Laura nodded at her own impressive statement of intent. Adopting what Carmilla supposed was her best 'determined action hero about to set off to fight the bad guy face.'
It lasted all of a few seconds before.
"Uh, so I'm not sure exactly how to go about that, any suggestions? Usually when people say stuff like that they immediately follow it up with a super awesome plan that they lay out in a montage, although sometimes they don't say what the plan is and the story just continues to keep you in suspense. Which is kinda cheap really, I mean if the characters know the plan why can't we?"
Carmilla shook her head but grinned as she did so. Only Laura could bounce from cute to brave, to dorky nerd and back again as fast she did. If Carmilla waited only a few more moments she was sure Laura would rebound from this dorky outburst to either something impossibly cute or an act of awe inspiring bravery.
Despite what she had said and despite her current doubts Carmilla knew Laura would come up with a plan eventually. She always did as crazy and dangerous as they sometimes were. But why not help her along?
"Well, to start with, we should probably work out where we are."
Although to be honest, she didn't feel like planning right now. She had other things on her mind. It had been stupid of her to think after everything they had been through, Laura would take issue with one more story of violent misdeeds. She knew that, had known that. But regardless the moment Laura had accepted Carmilla's part in the Sarratum's dark past without reservation she had felt such a rush of affection. It was as if her heart had started pumping the emotion through her veins instead of blood for a few beats.
She hadn't been able to quash the desire to keep such stories away from Laura if she could. She had so enjoyed telling stories about herself to Laura that didn't involve that kind of thing. Instead they would be stories about her life at the Karnstein castle or her travels throughout the world as a vampire. She loved the way Laura would stop everything and listen to her when the storytelling mood struck with such passion and excitement, hanging on to every word. For so long Carmilla had felt that her life was one lived without meaning, without any purpose that wasn't according to her Mother's grand designs.
Laura was changing that. Not only in terms of her present but in her regards to her past as well. One day at the cottage after a particularly long remembrance of her first public appearance after becoming a vampire, a gala at a palace near Prague that resulted in quite the adventure when a caged Minotaur escaped, Carmilla had later found Laura scribbling down the story as close to verbatim as she could remember on a notepad. She had been doing this for all the stories Carmilla had told her.
"I don't want to forget any of them." Laura had explained simply.
She'd rummaged through Laura's things and found the notepad that night. Personal boundaries were never something she was good at. The experience of reading about her own life told in her own words was surreal to say the least. But flicking from page to page and reading the words provided pleasure. She really had lived a life and by trying to shield Laura from the truly awful she unintentionally had participated in creating a record of the rest. Some of it was even good.
Laura found her still flicking from page to page while sitting on their bed, an anxious expression betraying concern that Carmilla had taken exception to her Elizabeth Gaskell impression. Carmilla patted a place next to her for Laura to sit, when she did so Carmilla spoke.
"No one, not a single person has ever cared enough to do anything like this." She flicked through some more pages before continuing. "Would it be okay if I could take a look at these from time to time?"
"Of course! I just thought that these stories, I mean, your life. It's amazing. Well, obviously not as in amazingly good. You know with the evil mother and other… things. But amazing as in extraordinary, something unique and something I think is worth remembering."
Worth remembering. She'd thought a lot of things about her life over the years but that was a new one.
"Carm? Are you even listening?"
Laura must have been already hard at work at planning their next move while she zoned out for a minute. Laura was looking at her expectantly.
Yeah she was not in the planning mood at all.
Instead she got up from the table and planted herself in Laura's lap. Laura's mouth opened and closed like a fish a few times but couldn't quite get anything out.
"Okoye was right, you know, the Uffizi is quite large. I doubt they'd find it any time soon."
"Yeah, so we should be smart and use that time to-"
"We would be moronic," Carmilla cut across her smoothly. "To not use that time to make sure we're perfectly fine before doing anything. We've been shot at, almost stabbed, my back hurts, your shoulder hurts."
"Well, actually it really is feeling much better at the moment so..."
"So, we should absolutely check for other injuries, you have no idea where bits of shrapnel can get to without you noticing. Actually, now that I think about it, I did get hit with some across my stomach earlier. Maybe we should start there?"
She took off her shirt and idly let it fall to the ground.
"Did I mention that I love you today?"
"Literally just a minute or two ago actually." Laura said in a faraway voice, eyes distracted by something or other, could have been anything really.
"Yeah well, what's the number one rule of those stories you love so much? Telling is a terrible way to get one's point across. Showing is so much better." She leant in and kissed her.
She was really quite proud of Laura really, an iron will. She'd held out for a while. But she was up against the woman she loved and someone who had been seducing people for centuries so it was always going to be a losing battle.
The next few moments went by quickly. They resulted in Laura lying prone with her back on the table while Carmilla lay on top of her. Better her back than mine, Carmilla thought idly. She hadn't been lying the bruise on her back from the gargoyle fight really was still quite sore.
It was just getting to the point where Carmilla would have to decide which piece of clothing Laura would need to lose first, when an ear drum shattering creaking noise announced the opening of the huge double doors at the front of the house.
"God, I really need to get some polish on this thing, sorry sweetlings. Huh? I guess I was wrong I didn't forget to turn the radio off after all." A female voice coming from the door.
"Oh, right yeah not our house." Laura said. Her voice a squeak.
They rolled off the table in a rush, Carmilla gritting her teeth as pain shot up her back when they landed with a smack. The voice at the door gasped at the noise. She quickly dashed to put her shirt back on before the new arrival marched into the living room and saw them.
In her hands she held tightly a large wicker basket. Her brown eyes matched her long hair and they shone brightly in anger. She wore a pair of shorts and a black t-shirt apparently dedicated to some punk rock band. But these were not the things that Carmilla nor Laura were drawn to.
Instead they were drawn to the two white curly horns on each side of her head and the fact that her legs were covered in brown fur with backward leg joints below her knees. Her feet also happened to hoofed.
Before they could try to process this the woman started shouting at them.
"Who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my house?"
Elsewhere
With most of city huddling indoors as the news of the Mercato Delle Pucci shootout spread no one paid much attention to the hanging "closed" sign over the Bianchi Negozio Locale's front entrance. A sign that was virtually never used on a weekday, the Bianchi's prided themselves on keeping the store open twenty four hours a day during the week in an effort to keep up with the bigger supermarket chains. One of the few locally owned supermarkets left in Florence, the Bianchi family's store was a two story building, the lower for business the upper for living. If anyone had paid attention now they most likely would have assumed that Mr Bianchi and his wife had retired upstairs for the evening. It was late and everyone was indoors anyway.
But perhaps if the store had a more populous clientele more people would have noticed that the closed sign had been hanging since the beginning of the day, well before the unpleasantness at the flea market.
"It is amazing what we don't notice, even right in our own midst." Bolade Okoye said to no one in particular while staring pensively at the two black body bags lying stacked up against one of the warm coloured walls
She sat on an old wooden chair in the buildings upper story living room. The room had gone through some changes in the space of a single day. Furniture, like the bodies lay stacked up against the walls of the room to make way for computers and desks. A transformation from cosy living room to impromptu operations centre. A few Corvae techies bustled around her to and fro. The specificities of what they were doing caring her not in the slightest. One sat perfectly still staring at a large monitor on a desk with feeds from cameras all over the city.
"Talking to yourself Okoye?" A mocking voice coming up the stairs rang out to her. "Because I know that there is no way you would be talking to these nerds in a tone of voice that isn't shouting."
Okoye's eyes flicked from the body bags to the top of the stairs as the voice's owner came into the room. The hazel eyed man with the long dirty hair. Her pensive stare became a glare.
"I'm reserving my shouting energy just for you, Gustav."
The man pointed his thumbs at himself and opened his mouth wide in an exaggerated gesture of shocked indignation.
"Who me? Whatever for? For saving your life or for dragging your concussed ass all the way back here afterwards? How is your head by the way? It looked like quite the bump."
"A bump I wouldn't have had to take if you hadn't shown up and messed things up like the idiot brute you are! And if you hadn't shown up, instead of a slight concussion I would have gotten the specific location of the Sarratum. Instead all we have is the Uffizi, which I might add we only have because I had to step in after you messed things up at the Mercato, also like an idiot."
Gustav ignored her for a moment and instead angrily gestured at the body bags.
"Seriously, has no one taken out the trash yet? You lazy deadbeats, it has been a whole day. We're lucky they don't smell that bad considering. Someone do it now, this is the best time to do it."
He walked passed her and entered the bedroom behind her, a room that had also been transformed during Corvae's stay at the Bianchi's. Now it was full of equipment and weapons. He spoke again from there.
"Well as for the flea market. Pisano got spooked 'cause one of the guys Corvae supplied me with was a moronic klutz, 'trained operator', yeah sure pull the other one. I had to take Pisano down, too many exits, he'd have gotten away. What if he'd run off with the mask you guys want so much? At least with him dead the mask is still in Florence."
"Oh and Hollis and Karnstein won't try to escape the city if they get the mask?"
"Well, you might not have noticed, but we shot at them too, how could I have anticipated a horseback escape? A horse! Wow, did they really lance one of my guys with a flag pole on horseback while that same guy was shooting at them in a car? Holy shit, you were in the helicopter tell me you saw that. Scratch that, tell me you recorded it so I can see it. You know my brief was one ex-vampire and an under grad. I think I'll amend that in the debrief to two bad asses."
He came out of the bedroom, now garbed in his black armour vest. The difference was alarming. He went from looking like a dangerous soldier to some kind of heavy set warrior. This wasn't a present day trained mercenary, he looked more like a modern update to the stereotypical barbarian an Ancient Roman Legionnaire would fight.
He pushed a techie out of the way or rather he moved through the room and a techie that happened to be in his path bounced off of him. He crouched down on a chair near Okoye. He spaced his legs apart and he brought his hands together in front of him.
"As for the alleyway. That information you thought you were going to get? Come on, I have good eyes, your hands were shaking so much I was more worried you'd hit me if you fired. Not to mention that sweat going down your shiny bald head. What were you thinking by the way in going down there alone? My guys on the chopper tell me you told them to stay put when they set you down."
Okoye swallowed before answering.
"We knew they had crossed the bridge but it was only a guess that they might be in those alleyways, I didn't see any reason to take more people in case I was wrong. Besides you are mistaken, I had everything under control."
Gustav smiled at her with his eyes but said nothing.
The second body bag was being taken down the stairs by a couple of Corvae techies. Okoye's gaze turned to it.
"Was this really necessary? Were there no other places we could have set up?"
"Well excuse me. You're the one who insisted on a place in the middle of the city so we could get anywhere in it quickly. This was the best bet. Stick up a closed sign, just some local store not too many people will care or even notice. Well unless they have some old folks as regulars. Those guys, signs or no signs, they'll bang on the door of the place they shop at for all eternity until someone lets them in."
He nodded to himself.
"Yeah heads up we might have to kill some more old folks before we're done here. I'll check the dumpster outside later to make sure there's space."
It wasn't cold but Okoye shivered slightly in her chair.
Gustav laughed.
"Relax Bolade, it's not like you have to deal with any of that, don't think about it. You're too tightly wound. Shouldn't you be used to this kind of thing anyway, what was that African hell hole of slum Corvae plucked you out of again? Was it in Sudan? Tanzania?"
"Kinshasa." Okoye answered stiffly. "And Corvae didn't pluck me out of anywhere. I got out myself."
"Ah right that's it, Congo that wasteland. Never mind, like I said don't worry about anything, I'm not gonna let this thing go wrong, I got a lady I need to get back to, so quick and smooth is what I'm looking for here."
Okoye raised her eyebrows.
"A lady? You?"
More mock indignation.
"Don't act so surprised, I'm offended. I've got the best lady in the universe waiting for me when this is over."
"I'm sure she is." Okoye snorted.
"It's true. If you met her you'd love her too. Everyone would, she's divine."
She waved her hand dismissively and switched topics.
"We only need to stop Hollis and Karnstein from getting to the Uffizi, nothing more. I have contacted some people and pushed some money around. We'll get access to the Gallery it will only be a matter of time. If they don't cause any more fuss there isn't any reason for further violence."
Now it was Gustav's turn to snort derisively. He got up from his chair and strode towards the stairs.
"Good luck with that fantasy. I'm off."
"Where are you going?"
Gustav didn't turn around or stop as he answered.
"Some fun stories my guys told me about those tunnels they chased Hollis and Karnstein into. Think I'll check them out. See if I can't get you a more specific location while you play the corporate cheat card on the phone."
"The tunnels that hold killer stone gargoyles? For all we know Hollis and Karnstein are dead down there."
Gustav froze at the top of the stairs. He stayed still and silent for a moment before speaking in a quiet voice, almost more to himself than Okoye.
"That would be… a disappointment."
Okoye watched on as without any further comment he walked down the stairs and heard his loud purposeful footsteps until he left the building.
Some part of her understood the social dynamics of this situation. They had technically intruded on a home, explored it without permission, lounged around in it, were about to have sex in it. Now its apparent owner had arrived and if the positions were reversed she'd probably be splattering their blood all over the walls right now without much of second thought.
But goddamn if she could not help but take to being shouted at poorly.
"Okay, so I'm just gonna kill her." She said head turned towards Laura.
Laura yelped in dismay.
"What? No! Of course you're not going to kill," She gestured to the horned woman. "She's not going to do that, forget you ever heard that. She's ah, she's ah, what she means by that is, we're really sorry, we didn't mean to intrude on your home. We came here by accident, complete accident. Well, I admit we didn't try very hard to leave when we got here but-"
"I'm getting these terrible flashbacks Laura, you remember the last time someone interrupted us in the middle of the kind of activity we were in and you said not to kill them? How did that one work out again?"
"So this isn't the first house you've intruded in. What, are you a pair of burglars?" The horned woman demanded.
"Not talking to you Horny and that's not the kind of activity I meant."
Laura held out both hands in a placating manner, one aimed at Carmilla the other at the horned woman. She looked at the woman and tried not to stare at the horns. Or the legs. Or the hoofs. Carmilla could tell she was struggling with that.
"Okay everyone take a breath here, no killing, no killing happening here at all. Don't worry she would never, okay that's a straight up lie she totally would but not… right now. So please don't be scared or alternatively if it turns out what you are is something really really powerful and dangerous please don't be mad or you know, murderous."
The horned woman glared at them both.
"So basically don't be scared or mad even though two people are arguing over whether to kill me after they intruded into my house."
Carmilla gave a snort.
"Oh please, your house? This house belongs to someone with some serious money. The wealthiest Satyr I ever knew had two woodland huts instead of one."
"Wait, Satyr?" Laura said, clearly trying to process that quickly enough to keep up with the rest of the conversation.
The Satyr went to shake a fist at her angrily but stopped mid-way to keep her tight two handed grip on the wicker basket.
"Oh so slander against my kind now? You know you're really something lady, I have half a mind to-"
"To what, half a mind to what?" She shaped herself up for a physical confrontation, daring the Satyr to make the first move.
Things could have gone rather poorly from there and she'd have to admit it would have been mostly her fault but at that moment a bleating noise came out of the wicker basket.
The Satyr's face went white with fear. More bleats came out of the basket, now from multiple sources. The Satyr looked down at her basket.
"No no no, honey's please not now. Go back to sleep, stop making noise." Her voice barely more than a whisper but Carmilla still heard her easily.
The Satyr looked back to them, clearly trying to decide whether to show fear and plead with them or double down on the anger. It was obvious which one was the real emotion however. Eventually the real one won out.
"Please, please just leave you can take whatever you want."
A head popped over the top of the lip of the basket. It looked exactly like regular baby goat. It had brown fur like the Satyrs legs. It peered out from the basket and saw them both. It gave another bleat. Beside her she heard Laura gasp.
Hand over her mouth, eyes shining with excitement Laura moved slowly towards the basket. The Satyr started to protest but Laura's lack of hostile intent was obvious even to her.
"Oh my God they're gorgeous, hello." She giggled when the head bleated apparently in response. "Are they like your?" Her voice was muffled slightly from the hand over her mouth.
Carmilla answered for her.
"Satyrs when young are indistinguishable from goats. At least that's what I was told once, never been in the presence of a Satyr that wasn't an adult, or annoying me."
The Satyr harrumphed.
'Indistinguishable for you maybe, I know who my children are."
More heads were popping up next to the first one. In a blink of an eye, four brown goat heads were now looking over the basket at Laura while bleating.
"They're beautiful." Laura said.
The colour returned to the Satyr's cheeks with a vengeance.
Laura reached out a hand towards the basket before snatching it back. She looked to the Satyr.
"Can I err, is it rude to ask to?"
The Satyr chewed her lip for a few seconds before smiling at her.
"Yes that's fine. It's generally considered to be normal to pet them until they start to grow their human features and personality around puberty. After that it would just get weird."
She gently lowered the basket to the ground. Laura gleefully crouched down in front of it and the 'Petting Olympics of Wherever the Hell They Where' began in earnest. Laura's giggles became uncontrollable as the baby Satyrs nuzzled the hands she reached out to them.
"Well isn't this all lovely and tension defusing." Carmilla said.
But annoyingly Laura wasn't paying any further attention to her at this time. Her brain apparently entirely short circuited in the face of the baby Satyrs. In fact both Laura and the Satyr woman seemed to have forgotten her presence. It was nice, she supposed, that a fight seemed now unlikely but being ignored left her feeling vaguely put out.
She stamped her foot.
"Hey! Kind of things still happening here, we still don't know where we are or who you are." She pointed at the Satyr. "As well as bunch of other questions."
Laura looked up kindly at the Satyr.
"Hi I'm Laura, Laura Hollis. She's Carmilla." She reached up a hand.
The Satyr reached down and took it.
"Amaya, my name is Amaya. I live here, this is my house."
She looked pointedly at Carmilla when she stated that last part.
"Nice to meet you Amaya, Amaya the Satyr that has a good ring to it. Your children are lovely. I'm genuinely sorry we scared you, we really did come by accident. We came through a portal we didn't know where it led. Did you… know you had a room with a portal in it?"
Amaya seemed shocked.
"Wait you came through the portal upstairs? The one that leads into Count Bagucci's Tunnels?"
Laura nodded.
"Well we don't know any Count Bagucci but that sounds about right, we were in some tunnels. We don't need to intrude on your home any longer. We just need to know where we are so we can get to where we're going. We need to get to the Uffizi, well actually we need to sneak in to the Uffizi if we're being totally honest. It's a long story."
Amaya looked thoughtful.
"You need to sneak into the Uffizi Gallery? Well if I'm being honest. Especially with one of you seeming quite nice. I think I might be able to help you there."