pennysheets | Vampire cult nonsense (PSL for Natasha)

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Vampire cult nonsense (PSL for Natasha)

It had taken her a while to get far enough into the ranks of this... organization. They have half a dozen names for themselves, depending on where one gains entrance, and most people don't ever go beyond those half-dozen entrance groups. Natasha is good, but these people are paranoid, and death cults are not a thing that you get access to immediately.

But because she is good, here she is finally, fresh from the ritual bath and dressed in undyed cotton, barefoot, ready for her first ritual. She's the only new one today, but there are other junior members walking in their two lines from the baths to the ritual room and its five sealed coffins. Natasha has yet to be told what's in them, only that they are very powerful.

"Which one is it today?" the young man who'd introduced himself as Stolen Moon (junior members tend to pick very pretentious ritual names) asks, quietly, of the senior member walking in front of him, who was known by the (slightly less pretentious) name Fox.

"You'll see when we get there," Fox says.

"Don't ask questions in front of the initiate," adds the senior at the head of the second column, an older woman called Hawk.

There are already three senior members waiting inside: Raven, Star, and Shimmer. Fox and Hawk motion for everyone to take their places, in an outward-facing ring inside the circle of coffins, and then join them, each standing between two of the coffins.

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She considers for a moment, then shakes her head. "It wasn't high profile enough to have crossed his desk through normal channels. We've kept it small so far, need-to-know only. It won't last, but for now, we have some cover."

"I might be able to be a distraction," he says, thinking hard. He always was pretty good at tactics, he thinks. "To give you cover. Make him think I'm coming for him alone, then you take him out while he's trying to bind me again... maybe bring your Hawkeye friend for backup. He needs to die," he adds, more fiercely for his fear. "If he's that high up, their claws are deep in your SHIELD and only killing them will stop them." Maybe not even that.

"Fuck." He shakes himself and leans over to pick up the tablet again. slow and careful as he makes sure he's not shaking anymore. "I need to look at the rest of your teams. There's probably more."

"If he knows you've snapped your chains, he'll want guards who won't ask any questions," Natasha muses. "So yeah - knowing where the moles you can identify are will help us figure out what kind of resistance to expect."

And movement of those agents wouldn't be proof that Pierce is a death cultist- but it would be confirmation that something is very, very wrong.

He stares for a moment at the image of Alexander Pierce, then swipes the page away to the next with a final little shudder. "They might already be in place, around him," he points out grimly. "These people like keeping their initiates close, from what I can tell." Standard cult practice, really, lots of group meetings and isolation from others.

"But if anything's changed after you freed me... it'll be something, anyway. I know he has to know by now. The news will probably spread pretty quick."

One corner of Natasha's mouth quirks upward, more grim agreement than humour. "I'm not sure if I should tell my people to increase security around Star, or wait for the assassination attempt to expose another tendril."

It's sheer practicality, rather than any concern for the woman's life that has her weighing the options - if the inevitable assassination attempt is successful, they'll lose whatever information they haven't yet wrung out of her.

Given it's Coulson heading up the interrogation, she trusts it will be thorough. Thorough never means that nothing's been missed.

"I'd up it, if it were me," the vampire says, frowning at the pictures, flipping a page again. "They might send another one of us if it doesn't turn out to be an inside job. Maybe make sure wherever she's being held don't have windows," he adds.

He keeps swiping through pictures, noting a face here and there. "Well, don't seem like it's your whole organization. Just a handful of these." He pauses to scowl at a photo of Brock Rumlow. That fucker. "Who's this guy to you?"

She leans over to look at the photo he's glaring at.

"Rumlow. He heads up one of our strike teams - not the one we deployed on the last op. His team's the one we use when we need to go loud." Her gaze flicks briefly up to his face, then back down again. "Not exactly conservative with the collateral damage. Barton's worked with him more than I have."

"He's a fucking sadist, so guess I'm not surprised. He's one." Obviously. And obviously one he's had enough experience with to hate. He points out three more from her dataset and puts the tablet down. "That's it that I recognize. Doesn't mean that's necessarily all of them, but it's a good start. I'd branch out to people close to those few. If they spend a lot of time, it might be for recruitment."

"And here I thought he was just a testosterone-overdosed asshole," she replies, with a hint of weariness that suggests she's all too familiar with that particular type.

She notes the remaining cultists, brow creasing slightly as she begins mapping the mental web of connections, almost on instinct. "I'm familiar with the tactic. It's enough to start digging with."

The vampire slumps tiredly and scrubs his hands over his eyes again. "Let me know if there's anything I can do in the meantime. Besides head in the direction of a base or two to clear them out, I guess. I have... a lot of time on my hands, now." And he's not used to that. He's used to the coffin. The cult rarely kept him out and about longer than a few days.

Natasha's quiet for a moment, then lifts a hand to rest lightly on his shoulder.

"Can you mock up layouts and security schematics of the bases you're familiar with?" she asks. "The more we know about what we're dealing with, the more effective we'll be. Dealing with Pierce will make things easier, but it won't end this completely."

He stares blankly at her hand for a moment. Well, her arm, extending from his shoulder, just... touching him. For comfort. He knows what that looks like. There's some part of him that even remembers someone doing it to him, before he died.

Her hand is warm.

He almost wishes, for a moment, that he could cry, just to have some means of expressing a feeling that isn't violent. But it would be a waste of blood that's already busy keeping him animated. He just looks away, finally, and nods. "I'll see what I can remember. Is there some kind of drawing thing on that tablet? Or should I get some old-fashioned paper and sketch it out?"

"There is," she says, hand squeezing his shoulder gently before she pulls it away, though she doesn't retreat. "But it's a little finicky. Old-fashioned paper might be less annoying, at least until I have the chance to really show you the ropes."

He'll need some proficiency with technology in order to manoeuvre through the modern world. And, she hopes, helping him gain that proficiency will help him separate her from the cult that had controlled him for so long. SHIELD as a whole might be a lost cause.

SHIELD is definitely a lost cause at this point, unless they manage to mostly dismantle it and start over somehow. He can't support something that even in part belongs to the people who owned him.

"Paper it is, then. I'll have something for you next time we meet up. Unless you feel like hanging out here until tomorrow night, I guess." It's not a direction, but it's a task. It's something to start with.

And he has that information about the SSR. Names. That's something to start with, too, even if it's not his name yet. Maybe it'll lead to his name, if he digs deep enough.

She seems to genuinely consider the possibility of staying for a moment, before shaking her head. "We should play it safe for now. Don't want anyone thinking I'm hiding something worth looking into. We'll meet up again in a few days and exchange information. I'll have those files for you by then."

She pauses a moment, before offering, "I have a safehouse a few hours from DC. Mine, not SHIELD's. The lower level's built to withstand a small nuclear strike. No big cities nearby, but it's close enough to a resort town with a large, shifting tourist population. You can use it, if you want somewhere stable to lay low for a while."

He looks aside, weighing the risk. He knows there's a temple outside DC, too, though not a big one. All the big ones are in Europe. But he's been there, Pierce had been there. Being near DC means being close enough to help her take him out, but also means being close enough that if someone told Pierce he was there, there might be a retrieval attempt.

If he's going to trust anyone, at this point, Natasha is probably the only one he's even close to considering. The game she's playing would be too complex, and she isn't showing any of the signs of lying. She's the only person who's ever even tried to help him.

So he finally says, "All right. All right, sure, just tell me where it is."

She waits in patient silence, giving him time to think it over, to evaluate how much she can be trusted, how much danger he might be in, being that much closer to someone who is, apparently, a powerful member of the cult.

The address she gives is across state lines and a large bay away from DC proper, near the Delaware coast.

"It's isolate from the immediate neighbours, so no one will see you coming and going if you're careful," she says. And he'll need to come and go, in order to keep himself fed. She can accept that - she doubts he'll be any more inclined to kill innocent victims than he was to kill her without the goad of the binding spell.

Probably a good bet. A guy who feels guilty stealing from the blood bank is not a guy who is likely to go on a rampage. Even if some of that is bound up in being unused to making decisions like that, it's still probably a good sign.

"All evidence to the contrary, I'm actually pretty good at not being seen," he comments with a wan little smile. "Thanks, though. A safehouse is worlds better than where I'm at, now. I'll probably head out tomorrow night, after I get some paper here." He makes a face, remembering he's broke now, and can't exactly buy any. "It might wind up being scrap paper or something."

"So am I," she says, with a slightly crooked smile in response. "But it's still nice to play on easy mode, every once in a while."

She catches his expression when he mentions the paper, and suppresses a wince. It's not hard to interpret that, and it's something she normally would have thought of herself, if only to ensure her contact can get something to eat.

That he doesn't need to eat mortal food - if the bar is any indication, either can't or has no interest in it - is no small part of the reason it slipped her mind. She pulls her wallet out, flipping it open and offering a handful of folded bills. "Here, this should keep you for a few days. I'll have more for you on our next meetup."

In case he needs other things. Clothes, books that can't be found on her admittedly eclectic shelf, toileries that won't offend his senses.

He hesitates for a long moment, but then accepts it. He's out of cash, himself. He can probably raid a minor temple before turning towards DC, maybe throw people off the scent, but there's no guarantee there will be anything there worth selling, let alone actual supplies he can use straight away.

"Thanks." He looks at the money for a long moment. "I might hafta figure out how to get a damn job, eventually. They still got graveyard shifts places these days?"

"They do," she confirms. "I can get you set up with a solid enough ID to get something in night labour, if you give me a few days. Won't hold up to serious scrutiny of you trip the wrong radar, though. Something bulletproof will take longer."

She pauses a moment, then sighs. "Might have to wait until we've cleaned house. Forgers who operate at that level aren't easy to come by."

The vampire shrugs that off. "It's fine. Eventually. I guess for a while you're stuck taking care of me. But I'll earn it," he adds, a little more fiercely. "We'll get these people taken care of. Get your people safe." Well, safe from death cultists, anyhow. And errant vampires.

And if it gets him safe in the process, well, it's still helping her out. It's not entirely selfish.

"I don't think my people would know what to do with safe," Natasha replies, a brief flicker of wry humour touching the corners of her eyes and mouth. "But not having death cultists to worry about would be good."

"Safer, then," he says with a rueful shake of his head.

He's got cash. He's got a direction. He's fed up, for now. He's given her the intel he can, with what she had available. And he has some names to start looking into, himself. "I should probably go. Let you get some actual sleep."

Natasha exhales something like a laugh. "I'm not sure I know what that is."

But she rises, rolling her shoulders to dispell some of the stiffness that's settled into them. "You should pick up a burner phone before you get on the road. It'll make it easier to keep in touch."

She gives him the security codes and directions before she actually leaves; the system will ping her phone once he arrives, which will at least let her know where to find him if he opts not to avail himself of any convenient means of communication. In the meantime, they both have work to do.

When he does arrive at the safehouse outside of DC, he'll find it as secluded as she'd promised, and comfortably furnished. There's a bedroom in the basement, windowless and secure behind solid walls - and, when engaged, a door that could withstand nearly anything short of an enraged Hulk - in addition to the two upstairs. It isn't new. The clothes - not a lot, but two pairs of sturdy jeans, and several shirts in soft fabrics - are.

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