By the time they'd undone her bindings and shut the light off it took a minute or two for her eyes to adjust, and by then it seemed like most of the people in the council she'd been speaking to were long gone. Only one remained, the same guy she'd seen before, standing nearby and speaking to one of the guards. She still felt groggy, and she raised a hand to her temple to massage softly just underneath the fur. "You assholes have got to stop drugging me."
There wasn't an immediate reply, but the man took a chair from the other side of the actually rather large table - she hadn't been able to get a good look at it before, she was sat on one side and on the other side there were at least twenty chairs all crammed together - and placed it down in front of her, facing her, then settled himself into it. "There was no other way to speak, unfortunately. One of your kind is too dangerous to leave to their own devices."
Loonie rolled her eyes and let her head hang, supported on one hand while the other rested on her thigh. "Maybe I wouldn't be so dangerous if I didn't feel hungover from the shit you keep stabbing me with."
"That is quite possibly true, but not a risk many of them were willing to take." He leaned himself back in his chair and pulled out a small wooden pipe. "Do you mind?"
She glanced up, then shook her head. "No."
He nodded, then lit himself up and took a few puffs. "There are just a few more questions - personal ones - and then you'll be allowed to go. If you'll answer them, you are under no obligation."
Loonie lifted her head slightly to peer around the room - she didn't exactly see how she'd be leaving. "How am I getting out of here anyway? And to where? Back to Victoria's?"
A soft chuckle answered her first. "No. She's been reassigned, given a new cover, and so on. They are currently arranging somewhere for you to live. Somewhere we can watch."
"So you're saying I'm waiting here anyway." She pursed her lips, then glanced over to him. "Fuck it, ask your shit."
"Thank you. You mentioned before that hunters end up in Hell, can you explain?"
Loonie ran her fingers over her eyebrows. "Your 'commandments' aren't suggestions. They're commands. And hunters break, like, at least two. 'Don't murder' doesn't just apply 'when it's convenient', it means don't. No matter what. Animals and shit don't count, apparently, but anything that can properly think, like us..." She shrugs her shoulders.
He puffed several times, a small cloud of wispy smoke floating off into the semi-still air around them. "I see. Concerning, but not unexpected... How did you arrive?"
"Portal. There was a... grimoire. I didn't bring it with me, too dangerous."
"And the pistol was not?" He raised a brow.
She loosed a quiet growl. "I couldn't just... leave it. They'd find... what I'd done, they'd know immediately..."
He remained quiet for several long moments after that; one of the guards walked over from the door to whisper to him though he waved the man away. "And this... Imp, your father-"
"Adopted." She didn't like how quiet her voice had gotten.
"I see. You... feel remorse for this? What you've done? You regret it?"
Loonie let her head hang, and she lifted one hand to rub at one of her eyes. "Yes." She couldn't manage more than a whisper without sounding like she was choking up again.
He didn't answer for what felt like at least a minute, though she could hear him puffing away. "We've destroyed the pistol. Your spellbook will be returned, it's simply a succubi's tome, without their magic you could not do much of anything with it." He gestured vaguely with a hand. "They're waiting for you outside."
Great, a succubus spellbook. She hadn't known what it was when she'd left or she'd not have bothered - there were so many of those floating around on the black market and on the surface that it probably wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. The weapon, though, was surprising. "You... destroyed it?" She lifted her head enough to look at him.
"We agree with you that it's too dangerous to be left behind", he offered.
She breathed a soft 'huh', then slowly stood, groaning at just how beat to shit she felt. Everything ached, she felt vaguely dizzy, and she could feel her fur matted in several places. "Where am I going?", she muttered toward him.
Rather than answer, he simply indicated her toward the large double doors she'd entered through.
She'd been escorted out of the building by at least three of the huge guards - she had no idea where they seemed to have gotten a regular supply of brick shithouses to act as their private forces - and bundled up into a black van. She had to admit she felt nervous, they could be taking her to the woods to have her shot as far as she knew, send her back anyway... She wouldn't put it past them. But as they drove she could see lights becoming more and more frequent as they went along, indicating that they were heading back into the city.
Questions asked to the guards went unanswered, so she spent the time trying to clean herself up, at least a little. Combed claws through hair, licked at her wrists to try to clean them off, she still felt like shit but at least she was... vaguely presentable, though she couldn't do anything about the bloodstains on her clothes. She felt like she was getting a feeling of vague hostility from the guards, but none of them spoke even a word to her. Even when the van ground to a halt.
Loonie looked at the guards, but none of them moved, so once the van stopped she reached for the door handle - still no reaction - and when she pulled it open she found herself stepping out into a part of the city she actually knew. Kind of a worse part, not the worst but definitely not great either. She took the chance to look around herself, then noticed a red sedan sitting on the side of the street. There weren't any other cars, and she didn't think that after everything they'd just dump her on the street and leave her be, so she wandered toward it.
As she approached a familiar face emerged as the window was rolled down - Victoria. "Should have guessed it'd be you", Loonie muttered. "They said you were reassigned."
"I was. One last favor, though." She reached into the car and pulled out a small envelope to pass toward the hound. "Listen-", she looked over toward Loonie, keeping hold of the envelope for a moment.
"What? Gonna tell me to cooperate again?" Loonie did at least lean down, though she grumbled to herself as she did.
Victoria actually laughed. "No. I just wanted to say that I was sorry." When Loonie scoffed in surprise, she shook her head. "I know, I know. If anyone else had been in charge of your interrogation, it'd have been far, far worse, trust me. They wouldn't have asked questions, they'd have just dragged it out of you with drugs and torture, and who knows what else."
"What was the fucking bat for then?"
"Baby steps." She shrugged her shoulders. "Even among us, there were people rooting for you-", she puts her hand on her chest, "And people who wanted to use a lot worse than a bat. Put on a show, make them happy..." She swayed her head from side to side. "Yeah, I didn't like it but you put on an act, make them feel like they're getting what they want, and we get what we want." She held the envelope out toward the hound.
Loonie snatched it away with another growl. "I sure as fuck didn't appreciate being used as a fucking punching bag."
"Could have been a lot worse. You did good." Victoria rolled up her window, then before Loonie could say much else she pulled away, leaving the hound to stand in the middle of the street by herself.
"Fucking... pricks." She sighed, then walked to stand over on the sidewalk. Her foot nudged into something and she glanced down to see a familiar paper bag. A quick peek inside revealed the spellbook she now knew was basically worthless. "Great." She rolled her eyes and picked it up, stuffing it up under her arm as she peeled the envelope open to see what they'd given her or done.
Inside was what looked like a lease, and a small letter that was written on a sticky note attached to it. "Best we could do on short notice. Tracking spell in place. Don't move out." Loonie frowned after she read it, then lifted it to read the lease she'd been given. Six months paid in advance. She had six months to get something like an actual life underfoot before her last lifeline ran out. There was an address on the lease and a small bronze-colored key taped to the bottom of the paper. She lifted the paper to read it, then compared it to the other buildings nearby, finding one to match in a several-story brick building on the side of the street she was currently on.
A quick glance at her phone confirmed that it was getting late in the evening... though a glance at the date told her it'd been an entire day. "Fuuuck...", she groaned. There were two messages, though, one from Millie's phone that she didn't read yet, another from Victoria. 'Things sorted with work, still have job.' Well, that was something too. She decided the best thing she could do was head into the building, find her new 'home'. She assumed it'd be some kind of apartment.
When she headed into the building and presented her lease, the woman working the desk raised a brow - whether at her appearance or the lease or what, she wasn't entirely sure, it could have been anything - and directed her toward her room. Second floor, third on the left. She tore the key away from the letter and inserted it into the lock and the door clicked open. The building itself didn't look so bad - not great, it looked and smelled old, and in a few places she could see water stains on the walls - but she'd lived in worse before.
As the door opened, the hound found herself standing in a fairly small apartment. Kitchen off to the left in an alcove, door open to a bathroom in the back, bed right in front of her - at least it looked soft - loveseat and tiny ancient-looking TV on the right. And she had a balcony too. On the bed sat another envelope, though this one looked a little fatter than the one she'd been given. "Couldn't have just given me all this at once?", she muttered with a sigh as she sat down onto the bed. It creaked, and it wasn't as soft as the one she was used to back home, but it was better than a couch.
A quick swipe with her claw opened this new envelope and a whole slew of documents came sliding out, along with some cash. Loonie just blinked a few times as she picked up one of them, it looked like some kind of birth certificate, and there was an ID, a driver's license, there was even a diploma in here. "Lunar High, very funny." She muttered, then picked up one of the IDs to look at it. Loonie Wu- "Are you fucking- Loonie Wulfen? Really?" She sighed and let herself fall back onto the bed, one of her hands resting on her forehead.
She'd expected bad considering they said 'short notice' but she hadn't really considered that they'd apparently spontaneously develop a sense of humor, too. At least it was something, though, and the bed felt soft enough as she lay there. Another glance at the ID suggested they thought she looked mid-20s. At least they hadn't mistaken her for a kid, or worse, old. She could deal with that.
As Loonie lay on the bed and poked through the envelope and found everything else they'd stuffed inside of it - there was a whole identity in there - she could actually feel something vaguely approaching hope. She tried to squash it down, she didn't want to get too ahead of herself, but laying here on a bed in a room that was hers actually felt kind of okay. Down in the very bottom of the envelope was some cash - not much, just a few bills - but enough that she wouldn't starve until she started getting paid at work. And now that she had an ID she could actually try to find somewhere better than a shit coffee shop.
Maybe things would finally be looking up.