In Bram Stoker's Dracula, after the murder and perversion of Lucy Westenra, Mina Murray and her fiancé and later husband Jonathan Harker join the campaign to avenge Lucy on the titular vampire. In the process, Mina Murray Harker herself falls prey to the vampire, but even entranced and falling under Dracula's spell, she fights back, both interpreting clues for the other vampire hunters and spying on him through their psychic link. She leads the others to Dracula's location, enabling the vampire's ultimate defeat.
XLI
Demon of the Night Winds: Murray and Harker
There was a dark familiarity to slipping through the streets of Omega. Garrus found himself tagging the people he passed in the same old way—a family; probable escaped fugitive; vorcha; merc. No one to worry about. He logged whether the guns he saw were serious threats or just for show, and he logged who knew how to use them. Biotic implants, high-cost tech. Who was drunk, who was high, and who had friends along. He kept his pace casual—fast enough he obviously had business, so the vendors and con artists wouldn't try to stop him, but loose enough that it wouldn't look like that business was urgent. He wove through the crowds, keeping to places where the shadows were deep enough or the glare was bright enough that it would be difficult for anyone to make him out to clearly.
Advertisements played over the PA system. It was the same on a lot of hub worlds, but here, they weren't for skin care products, the new vid that had just come out, or the local news. Here, it was propaganda for the Blue Suns or the batarian slave trade. Advertisements that left an acrid taste in Garrus's mouth and made his plates itch. I hate this place. Garrus felt the ugly rhythm of Omega move through him again and made for Afterlife.
It was probably asking for trouble, heading right back to Afterlife, and alone, after Aria T'Loak had warned him off. Well. Can't be worse than getting all dressed up to go be bait for a serial killer with psychic powers. Garrus had avoided Aria's club back when he lived here, but he knew where the main doors and the VIP section were. Everyone did. If Omega had a heart, Afterlife was it. The club was th the start of the sick, pulsing beat that ran through every street and alley, and everyone on the station had to pass through eventually, like cells in the circulatory system.
As the entrance to the VIP level of the club came into view, Garrus guessed he was probably still several minutes ahead of Shepard and Samara. That was good. Not only would no one connect their entrance to his—crowds ebbed and flowed through Afterlife like the tides—but he would have a chance to get in position before either of them could see him.
Garrus knew Samara didn't want him here. Thought he would jeopardize the mission, that Morinth would somehow mark him and run. He could guess why Samara felt that way. Probably why Shepard didn't argue with her. But Shepard was nervous. He'd seen that. She was a commando, not a spy, and Samara's plan would leave her exposed and way outside of her comfort zone. Morinth was Samara's daughter, though, so, just this once, Shepard had given into the way the justicar wanted to run things when she really would have preferred some backup. Or at least a gun.
It could be that Samara was right to worry about him, Garrus thought. There was no denying he was personally invested in making sure the commander didn't get her brain blown up embracing eternity with Samara's daughter, and it wasn't beyond the range of possibility that that personal investment could affect something about his approach here that Morinth might pick up on and get spooked by. Personally, though, he thought Samara was taking a bigger risk tailing Shepard herself. Morinth had no idea Shepard or anyone with Shepard was hunting her, but she'd been wary of Samara for centuries.
Still, could we have tagged someone else for this? Garrus played with the idea for a minute. Everyone on the Normandy from Gardner to Massani would want to protect Shepard from this—as their captain and the leader of their mission. They were all loyal to her, admired her, were ready and proud to follow her into hell tomorrow or the next day. There were enough of them that Samara might not consider too close to Shepard or likely to hover over her. But not enough of them with experience tailing a mark. Goto. Maybe.
But it was an inescapable fact: Garrus didn't want anyone else on this. Not here. Not on Omega. And not when it was Shepard on the ground.
Garrus hoped he was just being paranoid, that Shepard and Samara were on top of this, they wouldn't need him, and he could go for mods in a bit without anyone but Joker ever knowing he'd been here. But if Shepard's assuming Samara knows what she's doing, and I assume that she doesn't, at least we're covered from every angle. They were too close to the assault on the Collectors to send Shepard alone and unarmed against a serial killer with the psychic ability to manipulate and control her victims.
Serial rapist, if she's manipulating consent.
The name Nef had given the bouncer weeks ago still worked to get Garrus into the VIP area of Afterlife. The guy gave Garrus a stern warning not to start any trouble. He promised he wouldn't—Morinth will start the trouble—and the bouncer opened the door for him.
The pulsing dance beat of Afterlife filled his ears again. The lights here spun in hypnotic patterns in different, more feverish colors than in the main area of the club. Everyone on the floor, at the bar, and at the tables that surrounded both had a sheen of money and success to them. But otherwise, the VIP area at Afterlife seemed a lot like the public area where Aria T'Loak held her court. Aren't as many dancers either.
The layout of the room was difficult. The dance floor was arranged around a central pillar. Circular half walls separated it from tables and alcoves where people ate, drank, and rested. Plenty of corners and shadows to hide in.
But there was also a stairway up to a balcony area. Garrus took it, and smiled. There weren't as many people up here—all the action was down below. And he'd been right. From up here, he any view of the lower level would be visible in a few steps to the left or right. He could see the bar, the entryway, the dance floor. The door that led back to the main section. But it would be hard for anyone on the lower level to see him over the wall that encircled the balcony.
And no one ever looks up.
Garrus left his rifle clipped to his hardsuit for now. He wouldn't shoot in here if he didn't have to. Too many civilians. And if he went for a gun, a couple people would be sure to notice, and then other people would look to see what the first ones were looking at. He'd be made. If he looked like someone minding his own business?
So Garrus sat at a table in the center of the balcony, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms, bringing up his omni-tool, like he had work to do but wanted to enjoy the music and the dancers while he did it. The seeming task would make him look unavailable. Unapproachable. Beneath interest. And the table was in the shadow of the sculpture hanging in the center of the club.
He didn't have to wait long for Shepard and Samara. According to his visor, they came into the club half an hour after he did. From his position on the balcony, he saw them, standing behind a wall on the lower level in the deepest shadow in the room.
Garrus scanned to left and right. If Morinth was near his position, she would be able to see them too. But he didn't see a lone asari nearby. Just a group of turian businesspeople and a salarian-asari couple. He glanced at the salarian's partner more closely, but she looked young, and too wide-eyed and innocent, somehow, for the mark they were after. Shepard and Samara were clear.
He couldn't see either of them clearly yet, but his visor had tagged them, and Shepard was out of her armor, but Samara was wearing hers. Two seconds' work on his omni-tool remote-activated her radio, and their voices came through his suit.
"You must go in alone," Samara was saying. "Morinth will be watching. Like any predator, she is cautious. You must pique her interest enough that she will approach."
It occurred to Garrus that while they knew Morinth had met Nef here and come here with her often, they had no guarantee that she would be here any time today. How long can we stake this club out before we have to go? Hope we get lucky.
"When you are face to face," Samara told Shepard, "subtly encourage her to invite you to her apartment. I'll follow discreetly, and when you are alone, I'll spring the trap. Know this: until I get there, you are in great peril. She will be planning to inflict horrors on you. If you are not careful, you will want her to."
So that's a yes on psychic control of her victims. Great.
Shepard's voice came through, a little faint, but still audible. "How can I spark her interest when I'm not even talking to her?"
Samara sounded thoughtful when she spoke next. "Courage or suicidal bravery could attract her. Hurt someone in defense and she will be excited, but pick a fight and she'll be bored. Show skill at working smoothly through a nightclub crowd; she will be intrigued. She'll want you the moment she sees you. The rest is just a matter of overpowering her caution."
Always nice to hear you're attractive, Garrus mused. Somewhat less nice to hear a serial killer will find you irresistible.
Shepard sounded nervous too. "How do I convince her to take me home?"
"She admires strength and directness and vigor," Samara answered. "Modesty, chivalry, or meekness frustrate and bore her. Violence excites her. You've killed, Shepard. She'll like that."
Shepard won't like that she likes that. Garrus could almost hear her fidgeting when she replied. "I don't know about this, Samara. We're going to need careful timing here."
"I will be near, and I will come for you, Shepard," Samara promised. "Trust me, as I trust and honor you."
And if she screws it up, I'm right here, Shepard. I've got you. Just like always.
Shepard let out a deep breath. "Let's get started."
Shepard's silhouette moved in the entryway, but Samara reached out and grabbed her wrist. "Shepard, we only get one chance at this," she whispered. "Any mistake and Morinth will disappear. If you're the least bit unsure, come talk to me. I will wait here, and Shepard? Thank you. I do not share this burden easily, and you are the only soul I can imagine sharing it with."
Garrus saw Shepard's head nod. Then she walked out into the room proper, and Garrus hissed in a breath. It was totally bizarre, Joker had told him once of Shepard in a dress. Like watching one of those crappy vids they sometimes make of her, except it was really her, not some asari romance star
Turian fashions, for men and women, didn't show a lot of skin. For one, though turian hide had some natural protection, it just wasn't a good idea to go around without some synthetic protection too on Palaven. Naturally, culturally, most turians were in the habit of covering up, whether they had actually been born on Palaven or not. In turian fashion, men and women showed their taste in the fabrics they wore, the colors and patterns they chose.
After almost a decade on the Citadel and a couple years on Omega, Garrus was past expecting aliens to conform to the turian fashions he'd grown up with. Asari preferred long, tight, slinky dresses, with interesting cutouts.
But he'd been unprepared to see Shepard in a dress like the one she was wearing now.
Like Shepard's other civvies, this wasn't asari-style. The dress was Earthen to the core. Not only were both arms left completely bare, but the length didn't even cover Shepard's backward knees. Her calves stretched out beneath the dress, tan and muscled and seeming to go on for kilometers. Instead of boots, she wore black slingback heels. The collar was high enough, mostly covered in a sort of vest piece, but the front dipped low to a sort of curved neckline designed to show off that cleavage area humans and asari thought was so important. Garrus still didn't get why people were supposed to be impressed by that, but the expanse of collarbone the neckline left open, accentuated by a short, silver necklace, made him swallow hard.
He saw half a dozen, eight people turn to look at her. The strobe lights flashing on her yellow hair, still pulled back in a style that smacked of the military, but more loosely now, so a few curls fell around her face and ears. The lean, deadly strength of her. Through his visor, he could see she'd put on makeup for the night club too. Longer lashes than usual and a red-brown lip that . . .
The people watching Shepard, Garrus. The people watching her.
Samara would be making the same scan. Garrus stood slowly from the table he sat at and backed farther into the shadows on the balcony, behind an elevated pole dancer.
Below, Shepard had walked onto the dance floor. She was talking to a turian and an off-duty dancer. The dancer looked angry, afraid. The turian was coming onto her. He was being aggressive about it too. He looked drunk, but not drunk enough that he wasn't a valid threat to the smaller asari dancer. She pushed out at him, yelling something. She was standing under a speaker, though, and Garrus couldn't hear her over the pulsing dance music.
Shepard grabbed the turian's shoulder, turning him to face her instead. She folded her arms over her chest and said something, challenging him. The turian raised his hands, moving away from the asari and toward Shepard instead. He looked her up and down, leered, then hooked his arm around Shepard's waist and moved his head toward her cheek to lick it.
Ooh. Bad idea.
Shepard sidestepped out of the guy's grip and stepped down hard on his spur. In the same movement, she reached up and grabbed his head fringe and pulled it forward, using the leverage to throw the guy over her hip and into the center column of the dance floor.
Garrus could hear the bastard's yelp of pain over the music. He grinned.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dancer thanking Shepard, but one of the people watching her had caught his attention—near the bar in the shadows.
So she is here. Morinth looked a lot like her mother. They had the same blue eyes, broad cheekbones, and clear complexion. But the features that were remote and serene on Samara looked dangerous on her daughter. She had a darker, more poisonous-looking color on her lips, and her eyes were darkly lined and shadowed. And her eyes were fixed on Shepard. Hungrily.
Once he had made Morinth, Garrus forced himself to keep scanning the crowd. Samara was worried Morinth would sense someone watching her. He wouldn't give her that chance. He positioned himself instead so that he looked like he was watching one of the dancers on duty.
"Thirsty?"
The voice was turian; flanged with flirtatious subharmonics. Garrus glanced over and saw a turian woman had come to lean against the balcony wall. Her colony markings said she was from Altakiril originally; the plates said midthirties; and the close-clinging layered ivory and violet silk and the heavy scent she wore gave him an idea of what she did. "I promise, I know what to do with a big boy like you far better than she does. Want a drink?"
Garrus smiled at her and looked away, over the rest of the club again. Down below, he saw Shepard walking away from a human male who looked somewhat dazed, or maybe high, shaking her head in seeming bemusement. "Appreciate the offer, but I'm cutting back," he told the turian woman beside him.
The woman shrugged. "Suit yourself, spacer." She walked off in search of a more promising client.
Below, Shepard had moved to the dance floor. Garrus saw her give another asari—a patron, not a dancer—that trademark Shepard smirk and a wink and say something. Garrus was amused. She's a little better at this than I thought she'd be. He wasn't surprised when the asari grinned—in a very pleased and flattered way—twined her arms around Shepard's neck, and started undulating her hips Shepard's direction. Shepard was surprised. She hadn't expected her mostly social advance to be so welcome. She stumbled a bit. Garrus chuckled, bringing up his omni-tool again for cover. You wouldn't think someone so in command of her body in combat would trip over herself dancing. But there it was. Maybe it's the heels. Or the asari hanging all over her.
Of course, the sudden uncertainty after the confident approach turned drop-dead sexy into adorable, and Shepard's dance partner didn't seem at all deterred by her awkwardness. Instead, beaming, she took the lead, taking Shepard through a kind of dance that made it plain she was a little more accustomed to meeting people at clubs than the former Alliance commando that had approached her. Mostly, Shepard managed to follow the asari step for step, but the two of them weren't going to be winning any dance contests. The asari didn't seem to mind; she looked at the planes of Shepard's face and the curls around them with open admiration, and her hands lingered over Shepard's arms and hips.
It would have been funny—Shepard in over her head with the woman she had approached for cover, completely out of touch with exactly how attractive she was—except that the cover was working. Garrus didn't know how observant Morinth was, if she was seeing skill working through a nightclub crowd or evidence of a woman slightly isolated from her peers, but Shepard's real target had circled around the room toward her. Morinth bobbed to the beat, still watching Shepard. She was almost directly opposite Garrus now, and his visor magnified her face as she licked her lips, once, moistening them.
The song ended and transitioned to another. Garrus saw Shepard extricate herself from her dance partner and say something polite. The asari looked disappointed, but she wasn't crushed. She squeezed Shepard's bare shoulder and started dancing by herself to the next song. Shepard walked away from her, quickly, toward the tables by the bar.
Slow down, Shepard. So you weren't into her. That's fine. But try and look like you're willing to meet someone pretty. Morinth has to feel like she has a chance.
It was strange, Garrus thought, as Shepard ordered a drink at the bar and stood back to wait. It was too easy to see the people they met everywhere who wanted Shepard—men, women, humans, asari, drell. It hadn't really occurred to him before how little she actually did to invite the attention. She's Shepard. That's enough. And she teases just about everybody. But she never means it, does she? When they come too close, she freezes right up, every time. Or pretends to completely misunderstand.
Garrus tried to remember if he had ever seen Shepard return anyone's attention, really. If he'd ever heard of her going on anything like a date, or setting up some casual fun on shore leave, maybe. He couldn't remember even hearing rumors from her time as Anderson's XO and before.
I'm the last one to judge if it's been a while, but . . .
Why now?
Why me?
. . .
First sexual encounter since she came back, I'd bet, maybe in a few years, and possibly the last one before we all die past Omega-4, and she's going with a turian she might not even be physically compatible with? Last time before I die, maybe, and I'm going with a human? And it's been months . . .
Sudden insecurity gnawed at his gut, and he had to shake his head to remember what he was supposed to be doing. He found Morinth again, just a few meters away from Shepard, but behind a loud group of celebrating salarians. Shepard hadn't noticed her—or hadn't let on that she had. Instead, drink in hand now, she was focused on two turians at a table by the bar, shoulders squared and mouth grim in a way Garrus recognized.
He saw the problem at once. The turians were up to something. How many times had he sat in a bar with Sensat, Erash, and Melenis just that way, scouting out potential targets? And these guys looked more like thugs than like heroic vigilantes. They were talking quietly together, planning an attack, and Shepard was planning to stop it. Unarmed and in a cocktail dress.
Shepard, don't!
Morinth hadn't approached Shepard yet, and Garrus didn't have a clear line of sight to her position. If Garrus drew his gun to back up Shepard now, he'd also draw attention of other people in the club. Morinth would make him, and if she didn't get immediately that he was here watching Shepard, paranoia would still drive her underground.
Shepard—
Shepard didn't care. She'd spoken to one of the turians, challenging him, confronting him on whatever he and his friend were up to. Immediately both turians were on the defensive, rising from the table, both angry and annoyed. One of them lunged at her.
Garrus's nerves sang as he watched, but it turned out that he hadn't had to worry. Shepard punched her attacker hard, underhand beneath the rib cage, applying by instinct what she had learned in her fight with Garrus back in the shuttle bay on the Normandy. Garrus laughed softly as the turian gasped and doubled over, and Shepard went after this guy's spur too, just like the guy that had been harassing the dancer, using the heel of her formal shoe for additional leverage. The turian went down.
Then Garrus saw the knife in his friend's hand, glinting in the multicolored lights of Afterlife. He tensed again as it arced around toward Shepard, but Shepard had seen it coming too. She dodged under the guy's guard, plucked the knife from his hand as easily as if she was plucking candy from a baby, reversed her grip in an instant, and in an extension of the same movement, used the weight of the knife's hilt in her hand like a bludgeon for an absolutely brutal stroke on her attacker's temple.
Spirits, she's beautiful.
The first guy was up again, clutching his ribs, gasping in pain. He launched back at Shepard, tackling her. He hit, sure enough, but in half a second, she had escaped his hold and thrown him. She kicked him, hard, under the rib cage again. His groan was audible, even under the beat of the club. He didn't move again.
Shepard stood over the thugs, not even breathing hard, knife still held in her hand, and a few more blonde curls floating around her face in the fog from the machines of Afterlife. Garrus laughed again and shook his head. Last time before I die, maybe. If she'll have me, then yes. Yeah. Definitely.
Shepard looked around her, and Garrus turned his head away, into the shadows away from her, toward a passing waitress. She widened her eyes at him, ready to take an order if he had one. Garrus sighed. "Bottle of rexxus. Sirkanius Silver, if you have it," he said, naming a milder social beverage that wouldn't affect him too badly if he had to shoot someone later. "And a glass of water."
"Six credits now, or you can set up a tab," the waitress told him. "I can get one going for you."
"Thanks, but that's not necessary." Garrus fumbled in his gauntlet for his credit chit. Six credits was expensive for a bottle of rexxus. The inflated prices for anything that didn't kill you was hardly the worst thing about Omega, but he still didn't miss them. The colonies are really the only place anything's really affordable, though, and then you get about a quarter of the inventory. Garrus sighed and slid the chit over the table to the waitress. She looked him up and down, and he could see "cheapskate" written all over her face. There goes any service I might have gotten here. In all honesty, he didn't need it. The waitress swiped his chit through her omni-tool and walked off to get his rexxus.
Down on the ground floor, Shepard had stopped looking around the club, and she was still loose in a way that she wouldn't have been if she had seen him. She was talking to a couple of armed batarians in uniform, gesturing toward the groaning turians on the floor. Security. The turians were unceremoniously hauled out by their collars and tossed outside of Afterlife. Shepard had convinced security the two of them were the troublemakers. Nothing else will happen to them, of course, and they'll rob or kill someone else tonight or tomorrow. But their whining won't be able to disrupt these people's drinking tonight.
Garrus put aside his bitterness. He was all too used to the way Omega worked, and right now the objective was not to make it so the two thugs Shepard had beaten would be unable to hurt anyone else. Morinth had finally made her move.
Watching the two of them down below, Garrus was immediately deeply disturbed. Shepard's whole body seemed to soften as Morinth spoke to her. Everything about her relaxed. But to Garrus, nothing about Morinth seemed to warrant that response. She was wearing a version of Shepard's own trademark smirk—the one Shepard had used to flirt with the partying asari earlier—mimicking it with all the skill of an actress that had perfected her craft over a couple of centuries. That smirk, on Shepard, was mischief and brilliance and danger and cool, wry arrogance, and it was one of Garrus's favorite things in the galaxy. On Morinth, it was cold, not merely cool. And it was flat—a mask devoid of all the life Shepard put into it. But Shepard wasn't seeing that.
She was smiling back at Morinth.
Someone cleared her throat, and Garrus turned to see the asari waitress standing beside him again, holding his bottle of rexxus and looking at him clearly watching the scene going on down below. "Thanks," he said. She slid it over the table toward him, rolling her eyes.
"Whatever. Pervert," she muttered, walking away.
Morinth led Shepard to a table back in the shadows, on the other side of the bar from where they had been standing. Garrus's visor tracked trajectories. Damn. No clear shot. Now would be the time to shoot Morinth, he thought. Her guard was down. She was completely focused on Shepard, setting up her own traps now, but Shepard wasn't in huge danger yet. But shoot now, and getting out could be a challenge. Even assuming I could move to a better position without attracting attention at this point.
Still, Garrus considered it for a moment. Samara's plan was for Shepard to leave with Morinth from here and to track her back to her base, but, at Samara's own insistence, Shepard didn't have any of her usual tech on her, so tracking her and Morinth would rely entirely on Samara's skills—or on his. Garrus was pretty confident in those skills . . . but if we lose them . . .
Garrus didn't have a clear shot at Morinth from where he was, but he could see Shepard well enough. His visor had tracked the movement of his eye and had targeted her—her heart rate was up. So was her temperature. There were definite physical signs that she was attracted to Samara's daughter, but there were other signs too, that didn't match up. Shepard's face was the mask now. She wore an expression Garrus hadn't ever seen from her before—a hard, confident, cruel demeanor that fit the character she was trying to portray better than the person she actually was. Strength, directness, and vigor, he remembered Samara telling Shepard in the entrance. Violence. That was the person Shepard was trying to be now—brutal, energetic. Dangerous, but in a more heated and reckless way than her usual steely, reasoned resolve.
The character worked for her a little better than . . . whatever she had been trying to do with the other asari, but it still felt wrong to watch. Like a simulation sequence that seems to be a good idea at the time but ends up firing ten kilometers off target—still damn close in outer space, but the enemy's still completely untouched when you shoot. He could see the cracks: every so often, a flicker of contempt or disgust showed on Shepard's face, magnified at five times in his visor—a curl of her lip, a furrowing of her eyebrows. It never lasted more than a fraction of a second, but it was there. Whatever effect Morinth's abilities might be having on Shepard, she didn't have Shepard completely. What she was saying to Shepard, what Shepard was having to say to her—Shepard didn't like it. It was obvious.
But apparently not to Morinth. Garrus rose and walked along the balcony with his rexxus, acting like he needed to stretch his legs, like he might be thinking of leaving or dancing or hitting on someone he'd noticed in the club, but really moving left to get a better angle on Morinth. Her heart rate and temperature were elevated too. Whatever Shepard was saying to her, it was working. She wasn't seeing the flickers of contempt and disgust that seemed so obvious to Garrus, or else Shepard was successfully projecting them out at everybody else, setting herself and Morinth in a club even more exclusive than Afterlife's VIP area and passing off the reaction she was having to her conversation with Morinth as a contempt for the galaxy in general. Or, maybe, Morinth just wants to believe the story Shepard's telling her. She wants Shepard, and Shepard's making it easy for her to want her. Why not believe it?
He didn't like the way she moved. Morinth was as graceful as her mother was, but while Samara's movements had a sense of confidence and serenity about them—absolute and never hurried, Morinth moved like a snake. Her arms slid and slithered when she gestured, languid and subtle and suggestive. They invited Shepard in, and Shepard was falling for it, leaning forward, toward Morinth. What the hell is this woman? Here was exactly what Garrus had heard in Nef's diary entries right in front of him. Nef had never thought about being with a woman, let alone an alien, and she had wanted Morinth anyway. Shepard knew what Morinth was. Even if she hadn't, Samara's daughter's fascination with violence and brutality, her hedonistic lifestyle, probably weren't in line with anything Shepard would find attractive—
Though damn, she likes you, and you've killed enough people. Why does she like you again?
It didn't matter. He knew Shepard, and she didn't like Morinth. But she wants her anyway.
Garrus's mouth felt dry, despite the rexxus. He drained the rest of the bottle and threw it in a recycling receptacle set into the wall right as Morinth stretched her hand out to Shepard and asked her something. Shepard nodded, and both women rose.
Here goes.
"Spacer," someone said as Garrus started to walk down from the balcony. He turned his head to see the turian woman that had propositioned him earlier. Her golden eyeliner glinted in the flashing lights of the club, and her bangles clinked as she gestured at the door. "The asari's staying about two blocks from here," the woman murmured. "Kima District. Comettail Suites off Blueletter Alley. Nice view of the promenade. Couldn't give you an apartment, but . . ." she shrugged, looking meaningfully at Garrus's visor and guns. "I'm guessing you can work with that much."
Garrus stared at the woman, but he couldn't waste time asking her how she'd seen what he was doing or why she wanted to help, in case she was wrong or lying. "Thanks."
"That bitch gives me the creeps," the woman shrugged. "Came in here five weeks ago. Thought she was competition, at first, but her 'clients' aren't good marks. And they don't come back. I've stayed out of her business, but if you and your pretty human friend are in it . . ." she shrugged again, then grinned. "You get good at people watching, in my line of work. Take her down, Archangel."
Her eyes darted to the emblem on Garrus's armor. Her voice was heavy with irony—she didn't believe for an instant he was actually Archangel. But she was a regular here. She'd seen what Morinth was up to. And she'd seen him watching Shepard, seen Shepard trying to bait someone, and guessed the two of them were out to help.
"I'll do my best," Garrus said, moving past her, after Shepard and Morinth, sweeping for Samara as he went. Up ahead, he spotted a shadow that might have been her by the exposed pipes near the exit, in the faint, red-orange light that would conceal someone in armor like hers. But as Shepard and Morinth moved forward, the shadow melted back into an alley, moving away from the two of them. If that is Samara, she's still more worried about alerting Morinth than she is about losing her.
At the exit of Afterlife, Garrus watched the human and the asari leaving, black dress and black jumpsuit, long enough to be sure they were probably headed toward Kima.
Because of course they are.
Then he turned right into an alley, climbed up a rickety fire escape, and, drawing his pistol, starting climbing for the roofs of the complexes and developments of Omega.
A/N: Beth Shepard might slap me with an energy drain if she knew the comparison I made in the title of this chapter. Mina Murray is a character in a Victorian novel, and in many interpretations of the text, she is often portrayed as either a damsel in distress or so sexually repressed she's eager to run off with a vampire, and Shepard wouldn't appreciate the comparison of her relationship with Garrus to Mina's with Jonathan either. Garrus, I think, would acknowledge the parallels here, though with a pretty wry dislike for them.
The truth is, for a character in a Victorian novel, Mina Murray Harker fights hard against her designated DID role. Dracula influences her but never overcomes her, and she turns what influence he has over her back on him to become a leader on the team seeking his demise. To me, the parallels to a Shepard sent up against an Ardat-Yakshi with psychic influence were striking, especially when Shepard's love interest has to watch what happens to her.
In Dracula, Jonathan Harker and one other character actually end up killing the vampire. I don't intend to veer that far outside canon; Samara will still achieve her own mission. But it doesn't make sense for a character like Garrus to just sit still while Shepard goes up against a serial rapist and killer with the power to affect the mind, especially less than a week before Shepard's supposed to lead them through the Omega-4 Relay, as I've written it here. I imagine many other characters personally invested in the wellbeing of other Shepards might pull something similar: Jack, Miranda, and Thane all three, at least. Thane might be a little better at it than Garrus is, even, as you can see that Garrus isn't as subtle as he thinks he is just now, with at least two other characters (albeit ones that would be particularly observant by training) noticing he was watching Morinth and Shepard, and the still-very-obvious Archangel emblem on his armor.
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LMSharp
