undergrounds | Knowing when it's time to leave the table (CATCH-ALL)

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Knowing when it's time to leave the table (CATCH-ALL)

(OPEN)

God it was slow today. She hadn't had a street fair go this badly in like... six months. There were always some dumb tourists looking to buy her garbage, but right now? She had a very barren deposit box and a lot of garbage that needed selling.

Kenzi was considering even taking off her wig she was that bored. She knew when she was thinking about not going method - that was when she was having a shit day. Her fingers idly flip through her tarot deck as she watches the crowd pass by her stall without any interest. Eventually...she starts looking at the deck and wonders what her own spread would be.

Kenzi has never - not once - read for herself. Either she's too freaked out by it or doesn't believe in it (the latter is far more likely). But right now...

"Fuck it," she grumbles and leans forward to start shuffling the deck. She has nothing better to do right now.

Kenzi does a three card spread. Recent past, present and future soon to come. It's one of her aunts old standbys and she knows it well enough.

As she turns over the cards, she likes less and less what she sees.

Four of Pentacles. Reversed.

The Chariot. Reversed.

And for the future...

Death. Upright.

"What the fuck?"

Is shakily whispered. Her typical fake accent is gone.

(OPEN)

The problem with having all your business taken away was that it meant you worked twice as hard. The irony was not lost on Kenzi. And she was trying to keep up with winning back the sheer volume of people who didn't want anything to do with her after Norrell got ahold of her and all her crap, but that was far easier said than done.

A month ago, Kenzi would have laughed in your face if you told her she'd be this far up shit creek.

Now she was just keen to stuff her face with pizza and drink her feelings away. Which, unfortunately, meant going out and getting food herself.

Instead of just getting it to go, Kenzi is relegating herself to doing this in public because it means less work right now. One large pepperoni pizza with extra cheese and tears. Well, not really. Vodka would be more accurate.

"This is my life."

Eating pizza at two in the morning and drinking more than anyone with a still-functioning liver had any right to.

(For Nancy)

Kenzi smacked her open palm against Nancy's door, listing to the right as she did. She hadn't been this drunk in ages, but then again - her life hasn't been this shit in ages either. She needed a friend. And she needed one bad. Someone to complain to and pet her head. Someone she could trust to stay by her side unlike some horrible bodyguards who will not be mentioned.

"Nancy! Nancy fo-fampsy! Open door!"

She didn't hear the whine in her voice. Not well at least. Kenzi could handle her liquor and thought she was just fine right now.

She was very. Very. Wrong.

(For Jean-Claude & Nancy)

This was it. The End.

Kenzi couldn't tell you what happened or how... not right now at least. All she knew was that she was bleeding. A lot. Later, if she lived, she would be able to tell you that some guy (she never even got to see his face) grabbed her from behind and told her to 'stop poking her little witch nose into things she should' and then... pain slicing through her back and her neck. Too hot and blistering her senses, she fell to the ground practically crippled and in shock.

She couldn't be dying. Not like this. Who would hold Nancy's hair back when she need to hurl?

But she is... and in the back of her mind, behind the pain, she knows it. And it's terrifying enough to get her to croak out in a breathless, weak voice:

"Help...please, someone..."

She doesn't care if she sounds pathetic - it doesn't even factor into this. Right now, survival is all she cares about.

WILDCARD

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Jean-Claude has been known to walk the streets at night. When you do not need to sleep, what else is there to do to keep from boring yourself with the monotony of life but wander. Perhaps it is fate, one might say, that has brought him to such a place at such a time. Jean-Claude is not so certain he believes in any such thing. But he is there nonetheless.

And the first thing that he smells is the blood. That hot, copper and metallic warmth of it in the air. He can taste it, enough to know that something has happened. Something terrible. And like a moth to a flame, he finds himself drawn towards the smell of it, uncertain of what he'll find, uncertain that he shouldn't be getting the hell out of there before someone pins this on him.

That is, at least, until he hears the cry for help. And freezes in his place. Now he really wants to leave, and pretend he'd never noticed any of this at all. And yet he has clung on to a shred of his humanity, even after all these years, and it's telling him he cannot run. Swearing under his breath, he takes another step forward. And that's when he spots her, dumped in an alleyway just off the main sidewalk of the road.

He swears again and steps forward, moving to kneel beside her. "What is this? What has happened?" he asks. "Who has done this to you?" God, but there's so much blood. There's an animal part inside of him that just wants to feed, to lick it up off the pavement, let none of it go to waste. He holds himself back, but just barely.

She doesn't register the questions. Not really. But she gets the gist of it.

"Tried to make my cat take a bath," Kenzi croaks out and giggles at the same time. Which only makes her wince in pain because movement - ow. Making jokes wasn't a good idea when you were bleeding out but it's the only way she knows how to cope with the fact that she is dying.

Kenzi whimpers at the prospect of her life ending and her eyes sluggishly track up to the stranger's face, asking silently for help before blurting:

"I don't wanna die. Please."

Jean-Claude clicks his teeth at her poor sense of humor, the soft tsk sound still loud in the silence of the night around them. He reaches to shift her slightly, to get a better look at her wounds, before he shakes his head.

"I could call you an ambulance," he says, sitting back on his feet, "but I fear that it will not come in time. You are losing too much blood. You have lost too much already." He can almost taste her heartbeat in his mouth, with all of her blood spilling out onto the pavement as it is.

She tried not to cry when he moved her, but it made the pain in her back - which already felt like it was on fire - absolutely gut-wrenching. Kenzi moaned pathetically as it subsided to the heat being leached out of her and looked up at Jean-Claude like she was trying to memorize his face. It'd probably be the last thing she saw.

"At least you're pretty," her filter may or may not have stopped working. Or she might just not care to keep her thoughts to herself anymore.

In that instant, it seemed the truth of her mortality finally hit her and Kenzi spasm'd valiantly in an effort to move off the cold ground.

"I can't - I can't die."

As if that would make an ambulance magically appear.

Jean-Claude raises one delicate eyebrow as he gazes down at her. "Can't you?" he asks, letting the question hang in the air, before continuing his point. "Whether you want to or not, you are, ma chère. You are dying, even now. And for that, I am sorry."

He raises a hand to caress her face, brushing a lock of hair from her eyes. "It's a pity, for a charming little thing like you to go to waste like this. All this blood..." He glances down to where he's basically kneeling in the stuff. It's a good thing his trousers are black, he's always had a hell of a time with stains.

Kenzi whimpers at his question. The point of her mortality being driven home far more effectively than any knife could.

As his hand moved over her face, Kenzi looked confused, "What are yo -,"

Until he mentions blood...Kenzi's bleary eyes widened in fear and realization.

He's a vampire.

Of course, he was a vampire. That was just her luck coming back to bite her in the ass one last time before she bit the bucket.

"...Bit...," Kenzi doesn't given any context to her train of thought beyond that before she fitfully grabs at Jean-Claude's shoulder to try and get his attention.

"Bite me."

Now that does surprise Jean-Claude, enough for both of his eyebrows to raise as he stares down at the dying girl and tries to determine if she knows exactly what she's saying. She knows enough to have recognized what he is, at least. Clearly that means that she's somehow involved in the underworld. He takes in a deep breath, and there it is. The faint scent of magic. Hidden under all the blood at first.

"Ahh," he says, shaking his head at her slightly, "you ask me that now, little witch, but I do not think that it is really what you want. I do not think you know what such a thing would entail. For you and me both."

She's been around enough vampires at this point to know the type. Though it was more of a wild assumption than keen deduction at this point. In hindsight, she'd find his restraint impressive - but right now she was more concerned with making him do this.

Kenzi's rapidly paling face sours and she knows - logically - that arguing with your ticket to survival was ...well. Stupid.

But logic and dying seldom went hand in hand.

"I know what I want. What I want is to live, dude."

She doesn't know how else to convey her desperation other than bargaining. Death was not as noble as all that, after all.

"I'll do anything. Literally. Please."

Jean-Claude raises an eyebrow further at that. Literally anything, she says, and he believes her. To some extent. Of course, becoming her maker, she'll have next to no choice what she does for him. If he says jump, he can make her ask 'how high' if he so desires.

He sighs internally, knowing he will have lost this battle before it's already begun. He's always been too much of a bleeding heart and now is no exception. Still, he might as well sell it, if nothing else.

"What do you have to offer me, then?"

Sorry Abby.

"I know --," Kenzi swallows back what she hopes isn't blood because if she's bleeding from the inside and outside, well she might be dead before she can even convince this guy to turn her. "The Maiden of Witches. An - And I have a lot of connections! Anything you need I can get, if you can't get it."

Granted, all that's pretty much down the tube at this point thanks to Daybreak, but she wasn't going to tell this guy that.

Jean-Claude shuts his eyes for a moment and lets out another sigh. He can hear the desperation in her voice, and if ever there were a time to lie to save her own skin, this would be it. But he doesn't think that she's lying. He's pretty sure, if the amount of blood on the ground is anything to go by, that she's beyond that sort of tactic at this point.

He sits forward, kneeling fully in the pool of blood now, reaching to tug her up into his lap. "You will owe me a great deal, you know," he says. "Your command, your actions... Your very life will be mine to control." He reaches out to cup a hand against the side of her face, turning it up to look at him. "Are you certain that you would like such a life? You barely know a thing about me. Not even my name..." He watches, listens, feels for her response as he holds her.

The promise in his protests gives Kenzi an extra boost of hope and it's easy to see with her life leaking out under his knees. She doesn't care that she'll be in his debt in more ways than one. It means living. If you could call it that.

"You don't know mine either."

It sounds more like a finality than anything else. An end and a beginning in the same place. In an introduction.

"I'm Kenzi."

There. Now you know her name.

He strokes the side of her face for a moment, before the corner of his lips quirk up in the hinting of a smile. Ah, what sort of a decision is he making here, he wonders, as he looks down in her face and finalizes his decision.

"Jean-Claude," he says, introducing himself in turn. He hesitates for a moment longer and considers his options here. He could probably heal her, in truth. If he let her drink an amount of his blood that would leave him weak and open to attack. And he does not know this girl. He is not willing to die for her, no matter how much of an innocent she may be. It is the only way...

Lifting his hand to his face, he steels himself before biting a small wound into the skin of his wrist. Just enough to draw blood. She will have to be quick, it will heal over in not too long. Still, he lowers his wrist down in front of her lips, instructing her softly, "Drink."

Kenzi watches half-fascinated and half-horrified as he bites into his own wrist. Either she was hallucinating really good now, or she had been right and he was a legit vampire.

A vampire that was actually trying to save her.

Must be an out-of-towner.

She whispers her thanks against his wrist before wrapping her own bloodied fingers around his forearm and bringing his wound to her mouth to drink from.

The only thing she would remember from this moment was that it was warm.

Jean-Claude makes certain that she does not take too much, gently prying his wrist from her grasp once he's certain that she's ingested enough that the change should occur. It isn't difficult. Kenzi's grip is weak -- with all the blood that she's lost, it's unsurprising really.

He cradles her gently in his lap. Uncertain of how much she knows of the change, but if she knows about vampires then she probably understands the part in which she is going to have to die.

"I can take your life, here and now," he offers. "Fast and easy. Or you may live out your last human moments as you like." He gives a gallic shrug. "This, at least, may be your choice."

Kenzi swallowed convulsively, trying to get down the blood she'd drank and what she could feel coming back up of her own before talking again.

At least it wasn't in her lungs. She'd probably be dead already if it were.

Kenzi pawed weakly at his arm, as if that would even stop him from killing her now. She knew it was all in his hands so she made her face as pathetic as possible to plead her case.

"No, wait I ... I wanna see Nancy."

Jean-Claude raises an eyebrow at her. He doesn't know who Nancy might be, or who she might be to Kenzi, but if she wants to see her here and now, before she dies, then he understands whoever she is she is important to the girl.

Nodding, he moves to slip his arms underneath her shoulders and her knees, lifting her, moving to stand and holding her against his chest as though she weighed nothing. And she hardly does, really. She's such a slight girl. He can't help but thinking that she will make an excellent vampire. If she can handle the difference the life will be.

"Tell me how to find her," he says. Wasting no time, because he knows that they don't have a lot, although he's bought her some, with the blood she's ingested.

Moving hurts and Kenzi's eyes cross momentarily in pain and she whimpers with it as her body curls in against Jean-Claude while she's cradled in his arms, which only makes her hurt more.

This whole dying thing sucked something awful.

Kenzi rattles off Nancy's address by memory between gasps.

He nods and tucks her closer to his chest as he sets off in that direction. It is not too far. He is vampire, and he is strong and fast, it will not take him longer than she has to get there.

He glances down at her where she lies curled in his arms as he moves, recognizing that this is the beginning of things to come. That she will be his, in time. In not all that much time, at that. His to provide for, his to care for, his to protect. He hopes he knows what he's getting himself into.

"Hold tight, ma loulotte," he murmurs, and picks up the pace.

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Knowing when it's time to leave the table (CATCH-ALL)

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