Stolen
1.05
Contraband
Cherie
Isabella
Maebh
Cherie looks online and finds Astor’s specialist import company, and meets with Maebh on the way there, with Isabella also called in case they can negotiate. Antha confirms that he usually uses a mostly-legit shipping company and checks at the docks.
Maebh has her magpie scout around the store for a way in, and finds a way through in rat form.
Finding a box room upstairs at the back, locked from the outside, she hears steady breathing. Squeezing under the door she finds Martin, asleep on a camp bed.
Maebh opens the back door to let Cherie in, and they unlock the box room.
Martin doesn’t wake. They start to pick him up.
“Excuse me. I don’t believe we have an appointment.”
A man with pale eyes, a neat beard, dark suit, and a cane.
“Mr. Astor, I presume?” Cherie asks.
“May I ask who sent you? Rhodes, I take it?”
“Can we discuss this?”
“Set the boy down first.”
“Why him?” Maebh asks.
“Wrong place, wrong time. As we all were...”
“What were you trying to do?” Cherie asks.
“See who I’d upset.”
Then he pauses at the clatter of the shop’s shutter being forced open.
Maebh sends her magpie to look as Astor turns, ignoring them for a moment, to head back down.
The bird reports two dead and two living.
Cherie moves close enough, unseen, to hear voices.
“Novak.”
“You fucking - ”
And the sound of someone being slammed into a wall.
Maebh makes herself weightless and dives out of a window at the back. Cherie lifts Martin and pushes him out for her to catch. She manages it, but breaks her ankle and has to force her Blood to heal.
Getting to the waiting car, Cherie looks back and sees two people on lookout as Graham holds Astor down for Novak to kick in the face.
They decide not to intervene.
Confirming that Rhodes can meet them, they bring the still unconscious Martin to him.
Rhodes studies him, opening his eyelids and shining in a light, checking his pulse.
“He should wake with the dawn. At least we don’t have to find someone to give him true love’s kiss.” He chuckles icily. “So, it was one of my brood? Astor?”
Cherie explains, basically truthfully but making them sound braver and more decisive.
And Maebh reminds Rhodes of the offered favour. A boon they can hold for now, or the right to hunt on the city’s campuses.
As the vampires fall to dead sleep at dawn, Martin wakes. Confused, but he’s never felt more rested.
3 XP
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