roadrunnermuses | meme } { open rp post

Laughing softly, with her mouth closed, Artemis continued to limp down the hall. At the far end were a pair of double doors, one of them slightly ajar. She pulled that one open, stepping aside to gesture Sam in.

The library was an enormous room with two levels. The first level was nicely crammed with bookshelves and tables, covered in papers and tomes and items of varying states of decay. In the corner of the room was a spiral staircase, leading up to the second floor. It was more or less a balcony surrounding the bottom. The walls up there were nothing but bookshelves, filled with nothing but books.

The lights were dim. The room was more or less empty, except for two twenty-somethings, sitting at a corner table. Clearly, they'd been doing research, judging from the number of books around them. And clearly, they'd lost interest, since they were busy snogging each other.

Artemis cleared her throat firmly. The guilty-looking couple pulled apart. "Two of my field agents," Artemis muttered. Then she jerked her head toward the door. "Out."

There was no telling them twice. The embarrassed couple was up and rushing for the door.

Sam was too busy focused on the amount of books around them to really care about the couple that was making out. Sam and books have a very special relationship. If Dean was here he would be mocking him for it right now.

"This is ... amazing."

Sam Winchester: one track mind.

If Artemis had any doubt about his claim, about being a man of letters, that put it to rest for the moment. Yes, he was a younger, kinder, much more interesting version of Charles Something-or-Other.

And there was something else. Artemis couldn't quite put her finger on it. Something about what she'd seen in his aura. Yes, he was worthy of further study, to be certain.

"Feel free to have a look around," she told him. Who knew what she could glean from whatever drew his interest? "The lab reports will take a while to come back. We seem to have an abundance of time on our hands."

Edited 2013-10-07 02:43 (UTC)

Sam smirks a bit before turning to face her. "You sure about that? Because I disappear into those stacks, and I may never come out again." It's a real problem. That much is certain.

Artemis carefully sat down in a chair, lifting her leg onto the seat of another. "I wish all my operatives had your enthusiasm," she said. "A lot of them are less than interested in the research parts of our work."

She rested her chin on her fingers, watching him carefully; both his exterior and his aura.

"How is it that you're a man of letters? Because I know your kind was killed off in the 1950s."

"Actually, they weren't." Sam isn't sure how much he really wants to tell her, since they're in the saving the world business and all, he figures it can't hurt to share a little. "They just went into hiding - or the survivor did, at least."

"Hiding," she repeated. She said the word like it tasted sour in her mouth. Artemis had little patience for that sort of thing. She held other world savers to a high standard. A very, very high standard.

A self-sacrificing standard, sometimes.

"Well," she said, resting her chin on her fingertips. "We'll put you lot to use again." It was meant as a compliment. In her Malkavian way. "The world could do with a few more thinkers."

Edited 2013-10-10 12:37 (UTC)

"Yeah," Sam retorts. Honestly, he can't blame the guy. After dealing with Abaddon himself, he can understand why they never wanted to be anywhere near the supernatural again. "They were researchers. Analysts. They weren't ready to take on something like Abaddon when they summoned her, and when you're the only one of your group left, you get a ... weird sense of self preservation."

But that's ... not what he's here for.

"But I agree. Sometimes if people thought a little more, the world might be a little easier to live in."

It took a lot to rattle Artemis. Unlike her sisters and her father, she prided herself on being rather unflappable most of the time.

But her jaw dropped just then.

"Abaddon," she repeated. "The men of letters were the idiots responsible for..."

Manners and finishing sentences didn't seem necessary to Artemis. Immediately, she was up on her feet again, hobbling across the room to a stack of books. Muttering to herself. "See the shadows cross the sky, our time has come, the raven flies. The fates have called, the blackness speaks..."

She pulled down a book and started to flip through it.

"...we heard the screams and felt the shrieks..."

Sam listens, trying to put together the pieces about this girl, but he still can't find what makes sense. There are too many unanswered questions. "Well, you don't have to worry about her anymore. She's in pieces, encased in cement and buried where no one will ever find her."

Artemis held up a hand to signal silence, still flipping through the book, still talking to herself in a sing-songy tone of voice.

"Thunder rolled, winds grew fierce, lightning struck the earth was pierced."

Finally, she came to the page she was looking for. It addressed Abaddon and another, more recent demon disaster (as far as she knew) that her people had stopped a few years back. Her eyes quickly flicked back and forth, scanning the text. Artemis' Aramaic wasn't fantastic, but she got the general idea.

"I tell you now," she murmured, limping back over to the table. "Listen close. Those who hear learn the most." She set the book down on the tabletop, jabbing her finger at a particular passage.

And when Abaddon is free
Then shall three infernalists walk the earth
To its very bottom to free
The demon Baal

"This just happened," she sighed. "A few years back. In Australia."

"Wait, Baal?" Sam's eyebrows climb into his hair as he looks over the passage, one hand coming up to rub against the back of his neck. "Why would they wait so long, though? She was freed in the fifties."

A beat.

"And I thought Baal was just another name for Lucifer?"

"The infernalists needed to build a power-base," Artemis told him, turning the page. On the next was a handdrawn sketch of three people; a regal-looking man with cold, hard eyes, an athletic woman with ferret-like features, and a scholarly man in a bowtie. Names were neatly written beneath each. Gregory. Alice. Jack. Perfectly normal names, considering the book. "This one," she said pointing to Mister Bowtie, "was the real problem. In order to get enough power, he traded in the souls of supernatural creatures. Messy bit of business."

Artemis turned to look up at Sam, a little surprised when she realized that he was standing right next to her. Her singular focus had apparently distracted her a little bit.

Shaking her head slightly, she straightened up again. Her leg was really starting to bother her now, but she'd be damned if she was going to let that get in her way. "Lucifer," she told him, "was an angel. Baal is a demon. Two very different things."

"Trust me. I'm well aware of what he was." He was his meatsuit once. It was fun. "But according to most records, Ba'al was just another name for him. He had a ton of titles, but I was sure that that was one of them, not a separate demon entirely."

Artemis tapped her finger against the page, disappearing into that place that only she could see for a moment. She might have stayed there for a very long time, had the door to the library not opened suddenly.

A young woman, probably no older than twenty, but dressed like a thirty-something turning tricks in Atlantic City, walked in, carrying a tea tray and a file folder under her arm. She didn't seem fazed by Artemis staring off into space. She just smirked, setting the tray down. "Coffee for the warm-blooded," she said, giving Sam a wink, "and the report on the dead puppy."

The woman snapped her fingers once in Artemis' face. Artemis snapped out of her trance, snatching the file from her. "That will be all for now, Tima," she said.

"Whatever. I'll be in the kitchen. Give a shout if you want something to eat, pretty boy. It's taco night."

Sam just stares, watching in the trance for the moment before the door opens, and his eyebrows go up at the mention of Taco Night. "I'll ... keep that in mind."

But for now, he's just going to go for the file folder to see if he can get a look at what they were looking into.

Artemis gave a faint grunt and a nod to Fatima as she departed. Just as the door closed behind her, Artemis mumbled, "And change out of that dress."

But it was probably too late.

Folding her arms, she leaned against the table, discretely taking the weight off of her bad leg. "In the spring of 2007, the infernalists opened a portal," she said. "To some other place. We never were able to figure it out. For about thirty minutes, there was a demon roaming the streets of Perth. Eventually, the infernalists and the demon were shoved back into the portal by a team of Cainites and werewolves. Immediately after, the werewolves banished absolutely all supernatural creatures from Australia. Precious few got out alive. Since then, we've had no idea what's become of Perth or that portal."

"Spring of ... " Well, fuck. Sam runs a hand over his face, and he exhales slowly. "It was a Devil's Gate." It had to have been. Especially considering that Jake was on this side of the world opening one at the same time. "It was a friggin' door to Hell."

"A Devil's Gate."

Artemis ran her tongue along the tops of her teeth. She knew precious little about Devil's Gates. Of course, she'd heard of them before. And there were doubtlessly volumes and volumes worth of information, somewhere in the stacks of the library.

If only they'd known when her operative was in Perth. Perhaps they could have prevented the bloody thing from ever being opened and the werewolves wouldn't have...

"It's still open," she said abruptly, standing up straight and knocking over the sugar bowl on the coffee tray. "All the recent werewolf attacks in Los Angeles." Her fingers danced through the air, like she was playing the piano. "Something's connected. There are dots all over the chess board. What's the link? Where is it? Where is it?" She turned in a slow circle, conducting her private, little symphony. Then she snapped her fingers and pointed at Sam. "The file. Does it say anything about the werewolf being Australian?"

Sam doesn't like the idea of there being an open Devil's Gate anywhere in the world. But he keeps his mouth shut on that and just flips open the file, paging through the information.

"You can get that from a wolf?"

Artemis looked up, giving him a look that made it very clear she thought he was a bit thick.

"They carry drivers licenses," she told him dryly.

Her mind was racing. Thoughts piling on each other too quickly. She dug her hands into her hair, bending at the waist. Werewolves. Microchips. Perth. Devil's Gate.

"Bloody hell..."

Oh. Of course they do.

Sam watches her, trying to see where the gears in her head were turning, but unfortunately he isn't entirely following. "That doesn't necessarily sound good."

She huffed out an impatient sigh, pulling on her hair a little bit. "Can't think," she mumbled. "Can't think like this. The pieces aren't coming together the right way."

And with her trademark abruptness, Artemis stood up straight. She pointed to Sam. "Follow me, bring the file with you."

Without waiting for a reply, she started out of the room again, heading down the hall as fast as her injured leg would take her. Along the way, she pulled off her father's duster. Artemis was an incredibly slender, frail girl beneath. She seemed to lose more than half of her mass in that one, simple action.

Sam doesn't complain, just follows and decides it's probably better not to ask. He watches as she sheds her coat, and is curious, but doesn't ask. He isn't sure he really wants to know.

Still, he's got the file in his hand and is still looking it over.

Artemis led him to the end of the hall, to a bathroom. It was old, like the rest of the mansion. The floor had uneven, little white tiles and the bathtub had feet and a rickety railing holding up a curtain.

She hung the coat on the corner of the door, then pointed to a rusty folding chair, propped in the corner of the room. "Start reading me anything in the file that seems interesting," she ordered Sam. "There's a missing piece. Something connecting this attack to the Devil's Gate."

And then she turned on the tap for the shower.

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