- Dan Owens, van driver and stoner, was imbued during a zombie attack.
- The gang went looking for Dean’s quarry in Harper Park, where the trail lead them to a recently-murdered reporter named Kevin Shepherd. Unfortunately, it also lead them to Detective Weathers, who might have dragged them in for questioning if not for a fortuitous potted plant accident.
- In Shepherd’s apartment, they found a bizarre picture they can’t identify. Notes on the back are similarly inscrutable.
- They chased the vampire into the subway, where they destroyed him.
- And Dean saw large, burning red eyes in an unfinished subway tunnel.
“Sunday”
The group gave Dan a week off to think things over, but that week does not pass without incident. Dean’s car is struck by a drunk driver (a big redneck named Steve), and he’s seriously injured. The worst of it is a broken jaw, which has to be wired shut while it heals. In the interim, since he can’t talk, Lucy loans him her laptop computer, so he can type his messages to the group. Meanwhile, for reasons he can’t explain, Willem has a song stuck in his head: Jay-Z’s “Dirt off Your Shoulder.” Not only that, but he’s been hearing it everywhere—in the car, at the bar, people drive past him on the street playing on their stereos. It’s weird.
Dean has told everyone about the strange eyes, but no one is quite sure what to do about it. Marching off into the darkness with shovels doesn’t seem to be the best of ideas, and they’ve been sidetracked with Dean’s injuries.
On Saturday (a week after the zombie incident), Lucy calls Dan, as promised, and after confirming that the group is dedicated to simple mass slaughter of innocent people, he agrees to join them. Around that time, Edgar is treating the group to some Chinese food (well, everyone but Dean, who can’t eat). The fortune cookies are passed around, and Willem opens his and reads the fortune: “Wait until Sunday.” He, of course, adds “in bed,” but doesn’t think anything else of it.
Edgar asks Willem for a light for his cigarette, and when he can’t find one anywhere in the bar (despite usually having many lighters and matches on hand), he heads out to his car…where he runs into Detective Weathers. He’s fine, save for a serious concussion and a bandage on the back of his head. But he’s pissed, and wants to know why they left him unconscious in the rain. Willem bluffs—badly—through the conversation, and Weathers tells him that their story (“We were looking for a…friend”) checked out. The “old lady” he spoke to confirmed that they were visiting her, and that the potted plant was hers, knocked over by a cat. “She was very apologetic,” Weathers says.
Dan pulls up during this conversation, but stays out of sight while Willem continues to drown. Finally, as Weathers is again announcing his intention to take them all in, gunshots ring out down the block. The police detective is forced to investigate, and orders Willem to stay put. So, of course, as soon as Weathers’s back is turned, he flees. Dan pulls the van around to the back of the bar.
Inside, Edgar starts to get worried (either about Willem or the light for his cigarette, it’s not clear) and looks outside, sees the cop and quickly turns back in. Moments later, Willem enters and announces that they have to leave. Quickly. Now.
Dean, on the other hand, says—err, types that leaving will only anger the cop more, and he decides to stay alone. Lucy, however, doesn’t want to split the group up, and certainly doesn’t want to leave any one of them alone. (This will become a recurring theme.) So Willem, Dan and Edgar race to the van and leave Lucy and Dean behind. At least trying, Willem leaves a note on the front door of the bar: “Had to go. Family emergency.”
A few minutes later, Weathers enters the bar, even more pissed than before. Lucy tries to do the talking, but she’s even worse at bluffing than Willem, to the point where Dean finally types in desperation, “Stop talking.” Dean also takes his hand at talking the police officer, oddly by being more honest (that he was there looking for an acquaintance to continue a fight they started in a bar…all of which is actually true), but Weathers still isn’t buying anything they say. The problem is that they haven’t actually done anything, and when Weathers receives a call, he has to leave. But he’s still pissed.
Lucy calls Willem to come back to the bar, but as it turns out, they’re still sitting in the van in the alley behind the bar—they started a discussion on where to go, and never quite left. So everyone comes back to debate their next move.
Edgar reveals that he’s spotted an odd-looking man in his hotel—stringy black hair, really pale, and he only seems to be around at night, wandering the third floor. The group decides to go investigate.
(It isn’t known, exactly, why Edgar never bothered to turn his Second Sight on the weird guy to know for sure, but it’s strongly implied that he only sees him on his way back from the hotel bar, so he’d be too drunk to think of it.)
At the hotel, the gang waits for sunset and then walks the third floor hoping to run into the guy. (Really, it’s the best idea they have.) While strolling the hall, they hear loud music playing from one of the room—“Dirt off Your Shoulder,” by Jay-Z. Willem knocks at the door, and the occupant appears: a really pale guy with stringy black hair. Various Hunter powers are used to first identify the man as a vampire (which he is) and then to summarily slaughter him, including one savage Cleave-assisted punch from Dean (five successes will do it pretty much every time). An attempt is made to question the guy about the items they found in Shepherd’s apartment, but he knows nothing, and soon he’s ash.
But as they loot his body, Willem glances out the window and sees, on the balcony of another room in the hotel, the old lady in the purple raincoat. She waves frantically to get their attention, then beckons them over to her room. They race over to find the room unlocked and empty and a note waiting for them:
!!LET’S TRY A PROBLEM-SOLVING EXERCISE!!
Planets in this solar system
(then)
The number of times people say “Beam me up, Scotty!” in the original Star Trek series
(then)
(The number of words on this paper minus the number of people in this room)
(then)
The best closer in the American League.
!!LET’S SEE HOW YOU DO!!
(This isn’t too hard, is it? I worry about that kind of thing.
But you’re a bunch of smart people, aren’t you?
I hope so. Otherwise, I’m gonna be waiting a while.
See you!)
___
The group immediately sets about solving the puzzle, which doesn’t take very long at all. (It isn’t that hard, and the only part that tripped them up was figuring out who exactly the best closer in the American League is. Gut instinct is Mariano Rivera or Joe Nathan, but the answer the puzzle is looking for is Huston Street.)
The puzzle’s answer takes them to a small house in Harper Park, where they are greeted by the smell of chocolate-chip peanut butter cookies and the old lady in the purple raincoat, whose name they soon learn is Sunday.
After going to great pains to insist that she means them no harm (and offering them delicious cookies and milk, which Willem takes to with gusto), she wants to know all about them. As she puts it, they’re “interesting”—she says that the universe “hums” around them, and she can’t figure out why. They’re just as interested in her, and refuse to answer her questions until she answers theirs, though that plan is upset a little by Willem’s constant talking.
But she agrees to tell them some things. She says she’s a “magic person,” with the ability to use magic (as result of a sarcastic request from Dan, she pulls a rabbit from a hat, but later claims it was a trick hat). She glosses over her own personal history, though she does say she grew up in California, which might explain her preference for Huston Street. She says she doesn’t like vampires (“They eat people. Well, I mean, not really. But I wouldn’t put it past some of them.”) When asked, she says she doesn’t know how many “magic people” there are, but that they can do “just about anything” with their abilities.
As a further token of good faith, she gives up the location of a common meeting place for vampires: an abandoned fire station in Glenville, out of service for years. Fifteen or twenty vampires meet there three times a week, including tonight. (Interestingly, no one asks how she knows this, but they do ask about the symbol and initials—she knows nothing about them.) She even offers several canisters of propane for use as an explosive.
The Hunters take the propane (and Willem takes several pounds of cookies) and set off to destroy the meeting place. Sunday leaves them with a word of caution, to pay attention to everything around them, because even the smallest things can have huge consequences. To illustrate, she tells a story about an accused murderer who was acquitted largely because the investigating police officer didn’t get enough sleep the night before he began investigating and botched the evidence due to exhaustion. She’s clearly talking about Edgar, who doesn’t take the sentiment well.
They leave, but as soon as they reach the van they start to have second thoughts. Blowing up a whole building is highly illegal, highly visible and highly dangerous. Not to mention the group’s lack of experience with explosives in general and the potential for great collateral damage. After much debate, the group decides to take Willem’s car to the place and simply scout the place.
They do so, each Hunter hiding in a separate darkened place near the station. After a while of waiting, a blond woman exits the building and walks down the street. Dean sneaks after her, hoping she isn’t walking to a car (the group only has the one car with them, after all).
Unfortunately, she is. She gets into her car, and Dean walks away in disappointment…and the car explodes behind him.
Next week’s episode: “You’re No Fun Anymore.”
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