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conspicuous [jade mood]
#1
[[I am pretty sure I should put a warning on this: blood and gore and grossness ahead!]]


The air at night still has the crisp, sharp tang of spring, but the fact is that summer is just over the horizon for the Mile High City. It comes earlier to this place than it does others, often in fits and spurts interrupted by sudden cold snaps and surprising snowstorms that blow over the mountains seemingly from nowhere. One day the temperatures rise to nearly 70F. The next citizens are donning their winter gear all over again, hats and gloves and thick warm jackets.

Tonight it is somewhere in between. It is the sort of night where a young woman walking without so much as a jacket is only given a second glance and that a brief one. There are people in this city that wear sandals and shorts all year long regardless of what's on the ground. A girl in a little black dress and little else is scarcely looked at longer than a handful of seconds. Of course, that could have just as much to do with her companion as it does with the expected eccentricity of the downtown Denver area. Tall and broad and dark as obsidian, with a face that looks like it was chiseled from that very stone, her companion is an imposing figure. Any onlooker couldn't fail to recognize the which is the threat and which is the fragile one. She is a young socialite, the daughter and potential inheritor of some old fortune is delicate and he is the one hired to guard her.

And so Jade Castle walks with her man, Liam, along the streets of LoDo undisturbed. Perhaps they are out for a stroll, taking in the sights of the city after the bustle of those blessed with gainful employment have scattered like roaches to their warm little homes. Little fortresses, away and safe from the monsters that stalk the streets. Perhaps they're looking for a bite to eat, these two.

They are, but no all night diner or 24-hour drive-thru will do.

If it were daylight Jade and Liam would not stand out at all, but here they are conspicuous. The homeless, the lost, the destitute, they are the owners of these streets now. They lay stretched out across the benches all along the 16th Street Mile or on sleeping bags spread out over any stretch of dried, once-green grass they can find, or they shuffle slowly across the streets wherever it pleases them to do so. And everywhere eyes watch the duo, trying to decide how desperate they need to be to try and knock the girl down, take the little purse from her delicate fingers or drag her into some shadowed alley to satisfy some other hunger. Could it be done before the man reacted? Could the man be neutralized?

Little do they realize it's not the man who should concern them.

They approach a figure crouched in the lee of a closed parlor. The figure is wrapped in blankets and rocks, forward back, forward back, muttering and whining to themselves.

"Oh, Liam," says Jade, and the ritual begins. She stops a few feet away, lays a slender hand on his massive bicep and her touch alone brings him to a halt beside her. Her face and voice are infused with sadness or pity or sympathy, and she takes a few cautious steps forward, her movements as delicate and careful as a fawn's. Liam does not move or speak a word of caution to her, but keeps his gaze roaming over the street.

Jade, with all the trusting naivete of any pampered rich girl barely out of her teens, carefully lowers into a crouch before the lump of forgotten humanity. Her hair falls forward in a tumble of glossy black curls and her face has been prettily made up with a touch of gloss for her lips and a touch of shadow for her eyes and blush to give her the glow of the living. "Are you hungry?" she asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. Turning her head to look up at her towering guard, she says, "Liam I think she's hungry." Because on closer inspection that is a woman's haggard face beneath the layers of filth and desolation. "Can we take her home?" Her voice has a girlish charm, a honey sweetness that would sway the hardest heart to action.

Or at least it appears to. The stoic man looks at her and he looks at the woman and he appears to consider the request. Then he nods. "Very well, miss," he says, his voice a rumble of distant thunder.

The girl is delighted. Jade looks at the woman and she smiles a smile that is sweet and innocent and charming. Dimples appear at her cheeks and her almond-shaped eyes nearly disappear with it. She holds out her hand to the woman. "Come on. Let's get you cleaned up and a warm meal in you."

And the woman? So addressed by these well-dressed strangers, she can't believe this is happening. Is this real? Or is this another dream? She's tempted to dismiss it as a figment of her imagination but the girl, she reaches forward and finds a hand to hold. Her own hand is cool to the touch but not chilled, a sign of poor circulation? Or the fact that the night is cool and getting cooler and she's dressed in something that looks like a slip? Certainly it isn't a sign that she's anything other than a sweet, charming, compassionate girl. The woman isn't so far gone that she doesn't realize what's happening, that this girl is either taking her for a night's reprieve from life on the street or this is going to turn out to be some terrible joke. But she is far enough out of her mind that she doesn't offer much resistance to them. She starts to gather her scant few belongings, but Jade rests a hand on her arm, smiles and says, "Oh honey, no. Where you're going you won't need that. They walk away, Jade with her slender arm threaded through the woman's, walking close to her like they are true friends, old friends, comfortable companions.

Not long after, the woman's effects are scavanged, and her life on the street, her very existence, is erased.

======

Time passes as it has to do. The woman was brought to the hotel where she was given a room and access to the room service, "Oh honey, just order whatever you like, okay? It's on me." She didn't order anything but food arrived anyway, plates and bowls and piles and heaps, more food than she could hope to eat in one sitting. There will be much left over in the morning, when more will come. Eggs and bacon and fruit with cream and orange juice and on and on. The homeless woman can't believe that this is happening. She takes a shower and she spends hours soaking in the huge tub as the bathroom fills with perfumed steam. She eats her fill, and she sleeps in comfort for the first time in her entire life.

And also for the last time of her life.

The day passes by like a dream and then the night comes. The sun drops behind the mountains and darkness swallows up the city. There comes a knock at the door and when the woman opens it there stands the tall black man. Liam, the girl's guardian. Miss Jade would like to see her, no, what you have on is fine (a robe, she'd just stepped out from another bath), she must'n't be kept waiting. He guides her to a service elevator and down they go.

And down.

And down.

And down, until finally they are well beneath the hotel's lobby, down where it is dark and cold and clammy and strange. And empty. And void of life. The woman is not so trusting that she would simply walk through this strange place, but Liam is at her back. There is nowhere to go but forward, so forward she goes. The corridors down here are made of naked concrete, with pipes along the ceiling and metal boxes affixed to the walls at intervals. And long, so long. It seems an eternity before they finally reach a small door that leads into a small room. A room which is empty but for one strange object. A raised stone tablet with grooves cut across it, and what look like straps to bind--

It's an altar. The woman realizes it with a jolt and tries to step back, but she only backs into the wall of Liam's chest. His hands close over her shoulders and he pushes her forward, toward the table as a something low and tawny slinks from around the other side of the altar. It is a cat, but it's like no cat this woman has ever seen, save maybe its cousins in the zoo. Pearl eyes this woman with the wary eyes of a skittish animal, tasseled ears flicking back and then forward again uncertainly.

When the woman is brought close enough to the table, Liam's grip on her shifts and he pulls the robe from her. Just in time for another figure to enter the room from the other side. Is that Jade? Is that the sweet girl who pulled her from the street last night? No, it can't be. The woman who enters is dressed in robes of gold and blue. Her face has been painted a light gold, with thick black lines to outline her eyes, and she's wearing a wig of braided black hair, each fat braid bound in gold. But these changes are not why the woman is unrecognizeable.

This woman, standing with feet bare on the cold concrete floor, seems taller. Her shoulders are back and her chin is lifted, and she is haughty. Proud. Powerful. This is not the delicate girl from the Mall, this is a woman carved of stone. She does not smile as Liam pushes the exposed woman to the table. She does not smile as the struggle begins to get her laid out and pinned down. She weeps, this woman, weeps and curses and cries out but they are too deep below the weight of the hotel for her cries and pleas to be heard.

Jade steps around to the side of the woman, and that's when she sees the knife in her hand. It seems so simple, that knife. The blade is long and curved, the handle is plain. Jade lifts her chin and she begins to speak, but it is in no language the woman can understand. She moves around the table, lifting her blade to the images painted on the walls, glyphs of a man figure with a long, curved snout.

In the corner, Liam stands, hands clasped before him, Pearl laying on the floor beside him. They watch, and they wait.

Finally, when Jade has returned to where she started, she looks down at the woman and that's when she smiles. Beneath the gold paint and the glittering clothes, there is the girl the woman met. All sweetness and charm.

"Thank you for this offering. Your life will become my life. Your strength shall be my strength. And together we will serve our master, Almighty Set." Leaning forward, Jade slides the blade along the inside of the woman's upper arm. The blade is so sharp she feels only a sting as it slices through skin and muscle and artery, and again in her other arm. Then only the dull ache as her blood drains from her. There is a tap! as the first small river, caught and directed by the groove carved into the stone, drops into a porcelain basin set to collect this important fluid. In the corner Pearl shifts, short, fat tail twitching. Liam remains still as he can, but he can't help but lick his lips in anticipation. The woman starts to feel the cold of the chamber more deeply, feels it seeping into her bones as her senses dull and dull and fade. There is one last thing before the world goes dark. A pressure in her abdomen that feels so very far away. She is not quite gone when Jade cuts open her stomach.

And then she is. Gone. But the ritual is not over for those left animated in the room. Jade has a bloody feast to harvest. Liver and heart and so on, each placed on a small plate along the altar's edge. Her timing after all these years is impeccable. Just as she has every piece aligned in a row the flow of blood slows until it drip drip drips and finally stops. She goes to one of the porcelain basins, lifts it with both hands up above her head, and says a few words before she drinks. Then to the other basin, where she repeats the ritual. Liam steps forward at last, finds a cup and a bowl and sets them out while Jade begins to eat.

And eat.

And eat.

The heart is saved for last, and when that is finished she grins at her ghouls, that adorable, dimpled smile made horrific by the smear of blood over her lips and chin. She finds her knife, wipes the blade clean of the mortal's blood. Holding her wrist over the cup she cuts it open, lets her vitae spill out and fill it not quite to the brim while Liam lowers to his knees before her. Closing the wound, she lifts the cup in both hands and holds it out to Liam, supposed guardian and protector, but loyal ally just the same. Jade murmurs a few more words of ritual. Liam offers a deep nod of gratitude, and then he drinks.

She repeats this over the bowl, but this time when she murmurs the words she herself lowers into a kneeling position. Setting the bowl on the ground, she waits for Pearl to come forward and scrubs her fingers into the fur of the caracal's skull. The cat butts her head upward, licks once at Jade's palm, then lowers her head to drink.

In this way Jade shares the bounty of her own strength with those under her direct care, and completes the ritual.

The night isn't over, of course. Liam will take care of the body, and he'll take care of the clean up, and he'll even take care of Jade. He will sit with her while she leans over one of those basins and he will carefully hold her hair back from her face as her body rejects the meaty contents of her stomach without digesting them.

Neither of them regret their positions, though, or the outcome of the ritual.

They must all do their part for the glory and for the resurrection of almighty Set.
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