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Date Posted: 11:30:16 07/24/03 Thu
Author: Ph0tog!
Subject: Re: I'd like a side of Witchblade Game with that, please.
In reply to: Lark 's message, "Re: Second Round of the Witchblade Game: ATTN ALL" on 07:17:50 07/10/03 Thu

* * * *
Gabriel Bowman’s left eye cracked open into the early dawn’s light spilling from a high window onto the worn, somewhat dusty Persian carpet that covered the hardwood floor directly to the side of his bed. In the sun’s ray, the air in the room took on a visible consistency; tiny motes of dust and who-knew-what-else whorling and spinning like lazy dervishes in thick honey. Watching their slowed, floating progress, he was forced to admit--Yep, his head definitely hurt.

Looking away from the sunlight into a darker corner to orient himself and keep whatever was in his stomach mercifully still, he saw his turtleneck from the night before, spiked on one of the tines of his devo-garde coat rack, fashioned reminiscent of several halberds roped into a giant metal sheaf. The violence that had staked the knitted sweater there had also caused the bottom three rows of knitting to unravel, the yarn’s end falling almost to the floor.

He noticed the squeal of his shower at about the same time the memory of the sweater’s punishment the night before spilled from wherever it had been hiding back into his conscious mind. He could say he was going to kill Sly all he wanted. He knew he wouldn’t. Besides, after last night’s paid lecture on vampyre lore and counter-talismans (which he was pretty sure went very badly), it had been he (not Sly) who returned home with a ‘tortured creature of the night’ groupie on his arm.

Not that Kaeris had been such a bad date—or nocturnal partner, for that matter—but she had been a groupie. And he had sworn off groupie sleepovers. Or at least he had meant to.

Now, the morning after, he was faced with the familiar dread such encounters engendered. He wasn’t a ‘dark’ guy, after all. He didn’t shun daylight or children or flowers or life for that matter. Talismaniac was his business, and in a way his hobby—but not his credo. And ‘the morning after’ always seemed to bring that into the light in a way death and darkness obsessed girls like Kaeris never seemed to care for.

The squeal of the shower ceased and he heard the stall’s door fall closed.

Leaning up on his elbow, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand and yawning, he looked around. Seemed like she’d taken her multi-layered dark clothes in with her, even her shoes and nettled hose. Always puzzling, he thought, the sudden modesty of dawn.

The door opened into the room. But the woman that stepped through was not the woman he had brought home the night before. Gone was Stevie Nicks couture, gone the abundant silver jewelry, gone the piercings (he had thought they were real), and gone the heavy whiteface and midnight black hair.

He sputtered at the strawberry blonde woman before him, sputtered further to notice her freckles. “Kaeris?” he asked the air between them. “You—you’re—“

“Oh, please don’t,” she asked him, stuffing the protruding toe of last night’s granny boot shoe deeper into the shoulder bag she was carrying. The bag that perfectly matched her bright, Pucci A-line skirt and vintage go-go boots. “I just came to say I’ll see you around. Gotta go, though,” she shrugged. “I’ve got an early call.”

“But,” he continued to sputter,” you’re—you’re Kaerista.” He struggled to recover from the revelation. He’d spent last night not with the Goth groupie he had gone home with, he’d spent it with one of the world’s top international supermodels. And she was standing here, in his doorway. He smiled like an absolute idiot.

“You have freckles,” he proclaimed, in his shock unable to rise from the bed.

“And you have a hangover,” she smiled back. “Take something,” she gestured to some packets of herbal remedies she had left beside the bed. He recognized the wrappings from a store in Chinatown he liked to frequent himself.

“Thanks,” he said, acknowledging them. “I, uh, don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” she suggested, consulting her Palm Pilot. “Tomorrow night I’ve got a soiree to attend for the Boucher Agency at the Met. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“But—I--” he was going to say he wasn’t invited.

Kaerista—THE Kaerista, coveted by men planet-wide, envied by women of every creed and color—turned with a slow smile and left his house.

A string of curse words rattled through Gabriel’s head, trailing just behind his headache. If only he could remember more about last night he might actually know if there was anything in his mind, or his heart—and not his pants--that wanted to see her again. As it was, he had rather more the feeling that he had endured drinking a knock-out potion and just woke, rather than having spent the night in a beautiful woman’s arms.

He had some sorting out of last night to do. Eyeing the herbal remedies she had left for him, he stood from his bed and walked to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, the mirror still wet with condensation from Kaeris’ shower, a towel somewhat worse for wear (she had rinsed the black out of her hair, staining it) hung over the shower door’s top. Opening to the cabinet behind the slick mirror, he grabbed for his trusty aspirin and filled his hand with water from the tap to swallow the dosage down.

(cont'd)

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