They still do not have a name, the quartet. Sera has taken to calling them NAMELESS the band when she takes the stage, but the joke's falling flat with Dahlia and Rick now. It never really falls flat with Dan because he loves her and more to the point - he knows exactly what's going on. Knows why she has been missing and fucked up when she hasn't been missing. Knows why she skipped that one gig she got them at Lone Star and why she turned down another couple-three that came in in the interim. He also knows that Dee and Rick need something more in their lives than their dead-end retail work and that Dee's been getting antsy and he's the only who booked this gig, on the strength of an old mixtap with some of their old band and some of the stuff they played out in North Carolina, before Sera and Dan followed Rick and Dee to Denver.
Took Sera two or three songs to get into the rhythm on the stage; took the rest of them a couple more after that, but somehow mid-way through the night it all came together. Sera got the vibe and spread it out and she was her usual self - bantering with the audience and her bandmates, drawing flashes of white-toothed smile even from Dee, who has taken Sera's distance the hardest. Fucking up the intros and bringing them back around. Drinking and drinking and drinking from the bottle of whiskey she commandeered from the bartender the minute she arrived, getting looser and brighter as the lights and faces blur together and the energy builds all around and in her.
Rearranging the set-list to accommodate some shouted request for some old Echo and the Bunnymen song the rest of them only sort of know. So Sera pulled her guitar (which, frankly, mostly lives on her spine through the set and only gets pulled around occasionally) and accompanied herself singing Lips Like Sugar and pretending she was a moody and modish Englishman from the mid-1980s, well before she was born.
And so the night circles 'round. The last few songs are always an improvisation of some sort. A dedication or some fucking thing. Tonight, Sera leans back to murmur something to Dan and he carries the word to the others because the rhythm underneath is what keeps the song moving forward. Sera's standing forward, her guitar on her back again, one hand on the mike stand and the other wrapped around the neck of her whiskey bottle. She's not satisfied with the first two starts Rick and Dee make and counts them off a third time, and this time something catches. She's bobbing her head by the time Dan comes in strumming and launches into a cover that settles into a meditative groove, except for the way the chorus rises and starts to soar before slipping back into the hypnotic groove.
Moments like this, Sera is both serene and divine, drifting around the mike stand, singing, half-dancing, half-tranced, magnetic and one-with-fucking-everything.
EntropySerafine didn't see the man at the back of the room while she was singing, and that was surely for the best because if she had... the band may not have finished the set. And they needed this - not just for the exposure or the money but because musicians needed to perform. They needed the rapturous swell of the music and the heady energy of the crowd. Given all she had been through the past few weeks, it was just the kind of rejuvenating outlet that Serafine probably needed.
And in a perfect world - in a just world - she would have that. She would have these moments of beauty to renew her when life was anything but.
But the night was over all too soon. And then there he was. Moving through the crowd toward the stage at a leisurely gait, like he genuinely had nowhere else to be. Like he had all the time in the world. She should have felt him coming from across the room, but tonight his powerful energy had been muted somehow (cloaked.) Only a silent void where his commanding presence should have been.
Not that he needed it. Brogan had a natural presence to him that superseded his supernatural abilities. He was dressed in a pair of black jeans and new-looking leather boots, with a button-down red shirt (how appropriate.)
"You guys are pretty good. A little shaky at the beginning."
SerafíneHad she sensed his presence at the beginning of the set, she would have whispered something to Dan and stood up there with her fucking whiskey while the fucking band packed up their shit all around her and she stood alone, singing a capella. Working her way maybe through the whole oeuvre of the Smiths and Joy Division until the people she cared about were packed up and out of his reach.
Had she sensed him at the end, she would have done the same thing - some extended encore, lingering more-than-half drunk at the microphone, crooning a mesmerizing rendition of Asleep by the Smiths like an endless lullaby until Dan had herded the others out of there.
But Serafíne had not sensed him at all. So the songs end and the band is starting to pack up their gear and Sera's laughing with them, all bright now, not like a diamond so much as a crinkled piece of tinfoil, but they both gleam when the light's on them, don't they? Laughing at a joke that Dee shunts her way and once more skipping out on packing up because she's too fucking drunk. All she does is return the mike to its cradle, hand off her electric guitar to Dan (or rather, let him pull it off her body, flirting with him when his hands find her hip), and then retrieve her bottle of booze.
She's standing at the edge of the small stage when she sees him, sailing through the crowd like a preternatural shark. Goes all still for a moment, something physical and thoroughly animal about her in that moment, before she jumps the fuck down, anyway, hitting the floor while the audience breaks up around them. Heads back to the bar or the bathrooms, or just starts to dance as music starts up over the stereo system.
All bravado now, she walks fucking towards him, meets him on the dance floor maybe five feet from the base of the stage. There's no joy in the slash of her smile across her face. Just an edgy, churning mix of awareness, fear, wariness and wrapped with a liminal sort of aggression that is bright as she is.
"Yeah well." That slashing smile, crisp as a blade. He's dressed conservatively, in black and red. She's wearing a black-and-pink... bustier. Bra, really, the cups covered in tiny pink roses, a short denim-and-leather skirt held together by safety pins, and her usual fishnets and platform-lifted boots. "Haven't had time to practice lately, so we open with the practice and finish with the show.
"Doesn't seem like your kinda place, though." A glance around the room. "You're really slumming it, aren't you?"
She lifts the bottle to him, an elegant, negligent curl of her wrist. "Wanna drink?"
Serafíne(BRB)
EntropyThere was a soft laugh at her assertion. That this wasn't his kind of place. And what was his kind of place, exactly? Where did men like Brogan spend their evenings off? Pan could more than likely venture a guess, after what he'd seen the other night. But maybe it wasn't quite so dramatic as all that.
"I think a few things about me might surprise you," he offered cryptically. But when she offered him a sip of her drink, he shook his head. "Alcohol pollutes the body."
There had to be some kind of special irony reserved for phrases like that coming from people like him.
"But I like music, and I like the crowd." He smiled at her swaying figure, leaning forward to speak low beneath the thrum of the music. "I also like to dance. If you can spare some time for an old man."
Serafíne"Does it?" returns Sera, with an exaggerated sort of gleam to her voice. If she weren't already drunk she could well just be frightened of him right now, stiff and stark with her fear. But she does not want to be and cannot afford to be and anyway she's drunk; the fight-or-flight boost of adrenalin is spiking into her blood and even though there's a stark new pallor to her skin up close, a rapid, thready pulse beneath her skin, the kicked up hammering of her heart beneath her sternum, she's also so fucking alive. "I've never found that to be the case."
And (fuck John Brogan) lifts the bottle by the neck to her mouth and takes another very deliberate draught. "Oh well. Too bad for you." The tight little slash of her half-smile crawls wider. "And more for me."
Her eyes are glassy from intoxication, but steady on him beneath that. Nothing about her is easy tonight. When he smiles at her; when he leans in close he can see the stiffness beneath her lean energy. It comes in stuttersteps, as if she were lit by a strobe. In compacted little units: his smile just arrests her for a fractional second. Then, his voice, close beneath her ear stills her again for just as long as it takes her heart to beat again.
There's something stark and even prideful about her bare shoulders as she absorbs the suggestion, the invitation to dance with him like a blow. Absorbs it and swallows it and digests it all in three or four heartbeats.
Her eyes on his face, like the reflection of someone in a distant window. Like the memory of the reflection of someone in a distant window, on a dark, dark night.
"Why the fuck not."
Sera throws the words back at him, opens her arms and steps in close.
SerafínePerception + Awareness-as-empathy on Brogan +1 dif for being drunk.
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )
Entropy[Manip+Sub (specialty applies)]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 2
Entropy[Actually, while we're on the subject of dice rolls... Aura Scan?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 4 )
EntropyFor all the potential harm this man may have been capable of, his motivations had so far proved a troubling mystery. He was as difficult to read as Serafine was adept at reading, but... there was this. His smile when she accepted his offer. The way it made his eyes light up. A true smile - not a thing of schooled precision. Pleased. There didn't seem to be a hint of aggression within him tonight. If anything, he seemed relaxed. But there was something unnerving about both his pleasure and his relaxed confidence. One could not help but feel it, knowing what he was.
His body didn't have the alert readiness of a predator about to attack its prey. That didn't make him any less frightening to be around. The unknown threat was sometimes worse than the known one.
What was it they said about dancing with the devil?
Serafine stepped close, either because of hubris or because she didn't think she had a choice or because she knew that a few extra inches probably wouldn't matter if he wanted to hurt her. (A few extra miles probably wouldn't matter.) Brogan danced with the same relaxed and graceful ease with which he moved, but he was also restrained. Like a preternatural shark, indeed. Despite their proximity, he didn't make an attempt to touch her.
"You're afraid," he said. The way one might casually observe that a friend had just cut their hair or bought a new pair of shoes. "So why haven't you run away?"
SerafíneAnd Serafíne does step close. Close enough that she can read his body language without having to take in the whole of his face. Close enough that if she wanted to look right at him, she could only take his features in in piece. This eye or that corner of his mouth. The cut of his brow or the slide of his cheek against the darkness.
Close enough that he can smell the sweat on her skin. The alcohol on her breath and wafting up from her bottles. The spent cigarettes she smoked before the band took the stage, an hour and a fucking half ago.
Her head is down now; she's watching the space between the bodies. His feet and her own and their twined together shadows and the shadows of the other people who came out here to hear a live band on a Wednesday night, and get pleasantly drunk or pleasantly high or both or just get fucked up.
Usually when she's in a crowd or in front of a crowd she feels like she's entirely part of it; feels off the energy, the vibe, the way he feeds on -
- well, she doesn't know what he feeds on.
That makes her heart beat faster.
She bites her lip; sharply enough to draw blood. Lets the spike of pain slice through her awareness and pull her every minutely outside her body, back into the slipstream.
She thinks about his question. Genuinely thinks about it, a spot of blood trickling to mingle with the scarlet lipstick smeared across her mouth. He can see her thinking about it. Pulling it inside her drunken mind and turning it over like a stone, to see what's underneath. To see what crawls away from the light.
"Is that what you want me to do?" she returns at last, her gaze flashing up to meet his eyes, shadowed by dark, mascara-coated lashes. There is a sort of fuck-you challenge inherent in the look. Her voice is quiet, though. " - run away? Or is this better for you.
"See, I just don't see what the fuck good it would do me.
"Either way, when you walked in that door, I was pinned.
"Like a butterfly in a book."
SerafínePrime 1: Watching the Weaving. Dif 4 -1 specialty focus.
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (6, 8) ( success x 2 )
SerafíneBravado? WP
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
EntropySerafine opened up her senses, and she'd see the faintest shadow of his own effects ringing his head like a dark halo. The working of his Will, cloaking his resonance and gleaning the details of her projected emotions. It was nothing she was not herself familiar with, but on him the threads were wrong somehow - woven backwards.
That was all she would find though. And the fact that she found anything at all was indication enough of his lack of concern. Anyone of his level of mastery would be capable of frightening subtlety, if they wished it.
He laughed, like he found her amusing. There was a fondness to the sound, but it could never be called warm. Nothing about this man could ever be mistaken for warm. (Burning, perhaps. Impassioned. Dangerous. But not warm.)
"I don't want you to run away. But I won't stop you if you do. You are, as you put it, free to fly away." He stopped dancing for a moment, his tall frame still amid the moving crowd. "I think there's a part of you that wants to stay. Maybe that scares you even more. But you shouldn't be afraid. Wary - but not afraid. Fear is a useless emotion." He reached out toward her carefully to run the edge of his thumb over her lip, catching that drop of blood.
"I see so much more in you than what you think I see. You're not like the others. Some of them are strong, but you could be limitless. Because you understand things that they don't. The only thing holding you back is your fear."
He put his thumb to his mouth and licked the red streak of blood from his skin, never taking his eyes off of her.
SerafíneWhatever streak of stubborn bravado causes Sera to stand stiff and still and stubbornly straight-spined as he reaches out to run his thumb across her mouth is not enough to suppress the faint shudder that runs down her body when he does touch her. It is bone-deep, that movement, and radiant, slowly as it opens like the expanding waves of energy released by the slippage of some crack, some fault in the earth.
It is harder now for her to look at him; he never takes he eyes from her, but she takes him in in pieces. Glancing up to find his eyes steady on her, then dropping her gaze between them just as quickly. Her hand tightens around the neck of her whiskey bottle, but she asn't taken another shot, not since the first one she threw back when he refused her offer, and unless he has started moving again, she, too, slows, then stops.
Stands still and alone with him in the center of the moving crowd. "Is that why you're here?" she looks up sharply at him, then. " - to show me how to lose my fear and find some new path forward?"
She looks up, then. Meets his gaze with a raw, open, animal directness.
"What is it you think I understand, John?" Between questions, Sera swallows hard. She's feeding on her own fear just as she fed on her own pain, used it to push herself just beyond the shroud of her skin; just enough to see the faint crown of his Work, which he allows her to see. "That none of the others do?
"I'd like to know. I'd like you to tell me."
Entropy[Sound buffer]
Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
EntropyShe avoided looking at him right up until that moment when her focus sharpened and her strength coiled within her in a shock of willful energy. And then she asked her question, and this time the man did not laugh. His eyes pulled their focus away from her long enough to slide shut as he whispered something she could not hear, but that sent a cold shiver up her spine all the same. The threads of his Will formed around them, and within a moment the din of the music faded away, along with the shouts and scuffle of the crowd.
They were all still there, but it was like the rest of the world was on the other side of a glass box.
"Pain," he said simply. "Not what it feels like, but what it means. And yes, I can show you how to lose your fear. If you want to.
"I can show you the things you locked away. The things you're afraid to remember. I can give you back all of it, Serafine. The question is, are you strong enough to look?"
SerafíneThat cold shiver crawls up her spine with his whispered words; Sera cannot suppress her reaction and does not bother to try. Once again she shivers, pulling her shoulders back as the sensation runs up the column of her spine, from somewhere in the center of her back through her neck, expanding outward through her stark, stiff shoulders. The cut of her clavicles like blades slicing beneath her skin.
Then the noise recedes, the music, all of it. There's a certain wildness to her eyes as she pulls her gaze from his and looks aslant, takes in the sensation of people moving all around them, without, silent and therefore distant.
She just stands there, in profile, her vaguely glazed eyes drifting over the people who are moving noiselessly all around them. Some are drunk; others are half-sober. Some are giving themselves over to the moment, others are holding back, looking around, wondering if someone's watching them and judging the way they move. There's a girl at the edge of the crowd who has had too much to drink and is just starting to retch. One of her friends shouts and reaches out to hustle her to the bathroom before she vomits on the dance floor.
Sera hears none of this. She's turned to the left; her hair loose and damp from her sweat against her left cheek. The buzzed line on her right darker than the long blond curls that cover the rest of her head.
While she's studying them, she lifts back the bottle of whiskey and takes another drink. Feels the sock and burn at the back of her throat; welcomes it as it slides down into her gut. A little less focused, now. Smiling around the mouth of the bottle - almost bemused above the turmoil, the fear, the hunger, the raw animal panic his suggestion engenders in her.
"Let's play a game," she tells him, her words a little more slurred, now. Her focus no longer on his face, but drifting down his tall, lean frame. "You get three guesses."
The slice of her smile is as raw as her emotions. As cutting-deep.
"What do you think I'm going to say."
SerafíneTime 2: trying to scry the future, looking for maaaybe his next moves. More concerned about her friends than herself here. Difficulty 5 -1 for specialty focus. Can I get another -1 for visceral?
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Entropy[Per+Awareness]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Entropy[Countermagic]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )
SerafíneExtending Difficult 5+1 = 6 -1 for focus, -2? for merit
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (1, 9) ( success x 1 )
Entropy[Continuing to counter]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (1, 5, 10, 10) ( success x 2 )
EntropyThere was a reason why this man had come here tonight. A reason why he was making this offer to her and not to Jim or the Priest or any of the others. Part of that reason was evidenced by the fact that she stood there in front of him and did not run. That she spoke back to him willfully, despite the growing panic and the shame and all of the other emotions his presence engendered in her. That she dared to try to read his future.
But tonight, her vision was struck blind by the force of a more powerful Will. She would experience the same frustration that Pan had when he'd attempted something similar, but thankfully not the same punishment.
Brogan smirked. "I think it doesn't matter what people say. What matters is what they believe."
Suddenly the wall of silence around them fell, and Serafine would find herself plunged back into the immediacy of their environment.
"If you want to talk, your friend the priest knows where to find me. But come alone, or the next time I won't be as friendly."
Over the speakers, the song changed, blending into something down-tempo to wind down the night. John turned away and threaded back through the dancers, and unless Serafine chose to follow, a moment later he'd be gone.
SerafíneSera closes her eyes; grits her teeth firmly against the frustration of his countermanding Will. Stands there are sound returns and the noise of the crowd resumes all around her. A sharp glance back over her shoulder at the stage is enough to assure her that the band is gone. Packed up and snuck out the back, not that any of that matters when he can hide himself from her senses and wreath himself in a dampened sort of darkness.
Then she spins again, finds the back of his head in the crowd and pushes through them, following his wake like some opportunistic predator in the shadow of a larger, more dangerous Thing. Follows him to the edge of the dance floor, though no further, just watching him to assure herself that he's gone.
Then and only then does she lose her grip on the bottle of whiskey. The neck slides through her nerveless fingers.
The bottle shatters on the dance floor.
Sera does not hear it. Does not even seem to notice its gone.
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