A collab with [@Ruby]

[img]https://www.therooftopguide.com/blog/Bilder/AndazWestHollywood_3.jpg[/img]


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The doors of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel opened at nine o’clock at night, although there were next to no one present besides hotel staff and organizers and the DJ at the turn tables until around ten o’clock, ten-thirty. There were some try-hards and some wide-eyed star-chasers, but they had given themselves away. Security would check which of them even belonged, and even scrutinize just what name was linked to their entry on the guest list. If they were irritating, inappropriate, or violated some other Hollywood faux pas it may not matter who had them added to the guest list.

For those present, there was no mistaking when the party really started. After midnight, there was suddenly very little room to maneuver outside the pool. Although the pool itself wasn’t that crowded, she thought, from her perch near the middle of the pool, straddling a purple pool float, splashing about with perfectly straight hair coming down to her shoulders, the plunge-style black bikini top from her shoulders to just under her 36C sized bust, the thin-strings keeping the bikini bottom tied to her frame clung tight to her hips jiggling about as she splashed.

Despite the late time of year, the event coordinator from the hotel assured them all the pool would be fully heated, with gas heat lamps strewn about the rooftop. Eva wasn’t cold, but she wouldn’t be, anyway. No one else seemed cold, not that there were many other people in the pool. Some Instagram models, some girlfriends, some fucktoys. The normal Hollywood pool mix.

Past the pool she could see the dance floor mixed in with the chairs and tables along the back wall, the other side of the wall a small courtyard with benches and chairs swrapped around wide palm trees wrapped in sparkling white lights. Up from the lobby, to the elevators, to the pool roof level, a quick walk from the hall to the door outside. Eva had lingered down in one of the ballrooms before she arrived at the pool level around 10.

The Hollywood Roosevelt was the birthplace of one of her favorite creations: The Academy Awards. Memories of ghosts and golden age Hollywood glamor danced in front of her in the dark, empty, ballroom before she slipped away and made her way towards the back staff elevator. She came out from behind the bar, not a soul looking in her direction.

Around 10:15 she was at her day bed next to the pool, taking the bottom hem of the sand silk sundress, lifting the dress up and over her shoulders, off her body, a little squirm of her hips and some corrections of the bikini top, and the dress was on the daybed. There was no purse, there was no need. She slipped into the pool, the first one of the night, even if no one looked in her direction. Even the second and third people in the pool, an influencer and their Instagram model fan, stepped into the pool giggling about being those crazy people that were the first in the pool.
No one saw Eva. No one saw so much as a ripple in the pool from her splash. She didn’t exist, to any of them, even as the Los Angeles Wildfire Relief Fundraiser kicked into high gear at midnight. He arrived shortly before midnight, an interesting time to show. He wasn’t the only athlete, a few Dodgers, a few other Lakers, a few Clippers, with the odd Charger or Ram. Most of the crowd was Hollywood, agents, actors, musicians, writers, directors, publishers, and a fair mix of corporate executives that spent all day in budget meetings.

It wasn’t until nearly one o’clock in the morning that she found him on a daybed that didn’t belong to him. Maybe it was his size that kept hotel staff from coming up to him and telling him the daybed was reserved. Maybe it was Eva’s supernatural presence keeping everyone blind to every little bit of her presence from notice. But he noticed the chair, and then, he noticed the woman rise from the water, big brown eyes absolutely locked on his as her palms hit the edge of the pool, and pushed her body up, chest pushed up and out until her waist was high enough, her body twisting, sitting on the edge of the pool with her legs still in the water, back now turned to the daybed, and the Hunter on it as the DJ went about mixing electronica and Ariana Grande’s sweet voice, and sinful lyrics.

“Finally, he notices me.” The tone was light, playful; the smile on her lips obvious despite her back turned to the man. Her right hand straightened and combed out her wet, heavy, dark hair to behind her shoulder as she turned her hips to look back in his direction for a moment, the smile having become a silly little chuckle. “No one can hear us, Mihail. Don’t worry about it. No one but you can even see me. I’m making myself so insignificant in their eyes, they don’t even notice me. Not a thing about me, not even my splish-splash good time in the pool. Same process I use to appear human, or like a lowly young vampire.”

She offered nothing in terms of what the opposite end of the process was. Better for him to ask, if he wanted that kind of information. When she looked back one more time, her lips spread again into the start of small grin. Amusement thick in the amber of her voice. “Relax. You have a better chance of fucking one of the Instagram models in the pool than fighting me, I’m just here to chat.”

Although one of the hotel staff, a Jessica Cruz, was a working actress. Blonde, athletic, and with acting talent to spare. Eva noticed her the moment she walked through the bar to the poolside. Not ripping her clothes off and leaving her a mess of sweat and orgasmic joy before draining enough blood for a good night cap, leaving her in a hotel bed to heal and try to remember what happened, had been more of a struggle than Eva wanted to admit, even to herself.

The Gehenna struggle was real.

Mihail was rather groggy by this point. Perhaps the undead were accustomed to running around in the wee hours of the night, as were his teammates, but Mihail kept an early-morning schedule. In truth, the colossal man had started to fall asleep about twenty minutes ago, dozing off as he had waited for some sign of the Anarch, perhaps falsely assuming that his colossal figure would’ve been easily-noticeable for her.

Parties like this were not Mihail’s favourite. Sure, he enjoyed EDM as much as any other Eastern European, but the sheer volume of beautiful models (and handsome athletes, though he denied it to himself) had him flustered. It certainly didn’t help that the vampire who now beckoned to him was eager to emphasize every single sultry sight at the party. The Anarch herself was absolutely beautiful, and her reputation as a smooth-talking seductress preceded her. Although Mihail’s newfound powers inoculated him against charms and domination, he nonetheless felt the supernatural pull of the mysterious kindred.

“How long were you waiting to contact me? You [i]know[/i] I cannot see through all your Toreador tricks. Yet.” Mihail seemed a bit frustrated at the cavalier attitude of this mysterious stranger. Given the severity of the situation, he had thought she would try to get his attention right away. Mihail stood up to his full height, tried (and failed) to be inconspicuous about adjusting his swim trunks, and removed his undershirt to reveal a volume of body hair and muscle which was common among professional sports and near mythical everywhere else. He entered the pool and stood a few feet from Eva, getting a closer look at her entire body. He muttered something under his breath in Romanian: [i]“Tatăl meu m-a avertizat că diavolul va fi frumos.”[/i]

Despite standing waist-deep in the pool, he still had to arch his neck down to look Eva in the eyes, trying to prevent his gaze from wandering further south. [i]Her stupid, evil, beautiful brown eyes... goddamnit, [b]FOCUS[/b] Mihail.[/i] “I could not fight you even if I wanted to. The greatest hunters in my family's history have killed vampires like you, but I am not one of them. And if you wanted me dead, you would have gotten your goons to do it for you.” He paused. “Speaking of which, was sending them after me truly necessary? A phone call would have been fine.” His combative demeanor betrayed a deep fear of the events soon to come.

“There are no vampires like me, Mihail, there is only me.”

Somehow, someway, the tone of her voice never once even bordered on arrogant. It was more of a matter of fact; if there were others like Eva, the Free State wouldn’t be a one-off. If there were others like Eva…maybe they could deal with Gehenna, instead of her. But there weren’t. In all the world, there was her, and her disciples.

“Goons?” Her lips grinned suddenly, wide, “I think you mean my coterie? My family, yes? The supernatural beings trying to save this world for humans alongside me? Let’s put a little bit of respect on their names, shall we.” Playful as the grin was, her dark brown eyes stayed on his eyes for a moment, the seriousness behind her words evident. “As for why…maybe you weren’t shit.”

She shrugged her bare shoulders, casually, as she was nearly eye-to-eye with him, her perched and seated on the edge of the pool, him in the pool. “Maybe you were. One of those ‘goons’ runs Hollywood, the other runs one of the largest money laundering enterprises in the world. These are experts in their field, very good at judging the strengths and weaknesses of individuals. To put it a way you’d understand more easily? They had to scout you, before I, the GM, could make a decision on whether to help you, or ignore you. Why did I wait?”
The grin came back, then, as she found herself lightly shrugging again. “No idea. I guess I wanted to watch you, I wanted to take the measure of you, myself. Not something easily done over a telephone. Do remember you’re talking to someone over three hundred years old, Mihail. I’m a little old school.”

Her body slipped back into the water so smoothly barely a ripple was made until she resurfaced, feet from him, her hands up at her hair, pulling it back behind her ears and shoulders. There was a sound of a giggle as she enjoyed bouncing about around him, a splash here and there. A playful, cheerful, 300 year old vampire, afterall.

Mihail sighed, his expression softening significantly. Everything he had been warned about was true; at least in the way she spoke and acted, the anarch was at least somewhat human, and Mihail couldn’t muster any hate or fear towards her. It was far easier to revile someone in the abstract--significantly more difficult when they were right in front of you, being perfectly civil. Even more-so when they were being playful, cheerful, and at least a bit bit sultry. “Coterie. I am sorry. It’s been a rough week.”

He allowed himself the slightest hint of a smile as the immortal splashed about, though it was quickly swallowed by his nerves. “This is a very relaxed place to meet while discussing the End of Days.” Talking to the anarch was surprisingly relaxing. Then again, so was the poison a venomous creature used to paralyze its prey before devouring it. The dissonance was... significant. But whatever trap may or may not have existed, Mihail had already willingly walked into it by meeting her here, and monologuing internally about her supposedly-sinister nature wouldn’t bring either of them any closer to stopping the apocalypse. He waved a hand through the water, returning one of Eva’s splashes back to her before continuing the conversation: an odd but contextually-appropriate way to show his cooperation. “What exactly do you want with me? Am I joining the Los Angeles Slayers as well as the Lakers?”

The reaction was small, delayed by a single beat of his heart. The smile that found her after such a short confusion was endlessly warm, yet small and slight kept to the corners of her high glossed lips in a way that only came with distance. “Given your heart rate and your focus of conversation, I dare say I needn’t recruit you to the overall cause.”

His concern, his anxiety, about what faced them covered her as completely as the water that she bobbed around him in. Did it suffocate him? Did it explain his impatience? “Mihail…” She stopped in front of him, and turned to face up to his eyes. The very rhythm of the dance between tone and pitch of voice hinted in new ways at distance; what she would have said, and what instead she found herself saying: “What I want doesn’t matter. Your path is yours to walk. You clearly believe the danger, you clearly want to do something about that. I have a feeling if I walked away and never had any interaction with you again, you’d find your way into doing something about all of it anyway.”

Dark eyes lit up. her head tilting to the side, as new amusements found her. “Hmm,” the actress began with suddenly furrowed brows, eyes squinting in exaggerated concentration, as if she were but racking her brain on the subject of what she might do with him. “Assuming I get no lip from you? Well…” Her hands retreated to below the water line that rested on her body at upper breast, her eyes wandering back in her head as she drifted away from him at the pace of a stoned sea turtle.

“Fast track your training using magical means. We’ve looked into blood magic that would ‘download’ certain training to minds. It required telepathic follow up from me, in a surgical manner, but it’s possible. Not as possible on a, say, army against the apocalypse scale as we had hoped…but on a more one of one level? Sure. Then I have Andre and his lads do some training at Camp Pendleton with you. Basic fire team, close quarters familiarization. Nothing too crazy, just a foundation.”

Her body disappeared under the water, before popping up again at the pool wall, raising herself out of the pool with a bounce that easily took her body out of the water. The towel draped around the daybed retrieved for drying off, from shoulders down. “Don’t worry, no one gives me what I want without lip. So you find what approach works best for you, and let me know. In the meantime I’ve smelled the roses and had my fun long enough, time I get back to work. Night is young.”

This time, when she smiled with the enthusiasm and warmth along with the playful little brow wiggle, the fangs showed in her perfect smile.
Mihail frowned. The prospect of allowing Eva to mess about with his brain frightened him, and he had most definitely seen this done in a sci-fi movie he’d been told to watch when he immigrated. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately), Mihail had an excuse: “Blood magic does not work on me the same way it does others. And I think your very powerful magic will have effects you do not intend if it is used on a hunter.” His speech was stilted due to a mixture of inexperience with the language and nervousness. “It is true what I have been told, you are a very... [i]soulful[/i] vampire.” The contradiction was not lost on him.

“I know that there is not much time,” Mihail conceded, turning to face Eva, “but I have learned very quickly. Something happened that day, when the neophyte attacked me. Since then, I hear whispers. Sometimes they sound like my father, sometimes my uncles, and sometimes they are a voice all their own. But these voices come to me when I do not expect it, and they teach me things.” Mihail got up out of the pool. Rather than grab a towel, wisps of steam began to rise off of his skin. He took a few steps towards the vampire, each footprint leaving behind burn marks as the heat from his body began to radiate outwards. “I am only human. We live short lives–”

““--we all have the same life expectancy right now of a few months, at most.”

“Why are you all so goddamned cryptic?!” Mihail asked angrily, “I have spent my entire life running from the supernatural, and it has gotten me nowhere! How am I supposed to protect myself against something I do not understand? Something that I cannot even see?!” He gestured to the rest of the party, somehow still unaware of the conversation between the two of them. “And what about everyone else!? They’re even more confused than I am! Are you going to keep up this charade until the 11th hour, and announce the apocalypse just in time for everyone to know they’re dead!?” As he clenched his fists in a confused rage, wisps of flame peaked out from between his knuckles.

The look Eva gave was long and absent of any and all inflection of emotion. Her expression was closer to Vulcan than vampiric, but when he was done, she actually did let her half-smile return in a more faded manner than it had been worn before. The biggest contrast to him came with her perfectly calm, unbothered tone, “Settle down, Zippo. There’s nothing these people can do. No reason to drag them into it. If they find out it’s because the ancient Kindred have risen unchecked and it’s all over. I don’t know if I can stop it, but I do believe I have a chance to change the endgame. Maybe, together, that’s enough. Maybe not.”

The silk dress went back over her body, her right hand brushing her hair free with a soft, near inaudible sigh as she started towards the bar and it’s service elevator, “C’mon. Henry’s gonna fucking love this. Does sex and drugs and partying bother you? If so, I’m about to be highly amused.”

Mihail’s rage gave way to confusion once again, and the flames subsided. He grabbed his gym bag and followed the anarch, haphazardly putting on a white loose-fitting dress shirt, stumbling into the elevator after Eva as he buttoned it up. For someone who moved with such purpose on the court, Mihail’s movements could only be described as ‘lumbering’. “... As long as my blood stays [i]in my veins, where it belongs[/i], and you actually tell me what it is you’re trying to do. I’m tired of half-knowing things.” As he fiddled with his top button, he added: “How formal is this? One button undone or two?” He was wholly sincere.

“The older we get, the more partial to types of people to feed from we get. Breathe easy, you’re not my type.” She tried not to smirk in amusement as the words fell from her lips. It wasn’t until they were in the elevator that she dropped the ‘invisibility’ act, simply shrugging. “Trying to do? At the moment I kind of want a buzz. Most of my people are out fighting werewolves. More directly, I need to see a Sabbat Bishop. That’s bound to get bloody. Speaking of bloody…”

The elevator opened, and there was a man of average height, unusual good looks with short auburn hair and bright blue eyes, dressed in a tan suit with a dark blue shirt, no tie. He looked shocked, and he was smiling. She almost winced.

“Eva, listen, five seconds.”

“Mihail, this is a Hollywood producer. Former agent. We call this one John.” It was an introduction of sorts, a gesture of her hands in his direction, before she moved past him and started through the Hollywood Roosevelt’s back kitchens.

John laughed, forcibly. “Officially you’re a consultant. Unofficially you can make any door in our industry open with a phone call. So, get your phone out, because Leo has signed on, the script will be ready w—”

“Will be? John I don’t care if Leo is in it, he’s not even the best choice for it.”

John stepped in front of her, stopping her. If Mihail knew Eva, he would have almost felt the anger in her. Instead, he would have simply seen her stop, calmly, and stare at the man. “If Leo isn’t right for this, who is?”

“I’m not doing your work for you, John,” moving past him was easy, his hips were slow and uncoordinated, “and my problem is the story pitch was weak, and you can tell me you have the best hook in the world, I’ve seen what bad scripts do to good pitches.”

“I appreciate it,” the man meant it, even if he said it somewhat bitterly, “Thanks for the five seconds.”

Only when they were past the kitchens and out the pedestrian door of hotel kitchen’s truck docks, when it was truly just the two of them, did she follow up. “Now you understand why I kept myself hidden from sight in that party.”

If Eva had been obvious, every person at the party would have wanted something. If Eva was obviously a means to help avoid the end of all things, every person in the world would want a part of her. The thought filled her with uncharacteristic dread as she considered, again, the prospect of the Sabbat Bishop’s meeting request. The black Cadillac SUV awaited, the driver Wyatt awaiting with the car on and parked against the curb next to the truck dock of the hotel.

Before she opened the door, she turned around, and faced him. “If it came to it, could you protect me? Are you capable of protecting me? One of mine? This is it, Mihail. In or out. You come with me, you’re one of us. You’re one of us, you’re family, and we protect each other. If you can’t do that…if you have any doubts about the path ahead…this is where we part, wish me luck.”

She turned, opened the door, and stepped and scooted across the backseat. “This is the part where you decide.” She said it, smiling, knowing there would be times she would have to slap him with the obvious. 

Mihail sighed deeply and crouched down to meet Eva’s gaze. “I do not think you are the one needing protection.”

“Every girl wants protection, Mihail. Besides, you’ve clearly never met a Sabbat Bishop…”

“Well,” Mihail responded, somewhat sarcastically, “who am I to deny the Baroness what she wants?” He entered the vehicle, ducking his head as he closed the door behind him and prepared himself mentally for what fresh hell awaited them at the end of the journey. Almost immediately, he regretted doing so. “... oh God, what am I doing?”

“Believe me when I say God is sitting this one out.”