"Dead it is, then."

[hazlogs]

It is currently Sun Nov 29 2003. Night.

Currently the moon is in the waxing Half Moon phase (43% full).

Salem answers his cellphone on the second ring. "Salem here."

There's a pause. One of those 'hang on, did I get the right number' kind of pauses, then a familiar kinsman's voice comes on the line. "Salem? Um...hi.."

Salem's puzzled frown is audible. "Hello, Ebony. Where have you been?"

Another pause, this time as Ebony tries to think of what to say. "Um....I don't know.....it's been weird." He fidgets a bit. "I'm at some motel outside of Seattle. Fuck knows how I got here."

Salem answers after a moment's hesitation. "Seattle? ...Ebony. Are you alone?"

Ebony offers a brief, "Uh-huh." A pause as he checks the clock. "It's 8pm now....I think there's a night coach leaving here in a few, but I'm not sure I can be on it."

Salem asks the obvious. "Why not?"

Ebony coughs quietly. "I'm ill. I think it's some kind of stomach bug....one minute I feel fine, the next I can't keep anything down."

Salem mutters something quiet in Serbian, then asks, briskly, "What do you remember?"

Ebony takes a slow, stilted breath. "Well, I was walking from the car to my apartment, and....I think I got mugged or something. I vaguely remember someone in a suit, and next I know it's half seven this evening and I'm in some seedy motel.

Salem's frown deepens. "A suit? Do you remember anything else about him? Or her?"

Ebony makes a vaguely negative noise. "Salem you've got to help me," he whispers then, some note of desperation in his tone. "Everything....I feel so cold....I keep getting the strangest impulses and I can't remember anything..."

There's a snarl on the other end of the line, but distant -- as if he took the phone away from his face before he did it. More audible now, but tightly, Salem says, "Stay where you are. _Right_ where you are. I'll come pick you up. Can you tell me the name of the motel? Any landmarks outside?"

Ebony looks around. "One second....there's a map here....some driving directions." He rattles off general driving directions from the closest 'main' road. "Will that do?"

Salem says, curtly, "Perfect. I'm on my way." He's moving, struggling into his coat, heading for the unbeautiful but ever-faithful Yugo. "Stay on the line. Read me the number off the phone in your room." In case they get cut off, of course.

Ebony fumbles a bit. "Uh.... ###-###-####. Or my cellphone....I think I've still got that."


It's a seedy motel room - once you've seen one, you've seen them all. Dingy plaid carpet and white walls stained by smoke from a thousand and one cigarettes. Mostly-clean bedding over two singles, a little breakfast bar and a closet that's posing as a bathroom. The door is securely locked however, and Ebony is curled up in the bathroom, huddling near the toilet just in case.

It's been a hell of a drive, but somehow Salem makes it without an accident, without flying into a rage at the traffic (good thing the moon isn't more full), and _somehow_ without running out of things to say. Near the end he's actually making _small talk_, telling Ebony about Thanksgiving and the drinking contest that he won. Anything. Finally, though, he's at the motel. "All right, I'm here," says the Walker Elder, scanning the parking lot with a suspicious frown. "Let me in when I knock."

"Uh-huh," Ebony agrees, sounding nervous. Very nervous, and he doesn't know why. "Okay. It's on the first floor, I think....105. And, boss? Congrats on the competition." Picking himself up and tugging his clothes into laying as they should, Ebony makes for the door of his apartment.

Salem utters a curt chuckle, no more than a 'heh'. "Thank you." Then, moments later, he raps sharply on the kinsman's door.

There's fumbling behind the door as various safety locks are taken off, then the kinsman opens up, himself positioned behind the door and half-hidden by it. Upon first glance he looks fine, but even the dim light of the room's single lamp can't fail to illuminate that he's somewhat washed out. How a black man can look pale is difficult to describe, but he's not healthy.

Salem clicks off the cellphone and shoves it into his coat pocket, all the while eyeballing Ebony with a critical frown. "You look like shit," says the Walker, though he doesn't look all that much better -- he looks _different_ since Ebony saw him last.

A nervous laugh from the englishman. "Then I look like I feel," he replies, closing the door behind his Elder once the man is in. "You don't look much better though - what's been up with you?" More smalltalk, as the kinsman gets a sinking feeling deep inside. Pit-of-the-stomach dread.

Salem shakes his head. "Had to do a favor for a friend." Must have been some friend. He's not willing to let the conversation devolve on his own issues, though, and gestures toward the bed. "Take a seat and tell me about the urges you've been having."

Ebony lurks near the door, leaning against the wall beside it. "I'm not a violent man," he murmurs, almost to himself. "But.....I've just been feeling really on-edge lately, like something's grating against my mind and driving me insane. So angry....so....it's a cold feeling though," he rambles, trying to put words to the experience. "I feel so.....restless, like a caged animal."

Salem paces around the seedy room while Ebony talks, looking for... something. A clue, perhaps. "Hungry? Or just violent?"

"Hungry....yeah." Ebony practically jumps on the word, nodding as it seems to fit. He clasps his hands in front of him, fingers fidgeting for lack of anything to do. Around the room there's nothing of note, nothing that seems to belong to anyone other than Ebony - the beds haven't been slept in, however.

Salem watches a cockroach scuttle along the baseboard and under the dresser, then cocks his head at Ebony. "We'll get a pizza on the way back, how does that sound?" The casual tone of his voice is false; the expression on his scarred face is simply bland.

"Works," the kinsman agrees, then wrinkles his nose. "I dunno if I'll be able to keep it down though. Haven't been able to stop m'self from bein' ill after eatin'." He also notices the 'roach, a slightly forced smile coming to his lips.

Salem's lips thin into a grimace. "Maybe you haven't been eating the right things." His eye scans the room again, pausing briefly on the old-looking television -- required by every seedy motel in the country -- across from the beds.

Ebony shrugs and nods. "Could be," he allows, clasping his hands over his stomach now after rubbing one over his eyes. "I don't....." he trails off, biting his lip. "I don't feel /hungry/, though. Not like...stomach-rumbling-need-to-eat hungry."

Salem exhales a quiet breath. "Just an urge, yes?" He turns back, and there's a sizeable-looking pocketknife in his hand, which he's unfolding. "Don't be alarmed. I just want to test something." He's not within stabbing distance of the kinsman, though god knows how fast Garou can move when they want to...

Nodding a little bit, Ebony watches the knife carefully. It's not that he doesn't trust his Elder, but a knife is a knife. He doesn't move from his leaning, however.

Salem doesn't take a step toward the bed where Ebony's sitting. Instead, with a twitching grimace, he slices the blade across his own palm -- a swift, clean cut that immediately begins to bleed visibly... and since he's in his birth form, doesn't immediately start healing. He shows the wound to Ebony, almost holding it out toward him, and watches the other's reaction carefully.

Now that does bring a very visible reaction. There's shock on Ebony's features, and....something else trying to get out too. He's never been good at hiding his feelings, and a very alien hunger is in his eyes as he observes the bleeding wound for a moment. He's tense, like a deer caught in headlights, neither moving to the hand or trying to escape....just frozen.

"That's what you're hungry for, isn't it." Salem isn't asking a question, and his face is very cold, very solemn. The wound continues to bleed. Fresh blood, bright red, hot with life. "A man in a suit, you said?"

Taking a slow breath, Ebony seems at a loss for words. He nods, a certain brand of horror in his expression now as something becomes crystal clear. "Fuck," he whispers, his hands shaking a little. "Yeah....suit."

"The question, of course," Salem murmurs -- as much to himself as to Ebony -- "is _why_." He scowls, and for a moment stares at the once-kinsman with an expression that's... not very comforting. Like he's trying to make a decision that, if it goes a certain way, will ensure that the other doesn't survive the next few minutes.

"Help me Salem..." Ebony pleads, lifting his hands to his face and rubbing his eyes, very visibly distressed. "Please....you've got to help me....how do you fix this?"

Salem sighs. "If you've been... changed... you _don't_. It's not fixable, any more than lycanthropy." He looks at Ebony a moment more, and mercy wins out. "You're still Family, though," he says, the capital letter clearly audible. "And we'll take _care_ of the individual who did this to you."

Relief floods Ebony's face. Clearly, he was expecting to become finely-diced chunky salsa. "Thankyou," he replies soberly, closing his eyes and forcing himself to inhale.

Not that the poor bastard really _needs_ to anymore... Salem shakes his head, his face tight with anger. He murmurs something under his breath in Serbian and walks over toward the bed, the bloodied pocketknife still carried, albeit loosely, in his right hand. "First things first. Your dinner." He holds out his still-bleeding left hand. "Make it quick, and I'll take you back to St. Claire." His back is stiff with reluctance -- but Family is Family. The things he'll do for loyalty.

"I am not going to drink your blood!" Ebony protests, disgust in his features. "I'm sorry, Salem, I know you're offering so I won't end up taking it out on some poor innocent, but I am not going to prey on my family!"

"It was offered freely," Salem points out dourly, but he's really not willing to press the point, so he shrugs. "But suit yourself. You'll have to deal with it eventually." Moving away, he shifts up to Glabro long enough to heal the cut, then goes into the bathroom to clean the blood from his knife and his hand. "We have plenty of time until dawn, fortunately. You have some vacation time or sick time coming to you, at work?"

"Got about two weeks vacation time," Ebony responds, flinching back as his elder shifts up. Poor boy is wired tonight it seems. "I'll ask them if I can work nightshift....I'll figure out an excuse later."

"Mm. The one who infected you will probably show up at some point," Salem says from the bathroom. He returns, drying his hands on a motel towel, and looks critically at Ebony. "I'll have to tell the others, of course. Renee's especially worried about you."

"Fuck." Ebony's shoulders slump. "You can't tell her about this, Salem, she'll flip....I know she doesn't hold with this kind of shit." There's real fear in the vampire-kin's voice now.

Salem tosses the towel back toward the bathroom, where it lands in the sink. "I have to tell her something, Ebony," he says grimly. "Or eventually she'll just go looking for you."

"Tell her I'm dead, tell her I'm ill, I don't care....just not this." Ebony closes his eyes, and then shudders again, a few red-coloured tears escaping him. "What about KC?"

Salem folds his arms across his chest. "Do you want me to tell _her_ that you're dead, too?"

Ebony swallows tersely. "I /am/ dead," he points out harshly. "But I want to tell her myself. If she can't handle it, and decides to send me back to Gaia, that's her choice."

Salem nods once. "Fine." He glances around the grubby little motel room, then back at Ebony; his narrow face is cold. "You ready to go?"

Ebony nods, straightening and letting his hands hang at his sides. "Yeah. Salem? Thanks....and I'm sorry."

Salem shakes his head. "Not your fault." Opening the door for the kin-leech, he manages the thinnest of smiles -- trying to look encouraging, perhaps.

Ebony steps out and heads down the hallway, to the stairway and out to the parking lot, still privately wondering that he's not been rendered down into ash yet.

Salem isn't saying much now; he unlocks the Yugo without comment and levers himself into the driver's side without a word other than a muttered, "God, but I hate Seattle." As if, somehow, the homeland of grunge rock and fancy coffee were responsible for all the problems in the world.

Ebony settles in as a passenger, pulling on his seatbelt. Not like he needs it, but some habits don't die when their host does. he doesn't reply to the grumble, figuring it best to let the Elder walk through his own thoughts without a precocious kin's interferance.

The drive back to St. Claire is mostly quiet, with Salem concentrating, tight-jawed, on the road. He keeps giving the fledgling vampire quick, sidelong glances. He doesn't speak again until they're turning off the highway into the city. "Where am I dropping you off?"

"My apartment. Gotta try and grab some stuff before Jeremy comes home from work," the kinsman replies. "I'll check into a hotel from there until I can figure out more perminant accom." Clearly, he's not going to live with the other Kin anymore.

Salem nods approvingly. "If I tell Renee anything other than that you're dead, she'll seek you out. And she'll find you, too." He grimaces.

"If she finds me, she'll kill me. I want that....privilage....to be KCs," the newly-Embraced Kin replies soberly. "If she chooses not to, then you can be sure I'm not going to go quietly. It's better for all concerned if you tell Renee that I've been killed."

Salem grunts. "Dead it is, then."