Episode 4
Surveillance
The day after making the video at Gower’s, several visitors came to Chet and Saria’s apartment. They introduced the group to Paladin, the superintendent of the apartment building, and his 17-year-old niece Darla, who had moved in with him following the death of her parents. While the rest of the group got to know Paladin, Darla took an interest in Marta. The two of them hung out in Darla’s room and at a nearby coffee shop and quickly became friends.
Then, Chet introduced the group to Arie Madison, another new hunter who had just moved into the apartment building for protection. Arie explained (not very eloquently, since he was stoned out of his mind on magic mushrooms and apparently none too bright) that he’d become imbued when a vampire had burst into his apartment and, for no apparent reason, begun attacking him. Not really knowing what else to do, Arie reached for one of the numerous firearms he had lying around his apartment and, despite the monster’s apparent superiority, began gunning him down. After a lengthy battle he managed to kill the creature, but the sound of gunfire had (obviously) alerted the cops. Rather than explain what had happened, Arie decided to run, and while he was looking for a new apartment he ran into Paladin, who’d helped fix him up with a place to stay. The others explained their situation to Arie, and he agreed to help them out in exchage for their protection if he ended up needing it.
That evening, Darla asked Marta and the others if they’d like to take a walk around the neighborhood. Melba and Will decided to come along. While they walked, Melba took the lead with Darla right behind her. Suddenly, Melba tripped and fell flat on her face. Annoyed, she picked herself up, and Darla leaned over to Marta and whispered, “I can’t believe she didn’t notice that I just tripped her!” Darla and Marta tried to stifle their laughter, and Melba thought something might be up but didn’t say anything. As they continued to walk, once again Darla stuck her foot out to trip Melba, and once again Melba didn’t notice and fell down. Darla began to laugh hysterically, and as she did Melba felt a strange sensation and suddenly became very tired and a little disoriented. She became suspicious of what Darla might be up to, but thought it better not to make a scene and continued walking.
Eventually, Darla, Marta, Melba, and Will arrived at a park and decided to rest there for awhile. While Darla and Marta sat on the swingset and talked, Melba told Will what had happened. Equally curious, Will turned on his second sight and began to scrutinize Darla, who did not register as human. Soon, Will’s use of Discern revealed that Darla had ears and a tail! Melba rushed over to the sandbox and began scratching out the hunter symbol for “monster” and trying to draw Marta’s attention to it. She noticed, but didn’t seem to care. Shortly thereafter, everyone went back to the apartment building.
That night, Melba and Will confronted Marta about Darla. They told her what they’d seen and she told them that she didn’t care, since Darla hadn’t done anything threatening, unless they counted playing a minor prank on Melba. They told her to be careful, but to Marta it sounded like they were passing a very harsh judgment on her new friend. The conversation became an argument that ended with Marta storming out of the room and going to see Darla. There, Darla convinced Marta to give her more information about hunters. Marta shared the little that she knew, and Darla began to tell her about changelings (the kind of creature that she was). The next day, the previous night’s argument had more or less blown over and the work solving the problem with Saigow began again in earnest.
The video of the vampires feeding was a good piece of evidence, but Chet and Saria feared that it might not be enough to get Saigow to back down. Melba shared the information that she’d gathered over the past few days and suggested that since she knew where Martin Bowers, one of Saigow’s business partners, lived, they should try to stake out his house and see what kinds of things might go on there. Will suggested gaining access to the apartment building, tapping the phone, and bugging the room, which seemed like a good idea to the others as well. Later that day, Arie, Marta, and Will went to the building while Melba continued to research. They got Arie to kick a football onto Martin Bowers’ balcony, then asked the superintendent to unlock the apartment so they could reclaim it (but really so it would give them a chance to place the bugs). Their plan worked, and Marta placed one bug on the phone and another in an air vent near the living room so it would capture anything that was said in the apartment.
Over the next few days, the group quickly discovered that Martin Bowers didn’t actually live in his apartment and was only rarely there. There were no phone calls until a few days after the bugs were placed, but the one that came then proved very useful. A man called the apartment to set up a meeting with Saigow and his people that would take place the next night. Of course, the group decided they had to stake out the building, not only in order to hear and record what the bug in the airshaft picked up but to find out who would be at the meeting.
The next night, everyone piled into the cars at midnight and went to stake out the apartment building. There, they saw Saigow and some of his people entering the apartment, and the bug picked up a lengthy conversation in Chinese that Saria said had something to do with a business deal. About an hour later, they got in their car and left. Melba decided to follow them while the others went back into the building to retrieve the bug. Arie stood lookout while Will helped Marta climb into the airshaft.
The bug was undamaged, unnoticed, and easy to retrieve, but while Marta was removing it she noticed something interesting. Saigow and his people had left something behind in the apartment: an oblong, ornately carved wooden box sitting on the dining room table. Curious, she climbed out of the vent and let Arie, Chet, Saria, and Will in through the apartment’s front door. She pointed out the box to them, and everyone began to examine it and argue about what to do with it. They had finally settled on taking the box away to examine it more closely, then breaking the lock on the door to make it look like it had been a random burglarly, when Marta heard a noise. She listened more closely and realized that it sounded like someone whimpering in pain—and that it was coming from the refrigerator. She hurried into the kitchen and threw open the door.
Inside the refrigerator, Marta saw a wiry, bald Indian man wearing nothing but a loincloth (but the cold didn’t seem to bother him). He met Marta’s eyes, and she was suddenly struck with the bizarre urge to climb into the refrigerator and close the door behind her. As soon as the door closed, however, the spell was broken, and she began pounding on it demanding to be let out. Will rushed over to help her, but the man blocked the way. Quickly, Will used Burden, which slowed him down long enough for Will to unlock the door and let Marta out—but then, the man grew claws and lunged at him, hissing, “Don’t meddle in things that you don’t understand.”
A battle ensued, with the refrigerator man very nearly proving more than the five hunters could handle. Marta tried to talk him out of fighting and find out what he wanted, but it seemed that he only wanted to kill all the humans he could get his hands on. At first, she found it nearly impossible to believe—but when the man hit Saria hard enough that she couldn’t get up afterwards, she thought she was out of options. Picking up Saria’s gun, Marta said, “I’m sorry, but we have nothing else to talk about,” and shot, dealing him a severe wound. The man looked at Marta and said, “I thought you were different from them.” She was about to reply, but before anything else happened Chet rushed in and tore the refrigerator man apart with his bare hands. The man crumbled to dust, and Will grabbed the box and urged everyone to leave before they attracted much more attention.
Meanwhile, Melba followed Saigow and his people to the 24-hour Wells Fargo she’d learned about earlier. Once there, she made her way to Selicia Fargo’s office, who (not surprisingly) was also a vampire. Unhappy that Melba was there without her permission, she sent a rather large number of lackeys after her, but Melba managed to fend them off with Ward long enough to make a run for it. In the hallway, she ran into (surprisingly enough) Paladin, who was coincidentally also trying to find out more about Saigow and his people. He backed her up as she headed for the parking garage, taking out a number of the vampires with Cleave and his trusty hammer, “Old Hefty.” In the garage, they climbed into Paladin’s utility van and rammed the doors to get out (thought it took them a few tries and they had to run over a few vampires in the process). Then Melba made her way back to the apartment building, where everyone else had already reconvened to consider the implications of the night.