Regroup (RP)

Emma barely recognized the place. Eliot’s stylish Penthouse now looked like a post-apocalyptic VIP lounge. The bass was the first thing that hit her, so strong the entire floor under her heels was shaking. The few lamps which weren’t smashed were left flickering, casting the entire room in a dim light.

She could barely make out the shapes of people grinding against each other. A couple of girls dancing barefoot to her right, one of them had a thin trail of blood running along her thigh. Another young man staggering past her, barely cognizant of where he was.

Emma was never accused of being ‘sentimental’, but seeing the massive Zao Wou-Ki original hanging crooked above the sofa, slashed almost beyond recognition, made her stop and shake her head for a moment. And once again, when she noticed Eliot’s beautiful, now shattered, tropical fish aquarium. The colorful fish were still flopping helplessly in the puddle of water, left to die while people were dancing indifferently around them.

There was something sacrilegious about the destruction they wrought on the place. All that beauty and elegance destroyed with such reckless abandon. Then again, there was something weirdly fascinating about the chaos. Violent, decadent, so utterly tasteless. There was beauty in that too.

Her eyes searched for Dead-Beat, and she soon found him sprawling on the white leather sofa, his shirt open to the waist and his chin wet with blood. There was a scantly clad girl on either side of him. One was clearly a vampire (unless those fangs were fake) in tight leather, while the other was a girl in silk lingerie, human most likely based on how glazed her eyes were, and how her head kept dropping against the vampire’s shoulder.

Yet another man was lying motionless on the couch next to them, with one arm dangling to the floor. His fingers were blue-white, as was his face. Dead. Drained dry, and left right there on the couch while the other humans and vampires kept on dancing around him. Who knows how many other bodies she might find tucked away around the big penthouse? Dead-Beat and his handful of ‘friends’ didn’t look like they bothered cleaning up after themselves.

The sight of a corpse didn’t elicit any emotional response in her. Nothing. The guy was dead, but he was already dead when she got here. Nothing she could do about it, so best not to spend any time worrying about him. Or about the rest of the human guests here. She couldn’t do much to save them without risking her own skin. Maybe they will get lucky, and wake up with a massive headache tomorrow morning, rather than in the morgue.

She was smack in the middle of a vampiric blood orgy, and she had to worry about herself. Staying here for any length of time was exceedingly dangerous.

Brushing her hair with her fingers, she took off her raincoat (she was already overdressed for this party), and closed the distance to Dead-Beat, kneeled by his couch so they won’t have to yell at each other over the blaring music

"Dead-Beat!" she placed one of her hands on his thigh, to get his attention focused on her "…haven’t seen you in a while. Cool party"

Emma gave him one of her sultry smiles as her fingers slid a few more inches up his thigh. Seducing him was probably the easiest leverage she had right now. If he thought of her as 'fun', or even 'his', then he might not think of her as food. That was a very important distinction, judging by the dead man lying on the sofa.

"I just stopped by to grab a few things" she kept her voice low and intimate. She was counting that his supersensitive hearing would be able to pick up her voice over the loud music "I’ll be right back!"

She began to rise on her heels, careful not to look too eager, or repulsed.

Emma caressed his thigh with her fingers as she stepped away, still playing the part of a temptress, but her demeanor changed with each step she took toward Eliot's office. She could still hear the music thumping behind her, but it was a bit muted, enough that her ears were no longer ringing.

She didn't know what she expected to find. She would be extremely lucky if his laptop was still there, but even if not, there must be something in his drawers. Maybe a backup drive, a handwritten note. A journal. A hidden Safe. Anything could help at this point.

The office was exactly how she remembered it. The mayhem of the party didn't reach this part of the penthouse. Yet.

The massive antique desk dominated the room, with a few plush chairs thrown around it. The walls were paneled in rich walnut, and the blinds that could plunge the room into pitch darkness were currently half open. Not that it mattered. With the rainstorm outside, they might as well have been wide open. The heavy clouds didn't let any light through.

She approached the desk to have a closer look. The monitor was still there, but the laptop was gone.

Someone had beaten her to it.

There was nothing of interest in the drawers either. A few old notebooks. A very expensive-looking fountain pen. If there was anything useful to be found there, that too, was snatched before she ever got here.

Then her eyes settled next on the oil painting behind the desk, an almost life-sized portrait of Eliot in his tailored suit, arms folded, staring down like some sort of medieval king. It was sooooo like him. It was ridiculously arrogant. Yet… something was off about it. She had a good eye for details, and she knew the perfectionist Eliot would never leave a portrait of his hanging slightly tilted.

She reached for it and swung it aside to reveal exactly what she expected to find - a black safe embedded into the wall. She looked a bit closer, not missing the claw marks along its edges. Someone tried to rip it open, but obviously failed to break through the hardened titanium.

"Amateur"

Whoever it was hadn’t spent weeks interviewing Eliot. She had. She knew how his mind worked. He confided in her with details he never told anyone else. The code wasn’t his birthday, or the day he turned into a vampire. If he picked something, it would be a date that he considered to be his ascension to power. She keyed in the date he won the contract for renovating the projects.

"...here we go"

She keyed in the six digits. There was a soft click, and the safe opened.

The first thing that caught her eye was the bundles of crisp 50 pound notes, stacked in bricks on top of each other. There must be thousands of pounds in each of them. Then there were multiple foreign passports. A few sealed files. Two spare phones. And at the very back, exactly what she was hoping for; a slim backup drive, barely bigger than her phone.

She opened her purse.

The drive went in first. Then, without hesitation, the cash. Elliot wouldn’t miss it, and she needed it. Wouldn’t he like her to have the money? For all the expenses incurred while she was out looking for him? And if he was truly dead.... then he would have no use for the money, anyhow.

She crammed the second brick into her purse when someone tapped her on her shoulder

"Shit!!!"

Yelping, she spun around, dropping her purse to the ground and clutching her chest with her hand.
She found herself facing Dead-Beat’s girlfriend. A young woman with jet black hair and a black leather vest that plunged so deep it almost reached her naval.

What was her name again?

Dead-Beat mentioned her once, back when she was still human, not that long ago. He used to 'date' her, didn't he? Maybe he turned her out of passion. Or maybe he wasn’t as stupid as he seemed. Maybe he was building is own little clique. A gang, really.

"...Tara" Emma finally breathed. The woman just looked at her, and the open safe behind her, waiting for her to explain herself "I...I didn’t hear you come in" she finally managed to say, unable to think of any excuse she could give her "You almost gave me a heart attack!"