Eighteen

She smiled.

"Yes, I'm sure that's just how it went." Agueda said, raising an eyebrow slightly. Well, she tried to at least. She'd never quite got the hang of it. Her eyes tended to just narrow out a bit instead.

Suitov's mention of wards caught Jaina's attention. Interesting. She had been other places with some warding on them (it was pretty much required when you had distractible or inept magic-wielders in a flammable fluid fight) but hadn't quite expected such a ramshackle place to have that particular safety measure. She cocked her head and moved on.

"So you know and plan to take measures," Jaina said. "Good. I can handle myself around the things -- well, usually -- but it gets to be a pain. Far as I'm concerned I am on vacation right now. No battles today." Whereupon she leaned back in her chair and almost toppled over, straining her hamstrings to keep her balanced (physically if not mentally).

Whoops.

"Nothing's getting within biting distance of you while I'm around," Suitov said matter-of-factly.

"In any case we've a sporadic vampire-killer prowling the gardens, and nothing seems to ward him off. Perhaps I should put down chemicals."

---

"Well, sort of pretty much like that, yes," Baskerville said. And looked shifty.

But maybe she wouldn't notice that. He was brilliant, after all, and he had killed... well, seriously injured a werewolf all for her. Well, mostly to protect himself. But he'd pushed it into the fountain all for her. That was impressive.

Meanwhile, up in the attic, this had happened.

"Chemicals, huh. I'd like to see that," Jaina said with a wicked grin. If she meant Suitov-as-bodyguard as well as pesticide, she indicated only by widening her grin.

"Oh, don't worry Baskerville, dear. I'm at least a little impressed."

She looked at the podocyte-pestered Kerak and added, "Maybe he'd prefer not to be disturbed. Is there anything else to do round here?"

Although she hoped she could find a way out soon. Whatever was underground had caused her to tilt sporadically and it was a little disorientating. And all in all, it had been a rather trying day.

"Fairly quiet round here," Baskerville said, "just you, me and the vampire bats, really."

But there were no vampire bats. There was the usual infestation of wyverns, who were found everywhere around the Cross'd Roads since Archblingus So-And-So had knocked the first inn flat with a single Frog Squash. Very nasty business that, very nasty.


Suitov snorted noncomittally. Unfortunately, all he'd discovered so far by way of bishykitty-altering chemicals (and that only by accident) was a Weft-attracting herb. And that handful of informational gold dust wasn't escaping his lips.

"You know, in my wo-- in Shade, there are blood cults and there are small animals known to supplement their diets by drinking blood, but I've never come across creatures like your vampires," he said. "Fascinating. I'd love to run some tests on one."

Jaina grinned. "You should've been a Terran woman in research."

Well. No. She quite liked him as he was and her twinkling eyes clearly showed that.

"Science was never my department, but I know -- used to know some researchers. They specialised in supernatural creatures and their weaknesses," Jaina said while pouring herself more Djew. "You know, the sort of people who could calculate the best grade of silver to be sturdy and still pure enough to hurt a werewolf, or the ideal location to smack a zombie's head with a shovel. Too bad they're sexist as hell or you could get some swell notes out of those ladies.

"Wait. Blood cults? How is blood involved with them?"

"Just in case something, uh, else should happen, is there an emergency exit?" Agueda queried.

"Oh, ritual bloodletting, chanting, criminal damage; the usual, I imagine. You'd have to ask a member. It all sounds quite juvenile." He spoke uninterestedly.

"How's silver harm a werewolf?" Something Baskerville had spotted earlier made more sense to Suitov now.

The dawg himself was still out in the gardens. "Well, you can just walk out the place and you're back in the Cross'd Roads district," he said. "Though that seems to work sort of oddly here, especially at night. Silly age-old curses, honestly. Hey, do you like rock music?" Baskerville asked apropos of nothing but his own ADDish thought processes.

"Cross'd Roads District? That doesn't sound familiar at all. Maybe that's not the way I came. Although to be honest I'm not sure how I got here at all."

Agueda's eyebrows lowered slightly. She liked to have emergency exits ready and waiting.

"Rock music? I've been known to."

No drinking blood in blood-cults? Jaina was secretly pleased to hear it. Work was a bother to consider, especially while Suitov was near.

"Werewolves are highly allergic to silver," the vampire hunter explained. "I'm not sure exactly how allergies function, but it makes their immune system turn on itself. Typically the entire hide becomes puffy and inflamed, particularly around the wound. I believe eventually the airway expands so much it closes, and the 'wolf suffocates. They have trouble breathing until they die, at any rate."

She sipped her Djew and wondered aloud. "Some vampires have difficulty with silver as well, but there has to be more going on than breathing. Suffocation doesn't kill a vampire; they're already dead. Dammit, now you've got me curious," Jaina said with thick mock-anger. Her green eyes dancing mischieviously, watching for the mage's reaction.

"Curiosity never killed anyone of consequence," he declared, matching Jaina mischief-for-mischief.

"I wonder if that wolven specimen is still under the fountain. This could bear investigation. Or we could await the first nasty who tries to breach the boundaries..."


"That happens a lot," Baskerville said, "people forgetting themselves around me. Animal magnetism.

"Course, when they hear my guitar-playing they often remember appointments they forgot they had. Basically I'm just a mnemonic marvel."

"The fountain, you said?" Jaina asked with interest. "Was that where I banged myself up some time back? I bet the 'wolf's still there, just waiting to be tossed in an oubliette and sprayed with silver nitrate!"

The redhead's eyes lit with pale green fire just thinking about such retribution. "Let's go already! If you're game, of course, but don't you wanna?" Several unladylike cackles escaped Jaina's throat, purely by chance.

"Well, you are a very handsome doggy." Agueda replied, giving him a quick skritch behind the ear.

"And I suppose you made a pretty handsome sort of man too."

She paused for a moment, and fiddled with her ring as she thought.

"What does it feel like changing between the two?" she asked, her eyes fixed somewhere far off in concentration.

"Not bad," Baskerville said. "I don't really technic'ly change at all - or at least, if I let the spell up, I spring back into dog-shape. That's what happened back there by the fountain. Not because I was scared, though!" he added hastily.

He had wondered what it was like to execute a real p-shift, as had all hellhounds at some point. You did, when you were one of the fixed-form doggies growing up in a hell full of polymorphs.

Suitov held the door for Jaina (chivalry gave him the opportunity to pretend he wasn't worried about the building falling down if he slammed it). But they were to be disappointed, as it turned out, because the stagnant fountain lay as disused as it was before Suitov bought the place.

"Oh dear," the mage said good-humouredly after it became plain Kerak had vanished away into the dark of the woods. "Does this mean we're back to plan B and vivisecting Weft?"

"I'm game," Jaina said darkly. "He still owes me blood for past transgressions. It'd be nice indeed to collect it. Why do you hate him, though? Not that I'm complaining!" she added with a laugh.

Mai investigated her surroundings until she caught a whiff of Baskerville. The human-looking, canine-scented prescence confused the kitten to no end -- until a random breeze blew a stray pebble across her path, distracting her entirely.

"Hate him? I experiment on all my friends," Suitov responded in mock shock at the suggestion.

"What has he done to you, besides being his charming self?"

Jaina scoffed. "Charming. There's that, of course.

"He cut up a friend of mine. I found Lance unconscious and bleeding, and Weffykins standing over him with a bloody knife. Not hard to guess the culprit."

She didn't realise how much her anger showed until something sharp poked the inside of her fist. Opening the fingers revealed the crumpled remains of empty Djew can, and a thin line where it had lacerated her palm.

Suitov frowned. "I find that hard to believe. That Lance was still alive, I mean."