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It's a pretty long bus trip from Des Moines to New York. A full day, and change, not accounting for stops. Alexander is tired; hard to sleep on a bus full of people, though at least the drive was uneventful. He arrived at the bus depot in Manhattan a few hours ago, and only just arrived in Hell's Kitchen, looking for a place to rent. He's a bit of a sight, carrying a small duffel bag over one arm, and a rather long sword strapped to his back. It's a wonder he wasn't arrested for carrying a weapon like that through the city; but then, people tend to leave him alone, when he wants them to.
By some miracle, he managed to make it to his appointment on time. The landlord of this particular building seemed eager for a new tenant, probably because the recent rash of vampires, demons, monsters, and whatever else has been plaguing the city, has made new rentals rather hard to come by. He drops his duffel bag on the steps, flexing his fingers a bit to stretch them out. As strong as he might be, carrying the sum total of his worldly possessions from downtown to here is hard on the hands. The young man leans against the wall, watching the passers-by on the street as he waits, impatiently. "Should have stopped for that burger," he grumbles to himself.
*
The tangled landscape of high rises and rotting tenements home to New York's worst, or simply unluckiest, is not the sort to draw corn fed boys from Iowa or lovely Georgia girls dreaming of a fresh start. It smells terrible here, sewer gases bubbling away through the foul puddles spreading around blocked storm drains. Unmentionable things rot in squalid alleys barely narrower than the main drag, and everywhere are dark corners that wise souls don't look down. Sometimes things stare back.
Lesson not learned by one brunette in a claret leather coat, sliding down a fire escape. The building it's attached to may crest five floors, sufficiently tall to make a drop a nasty prospect. Not that her quarry cares; it leaps from a broken window into the alley, scuttling along with inhuman agility on three limbs. The fourth hangs uselessly at its side, carved open through a faded t-shirt by some kind of blade.
The rusted out railing shrieks under her weight, nonexistent screws coming free. Rust flakes drift to the ground, the landing swinging at a sharp angle. Wanda seizes hold of a strut one handed for balance, and hisses under her breath, a harsh cadence that follows rapidly.
Her quarry looks like a man with a mop of sandy hair, torn jeans, and a desperate need for a bath. He smells like a dumpster, possibly the source of those stains. Inexplicably he trips, shoe tearing free, and crashes to the ground over a pile of broken wooden crates and shattered pickle jars. The noise is horribly loud. His position is only a few yards from Alexander.
*
If the noise startles Alex, he doesn't show it. The young man instinctively reaches for the sword at his back, and draws it with a fluid swiftness, eyes bearing down on the creature that has landed not far from him. "Don't move," he orders, his eyes glowing bright white, his voice pitched in a tone that brooks no argument. If the creature has the capacity to fear, Alexander's power would take hold of it's senses; a petrifying sense of dread which would reduce mortal men to a quivering, useless heap. But then, this is clearly not a man. At least, not any more. "Father was not wrong, it seems, about this place," he murmurs to himself. His eyes lift to see Wanda above, and though they don't fade from the bright white, she is not the target of his power. "I wouldn't want to deny you the chance to finish this one, but if you don't get down here I might not have a choice," he says, uncertain if he will be able to keep the creature still for long, if at all.
*
Can something driven by hunger, dominantly, know fear? Yes. That bestial mind processes threats to its unlife, like any monster with a brain and a will for survival. Lips curl back in a rictus snarl, revealing pointed teeth and curling tongue. He shrieks, and long claws flash out against the smashed boards and broken glass. It recoils from the sword, the criterion to fear subsumed in the crimson tide to hurt. Feed. Flee. Back arching, it moves away from the sword, from the light, hissing in a fractured impression of speech. What little is heard is hateful: "Die, human, smear you on a wall, break your bones and tear them out…"
Wanda grabs onto the bar, her white-knuckle grip tested as she swings her legs to gain some purchase. One boot sole hooks over the edge of the landing. Her weight and motion threatens a fall, but better a supported platform than dropping with the fire escape likely to fall atop her afterwards. Flipping over onto her stomach, she slides right down the weathered lattice and catches the stairs, trying to belly her way down. The whole construct sways but holds, dropping ower by another screw torn free. She scrambles down, nodding sharply to Alexander. At least she understands him, or the value of his sword, a black knife drawn from her belt.
The warning seems to have mobilized her, but she winces as glass shatters above her. And there is the other partner, a Hispanic kid no more than 14, thin and spidery as he leaps down for the alley and a break for freedom. Blood stains his front, and he looks ready to run the other way.
*
Alex lets out a quiet little laugh at the creature's words, such as they are. "Aren't you precious," he murmurs, stepping toward the beast, the Grasscutter sword pointed menacingly. The sound of glass breaking overhead doesn't seem to phase him, though he does look toward the source of the noise, the younger boy covered in blood. "You find a whole pack of these things, lady?" The white glow from his eyes intensifies, and he glares toward the second creature, willing its sense of fear to extreme levels, though with his attention split between two, he won't be able to maintain the effect as easily, or for as long. "Best make it quick," he says. No telling how this second one will react to Alexander's abilities.
*
"A pack would have six." The young woman announces herself as not the least bit American. Eastern European, maybe Central, by the sound of her accent. She drops into a crouch, already bounding to intercept when the Hispanic vampire bolts for the back end of the alleyway while its blond counterpart is scrambling for the wall one armed, absent a shoe. Those toenails are perfectly able to dig into brick, as are fingers, and it moves fast as a jumping spider to get the hell out of there. The teenaged vampire scuttles, ignoring anything but the singular need to get around, through, under or over Wanda. She swipes the knife at its chest, driving the blade into its bony ribcage. The squeal is unearthly high and sharp, air wheezing out of dead lungs, and the addled undead swipes hard at her blocking arm. That in turn earns a hard kick as she wrenches the blade free, coming out coated in ichor and fresh blood. "They drink from the living. Kill it!"
*
"Ah," Alex says. Duly noted. A pack is six. When the woman darts away to go after the second creature, and the first makes its move to escape, Alex is quick to react. He may not be able climb walls, but he moves with speed not often seen in regular humans, though it's been made pretty clear by now that he is not one of those. The call to finish the thing reaches his ears, and he leaps up, the sword slashing at the creature, aiming to sever its head from its body; Alex doesn't know what this thing is, exactly, but in his experience decapitation tends to solve a lot of problems.
*
The slice through dead bone and flesh might meet with resistance, in a normal sword, not one forged by a god. Nor one wielded by the child of such. The violence is effective even as the fast moving vampire attempts to get away, without much luck. As soon as the severing strike breaks through its windpipe, the body crashes to the ground in a gush of black icon. Sick as the scent would be, it splatters the ground and the body starts to crumble away as the flesh rots almost immediately.
The grunt of pain from the teenaged vampire trying to claw at her eyes escapes from Wanda, and she blocks the next swipe with her forearm. Then her fingertips take on a charged spark, and she slams her palm into its chest. The black blade follows again, rammed through the break in his ribs. Garnet light rolls over her eyes, and flashes around the blade, though with its back to Alexander, he might not notice that. Heel planted on the ground, she flings aside that horror to crash to the ground. The boy doesn't even twitch, eyes huge and full of hate, stiff as a corpse in rigor mortis. "Do you have matches? Lighter?" Because these are things a nice girl wouldn't normally, no?
*
"Nice neighbourhood," Alex mutters, resheathing his sword. Gross. He steps over the mess of goo, and turns to see how Wanda is faring, in time to see her push the corpse away from her. Looks like she's managed. When she asks him for the means to create fire, he reaches into a pocket, and pulls out a lighter; what kind of man in this day and age walks around without a lighter? He flicks it to show that it works, and tosses it easily to Wanda. "Guess the smell can't really get any worse," he muses.
*
Sarcasm rarely crosses the language barrier. All the same, she smirks slightly. "Lives up to its name. A bad luck name." Whip fast reflexes snatch the lighter out of the air, fumbling it only once. She flicks open the lid and the yellow tongue leaps out, enough she can work with. Leaning over the vampire, she says, "Send your maker my regards." Then she puts the flame to his torn, bloody shirt, letting it catch on the material. The skin is more combustible, but not much faster than previously demonstrated. The creature cannot even scream as the instinctual spark of terror in its eyes builds and grows. Flames lick over its skin, burrowing deeper, guided by a stirring of a whispered spell that might be mistaken as a prayer, reasonably so. She waits until the corpse is fully aflame, fed by the settling marks of the spell that flower bright, fiery blossoms along the growing fissures. Her knife remains in place, heating up, though not affected by the combustion. The girl puts her hands in her coat pockets and eases back, gesturing. "Too young to explode. The smell will be here for hours. Pinch nose, don't breathe too deep."
*
Alex makes a bit of a face as the creature is incinerated, and glances around at the mess of it all. "Isn't that always the way," he murmurs. "If nothing else, I suppose I can use this to negotiate a rent reduction," he says with a bit of a shrug. Vampires and demons he was prepared to live with; he knew what he was getting into, at least to some extent. But the smell? That's worth about fifty dollars less month. He gives Wanda a curt nod, and moves to return to his post, waiting for the landlord to finally show up, as if nothing had happened. Just another day in Hell's Kitchen?