Burning Sins Chapter 3 (Smoke on the shore)
Chapter three is finally done oh my god this took so long!! but its finally done and with my main stress maker during school coming to a close I will hopefully be able to get more chapters out faster.
Her research led her to a dreary town along the coast of England; a place called Whitby in North Yorkshire. The cool autumn air greeted her as she stepped down from the plane, but she was so used to the Compounds freezing year-round temperatures that it didn’t bother her at all. She sat outside the airport with her worn leather-bound notebook opened at her lap with a few detailed noted and an address written on the faded yellow paper. She was in her civilian clothes: dark blue skinny jeans, a red and black flannel and her hair was pulled up in a messy bun. She tried to model and dress herself to match with the seasons and with what humans would normally wear, but it was often hard to keep up with the treads.
She leaned back with a sigh and examined the start of the sketch of Vanity off to the side of her notes. He wasn’t here it Whitby; she was here because whoever was controlling the robot in the Compound accessed it from somewhere nearby, and she was going to find them. She wasn’t ready to leave just yet though, she wasn’t in a rush to find the hacker. If anything, they would be reasonably easy to find given how small the area was, and that Arson had the exact address where they gained access. She could take her time here and learn.
“… the poor girl in Brighton?” She caught the tail end of a sentence as she started tracing the sharp jawline, “Was a real shame.”
“She’s the third one this month,” someone else chimed in as the conversation came closer, “and the damn pigs down there don’t know how to catch a killer if they were standing in plain day…” Arson carefully shaded the jawline and added some finishing touches before closing the book and sliding it into her bag and heading to the address and just happened to be trailing behind the two women talking from before.
“It’s just not safe anymore,” one of them said, “Mariah lives down there, and she swears that she heard something one night. I tried to convince her to come up and stay with me until they catch the bastard, but she has to stay for classes.”
“Poor girl…” The other woman replied, but Arson broke away and crossed the street and started heading towards a massive building on the corner. The small fountain sparkled in the late afternoon sun, but the entrance was otherwise empty save for a guard at the building door. Arson took a second to check her information, but she was defiantly in the right place. A massive library, much bigger than the Compounds library, but then again it held more than files of information about monsters.
The guard held the door open for her with a friendly smile and she was greeted with the smell of aged paper and wood and felt the familiar tingling in her body telling her that there was technology nearby. There were a few people seated at the tables with books and paper scattered about clearly deep in studying. Arson made her way upstairs and found a small cluster of sleek computers.
“Found the access point at least…” She muttered under her breath and looked around for any sign of a camera, “Now to just find the hacker…” She couldn’t touch any of the technology else War would have her head and just being up here was making her eyesight fuzzy.
“Can I help you with anything?” A quiet voice asked. A young woman in her early 20s stood at the top of the stairs behind her. She had a friendly smile and curly red hair tumbled over her shoulders as her arms were tucked politely behind her back.
“I…um…I left my bag here a few days ago and,” Arson stumbled over her words. She wasn’t good at interacting with humans, it wasn’t her job, “I’ve checked everywhere else and I…I can’t find it.”
“I can help you look if you want,” she said walking towards one of the tables and pulling out one of the chairs, “I volunteer here in my spare time, so I know my way around here pretty well.” She flashed her a bright grin, and Arson was taken back for a moment. She had met a kind human before, then again, maybe it was just a trick they did…
“It’s a grey bag,” Arson said as she knelt down and pretended to look around as well, but she was watching the shelves and looking for a quick exit in case things went wrong, and she kept her knife ready to summon at a moment notice.
“Well, not a lot of people use the library computers anymore because they’ve got their own computers at home,” the woman said as she moved from one desk to the next, “Any idea why someone would want to take it?”
“People are greedy and take what isn’t theirs,” Arson said bitterly. She dug her nails into her palms and gritted her teeth as she felt a numbness spread up her spine, but the woman simply laughed.
“That is the nature of the beast,” she said as she sat back on her knees, “and I think that’s what’s happened here. We could try checking the cameras to see who used them last?”
“That could work,” Arson said through gritted teeth, but thankfully the woman didn’t seem to notice. She wouldn’t do this here, she wouldn’t. She forced herself up and followed the woman back down to the first floor.
“My names Amanda by the way,” she said as they stepped into a dimly lit security office, and the numbness in Arson spine was replaced with sharp tingles and pricks, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”
“I mostly come during the later hours when theres are fewer people,“ she said, “not a big people person.”
“I understand,” Amanda replied as she sat at the worn office chair and began rewinding through the security footage, “About how long ago did you say it was?”
“Two or three days ago” Arson answered as she scanned each frame as it sped by. Amanda wasn’t kidding, hardly anyone used the computers anymore. One or two students, and maybe the odd homeless, but one stuck out to her.
"Wait! Go back a bit…” Amanda played the footage forward and Arson watched an elderly woman sitting at one of the far computers. She wasn’t interested in the woman’s bag which was filled to the brim with papers, but what was on the woman’s screen. Arson could just barely make it out, but it looked like a recording screen with shelves filled with books, just like the Compound.
“Ms. Richfield?” Amanda pondered, “Why would she take your bag?”
“It could be a mistake,” Arson said, but her focus was on the video as the woman pulled out her phone twice and then went back to the computer. Another 20 minutes passed before the computer screen seemed to shut down and the woman quickly left, “She’s old, and could have thought it was hers.”
“Maybe…” Amanda said, “I can take you to her house and see if she has it…”
“Just give me her address,” she said harsher than she intended, “I’ve already taken up too much of your time today.” She felt Amanda’s stare bore into her back, but she didn’t dare move her eyes from the computer screen even as the footage looped over. She was getting testy and she didn’t want to lash out at the red-haired woman beside her. Her eyes followed Amanda’s hands as they reached for a pen and paper and quickly wrote down an address.
“She lives down by the water and doesn’t get many visitors these days since her husband passed last year,” she said as Arson pried her eyes away from the screen and looked down at the neon pink sticky note in her hand, “And my phone number, just in case you ever need help with class or wanna grab coffee sometime.” She looked up, and noticed that Amanda had a slight rosy hue to her cheeks; she arched an eyebrow and pocketed the sticky note.
“I’m always pretty busy, but I’ll keep it in mind,” she said slowly, “Thanks for the help.” She turned and left as she heard Amanda start to say something, but she didn’t want to stay to hear what it was. She quickly walked out the library and was greeted by the fading sunlight and growing chill in the air. She pulled out her notebook along with the sticky note and started searching for the address as she walked through the courtyard, and sure enough, Ms. Richfield lived down by the city shoreline which was easily a 30 minute walk from the library, but hopefully this “Ms. Richfield” would be able to tell her where her target was or else she’d be back to square one.
The house was small and quaint; a perfect home for an old lady living out her last days alone. The sun had completely set by the time she had reached the house, but the lights were still on inside and she could see the shadow of a hunched over figure slowly walk back and forth by the windows. She debated whether she wanted to go in guns blazing and demanding answers or play the innocent card. An old woman couldn’t fight back as well as others could, but you never knew with people that worked with the Compound. She summoned her knife and carefully tucked it into her boot as she walked up the front steps, just in case things went wrong.
She knocked sharply on the door, and an elderly woman answered within seconds. The house smelled like baby powder and shag carpet and was pleasantly warm against the cold night air; the old woman was wrapped in a dusty gold shaw with matching glasses sitting low on her nose. Her eyes sat far back in her head and showed years worth of smile lines and wrinkles, she was a typical old woman.
“Can I help you, dear?” She asked kindly and Arson mustered up the best smile she could.
“Are you Ms. Richfield?” She asked and the older woman nodded, “I think you may have taken something of mine by accident at the library a few days ago.”
“I don’t think so,” she said with a chuckle, “I may be an old woman, but I can keep up with my things though I can’t say the same about you.” Arson bit back a scowl.
“Ms. Richfield, I just came all the way from the library,” she pleaded, “Would you at least let me look? It’s got some very important things in there.” Ms. Richfield sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, and Arson took the chance to glance into her home. Papers were scattered everywhere across the floor, but that was all she saw before Ms. Richfield stepped to the side.
“Come on in then, dear,” She said, “and please don’t mind the clutter. I’m afraid my bag got away from me and I spilt all of my papers. I’m an editor of the town newspaper, you see.”
“Must be hard work,” Arson commented as she stepped in and closed the door behind her. Ms. Richfield wondered off to another part of the room as Arson backed up and slowly locked the front door deadbolt.
“Now, what was this bag of yours?” She asked with her back to Arson, “but, I can promise you that I didn’t take it.”
“Actually, Ms. Richfield.” Arson said coolly as she carefully pulled her knife from her boot, “I’m here to ask you about something else…”
“Are you now?” She replied with her head tilted back slightly, but she continued to clean up her mess, “Then please, ask away my dear.”
“How did you get into the Compound computer?” Ms. Richfield froze for a split second as Arson stepped forward, “What were you trying to do?”
“Why does it matter to you, dear?” She asked and turned to face her with the calmest expression Arson had ever seen for someone facing certain death.
“I don’t want to kill you, Ms. Richfield,” Arson replied with a twist of her knife; Ms. Richfield’s eyes glanced down towards it then back to her, “But I will if you don’t tell me.”
“Really now?” She said, but her voice was twisted and cold. Arson tilted her head in confusion before a sharp pain shot up her leg. She cried out in pain and clawed at her leg, only to find a large rat biting at her ankles. She clawed the rat away before Ms. Richfield pinned her against the door; her skin was a sickly grey and her eyes were a faded yellow. A curved blade was pressed against her throat and she felt the sharp edge begin to cut her skin.
“You should know better than to threaten your elders, girl.” She spat. Arson kicked her as hard as she could in the gut and sent her flying across the room into the wall.
“And here I thought I was just visiting an old scientist in retirement,” she said as she rubbed her neck and felt a chill shoot up her spine when her hand pulled back slick with blood, “What my luck that it was a Sin on my radar this time.” Her body was shaking, whether it was from excitement or from the sight of her own blood she’d never be able to tell, but the Sin pulled themselves up and stared her down.
“Where’s Vanity?” Arson hissed, but the Sin lunged back at her with a shout. She was just barely able to dodge them as the stabbed their curved knife into the door. Arson tried to slice at the Sins back, but they were faster and managed to get a cut across her arm and send her sprawling across the living room floor.
“How long have you been living underground?” They shouted as they tried to get a kick to her gut, but she rolled out of the way before they could, “He hasn’t gone by that name in decades.” Arson bared her teeth as she stumbled to her feet. This fight was going nowhere with just knives alone, and there was no telling when they’d use their rat bastards again; her only opinion left was to play with fire.
“Why do you care what I want with him?” She snapped as the two slowly circled the room as Arson waited for the perfect time to ignite to shag carpet under them.
“Maybe it is my business,” the Sin shrugged, “Time’s sure have changed…” They suddenly pulled back their knife and threw it towards her at incredible speed. Arson barely rolled out of the way but dragged her hand along the carpet and a line of burning embers irrupted into flames on the trails of her fingers. Burning heat pushed back the Sin as they shielded their face, but Arson simply sat on the ground as the fire quickly engulfed the room. Arson looked up at the Sin and started walked towards them, but stayed just behind the fire line.
“Make yourself useful before you die please,” she said calmly, “because either way, I’ll find Vanity with or without your help.” The fire began licking at the walls and catching onto the curtains; Arson felt the edges of her clothes begin to burn away, but the Sin still didn’t move. They simply held their head higher and a grin played on their lips.
“It takes more than a little fire to kill me, my dear,” They said, “But nice try.” Suddenly, they rushed towards her. Arson rolled out of the way and had her knife at the ready, but the Sin wasn’t going for the attack. Instead, they had thrown themselves into the fire, and Arson watched as their body was quickly engulfed in flames. The body thrashed and screamed in pain for a few minutes before finally dying.
“What a waste…” Arson muttered as she stepped through the blazing room and into the mostly untouched hallway. She caught a quick glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw that most of her clothes had burned away save for a few scraps here and there, but the fire was growing quickly and the police will be at the house soon, she needed to work quickly.
She made a quick run through of the rooms but found most of them empty and bare of anything other than the necessities’, but when she got to the office she found dozens of papers and letters just like the ones in the achieves. She didn’t have time to read any of them as the sound of sirens was audible of the roar of the fire. She shielded the papers as she dashed through the fire and out the back door.
Only once was she far enough away did she stay to view her handy work. The once small and quaint little home was now nothing more than a raging inferno with at least three fire trucks and seven police cars at the scene. It was a new record for her. Arson sighed with a grin as she inspected herself to see what damage she had.
Most of her upper clothes had been burned away and the fire had brought out the fleshy pinky and red burns across her body. Surprisingly, her lower half wasn’t nearly as burned away, but what concerned her the most was the various gashes she has managed to get during the fight. She was getting too slow if a Sin like that was able to get that many hits on her so easy. War was going to have a field day with her when she got back.
But now wasn’t the time; she quickly pulled out her cloak and wrapped it around her shoulders to hide her bare skin from any prying eyes and started shuffling through the papers she managed to collect from the house. She quickly scanned the first few to see if there was anything relevant, then she caught the date; less than a week ago.
It’s not my job to keep track of either of them anymore, but I have nothing better to do in the outside world. I keep track of them and try to keep them apart, by they seem to have…mellowed with age though both are still extremely hostile.
Dark seems to have settled nicely the western part of North America, some place in LA and as far as Anti…well…he’s just as far away from Dark as possible and that’s all that’s needed…
Dark? What the hell kind of name was that? The Sin from before said that Vanity no longer went by Vanity, but there were two names on her that she didn’t recognize. She felt like she had seen the name Anti before, but Dark? And LA was a massive city filled with hundreds of thousands of people, it could take her days to find this Dark character and it might not even be Vanity, but what other option did she have? She quickly glanced through the rest of the papers, but all the seemed to talk about was whoever this Anti person which was useless to her. The glow from the house fire was starting to fade showing that the firemen were doing their job of controlling the blaze; it wouldn’t be long before the police began searching the area for anyone suspicious. She pulled the hood over her head and quickly made some distance between her and the dying fire as she headed back to the airport.
Back at the burning house, firefighters fought against the roaring flames as police kept the growing crowd back. The people whispered among themselves and asked how this could have happened and asked where the owner was, but the police didn’t answer. No one paid attention to the white rat scurrying across the roadway away from the flames and down into the sewers. It fell with a thud onto the concrete ground before it faded into a skinny and frail woman hunched over one of the pipes. Famine gasped for breath and tried to cough up the mass amount of smoke in her lungs, but even though she had sacrificed her host’s body to trick the assassin the smoke still seemed to linger even though she didn’t have a body.
She knew something was wrong as soon as she answered the door; she knew, but she let her in any way. She knew that she could handle a normal human assassin and she expected someone to find her soon enough anyway, but that wasn’t a human. A human couldn’t send her flying into the wall so hard that it broke the beams, a human couldn’t summon fire from their fingers…
A humans’ eyes couldn’t turn as black as the night sky…
No… that was a Sin. A well trained and deadly Sin, but who was it? Pyro? Rage? Arson? But it was too young to be any of those. Was it some new beast that War had created? But they seemed so stable and well controlled.
Famine fell into a violent coughing fit and fell to the ground; her chest heaved violently and she dug her nails into the ground as she fought to clear her breathing. A small spotted rat stopped by her hand and carefully sniffed her finger as she tried to even her breathing, but she shooed the creature away.
She needed to get to Dark; she needed to warn him of what was coming. If they were clever enough to find her after so many years of exclusion then they would be able to find him without much difficulty, and if they were going after him then there was a chance that someone was after Anti as well. She trusted both of their skills, but what she had just seen was almost more than she could take but before she could do anything, she needed a new host.
She faded back into the white rat and slowly climbed back up the sewer drain and back out into the world. By now, the fire had mostly died down and police had begun searching and asking questions to figure out how the fire started. She carefully ran underneath everyone’s feet until she found a host that would a suitable for the time being. A 60-year-old homeless man standing off by himself watching the last of the fire burn away; even though he was layered against the biting cold, Famine could still tell how malnourished and thin he was simply by looking at his sunken cheekbones.
She quickly changed from the rat to her actual form before swiftly grabbing the man and kissed him on the lips. She felt him struggle from a split second before he fell limp in her hands. In one quick blink, Famine was in his body as big and lanky as it may be and she shook out her neck and hands. She glanced back behind her to make sure no one saw, and then made her way into town.
It was easy enough to get a phone; slip into one of the bars and pickpocket one of the poor drunks knelt over in the bathrooms. Of course, she got a few sneered looks as she left, but she paid them no mind as she quickly dialed the number.
“Hello?” A deep, but cheerful voice answered; His host for sure.
“Tenebris,” she said shortly and the phone broke with static for a split second.
“It’s been a while since I’ve received a social call from you,” another voice echoed back. The phone felt heavy in her hands and she could hear the line break with ringing and creaking.
“I’m making a long story short, Dark,” she said shortly, “I’m coming to LA.”
“Care to give me a reason at least, Famine?” The Sin replied.
“Someone just killed my host and asked where you were by the name Vanity,” she said harshly, “an assassin by the looks.”
“Then, by all means, let me buy you a ticket to LA,” he said calmly, “They asked for Vanity?”
“That’s what worries me,” she said, “You haven’t gone by Vanity in…”
“Decades…” The other man finished for her, “Could this be War?”
“That’s a possibility,” she sighed, “If he’s sending someone after you, then he could be sending someone after Anti as well.”
“Good,” he said harshly and the phone rang loudly, “Maybe they’ll actually be able to kill the slippery…”
“Now is not the time,” she interrupted him, “Look, I know history isn’t the best between you two, but there is something bigger going on here. So, get your ego out of your ass for a few days and suck it up.” The other line was silent for a few moments and Famine couldn’t tell if he was seething with rage or in shock. If he was wise then he wouldn’t say anything.
“Get me times and dates and I can bring him to LA,” he finally said calmly, “But I’m not to blame if a disagreement happens.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” she answered sarcastically and hung up the phone with a sharp click. She quickly dialed up the next number but wasn’t surprised when it rang for a minute before going to voicemail. She left a very brief message as she started to the airport. The phone buzzed in her hand with a message from Dark saying that her ticket to LA had been bough, but her plane wouldn’t fly out for the next couple of hours. The least she could do was find a host more suitable for her while she waited.
