[[He knew plans were being made, but all he knows right now is that Evans has gone off somewhere and Mrs. Bradshaw is baking. Hank just suggested using Sarah's hybrid steam wagon to take a few of you right now, and Jake seems to be suicidally eager to go somewhere else, so there's that option, too.]]

"Okay," the clank responds, though who knows what it makes of the situation.

"That's what the cake will help us find out," the widow says tersely. "When Ambrose has got his posse and plan of attack together, credit with the birdies is vital...I'm too tired to summon more, and the ones we've got are the only things that'd be able to see the trail from above and show us to shortcuts...I just hope this is enough."

Jake started to shift his hips in a slight motion much like a person might when remembering a dance. His eyes were distance and a bit of a smile was his face.

"You mean...we should get it drunk and tell jokes?" Harry queries.

"Well, maybe not jokes. More like riddles. Maybe challenge it to a game o' riddles to distract it, and then have somebody stick it with a syringe containing alcohol or some snake venom from a related snake. I got the names o' some that might make sense to the Mayor. Metzlicoatal and Omitetlcoatl, both descendants of Tezcatlcoatl." He struggled a bit with the pronunciation but enunciated them as best he could.

Evans considers Glenn's request, and sighs. "I suppose I can't deny that. Don't make me wind up regretting it." He leaves them and heads over to Adrian and Lazarus in time to hear the tail end of their conversation. "I believe the 'weakness to spirits' reference is more that it's easy to get them drunk than as an efficient means of poisoning them. Of course, if we want to get a syringe of snake venom, then the question is...where to we get the snakes? and how do we milk them?"

"Well, gettin' it drunk might at least lower its coordination and ability to do harm, but maybe it'll just make it an angry drunk. I can't really say. As far as where to get serpents, I dunno. It lists a couple serpent spirits here. I don't exactly know how to go about finding them or getting their venom," he said.

"Ward had some annotations on those names I mentioned. Maybe he or one of these Moonies knows somethin' about 'em."

"You take them by the neck and push their fangs over a can or glass. Knew a guy up in Montana territory who used to put snake venom on his blades. Nasty fella."

He shrugs. "Someone else will need to take care of the riddles."

Murphy would be the guy for that. I wonder where the little fella is these days...

"Don't know if any old snake'll do. Book says it's gotta be his own or one of his kin. That means a spirit snake," he said.

[[Er, William, how'd you get in here?]]

The Mayor glowers a bit at being afforded premission. "It'll be Omitetlcoatl - we gave him a steer for a host for a reason...and hmph, I suspect most rattlesnakes in the area, not to mention the brood inhabiting the cattle, have some dim taint of Tezcatlcoatl, his dam being the goddess of wild and poisonous things." He harrumphs a bit and shuffles out.

There's a distant <crack!> from upstairs, more like a shelf giving way than any kind of weapon fire.

"Then it looks like the easiest way to get the venom is to wrangle one of the tainted cows and drive the spirit out to milk it..." Evans says, then sighs at the cracking sound. "Oh, what now?"

"I shall go see, sir," the butler says, smoothly moving out.

"I'll go with you." Williamd hooks a thumb into his belt and follows Abraham.

In reply to Jake Lawrence (msg # 228):

Back in the kitchen, Hank looks up at a <crack!> of breaking wood from somewhere above. He looks at the widow's preparations uncertainly, then heads out to the foyer to see what's going on, tossing Jake a silver dollar as he does so.

"You know about spirits, right? See what you make of that," he says obscurely.

In reply to Hank Miller (msg # 239):

Jake caught the coin with little effort and rolled it over in his hand slowly. He swatted at his ear as those shooing a gnat, "Shush you..." he muttered. Considering the coin for a moment, Jake looked at it closely before pondering on it more. "Where'd you get it?"

"Old man we met on the road here," Hanlk respondsfrom the doorway. "I got a theory he weren't exactly natural."

---

Abraham and Pierce walk out into the foyer to see Hank doing the same. Not a lot seems to be going on, but the library door is cracked from side to side as though dealt a massive blow, as is the frame.

"Everything all right up there?" Abraham calls.

Abbie sticks her head out of the library. "We're fine...the door just broke, though, and, um..." good breeding struggles with good sense. "-the hands are keeping an eye on Mr. Hardin. We...they seem to think it's his fault somehow. Could you send Father up when he's done, or Mrs.Bradshaw?"

Hank tucks his own thumbs into his belt and snorts.

"Got something to say, Hank?" William drums his fingers on his belt, seemingly restless.

Hank looks over. "I still figure we should get gone fast - Hell, I'm going to fix up and take that thing in five minutes with or without you all."

"With you on that... But it pay to be prepared."

The young man scowls a bit, but is clearly reined back for now.

"Happened right as he walked in, didn't it?" he calls up to Abbie.

"Y-yes," Abbie responds, distracted by the apparently tense scene inside the library and stooping to pick up the Peke. "That's why they think he did something."

---

Abraham returns to the study to report. "It appears the library door suddenly broke. The hands take this to be something to do with the four-armed gentleman and appear to have him covered."

"Miss Abigail requests her father or a Society member come up, presumably to see the damage."

---

"It's the boots," Hank says to William in the foyer. "We met an old road-worker on the way here, digging away in the middle of the night, and he asked Wes to swap boots with him. I reckon it was the Devil himself, and that those are the Devil's boots."


[[ *whistles* ]]
This message was last edited by the player at 23:41, Sat 21 Feb 2015.

"Lovely. So there's another thing we need to deal with?"

A thought occurs to him.
"Is Marina still a crisp corpse in the bathtub? Anybody check on her?"

"This isn't going to end well..." Jake said as his eyes fix upon the coin in his hand.

OOC: OH let's take a Hunch on this coin ... after which we'll be doing a Mind Rider for even MORE fun.
12:54, Today: Jake Lawrence rolled 9,11 using d10,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 9,(6+5)11. Hunch.
12:55, Today: Jake Lawrence rolled 8,1 using d10,d6, rerolling max with rolls of 8,1. Mind Rider.

"Nah, I reckon the door up there was too holy for 'em, that was all. Some old boots aren't a threat to anybody, unless you get kicked with 'em."

Abbie looks a bit confused, but walks across the upper hallway to peer into the bathroom. "There's a dead cow in there," she reports, then looks down. "...and a kind of ashy, bloody trail on the floor..."

"Wait, who's Marina again?" Hank asks, still not quite up to speed with all the recent goings-on.

[[Abigail Bruebaker rolled 10 using 1d6, rerolling max with rolls of (6+4)10. Notice? ]]

The clank starts growling, startling the widow.

"GROWROWROWROWR..."

[[Are you super-sure about that? Both?]]

"ffffFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUCCKKKKKKK!!!!!"
William's movement is almost a blur as he checks the bathroom himself.
He balls his left hand into a fist and slams it against the wooden door frame.
"FFuck, fuck, fuck, motherfucker, FUUUUUUUCKKK!!!!"
He grabs the bathtub and turns it over, kicking it hard.

"Fucking stupid fuck... NOOOOOOOO!"

And all of a sudden he's standing completely stiff, taking deep breaths through his nose, his eyes closed, his hands balled into fists.

"No", he repeats, after a long, silent moment.
He opens his eyes. "The hell-bitch is still alive and at large. She's been hurt, she'll need to feed. It's not the boots. She took him."

When Pierce looks up, Abbie is rather awkwardly holding up the bent curtain rail that was used to block the library door as though unsure if William's quite sane.

"Who, what?" she asks, then moves the hall rug with her foot, not taking her eyes off the rough-looking, ranting fellow. "I thought you defeated the vampire?"

Still watching William, she unhooks one of the upstairs lamps from its bracket and holds it up, first over the trail, then inside the small bedroom's door, looking in. She holds it a little higher as though trying to see to the corners of the room without going in and leaving her back to William. Percy appears in the library doorway, armed and quizzical, whilst Hank bemusedly stomps his way up the stairs.

"What's up?" Percy asks, giving his glasses a rapid breath-clean in case there's shooting to be done.

"Looks like she went out the hole where my sister got dragged out...she surely can't have gone far after losing all that," she nudges the bloodstained rug with her toe and nods at the butcher stain down William's clothes. "...just crawled under a bush somewhere out back. The birds will have got her: it's not like she had a horse or anything."