Divine Blood: Can't Go Home

Róisín was perfect. There was little else that the man sitting beside her gently sleeping form could say to accurately describe her. Black hair hung loose down to just below her shoulders. Not just black hair, glorious hair that seemed almost as if it was a piece of the night sky draped over her head. The beads of sweat along her locks failed to mat the hair down as it would with any other woman, instead it enhanced the image of the evening spun shawl by glittering like stars against the dark.

This was contrasted against alabaster skin that never seemed to tan. Lying beside him now, she seemed a fey ghost of snowy hills against the comparative darkness of the cream blankets. She was unscarred, despite the years that she'd lived a very active life style. There was no natural mark on her that wasn't mirrored on the other side of her body. Róisín had softened the impact of her symmetry by a liberal practice of tattooing herself with asymmetrical designs.

Once her eyes opened in the morning, he would find them a deep, chocolate brown of a shade that he'd never quite seen duplicated in any other woman. They were large and watery, but just to the tipping point of perfection. Like everything else about her, they were beautiful. Even with the small line of tears that traced from the corners of her eyes in her sleep.

There was something about Róisín's looks that was as unsettling as it was enrapturing, but the man knew her too well to be concerned over it. Especially as it was the first time he'd seen her in almost a year.

When last they'd spoken, she'd been telling him over the phone that she had to settle a family issue. She'd sounded as if she were holding something back at the time and with the tears in her eyes, the man couldn't help but wonder what sort of family issue she'd had to solve. He'd like to have thought that she would trust him if it were something along the lines of a blood debt, but perhaps it was simply a death in the family and there was nothing that he could do but welcome her now that she was back.

And he'd done that.

He smiled to himself, mollifying his heavy thoughts, as he remembered opening the door earlier today to find her on the other side. He'd barely had time to recognize her before she practically latched onto his lips and pushed them both into the hotel room he was staying in.

A quiet buzzing cut through the dark scene and Róisín stirred slightly in her sleep. Cursing under his breath, the man stood up out of the bed and stepped carefully around it to snatch up the cell phone before it woke her. Whatever she'd gone through, he wanted her to have the chance to rest a little more. Stepping lightly he moved into the bathroom and closed the door behind him before answering.

"This is a hell of a time to be calling," he said in a harsh whisper. "You'd better have a good reason."

"There is, Mr. Connor," the voice on the other end noted. "We heard the freelancer rejoined you today, good. We could use her too. Get to the circle in the next two hours. No excuses will be accepted."

"She's not up to a mission right…"  He pulled the phone away from his ear and came just short of slamming it down, "Bastard!"

"Was that Leary?" a crystalline voice asked behind him as the door opened.

He turned to see Róisín standing there looking much more refreshed than she had just moments ago while asleep in the bed. She paused to rub the sleep out of her eyes and yawned as she moved to mold herself against his body.

"He wants us at the circle now."

"I can handle a mission, Whelan," she told him. "Actually, I almost need it."

"Are you sure about that?" Whelan inquired of her sharply. "You seemed pretty upset…" though for the moment, he couldn't for the life of him see any sign of fatigue or emotional baggage.

"Don't worry about that, love," she said in a slight cheery tone of voice. "Let's get on with what the little man needs, shall we? Well, after a couple of showers and at least some underwear."

The easy humor momentarily put Whelan off his worry, but he knew well enough that Róisín was exceptional at putting on airs of one feeling or another. His worry fluttered back into his stomach as she kissed him and stepped coquettishly past into the showers and throwing one last jibe as she closed the curtain. "No joining this one, love. Not if we need to be going."

Whelan let the matter drop for the moment, willing to let her have her privacy for now. Instead he turned his thoughts towards considering Leary's call. Without knowing the specifics, it was clear that this was a meeting called either in panic in response to some terrible news or in eagerness for some suddenly acquired piece of intel.  He didn't have time to reach his own contacts to get any forewarning of what could be happening. Of course that didn't matter since they'd have contacted him already with information that could have provoked a response like this if they had any information.

The water came to a stop while he was pondering the matter. Róisín stepped out and reached for a towel smiling briefly as he clapped an encouraging hand to her shoulder and stepped past her into the shower himself. The hot water in the old building didn't last too long and he found himself shivering not even two-minutes into the process. The sound of a flushing toilet from the room nearest theirs probably hadn't helped the issue at all. He needed to stay in a better class of dive. He stepped out and noted a missed called on his cell-phone and checked its records a moment before setting it aside with a grimace.

By the time he was back in the main room, Róisín was strapping her chest armor on over her undershirt. The high-tech greaves and thigh-guards were already in place and the normally baggy cargo pants had been pulled on over them. The extra pockets of the pants went some ways towards disguising the bulges where the armor sat, she'd pass basic observation, but it wouldn't be the sort of thing you'd want to wear around the town unless you wanted some Brit taking an interest in just why you thought body armor was something you needed to be wearing. Neither he nor Róisín usually wore the armor unless they were going into action, but it made sense to get ready just in case that's what they were going into.

"You have a cache nearby?" she asked.

"It's on the way," he told her, moving to dress and armor himself.

"It always is," came the response. "That's a bad habit to get into you know."

"What's that?" Whelan asked playfully.

"Forming habits," she answered with a smirk as she finished strapping down her last bracer and reached for a sweater.

Whelan rolled his eyes but didn't give in to the temptation to respond. Instead he went back to the process of preparing himself as quickly as he could without risking any sort of mistake. He was pulling on his own sweater as she was putting on a necklace that was crafted to seem as if it were almost a living piece of vine adorned by glittering red rose buds and decorative thorns. She'd once called it her hallow and, from comments she'd made, it somehow helped with her Talent. He'd seen other things like it from other freelancers, though every other psychic seemed to prefer to use crystals.

"Are you ready to go yet?" the tattooed woman asked as she flared out her hair to release what was getting caught in her overcoat.

"Just a moment," he responded, holstering his pistol and pulling his own thick jacket on over the weapon. "Let's go."

He opened the door as she turned toward him, starting to call out. "Wait a…"

Heading out into the open air, the first thing the tall Irishman noted was the rather stout Brit shaking out a match as he walked down the street toward the hotel with two uniformed and fully armored police officers walking behind him. Almost immediately the man saw Whelan and quickened his pace after firmly instructing the two officers behind him to remain where they were.

"Fairclough," he muttered over his shoulder, holding a hand back to Róisín for her to stay out of sight.

"Don't worry about me," she said, her voice moving past his back.

He didn't look aside as he registered her movement across the street while the cops seemed to miss her. None of the cops seemed to even bat an eye. He'd seen that before with Róisín, the Lamont Cranston thing. She called it dreaming and he'd never pried into the how of it.

"Mr. Fairclough, isn't this a bit late to be out and about?" he asked the wide, somewhat older man irritably.

"Or early, only a couple of hours to dawn," the man responded gruffly. "And it's Inspector Fairclough, Connor."

"I'd be a bit more impressed with that if this were British soil, Fairclough," Whelan nettled.

"Good thing it is then," the officer responded looking Whelan over. "Now where are you going at these hours of the day, Mr. Connor? Dressed for success in fact."

"You see, this motel suffers a gift of British decorating," the Irishman responded. "And I don't want to be around when the room's had enough with it."

"Enough of the chatter, Connor," the man said. "I've got bigger fish to fry than you tonight and I don't want to waste the hours of paperwork I'd have to bring you in for that little bulge we'll call your good Catholic Bible. There's no seat for you at this party, no little technicalities that will keep you out of the noose."

"I don't know about that Fairclough, you've been pretty sloppy about things," Whelan shot back. "I might just have to crash in depending on what you're serving."
The badger like man snorted and gave an unpleasant smile.

"I am very much waiting for that, kid," the man told him, "Very much so. I've had all I can take from this game with you."

He chuckled darkly and started walking back toward the two uniformed officers, leaving Whelan behind with a casual and calm grin on his face. He waited until they were out of sight before he let his expression fade into a frown and moved across the street to join Róisín where she was standing there watching.

"More snatches are ruined because of a single boastful cop talking for two minutes than a whole score of good lookouts on guard for a month," she noted with sour humor.

"Have you ever thought about a change of scenery, love?" Whelan asked. She turned to look at him with a bit of cautious confusion. "Because I'm thinking that's involved." He emphasized the word "that" pointed toward where the police had vanished.

"I'm the freelancer here," she noted with a disarming smile. "Leave the mind reading to me."

"From what you've told me, you only put things in," he retorted as they walked down the street through the abandoned or ramshackle buildings. "Not take things out."

They walked a few more blocks, having the appearance of a loving couple, as the last statement rolled around in his thoughts. He thought again about how she'd seemed upset and found it hard to imagine given how upbeat she looked right now. It was beginning to look like he'd imagined her being ill at ease earlier. Or he could be imagining her being fine right now. More to the point, she could make him imagine such.

It said quite a few things that he never considered that she could use such imaginings to play him for a tool. Depending on who might make that observation, some might consider it romantic that he so completely trusted her while others would consider it foolish to even consider such a thing. Worse, some might take it as a sign that she had already concealed such an idea from him.

They remained silently on the watch as they walked through the town at this early hour. Banter would not camouflage them right now, only point them out to people that might not otherwise even notice their presence. Seven years previously, this town had been at the center of fierce fighting. Military uprights employed by the British, repurposed construction uprights used by the IRA, bombs, guns, it had been a legitimate battlefield that had been overlooked in the face of some of the bigger IRA and British clashes of the early nineties.

It was only now that the town was starting to really be rebuilt. Unfortunately, that rebuilding was coming from a British company with British pounds. There had been some sabotage, but all that had done was push the new generation that was growing up in the wake of that fight away from the IRA. Before Irish hands spilled Irish blood, the word had come down not to touch the construction.

The town dropped away behind them quickly enough and they were into the surrounding hills and forests. They stopped for a few minutes at a particular set of boulders where Whelan had hidden his cache of arms and equipment.

Among those was a rifle. It was a military rifle, made for sniping, but it wasn't all that different from a hunting rifle. The scope wasn't much different either, save for the fact that it had a digital recorder included in its making. A lot of hunters had similar things, wanting recordings of whenever they took down a particular animal, though Whelan used it more for its original purpose.

Whelan started to climb up the boulders toward the top of the rocky hill, for.  For her part Róisín frowned a moment and pointed downward into the thickening parts of the forest ahead of them. "Aren't we going to the circle?"

"I'd like a look at what we're going into first," he said.

Róisín rolled her eyes and shook her head, "Snipers."