Adrian realized, halfway up to the entry level, that he actually had no idea who or what he was looking for. Matt hadn't described the men he'd seen, other than that one of them was wearing a suit. There were a few men in suits; the Dome was close to business offices. Adrian studied everyone in a suit he saw. One or two of them stared back at him, either belligerently or with an interest he recognized only too well. This was Toronto, after all, and making eye contact with a stranger was an act of open hostility. Or invitation.
The smell of concession food overpowered even the smell of massed human beings once he reached level 200. How could anyone eat that stuff? Modern times had wrought many chances in cuisine; but Adrian was amused by the fact that the common sausage, despised by gourmets and food critics, still survived and was still a popular choice. You could call it a hot dog, but it was still a sausage.
He should really inspect the men's room, just in case. But that was a risk.
Not only would he draw attention by going in there and not using the facilities, but bathrooms invariably had mirrors. Adrian did have a reflection, but the reflection showed his true self. The monster. Red eyes and fangs.
He decided to risk it. Most men didn't pay that much attention to their own reflections, let alone someone else's. He could just wash his hands, that was a reasonable excuse to be in the bathroom.
The smell of fresh blood hit him almost instantly. It wasn't something you normally smelled in a washroom, leaving aside the whole topic of menstruation. None of the breathers in the bathroom seemed to notice it; only a vampire would have picked up that scent. Like a lion catching a whiff of zebra off the veldt, he thought wryly. It was coming from one of the stalls; fortunately, the stall was empty.
Adrian walked over, carefully keeping his face turned away from the mirror, and entered the stall. He shut the door behind him. Nobody had been in to clean in the last few minutes, he decided, since the blood scent was coming from the back of the door. A message had been left there for him. Blood wasn't the best ink in the world, but the message was quite short. It said, "You next, Talbot."
He spent a minute or so in the stall; using wadded up toilet paper and water from the nearest handy source to wipe away the message. He flushed the evidence. Then he went and washed his hands, still keeping his direct gaze away from the mirror. Nobody seemed to notice anything strange about him.
He even remembered to get Matt his hot dog. He was quite proud of himself.
Then he went back to his seat.
Matt spotted Adrian as he made his way down the steps toward where he and Pippin sat. He heaved a deep sigh of relief. Adrian's clothes looked just as nice as they had earlier, so no mayhem could have occurred. And Adrian, great guy, had even remembered his dinner.
As Adrian seated himself and handed Matt the dog, Matt asked, "Jeez. I bet this stuff seems really nasty to you. Thanks for getting it for me though."
Adrian nodded, and Matt took a bite. As Matt chewed, Adrian was aware of Matt's eyes on him, not on the game. Finally, after a swallow, Matt asked, "Everything okay?"
Adrian considered lying. Why worry Matt, after all. This wasn't about him. But then BOO was in New York and Adrian couldn't protect Matt or Pippin there. Better to give Matt all the information so he'd know what to look for.
"They left me a message," Adrian explained, acting his ass off to look nonchalant about it.
Matt's eyes widened. "A threat?"
"What threat, Uncle Elijan?" Pippin asked, obviously paying far more attention to their conversation than either of the men had thought.
"That I'll grow dreads and live on ganja."
"Huh?" Pippin asked. "Oh, dreads! Yeah! Grow them!! Great Uncle Serge would have a cow!!"
"Geez. Don't tempt me Pip."
Once Pip was once again engaged in the game, Matt turned to Adrian and gave him one of those Looks.
Adrian asked, lazily, "Ganja?"
"Marijuana", said Matt, "but don't change the subject. Was it a threat?"
Very carefully, so that Pip wouldn't see him, Adrian nodded.
"Shit," said Matt. "They won't get away with it."
"Matt, it would appear that they have quite a large organization, with agents everywhere. Vampires have no legal status in this or any other country. What exactly are we supposed to do?"
"We go to the tabloids. Expose them there. We'll get head shots of all of them, publish them with all the info we can get on them and make sure every creature they want to hurt knows who they are. Then we sic the paparazzi on them. Have them chasing them in every venue. I bet I could get the paps in Manhattan all in a whirl.
"Even if most folks just think it's the usual made-up stuff, it'll get out to those who need to know."
Matt looked at Adrian earnestly. "It's not the greatest plan, but at least we'd be doing something."
Adrian sat there for a few minutes, watching Baltimore beat the feathers off the Jays. A stray ball came in their general direction, but Pip failed to catch it despite a strenuous effort that made Matt automatically reach out and grab the boy by the back of his shirt.
"Easy there," Matt said, "we are on level 200 and we aren't supposed to throw things on the field."
Pip grinned. "Well, I had a shot!" he said. He settled back down, not paying any attention to the tense conversation between Matt and Adrian.
"But how do we find them?" Adrian asked. "You can't just look them up in the phone book." He remembered Jake finding "Out, Out Bugs". "At least, you probably can't anymore," he amended. "They have lawyers as well as hunters. So far we know they're in Toronto, New York and Maine. They probably have hundreds of agents, and if the few I've seen are anything to go by, they don't look like anyone in particular. They seem to be very good at recruiting the everyman."
"Hey, I'm not a reporter for nothin', yanno. When you're out of it tomorrow, I'll scout around and see if I can't figure out where they're set up to watch you. I've got my camera with me, and it's got a pretty good lens on it. If I can get a shot of them, even only one of them, then maybe we can start to figure out who is workin' for them and break some of that secrecy around them. What can it hurt? Things can't get much worse so far as I can see."
"What's worse?" Pippin, uhm, piped up.
"The Jay's playing, Pip."
"Man, they stink Mr Adrian. Sorry."
"Never be afraid to tell the truth," Adrian advised him, "no matter how unpopular it makes you." He looked at the score, and winced. "What do you say we get out of here and go get some ice cream?" he asked.
"Great idea!" Pip said.
"I'll even splurge for a cab," Adrian said. "And we'll beat the crowds."
Matt felt a blessed absence of that feeling of being watched as they slipped unobtrusively out of their seats and out the nearest exit from the Dome. Adrian led them through a maze of stairways and walkways to street level, and hailed a passing cab.
"But it's not yellow, Mr. Adrian!" Pip remarked.
"They don't have to be yellow here, Pip," Adrian replied.
"You must be from New York," remarked the Sikh cab driver. "No, we do not have to have yellow cabs here. This is a good thing. Where would you like to go?"
"Gregg's Ice Cream Shop," Adrian replied.
"Ah, very good ice cream there. I take you there."
"Why's it such good ice cream?" Pip asked.
"They make their own," replied the driver. "I have seen them do this thing.
It is very interesting to watch them make ice cream..." he launched into a lengthy description, with appropriate hand gestures, ignoring the peril this caused to passengers, traffic and pedestrians alike.
Under the cover of this conversation, Adrian leaned back and murmured to Matt, "I think it might also be time to have a little chat with T'beth's boyfriend."
"Fluffernutter?" Matt replied. "But I thought he was with ORC*, and they're pretty harmless."
"I think," Adrian said, "that he used to be with BOO."
"Ah," Matt breathed. Adrian was, as usual, intrigued when Matt did that, much as Matt was intrigued that Adrian didn't.
They piled out of the cab when they'd reached Gregg's Ice Cream Shop. Pippin was all business, making certain he understood every nuance of the flavours available to him. Matt, patient as always with the boy, gave him plenty of time to choose. Matt chose a sherbet for himself. Pippin ended up with multiple scoops of things that most definitely did not seem to go together.
Adrian had coffee, and a very small dish of plain vanilla ice cream, which he mostly left to melt.
Matt was staring dreamily at Adrian, and not paying much attention to his sherbet. Pippin poked him in the ribs.
"Hey. Don't you like your dessert?"
"Hmmm. Yes, I was rather dreaming about dessert. But first we're going to go visit some of Adrian's friends."
"Oh, boy!" Pippin commented enthusiastically. His face was spotted with chocolate swirl, butter pecan and cherry cheesecake ice cream.
"Hmmm," Matt muttered, studying the young boy critically. "First, I think we need a short trip to the men's room where we hope we will find a reasonably clean sink."
As the two walked off toward the bathroom, leaving Adrian to relax at the table, Adrian listened to their banter.
"I'm big enough to go wash all by myself, Uncle Elijan."
"Of course you are, but I've got raspberry sherbet sticky fingers."
"Don't you like chocolate?"
"Yeah, Pip, I do, but I was kind of remembering the sherbet I got in Baghdad. It was really good. Well, it probably wasn't all that good, but since not much else about Baghdad during a war was good it sure seemed like it was...."
The door to the bathroom closed, separating them from Adrian.
He shoved away the barely touched ice cream, and got up, hunting for a quarter. He refused to carry a cell phone. He nodded to the bored young man behind the ice cream counter and sauntered over to the payphone, hoping like hell that T'beth and Fluffy were at home tonight.
Fortunately, it was her gruff "Yeah?" that answered, and not her answering machine message of "I'm out. Deal with it."
"Evening, Tabitha," said Adrian pleasantly.
"I told you not to call me that, Talbot," she replied. 'What do you want?"
"Matt and I would like to spend a convivial evening with you and Fluffernutter."
There was a long silence while T'beth tried to work out what he _really_ wanted. Then she sighed. "He's been expecting this. Okay, come over. Where are you now?"
"Greggs. Pippin's with us. That a problem?"
"I don't have a playroom, Talbot."
"He'll be okay."
"Right."
"See you in a bit, then."
"Don't expect cookies." She hung up.
Matt and Pip emerged from the bathroom, Pip's face now shining clean.
"We're going to go visit my friend T'beth now," Adrian said. "And her boyfriend, Ambrosius."
"Geez. And I complain about Elijan," Matt commented. "Poor guy."
They flagged down a non-yellow cab and headed on over to T'beth's place.
Pippin really could have cared less were they were going. He was too busy eating up the fact that Matt and Matt's boyfriend were treating him like a person rather than a pesky and not very bright protuberance.
The cab pulled up in front of what appeared to be a small warehouse, in a dark and secluded location. And the boys hopped out.
Pippin was the first one at the door.
When T'Beth opened said door, Pip looked up at her and smiled. "Hi!" He said brightly.
Matt, standing just behind him, grinned at T'Beth. "Yo, T'Beth, good seein' you again." T'Beth studied him for a moment but soon realized he really did mean just that. Matt seemed to always mean what he said. That was something she found a bit odd considering he hung out with Adrian.
"Yo, Matt," she replied. "This must be Pippin," she looked down at the boy.
"I'm T'beth. You call me ma'am. Got it?"
"Sure," he replied, still smiling. "Ma'am."
"Come in," she grunted, standing aside.
A narrow staircase led up to a loft the Spartans would have thought too Spartan. There wasn't much in the way of furniture, although there was a television. The apartment above the warehouse was loft-like; a second floor had been built on consisting of a wooden platform on which rested a low bed and one or two other pieces of furniture. There were student-style bookshelves on the main floor, a low table with some cushions around it, and maybe three or four chairs. A large, locked cupboard drew Matt's attention, but he refrained from asking what was in it.
"Oh man, cool. Uncle Elijan used to have a house without all the stuff too. Now he's living with Ms Lana and he has lots of stuff. I like this better!"
Agent Fluffernutter had been sitting in one of the chairs. He had the sort of features that you forget immediately. You couldn't have picked him out of a crowd or police line-up, he was that instantly forgettable. Adrian found himself wondering, not for the first time, what on earth such a dynamic woman as T'beth saw in this dweeb.
"Elijan?" Fluffy asked.
"Ambrosius?" Matt countered.
The two men eyed one another, dweeb to dweeb.
"So, uhm, Pip, why don't you go watch the TV or something."
Pippin eyed his uncle (he was really really good at imitation).
"Okay, okay, I'll take you skiing with me. Once. That's the last bribe you're gonna get from me for this trip."
"Cool. I can live with that," Pippin said as he sauntered away toward the TV.
Matt looked over at Adrian who seemed to be lost in thought. So he said, sinking to a very un-American sort of crouch on the floor, "Okay, tell us about BOO. I really really don't like it when guys go after my nephew."
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* ORC - Occult Research Council for more info see: Tag You're It and Hide and Seek