North

Within the Northern vicinity of the city, the wealthy gather behind meticulously trimmed hedges and high-class architecture. The pristine streets are paved with stone and the storefronts are brightly lit and inviting - for the right clientele. In the North, every establishment is eager to cater to the rich and the wealthy. Many such places are used to the sometimes peculiar requests of the otherworldly but here there is little that money cannot buy - whether it happens to be illegal or merely involves looking the other way. Vampires and Dark Hunters are often found upon these Northern streets, their long lives often contributing to their sizable wealth which allows them the luxuries that the North provides.

What You'll Find Here

Eternity
The VooDoo Room
The Witchery

dig up her bones


Posted on January 12, 2015 by alekto lyon
North


It was the damp in the air that chilled her through to the bone. Hunching shoulders against the chill, she drew the wool peacoat closer around her small frame, jaw set against chattering teeth pushing her way forward into the rush-hour crowds thronging the streets. The weather was nothing like what she was used to, a mass of leaden grey instead of harsh sunlight and polarized sunglasses. Rather than asking the cab driver to take her to Fee's apartment where she would be staying for the time being, the airport in the rearview, she'd asked for the mall, and a chance to find a decent winter coat. Where the desert winds had whipped her hair and tanned her skin, here she'd be lucky to find her sunglasses after six weeks.

Shoving chilled hands into barely warmer pockets, she wove through the tourists, the natives and the vendors alike, wishing that she was back in the desert instead of trying to hold down a civilian job. She had met the doctor while in Afghanistan, two sides to the same coin. One healing what could be saved, the other gathering evidence from the souls of the dead, packaging the information neatly to hand off to someone's baby with a gun and the cry of freedom ringing in his ears. It wasn't her war, but they had needed someone with her skills, her way of recalling the dead and gathering critical intelligence, even from dumped bodies weeks old. How then would they know where to strike next, how to reclaim their imprisoned brothers, sergeants, sons? But the stripped-down version of reality that she was used to there made no sense across the Atlantic and into this new city, this hub of magic and were-creatures she couldn't even begin to fathom. Werecreatures heaped on top of witches on top of vampires- her brief forays into the the streets left her with ashes in her mouth and the sudden sense of being followed.

Even wartime instincts weren't that quick to go away.

She dreamed in reds and oranges, the harsh glare of the sun across the sand and the endless sky only fenced in by barbed wire. It was the weight of her pistol she missed, and even as a contractor, the shared cigarettes with men she'd have to recall from death's clutches the next day and apologize for the inconvenience. Instead, she had a bag containing a laptop and the files from the cold cases lingering in the morgue's fridges, waiting for someone to ask them about their deaths and their murderer's. A special kind of investigator, neither cop nor doctor, intent only on the evidence and managing the blowback long enough to write the reports.

A cold gust of wind drew her away from the rigors of her first day and back onto the streets, pausing at a corner and waiting for the light to change in her favor. Strangely enough, none in the crowd seemed to press too closely, as if they understood how death rode her coattails and wound his fingers through her red hair, waiting for the day when he could claim her entire. Scrub-coated legs carried her across the painted asphalt and instead of continuing towards the bus stop, decided that the rest of her was too chilled to think properly and into the eclectic bar and its warm embrace.

Shaking off the chill even as she paused in the doorway to let her eyes adjust from gloom to further gloom, Alekto breathed in the comforting scent of leather and liquor, wishing suddenly that her desert companions hadn't let her go back to the world they all longed for.

"Double whiskey sour," a quiet drawl even as she slid the cash across the lacquered surface of the bar, sliding onto a stool and setting the briefcase at her feet. It wasn't her first choice of venue; all nuanced decor and haute couture, but as long as the liquor remained in her glass to pour down her throat, she perhaps could tolerate it long enough to push death aside and remember how to live.


alekto lyon

so dig up her bones,
but leave the soul alone

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