River Tam

People sidestep out of her way as she passes, most of them barely giving her a second glance.

Too much noise, too many crossing tracks; if the vampire came this way, there's no way to tell.

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Too much noise.

Too many --

(It's getting very very crowded)

Too much noise.

Every door she passes, she looks sharply at, and drifts her fingertips over. She's not trying to open them; she only looks closely, and sags a little each time.

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She's being watched.

A figure on a nearby rooftop, all but completely hidden behind a billboard.

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Of course she is.

She expects it.

(But there are crowds.

Lots of eyes.)

The problem with not knowing the ground is it means have no ground to go to. Not if what you want is a way home, instead of just a night's bolthole.

All she can do is keep wandering, and keep hoping, and keep wary and alert.

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Whoever (whatever) is up there -- it's following her.

The buildings are getting too high to effectively track anybody from the rooftops. There's a little time lost in getting to street level; time that the unseen follower makes up in short order.

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River's half-running now. Turning corners, one after another; maybe she's lost herself or maybe she isn't, but it doesn't much matter anyway.

The buildings rise around her. It's a maze in these parts, industrial brick forming faceless narrow alleys and grimy ill-lit streets. Sometimes there are crowds around her; sometimes there are only huddled homeless men and women crouched where the cops and the predators might not find them, and the occasional passerby staring determinedly at no one, and all the talk and laughter and footsteps of the main roads are muffled into a low susurrus.

River turns, turns again, and finds herself staring at the blank wall of a dead end. A long-vandalized no-loitering sign (Joseph luvs Tanya, it says, scrawled over a faded complex squiggle that might have been a name) presides over a motley collection of cardboard boxes and old rugs and garbage.

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One of the cardboard boxes shifts.

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River spins, one hand creeping to her pocket.

(Her palm is red and tender from splinters.

You learn, after a while. Not to ignore pain; not to set it aside. But to accept it as part of your daily life.)

"You think we can't fight them," she mutters, staring down at the cardboard.

"But we can."

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What emerges from under the cardboard is ragged and stinking and hissing obscenities as it backs away, backs away.

The filmy eyes behind the tangle of matted hair aren't looking at River.

"Hi again, gorgeous," says a voice behind her.

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River doesn't look behind her.

"Told you," she murmurs, and she's smiling, small and sweet.

"Time to run away."

And then she spins, and her foot hooks viciously upwards with the movement.

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Her foot doesn't connect; he's not standing that close anymore.

"Uh-uh." He's grinning. "Not this time."

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He's not.

An empty garbage can is, and it's a simple motion -- easy as breathing, easy as dreaming -- to continue the spin and grab and hurl.

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He catches it, tosses it aside like an empty beer can.

And in a continuation of the same movement, he closes with her, aiming a blow at her neck.

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River drops fast, ducking under the blow and between his legs in a roll that carries her into a stake-strike towards the back.

No quarter. No prisoners.

There are two kinds of predators in this alley. One is grinning; one is silent and intent.

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He spins away, his arm coming up to block her strike.

Two kinds. More than two predators.

The homeless woman gives a despairing cry and makes a shambling run for the mouth of the alley. The two other vampires draw aside to let her pass, lips drawing back from fangs in distase, and close in again.

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There are no convenient wooden crates in this alley.

No convenient wooden furniture, either.

(An hour or so back, another crate got sacrificed to making as many makeshift stakes as River could fit in her coat pockets without impeding motion.

That's still a limited number.)

River's no Slayer, and these vampires have strength even the most adrenaline-charged human can't match. But she has speed to rival theirs, and she has skill, and she can fight.

And she fights hard.

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This time, she needs to.

The vampire she saw before isn't playing now; he's in earnest. And he's faster than a Reaver, and much stronger. And he knows she'll kill him if she can.

The other two vampires are just watching, for now.

Oh, wait. No they're not.

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River gasps as the blow slams into her shoulderblades, but she was already ducking away from it; she turns a stagger into a roll, and comes up stabbing.

One unwary stooge is dust -- but there's still another, and the leader who's the toughest of the three by far.

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sunnydalealum

He's also, thanks to the brief distraction, close enough to bring his fangs to bear.

There's a strange zip-thud sound, and his expression freezes in momentary surprise. And then dissolves into ashes.

Behind him, at the mouth of the alley, is a blonde young woman with a crossbow.

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Now there's a pile of dust at (and on top of) River's feet, with a crossbow quarrel lying in it.

It's sturdier than River's stick of splintered pine; she ducks, dropping her stake in a puff of vampire-dust and grabbing the quarrel in its place, and whirls back upright to slam it into the chest of the last vampire. His reaction was still in the oh crap stage of indecision between attack and flight; his face changes to a slightly different and more urgent shade of the same expression just before he explodes into nothingness.

And River is left, covered in dust and sweat and alley grime, weapon clenched in her fist, staring fiercely at the blond woman facing her.

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sunnydalealum

"Hey."

The blonde's lowering the crossbow.

"You all right?"

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Low, "Are you?"

It doesn't sound, somehow, quite like a polite inquiry into her health; the blonde may be standing down, but River hasn't yet, and what's in her eyes is a killer's cold scrutiny.

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sunnydalealum

It's possible she recognizes that.

A pause, and she bends slowly (not taking her eyes off River's) and sets her crossbow down on the pavement.

"I'm Brianna," she says, straightening, her hands held up open and empty.

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