West

The western part of the city is often home to the poorer residents. Here there is a grunginess that permeates the town from the graffiti on the once cleaned brick buildings to the broken and unmaintained architecture. Crime runs high within the western half of town, making it the home of supernatural gangs of illicit activities. Such activities are rarely reported, however, and most residents are distrustful of individual's of authorities, and often let the powerful supernatural beings sort things out amongst themselves. Be careful wandering the Western streets after the sun falls.

What You'll Find Here

Black Market
Cull & Pistol
Noah's Ark
Syn

I hate it when you hiss


Posted on July 06, 2014 by Bethel Ayer
West


Being in a city alone is an incredible feeling. You may not know anyone, you may. The exhilaration of living in a fast paced blur where you're riding your life on tracks of a metro-rail, and there aren't seatbelts, feels amazing if you want badly enough to be lost with an unfathomable, infallible trail behind you. You're lost in a sea of people, maybe with anchors or connections... Maybe without them. Bethel had moved to Washington knowing that there were many more of the supernatural there, and maybe someone who had answers for her that didn't exist nearly 700 miles north where everything familiar resided. Bethel didn't mind the distance, knowing that home was only a mental idea. Home wasn't physical; it was wherever you could collapse into yourself and make a safe haven for yourself. That idea had become an apartment lost in a mid-Atlantic city where the streets were rife with creatures who could do a whole slew of things Bethel had never even heard of before.

Even though Bethel was alone in the city so far, she had heard of packs. They were something far from unfamiliar to her, especially considering her family history. She was an Ayer, related to the poor souls who existed during the time of the Salem Witch Trials, where she had grown up well versed in all crafts of the supernatural. Witches, Vampires... Nothing was strange to her. But living in a place where it was all accepted as normal, as familial? That was different. There was nothing like the bonds of family, though packs somehow seemed different. They were almost more intimate than family, she'd thought, and often wondered how that was possible. Bethel hadn't been confronted face to face with a member, or even an entire pack yet, but the day for that was probably coming. And she had to admit, the idea of acceptance for the scales beneath her skin and the monstrosity they could create sounded fantastical.

The warehouse district was comforting, even though sometimes it felt like tempting fate. Bethel had found herself in the area to peruse the Armory, but also to spend some time sincerely alone. She had posed herself on a bench, watching the families at a distance. They knew something was off with her, almost like they could smell the way her skin shed itself, or how her jaw could unhinge and swallow all of them whole. The power was intoxicating, often, and unraveled the very fiber of her being. It was easy to get lost inside herself, in the maze of veins that made her up, almost like getting lost on these back streets.

Sometimes, riding the line between the prey, the predator, and the observer felt like a roller coaster. But here, settled on a bus bench to watch the prey felt more like home than anything else in the world, even if there was dinner, disguised as a Mother Theresa feeding the poor and under the skin of a human, Bethel could still smell the fur beneath.

" They don't eat often. I'm sure they will appreciate what you've done for them," She said softly, her voice a quiet hiss for the woman to hear as she passed.












































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