undergrounds | Tell me that I'll figure it out...

"That does help narrow the stretch of time." Otherwise, they'd likely be here a week sorting out victims. Cooper's already got his phone out and is dialing numbers. He's got a good bead on most of the vampires and human allies in the Nest. "You start thinkin' up anyone who stands out while I make a few phone calls."

Cooper tried first one number and then the next. The first few turned out to be duds, but on the fourth one, it seemed like he got a bite. "Really, Diego? You think it was when? I'll ask." He turns back towards Joss. "Who do you remember killing in the weeks after Millicent bit it?" He's hoping the numbers aren't too high. Joscelin could be a vicious little thing when he wanted to be.

Joscelin looks blankly back at Cooper. "Can you be more specific?" After Millicent bit it had been something of a one-vampire blood bacchanal for a few days. He'd taken his frustrations out on the city of London in general and left a sizable body count.

He hadn't exactly been thinking straight, though he's not going to let Cooper in on that particular piece of intelligence.

"I suppose...there was a...dog walker in Islington. And a woman near Finsbury Park Underground station. And...more, but I really can't recall any details."

Of course he would have gone on a free-for-all over the entire city. One would have thought he was newly turned instead of a vampire three times as old as Cooper.

"That'll do." Cooper gets back on the phone, relaying the information. "You think it was which one? The dog walker? I'll ask him again."

He turns back to Joss. "This dog walker, what did they look like?" Cooper had a lead, but he was going to need more information.

"He was tall?" Everyone is tall when you're four-foot-seven. Cooper is tall as far as Joscelin is concerned. "God's wounds, Cooper, it was two o'clock in the morning off some alleyway. I wasn't looking for distinguishing features."

He feels distinctly uncomfortable sitting here. Asking for help is already completely unlike him; watching the other vampire phoning his contacts like a detective in a bloody television show does very little for his already delicate ego. It makes him even pricklier than usual. "It was the night Millicent died. That's all I remember. Surely, even a fucking saint like yourself has been blood-mad before." It had been his first kill in seventy years. Of course he would have gone a bit overboard with it.

Cooper pushes at a muscle throbbing in his eyes. "Joscelin, you are not being helpful." Next thing he was going to tell him is that he had an epidermis and was breathing.

Cooper's eyes narrow as he once again fantasizes about tossing the little nuisance down an elevator shaft. No, he's promised to help, and he needs to make amends for his screw-up. "Let's compare who's the bigger monster later. I'm trying t'help you solve a problem right now."

He gets back on the phone. "He says he was tall. Maybe. I know, but work with me here. There has to be something you've heard." He listens for a few minutes. "Uh-huh. Thanks. You've pointed us in the right direction." He hangs up and turns to Joss. "According t'Diego, who heard it from a meta human in Daybreak, there's a witch who apparently has been lookin' for the person who killed her brother months ago. He was out dog-walkin' when he met a most unfortunate end."

Of course he had an epidermis and was breathing, Cooper. Now you're just being insulting.

Joscelin shrugs. "I let the dog go." He's not that horrible. He quite likes dogs, though he wouldn't have one himself and has eaten a fair few of them on hungry nights.

He can't help but glare as Cooper goes back to talking to Diego like he doesn't even exist. In a perfect world he would be grateful to Cooper for helping him with his problem, but this isn't a perfect world and he's an ungrateful little shit. "The poor man," he replies insincerely. "Odd that his bitch of a sister didn't just try to kill me if she wanted revenge. Why waste the energy on a curse?"

"Oh, you let the dog go. Do you want a gold star?" Cooper sits back down on the couch, putting his feet up so that Joss is forced down to the other end. Yes, he is a mature adult vampire, why do you ask?

He does look seriously as he mulls over what they've learned. "Well, if it was me, I'd want the punishment t'fit the crime. You killed someone who couldn't fight back, so she put you into the same state of bein' helpless and vulnerable for a few days. It could have been a helluva lot worse if Nancy 'n then Cesare hadn't found you."

"I'm aware of that," Joscelin sighs, wrinkling his nose at suddenly having smelly Irish feet shoved in his face. He scoots further away from Cooper. "How can I not be? Frankly I'm surprised only one person died while I was loose on the city. I had significantly less control the first time around, when I was actually turned." He'd killed more than thirty people then. "I am grateful to both Nancy and Cesare for the assistance they provided." And he means that sincerely. It could have gone so much worse.

Cooper's serious mood continues as he thinks back to waking up in a crypt back in 1798. His eyes are far away as he remembers waking up, the rope marks from his hanging still around his neck. "You 'n me both. Never a picnic when you're newly turned." Cooper hadn't even had a sire to help him through it. Scared and confused, the young teenager had been every inch the monster all the legends and myths made vampires out to be. Those early years were all a blur of blood and death.

He looks down the couch to Joss in surprise. "I think that's the first time I've ever heard you say you were grateful t'anyone."

Joscelin's also far away. He'd woken in a mass grave, three bodies on top of him. He had died with his eyes open, not so delirious from pain and fever to not understand what was happening to him. He remembered taking his last breath in the dreamy way one remembers falling asleep. And then he was awake again. And hungry.

He looks up at Cooper. "I don't see why you're so surprised," he shrugs. "I haven't lived this long by not giving credit where credit's due."

Cooper comes back to the present moment, tearing himself away from two-hundred year old memories. He'd come a long ways from that moment, a young, frightened vampire whose first meal had been a gravedigger in the graveyard. Older if not precisely wiser.

"You're usually, I dunno, so sardonic. I rarely hear anythin' genuine like that from you."

"I would have died." He isn't looking at Cooper anymore. He is usually far more sardonic and selfish than this, but Cooper is another vampire, and a physically young one at that; they have a lot more in common than not. "Someone would have figured out what I was, handed me off to a hunter, and I would have ended up dead. Or I would have taken off my daylight ring and walked outside on a sunny day. Maybe that's even what the witch was counting on; I don't know. I do know that without your...woman and Cesare Borgia I would have died. I rather enjoy continuing to exist."

Edited 2017-04-27 01:09 (UTC)

Cooper can hear the pause in Joss' words when he mentions Nancy. He can think of several substitutes that he was probably thinking, none of them flattering. Still, he's not going to solve anything by picking a fight. They'd already tried that in the entryway. "Well, you got the luck of somebody on your side." This could have turned out with Cooper reading Joscelin's obituary in the London Lambast Daily.

"So are you gonna retaliate against that witch?" He can't very well stop him, but they both know how JC's been wanting the Nest to play nice with everyone else.

Tell me that I'll figure it out...

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