stuff us in boxes that's where you want us

cardboard is boring, we brought our matches - look how it burns

Waking up to that glaring text from Darcy already set the morning to a rough start. She wasn't a fucking errand girl. Plain and simple. Yet those summonings were claiming something different. But this was the first time he ever asked her to do something so tedious. Didn't Syn have people for that? It was yet another reminder of the cowboy's presence buzzing within her life. Didn't he know she had a day job? That she needed to survive? City life wasn't cheap. And the amount of fucks Darcy gave about anyone but himself.. Was next to nothing. The next thing she knew, he would be asking her to pick him up some hair gel in the middle of the night or worse. How she could feel her world start to get suffocatingly smaller by the week. A growl escaped her as she tossed her phone onto the soft surface of her bed as if she could throw away that increasingly unfortunate part of her life. How she knew come nightfall if she didn't pull this off.. There would be hell to pay. Maybe he did it on purpose. A reminder that her life was not her own. That's what he thought. She stormed around her apartment far more like a grouchy feline than she realized. From the time she woke up, to the time she saw that glaring text she realized she didn't have much time at all. It was just barely enough time to take Ace on a short run, shove some food into her mouth and shower. In record time too. She only had just enough time to let her long straight raven locks semidry. She threw on her leather jacket over a printed storm grey tank, a pair of skinny jeans and her favourite pair of combat boots.. Because every day was a fucking battle.

She wondered what that appointment even was. Darcy barely said more than a few brash words. She didn't get paid enough for this shit.... In fact, she didn't get paid at all. Which was complete bullshit. Money kept the lights on. Money that she should be earning, doing her job. She liked her job, she was pretty damn good at it too.. And it wasn't like she was lacking in clients. But this? This was bullshit busy work. Maybe that's how it started. The moment you were fucked financially. They had you. There was nowhere to turn, but them. Or Tetradore. Like hell that was going to happen.

Perhaps that was all part of the breaking process. Being forced to turn yourself over to them. To become a fucking slave. Which was certainly not what she was now. Hello denial, pull up a chair. She refused to think about it, focused far more on what she could do to help herself, but that would need to come later. Problems for another day. Those ever-increasing problems could have formed a mountain if it kept it up. But they were her own and she damn well knew they could be far worse than what she faced here and now. But she was alive and she liked that.

The were-woman pulled up into Syn's semi-empty parking lot in her loud mustang Shelby, that knew how to make an entrance, just like her. It looked like a ghost town during the day. She knew better. Syn was never just a club, even though upon first glance it would seem so. Nothing was ever what it seemed there. The sprawling goliath building itself looked deceptive, especially during the day. It looked like just a normal building, a converted expensive-looking warehouse, anything that might have suggested otherwise was discreetly concealed at the back. It screamed, just a club. The dark facade, the barricades, the impregnable entrance with those heavy doors.

As she closed her car door with a hefty push, that was when she saw a van, parked off to the side with a logo on it. Arctic Air. Shit.. the person was early. Who the hell showed up on time anymore? Let alone early. She peered around, as she took note that the person wasn't actually in the vehicle or anywhere in sight. Which meant he was inside. Double shit. It was a good thing the vampires were most likely sleeping.
Swiftly she used her own, resourcefully, freshly swiped keyfob from poor oblivious Ian. The door was locked, how did he get in? The door clicked open and she swore it was like a pick your own adventure moment. It wasn't long that she caught sight of the open case of tools.. But no person in sight. The room had limited lights on, unwilling to waste time trying to find those switches she opted in allowing her eyes to adjust. "Please don't tell me they already got themselves killed." She muttered under her breath, purple eyes trailed swept across the empty club. Still no sign of AC dude. Maybe.. Did he go looking for the utility room himself? "Hey AC person? You here?" Crickets.

How the hell did he get in here in the first place?

She stalked the usual places, perusing any sign of life before she noted the slightly ajar door that led to one place she'd rather not be. The basement. Of course. An audible groan escaped her as she forced it all down and took one for the team.

The Were descended down those dreaded steps, her sensitive ears strained to listen for any sign of life. It felt like the kind of place where people kept their monsters or all their sins that they didn't want anyone to know about. She hated the smell down here. It smelled like lost hope.. bleach.. and death. Oh and something earthy.. that she couldn't quite place. What on earth could make that smell she hardly knew nor did she want to find out. A basement that smelled like forest practically screamed Jumanji. Her nose twitched with it.. along with the sense of dread that rose and fluttered in her chest. Definitely not paid enough.

Even down here.. the place looked too clean.. too pristine.. too much like a place that wasn't hell. That shit should be illegal. Wait.. she paused midstep.. That was when she caught onto... something. A murmur of voices, a strange masculine tenor she hadn't heard before... and a voice she'd rather forget. Ruben. Slenderman incarnate. What the fuck was he doing up?

She followed the labyrinth-like hallway, to see two tall, masculine forms that she approached. They were far too close to that singular door that possessed far too many memories. That dreaded room housed the feeders and some of the cats. The place where they shoved the misbehaving, sick, or undesirables. Not a place for an AC guy, she was sure of it.

Harley's intelligent eyes narrowed, practically watching that nervous energy rolling off that poor repairman. What kind of karma did he do to earn this job? Ruben seemed to be attempting to lure him in that room. Oh, hell no. Nothing good resided there.

Harley spoke up in the far to dim hallway.. and yet somehow attempted to make it look natural. Which meant, extreme sarcasm overload.. Incoming. If she had a sass meter it would long since broken. She placed her hands on her hips like she had caught a burglar, her expression seemed irritated which wasn't hard to feign. How certain Ruben was hunting the man.

"Ah, that's where you went. I was looking all over for you." Harley shot toward the duo, her gaze was upon the man who clearly had no clue of the level of danger he was in. Her voice caused Ruben's head to snap toward her like a predator who caught a scent he liked. She swore she could see that sicko's face light up with a twisted delight she wished she never saw... along with an unreadable emotion that caused the hairs at the back of her neck to prickle. Truly the man had a gift of being the creepiest being she'd ever seen. Even still, she exuded confidence, acted well and truly like she knew what the hell she was doing and talking about.

"Thanks Ruben, I will take it from here. Darcy will be pissed if he knows you were meddling in his shit again." She acted like she was in charge, shamelessly using Darcy's name for clout. If everyone in Syn knew she 'belonged' to Darcy, didn't that put her above Ruben on that social ladder? She crossed her leather-clad arms over her chest... although considering her height it took away from that boss babe vibe she was trying for. "Shouldn't you be making sure no one chokes on a hairball or something? You are just creeping out the poor guy trying to do his job." She took a confident stride toward the duo until she placed herself nearly between the two, that stern glare fixed on Ruben for now.

The last time she saw Ruben, he was covered in a pool of his blood... that might have... partially been her own doing.. And partially Darcy. His skin looked untouched now, even though that metal rod was coated in silver he was fully healed. She was certain he remembered too. That tension between them unspoken and yet... Darcy had been the one to stop him from choking the life out of her. How Ruben looked as if he were wanting to draw closer to her then. That crooked spidery limbed man all but fixated by what he would call one of his.. 'pretties'.

Fuck. She didn't like that look.. It was like he was possessed. His hand rose to far too tenderly stroke her cheek with a long, knobby finger with nails that looked like they were in serious need of a trim. She turned her cheek away.. Repulsed by the thought of his cold, gnarled hands anywhere near her. It was how they ended up where they did the last time.

She steeled herself, her defiant gaze alive. "Do you really want to be the reason I give to Darcy when I tell him why the AC wasn't fixed? I hear he is looking for someone for target practice." She smiled yet it was far from genuine, unsure if that was going to be enough to send him back in his creepy little hidey-hole. But she hoped so.

She turned toward the other male, who was refreshingly very much alive. Her own typically unabashed lilac gaze met his own. But of course, that look lost a little of its potency when she had to stare up at someone... Regardless, she was fully ready to push him down that hallway and well and truly away from Ruben if need be. She rose a hand to gesture to walk on.. But he didn't move as quickly as she would have liked, probably because he didn't have a clue who she was. Harley was entirely willing to bet that the utility room wasn't inside Ruben's creepy room of horrors. "Hey, my name is Harley and I am going to be your guide. You can thank me later but trust me when I say that you don't want to go into that room." She could still feel Ruben's deathly presence shift closer at her back. To make matters so much worse, he was breathing heavily. The raven-haired spitfire sighed, unwilling to turn to face the vampire even though she could practically feel him even though he had yet to touch her. "The creep is smelling my hair isn't he?" She questioned the dirty blond with as much enthusiasm as one would expect. Maybe some vampires were just like sharks... and all you had to do was punch them in the nose?

Well, this was going great.

Harley Westward