A Pink Corner House and Elsewhere, Bristol, Later Wednesday Afternoon
Annie
"Well, guess it's just you and me then, facing this insanity together," Annie muttered. She had her arms crossed, and she was still glaring at the door through which Mitchell had left several minutes ago.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to roll around on the floor and weep but Kate was here and she needed to be stronger than that and she felt like bursting.
Kate
Kate, on the other hand, was still looking down at her boots like she had since he'd gone, still wiping at her stupidly red eyes and her wet cheeks.
"Mmhmm," she agreed quietly.
Annie
"I just can't believe he's even thinking about going through with this," Annie raged on. She wasn't feeling quite as observant right now. "If it were up to me--"
And that was as far as she - and her lack of observant - got, as she turned around to find another ghost standing in the living room, touching the bandage at his throat.
Kate
"Nothing you can do, Annie," Kate told her shoes. She wasn't all that big on the whole observant thing, either, seeing as how she'd completely failed to notice the way Annie had stopped talking. "Nothing I can do, either."
Annie
"They kept coming," the wounded man whispered. At least, Annie assumed he'd been wounded horribly before he died - he had bandages all over. "Something must have happened, because it's like they were angry," he said. He sounded like he was choking. "They wouldn't stop."
"Who kept coming?" She was hyper-alert now, at least to the ghost. Kate was a secondary priority.
The man looked up. "The vampires," he whispered. "Where am I--?"
Annie smiled at him softly. "I think you're dead," she said back, as comforting as she could be.
He quivered. "But I don't want to be dead!"
"I know."
Kate
See, that was enough to get Kate to look up and be observant. What with Annie talking to someone who wasn't Kate, and wasn't there, and everything.
"Uh." She looked at the ghost, then in the general direction of where her attention seemed to be going, then back again. "Annie?"
Annie
And in that one word, the spell was broken. Annie looked away from the man's ghostly body and at Kate. "We need to get to the undertaker's," she said. "Now. There's something going on."
Kate
"What? What's going on?" Kate asked, throughly confused. Funny how that didn't stop her from already starting for the door. "What the hell just happened?"
Annie
"I saw a dead man," Annie said, heading after her. "He said, the vampires are going mad right now. There's more people stuck in there. We need to help them."
Kate
"Oh God," Kate muttered as she stepped outside, glad she hadn't taken her jacket off. "How is this my life? ... Wait, we're going where the vampires are?"
That took a moment to sink in, yes. And she did have the good sense to be a little scared of the prospect.
Annie
"I think they're leaving," Annie said, starting a hardy trot down the pavement. "They're... stressed out about something, and... and I think I can do something."
There was a strange glow to her right now. She could feel it in her bones.
Kate
"Do something," Kate repeated, trying to keep up with the ghost. She didn't sound... entirely convinced, but she did trust Annie. And it was like something was making her trust her more. "Okay."
Annie
Soon enough, they were there: the undertaker's. Annie opened the door with a determined frown and a-- "...Hello?" --slightly less determined opening.
The vampire - short, a little chubby, a little plain, and with fire in her eyes - veered on up from behind a desk. She hissed. "Herrick came for me, and now I have the blood of the ancestors." She crept up from behind the desk, baring her fangs and her black eyes. "Ten thousand years of majesty and glory!"
Annie wrinkled her nose. "Well, congratulations on mastering the whole 'speaking like a twat' thing."
Kate
Even Kate, as new to all this as she was and as much as her eyes had widened at seeing that black eyes and fangs combo again, looked a little unimpressed at that. "Too many movies," came her verdict, though as soon as she'd spoken she realized this was not a situation where she necessarily wanted to be drawing attention to herself.
Even if she was standing behind Annie.
Annie
"He's going to rip Mitchell's head off!" the vampire said, laughing hard and high-pitched and, if you asked Annie, in a way that was entirely over the top. She reached out with her hand, stretched, and willed-- found out she could will-- something--
The vampire flew back against the wall with impossible strength, and slipped down to the ground, unconscious. A second burst into the room, fangs out, and yet all Annie needed to do was wave a hand, will the power at her disposal into the right direction-- he flew back against the desk and crumpled into a heap.
"Well. That's interesting."
Annie
Interesting was a good word for it, if Kate's (again) widened eyes were anything to go by. Definitely interesting. Yes.
"Holy shit. You can do that?"
So interesting that Kate fell right into asking stupid questions. She shook that off quickly enough, though, eyes darting around the room in case more vampires ran in. As if she could do anything about them. "We should keep moving."
Annie
"I can do that now," Annie said, simply, and drifted onwards towards the door at the back. "There," she whispered. "There, around the corner, then down the stairs-- I can hear them."
Kate
"Right."
Well, Kate didn't really have much to say to that. She kept following Annie, trying not to think too hard about anything concerning this whole situation.
Thinking like that only led to panic attacks.
Annie
Annie rounded the last corner, and that's when she saw the door. She opened it with another wave of her hand. There was a woman seated in a chair near the front of the room, two vampires lingering over her neck--
--she waved her hand and they crashed back, slamming against the floor of the groddy little room, between the scattered humans who all looked skinny, hungry, bandaged to all hell and back.
Kate
Kate stumbled in behind her, then froze. "Oh my God," she breathed as she took in the scene, sounding horrified and all of her seventeen years that hadn't left her quite as jaded as she often liked to pretend.
And this was the work of the people Mitchell had held in such high regard for a while there? Color Kate unimpressed.
Annie
"Well, now we know what made Mitchell drop Herrick like he was on fire," Annie commented. She stepped forward, an invisible wind still ruffling her hair, and reached out to the woman in the chair.
Various people dropped from their beds, scrambling for their things or for the exit, yelling at each other.
Kate
Kate made some attempts at helping people get the fuck out of there, though they felt a little useless when obviously everyone in that little chamber of horrors knew where the damn door was. Still, she had to do something.
Something that wasn't throwing up or crying.
Annie
After a while, they had all gone, and Annie shut the door behind her with a click and a frown. "No wonder," she muttered, thoughtfully. "I'd rip his head off myself after this."
She turned her head towards Kate. "You all right?"
Kate
Kate was rubbing at her temples, looking just a little bit paler than usual. This whole thing was just insane.
"Uh. Not really."
The fact that she didn't even try to lie about it was probably testament to that.
Annie
Annie sagged a little, though the wind hadn't quite left her hair, nor had the poise she'd acquired. She reached a hand out to Kate, offering a silent hug.
Her face radiated a great deal of calm.
Kate
In another act of just not bothering to hide how completely shitty she was feeling, Kate accepted the offer for a hug, almost greedily.
It was weird, but something about Annie was making this a little bit better. Just a little bit.
Annie
With her arms wrapped tightly around Kate, Annie took a moment to take stock of everything. She felt strangely warm, in that human way that had left her a long time ago. Still, she couldn't feel the touch, not really, not in that same way, but she felt more solid, and in turn, capable of giving this comfort.
And she would've gladly done so indefinitely, feeling her balance slipping back from where it had gone sprawling after all of Mitchell's plans, had one of the vampires not stirred in the next room again.
The woman wasn't really capable of doing anything. She just muttered, loud enough to be heard, "If Mitchell had any sense, he'd lock himself up in that dungeon and never come out, he'd praise Herrick's splendour, we'd take children down there to hear him beg--"
Dungeon.
Somehow, that didn't sound right.
Kate
No, no it did not. Kate pulled away enough to look in the direction of that muttering voice, then back at Annie. Frowning.
"Did she just say 'dungeon'? I thought they were going on the roof."
Annie
Annie stared at the vampire herself, piecing things together, and-- "Oh god, George," she whispered. "Kate, we need to get to hospital. Now."
Kate
"What? Why?" Kate was a little slower to figure it out. Didn't take forever, though. "... Oh you have got to be fucking kidding me!"
And then she was already moving towards the way out.
[ooc: NFB, NFI, OOC-okay! Preplayed with the fantastic chose_humanity, follows this, and also adapted from Being Human S01E06. Stay tuned for more!]