Kage crouched on the rooftop across from the rooftop, wondering yet again how he was always getting himself into these sorts of train wrecks. Certainly, this wasn't his idea of a normal Saturday night....

Earlier that week...

Kage slunk quietly down Cherrywood street, on his way to have a good look around the place Tasha had been attacked. She'd asked him for help the night before, at the Red Dragon Inn, and this was as good a place as any to start. He took a sharp left, and swapped an apple in the hands of an old woman for a gold crown. She wailed for a moment, then looked into her palm, and ran away gleefully.

The last potential witness gone, he opened his mind to feel the area, and maybe determine what had really happened here. A sense of overwhelming hunger washed over him, the taste of sweet blood on his tongue. A being of great power had attacked Tasha, a Being that followed the tradition of the Vampyr as they were known in his place and time. He clambered up a nearby wall, and took to the rooftops of the city, Off to the WestEnd, where he moght find a few answers...

Three days ago

Kage kicked his feet up on the table, and took a long pull off the mug in his hand. Rachael, the overly-busty barmaid for the Singing Swan, swatted him across the back of his head with her towel, grabbed his heavy combat boots, and swung them handily off the table.

"Ye may be here to put on a show, ye flaming rogue, but ye'll not be getting your filthy bootprints on me tables. Ye try it again, and I'll haul ye out o' here, never ye mind the bouncers. They're here for show, and they bleedin' well know it."

Kage leaned back in his chair. "My humble apologies, then milady. I meant no disrespect to your fine establishment."

She gave him a level look. "This place may be a nasty dive, but everyone is expected to mind the rules o' the house. If ye're planning on starting a fight, I suggest you take it outside before it arrives."

He shrugged. " Actually, I'm rather depending on that attitude of yours to prevent such a thing. I didn't figure the local Drug Lords would have the steelies to try anything stupid with you around."

She favored him with a small smile. "Don' ye be forgettin' tha,' you, and maybe ye'll have a chance at a bit more out of the Swan."

He glanced at her, and then the door. "If you'd've caught me a few months back, I might have taken you up on that. I've already got a young lady that's very dear to me, and I'll be dead before I hurt her."

Rachael spun around, the hem of her thin overskirt lifting with the motion. "If ye ever change yer min' let me know, eh?"

He shrugged, and looked up as three men entered the bar. The first was a dimuitive, dapperly dressed man in a red and orange colored patchwork coat, bright green slacks, and blue suede shoes with bright orange spats. The other two were in poorly-cut brown wool business suits, entirely too small for the men in them. On the whole, they looked like they'd much rather be anywhere else in a loincloth, oiling up.

The little man brushed off the seat of the chair, and sat down daintily across the table from Kage. "I hear you've been roughing up my boys," he said solemnly. "The book was an interesting thought, but certainly not what I'd paid for. Where's the package?"

Kage shook his head. 'This isn't about your dope, and you weren't going to get what you paid for from Ol' One-eye at any rate. Was packed with flour, not whatever you were after. I did with it exactly what I told Billy I was going to do to it. I burned it."

The little man turned red with rage. "Do you have any idea who you're dealing with' I ought to have done with you right now, your little puke!"

Kage rolled his eyes into the back of his head. "Yep. You're Ragmin Ravenheart, a short punk in a garish looking jacket and orange spats. You deal drugs for fun and profit, and according to all my sources, you're short enough in all the correct respects to need drugs to keep a woman. Now, you going to piss and moan about a half-pound of flour, or do you want to know why I summoned you?"

Ravenheart's eyes bulged furiously as he made strangled noises in his throat. Kage stood, and set his chair politely aside.

He put both hands on the table, and leaned in. "Someone's got every punk inside of a hundred kilometers of this place scared stupid. I'm betting you know exactly who he is. Maybe you even know where he might be found. I got your money from Ol' One-eye before he could spend it, less the price of a half-pound of flour. You tell me what I want to know, and I'll give it to you. If not, then I get to keep it, and you get to keep breathing. Sound fair?"

Ravenheart looked at him sullenly. "I'll find out. He's been feeding on my employees."

Kage shrugged. "Can't have that, can we? Have Billy drop me a note when you work it out. Until then, you're dismissed."

Ragmin Ravenheart stood, took three or four careful steps back, and bolted through the door, leaving his two goons to trail in his wake."

Kage looked at the puddle on the floor around the chair Ravenheart had vacated. "Some people's children." He tossed a gold crown out of the recovered purse to Rachael.

"Sorry about the mess."

Kage sat up painfully. Fourteen hours watching on his stomach watching the same spot through the 'scope had made him stiff and sore. He had yet to see any one from this 'Winter's Brood' Ravenheart had told him about, even though the little punk had been sure that this was the right place.

He shook off the early morning's chill, and blinked blearily into the light of the false dawn. He had to meet Tasha in the marketplace in a little while, and although he had the name of a group, and a location, but almost no information on the group's leader, which most spoke of only in an almost religious tone.

"This guy has GOT to go down," he muttered to himself. "He's making my teeth itch." He carefully packed the heavy rifle away in it's individual components. He stuffed it in the black net bag he'd brought for that purpose. He swung himself off the side of the building, and carefully climbed down the drainpipe. jumping the last few feet to the cobbled pavement below. He turned, and headed off towards the marketplace.

As he approached the market, he slowly became aware of an oddness ahead of him, as he saw Tahsa's long silvery hair come out from under her black cap as she pulled it off. He glanced up and away, and spotted his quarry hiding in some nearby garbage. He slipped the black bag off his shoulder, and crouched close to the ground, carefully concealing the rifle behind a metal box nearby.

Kage freed his sword and guns from their bindings, and stealthily approached his target. At the last second, the man froze, and turned to face him.

"You want to stalk my friend here, punk? You have to get through me." He pulled his sword, and took an offensive stance. "Let's dance."