The stop over (Killian)

[CharlotteC]

"I'm going to leave my hand on your arm so you can follow me, and I'll also tell you if we're turning in a certain direction, so you aren't surprised by it.. Unless you'd rather I just turn you into one of my kindred right here and now, so you'll be able to see in the dark on your own."

Crazy person say what? She looked in the direction of his voice with what she was sure was a mix of unsure and skeptical. She felt around for her phone and pulled it out, unlocking the screen so that she could use its light like a flashlight. She called up the app that left her flash on and steady and looked up at him, not that she could see him, barely. "Turn me here and now?!" She asked as she shifted the light to move down the way a bit, it lit up only about five feet, but it was enough to see where she was going.

"Does that mean you were planing to 'turn me' later?" She asked, he really was crazy. That thought stopped her for a moment. If he really was crazy, then what the **** was so doing? Following him into a sewer? Standing here? And of course there was the facts. He was able to track her when she knew she was long gone before he noticed the missing money, she had been on the look out for the first few blocks. Then there was what he had done to that guy, the speed, the power of the attack. And the. There was also the fact that he had picked up that cover like it was a tinker toy. And now that he was out of the sun? He looked 200% better than he had above ground. "I have to be nuts..." She said to herself as she looked at him.

Vampires... The mere thought of it made her mind spin. "This can't be real, I mean you obviously are a real person, but vampire? Really? They are just a myth... Aren't they?" She asked, but at the same time she had to wonder if she was nuts for even voicing the question, even bringing it into reality.

After a moment she looked around, "Where are we going?" She asked as she looked up at the man... Vampire... Thing. Well not thing, that just sounded... Mean? Yeah that was a good word for it.

[Killian]

He laughed. That was all the man could do. Obviously, the girl had bitten off a little more than she could chew. Even after what she'd seen, she didn't believe he was a vampire.. Alright, he would just have to do something to prove it, then, and see what happened from there. 'Hmm... Razor claws? Nah, too subtle.. Celerity would just confuse her.. Can't jump or tunnel.. Hmm.. That bone crusher thing could smash part of the wall! Yeah, that'll work!'

"Well, I wasn't really planning on turning you until I asked just now, no. And, you think you're crazy? Think about how I must've felt when I woke up after a fist fight in a bar, and found out that I could do this." And at that, Killian exhaled and concentrated, then slammed his fist into the concrete, nearly punching all the way through to the city's septic tunnels. He brought his hand away without a scratch on it.

"Everything you know, is a lie." He had always wanted to say that. It was a great way to disturb and disorient someone that had no idea what was the real truth about things. And, when faced with what was clearly a vampire in front of you, that was a good goal. It kept immediate panic from settling in about what she was facing, instead causing that emotion to go toward the lack of knowledge that was possessed.

"Now, as for where we're going.. home sounds nice to me. You're welcome to come along if you want to, and you're also more than welcome to ask for the chance at more power than you could even begin to dream of." Appealing to the human nature of gaining power, and all the things that come with it. His words about not wanting to turn her were a lie, but she didn't know that. He actually wanted to manipulate her just enough to make the girl want the change to occur.

[CharlotteC]

She gave a little scream as he slammed his fist through the wall. Charlie was sure that his hand was going to be crushed to pieces, but instead the only thing that crumbled was the wall, the hole he had created, around his wrist. His hand had come out without a mark. Without even thinking about it, or even asking of she could, she grabbed at his hand and pulled it under the light of her phone. Not a single blemish, the bones seemed intact, nothing broken. Then she realized what she was doing and dropped his hand like he had burnt her, blushing brightly as she mumbled a soft "Sorry about that."

Then she noticed the stench and looked at the hole. Wasn't that the wall that he said led to the sewage? The stink was a lot clear not, before she hadn't even smelled it. Apparently, he had. That meant he really was nuts. He purposely slammed his fist at the place that would clearly be filled with all kinds of disgusting bacteria.

The next words out of his mouth drew a soft laugh from her. She couldn't help it, it was just too cheesy. Then she started to pull to the front of her mind every book, every comic, every movie she had ever seen that centered around vampires. Minus one or two books. Well more like four. Vampires that glittered in the sunlight was just too moronic. And who the **** would want to repeat high school over and over and over again? Before she could question him about the things she was thinking he was saying that he was going home, then he was offering her power. 'More than she could dream of.' She could dream of a lot of power. "The only power I really care about is the power of my scripts and viruses." She said softly as she looked at him.

Since he offered to take her with him to wherever this "home" was she decided to follow along, and as she did she started to question all of the things she had read and saw about vampires. Starting with the most obvious, "drink blood? Super fast? Really strong I just saw... Turn to mist and bats? Able to glamour people? Make them cluck like chickens if you so desired? Eating babies? Garlic? Silver? Or is that one just for werewolves? Oooh! Werewolves! Do they exist too?!" She knew that she was probably verging on the side of annoying. But she was an avid reader. Still she continued to list things she had read about or watched in movies. "Do you turn to dust if you're decapitated? Can you put yourself back together? Grow limbs back? Heal fast? Do you bleed if you don't sleep? Why don't more people know about vampires? Are you the only one in this city? Is this like your territory?"

Ok, now she was beginning to even annoy herself. She fell silent and decided that she would let him answer what she had asked about thus far. She had to wonder though what this guy called home. And she also thought about the fact that he said that he wouldn't have turned her against her will, he was going to ask her if she wanted it. His words echoed in her head, he had woken up to this world. Had he not had the same choice? "Did they base Lestat after you? How old are you anyways?" She couldn't help those two, they sort of popped out of her mouth before her brain could stop them.

[Killian]

He started laughing as she bombarded him with questions. Of course, he didn't really know the answers to all of them, but he would do his best to give her what information he knew of. "Drink blood, yes. Super fast.. some of us. Turn to mist, no. Bats... maybe someone does. I turn into a panda though. Dunno why. I've got no idea what glamouring someone is, and I can't make people do stuff like a hyponotist. Don't eat babies.. I can't eat food, though some can, but I've got no idea about garlic. Silver is ********. Regular bullets and blades do the trick anyway. There aren't werewolves, but I'm sure there are some that can pull off a few tricks that'll make them look that way. If I die, my body stays in tact, but most vampires turn to ash.. some just dissipate in shadow though. They're creepy and stalkerish and kind of dickheads a lot of the time. Can't put myself back together. Limbs grow back. For me, it's in layers of bone and meat and flesh. Looks pretty disgusting to see your own arm without any skin on it. Yes to healing quickly. No to bleeding if I don't sleep, although there is this awful sense of lethargy when the sun's up. More don't know about vampires because we're basically contained to this city. No, I'm not the only one. There are actually hundreds of us. We aren't territorial, but we do live in a shitty dictatorship that I'm working to overthrow."

A laugh left his lips as he kept walking, then her next two questions caught him off-guard. He nearly fell over with laughter at them. "No, no, Lestat isn't based off of me, or any vampire that I know of at all. Though, Mircea might be the closest match to him, personality wise. Hell, that book came out before I was even born. I'm only 28. I've been a vampire for a little over two years now. I was turned just after the Elders returned from the Shadow Realm. A couple hundred years ago, there was a vampire holocaust. Every vampire, with the exception of Cobb, was hunted and killed. Cobb managed to keep his head off the chopping block somehow, and from what I've been told he experimented for close to two hundred years, until he somehow managed to open a breach.. a rift, if you will, between this world and the Shadow Realm. A few of the vampires from before the holocaust managed to escape through the rift, and came to our world, completely out of their element, and they began to sire and rebuild the vampire population slowly."

He turned to face her, to see what her reaction was to the flood of information that she had been given just now. They were coming into an area of the sewers that he was more familiar with, so it wouldn't be much longer before they were climbing out and heading to the crypt he shared with his wife. Which was good, because if that didn't happen soon, Killian would start becoming irritable, and possibly violent.

"Now, I believe I heard you say something about scripts and viruses... Well, we've got plenty of those available to people around town, if they have the money to pick them up, as well as a plethora of people that make them outright and sell them, or even use them for their own personal gain. There are plenty of tech-savvy vampires. I'm not really one of them, unless you count DJing. I am one hell of a DJ. Co-owner of a radio station, as well as more or less running the station that's on the college campus."

[CharlotteC]

His laugh kind of took her off guard but then he started to answer her questions, almost in the same rapid fire that she had asked them in. Some of the comments caught her attention, 'some of them' were fast? He turned into a panda and thought someone might turn into a bat? She blinked as she continued to listen to his answers. Every answer brought on more questions. She wondered though if asking them would annoy him. So far, he hadn't seemed to be annoyed by the questions, just amused. If she put it in perspective, that was the better of the two. After all, if he really was the walking dead, really was a killer, he could snap her neck and be done with her if she did annoy him.

When he said he hadn't known what glamouring was her first thought was that she guessed he wasn't a True Blood fan. It was quickly followed by the sad realization that she wouldn't be able to do it. He was still answering her questions, and each one made her think a bit more about things. But the thing that really caught her attention was that he said that he was trying to bring down a 'shitty dictatorship'. She thought that Canada was ruled by the queen, or rather the Prime Minister carried out some things.

Then it dawned on her that he meant that there was a dictatorship, a ruling party, that controlled the vampires and what they did. After all, the vampires were oddly contained to this one city. Why? How? Those were just two of the thoughts that ran through her mind as he continued to lead her through the sewers. He had laughed at her again when she had brought up Lestat and the vampire chronicles. He was only twenty-eight? Her eyes went wide at that. Then she was almost tempted to cut him off to ask just how many years he had been 28. Of course she didn't because at that time he started to tell her a story, or at least it seemed like a story. One of fantasy. One that seemed hard to believe. Then again, she was following a 'vampire' god knows where, through a sewer.

A 'man' named Cobb, a Shadow Realm, a rift... It all seemed insane. Yet here she was. Her artistic side told her to go with it, her logical side told her she was insane, and the. She remembered how his fist had went through that wall, not a mark, not a blemish, not a broken bone. It was freaky and cool at the same time. Charlie looked at him as he looked at her. She had several questions running through her mind but couldn't find words to express just how far fetched everything he had told her still sounded.

The conversation turned to something she understood, one that she liked. She smirked and nodded. "I actually write my own, when I'm not doing some 'searching' through systems." She said softly before stopping and looking at him. "Wait! You're a... A... DJ?!" She started giggling "A vampire DJ?" The idea seemed more than a little amusing. "Please tell me the radio station isn't called 'Blood Stream' or something equally cheesy." She said, going back to teasing him a little bit. Meaning it all in jest. "Hey! Speaking of names... What in the hell is yours? Or would you have to kill me if you told me?"

[Killian]

Her laughter at his profession just made him shake his head with a chuckle, and then the teasing came a moment later. "No, no, it's not called 'Blood Stream'. There's Pirate Radio, which is the station I co-own, and there's Harper Rock Campus Radio. Pirate Radio is kind of actually on a boat.. and unregulated.. and illegal as ****."

Then her next question a moment later. He hadn't been ready for it. Hell, this entire thing had been unexpected, strange, and completely off-kilter. It wasn't often that someone actually asked for his name. Most of the time, people just knew who he was off the top of their head. Hell, it seemed like half the city had hunted him down and killed him multiple times in the last two years. Nearly everyone that paid attention to city politics knew his name, and knew he was an incredibly vocal opponent of the Masquerade and how it was enforced. He debated just for a moment on what to say, and upon a left turn he decided the truth was the best option.

"The name's Lynch. Killian Lynch." That was said with a thick, mock Sean Connery accent. He laughed at his own joke and then turned to face her. "Sorry, I've just always wanted to say that. Some would consider me a Dragomir, though, because of the lineage I was sucked into... no pun intended. But, I don't see myself as one of them. They've never really done anything for me as a whole, so there's no reason that I should do anything for them."

Not much farther ahead, there was a small crack of light showing through a wall. But it wasn't bright enough for sunlight. No, it was the door leading from the sewers to the graveyard that existed originally for city workers to make sure there wasn't contamination due to the bodies that had been placed there since the town first got running water.

"Ahh, almost home. I love the smell of graveyard dirt in the morning."

[CharlotteC]

As he told her about the different radio stations, she smirked a bit and nodded. Pirate Radio seemed to be a popular name, but then, when you were a hacker, you often ran into the more illegal ****, and of course, there was only so many names you could give something like that. However, it was a bit shocking and yet not shocking at all to know that there was a campus of sorts. That meant there were schools. Hell, maybe she would look up the school when she got to a hotel or something and see if there were any classes that entertained her. She always loved to learn.

When he got to his name, she couldn't help but roll her eyes at the way he said his name. And yet, she couldn't help but question "Lynch? As in Lynch Mob?" she asked, she knew that a lot of Scottish and Irish surnames often took on the occupations of the leaders of the houses. So that made her wonder, if this man had been destined to be a pain in someones neck, back, or ***. When he mentioned the fact that he was pulled in under the name of 'Dragomir' she arched her brow a bit. "So does that make you a Lynch or a Dragomir... is that even a word?" She couldn't help but ask. The fact that he said that they never really did anything for him made her wonder if joining this little brood was a good idea. Still she could see what he meant, why do anything for someone that didn't do anything for you? Every tit deserved a little bit of tat in her mind.

Charlie almost stopped dead in her tracks at his next statement. Graveyard dirt? He lived in a graveyard? As if the guy wasn't weird enough. He claimed to be a vampire, and she was starting to believe it, and not just because he had put his hand through a wall and done not a single bit of damage to his hand, but also the way he seemed to smoke in the sunlight, the way he had looked tired while out in the sunlight. She shook her head. That couldn't be right. It couldn't be real? I mean seriously? Vampires?

Yes, she had heard of some people claiming to be things like that, and usually, they were all some sort of nuts. Of course, there were people with a medical condition. Those that needed blood because for what ever reason, their bodies couldn't reproduce the plasma needed to live. And then there were the one in a millions, the ones with that skin condition where they burned to crisps if they stood out in the sunlight. Those people, she felt so bad for those people. And then it was that thought that shook her out of her thoughts and she quickly caught up to him. "You live in a graveyard? Seriously? Isn't that a little... I don't know... creepy?" She asked and then moved to walk beside him a bit, though really a step behind so that she could follow if he turned one way or the other. "Out of curiosity, since you say you are a vampire and all that. Do all vampires have the ability to stand in the sunlight without getting harmed? You are pretty much unharmed right?" She asked, she couldn't help but be a little concerned. After all, this man had saved her life. Even if he was a bit of a nutter. Or at least, seemed that way.

[Killian]

A hearty laugh left his lips as she asked questions of him once more. Thinking that living in a graveyard crypt was creepy. It was at least a little cliche, now that he'd thought about it. Then, the million dollar question. Are they all immune to sunlight. That's the one that made him laugh the hardest.

"All of us? No, not even close. Especially not the fledglings. However, all of us have certain strengths available to us. Powers, if you will. And they need to be learned, and honed, and perfected. All of which takes time. And then, there are the wraith guides. Vampires from long ago, that have made it out of the fade in an incorporeal state. They've become teachers to us, showing us the way to learn things that wouldn't be part of our usual vampiric skill-set. Some of us are currently trying to figure out how to return them to being flesh and blood beings. Others aren't so inclined. They'd rather trust a creature that no one has ever seen or spoken to in person. But, more on that at a later time.."

He pushed open the door to the graveyard access, then stepped to the side to avoid the light rushing in. He would have to be quick, now, in order to make it to his crypt in time to rest without roid-rage like effects settling in and taking him over for the night. The only way he could do it was with his celerity power, but that would make him disappear in the blink of an eye and she wouldn't know where to go to continue following him. That left him with three choices. Tell her how to get to his crypt, tell her the way back to the street and how to get to the bus station, or having her climb onto his back and be along for the ride. But, he was only going to give her two of those options..

"Okay, so, now I present you with a choice. You can either ask me how to get the hell out of here, go back to your life, and forget about this city and the crazy ******** you pick-pocketed.. or, you can come with me, down the rabbit hole, and have your entire life changed in the blink of an eye." He figured a girl of her style would appreciate the Matrix style reference, no matter which route she chose to take. He really hoped she would follow him into the firestorm, though. "Just a quick warning.. if you want to join me, you're gonna need to climb onto my back. There's no red pill, blue pill stuff here."

[CharlotteC]

He found her questions amusing and for the life of her, she couldn't figure out if it was because they were stupid or because he had never been asked things like that before. Charlie sighed as she watched him for a moment before he answered her, she couldn't help but be curious about these wraith people he kept mentioning. And, of course, her inner nerd didn't stop her from imagining something akin to the ring wraiths that were in lord of the rings. The way they looked like dark, deadly shadows, solid and yet not, and only the one with the ring could see their true face. In fact a lot of the things he told her reminded her of that book, was this creature the all seeing eye burning bright atop a tower in Mordor?

As Killian opened the door and stepped away from the light, Charlie watched him. It seemed even he wasn't 'immune' just resistant to the sun. She looked him over once again. Was she really starting to believe all this crazy that he was spilling out? She believed she was, at least on some very weird level. Charlie continued to watch him until he spoke to her, drawing her attention away from how he was avoiding the sunlight to what he was actually saying to her. She couldn't stop the soft snort that left her, so unladylike as her mother would say, then again she never claimed to be a lady. Even if she did tell him to tell her how to get back to the bus station, even if she did leave it behind, she wouldn't forget him, forget the city. He was too weird, and too much had happened. And then there was the fact that she had a photographic memory. She'd never forget. She bit her lower lip for a moment, wondering which choice she should take. When he told her that she would need to climb up on his back though, she laughed. She really couldn't help it.

She did feel a bit like Alice, she had been expecting him to offer her a cookie that said 'eat me' that would make her grow, and of course with him speaking like Morpheus from the Matrix, she again couldn't help drawing all the nerdy connections from one neuron to the other. She took a step closer to him and finally spoke, "Lead the way white rabbit. Or should I call you Morpheus?" She waited for him to turn so that she could do what he had said she would need to do, though she hadn't had a clue as to the why of it. Was he planning to use her as shade? She didn't know. Now though, as she hopped pretty easily onto his back thanks to all her years as a tomboy and held on. "Why exactly do I need to have a pony ride?" She said with a light laugh.

[Killian]

"Because you won't be able to keep up otherwise. Now, hold on tightly. Possibly hold your breath. I don't know if this creates a vacuum. Don't have to breathe, so it doesn't matter to me." Then Killian gave her a moment to comply. Once he felt her grip tighten, the man concentrated on where he wanted to be. Home. Then, in the blink of an eye, they were at the door to the crypt and he was unlocking it. Celerity was such a useful power sometimes. Like when avoiding prolonged exposure to the sun is necessary.

A moment later, and he was swinging the door open, revealing.. a crypt that was laid out like a normal home. Lights, furniture, a desktop computer in the corner, a bathroom visible to the left.. Even vampires had to shower, after all. The girl on his back would've just seen him essentially teleport them from one place to the next with how quickly they had moved, which would undoubtedly prove that he wasn't lying to her.

Killian let her off of his back easily, before stepping inside, then blinking as he realized that he didn't need to give her permission to enter. "C'mon in and make yourself comfortable." the man managed to say in his Irish lilt before he stumbled inside. He hadn't realized that he had been out so late, and that he'd used as much energy as he had. And he still hadn't fed after having donated to that Blood Thief so many hours before, either. He made it to the fridge a moment later and opened the freezer portion, then sighed at the complete lack of blood packs.

"****."