(The Dark) Getting It Together

[Yumyumcrow]

Emma easily finds purchase in the ceiling for amid the peeling paper and crumbling plaster there is bare wood. Hanging upside down takes a little getting used to. Emma might be in bat form but her mind is wholly her own and her enhanced instincts are still... human.

Emma will need to make a Wits + Investigation check.

Outside the party draw near the house. They follow Bea, now, as she plunges in arc around the house - first south, then west. Why the Daeva took this path soon becomes obvious as the trails crash through the undergrowth: vehicles made the passage as they rode around the house to the rear entrance!

There is a rather pristine bike and a rather wretched SUV out the back. Given the mess of ruts and flattened plant life, an even bigger vehicle may once have been parked there too.

The rear of the house is much like the first but all the boarded windows and the back door have been torn away. The ground floor windows and the back door are simply holes: eyeless sockets to see into the buildings interior. Candles clump in empty rooms thick with graffiti and stains; a lone lantern illuminates the back door and the corridor beyond, a passage that runs right through the house and dimly illuminates the stairwell leading up. A faint mist bubbles along the floor, lending the lantern's light an eerie glow.

The debris pile is bigger too and fans out around the north wall of the building, lost from view. Wood, earth, plaster, stone. Bone? A selection of work tools - sledges, wheel barrows, shovels and the like - lie cast aside and neglected by the cavernous hole of the rear entrance.

Everyone can make out sounds of conversation. Only Ale Orianna Alessandra and Bea Bea Cayce can make out what is being said with clarity.

"They should be rising now. I followed the rite to the letter! Do you doubt, me, Julia?"

"Fool you if you think so!"

"Stop your posturing. This is tiresome. We learned the ritual as presented did not work."

"Its not like we can do it again."

"Ha! We have contacts..."

"This is the United States, Julia. Or perhaps you have forgotten!"

[Emma French]

Emma finds a spot and hangs upside down batgirl style. Her head feels a bit weird and fuzzy since she isn't used to the position. Maybe she should have gone mountain cat or rat? Then she would get less of a headache.

  1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-02-01 10:16:46		Emma French rolls 4 to Wholy Batgirl, Investigation (10 Again)		1, 7, 1, 8		1 success

[Alessandra]

The voices made Ale stop as she listens.

Rising now?

Ritual?

Seems they got here just in time for the party. Well, granted whoever or whatever actually rises. Though if they don’t, that worked just fine for her, less assholes to deal with.

Her head turns to look at Alice and Jesse, a finger coming up to her lips, her head motioning towards the voices. If they could catch them off guard, all the better. But if they were Kindred, it was only a matter of time before the press of Beasts gave them away.

She then looks to Bea, who was leading them. Do they just walk right in? Or were they going to try and be sneaky about this? Beasts would only let them sneak so far, so it was kinda a toss up to her. Her hands wanted to move to the holsters and equip her guns, but if these were Kindred, it would only buy them time in a fight. Instead, her hands flex and relax a few times.

[Hugh Everwood]

Jesse been quiet for the most part, just following the lead and walking where he needed to like a good sacrifice kine with little to no survival instincts. His hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

"Relax, bet it'll be great. Just look at our company. Party's gonna be good." Jesse smiled widely, figuring to get talking some himself. Of course, he knew fully well Alice couldn't see nothing, but that didn't mean Kine him was going to watch out for these things.

Cause he wasn't.

Hearing people speak and not making out just what was said made Jesse frown, then he went and nodded at Alessandra's universal sign for shutting the hell up.

Guess they'd watch and wait. Ain't that grande?

[Bea]

Catching Alessandra's sign, Bea put a finger against Alice's lips. It was a rude gesture, but the albino leech was blind, and it was more important that they all understood, rather than bowing before what was polite.

Once Bea was convinced that message had been passed one, she gladly broke contact and brushed back her jacket to draw the .40 holstered at her waist. It wasn't strictly necessary, but she might as well follow the Sheriff's lead. If one of them was getting lead out, they all might as well.

Besides, talk of raising the dead didn't particularly sit well with her. Not when they were walking into an abandoned house ringed with stones, a house with a malevolent reputation, and most importantly, a house that was filled with devil worshiping, blood sucking monsters.

She was glad she didn't have a pulse. It would have been racing, otherwise.

So, gripping her pistol in both hands, Bea moved through the gaping hole of the back door and into the house, heading towards the voices.

[Alice Hart]

This was a feeling Alice had time and time again as she found herself in situations like this. She was less then useless, being lead around by the hand, in this case ear. The crunching steps are replaced by unfamiliar voices.

Their message slicked ice up her spine, where she the sort who've rage burned her blood would be boiling, but Alice wasn't one who was prone to that. Everything focused into a sharp cold clarity. The weight of the knife at her back an equally cold comfort.

The press of Bea's finger against her lips nearly had the Haunt snarling. This mewling thing dare! Alice was blind. Not stupid. Her only asset were her hearing why assume she wouldn't have enhanced it?

But Alice didn't snarl because her Rage wasn't an instant thing, blazing like the cruel sun. But a frigid thing, coiling, waiting.

The only thing betraying her stillness now was the mockery of life thrumming through her.

A moment, a beat of her heart, then another, and Alice follows the crunching steps and the Beasts leading her onward.

ooc

Alice has Heightened her Hearing too.

[Yumyumcrow]

Bat-Emma hangs from her perch, wings coiled placidly about her.

The conversation is coming from below, funnelled by passageways and the stairwell. The site of this conversation was below and most likely to her right.

The hand was attached to an arm. A frantic and despairing arm that disappeared through a hole in the wall at the point where the stairwell curved along the wall before heading down one level. The wall had signs of being recently worked, of a space being carved out for an unfortunate who was then bricked in place. The spot was thick with new graffiti.

[Emma French]

BatEmma flies closer to the hole in the wall to get a better look. She tries to stay out of the reach of the arm if possible.

[Yumyumcrow]

BatEmma flaps down. Bat senses come into play.

There is a hole in the wall; if there wasn't a grasping arm sticking out of it, BatEmma might have been able to squeeze through into the space beyond. Whoever the unfortunate is, they are lost in deep shadow. Echolocation picks out a little more but features and face is lost in a blur.

[Yumyumcrow]

And now everyone is in position, I can move onto a new scene