The bewitching hour

[Emily Littleton] It was a clear night, warmer than the last, and the moon hung high overhead. Sated. Fat with a new year's revelry and promise. The Mile was quieter, no longer gorged with holiday shoppers headed to and fro. No longer festooned with Christmas decorations and tinsel bright lights. The city nursed a slow return to normalcy, like it too was fending off a hangover from too much champagne.

Emily walked down the emptier streets, letting the ebb and flow of humanity pass her by without much notice. She was still jet-lagged, still out of sync with the world around her, but it was getting better. The Orphan was just another face in the crowd to unAwakened eyes, but to the special few who had been enlightened she glowed. She was a bright spot in an otherwise dull tapestry and that bright spot spoke faintly of Home.

Stopping at the corner, Emily looked down to check something on her cell phone while she waited on the traffic pattern. It was just another night, quiet, waiting for the winter session to begin.

[Dylan Willis] This time of night, with the holidays drawing to a triumphant close and the threat of the return to normalcy driving most people indoors and into bed, there are very few people out on the streets on foot. Paranoia drives a lot of them on quicker than they would normally walk, paranoia and the sharp, bone-gripping cold that has descended upon Chicago in the depths of winter. Occasionally, a car will whisper past, the asphalt damp from earlier snowflakes that have sublimated into water under the assault of so much hot rubber and friction, but she finds herself alone for the better part of a block.

She isn't alone for long.

It's quiet enough, sparse enough, that she could just dart across the street heedless of the red palm's insistence that she remain where she is. She chooses to check her cell phone instead, taking her eyes off of the cityscape around her as she looks at a text message, perhaps, or checks to see who has been calling her recently.

Thermometers around the city claim that it is only a few degrees above zero, and yet the next breeze that blows past Emily is warm. Not just warm. Hot. As if she's in the desert rather than on the lakefront. It may very well be enough to catch her attention as she spreads it to her phone, and then: footsteps. Shuffling, hurried footsteps.

Someone is coming up the sidewalk behind her.

[Emily Littleton] On another night, it would have caught her attention more quickly. But Emily is just returned from balmy sixty-plus degree weather, just recently released from visitng her parents in far away places. So it doesn't immediately strike her as strange (but it should [it really should]), until she remembers that just last night there had been snowfall. Until she finds herself shifting in the wool jacket, because it was untenably warm.

Emily slides her cellphone back into her pocket. She lifts dark eyes that are merely dark in the half-light of a city night, but are otherwise deeply blue. Those eyes, both bright and stormy, search the mostly deserted street for a likely sign of unexpected warmth. A storefront with an overzealous heater and an open door. A passing car's exhaust. Some sensible thing that could make the night... hot... like that.

Finding nothing, she is left looking at the someone who approaches. Emily is slight, between five-and-a-half and six feet tall, dark haired and pale skinned. She is not frail, but she is not strong. And she is curious. Insatiably so. About the inexplicable summer wind.

[Dylan Willis] He looks like something out of a horror movie.

It isn't that he himself is particularly monstrous. On the contrary: the man himself could be considered quite attractive. He has a strong jaw and handsome facial features, is over six feet tall and strongly built, yet all of that is obliterated by the fact that he looks as though he has recently been involved in some sort of a fight, as though something unholy has torn at him, gobbled him up and chewed him up and spat him back out.

He's not dressed for the weather. Combat boots and dark-washed jeans and a t-shirt and an olive Army jacket are all he has on in order to protect him from the below-freezing temperatures of the lakefront city; steam comes off of his body as though all of the heat in his body is exiting all at once, billows out of his lungs with each exhalation. That t-shirt he has on was white at one point, or at least that's the impression she'll get from the patches that haven't been saturated by blood recently. His shirt and jeans have been torn in more than one place, thick harried lines that reveal tanned flesh beneath, and there is dried blood underneath his nose, spattering his hands.

Rather than walking normal, he seems to lumber, as though he's about to lose his bearings or his balance and crash to the earth at any moment. There is nothing silent about the way he moves.

When he notices Emily he stops dead in his tracks, maybe ten yards behind her, dark eyes going briefly wide. She can hear his respirations rattling in and out of his chest as he stares at her. This is what obliterates what attractiveness he might have had going for him, what attractiveness might have survived the splash of blood covering his body. He looks feverish, delirious, crazed.

"Haven't they found you yet?" he asks, his voice hoarse and breathless.

[Emily Littleton] Emily tucks her hands into her pockets. It's a reflexive thing, but it affords her very little protection against the odd man lumbering toward her. Her eyes widen, because he has caught her off guard, because he looks like he's been to hell and back again, because he is not the first odd person to accost her since she returned to Chicago.

She is wary, and the sensible part of Emily tells her to turn away from him. To cross the street, duck into some store, and wait until he passes. But the hopelessly hopeful part of Emily, the piece that pushes her to work in soup kitchens and volunteer her time selflessly, wants to reach out to help him. Wariness wins (somewhat) and she quickly checks up and down the street for witnesses, anyone who might notice something going terribly awry with a strange man and a young woman in the middle of the Mile. Emily stays a bit away from him, in plain sight of any passing car, not cornered -- but that is by chance and not design.

"They, who?" she asks, taking a small step back as he drags himself nearer to her. Her voice is a muddled mix of accents, though tonight it is predominantly British that he hears. "Are you alright? Do you want me to call you a doctor?"

There is concern in her voice, and it masks the anxiety she feels. For now.

[Dylan Willis] His breathing isn't slowing down as he comes to a stand-still. Inexplicably, his gaze shoots away from Emily and focuses itself across the street. There's nothing there. There's no one there. There is a parking lot filled with cars and there is snow beginning to drift down out of the sky and there are shadows but there is nothing making noise or projecting movement that would have drawn the average person's attention, and that is where he looks up until she asks if he's already.

There is profound tension riding his shoulders. They are not broad shoulders, are not built for sport or recreation but for doing work. He has a worker's hands. Never mind that they're stained in blood; he looks like a man who was used to physical labor his entire life. He looks like a man who could kill someone without having to exert a great deal of effort. If Emily were at ease around him right now, if she weren't trying to come up with a way to get herself out of the immediate vicinity as quickly as possible, then one would have to question which of the two of them is more unbalanced.

A twitch jolts through his shoulder and jerks his left arm, and he squints at her when she asks if he wants her to call a doctor. That squint turns into a frown, which turns into him taking a step forward. And then another. There are maybe nine yards between them after he devours part of the sidewalk with his steps, and as he draws closer, there is likely very little doubt: that heat is coming from him.

"If you don't know who They are... have you been here long? You can't have been here long if you haven't met Them yet. You'd know it if you had. They're with the Ones."

[Emily Littleton] The corner of pavement where she stood was fast feeling like an island. Emily couldn't back up far enough to regain the distance between them without putting herself in the street. She could back right up against the edge of the curb -- and she did so -- but then it became a matter of weighing what was more dangerous. This man who radiated a visceral heat, or the stray late night driver who didn't bother to look for pedestrians.

Emily's features pinched in, perplexed, as he continued to ramble. "I don't know who They are," she said, discomfitted by the similarity in his rantings to the Traditionalists' rhetoric form early December. "And no... I only got back last night. You see, I... I don't know anything."

Her hands came out of her pockets. Emily held them up in front of her, long fingers extended, empty, unthreatening. She held them up to ward him back, to leave no question in his unhinged mind about her intention.

"Please... if there's something I can do to help you, please tell me." (Please don't [come any closer] hurt me.)

[Dylan Willis] If he knows nothing else, if he doesn't know where he is or who he's talking to or what he's doing next, he knows what it means when a woman puts her hands up palms out and holds them there. At least, he seems as though he knows what it means. He was about to take another handful of steps towards her when Emily gave that clear Back Off gesture. He stops mid-stride, eyes moving to her hands as though he's afraid to look away from them, and then she's pleading.

Please. Please. More than once, please, as though her sense of self-preservation is struggling beneath the surface, as though she's attempting to find a way out of this without having to break down and run. Perhaps she should break down and run. The eyes of the man who is now only eight yards away from her--it's a long ways away, twenty-four feet, the width of a dining room perhaps or a typical city side street, but he could cross that distance so very easily and if he's this warm from this far away there is no telling what will happen if he gets close enough to touch her--are not focusing.

Maybe he's sick. Physically sick. High fevers will cause a person to suffer from symptoms akin to psychosis, will have them hallucinating and spouting out delusions, but fever doesn't cause an entire city block to feel like Death Valley in August.

This is not a pleasant heat he's carrying with him. It's punishment.

"I'm not the one who needs help," he says. "Once they figure out you're down here they'll try to keep you down here. They've had me down here for weeks, and it's not like I don't know why, I know why, but once they find out you've seen me they'll come out of nowhere, they'll try and keep you down here and you're better off just..."

Off in the distance there's a blood-curdling scream. There's a clanging of metal. The man takes a step forward, and then another.

"She didn't believe me either. She thought I was mak... making this up, but then they came and now I don't know where she is. She's an angel with cold fire for hair, calls herself Kay Are. Have you seen her?"

[Emily Littleton] It is a long way, but it is not long enough. Not long enough to the girl who had spent a relentlessly hot June day (three) in an underground space, held against her will. They'll try to keep you down here, he says, and Emily has a very real reaction to that. It's the sort of memory that washes over her features in technicolor, paints itself out in all too readable ways. Even to one as lost as Dylan. She understand, she knows what that particular torment is like. Not his Hell, no, but echoes of her own.

In the distance there's a scream, and she looks up and outward for it. Instinctively. Drawn to the sound of danger without, hoping it could inform, explain the danger traipsing ever nearer to her. The nearer he got, the more Emily could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

"I believe you," Emily said. Pleaded. It was there in her voice: fear. She was afraid of him, but she said she believed. "And I haven't... no, I don't know any Kay Are. I'm sorry."

Emily took a step back, away from Dylan and into the street. Just beside the curb, she was, not quite in danger of stopping traffic, she was. And lying through her pretty teeth. She knew an Angel with cold fire hair. She knew how Kage's mind (soul) sang when she looked through was was and into what might be. But Emily would not give her friend from the Court over to this madman so easily, no. Not when he didn't know her from Adam.

"Are you sure you don't want me to call you a doctor?" she asked. He was delerious. Unwell. Surely someone trained enough could save him.

[Dylan Willis] [Awareness+Perception: Detect Lie.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)

[Emily Littleton] ( Not the One you're looking for ... Manip + Subt, +1 distracted )
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Dylan Willis] Emily is among the very blunted minority of individuals who, when faced with a raving lunatic on the chilly, unforgiving streets of Chicago, would not simply turn on her heel, sprint across the street, and keep running until she physically connected with the door of whatever domicile would mark itself as her safe ground for the evening. She has no idea that just last night this man had gotten into an altercation with Jarod Nightingale, that he had been the one frightened and running last night. She has no idea that several other Tradition Mages have already made an attempt at pacifying him, that they are the They he is referring to.

All she knows is that she doesn't want him anywhere near her, that he's scaring her. People driving past are paying absolutely no attention to the pair of them on the sidewalk, are not giving the terrified young woman a second glance as they slide along towards their next destination.

That may very well change once some poor bastard decides he wants to make a left-hand turn and finds her slim, slight body not on the curb waiting to cross but just beyond the gutter, but for now, they may very well be alone, they and whoever it is that is off in the background screaming, they and whoever it is who is making that clanging noise.

Snow is coming down at a pretty decent clip now, heavy white flakes that fall rather than drift, but none of them are falling in the thirty-foot radius around the madman. They're melting in mid-air, turning to vapor before they have the chance to get too close.

Emily lies to save her friend, and he is too far gone to recognize it for what it is. He believes her.

He seems utterly baffled when she asks, again, if she doesn't want him to call a doctor. It isn't translating, or else he isn't sure of her motivation for asking. He clearly hasn't seen himself lately, doesn't realize that he's got blood on his face and hands and clothing, that he looks as though he's been through a series of fan blades recently.

He hasn't blinked the entire time he's been talking to her. He glances off to the side, towards steam rising out of a nearby manhole, and then looks back to her.

"It's too late for that," he says.

And he takes another step forward.

[Spirit 2: Doing Something We're Not Supposed To Be Doing.
Vulgar, With Witnesses. Base Diff: 7, -1 (taking time), -1 (using focus), -1 (Quintessence).]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 5, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 4)

[Dylan Willis] [Paradox Accumulated: 3.]

[Emily Littleton] She backs further into the street. Emily cannot seem to maintain the space between them. Dylan won't stop, stay, wait -- he wouldn't just leave her alone. She takes several steps away from him, and it puts her across the median line, somewhere that oncoming traffic might have a (prayer) chance of seeing her. But Emily's not worried about the cars; she doesn't want to take her eyes off of Dylan long enough to turn and run. Some part of her is terrified of looking away, and finding herself captured in more than just an awkward moment.

"No, no," she counters, still talking to him about doctors and hospitals. "They do wonderful things now. I'll just phone for help. You won't mind, will you?" She's reaching into her pocket with one hand, holding the other out where he can see it. And it isn't too hard to thumb 9-1-1, whether then phone stays in her pocket or comes out to plain sight.

She keeps backing up, until her heel hits the opposing curb, or she runs into a parked car and is pinned between it and him. Until the cold comes rushing back in and she can breathe again. Until she can fucking breathe without feeling like her lungs are burning.

[Dylan Willis] Emily walks right up to the curb on the opposite side of the street, and the nameless man halts once he's hit the edge of the one she'd vacated, as if he's reached the end of a long tether, or as though he's come to an impassible river. He stands breathing and watching her, digesting the words that are leaving her throat in a voice that doesn't seem to register as being terrified in his mind, but it's clear that his attention isn't fully on her anymore, that he's not looking at her anymore. His eyes go back to the manhole cover, with its steam and its mysteries beneath, and then she can hear it: whispering.

Frenetic, hissing whispering.

If he's concerned about the fact that her hand is in his pocket, out of sight, he doesn't do a thing to stop her. It's entirely possible that he doesn't even notice, that it doesn't even register that she's doing anything other than trying to get herself extracted from the vicinity.

She isn't going quickly. She's staying just far enough away from him to feel as though she can breathe, and for now it seems as though he's going to stay where he is.

"There won't be any helping once they show up," he says. "You don't understand, they aren't good. They'll make you think they are, and then they'll turn on you. That's what demons do, they trick you, and that's what they are, they're not... they look like normal people, but there are no normal people down here, everybody's down here for a reason but there's... there's a way out. There's gotta be. There's gotta..."

He turns away from her now, the speech that leaves his throat not meant for her ears as he starts off down the sidewalk again.

[Emily Littleton] Dylan's eyes are no longer glued to her. They look away once, maybe more, toward the manhole cover which Emily knows she is only imagining given off unintelligible sussurations. It is the heat, the stress, the strangeness -- it is not real. (Except that it could be...) She looks away from him, for just a moment, to inspect the manhole cover. At the same time, her fingers close around her phone and she drags her thumb across the keypad feeling for that little rainsed nub on the 5 (like the ridges on home keys on a keyboard).

Down and to the right was Nine. Up and to the left was One. It was easy, and he was leaving her. Emily started to walk away in the other direction. Raised the phone to her ear as she let the call ring through. She looked over her shoulder at him, making sure he didn't change course and follow her. She looked for a street number to give the dispatcher.

Emily was a good citizen, a world citizen, a girl with no real hometown. But she was getting the hell out of Dodge now that she had a street's width (a head start) between them.