw one kill somebody. And then I saw Faith kill it. So can you all just shut up and let her talk?”
The room quieted down in a hurry and everyone turned back to Faith.
“So, yeah, vamps.” She made pointy teeth using her pointer fingers and grimaced at them. “It’s pretty funny, right? Except they’re real, not just made-up monsters. Killing them is what I do, basically. They’re not quite like what you’d see in the movies, but not too far off, either. They’re faster than people, stronger, heal quickly unless you kill them the right way. So you need somebody with some extra oomph to fight back.” She gestured to herself. “So you got moi. There used to be only one of us, but you’re in luck - these days we have a bigger team to field.”
“So your job,” asked Sophie, “is finding these creatures and killing them?” She was clearly having trouble with the concept but was trying her best to be polite.
“Yup. It’s what I do. Comes with a nifty title - slayer - and a lifespan that skews more to the short but glorious. However, I can bench-press a Buick. So, tradeoffs.” She pulled her backup stake from her jacket pocket and let it clatter on the table. Everyone looked at it, silently taking in the fact that it did indeed look like a stake for vampires, right out of every B movie ever made. Sometimes the props guy did get things right.
“It sounds like you have a power player here, a vamp who has enough strength and smarts to start running a gang. Nasty. People start dying just because they have no hesitation about killing like an ordinary crook might. They get greedy and all bloodlusty. So I’ll stick around and help you clean house.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way,” said Sophie, “but how do we know this isn’t some elaborate hoax? We’ve seen most of the cons out there,” (“Hell, we’ve run most of them,” said Hardison sotto voce behind her), but this all seems a little difficult to take in. I don’t know. I’d love to say that because Eliot vouches for you, it’s fine, but...this is a pretty big thing you’re trying to get us to accept.”
Faith leaned back in her chair. “Let me remind you folks that you called me here. I was sipping fruity beverages on the beach yesterday, I didn’t have to return to the blighted city of my birth until Eliot called in the favor.”
“I tried to tell them it was vampires,” said Parker. “Nobody listens to me.”
“I’m not going to patrol for vamps with the bunch of you yapping at my heels,” said Faith. “Want me to find a vamp and bring him here? Kill him in front of you? We could do it that way. Or you could trust your teammate. I did, after all, save his ass.”
Nate cleared his throat. “OK. At this point in time, I think we can just agree to accept your story. Frankly, if this is a con, it’s a lousy one, because...vampires, really? It would be aliens if you wanted to be more believable. There was a smothered protest behind him that involved the words “Roswell” and “government conspiracy.” Nate squelched Hardison with a glare, then turned back to Faith. “Please know it’s nothing personal, it’s just difficult for us to take in.”
“You can say ‘I told you so’ once they see real vampires,” offered Parker. “It’s almost more fun that way.”
“I think I just might,” said Faith.
***
They went back to the hotel kitchen where Parker had seen the vamp. Eliot flashed a badge from the county health inspection department, and barked at the poor assistant manager until he left them alone to roam through the kitchen. There was the office, broken blinds and all, but there was no sign of any blood, and nobody resembling any of the men Parker had described.
The rest of the team fanned out to look at the rest of the kitchen and question the staff, while Nate and Faith stood in the middle of the small office.
“Parker doesn’t lie,” said Nate. “She just doesn’t always see things in a straightforward way. But she must have seen something here.”
Faith knelt and pushed a small, two-drawer file cabinet away from where it stood on the wall. “She sure did. Somebody didn’t clean up quite well enough.”
A smear of dried blood stained the wall.
“So. Someone was killed here. According to Parker and this blood, anyway. And then whoever did it disposed of the body and did their best to clean up the place. What does that tell us?”
“Tells us they want to keep using this place,” said Eliot, who had arrived in the doorway. “So they’ll be back. And they have to be a little careful, because other people use this office that don’t know what goes on, but they’re careless because they could have just killed the person off-site somewhere instead of having to scrub the place down.”
“Vamps are usually not really good with the self-control,” said Faith. “He may be smart and powerful enough to tell other vamps what to do, but he may not be able to keep himself in check even when it would be better for him. Basically, bossman got mad, killed the guy who pissed him off, left the cleanup job to the underlings.”
Nate slipped out of the office, and returned with Hardison. “Can we keep ears on this place? Our best bet is that they’ll be back here later.” He turned to Faith. “Will they sweep for bugs?”
“Not likely. If he’s old, he may have problems understanding technology. If he’s young, he may think to do it, but young vamps generally don’t have the mojo to push other vamps around. There’s a pecking order, new vamps tend to get killed off quickly unless they find a stronger protector to glom onto. Or sometimes they get lucky. But odds are that he’s older and dumb about tech.”
Hardison placed tiny bugs in several spots through the office, while Nate found the assistant manager and concluded things. From Nate’s gestures and the assistant manager’s expression, he was praising the guy for a well-functioning and clean kitchen space, which had to be the first time a kitchen inspector (even a fake one) had ever said those words. He patted the guy on the shoulder, and the team left, leaving a pleased kitchen staff in their wake.
***
“So, the likelihood is that they’ll not be back using that office until late tonight. After sundown. Even later, maybe.”
“Do they burn up in the sun?” asked Parker. “Like bacon?”
“They do, actually. Although more like kerblooey, cloud of ash. So they operate at night, or sometimes in the daytime but underground. So we listen in, find out what they’re up to, and I go in.”
“And?” Hardison looked a little unsettled. “What do you do then?”
“Well, Hardison, I think the plan is for me to kill as many of them as possible. That’s why you called me here, I’m pretty sure.” Faith stepped away from the group. “I’m going to go take care of a few things. I’ll be back at your bar just before sundown.” She was off before anyone could object.
Nate turned to Eliot, his expression sardonic. “I’m still having issues with all this.”
Eliot shrugged. “She staked a vampire in front of me. I know what I saw. Looks like you’ll have the chance to see it too.”
“Hmph.”
****
Boston had changed. She had too, so it was fair, but parts of the old city were almost unrecognizable, what with new streets where none had been, old streets gone, neighborhoods changed. She actually got lost a few times, finding herself places that were almost familiar but just different enough to throw her off. It made her feel itchy.
Southie is all upscale shops and watering holes and a funny accent they bust out for gangster movies now.. Everything is spruced up, painted, the ugly spots smoothed over. She can still feel the rough patches on herself, but the setting doesn’t match anymore. It doesn’t look like a place where a mom would hit the shit out of her daughter in a drunken fury, where a woman could be torn to pieces by a demon, where a frightened girl would come into a whole bunch of power and a raft of trouble to go with it.
Faith gets a slice of pizza and heads back to Eliot’s bar. No more of this nostalgia trip bullshit.
****
Hardison must be some kind of tech genius, because the voices that crackle out of his speakers sound like they’re standing in the next room.
“Tell me what Lucas is doing,” demands the first voice, almost too high-pitched to register as male. “I’m assuming he doesn’t need another object lesson in what happens when I don’t get what I want.”
The other voice, a basso rumble with a thick Boston accent, is placating. “I’m sure he understands, Costas. He saw what happened to Sean, he wouldn’t disappoint you.”
“He’d better not. Have the men finish the move to the secondary warehouse. I want things wrapped up by Friday. I need a buyer in place by then.”
“Buyer?” mouthed Eliot to Faith, who shrugged. On a sheet of paper, she wrote, “Could be anything.” Nate frowned at both of them, concentrating on the voices.