18467/What They Do In The Shadows

What They Do In The Shadows
Date of Scene:	30 June 2024
Location:	Alleyways: Brooklyn
Synopsis:	An old man and an old woman meet up and talk while they feed the birds.
Cast of Characters:	Mary Seward, Dracula

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Mary Seward has posed:
It's taken a while, but Mary Seward, the Queen of Blood has finally feels quite at home in New York. It's never quite a dull moment in this city. Even for a vampire. It's the perfect place for one with grand ambitions such as hers. Plenty of people to both feed and convert to the army of darkness she was raising for her eventual war against humanity. Oh, the humans, how she despised them. Such disdain for homo-sapiens was what led her to form her Blood Red Moon cult, full of undead vassals acting in tune with her her maddened will total undead supremacy.

Some others of her kind have been so rash to dismiss her, to talk down to her. Not that she'd ever see them as anything other than weak and complacent of course. If they considered her a radical then fine, a radical she was. She was the Queen of Blood. Might as well stand out amongst the rest of vampire-kind...Speaking of which though...As she prowls the night sky of New York, in search of her latest prey to feast upon...she feels...a presence. It's another vampire for sure. She could sense others of her kind very well, and she was well aware of the presence of other vamps in New York...but this presence. It was unlike any she'd felt before. Both, somehow familiar yet unfamiliar...

It's actually been a feeling at the back of her head for most of the day. Yet, now that she's out on the prowl, it feels all the stronger.

Strong enough to track to some unassuming alleyway nearby...Huh...Somehow she keeps running into to fellow vamps in alleys.

Dracula has posed:
Count Dracula.

    Vlad Tepes Drakul.

        Vlad the Impaler.

He has gone by so many names over his half a millenia of life that many of them still are lost to the annuals of time. Whispered fears in the minds of mortals tracing back to the end of the Crusades. Superstitions in Eastern Europe that exist to this day. All born for the abhorent rumors of the Son of the Dragon. The Devils own.

Whatever name by which Dracula goes, he is a force of undead might. A tempest in the chaotic winds that surfaces in New York upon the wings of a private jet that he's affectionately named the Demeter. Call him a romantic. A sucker for symbolism, as it were. If his age has taught him anything, it's that memories are the cornerstone of everything and to forget is to betray.

Of course he's heard of Mary Seward. She is nearly as old as he.

With some of the same grand designs and dispise for humanity.

Does he reach out to her? Perhaps he has. Perhaps he's extending his presence in a manner to draw her attention to him. It is well known that Dracula can call out to others of his kind, not simply feel them. Alert them that he is present, should they care or not.

Where she finds him, should she follow that tickling sensation that tugs of familiarity is a park bench in Central Park. A bag of popcorn held in one hand against expensive slacks with his top hat turned over on the seat beside him. Where he gingerly tosses kernals out upon the pavement path, surrounded by pigeons all pecking at the discarded morsals.

Mary Seward has posed:
Not quite what she had been expecting to find at the end of this wild bat chase. She's not sure what catches her more off-guard...the bird feeding or the boldness to carry around a top hat in public in this day and age. Then again, anyone who knew her would say she was no one to judge on odd fashion choices.

She silently approaches the bench, casually taking a seat next to this man feeding pigeons. Obviously, she knew better than to take this at face value. That she had just run into some ordinary joe. No, in fact, she knew it for what it was. A powerful being exuding subtlety. Granted, that was something she, a powerful being herself, took for granted at times.

But she can at least give it a try. "...Adorable." She leans down, eyeing the birds.

Dracula has posed:
"Aren't they just." The Centuries have taken much of the original Romani accent from his words, but there's no mistaken Dracula's origins when he speaks. Some vampires adjust to the times, others simply exist in them. He is of the latter camp. His mode of dress is, without a doubt, very archaic, his form of speech quite antiquitated, but he's not lost in the flow of times constant passage. Quite the contrary.

It's a mirage.

Smoke and mirrors.

He tosses a few more kernels outward with a flick of his wrist and the pigeons leap around one another to get at them, despite there being plenty enough for all of them. Clawing over one another as if they are starved and each individual white puff is the last bit of food on the planet.

It's amusing, perhaps.

His green eyes turn to one side, each iris lined with crimson red to bring them out in high relief against the white sclera. Have they met previously? Certainly in so many centuries two of the oldest Vampires on the planet have run across one another. If only in passing... It's not as if the circles they walk are exceptionally large.

The popcorn is set aside, a handkerchef produced from his breast pocket to wipe at his fingers, around each of his rings, cleaning them of what salt remains. "What do you see when you look at the birds, Mary Seward?"

Mary Seward has posed:
Maybe, they had met before Maybe, they hadn't. Either way, Mary couldn't help as though she were sitting next to an old friend. It's a certain kind of kinship. One beyond the kind found by blood relatives, or lovers. It's just a natural acknowledgement of...complimentary people. Just an innate understanding of one another. Like fate itself conspired for them to meet and click together so well.

"Same thing I see when I look at the warm bodies I pass by on the sidewalk...Dumb little animals, always flocking together and leaving their mess everywhere..." She holds her hand out and pats one of these pigeons on the head.

"...Though, I think I prefer the birds...They know their place at least."

Dracula has posed:
Fate has always been an interesting bedfellow to Dracula. At times an ernest companion in the ever changing tapestry of his lifes cycle of chaos and others a gapping wound that is in desperate need of suture. He continues to peer at her with a single brow raised over his green eyes, at least until she gives her answer. All the while he's wiping his fingers clean, set to tuck the handkerchef back away and settle his hands down upon his leg crossing over the knee of the other.

"It's been many a century since I fed on a bird." He says this with no small amount of amusement in the tone, as if remembering something from long ago that was funny then and has only aged more comedically. "During the plague, I believe.. Seventeen... no, sixteen sixty five." His nailed fingers flick at his leg, a bit of crumbs brushing onto the pavement to be gobbled up by pigeons. "The rats tasted better than the humans. I've always found death and misery gave blood a...mmm.. a sour taste. It's less palettable. Offensive, really. Fear is nice, a fruity taste... misery." His hand wobbles, glancing off after a pair who, for one reason or another, scurry away from the pair.

Prey can always sense predators.

His green eyes return to Mary.

"Do you know what I see? Inevitability." The question was rhetorical, of course. How could she know what he sees. "Countless generations of cattle doing exactly the same thing expecting different results.. Look." He points a claw towards a pair of pigeons literally fighting over one piece of popcorn when several sit directly around them. "This is how they are like mortals. This.. They will kill one another for scraps when a banquette sits directly beside them."

Mary Seward has posed:
"Really?" In the past, the quick conversational pivot to discussing the blood of literal vermin would be a topic of disgust for the prideful Queen of Blood, who so often despised the subject of feeding on animals, Cullen-style, on principal alone. But, discovering a magical vampire cow that was fed upon by the very man that sits beside her now quickly gave her new perspective on it. To the point where she now encourages her own flock to start turning their fangs towards the occasional rodent or farm animal...of course, she still preferred the taste of mortals.

"Quite the blood foodie, aren't you?...Guess I don't really feed that often on miserable people. Honestly, I should really expand my palette more when it comes to the different emotional flavors...Of course, lust always tastes the best....You know, I had this dinner date with another vamp in town, and we tricked this girl into thinking she'd get lucky...Immaculate taste. One of the best I'd had in awhile, you really should've been there."

But, here she was starting to get crass, when Dracula was getting oh-so philosophical. "Indeed they will. Though, it's not quite the same as these guys...These little pigeons, they attack cause they don't really know better, I feel. They can't help being stupid....The mortals though, they're just looking for an excuse. Doesn't matter if that excuse is scraps or some other arbitrary motivation...It's all secondary to their drive to just turn on the nearest person next to them. They all wanna do it. Even the noble ones in the capes and tights, they're all just finding a socially acceptable reason to vent their bloodlust on their fellow costumed nutcases....Yet, when we do it to eat, a valid natural reason...we're the monsters. Suddenly, they're morally justified in trying to slay us...Hypocrisy to the max, right? At least birds can't moralize at you."

Dracula has posed:
"Some mortals eat 'McDonalds'." Vlad points out as if to explain his particulars on the different flavors of blood. "There's a taste to everything a creature eats and to truly appreciate what we dine upon is the height of sophistication. I'm certainly not above the blood of a miserable wretch if that's all that's available, but why eat McDonalds when Rue Christine is down the street?" He chuckles, humorlessly, and waves a hand in an flampant dismissal. "As I said, it has been centuries since I've feast upon animals and then only because the alternative was festerous remains of the plague stricken. There are things I can get past and there are things I cannot."

Monsters we are else monsters we become, as the saying goes.

He inclines his head to the picture painted of potential lovers met with dining, "I have been there. Many times." He nods, perhaps remembering, perhaps letting letting it roll about in his mind for a meer second which matters as little to the eternal. "Terror is, by far, my favorite dish. True terror.. the moment where hope is absolutely lost..." Air sucks upon his teeth, fingers blossoming out from his pale lips.

"Mwah.. my compliments to the chef."

The conversation turns and Dracula follows the thread.

Again nodding. A shallow dip of his head. "You've yet to see our own turn upon one another, then. Mmm.." His nails flick across the seam of his slacks. Eyes cast down, tracing the seamstresses needle as if he's watching her stitch them. "We're no different, dear. No.." The word drug out, lips pursed, hand waving with another humorless chuckle. "No.. we're worse." He points to Mary, "Because we're better. Evolved. Mutants.. Metahuamsn... mortals... mmm.. I've watched them and battled them.. and they always find a way, they do. They find niche... but you mark my words-" The point angles towards her, sloping downwards to point in her direction, "When the war is over the army will need someone to fight. And it will be each other."

Mary Seward has posed:
Of course Mary couldn't disagree with how much Dracula fawned upon the greatness of a terror fueled victim. Not just the taste for her, no, the joy of seeing a cringing, whining human bloodbag cowering at the sight of their better was almost as invigorating as the feast itself for her. Perhaps, one could call that playing with her food. She would think of it as savoring.

"Ah, yes. How quick I am to forget...Alright, you got me there." Seems she can be somewhat humble. "Yeah, we are quite bad in the whole infighting business." She would know that well, again, she was something of a radical amongst her kind. For all those who agreed with her worldviews, there would always be those who would scorn her, and eachother. Not wanting to do away with the little underworlds they made for themselves and being just as eager to stomp out those would oppose them as eagerly as any nut with a hammer in one hand and a stake in the other.

"However, I'd argue that's a consequence of most of us having once been apart of humankind. It's kind of an original sin deal, you know?...After all, don't most evolved beings keep some vestigial aspect from what it is that they evolved from?" Now, she's playing biologist it seems.

"...I'd like to think that, unlike the humans, we're at least capable of growing past it...We just need the right circumstances to set us on track...The right people calling the shots...Plus...it's a big, big universe out there. There will always be more lands to conquer, won't there?"

Dracula has posed:
"I am going to play Advocate of the Devil." Which he is. It's no secret that Dracula consorts with the Christian visage of Satan, but to the point, he regards her with a slow turn. His knee still remains laid upon the other, but his body is now subtly angled in her direction, with both hands laid upon his folded knee. "You and I have both seen the 'growth' of mortals. Disgusting little bastards that they are... they have come a long way from penny anti-pony shows and peddling pedantic rhetoric on the subject of racial superiority. Where they may faulter, and believe me I take great pleasure in their failures, they have grown.." A hand lays upon his breast, once again then settling upon his knee.

"I evolved from 'nothing'. Because I am a creature of an era from which 'morality' has escaped.. You and I." He flicks a nail betwixt them, "We are both old enough to remember times far worse than 'these'. This, a footnote. Barely... minute.. even in 'my' lifetime." He sucks his teeth at that and shakes his head.

"I do not disagree with you, they need a guiding hand. A ruling upper class of enlightened minds-" He is a very dramatic figure, flaring his hands out like the flash of fireworks on the 4th of July. "-to usher them into a better, controlled-" patting those same flared hands down, "-state of inferiority." It's here that he chuckles, rolling his eyes at his own antics.

"If your goal, sweet Mary Seward, is to battle the entire company of capes by amassing an army of fledgling vampires? Well.. you've sold me." He claps and then sets his hands upon his knee, "It has been said I am to take part in the downfall of everything, which.. mythology and prophecy besides.. I find drawl and incredibly unentertaining. Perhaps it is time I hand the reigns of such grand designs to you? That you may sit upon the throne of skulls you wish create from the corpses of a trillions of mortals and face the ravinous eyes of a company, neigh a host, of eager vampiric eyes all searching for the immortal question...

"What now?"

Mary Seward has posed:
Mary often loved hearing herself talk. Anyone who knew her could tell you that...Yet, here she was, so greatly captivated by the words of another such as the monarch before her now. Perhaps, that speaks to the true power of Dracula, or instead to how great of an understanding they had for one another. That natural fit that just can't be explained by anything other than a feeling.

"Never really got the interest in skull thrones...That sounds like it'd be pretty damn uncomfortable." She grins, always one for a joke. Again, how she loved hearing herself talk. "...If you would be willing to hand those reigns off to anyone, I'd take them. Not that I'd be so bold as to tell you to retire...Really, I'm just honored that you'd even consider it..." She leans ever forward, both of her legs criss-crossing atop the park bench.

"There aren't many who have the drive necessary to take on such a role. Even with how prone we are to posturers, and those who brag about their power and age and other such things....But, I do. I'm one of the few people on this Earth who can actually commit. For any lesser vamp would be motivated by power grabs, by their obsessions with statuses that they pined for in life and still do so in undeath...My interests...are in the future of our kind. They will always be in the future of our kind, for I love it so. For all it's flaws, for all the upstarts and idiots within it...Warts and all...and I will gladly dedicate the rest of my eternal existence to pushing us all forward. For those of us, who would ask what now..."

Her crimson eyes shine in dark, with a pulse, as though a great fire were burning in the skull behind them. "...I am the answer. I am what now. I am what comes next..."

"...That's just my humble opinion, of course. Feel free to disagree."

Dracula has posed:
For all his verbosity, Dracula is equally as capable of listening. He remains silent as she speaks, stationary as a statue, with his hands laid upon his bent knee turned just so to face her. While it's unclear how he hangs upon her words, he certainly takes them in, and it's only once she's offered him leave to disagree that he animates beyond the gentle shift of his oddly colored eyes.

"Interesting."

Is what he says. Though it's hardly the last words spoken. He gives enough time between that one word that it settles over the conversation, lending his considerable consideration to the gravitas of what she's suggesting. "Well, it's good that you don't ask I retire, I have no intentions. I have my own designs, Mary Seward." His smile flashes, fangs and all, across his pale face.

"If only could hear what I hear in your words. If only my words leant any weight to what you would believe... alas, you cannot and they will not. Which is fine because we walk a very similar path, paved in so much blood. We 'both' seek a world beneath our boot-heel. You for the good of all of us and me because I can." Again the smile flashes. It fades as rapidly.

"There are those vampires amongst us who I dispise more than any human. Creatures so wretched and vendictive that they have no place in either of our kingdoms... So if you wish a reign where all are welcomed, I have to politely, but pointedly, decline. Not everyone is welcome in my home. No..." He taps at the air with one long finger capped in a sharp nail.

"Your ideology may not be one meant for power, now, but... eventually, oh eventually, it will. Because Vampires are not ruled. The heroes of your rebellion today are the anversities of your rule tomorrow." He takes a slow breath which he obviously hasn't need for longer than there has been an United States.

With his tongue touching the back of one fang, curiously watching her as he leans back. A hand absently sends more popcorn kernels flaring out for the pigeons who now stare up at them, largely forgotten. "I admire your ambition enough that I will offer you something I've offered to only two people in my life... a truce. Stay out of my way, Mary Seward.. Stay out of my way and I will stay out of yours."

His hand extends outwards, as dramatic as any gesture, with his claws opened to accept her hands. "Do we have an accord?"

Mary Seward has posed:
"Oh, don't get me wrong...I'm something of an idealist...but  not some naive little girl.. There'll be those of our kind that I'll...deal with, once I have my way..and there'll be those who'll try to take what I have...Some people just don't realize who's got their best interests in mind."

She clicks her tongue, her eyes following the popcorn kernels. Stupid little birds, stupid adorable little things.

"..Well, that is just a-okie dokie-kay to me. I wouldn't want to step on your toes, my good sir. You've earned my respect which is very hard to come by..." She meets his offer with her hands meshing with his. "We have an accord...and just for the record, I'd love to really get the chance to work with you some time. Honest...But, hey...You do you, I do me...I'm chill like that."

Dracula has posed:
"Chill like that." Dracula doesn't immediately release her hand, even grinning at those words as he speaks them, "Today's venacular is incredibly amusing." He shakes her hand again, then pulls his free to rest upon his thigh, absently drumming the tips of his nails across the seam where it lays. "Perhaps we yet will, dear. Perhaps we will. It's a very long life we live and the cloak of ideology is heavy enough that it requires our eternity to properly drape." He considers, then regards her fully.

"I wish you nothing but the best success in your endevours, of course. Should you be successful, far be it from me to have sat upon the pulpit preaching your failures. No, I am pragmatic enough to see the forest for all those silly little trees in the way.." His fingers wiggle in the trees direction, though they're not the true culprits to whom he's referring... metaphorical.

"I'll have a list of names, which I'll discreetly slip into your palm. Individuals whom need an education on friends close, enemies closer and how long the memory can be." He chuckles, a hollow sound, with his hand dropping to grip the tophat beside him and flip it with a flick of his wrist down upon his dark haired head.

"You were gracious enough to join me, so I shall give you the bench." Said as he rises, handing the popcorn out to her with two fingers and thumb gripping the outter rim of the bag, "Don't forget to feed the pigeons from time to time. Some time ago, someone once told me; the course of our lives runs along an endless garden and it is on us to periodically stop and smell the roses less we forget that Eden is behind us." Once she takes the bag, he taps the unoccupied fingers against the brim of his top hat.

"Chill like that.. mm... I like that. Peace be unto you, Mary Seward."

Mary Seward has posed:
She would tease him for being so blatantly old, but she was nearly as old and it took her awhile to figure out some of the virtues of the modern era. The hardest parts, sge lets her fledglings handle. Social media and the like. A fact she would never admit to anyone living or undead. "Oooo, I love a good hit-list. You spoil me, my good man." She accepts his popcorn bag with gratitude, hugging it to her chest. Perhaps, now it's her time to embrace what an old woman she was for a change...and feed the birds.

"Peace be unto you as well, Count Dracula...and...keep up the good work." She smiles wide, already making an effort of tossing a kernel amongst the birds. She's being sparing with the portions.

...She likes to see them fight.