[center][img]https://txt-dynamic.static.1001fonts.net/txt/dHRmLjE1OC4zMjUzNGYuVG05aGFDQkNaV0YxYlc5dWRBLCwuMAAA/donrees-claws.regular.png[/img][/center]
 
[Color=darkslategray][b]Time:[/b][/color] Night
[Color=darkslategray][b]Location:[/b][/color] The Witch’s Brew
[Color=darkslategray][b]Interaction with:[/b][/color] Desecrating some corpses
[center][hider=the reference photo of The Witch’s Brew from the discord][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/648375243781570561/650223021235240960/66102708223755817f64a16f096ce182.png[/img][/hider][/center]

His time spent riding aimlessly in the truck had provided Noah with one useful sight, a sign for a small cafe he’d never really paid much attention to, [i]The Witch’s Brew[/i]. This was the perfect spot for his next move, it even had the word ‘witch’ in its name. Noah, of course, had no idea that such a place was owned and run by the oldest and most powerful witch in Ember Grove. Nor did he have any real reason to believe it was some kind of witch hot spot, but what he did know was that if Ember Grove had a vampire themed hangout he would most certainly go there for the sheer irony of it. He could only assume that witches might have the same appreciation for kitschy irony as well, and that statistically, at least a handful of the cafe’s patrons must be witches. Maybe one of them would know of Shay, or if he succeeded in creating enough of a scene, perhaps she would hear of such a thing on the news. He could imagine the headline now ‘Satanic Slaying found inside The Witch’s Brew’ and such a thought made him grin. Many years ago his father used to be the one writing those headlines, and now it would be Noah who made them. 

He needed her attention, needed her to be drawn out so that he could better hunt her, she would start making mistakes. He knew his message had to be clear and bold. Something that couldn’t be easily swept under the rug like so many crimes of Ember Grove. He needed to grab the town’s attention, make sure that his message would reach Shay, that it would reach every witch in town. So he waited in the backseat of a car in the back lot of one of the bars until his victims arrived. To his luck two humans came to the car, already very intoxicated, and therefore so much easier for him to deal with. Normally Noah preferred to play games with his prey, but humans were not what he was hunting right now, the witch was. He snapped the neck of the driver before savagely tearing the throat of the passenger, finally getting the meal he’d been craving for most of the night. By now it was very late at night, most people of Ember Grove were gone from the streets, the majority of creatures out at this time were likely up to things almost as devious as Noah was. 

After he fed he was calmer, it was easier to focus on the rest of his plan, his mind was no longer drifting away to thoughts of his past. He parked the car near the back door of the cafe close to the dumpster. Breaking in was easy, a locked door was no match for his vampiric strength. The body of the victim with a snapped neck was drug inside, carefully placed propped against the tree that grew inside the cafe. A decorative bird cage that he found inside was then placed over the victims head, whose neck had been twisted enough to make it look like the corpse was always trying to watch it’s back. In Noah’s mind this was all too perfect, it was just like the cage they would return the witch to, a cage for a pet. While she could watch her back all she wanted, just like the body Noah posed in the cafe, he believed her fate was already determined. 

Noah had brought with him a handful of things that he’d grabbed from home; a knife, a gift tag, a greeting card, and a can of bright red spray paint. Now it was time to wrap his gift, which came in the form of entrails removed from the victim he’d drained of blood earlier. These he used to decorate the tree inside the cafe much in the same way his family had decorated their christmas tree. Taking them from the corpse already mostly drained of blood made much less of a mess than he anticipated, and he hoped this would only further confuse those who came upon his scene. Once this was completed he set to work on preparing a bow for his gift. 

A pair of eyes perfectly plucked out were placed upon the counter right next to the cash register, with a severed tongue in front of them. Both of these parts had been harvested from the body with a snapped neck that now sat under the tree. A few stray droplets of blood were scattered around the counter but for the most part he left a much cleaner scene than he had in the woods. This time Noah thought things out more, he was careful and deliberate. He left a gift tag, tied around the piercing on the severed tongue, it was written in blood and stated simply, ‘To: Shay, From:’ and rather than his name he signed it with a crescent moon drawn in blood. Noah knew his own name wasn’t well known, it would carry no weight, but a moon drawn in blood would point those with supernatural knowledge towards Sanguine Moon, and that would have to do for now, until his own name became one that struck fear. He wasn’t sure if news of this part of his gift would reach Shay but he really hoped it would.

He continued his project with the can of spray paint, writing out ‘SHAY’ in big red letters on the wooden floor in front of the counter. Even after the majority of the mess he was making here was cleaned up, the message on the floor would be much harder to get rid of, and Noah wondered how long it would sit there. He wondered if at some point she’d walk in and see it, and know that he’d killed people because of her, because she had defied Drake. He really hoped she would, it would serve a nice reminder for when they got her back what would happen if she tried anything again. In the dark he looked around for a pen to sign the card before he left. The card was mostly plain with Happy Halloween on the front and a picture of a black cat wearing a pointed witches hat sitting next to a jack-o-lantern. Inside he wrote, ‘Bring us Shay, or more will die’ and signed it with a happy face that had a pair of fangs. He placed the card in the  hands of the victim with no eyes, tongue, and a twisted neck, leaving his bright red paint stained fingerprints on the card. Before he left the cafe he washed blood from his hands in the sink, and took one last look at his beautiful masterpiece, wondering if Lord Drake himself would be proud of such a work of art. 

Noah envisioned how the morning would play out, the look of shock and horror on the face of whoever came to open the cafe, the building soon covered in police tape, the hours they would spend collecting evidence. He had no reason to worry about fingerprints or DNA, if anything was even able to be traced back to him, it would only lead them to a missing and presumed dead teen from years ago. Nosey journalists would desperately try to pry into the details, releasing as much of the grizzly scene to the public as they could get their hands on. Ember Grove was used to mysterious disappearances, the occasional body found mauled in the woods, but this would be different. Vampires rarely made such a proud spectacle of their work, he would have all the attention that the truly great monsters of history only ever got. He would be Ember Groves very own Jack the Ripper, and that thought filled Noah with a bubbling giddiness that he never felt before. 

He drove the car, along with what remained of the bloodless corpse tucked away in the trunk, deep into the woods and left it there. Instead of returning home to his clan, he walked back to The Witch’s Brew where it’s back door still sat slightly ajar. He didn’t intend to miss what would happen when his gift was found, the best part about giving gifts was watching people open them after all. Noah climbed up to the roof of the building that sat right next to the cafe, the sheer anticipation building in him as time crept by. Soon the place was due to open, soon somebody would arrive and he could watch it all unfold. He hoped to hear a scream right out of a horror movie, and with his enhanced vampire sight he felt confident he would be able to spot the reactions of those who saw such horror. He would stay here all day, although the thought of hanging around in the daylight greatly annoyed him, it would be worth it in the end, to watch the chaos his plan would unleash. To watch for any reactions that could point him towards more witches, anyone who could bring him closer to catching his prey.