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<Deagan> Deagan McNamara had found the letter in a sealed envelope in his mailbox, minus return address or postage. It was a little unnerving, with everything else that had been going on recently in his life, to think that someone had just walked up to his house and put it there; someone who obviously knew where he lived.

The letter inside was written in a non-descript block script. It gave an address, and nothing else. But Deagan had come to realize that seemingly meagre clues such these could hold great weight; that their perceived lack of substance was often a mask for the amount of secrets they potentially contained. Secrets that others dared not put down with ink and paper, or with keyboard and data streamed over the internet.

Deagan got in his car and headed towards the address, which was in Newborough.

I have something important to tell you.

It was amazing how quickly one’s mind could adapt to the unbelievable. This time when the ghostly voice whispered in his ear, Deagan only jerked the wheel a little.

He did not bother to look for the source of the voice. He knew from previous experience that he would not see her, had not seen her in fact since that day in the bookstore. It was probably for the best. She had been a vision of light that day, one that he still couldn’t get out of his head. Seeing her again like that, with the knowledge that she was still dead and beyond his reach, would only drive him further into madness.

“Tell me what Emily?” How jaded I’ve become, he thought. I’m speaking to the ghost of my wife, and I sound positively bored. It did not help that this was the most recent in an increasing number of iterations of this cryptic phrase. I have something important to tell you. It was like she was caught in a loop, an ectoplasmic broken record. Deagan knew from experience that further inquiries into the nature of this great and important matter would get him nowhere. But occasionally his dead wife’s voice did reveal other tidbits of information, almost none of them reassuring.

There’s danger where you’re going.

Tell me something I don’t know, thought Deagan morosely. He pulled up to where his GPS told him he could find the address from the letter. It was an abandoned factory on the southern part of town. Or if not abandoned, the owners certainly weren’t invested in keeping glass in the window panes. Over half of them had been broken out. Deagan got out of his car and looked around cautiously. The street was deserted and desolate. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting to find, but he probably could have dressed better for the occasion. He was wearing a tweed suit and overcoat. The wind blew dust in his face and he winced. Best to get this over with, he thought. Emily appeared to have gone silent again, for now. He walked up to the door and tried it. It opened easily. This only increased Deagan’s unease. He opened the door further, and stepped into the decrepit building.

<Nesa> The night was lovely -- starry, beautiful. She enjoyed watching the stars from the window she had perched in. This was one of her usual choices for wandering at night, just far enough from home that she felt rebellious, but close enough that she still felt safe.

Though it did not particularly matter if she was close to home, as long as she kept her tome with her at all times. It had become second nature for her to carry it with her everywhere. To ensure she would never forget it, she kept it inside of the teddy bear, she always carried that bear with her.

Pale fingers picked at broken shards of glass as she stared into the night, her lips parting in a huff. She was bored. Usually she would hunt zombies -- that always kept her quite occupied, but tonight was boring. She had yet to come upon a zombie.

She shifts to drop from the windowsill as a chilly wind blew threw the broken window. Her feet touched the ground gently and soon Nesa was off to see what she could find -- hopefully she could find something.

The teddy bear was held tightly in one hand, carrying the raggedy stuffed toy by one arm that was slowly coming undone -- the poor thing had seen a lot of use from the young blonde that carried it everywhere.

“What danger, Uflu?” She tilted her head as she held the toy up in front of her face, her tome was sticking haphazardly out of the back of the bear, there had been times where she had to backtrace her steps because it fell out -- she had not looked into having a zipper or anything placed on the bear, so the tome was just shoved through an opening in the back of the toy.

She huffed at something, “So? Nothing happens ‘round here anymore.” She is still talking to the bear, “Stop worryin’! I don’t think I gotta worry ‘bout anything.” The girl appears to be in her early twenties, though she does not act it. She tugs one of the sleeves of her light blue jacket, biting her lip as she moved to a dusty old couch, plopping down onto it. She might as well sit and have this serious talk that the teddy bear ‘seemed’ to want to have.

“Okay. I’m listenin’.” She states, sitting the bear beside of her and turning so that her back was against the arm of the couch, legs sprawled beneath her. This would be a very serious conversation… with a toy, but nonetheless, very serious.

<Deagan> Broken glass crunched under the soles of Deagan’s shoes as his feet shuffled through the debris that had piled up near the door like a snowdrift or shifting sand in the desert. The building appeared to be an older factory, now completely deserted. Any equipment, and most anything else that hadn’t been bolted down, had been removed. The roof of the cavernous building was held up by a series of support beams that resembled ribs in the barren and cavernous interior of the building. Yet as Deagan entered and flipped on his flashlight (he had at least planned that far ahead) he thought he could hear the sound of a voice over the crunch and shuffle beneath his feet. The echoing nature of the large space made it hard to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. He moved his flashlight about, the beam streaming through the dark like a searchlight, until it landed on a truly bizarre scene. A young woman was sitting by herself on a couch on the far side of the building. The voice appeared to be hers, but Deagan could not determine who it was she was talking to. Herself maybe? The only other thing he could see on the old torn couch was what appeared to be a stuffed teddy bear. What the hell? thought Deagan.

<Nesa> Bright light. Flickering shadows. The fledgling hardly paid attention to these things as the man shone a light over her direction. She did not like the light, she liked the dark. That light needed to go away.

This was her hunt. Her game. Whoever it was, was most certainly not welcomed into Nesa’s world. And she says this, though indirectly to the bear: “Uflu there are rude people about. Oh, so very. They should go away.”

She brought the bear close to her torso, in a hug. “Bad men, men, men. Uflu we should leave. Go home to family.”

<Deagan> As he watched the young woman, who looked as if she were in her 20’s, bring the bear up to her chest and begin talking to it, Deagan got a sick, creeping feeling inside. He strongly suspected he may have come across an escaped mental patient. He had an overwhelming instinct to turn and run out the door and escape this bizarre scene, back to the safety of his car, the safety of his house. But then again how safe was he truly anywhere? The house was where the mysterious letter had been delivered. The one which had lead him here, to witness this. Was this what he was meant to see tonight? A grown woman with the mentality of a child, talking to her toy? He decided he would let fate have its due. If nothing else, this woman needed help. She needed to be somewhere safer than this abandoned building in the dead of night. Who knows what horrors could be inflicted on her if someone did not look out for her?

Deagan began approaching cautiously. He lowered the flashlight so that it did not shine directly on the girl, but still allowed him to see where he was going. “Please don’t be afraid,” he called out. “I mean you no harm. Someone told me to come here tonight, and I don’t know why. Perhaps if you tell me why you’re here tonight, we can figure this out. I know you don’t know me, but I promise, you can trust me.” Though reclusive, obsessive, and at times manically depressed, Deagan had gained a reputation for one thing among those acquaintances who still actually spoke to him. Ever since his wife’s death, he had come to abhor any kind of lying or deception. It made him sick to know that the answer to why Emily had been murdered was out there somewhere, and it was being hidden from him. He hoped this commitment to always telling the truth came through now in the words he was saying to the young woman with the bear. He hoped she would trust him. He suspected she might have something to do with why he was here tonight, and if so, he would need her to get closer to the answers he sought.

<Nesa> There was a voice. Fancy voice. Strange voice. The blonde turns to stare into the dark -- toward the stranger. Her fingers curled into the bear, it appeared to be a normal toy, but was stuffed with multiple weapons, her tome to get home, her cell phone. She kept everything in that bear.

“Who told you? Why would they tell you -- tell you, tell you to come into the nighttime dwelling of evil baddies, very bad baddies.” Her head has tilted. She does not make much sense -- but this time she is doing it on purpose.

Nesa’s lips part as she studies the stranger, before leaping up from the couch, bear in tow. The soft clinking sound of the bullets she kept inside could be heard, though her rather loud movements should mask that.

“Hiya! Wanna be friendly friends? Friendlies are always good.” She offers a big grin, canting her head to the left as she held out a small, but firm hand. The teddy bear is raggedy, torn all to hell. The toy is missing most of its eyes, its ears, its stuffing.

It is also stained with blood -- though the stain has faded and is long since a soft pink color that is not visible in this limited lighting. Standing there, dressed in torn jeans and a tank top, the blonde-haired woman beams brightly at the stranger.

“Hope the baddies don’ get ya.” She states, with a giggle.

<Deagan> Deagan was startled by the speed at which the young woman closed the distance between himself and the beat up old couch she had been perched upon. There was something almost...inhuman about it. But he quickly regained his composure. Having made some sort of headway with this stranger, it would not do to blow any goodwill gained by showing how utterly disturbed he was by her. He smiled cordially and took the offered hand, the other hand with the flashlight dropping to his side and temporarily plunging them into further darkness. She’s freezing! he thought, as they shook hands. The poor thing must be close to hypothermia.

“I would love to be your friend. My name is Deagan. How do you do?” Her comment continued to stick in his head. This was a “nighttime dwelling of evil baddies.” Despite the infantile speech, the prospects of what she had said disturbed him. What had he been thinking, running right out to an unknown address in the middle of the night based on an anonymous letter? This obsession of his would get him killed. And yet, wouldn’t it be worth it, to find out the truth? The visions of Emily’s ghost had assured him somewhat that there must be some kind of afterlife, and therefore even if he himself died in the pursuit of her killer, he might yet have some hope of rejoining her.

“If what you are saying is true, I think perhaps we shouldn’t stay here too long. Tell me, who are these ‘baddies?’”

<Nesa> “‘m called Nesa. Nesa, that’s all.” She had to play it off -- he wasn’t family, and he certainly was not another vampire. She didn’t care who he was -- just that she didn’t have to deal with anything. She didn’t want to hurt anybody. Hurting people was bad. Now, zombies on the other hand…

But those were not people. “I do good! Real good, ‘m ‘splorin’!” She said these words in short spurts, almost as if she was forgetting how to say each word. “Well they’re all over! See?” She points in a direction -- though he would most likely not pick up on any sounds, she sure did. Perhaps he would assume she was insane. It was what she wanted, after all.

Insane people were always the ones who’d get you in the end, right?

“Well, if you don’ wanna deal with ‘em, we better go.” She would have to watch the time -- make sure she was able to disappear with the use of her tome before sunrise.

<Deagan> Deagan could see nothing in the direction that the young woman Nesa had been pointing. With his curiosity piqued, for half a second Deagan was tempted to take his flashlight and wander over there to have a look. Then he remembered every horror movie he’d ever seen, and realized that was complete idiocy. It was foolhardy enough of him to have struck out on this venture in the middle of the night, not knowing where he would end up. This young woman obviously needed psychiatric help, and for all he knew, that was the reason why he had been directed here tonight. He would see to it that Nesa got the help she needed, and would return during the relative safety of daytime to explore the abandoned factory further.

“I agree completely,” he said to Nesa. “Let’s go before we encounter anything unpleasant. I have a car right outside. I would be happy to take you someplace safe.” Deagan began heading towards the door that he had originally come in through, hoping Nesa would be right behind him. But then suddenly he stopped short. There was a new sound. He couldn’t be sure he had really heard over the crunching of his own steps, but now it was all too obvious. It was the sound of something shuffling through the debris at the far end of the warehouse. His flashlight was still pointing towards his intended destination, the door still slightly ajar to let in a little of the light from the street lamps outside. The rest of the factory was consumed in darkness. Deagan knew he would have to look, would have to swing the flashlight in the direction of the quiet shuffling footfalls, but he found that he was suddenly paralyzed by fear. In the cavernous dark of the factory his imagination was running wild. It’s just an animal. It has to be! he tried to reassure himself.

Slowly he turned, and pointed the flashlight in the direction of the noise.

<Nesa> The shuffling noise was familiar to Nesa, she spent so much of her time hunting zombies -- it was second nature to note the sound and track it. Though sometimes they did sneak up on her.

She turned to face the man again, frowning as he shone the flashlight toward the direction she was sure a zombie was coming from. “Should leave now.” She stated. She did not want to have to pike a zombie in front of this human man -- but Nesa being Nesa would not stand down if a zombie came too close to her.

“C’mon, mister strange-stranger.” She’s reached to curl her fingers against the man’s wrist and pull him gently. “C’mon ‘fore it gets us.” She tried to act afraid, but she was finding that hard to pull off.

<Deagan> Nesa grabbed Deagan’s wrist and pulled him again towards the exit. The beam of the flashlight went wild as she yanked on his arm. The poor girl was obviously terrified. Deagan decided he should trust his initial instinct, and not go looking for trouble. “Yes Nesa, let’s go.”

He proceeded again to the open door, swinging it open and stepping out onto the sidewalk. His white Mustang was still parked on at the curb. He was relieved. This wasn’t the nicest part of town. How ironic that would’ve been, if while he was running from some boogeyman in the dark, some hood had stolen his car. He hit the switch to unlock the car, and the beeping noise rang hollow through the empty street. Deagan found himself nervous who, or what, might have heard it. “Get in,” he said to Nesa, as he opened her door and proceeded to the driver’s side. “Is there somewhere safe I can take you?”

<Nesa> Was there anywhere he could take her? She shut the door of his car roughly, thinking. After a moment she piped up, “Sure is! My.. big brother runs a shop, uh.” She made like she was thinking of the name, before piping up, “Adrenaline Tattoo. You know how to get there?” She had to give Micah some sort of relation -- otherwise she was certain the man would not drop her off at the shop. There was not even any promise that the man would be at the shop when they arrived.

She taps her fingers against the side of the car door, as she tilts her head to one side and stares at him. “Maybe we could get you a tattoo, huh? My specialties line-art, black and white,” She grinned slightly. If she was going to drag this stranger into her sire’s shop, she should at least promote the man spending money while he was there.

“Hope you find whatever it is that brought you out here.” She glances toward the warehouse -- her fingers just aching to drag her pistol from her bear, and just go kill the stupid zombie. She knew she shouldn’t, though. It would be bad for them all, she supposed.

Nesa’s lips pursed as she murmured, anxiously plucking at Uflu’s fur, “I got a curfew, mister. My big brother wants me home by four.” Curfew her ***. She just didn’t want to be in the car any longer than she had to be, especially not with this strange human. God knows what he would want from her.

<Deagan> Deagan could sense that Nesa was anxious, and why shouldn’t she be? She had no real reason to trust that this stranger whom she had met in a seedy part of town had any sort of noble intentions. For that matter, knowing as little as he did about her, Deagan wasn’t terribly comfortable having the young woman in his car in the first place, but it was better than the alternative; leaving her in an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night. Four a.m., huh? That was an odd sort of curfew.

“I’m not real familiar with tattoo parlors, but I think I know which one you’re talking about. It’s in Honeymead, right?” He thought he had probably seen it on one of his frequent trips to the library. “But I think I’ll pass on getting a tattoo right now. I’ve had enough excitement for one night.” Deagan smiled at Nesa as he started the car and pulled away from the ominous building with its strange noises and strange inhabitants, one of whom he had somehow managed to adopt, at least temporarily. He drove east, hoping that he could soon take a left north towards Honeymead. He would be putting the pedal to the metal a little more than usual so that he could deposit his odd co-pilot and her teddy bear at their destination sooner rather than later.

<Nesa> “Yeah. Honeymead.” She stated, with a shrug. She just wanted to go get away from the stranger -- strangers were bad, even she knew that. “No tattoos? Aw. I promise I do good work.”

Of course she did not have anyone to display her work -- but that did not bother Nesa. She would eventually talk to her sire about getting a job at one of his shops, but she was certainly not going to do that just yet.

Of course there were zombies all about tonight -- it would be the night Nesa was with a human that zombies would roam this certain seedy street. The man would probably end up hitting one at some point -- or stopping if he did not want to ruin the car.

<Deagan>
Deagan stopped just in time to keep from hitting the zombie and ruining his car. There was no denying that’s exactly what it was. It shambled out into the middle of the street just as he was about to turn left and exit the rundown business district in which he had ended up tonight, all on account of an anonymous letter.

Deagan knew about the rumors. About the Quarantine Zone. He had been corresponding with someone he had met online, someone who called herself Music@Midnight. She had told him that not only did she actually live in the Quarantine Zone, the zombies roamed freely there. There were other reasons why Deagan had wanted to trust her, and so he had been gradually wrapping his head around the idea that there might really be such a thing as zombies. And now there was no going back from that particular mental cliff. This abomination walking across the street had made sure of that.

The thing stood there in front of his car, plain to see under the harsh halogen street lamps and the Mustang’s own headlights. It was not the rotting nature of the flesh, as it was liquefying and peeling off the bones, that made the walking corpse so hideous. It was not that so much as its too close approximation to the person it might once have been. It was an animated shell of a human being traipsing about. The zombie’s inhuman nature was made all the more horrible by its vaguely human shape.

It had stepped off the curb like an absent-minded pedestrian as Deagan had hit the brakes and come to a halt. For a second the hideous thing did not seem to even acknowledge the three thousand pounds of metal and fiberglass that had almost run it down. And then it did. The creature stopped in its tracks, and turned its ghastly grey head towards the two occupants of the Mustang, and though the eyes had obviously been the first to go in the decomposition process, Deagan could swear it was looking straight at them with its blackened, empty sockets.

<Nesa> Damn it all to hell. She didn’t know what to do in this particular situation. She had, honestly, never pictured herself in the car with a human. Which thing did she kill? The man or the zombie?

Should she use her tome and let the man sit there all alone, and fend for himself? No… well, maybe. Her sire didn’t like them to feed off humans -- was it okay to kill them? She didn’t think so. Not unless they did something or knew too much, right?

She rolled her shoulders roughly, sliding her fingers into the back of the bear. The hilt of the dagger felt like safety. She shoved the door open and stepped out, silent as a mouse. She’d sit on the hood of the car and stare up at the zombie, before her hand left the bear and the knife was plunged into the eye socket.

That empty, empty eye socket.

Nesa stared upward, and when the zombie’s fully lifeless form hit the ground in front of her, she bit her lip. Did she want to go home? Tome yes, or tome no? She had already done too much, hadn’t she?

<Deagan> Deagan was still reeling from the shock of watching a corpse walk in front of his car when he heard Nesa’s door open. “Nesa, no, what are you doing?” he shouted, but it was too late, and the young woman was out of the car. For a moment he registered with horror as she approached the zombie! Then the shock broke, and Deagan swung open his own door, not knowing what he was going to do next, but knowing he must do something before this insane young woman got herself killed. He scrambled out of the car and rounded the front just in time to see the grisly creature collapse in a heap at Nesa’s feet. The brutal looking knife she was holding was dripping with blackened, rotting gore. Where the hell did she get that knife? he thought.

As he stared down at the now truly dead body, the smell of it hit him for the first time. “Dear god, that’s atrocious!” he said, covering his face with his sleeve. “Nesa, is this one of your ‘bad baddies?’” he asked, without taking his eyes off the zombie, as if doing so might allow the thing to spring once more to life…

<Nesa> Was the man shouting for her to stop? She hadn’t heard him. Her fingers curled against the knife, staring at the man as he talked to her again. It took her a second, and then she bobbed her head slowly. “Uhuh.” The smell didn’t bother her -- but then, she did not need to breathe, did she?

The blonde vampiress stared at the body, before she steps over it. “‘mma head home, now.” She chirps, canting her head to one side. She didn’t know what else to do, other than to walk home -- possibly to the parlor, like she had originally planned…

Tsk. Such choices for a young fledgling to make.

<Deagan> It was obvious, despite whatever mental issues this young woman might be suffering under, that she knew how to take of herself. However, this combination of her mental unbalance and the fact that she was holding a knife didn’t sit terribly well with Deagan. As much as it pained him to do so, he knew he had to let her go. He didn’t dare invite someone like that back with striking range of himself. And yet…

As he watched the distance between them lengthen, the light around her growing dim as she walked out of the range of the street lamp, Deagan suddenly called out, “Nesa, wait! Please, just tell me one thing: where did that monster come from?”

Somewhere, deep in his guts, he felt the answer would bring him one step closer to solving Emily’s murder.

<Nesa> His question caught her ear. She gave most the cryptic answer possible -- too. “Where all us baddies come from!” She whirled around to wave, before walking frontface again.

In one hand she held her tome, and her lips murmured the words softly. Thank God for human hearing being so bad. Nesa has soon disappeared -- home sweet home… And she would be bringing this up to her sire, or his wife. She didn’t know what to actually do.

<Deagan> Before Deagan could respond to Nesa’s unnerving comment, she was gone. Literally gone. As if the darkness beyond the street lamp had swallowed her whole. He ran to the last place he had seen her. Beyond, the sidewalk stretched in either direction into darkness past the facades of this forsaken industrial complex. She had to have slipped back into one of the these abandoned buildings, though he saw no obvious points of egress or ingress that she could have so instantaneously disappeared through.

Deagan’s thoughts and his search were cut short. In the distance, he heard an engine. In the eerie stillness of this abandoned city block, its low rumblings easy to pinpoint. Deagan already knew when and where the headlights would appear, moments before they rounded the corner at the far end of the street down which Deagan had just driven, back by the abandoned factory where Deagan had heard what was more than likely another zombie scraping its way through the darkness. The minute he had heard the sound of that engine approaching, something in Deagan’s gut told him that he did not want to still be there when this new vehicle arrived. He was at a point where he had begun trusting that instinct implicitly. Thus, when the two pinpoints of light appeared at the far end of the street, Deagan was already climbing back into the still running Mustang. By the time it became obvious that the vehicle had stopped at the same factory from which he had just come, Deagan was pulling forward around the stinking, rotten corpse that Nesa had rid of its unnatural life. As he turned the corner to head north, he could see the mysterious vehicle begin moving again, this time, he had no doubt, in pursuit of his own. If there was ever a time when he was glad that he had invested in a “midlife crisis-mobile,” it was now. Deagan put pedal to floor and had the Mustang shifted into fifth gear within six seconds of rounding the corner, He sped off into the night, quickly merging into traffic as soon as he hit a more populated street, and continued breaking every speeding law Harper Rock had to offer until he pulled back into his own driveway. Jumping from the car, Deagan rushed inside and locked the door behind him, his breathing ragged and with the hint of panic. The rest of the night, Deagan sat looking out his front window for any sign that the vehicle which had begun following him from that horror show back at the warehouse district had successfully pursued him home. He finally let sleep overtake him as dawn was breaking, sending its grey fingers out over his quiet suburban neighborhood. And thus it was that he missed observing the solitary car which drove down his street, noticeably slowing down as it went past his house, in the early hours of the morning.