The skal goes down easily and it's last thoughts are a mess of confusion. It doesn't know who this man is, what they're doing, what's going on. It was made and then abandoned, left to fend for it's own. It knows how to fight against humans, not any other vampires.
Behind Reid there's a disgusting gurgling sound, as Dorian tries to breathe through his open neck wound. But the gurgling sound starts to lessen, as Dorian's skin, bones, and muscles start to slowly knit themselves back together. He's not getting up from the floor, though—at least, not until he's fully put back together.
Reid is in the midst of turning when he watches Dorian’s skin start to knit itself back together, his bones and blood and muscles closing up and settling back into place, and Dorian will awaken to Reid, eyes focused very much on him, holding a large red spear seemingly made of blood pointed directly at him.
"Something special," Dorian says, as his neck fully heals. He rolls his head around in a circle, mostly to make sure that everything's healed up properly and there aren't any broken bones. He doesn't try to get up, though. That red spear is certainly worrisome.
"Not you, whatever you are. If I stand upright, will you stab me with that thing?"
"I would prefer not to. Will you attempt to attack me if I dismiss it?" he asks with his fingers shifting a little, the blood flowing a little. It takes a little effort to keep it up like this.
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"I'm aware you are not what I am. There are... signs for such things. And you do not exhibit them."
"The only way I can attack someone is if I use my bare hands," Dorian points out. "Even using that odd sword thing would kick my ass. Now, may I stand up?"
He looks a little annoyed, but that's it—just a little annoyed.
"It's a surgical saw," he corrects mildly before his hand closes and the blood retracts into him for the time being. There's a definite feeling that he feels better for having it in the right place. To the question, though, he nods.
"On a completely different note, you would do best not to get between me and such creatures in the future. Do you even know what that was?"
"Considering it went straight for my throat, I'm assuming some sort of vampire?" Dorian lightly rubs the spot on his throat where the skal went for it before he sighs.
"Really, the last one I dealt with was quite well behaved. I've no clue why this one's practically bloody feral."
"A skal," he specifies, "a weaker form of immortal though, as you say, they are vampires of a kind. And able enough to eviscerate a normal man or woman in their path."
He looks down at the poor unfortunate victim.
"I would do best to ensure this one does not rise the same way. I've no way to determine the strength of that skal's blood should any of it have gotten into the corpse."
Dorian looks down at the corpse with a frown. He lightly nudges it with his foot, as if that will somehow tell them if the poor bloke's turned or not. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't.
"So what? Stake through the heart or leave him outside in the sun?"
"The stake would be less trouble, I think, and far less conspicuous," he says with a wry twist of his lips before he looks into his bag to pull out that very thing. It's a well-sharpened and he'll put it into the skal's heart without further ado. It's clear, however, he does not relish this.
"We would do well to figure out who this is, however, or there will be questions."
Dorian watches, interest on his face, as Reid does the deed and dispatches the poor thing.
"Mmm, there's going to be questions no matter what," he muses, as he looks down at the skal's body. "Questions that I'm sure the police will think about, but not actually say. Every time I'm in the middle of one of these public, messy pieces of work, it's always written down in the books as drugs."
"Do you work with the police?" he asks with a lift of his head and that is an unpleasant thought. To be caught out as something clearly supernatural in front of a police officer is not what he signed up for. Then again, perhaps there was a reason he hadn't gotten his polite nudge. Had he walked into the lion's den?
"What? No. But I know how this works. Buy me a drink sometime and I'll tell you all about how I dealt with this golem in the 1930s. The police weren't too pleased about that."
It's not that Dorian works with the police. It's just that he is exceedingly lassiez-faire about things like this.
There are quite a few things that he’s thinking about from that situation, but he’s not going to focus on any of them specifically. Instead, he breathes in deep and breathes out slowly.
“We should search the room. Information on the identity of our assailant, and the victim, will be useful.”
"Agreed," Dorian says. He reaches into his pocket to pull out a pair of leather driving gloves—he's not going to get his fingerprints more in the room than they already are.
"I'll search the corpses for a wallet, license, anything of the sort."
"I'll check the luggage and the rest of the room," because hopefully he can uses his senses to see places where they would have been poking about, whether there's blood in other places, whether there's something hidden somewhere.
Dorian nods. And, very carefully, he starts to examine the corpses. It's dispassionate, like he's done this plenty of times before (because he has). The skal doesn't have much of anything on him, unfortunately. But the victim...
"Found the victim's wallet," he sighs, as he pulls out the wallet. Opening it, he continues with, "And his driver's license. I'm standing over the corpse of one Taylor Smith."
"I don't know what they did for a living," he says mildly, but he'll turn the bag that he happened to be looking through and inside? Is a number of bundles of cash, straight from the bank, still strapped around. "but it appears that they were here for some manner of transaction."
"Drugs, perhaps?" Dorian reaches down to carefully unbutton his corpse's sleeve. He starts to gingerly roll it up, looking for trackmarks. "I can't think of any other reason why one might go to a hotel like this—aside from monster hunting, of course.
There don't seem to be trackmarks. But a little more examination finds him what the sinking spot in his stomach had made him suspect. He shakes his head as he finds another bag, one closer to the door. It has... well, it has a few bags of donation blood.
Dorian gets up, pokes his head around Reid, and looks down at the bag full of blood.
"What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck," he muses, before squatting down to lightly poke one of the bags, as if confirming that yep, this is blood. "Is an illegal blood drive a thing that your lot often do?"
"I've heard of such things," he admits quietly, "but that operation is a bit more thoughtful about their storage; a bag like that isn't made to keep such samples fresh or unspoiled."
He pauses.
"But it might make sense if-" he glances over at the dead body, the skal. He goes to examine it further. He breathes in deep and slow and breathes out low.
"If you thought you were making an ekon," he says mildly, "and it turns out, you can only make skals."
Reid winces, because the likelihood is small, in his experience. It's not a problem he's ever had, given is origins, but he'd seen the way that 'Lord Redgrave' had behaved when his blood potency was challenged.
Thankfully, a few decades had softened some of his... difficulties with such talks so he can give a proper metaphor.
"How often have you found a man to admit to 'limitations' in his virility?"
He shakes his head. Anyone who'd been this convinced he'd make an Ekon could very well be convinced it was something wrong with the object of his change, something wrong with the process.
Dorian lets out a small, bitter laugh at that. Too true. "Usually dick-waving contests are less murderous," he dryly responds.
He puts the corpse's wallet back in his pocket as he stands back up and makes the thing look like...well, like a corpse. Not like a corpse that's been rummaged through.
"I can't help but wonder. If we can sort out the type of man this vampire goes for, perhaps we could at least have an idea of where to look next. If they're all picked up at a club or work for a certain business, for example."
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Behind Reid there's a disgusting gurgling sound, as Dorian tries to breathe through his open neck wound. But the gurgling sound starts to lessen, as Dorian's skin, bones, and muscles start to slowly knit themselves back together. He's not getting up from the floor, though—at least, not until he's fully put back together.
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“What are you?”
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"Not you, whatever you are. If I stand upright, will you stab me with that thing?"
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Badumching"I'm aware you are not what I am. There are... signs for such things. And you do not exhibit them."
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He looks a little annoyed, but that's it—just a little annoyed.
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"On a completely different note, you would do best not to get between me and such creatures in the future. Do you even know what that was?"
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"Really, the last one I dealt with was quite well behaved. I've no clue why this one's practically bloody feral."
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He looks down at the poor unfortunate victim.
"I would do best to ensure this one does not rise the same way. I've no way to determine the strength of that skal's blood should any of it have gotten into the corpse."
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Dorian looks down at the corpse with a frown. He lightly nudges it with his foot, as if that will somehow tell them if the poor bloke's turned or not. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't.
"So what? Stake through the heart or leave him outside in the sun?"
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"We would do well to figure out who this is, however, or there will be questions."
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"Mmm, there's going to be questions no matter what," he muses, as he looks down at the skal's body. "Questions that I'm sure the police will think about, but not actually say. Every time I'm in the middle of one of these public, messy pieces of work, it's always written down in the books as drugs."
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It's not that Dorian works with the police. It's just that he is exceedingly lassiez-faire about things like this.
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There are quite a few things that he’s thinking about from that situation, but he’s not going to focus on any of them specifically. Instead, he breathes in deep and breathes out slowly.
“We should search the room. Information on the identity of our assailant, and the victim, will be useful.”
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"I'll search the corpses for a wallet, license, anything of the sort."
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"Found the victim's wallet," he sighs, as he pulls out the wallet. Opening it, he continues with, "And his driver's license. I'm standing over the corpse of one Taylor Smith."
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"I think not, actually."
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"What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck," he muses, before squatting down to lightly poke one of the bags, as if confirming that yep, this is blood. "Is an illegal blood drive a thing that your lot often do?"
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He pauses.
"But it might make sense if-" he glances over at the dead body, the skal. He goes to examine it further. He breathes in deep and slow and breathes out low.
"If you thought you were making an ekon," he says mildly, "and it turns out, you can only make skals."
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"I wonder when our man will realize his limitations—if he realizes his limitations in the first place."
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Thankfully, a few decades had softened some of his... difficulties with such talks so he can give a proper metaphor.
"How often have you found a man to admit to 'limitations' in his virility?"
He shakes his head. Anyone who'd been this convinced he'd make an Ekon could very well be convinced it was something wrong with the object of his change, something wrong with the process.
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He puts the corpse's wallet back in his pocket as he stands back up and makes the thing look like...well, like a corpse. Not like a corpse that's been rummaged through.
"I can't help but wonder. If we can sort out the type of man this vampire goes for, perhaps we could at least have an idea of where to look next. If they're all picked up at a club or work for a certain business, for example."
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SORRY FOR BEING TERRIBLE