Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend [Delaney]

[Cedric Costello]

‹Delaney› The woman with the raven hair color was darting around from each 'room,' in a building in the slums, as if she was in a hurry, or wasn't supposed to be in there. Delaney was looking for some gun parts for her...childe, and a couple diamond teeth for a ritual she had been wanting to do-but hadn't been able to due to the lack of a tooth from a gang banger, and some red flower she needed to get. People that seemed out of place-those that didn't seem like they belonged based off their clothing style, or lack of care or aggression towards her, implied to Laney that they weren't the ones the woman was looking for. They weren't given a second glance as Laney moved around, searching for those teeth.

<Cedric Costello> It wasn't exactly the kind of work to be proud of - running around this place, slaughtering the lackeys for their teeth. Who the hell wanted a diamond tooth, anyway? It was a waste of a place to put a diamond. And it got you killed. These were the thoughts vaguely circling Cedric's mind as he wandered through the rooms. If he found gun parts he picked them up, though he had no idea why. He had no idea what to do with them, and as far as he knew, Castalia didn't either. He'd have to ask. Passing into the projects, he brushed against a woman who looked like she was in a hurry. A muttered apology started to form, until he saw her. He recognised her. Where from? "Hey! Wait. Do I know you?" he asked.

‹Delaney› The woman was wearing clothing as dark as her hair, minus one exception. A white skull was dead center of the knitted sweater that came past her hips, and rested over the black utility jeans she had covering her legs. Laney felt contact with another person as she weaved around. Had she hit him, or had he hit her? He apologized, which implied he had ran into her, but Laney wasn't sure that was true. "I'm sorry!" She said, because she was pretty confident she had hit him. She was going to keep going, but the guy told her to wait and then asked her a question. Laney turned around, hands disappearing into the combined middle pocket of her sweater. "Uhmmm..." Laney looked around and then nodded her head. "I think-maybe? I see a lot of people all around in different places. Maybe in the zone or the mauso?" She smiled, as she tried to jog both their memories.

<Cedric Costello> Cedric was never anything but slightly well-dressed - even when he was trying to be casual. But he, too, was wearing all black - or mostly. The turtle-neck sweater was black, as was the plain coat over top. The jeans were so dark blue they may as well have been black, and looked black now, given that they were splattered with blood. The clothes hid a deceptive form; for a pianist, Cedric had a boxer's build. "...the zone, yes," Cedric said, narrowing his eyes as he tried to cling to the fleeting memory. "But I think I have seen you somewhere else. Portals..." he was thinking out loud, his accent somewhere between German and French. "...do you by any chance belong to Acheron?"

‹Delaney› She noticed the accent, the German one more, but couldn't peg it as a German accent. The French one was harder to hear, because Laney was native born to Canada, so Cedric just had one accent in her frame of mind. "Oh. Well...sort of?" She admitted with a small shrug. "I was part of it, but now I'm not. It was a ritual that made some of us differently named." Laney had spent a lot of time in Aeyrn's company that she had come to learn about rituals she didn't even know existed, but hoped to one day master. "From my sire." Delaney said with a small shrug of her shoulders. "I'm Delaney. Laney for short." She smiled at the guy, not positive she ever heard who he was. She only knew of Ambrose, Jedediah, Machk, and Aaron and this guy was neither of those.

<Cedric Costello> Cedric started to nod even before the woman had finished. "Yes, I know the one. But I don't think that I would consider myself anything other than Acheron," he admitted. The woman who'd done the ritual had ignored Cedric's presence completely, and when he returned the favour, had acted as if he was the one at fault. She was not someone he was keen to get to know. He pulled the dirty glove from his hand so that he could at least offer a clean one. "Cedric," he said. "You still use a tome, though. Yes?"

‹Delaney› Laney shook the hand and then nodded. "I do. Sometimes. Maybe a couple times a week?" It was not something she actually liked to do, which was why she was looking for these teeth. "I don't really consider myself anything...other than me." She laughed a little. "I don't know Ambrose that well, and I haven't really talked to or with Kika in a while. Anyways, I just think it's good to be an individual. To remind us who we are and what we believe in. Not to be just a number in a large pool of numbers." Laney took the hand back and dropped it at her side. "Are you looking for guns...teeth or...drugs?" Laney had done pot a lot in university, before she got kicked out, so she wasn't judging-just curious.

<Cedric Costello> Cedric laughed, and nodded. "I suppose you are right. I have kept largely to myself. Ambrose... I am wary. But he has helped me, quite a lot - for someone who does not really know me," he said with a vague shrug. "I am looking for teeth. I have a new...childe, who is in need of a tome. I am trying to find the ingredients for Ambrose," he said. The tome was a useful thing to have, and the chamber was well set up. It just made life that tiny bit easier, and if he could help to provide for his first and only progeny, then he would.

‹Delaney› Laney had to bite her tongue about her personal feelings about Ambrose. She didn't like him-or maybe she didn't trust him. Probably a bit of both. She knew he was a racist prick and people like that didn't fit into her world. "She or he could probably just have mine. As soon as I get a tooth or two and some flower, I'm going to make one to a different place." Laney made sure not to mention that place, as her fingers from her left hand slipped out of her pockets and wrapped around a thicker titanium necklace of sorts. "If it would be easier for you two." There would be no love loss over the tome she had once she made a tome to the apartment by the ritual altar that was always awaiting her.

<Cedric Costello> Cedric himself was far too young in this world to know how to make rituals; to have any idea about what went into it. Maybe, eventually, he might be able to create a place of his own. He had his businesses; he was growing a small (or large) nest egg. Which will help, when he wants to buy a bigger apartment. A house, maybe. Though he didn't have many to provide for, right now. He nodded to Laney. "That would be very kind of you," he said. "So perhaps I should give the teeth to you, if I find any. I think... maybe they have gotten smart. If they stop wearing diamond teeth, maybe they think we will stop killing them..."

‹Delaney› Laney laughed and then shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe. And I probably only need one. I doubt Jedediah or Lev want a new tome to a place that isn't so...nicely set up." Not that Laney would give him a tome to the apartment. "Or maybe everyone else has the same idea." Laney shrugged her shoulders before moving to the side of a wall, so that another person could pass the two of them by without having to bump into either of them. "Or maybe we're just in the wrong place." She offered before pushing off the wall and slowly moving towards the entrance. "Who is the one you sired? Name?"

<Cedric Costello> The names she mentioned were names Cedric had only seen on an internet screen. Maybe he'd seen them around the complex, but only briefly. It was something that Cedric would remedy, sooner or later. He'd just been busy. Three businesses in the matter of a weeks, and he had a lot to take care of. But it kept him busy. It was exactly the kind of new start that he had required. "Her name is Syn," Cedric said. Thinking about his childe, and the way in which the siring had come about, he found himself looking at Delaney. Really looking at her - beyond the dark clothes she wore. The pallor of her skin, in comparison to the darkness of her hair. The way her eyes stood, stark, against the find background. He took a deep breath that he didn't need. He found himself following Delaney.

[Delaney]

‹Delaney› Syn, though Laney imagined it being as it sounded; Sin. She wondered if it was short for something...but she couldn't think what name had the word, 'sin,' in it. Not that it mattered-if that was what she wanted to be called, then so be it. "Maybe you can point her out sometime. So I know who to give the tome to." She laughed, looking back at Cedric to see if he was following or not. It seemed her was, but to what extent, she didn't know. "Where are you from?" Laney asked, wondering about his accent again as she yanked open the door to the way out. With the door opened, Laney let her back come to rest on the door that threatened to close on the pair of them the second she stopped holding it.

* Cedric Costello He nodded. "She's still getting settled. I'll bring her around, soon enough," he said. "Or I could give you my number - you can call me, when you're ready," he said, his gaze lingering on the other woman as he passed her by, heading out into the crisp night air. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, his hands shoved into his pockets. Another family member. It was Aiyana last week, Delaney this week. What was it with this family and its women? "Brussels," he said. "Far away," he added. But now, home was here. Here is where he would stay.

‹Delaney› Laney watched Cedric pass through the door as he talked and she nodded her head. "Great idea!" She pulled out her cellphone from the same singular pocket in the sweater, briefly showed it off to him and then parted her lips. "What's your number? I'll text you quick, so you can have it for when you want to show her off." Laney knew how it was-not that she did much showing off of those she sired. But some people did. To each their own. As she waited, Laney composed a small message to an unknown number, simply stating 'Laney's number,' before she would send the message to him and let Cedric do what he wanted with it when he wanted to do something with it. "Germany, right?" Laney asked, recalling that freshman year of uni she shared a room with a girl from some place in Germany and how much she talked about three different cities to go to-Brussels being one of them.

* Cedric Costello"Belgium," he said. It was an odd kind of place to live, straddling different countries. French, German, and he even spoke a smattering of Dutch. At least, if you want to be multilingual it was the place to be. He plucked Delaney's phone from her fingers, his own brushing her skin momentarily. He plugged his number into Delaney's phone, and hit the send button. His own phone buzzed in his pocket as the message was received.

‹Delaney› Laney shrugged at her mistake, not caring if he thought she might be an idiot or something. Geography wasn't really her thing-Laney was more into focusing on the entire planet than one particular place in the world. "Right. Belguim." She echoed after him as his fingers connected with hers. While he placed with her phone, Laney gave the guy a once over as those fingers returned to the silver colored collar. The woman was so transfixed on his features, trying to figure out what type of person Cedric might be that the buzzing of the phone had her hop a little in surprise before the woman blinked and looked away. "We could try the club house or one of the places more north?" Laney suggested as the woman's eyes landed on a guy in some black pants, much like her own and a dark sapphire colored top, clearly packing something in his waistline. A gun maybe? Or some large stash? It was difficult to tell, as Laney wasn't a gun wielder or a dealer either.

* Cedric Costello Cedric handed Delaney's phone back, arching a brow as she hopped. They were dead center in the 'bad' part of town. There were men with guns and knives and bad intentions, and yet this woman had hopped at the sound of a phone buzzing in a pocket. He nodded. "We could," he said, following Delaney's gaze. "Most interesting date I will ever have been on. Killing men for their teeth," he said. He didn't look at Delaney as he said it - just took off, striding North.

‹Delaney› "I could think of a lot worser things than that?" Laney blurted out, not sure what was worse than killing people to yank teeth out of their mouths before rigor mortis set in and made that impossible to do. "Oh! A funeral would be a real killjoy." Delaney countered with a laugh before moving around the guy with whatever in his waist as he passed between the two of them. The woman followed after Cedric, hands back in her pockets with the phone in it, just in case she needed to use her phone. Maybe, now that she thought about it, having unseen hands wasn't such a good idea in a place like this. "I actually...don't really do this sort of thing a lot." Delaney admitted quietly. "The whole shoot or stab someone thing." Her eyes landed on the back of Cedric's body, sizing him up. He looked capable of doing something like that, which might be an unfair stereotype, so the woman knocked it out of her mind.

* Cedric Costello She wouldn't have been wrong. Cedric was a man of two faces; the businessman, the pianist with all the charm. And the thug, who could use his hands - or whatever else he could get a hold of - to beat the life out of someone. What were they all, really, but a bunch of civilized animals? "I always thought funerals were a great place to pick women up..." he said, turning around with a gleaming smile. He hadn't actually ever picked a woman up at a funeral, but he was well versed in his lies. "But... no, nor do I. I have businesses to run. I really don't have too much spare time to knock teeth out of heads."

‹Delaney› Great. Neither one of them could get what she needed. "Maybe...I'll just go on the auctions and hope someone has one too many and wants to sell them." Laney said, not at all bothered how she got the tooth, as long as the woman got it. "Do you know a lot of people who have died...or do you just look in the paper and..what do they call it-funeral crash?" What a crazy thing to do. "I heard weddings were where it's at. Drunk women-something about being easier." Laney shared, smiling a little more. She had heard that-but never actually seen it go down. Not that Laney attended a lot of weddings anyways. "Just a helpful tip if you're looking for a place to pick 'women,' up." She hadn't missed the way he said women and not a woman up.

* Cedric Costello Nor did he miss the way the word was inflected. He'd slipped up. Most women didn't like men who slept around. Or, maybe they did - some of them. Some of them imagined themselves to be 'the one' that could tie them down and keep them faithful. Cedric laughed. "The papers, yes," he said. "Grieving women are easier than drunk women," he said, turning to watch Delaney. To watch her reaction. To try to figure out what type she might be - if she was even into men at all. "A helpful tip for you, too. If you need it," he said. Poking. Gauging. He shrugged, too. "The auctions - I check them every night. It would seem, either I am too slow, or people do not want to part with their teeth," he said. "Maybe I should knock all my own teeth out, and get some diamond ones fashioned, hm? Then I will have them always on hand."

‹Delaney› Laney listened to Cedric and shook her head, even if her face had an amused look to her features. "I wouldn't know. I've never wedding crashed of funeral crashed. And thanks, but women aren't my thing. Never have been my thing. I'll save them all for you to...take care of in whatever way you deem fit." She couldn't care less what people did in their free time if it didn't have anything to do with destroying the world they lived in, through obscene uses of chemicals, pollution of all sorts and the lack of care or concern. Laney was positive everyone, humans and vampire alike were screwed at the end of it all. "Would that...work?" She touched her own teeth, wondering why she hadn't thought of that first. "I dare you. No. wait. Don't. It's already bad enough we're in the shady part of town, looking to do something shady. I'd hate for you to go missing a couple teeth before a possible...wedding this weekend? Or is it a funeral?" Laney asked as she caught up to Cedric finally.