Coal Mine Street Police House

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright looked at the page, and then back at Eleri. At the page, and then back at Eleri. At the page...

"Yeah, I'll just, urm, give you a call, on the phone..." He muttered sheepishly. So much for that. He could use the phone, he guessed. It must be somewhere.

Maybe he should get a mobile phone, but then again, he never had anybody to ring. Everybody he needed he could get on his radio which was...

...ohdamndamndamn, he'd left it lodged in that vampire's eye! So much for that!

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri stifled a smile.

"You know, sir, if nobody can find the phone, maybe we should just get a new one... I have about three in my house which I never use, you could put one of those in..."

Which probably means I'll be the one searching for the socket She thought.

"So...I'm guessing you don't get into too much trouble on patrols, sir?" She asked innocently.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright paused to think about this for a moment.
"Yeah, it's safe to say that I don't run into any trouble..." He muttered. Usually it was away from.

He ignored the comment about the phone, mostly because it'd mean he'd have to do something, and also because he didn't like to admit he couldn't find the other one. Wouldn't, he was fine with. Couldn't, he wasn't.

"So, what brought you here, Corporal?" He asked. Wright wasn't one for small talk, but locked away in the mind of a bumbling drunk was the mind of a still bumbling copper who knew it was a good idea to know everything he could about his officers. After all, he had to know he could rely on them no matter what, and know how they'd react. Especially if they were part vampire.

[Eleri Mortymer]

"I was born here, sir." Eleri started. She had been wondering when they'd get to this, and she wasn't particularly looking forward to relaying the vampire attack, but somehow she felt that simply "I was born here, I went to college and I came back" wasn't enough.

" My mum died when I was 10, and uh... I lived here until I was about 18, then I moved to London... left my dad and my brothers here... went to a Police college,which lasted about four years. I had a bar job to get some money, and I kept it after I left and uh... one night..."

She paused and steeled herself. She really wasn't looking forward to this. She kept her eyes ahead as she spoke.

"Well... I was walking home and this... woman... came out of nowhere and started attacking me. I remember thinking it was weird that it was a woman... And then... she... bit me." She sighed. "Next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed, my neck was bleeding and... the light hurt my eyes."

She glanced at Wright and then looked ahead again.

"About a month after, I came home. I couldn't face living in London any more. The light hurt my eyes, I kept getting sunburnt on overcast days and everytime anybody cut their finger, the smell drove me crazy." She sighed again.

"So I came back here and uh... found my dad dying slowly of liver disease. My oldest brother had been caring for him but that got passed to me pretty quick. He had a girlfriend up in Scotland and he scarpered to go live with her... we don't talk much any more."

She stared at the floor, watching the rythem of her feet.

"My little brother stuck around until my dad died, and then he left too." She lifted her face and looked at Wright.

"I didn't know at the time, but my dad was an alcoholic. Had been ever since mum died. Doctors said it was the drink that caused it." She looked away again.

"That was about six months ago. I spent a while sorting out my dads stuff and getting everything in order, and now... well... here I am." She said with a small smile.

"How about you, sir? What's your story?" She asked.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright had a funny feeling about the whole alcoholic thing. At least that explained something. Still, his liver was the least of his concern. He was lucky to survive until the next day anyway, so he didn't tend to actually worry about personal health.

"Haven't got one." He answered to her question. No real story for Wright. He was born in Edgehaven, he lived in Edgehaven, becoming captain of the police had been only because there was nothing else. "Signed up in a bad time for the town. They needed coppers and it was a job. Was only sixteen. Did it for my whole life, that's that."

Drunk or not, 'opening up' or not, he wasn't going to go into the details of some of the stuff that had happened over the course of those years, or how the Force had dwindled so much he was now captain, and of only th- four, people.

As far as he was concerned, he'd been born in a rough area, lived in a rough street, joined street gangs and the like until he joined the police 'cause he needed a job, and it'd help out his dear old mum (these things were important, contary to popular belief, to people from Wright's kind of area). Of course, his mum had died not long after, his dad was long gone, so he just lived as a cop. He never had really progressed 'up the ladder', he felt. It was more of a 'sideways' motion.

He wasn't going to go into detail about his family either. He had a vauge feeling his dad was a copper killed in the line of duty, but he had died before Wright could remember, and nobody ever told him about that. Wright had never been able to find any records of him, but he'd heard some hints. Not that it mattered.

"Sounds like you had it rough." He said, to change the subject. He hadn't exactly had it cushy, but this would change the subject back to her, and that was for the best.

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri decided not to press the matter of Wright's background. She knew from experience that men, especially men like Wright, didn't like talking about themselves.

"I wouldn't say that." She said pensively. "I've never really thought about it, to be honest, sir. Life just sort of... happens I guess. You learn to take the bad stuff as it comes."

She rubbed her neck. It was a subconcious habit she'd developed when she was uncomfortable, and talking about herself so much was starting to make her so. Growing up around her father, she supposed.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright actually managed to notice her rubbing her neck, and assumed it was the bite wound. He was lucky he didn't rub his wounds. They were everywhere. And before Eleri, he had tried to keep out of trouble.

And that was how he was already thinking of Eleri. As an event, not a person. It'd only been a day. Less than. And she was already making him think and change how he behaved, and actually attempt to do his job. She'd really changed things, whether for better or worse...

He made a mental note to add a 'Hurricane' to her name whenever thinking of the 'event'. Hurricane Eleri. Yeah, that was when all the paperwork suddenly got done and I had to look for the phone...

"So, why'd you join us?" For all his actual ability to understand human beings, he was still baffled on that one. "You could have gone back to London. Got a job there. Been a real police officer." He knew, vaugly, that in other cities around the country, being a police officer was actually a desirable, respectable job.

Here? Being a copper meant you were desperate enough to get paid to basically risk getting killed every night and be respected about as much as the muck on the bottom of somebody's shoe. Oh, and also that you had no applicable skills elsewhere. Hence why it had seemed like a good idea for 16 year old Wright...

[Eleri Mortymer]

((XD Hurricane Eleri. I'm adding that to her banner!))

"Well... I don't know. I guess I'm just not that comfortable in big cities anymore." She thought about it.

"No, that's not it... I think... well, I left once and my family pretty much fell apart. I didn't want anything else going wrong. And this is... this is my home, you know? I was brought up here. Weird as this place is, it's sort of special to me. I wanted to protect it, I suppose."

She brushed a strand of hair away from her eye.

"It's silly, I know." She smiled. "But I've always wanted to join the police, ever since I was a kid."

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright thought about this.
"You were raised in Edgehaven, and you still wanted to join the police?" Wow. When she was a little girl, all that...stuff...would have been happening. He was in the thick of it. And she still wanted to be a copper?

"You're right. That is silly." Tact wasn't Wright's strong point. "But, Edgehaven, well, it's my hom-"

He paused. They'd just turned a corner. There was something in the shadows, chewing on something else. That something else was humanoid, and that something was big and wolf like. A werewolf.

Wright sighed and turned to Eleri.
"You're gonna make me chase it, aren't you?" He said more for effect than reasoning. It had killed someone. That crossed even Wright's personal line.

He whipped out his old wooden truncheon, and came up with an idea. The werewolf had noticed them, and was snarling. He hurled the truncheon at it, and its wolf mind took over. Someone had just thrown it a stick. It leapt into the air to grab it.

Wright moved fast, grabbing the lid off a nearby rubbish bin, and threw that at the creature while it was in the air. It hit it with a cymbal like crash, and it fell to the ground with a yelp, and scarpered down the street, much faster than either of them could move.

"Norris Road only leads one way." Wright quickly summed up. He knew every road and every short cut anyway. "He's heading for the rich area." Unlike most cities, in Edgehaven, the rich lived on the outskirts, away from the danger. "And I'll never hear the end of it if some toff gets eaten. Follow me!"

He dashed down a side alley, knowing a much faster route to cut it off.

[Eleri Mortymer]

"Explains a lot, huh?" Eleri smiled.

The smile faded quickly when she saw the werewolf.

"The rich area? Oh gods." muttered Eleri. "Yes, sir!" She said, and dashed after Wright. She had no trouble keeping up, but she hoped she wouldn't have to run for long. She hated running.

[Nicholas Wright]

The two barrelled around a corner, Wright slamming into a wall and bouncing off of it to change direction rather than actually turn (hey, he was just thinking about running fast), and they burst out onto the street, near large, fancy looking houses.

It was suprising how often rich areas were near poor areas. Wright thought it was so that the rich b******s had somebody nearby to look down upon, but he'd never checked on that. He bolted down the pristine street, and spotted one house with the gate knocked off. People around here would never stand for a damaged gate. That had to be where the werewolf had gone.

He darted around the edge of the house, knowing taking the door was too obvious. The wolf would head for the kitchen, or living room. Somewhere to take hostages. Fortunately, rich houses liked nice big windows.

He was too drunk on adrenaline (and, well, drink) to think about it, and instead just ran at the window, and leapt...

Kssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssh!

((Continued in Beaumont House, but feel free to post Eleri taking the RIGHT way in ))

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri skirted the wall, just missed clipping her arm, and hurtled after Wright.

She followed him up the path and stopped, locating the front door. She made a mental note of where the window Wright had smashed was and opened the door.

[Eleri Mortymer]

((Continued from the Beaumont House thread. Yes, I replied in there too ))

As they reached the door of the Police House, Eleri thrust the candlestick and the first aid kit at Wright.

"Hold that." She said, leaving no room for argument. With her now-free hand, she opened the door and led the way in.

The Vampire's paperwork had disappeared. Eleri guessed Nolan had filed it somewhere. She'd have to work out the filing system (if there was one)... She added it to her growing list of things to do.

She made her way to the desk and gently lowered Wright into the chair, took the candlestick and the first aid kit off him and put them on the desk.

"Stay there." She said firmly. Then she turned to Hadrian.

"Right, let's get him in a cell." She said.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright gathered his courage and went to protest.
"Hey, I'm the Captain, you can't order..." He caught The Look, and fell silent.

"Well, short of injecting every Lycan with silver..." Wright began to call after them, suggesting, "Silver bars would at least make them think twice. Most werewolves seem to get jumpy around it. I wonder if they know it has to get into their blood stream..." He thought, mostly to himself. "Hey, how about spikey silver bars? Or is that against health and safety?" Just to be clear, his last question was very, very sarcastic.

He'd also noticed that Eleri was pretty silent on the UV light issue. He couldn't imagine why...
"Oh, and watch out for that torch!" He called after her with a bit of a sarcastic grin as she headed down. He liked Eleri, he really did, but he hated vampires, so couldn't resist cracking a few vampire related jokes.

[Eleri Mortymer]

"Hmm.... They do seem jumpy around silver, that's why I borrowed the candlestick - just in case he causes any trouble..." She sighed, lifting half the lycan to give Hadrian some help.

Eleri turned and glared at Wright over her shoulder.
"Thanks for the concern, sir." She said dryly.