Edgehaven Yard

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hadrian eyed the bulb and then looked at the Vampires, feeling rather uneasy at their lack of fussing before he went about fitting it - not even trying to wrap his brain around how the Captain had kept that in his pocket without breaking it, or even why he had it.

Still, he looked back at the Vampires, beginning to get that crawling sensation running down his spine. This... wasn't right. Not normal.

"What can we expect on the upper levels?" he asked them, frowning as sternly as he could - it wasn't quite a Look but it still said that he would Tazer them in the balls if they didn't answer, not that he would because Wright would hit the roof and then Eleri would write him up for use of 'Unreasonable Force'.

[Nicholas Wright]

There was an audible ding! from outside, and Wright peered out the door. He called back in without turning around.

"Think we're about to find out." He told them. A lift had arrived. "Looks like it's going up. Guessing whatever's up there is waiting for us. You'd think they'd at least put effort in to disguising the trap..."

Naturally, however, Wright knowing it was a trap didn't stop him heading straight for the lift.
"Come on then. Don't tell me you'd rather take the stairs..."

[Dawn]

Dawn opened her eyes, and her vision returned to the room around her. She had been seeing through the eyes of the vampires below, all of whom were now defeated. She felt a quant pride in the police officers. It was nice to see humans doing so well that weren't affiliated with any vampire slaying organisations. She had been watching them like somebody might watch a highly amusing pet.

She was a little disappointed in the half-breed. She was almost a vampire, and she loathed killing her own kind. But half-breeds had no real use to her in the long term, being mortal as they were, and so passed like a quick breeze to Dawn's long term vision. And unlike other vampires that aged at a normal pace they had an unfortunate amount of human in them. Although this particular half-breed she could stomach keeping around if she didn't kill the others. It would make things more amusing, and she could use a distraction.

She drummed her fingers on the arm of the throne she was sat on. It wasn't a great throne. It was made out of balsa wood and spray painted gold. The vampire's had liberated it from a play at a theatre the other day. Of course, to Dawn, 'the other day' was in fact July of 1982, but that was beside the point. It looked good and a real throne was difficult to come by, especially in isolation. It was also beside the point that it was a bit of a naff looking throne. From a distance, it made a good impression, and being a Vampyre was all about making a good impression. She'd even put on a long black gown and heels for the occassion, to embrace the atmosphere. She'd made sure the blood that had been delivered from the dungeons below was served to her in a silver goblet for effect.

It was, then, perhaps, unfortunate that she still looked twelve years old. Of course, it had been a while since anybody commented on the fact, and it always amused Dawn to see how various people reacted to her small stature, but she knew it could undermine the effect of the suave, in control Vampyre. She had used that very fact to her advantage often enough.

Still, she was actually quite looking forward to this. She'd known they'd be discovered eventually, although her own calculations had been a few months out. This didn't concern her. Being wrong was just about the only interesting thing that could happen to her anymore.

She began to play with the possibilities of the confrontation coming in her head, and smiled at every outcome. This was going to be enjoyable...

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri turned as the lift arrived. That was creepy. She sighed, waited for Hadrian to join them and then stepped into the lift behind Wright. She shuddered as she stepped through the lift doors.

"Is it just me," she asked, "or do you get the feeling we're being watched?"

((Crap post, sorry!))

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Hadrian shivered as he quickly hurried on after them, "Yeah. And it isn't very comfortable either," he muttered. Was he the only one who was getting the distinct impression that going upstairs was a very. Bad. Idea?

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright, who seemed to be completely relaxed and unconcerned, gave the other two a casual shrug.
"Calm down. They won't kill us. This is a show. They want us to go up there and be all impressed by their calm, cold, evil." It was like being in a James Bond movie.

"Which means, we're dealing with a vampire-with-a-y." Vampyre didn't lend itself well to easy pronounciation, hence Wright's distinction.

"By the way, did you notice? No stairs." He asked the other two. "No way back down. They control the only exit. It's definitely a show."

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri nodded in agreement with Hadrian. She eyed Wright suspiciously. "Just because it's a show, sir, it doesn't make it any less creepy." Still, she hadn't noticed the lack of stairs and she didn't like it now it had been pointed out. "This whole thing is like some kind of twisted movie or something." She commented. "The dutiful heroes being lured into a trap by some ancient evil... thing... with no way out? I don't like it." She looked up at the increasing numbers that showed the lifts assent. "This whole place just feels... wrong."

The captain was right though, the whole situation practically screamed Vampyre. She shuddered again. Vampires-with-an-I she could deal with. Vampyres-with-a-y, however... she'd only come across one or two of them, and then only briefly, but the whole time she was in the room with one, she'd felt... insignificant. Dirty. Like she was a stray mongrel that was only being allowed to live because it wasn't worth the Vampyre's time to have it killed. She'd hated it. And now she was on her way to, she assumed, the top floor of the building to confront something that was making her feel uneasy and insecure from the other end of a building. She fixed her hair self-consciously.

[Hadrian Beaumont]

((Sorry for the delay. I've been trying to apply for University and get my Portfolio up to snuff. Its been more difficult than I assumed it would be. I hate life drawing ><))

Hadrian fidgeted, "I really hope we don't get chomped," he muttered, tightening his grip on his weapons. He didn't want to know how his mother would react if he died. She'd already lost one child.

[Nicholas Wright]

The lift ding!ed a second time as it arrived at the top floor, and Wright turned to Eleri with a grin.
"Oh, come on, don't you two know by now? There's one thing you never put in a trap." The doors slid open. "Us!" He announced, striding out of the lift heroically.

It might have had the intended effect of over confidence, had he been greeted by a squad of armed vampires like he had been expecting. His hand was already on his truncheon, ready to leap into combat. What he hadn't expected was a twelve year old girl in a party dress sat in a big fake wooden throne.

"You?" He asked incredously. "You're the great evil at the top of the tower!? You're like, six!"
Wright managed a few seconds of stoicness, which given the situation was pretty stunningly brave, and then immediately burst into laughter.

[Dawn]

Dawn gave a smile. She knew it wasn't quite the controlling, dominant smile she might have wanted to have. It was hard to pull off that expression when you looked as young as she did. Instead she just looked like a happy child.

"Twelve actually." She answered, grinning, before jumping down from the throne like, well, a twelve year old. "Or two thousand." She added, smile suddenly vanishing. "Your choice."

She walked forwards, and looked over the three curiously. She wasn't just looking, but reading them, as if trying to work out exactly what they were.

"You. You're Nicholas Wright. Captain now, or has the EHPD grown up and decided to use big boy ranks? That'd make you, what, Chief Inspector?" She turned to Eleri and Hadrian. "Did he tell you? He's the only survivor of the Edgehaven station massacre that stayed a copper. Wonder why. What's that badge protecting him from, huh?" She couldn't help but ask the question like an innocent child, even if she had meant for it to carry a lot more weight.

"You're Hadrian Beaumont." She pointed to Hadrian. "Son of Elizabeth Beaumont, all grown up. Her child's jewellery line is crap, by the way." She told him with a disappointed and scathing look on her face. "What's this? Some kind of civil service out of guilt for mooching off your rich mummy?"

Finally she turned to Eleri, and froze. She seemed to be eyeing her curiously.
"Okay, those two I get. I mean, there are reasons I know them. I've been shut in here for, oh, a few years. You humans have lived your little lives." She directed this specifically to exclude Eleri. "So I had to work out who those two were from where the world was going..." Indeed, Dawn had no spies in the city. This was just guesswork from her memory of who was who in the city (and country) a long time ago. A vampire as powerful as her had a very good memory, and was easily capable of working things out. She'd known twenty years ago Nicholas Wright would one day lead the EHPD. She might have got some of the specifics wrong.

"But you? You're a nobody." She made it sound like a childish insult, although truth be told, she couldn't do it any other way. "So why do I know.... your name is Eleri Mortymer?" Dawn actually sounded like she was asking herself as much as the others, and for a moment, something dangerous flashed in her eyes.

She didn't say anymore. She wanted to see them squirm first.

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri sighed, pulled her gun out and prepared herself as the lift stopped. Naturally, she let Wright make his trademark Heroic Entrance before following him out. She stopped dead just behind him as her brain caught up with her eyes. Without taking her eyes off the girl, she put the gun back in the holster. Then she flashed Wright a dirty look and jabbed him sharply in the ribs. Honestly. Truth be told, she'd been expecting something other than a hoarde of vampires since the pink bondage room. But this? This was... something else.

She followed the girl's movements with her eyes, not moving and barely breathing. Bloody Vampyres, she thought. She was already starting to feel less than she was. She resisted the urge to whip her head around in amazment at her revelation about Wright. "No," she said coldly, "but why should he?" Truth be told, she knew very little about the massacre - she'd been a little too young to understand, and besides, she'd been coping with the death of her mother.

She continued to glare at the girl until she stopped infront of her. She almost flinched at the 'nobody' comment. That hurt. Ok, she knew she wasn't much, but to hear somebody say it? To hear a 2000/12 year old vampyre say it? That hurt a lot. She narrowed her eyes and they flashed angrily, almost simultaneously to Dawn's. If she was honest, standing up to the Vampyre girl was taking a lot of self-control and constant suppression of her growing self-doubt.

"Why?" she heard herself say. "Why? Is it because you have impressive psychic powers? Because you looked us up in some records? Or maybe, and more likely, because there have been Mortymer's living in Edgehaven for decades. Humans. I think you like to watch humans." She paused and dropped her voice but not her eyes. "And I was human once."

[Hadrian Beaumont]

Two thousand? Hoh shit. They had to stumble across one of the Elder Nosferatu, didn't they? Great.

The revelation about Wright's history was... unexpected, he knew it was grim and the older man didn't like talking about it, or thinking about it, otherwise he wouldn't have crawled so far into those whiskey bottles. That was one of the reasons why he hadn't gone probing into his past or asked around about it, that was for Wright to tell them when he wanted to.

As for himself... He didn't know his mother even HAD a children's line - which was probably what she meant by crap but alright. Maybe he could point that out to her, with the amount of cash her customers usually threw around they would probably pay out of the nose to get something rediculously fragile and expensive to choke their small children with. He spluttered a little at the last comment, it wasn't! Well, maybe on some level it was but it was never something he acknowledged because to be perfectly honest he didn't see a problem with it. He made pretty much all of his own money after he hit eighteen, he just never moved out because one his mother was an awesome cook and he burned water and two because she would have a kitten with a velvet tail if he went off on his own in Edgehaven of all places. (Yes he was a mummy's boy and he knew it.)

Still... "That's a little harsh," he muttered in regards to Eleri.

Go Sergeant Mortymer, stand up to that teeny-bopper Ancient Vampyre - who can probably read every thought going through his head and just heard that. Crap.

[Nicholas Wright]

Wright watched the interactions and sensed the danger, especially from Eleri, who seemed to be hurt by the midget vampire's rambling.

He leapt forwards confidently, and took a look around the room.
"What about you?" He asked back, deciding to fight fire with fire. Or over the top theatrical deductions with over the top theatrical deductions. "Big empty room. Cheap tacky throne. You're trying to act like the typical vampyre, but you know we'd see through it. You did it anyway. Just part of the show. Means you're only doing this for fun."

Okay, keep going... Wright's mind was racing as he tried to think up things to keep him sounding smart. He had to be able to read this girl. Come on. She gave a lot away.
"You're really proud you know who we are, but it should be obvious. That means you haven't been outside in a long time, and wanted to show off by deducing it. Of course!" He suddenly snapped his fingers and looked to Eleri and Hadrian.

"We never saw anybody coming in or out because nobody WAS coming in or out! You've been locked up here all this time! What, hiding away from the world while we play out our little conflicts? That's what an elder vampire would do, right? Thinking your so smart... That's it, isn't it? The fetish rooms. Ways of keeping you occupied. You really don't go anywhere. At all. Ever..."

[Dawn]

Dawn giggled to herself, and it was a childish giggle, like a kid entertained by a funny television show. She seemed to ignore Wright's efforts at grandstanding, if only because it was completely over the top and unneccesary. Besides, she was more interested in addressing Eleri.

"No, no..." She giggled. "That's not it. Watching humans is like watching ants. I don't bother to learn their names!" She said this like it was a ridiculous concept. "Unless I think they're gonna be important later." Again, there was her insult. Eleri had existed off her radar. Wright was in the police, and logically, would one day be an important figure in the collapsing department when she'd last seen it. Hadrian was the son of a very rich woman. But Eleri?

"And I'm not psychic. And reading files would be cheating!" She made the same sort of face she might have made were she actually twelve and faced with homework. "No....You're one of mine, aren't you?" She smiled, and grinned that childish grin. "You are! You are!" She practically sang the words.

"Let's just say I've got a pretty big family..." Her grin seemed to be becoming more toothy. "And now you can say hello to your Great Great Great Great....Ithinkyouknowhowthisgoes....Great Grandmother!"

She then rolled her eyes and looked to Wright.
"Oh, and great theory, but where'd we get the blood? Retard." Again, she made insults sound nasty with that scorn only a child could have. "And I was sired before I developed a sex drive. The fetish rooms aren't for me."

[Eleri Mortymer]

Eleri heard Hadrian mutter something about being harsh and smiled. Yay for Hadrian. She nodded to Wright's words - she'd come to the same conclusion, on the first part anyway. She, however, was still convinced that someone was going in and out of the building. Vampyres, and vampires, needed blood. And she hadn't forgotten about the watcher in the next building - in retrospect he'd probably been watching for a lackey to come out to get more food.

She glared at Dawn as she was addressed again. So Hadrian was important because of his mother, Wright was important because he was the leader of the EHPD, but she wasn't? Hadn't it been her that had dragged Wright kicking and screaming out of his alcohol-fuelled spiral? Hadn't she been the one to start the wheels in motion a few years ago? Wasn't she the one doing all the paperwork and keeping the station running on a basic level?

As she thought about it, all in a split second, she got angry. And then, in the same moment, she started to wonder if she really had done that. If she'd had an influence in any of it or if it would have happened anyway. Was she the catalyst in those events or had she just sped up the inevitable?

The thoughts snapped away again at Dawn's next words. "One of yours?" She considered it. It was, of course, highly likely if Dawn had sired as many vampires as she claimed. After all, Eleri had no idea who she'd been bitten by - they hadn't hung around long enough. The thought of being related to Dawn revolted her. She knew she had a sire, but this was...

Derailing that train of thought too, she asked instead "How did you get people in here withougt being seen, anyway?" It was something she genuinely wanted to know. And besides, it might give her a little time to think. Was there some rule with vampires that meant they couldn't kill an elder of the bloodline? She didn't think so. And if there was, it probably didn't apply to half-breeds anyway.