Tony didn't like the escalation any more than Parael did; it was an unusual amount of force for the supernatural world. He also didn't like feeling like he was back to the Vietnam days, but it did reinforce one notion in his mind -- this was a fucking war. 

The bloodsuckers controlled a lot of the high level local crime here, and if the thralls weren't a huge giveaway, he could smell the vamp blood on them, oozing through the pores, then the East Bloc weapons sure as hell were -- that was the sort of businesses they were in, moving the heroin and cocaine and the automatic weapons into the city. They knew that younger vampires tended to favor Nemsemet's "We shall rule the night!" platform and signed on, but this was a sign that some older/well connected ones that were used to manipulating things behind the scenes were involved. Typical vamp didn't start doing real business, besides foot soldiering, for at least two decades. They tended to spend those first vampiric college years trying to bag hotties to drink before they grew up and started manipulating the stock market or organized crime.

He kept eyes peeled for any more goons, but Parael's shriek was a signal; he started to fall back, and managed to pound on Flint's door until the window went down, "North Rousseau and Twelfth Street, there's a garage. If I ain't there, tell the security guy 'it's a cold sweat' and he'll make sure that the car gets towed somewhere safe and held there. Bottom floor, there's underground access tunnels that empties out into the old city subway system. There's a bunch of graffiti but you want to do is follow the purple peace signs till you hit a fallout shelter." Tony had his means, but he wasn't explaining to Flint how decades of doing charity and getting people jobs in this city meant that he had a network of mortals that could disappear a car and keep it safe, and help people move through the city without being tracked. 

There were the howl of sirens down the road, and that meant that they had to get the fuck out and fast...but still, Rivike grabbed some dude's 60's vintage Impala and was leaning on the horn. Sometime later, some guy would be saying to the cops, "Some white woman with a big ass sword STOLE my Chevy Impala!" and the cops would be like, "We'll check the parking lot at the hotel where they're having that cosplay convention." 

It didn't matter, because it was a ride out of here. He got in, the thing was a drop top, and told Rivike where they were headed, but got the feeling that he'd have to take her turn by turn.

---

Turned out, he did. Not only that, the woman drove the big, heavy car with too much gas and she didn't quite have the turns or the signaling mastered, so it was a scary ass ride. Luckily, despite all the people yelling at them, the cops were busy -- like, real busy, and so were the fire engines, screaming down the road. Apparently, whoever attacked Parael's decided to finish the job by torching it.

Finally, they got there, around the time Flint and the Bentley did, and Tony told the security guy, Bobby, that it was a 'cold sweat.' That meant the cars would be taken care of. Hell, it meant the Impala would get found in that lot of the towing company and returned to the owner, which was a lot better than what could have happened to it. Bobby, for his part, handed Tony a set of keys. The guns were stashed in a bag, out of sight of Bobby the security guy; he didn't need to know what the heat was or any more than he had to.

"Follow me," he told the lot, once they were parked at the very lowest level of the garage; the tunnel access he used had been used recently, so it didn't squeal in protest. "I made sure this shit was still there when I heard what was going down. Found this shit when I was a kid, screwin' around in these tunnels." It was a trek through the dark and he didn't bother to pop a light -- others could do that for themselves -- but he navigated the twists and the turns without consulting the purple peace signs that were buried among all the other graffiti down here. There were cables and pipes, but it all seemed disused; the rats, the roaches and the spiders were living down here in the dust and the shadows of the city. 

Finally, they found a reinforced steel door with a yellow and black sign on it, locked tight. With the key in hand that Bobby handed to him, he got the door open and gestured them in; the place was painted in the old school institutional blue-gray, but it had modern lighting and cables, once the switch got flicked, and modern amenities like plumbing for bathrooms and washing, as well as a place to cook. There wasn't cable TV or any of that shit, but there was space. He closed the door and locked it, with a bar that slammed down into place, making it impossible to come in through that door even with a key, before speaking.

"Nemsemet is a fuckin' disaster, and this is a disaster shelter that the foundation refurbished when it was doing the parking garage and other projects. I figured that it's always good to have a hidey-hole, especially after some shit happened in the 1980's. Two entrances; one leads up to the shelter's entrance which comes out into a tunnel that gets you out into Lord Dorset Park," which was notable for being very dangerous at night, "but I didn't want to risk getting seen going in like that and we needed to get rid of those cars, they're too obvious. The entrance we just used takes us out into the sewers and subways, which means that we don't ever need to use the same way in and out twice. Oughta be enough room, it was designed to hold two hundred for two months. Food supply's fresh. I have clothes, but they might not fit you guys."