Pact on the shelf[Tracer and open]

[salvatore]

New York, why? Why this town out of all places. Why would the base of his kindred be located here? Couldn't they pick a better place like, Frankfurt, London, Rome, Barcelona, hell, even the cold temperatures of Moscow would be better, at least the town itself had more to be seen and was far more interesting socially and culturally. This rat hole known as America was to him bland and uninteresting. Born and raised a true European and spending the last years of his life in Asia he had never met love for this continent on the other side, the rotten side like he usually called it.

Giovanni usually hid his true opinions of this place, it was too soon to gather enemies and he already had a few naturally without even trying. So all he showed was his more charming and appealing side, a bit like his father, but his father could never be as appealing, there was always a menacing aura surrounding him that kept people away, and at this run of the championship Giovanni wanted people running to him not from him, he needed allies, people he could trust well. Sorcha was a great source of help but just two individuals wouldn't take down an entire system.

That was the reason why his men were looking for possible vampire and lycan hideouts, he needed vampires that would join his side in the blink of an eye and he needed Lycans he could buy to make it all seem like it was their fault, the fame to them was good and the unknown status to him was even better. Still little people knew who he was and his father had yet to see him since his return, but curiosity got the better of him and instead of taking a rest or going to meet his old man, he went for a night stroll.

He knew one place well in New York, he had heard about it, a monument rose to represent the peace between Lycans and Vampires. Of course common humans had no idea of what the monument was about, perhaps they had a false image of it, a false meaning given to them by people of his own kind. It was ironic and funny to him, to know such a mark of supernatural creatures stood in the middle of a public place yet no one even knew what it truly meant.

Taking long steps, confident, not too slow or too fast he reached the base of the statue and looked at it, grinning and chuckling. Lowering his head he nodded it thinking to himself that the peace it represented was nothing more than a facade. He and his father had killed thousands of Lycans, they had killed thousands of vampires, how could you build peace on top of carcasses? It wasn't reasonable, and he was sure that even with the so called truce going on right now, there were still casualties and fights between them, a shame to superiors.

He thought about rising to power, because if he did, things would change quickly! The black jacket part of his suit flew a bit with the wind rushing by and he whispered to himself "Such glory we once had father." reaching with his hand to the cold stone of the monument he made a quick pause with his eyes closed "But now you prefer the life of a rat..." he often wondered why he loved and respected that man so much, it was all over the things he had once done, obviously, because modern Guillermo was weak in his opinion, not the true leader he once was.

Taking some steps back he noticed a bench perfectly placed in front of the statue. So with a gentle move he sat down, getting hold of his jacket so it wouldn't mess up. He stood there just eying down the monument, waiting for the first rays of sun to show up, alerting him that it was time to leave. He was not going to meet his father just yet, he was going to remember the days of blood and victory, the better days, and try to forget about their recent weaknesses and flaws.

[Tracie "Tracer" LeAnn Pearse]

The statue was a symbol of something. To Tracer, it was a foreboding monument to death. It was like entering a plantation house still standing from the old antebellum south and seeing shackles preserved, and a graveyard for the poor souls. It was a monument to a bloody, violent, and horrific history -- a tangible fixture that was like a ward for bad memories and countless tragedies. Even to the hunter, it was something to behold. She did not hate the statue for what it was. She didn’t think it activated a secret passageway to some Lycan-vampire smorgasbord of orphaned children or something, as some humans treated it. It was a monument, alright, but the meaning it had for her had nothing to do with a flimsy treaty between the supernaturals. It reminded her of the deaths such beings would cause. It sometimes left her not looking through the scope in front of her eyes, but back into her own head, watching memories like some PTSD victim continually seeing Charlie’s head being blown off. The vampires had been responsible for those deaths. Vampires had spilled her surrogate family’s blood.. And the hunters had ultimately burned their house with the bodies inside. Yes… it was a thing to behold, even for a human hunter who was painfully out of the loop.

The man had appeared in her line-of-sight abruptly, approaching and touching the monument gingerly, admiring its craftsmanship. Immediately he had three possibilities. Lycan. Vampire. Or tourist who was quite possible about to feed one or the other. It was a hushed and hurried conversation between herself and her mentor -- Bear. The man was a real sight, about 6’2 and muscular like a linebacker, with unkempt black hair and a grizzly beard. The edge of his mouth across his cheek had been torn, scar tissue from the stitching giving him something of a Frankenstein’s creation look that his bear didn’t quite obscure, the hair not growing properly along that gnarled root of a scar. He was hard to look at for some, but Tracer was quite used to him.

The conversation was one that took place in American sign language. Entirely silent, no machinery that could be bugged or intercepted. Bear didn’t trust it. He was an oddly old-fashioned human. The one guy out of a crowd that dipped into a telephone booth instead of pulling a cell phone from his pocket. He was in his early fifties maybe, originating from the Donets Basin in the eastern Ukraine. His history -- was a closed book. He was cold and aloof most of the time… which was why he’d volunteered her to approach the undecided individual. It was after dark, with only street lamps shedding light on the world. It was their job to keep as few humans from becoming a Lycan’s Alpo or a vampire’s (very rare) t-bone as possible. If he was a tourist, he’d be watched as if he was in a hostage situation. For all they could see, he very well could be.

Tracer was confident about dismantling her rifle and fitting it into the violin case. It seemed very cliché, a rifle in a violin case, like something from an old Italian mafia movie, but she was generally just dismissed as an artsy type and ignored in the bustling crowds. This case she left with Bear, and every step away from it was like losing a piece of her heart. That gun was a security blanket, and she walked out into the world much less assured without it, openly vulnerable, with only the promise that Bear would cause the skull of the first anything that came at her to explode like a fireworks… only in a spray of blood and brain matter instead of sparks. Without her scope and gun in a snipers’ nest, Bear was the next best thing to make her feel secure. Still, she felt naked without a trigger to pull.

She was plainly dressed in a plain red v-neck blouse, jeans and sneakers, with a bulky black jacket. She slide her hands into the pockets of that jacket, curling her fingers around the long bullets within. Silver nitrate tips in the left pocket. “Sunshine” tips in the right, as Bear called them. The inside of her jacket was sewn with pockets and pistols and, as a last resort, sheaths. Hand-to-hand combat was a no man’s land, in her line of work. Knives were a measure in hopeless situation. A lucky person might get a slash in at the eyes and away before dismemberment. No one got that lucky, basically.

She’d had to clamber down from her perch and go around the perimeter, staring through the fence at the trees that no doubt hid vampires, Lycans, likely bodies. It was a lot of work to look like she was casually strolling by to some tourist, but she was going to do just that. If she cut through the woods, Bear lost sight of her, meaning she was truly disconnected. She knew that a scope was following her wherever she went. Bear may have been the closest thing to religion that she’d ever had, that very good feeling of someone is watching over me. Except with bullets and more than one-sided conversation.

Walking into the park proper felt like walking down death row. It had a sort of eeriness that no other human would perceive. The dark between the trees could easily house eyes, and that’s what she had to assume, that there were eyes everywhere. A snapping branch could be a paw, from Adam’s house cat to a Lycan predator. It was paranoia, one that she was constantly aware of, but it was not an unfounded paranoia. She could see the figure ahead, the monument to all things man-eating, but somehow she was more aware of what lay off the paved path. It was a charming park during the day, it really was. Tonight it might as well have been Jurassic park with no fences as far as she was concerned. Velociraptors ahoy.

”Beautiful, isn’t it?”
It was casually spoken, as a passer-by might have, with not a pitch of terror or anything other than small-talk. She masked tension well.. Because, truth be told, she always felt it. She never once stopped suspecting that a smiling cashier or jovial old bus driver was a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. If it wasn’t a face she’d seen in the hunter’s compound… it wasn’t entirely human in her mind. There were lycans… vampires… and unknowns, in her little world. It was a lesson Bear had given her in his own aloof stance toward life… and one she had taken to heart.