World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - Visiting the Dead(er) [Fin]

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

[just after dusk, 25 August 2008]

Goddamned computers, Sarah thought as she dialed Declan's number. Should have been doing this nights ago, but noooo, they have to put everything on the fucking computers.

The computer of concern was flickering at 60Hz in front of her, spilling out strings of letters and numbers that would be utter gibberish to anyone uninitiated in the arcane details of academia. Sarah was, for all her disdain of the medium, one so initiated.

When she had attended classes three years and a lifetime ago, a tried and true tradition within ivy-covered halls was for the lists in front of her - course listings for the semester - to be posted in the student union upon a corkboard only slightly smaller than the state of Connecticut. Throngs of tomorrows leaders, doctors and drop-outs would be packed tightly in front of it, finding what new tortures would be afflicted upon them for the next eight weeks.

So when she made her quiet way into Ackerman Union in the wee hours of Friday morning, she was aghast and dismayed to see that massive corkboard filled not with endless listings of course numbers and professors, but a display of support for the Bruins. Only after hunting through the two-dimensional pep rally for five solid minutes did she find one small note tacked up in the far corner: Find Course Schedules Online at http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/ Student Login Required

Only after three nights of wasted hours in a computer lab, playing at work on a machine locked to all but the most basic of internet access, did she catch her break, as an inattentive freshman left his station without logging out. As smoothly as possible, Sarah slipped in to the warm seat and pulled up the needed information.

Two rings; that's all it took before Declan's gruff voice came through.

"It's Sarah. Are you up for that little field trip we talked about last Thursday?"

[Owns-The-Night]

"Yeah. Give me the where and when." Declan grunted as he listened to Sarah's voice down the other end of the line, then nodded to himself. "Okay. I'll be there." Without much further to say, he hung up.

A fuckin' morgue. he thought to himself as he got ready. The wounds on his belly and back were scabbing nicely at least, he mused as he pulled on a sweat shirt. The daily routine had gone well: a bit of light work, followed by a long run and a workout in the gym. And the sucker hadn't bled once, though a few times it had twinged fit to make the Rahu wince, forcing him to slacken off the pace a little or risk tearing himself open. That made him grumble, despite his relative luck compared to a normal man. Independant-minded to the point of stubborness, Declan hated feeling restricted, trapped, or hemmed-in by anything. He saw the wound as an enemy: not one that could be confronted head-on, but one that must be chipped away at, pushed a little further each time, until eventually it was gone and only he remained.

A few more days, and I'll cut the stitches out. he decided. From what he knew of his ability to heal, the resultant scar would be slight if anything. Only silver left lasting scars to Uratha. He reflected that a small scar wouldn't be so bad: what was it he had overhead one of the guys in the gym say once? Heh, that's right. Chicks dig scars. He grinned as he scooped up his keys and clasp knife. Can see that being a great opening line: "Hey baby, want to see my collection of scars? I got them defeating terrors from the Other Side."

Chuckling in the back of his throat, Declan slipped out of his house and started in the direction of the morgue at a steady, ground-eating trot.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Sandwiched between the L.A. County General Hospital and USC Medical Center, nearly caught in the shadow of the mighty Interstate 5, squat a brutalist structure from the dark architectural days of the 1970s: the Orange County Morgue. It was at this unloved pile of concrete that Sarah and Declan arrived within minutes of each other, each by their own means.

An ID badge emblazoned with the University of California logo was clipped to Sarah's sweatshirt, showing a smiling face full of life and hope and possibilities. After a moment's effort, the reality took on a semblance of those rosy tones, and she gave a smile that was a good deal less cheery than what was captured and preserved in the little three-inch plastic square. "You're brand-new to the pre-med program, you're name is Gary Ross, and I'm bringing you along to give you a taste of what you're in for in a few years. I've been here before; they aren't exactly Security Central after hours so long as someone has some ID."

That said, she walked into the wan fluorescents of the morgue.

"Can I help you?" The rent-a-cop sitting behind inch-thick glass might have been handsome once. If so, those days were two hundred pounds and ten thousand donuts ago. A steady wheeze from overburdened lungs set the beat while Sarah talked.

"Hi, I'm Sarah O'Neally, pre-med, UCLA." A course number and professer were quoted, then she explained: "Bringing one of the newbies in to see what he's getting himself into. Mind if we have a little chat with the dead?"

It wasn't the most social of performances... but then, Officer Staley was used to the ghouls that worked in this repository for the lesser victims of Los Angeles. Jowls the size of sirloins flapped and shook as he nodded his consent. "Second door on the left. Have fun, Doc."

Thirty seconds later, the pair were alone, surrounded by sterile steel and tile that housed hundreds of the recently deceased.

"OK, you start over there; I'll take this wall. We're looking for these names," she rattled off a list.

[Owns-The-Night]

The stink of the place was... well, disturbing to Declan. He'd never been in a morgue, though he had handled dead bodies out in the field, seen the aftermath of battles and massacres. He thought he was familiar with death.

But that was before his Change.

Now he smelled flesh. Antiseptic smells overlaid everything, even the faint cloying scent of decay, but they couldn't cover up the smell of, well, cold food. He was faintly nauseous at how it made him feel, and had an inkling now of why his tutor in Uratha ways had belabored one particular section of the Oath.

Nu Hu Uzu Eren: Do Not Eat The Flesh Of Man or Wolf. At the time, Declan had thought Well hell, of course I'm not going to chow down on people. Weirdo... but the last few months had shown him just how hard it was to resist that sometimes. It was why he always ate well. It might be too much to ask for a werewolf to be a vegetarian, but they could damn well stop themselves becoming a humanitarian. That was his private joke, one that made him chuckle in the face of the terrible urge that, thankfully, he was able to ignore ninety-percent of the time.

The morgue was making that difficult. The scent of decay helped, though. As did the antiseptic smells, but it was a few moments before his mind was again focused on the task at hand. He wandered along the wall of steel doors, checking names against Sarah's list.

"Found one." He said, then looked at the date. "Think it's the most recent one, too. Come and see."

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Crossing the tile floor with a silence nearly equal to their earstwhile companions these evening, Sarah came up to the other side of the latest unfortunate, laid out on the steel drawer.

The most notable feature was what couldn't be seen: the missing parts. Pretty much everything lower than the ribcage was stripped nearly to the bone, rended by wicked teeth. Not much was left of the arms, either. The face though still stared upward in a rictus of the poor bastard's last terrifying moment of life.

Unlike Declan, there were no hunger pangs within the vampire at the sight or smell of these recently deceased. What little blood remained in this ruined thing was long-since left bereft of the essence of life; it would do her about as much good as trying to eat dirt. A flicker of compassion for the dead came briefly to life in her dead heart, but it was no match for the anger that was building. Do Not Eat The Flesh Of Man or Wolf echoed through her head; whatever had done this hadn't given a damn about that oath.

"Well," she started in, "the spacing and size of the bites certainly measures up to what we're looking for. What's your nose tell you, Declan?"

[Owns-The-Night]

Loose clothing stretched, seams groaning slightly as Declan, still squatting, shifted up into the Dalu shape. His ears lengthened, soft fur sprouting down the back of his neck as his head of hair turned into something closer to a mane or ruff. His hair/fur lengthened down the sides of his face, forming thick sideburns. His nose became larger and longer, nasal passages developing further ridges and folds internally. Eyes became more sensitive to the harsh overhead lighting, taking on a faint gold tint that was a mere suggestion of the full molten fury of the Uratha's deep-seated Rage.

Leaning forward, Owns-The-Night sniffed at the corpse, taking the scents deep into his nose. *Too many hands... Latex gloves... antiseptic smells... cigarette smoke... AHH.* He looked up at Sarah and grinned, a feral expression of joy: the thrill of a quarry's spoor scented. He stood up, looming over the Gangrel female, and restrained the urge to howl, to call the pack to the hunt. It would be pointless in this sterile mausoleum to human frailty. He shrugged, the motion curiously appropriate as his shoulders contracted, his form shrinking some inches again, the bestial features leaving his face as his eyes returned to their familiar, eerie silver hue.

"It's the same one. This is it. One of the People did this thing." He bit off each sentence, the only outward display of his simmering anger. There would be a reckoning for this.

Code:

Wits & Survival(Hunting) +2 dice for Dalu senses = 8 dice
-4 dice for autopsy and other handling of body.

(Declan) rolls 4d10 and gets 7,6,2,10.
(15:32:38) ChatBot: (Declan) rolls 1d10 and gets 1.

1 success

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

Sarah sighed, nodding. She'd hoped that this wasn't the case, that Ariel's theories of this being a setup or frame job were right. But she'd known otherwise, and this was the confirmation.

"That's what I was afraid of. Dammit. Well, that settles that."

There was a long pause, and while she still gazed down toward the dead face on the slab, her eyes seemed to focus someplace far, far away. After a moment that seemed to go on forever, she spoke again, and whe she did, there was a slight catch in her voice.

"She looked good, Declan. Seems to be dealing pretty well, adjusting." It was extremely obvious that whomever she was discussing was not the hideously mutilated victim before them.

She finally did look all the way up to meet Declan's silvery-grey orbs, and the man-wolf could both see and smell a single small drop of crimson, a sparkling ruby that slowly traced down from the inside corner of her left eye, leaving a thin line as it made its gentle way down the curves of Sarah's face toward the tight, thin, forced hint of a smile.

"She looked a lot like Grandma."

[Owns-The-Night]

Now back in his human shape, Declan rolled the tray with it's grisly cargo back inside the dark cupboard that served as a resting place. Shutting the door, he rose and turned towards her. He silently watched the crimson trail run down her cheek and was conflicted. Part of him knew, from having been told, that this was a dead thing with no emotions, none that were real. She could not be trusted, should not be trusted.

But Declan's mind was made up of more than the sum of that which people told him. A lifetime of independant thought was not a habit easily broken for him. And more than that, he had observed Sarah at close hand. Seen her emote as much as anyone else, albeit through a lens of predatory detachment at times. But hell, he did that too with most folks. Now he was confronted with her tears, and the male in him wanted to protect or comfort her. Wolves didn't hold back on such things, not having the need to posture or pretend like humans. A wolf knew it was a badass, and didn't need to pretend or cover up genuine emotions that some humans considered weak when around friends. And Declan was becoming more and more wolflike as time went by.

"Yeah? Well, she acts a lot like her too, from what the two of ya have both told me." Declan's voice was gruff, but strangely gentle as he reached out and clasped Sarah's shoulder. "You'd think the damn fool girl would try to form her own damn opinions case-by-case, rather than stick to singin' out of the Storm Lord hymnbook. Hell, she ran the fuck away, didn't she?" He slowly pulled Sarah's cold form into a gentle hug. "You'll get your hearin', or I'll get a reckonin' as to why. Ariel's a cop and an Elodoth, and if she's worth a damn she'll be able to tell if your tale is full of it or not. But we'll discuss that in private later." He pulled away slightly and looked her in the eye with a hard smile. "Right now you ain't alone, and as long as you ain't false with me, you won't be. Hear me?"

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

There was more to say, more that cried from Sarah's soul. Three long years, only to find that Amber wouldn't even acknowledge her presense, let alone her identity. Three years, to find that this runaway, this escapee from the Wren clan, had taken on so much of what she had left behind.

But in the face of Declan's words, none of it need be spoken; he had done so for her. With a small nod, Sarah reached up and carefully cleaned the bright red tracing from her face, licking it from her hand with all the cautious care of any predator worth the name.

"Let's get out of here. We've got a lot of work ahead of us." And with that, a vampire led a werewolf from the lands of the dead.