Night's Omen

Arielle Orion, star defense lawyer for Valefar and Scarapino, sat with her head in her hands on the bench of the precinct in downtown NYC. The man the police had come to get her was just an intern to God-Knows-Who, and he had spoken incessantly from the ten blocks that it took to get between the firm and the station. Finally, she sat up, and glared at him, right as he launched into the third story about his kids and wife.

"Please stop talking?" she asked, voice obviously strained. "Where in the hell is the idiot in charge of you? Why are you out without a leash? Seriously? And they wonder how I make you all look like morons in court?" she said, finally unloading all of her anger on him.

The man sort of stood there for a second, and then muttered something and went to go find out the status of the police report she'd filed three weeks prior when she'd been attacked and mugged in the parking garage after a late night of work. Her paperwork was lost, permanently, and she knew it. She just couldn't bother to move at the moment. Her head was absolutely splitting; it had been for the last week now. She'd seen the doctor for chronic migraines, but they couldn't find anything wrong with her.

Now, in the precinct, the lights and smells and the sounds of all the voices and the phones ringing was making her head spin. She felt nauseous almost. Ever since she'd been attacked, actually, she felt different somehow. She'd gotten tested for every bloodborn pathogen that they could legally test for, and had negatives for everything.

She couldn't take the noises anymore. She stood, blonde hair swishing about the black button-down shirt she wore, and scooped up her Coach purse. That was it. She was done. She wouldn't spend another minute in this place. She headed for the door, smashing right into someone as she crossed the exit.

Maaaan, late again.  He even made his own hours usually, and yet the few times that his boss wanted him in at specific times, he couldn't do that for him.  His boss was going to eat his face when someone tattled on Jaime.  He could imagine it now: "LeCroix!  What the hell is your problem?  You think you can just waltz in here when I specifically told you to be here?"  It would be something to that effect anyway, unless of course his boss was in a good mood, but Jaime somehow doubted that one.  No wishful thinking today, please.

He hadn't been looking where he was going, and apparently, neither was whoever it was who had smacked into him.  Instantly he found his balance, reaching out to make sure he steadied the unfortunate runner-into.  "Sorry," he apologized, realizing it was a female.  He turned on his manners rather quickly, side-stepping to get out of her way.  It took him a moment, but he realized that he did know who it was that he had bumped into.  She was a lawyer, Orion, he thought, like the constellation.  What was her first name?  Something with an A...

Actually, he knew her by the letter after.  She was supposedly a real bitch in the courtroom.  He believed the people who said it enough to not want to find out himself.  He didn't take too kindly to attitudes and really, he was sure that other attitudes didn't take kindly to his own either.  Then again, a lot of lawyers were two personalities; one for the court and one for regular life.  Not all of them did though, just a lot.

"Ugh! Watch where you're going!" she snarled, Arielle having no time for manners, only cut short as her nose was flooded with a strange, heavy scent she could not place. It almost overwhelmed her as much as all the noise had, and she flung a hand out, catching Jaime on the chest before she stumbled backwards and into the outside area of the precinct. She'd never been startled by a smell before, but today seemed to be a first for a lot of things.

Anger totally forgotten, Arielle's yet to be discovered tiger senses were going insane, especially with the plunge she took into the outside. She put her hands to her head a moment, eyes nearly burning in response to the brightness of the midday sun. Oh, and she felt so sick when she moved, like everything was just a strange blur until she could stand still enough to focus.

The comment almost resembled disgust.  Jaime narrowed his eyes, his shoulders straightening, offended that she would dare speak to him in such a manner.  Her sudden reaction, though, startled him, and as she stumbled outside, he realized that her scent wasn't human.

Curiously, he watched her.  Something about the whole situation seemed somehow familiar but unnervingly distant.  "Take it easy," he told her as he took a step out.  "Now tell me, what the hell is your problem?  You can't walk around acting like that inside of the station.  You look suspicious."  He frowned, looking both disapproving and mildly interested.  She looked to be having some kind of drug-induced fit, which was what he meant by 'suspicious.'  He somehow doubted that she would want to have to go through tests of any kind.

"Were you attacked recently?"  This lawyer, Bitch Orion or whatever her name was, was leaving behind the wild smell of uncertainty and pain.  From what he gathered, he was going to take her answer as a yes and assume it as a shapeshifter who did the attacking.  He couldn't pinpoint what species she was attacked by as the scent was unfamiliar, but he was sure that he had it all figured out.

She whipped her left hand off of her face to point a finger at him, while her stomach seemed to churn so harshly that she crumpled a little, bending her knees for a moment. It felt like a wave of fire was washing over her, starting from her insides and working out.

"Stay away from me, LeCroix," she snapped. She knew who he was. He was the only detective she hadn't had the pleasure of destroying in her case yet, and it drove her only slightly batty. Her disdain for police though, didn't much help her tone. The cops hadn't done anything when she was a child, why now should it matter?

She found suddenly it was incredibly hard to breathe, and stumbled towards the corner of the building, gripping the wall. To a passerby, she could look like she was just about to be sick, for all of her motions suggested she might be about to vomit. She tried to suck in air to calm her down, but it was all so disgusting and vile. It smelled - no, TASTED - like dirt, and blood, and oil, and then there was that strange soapy scent mixed with florals she couldn't place, which smelled like her own body wash except a thousand times stronger; and even the detective smelled wrong. Not bad, or good, but wrong and out of place with the industrial scents she kept finding.

She swung 'round the corner into the back alley, and knelt down on the pavement. Her vision had gone all spotty and unclear; she thought she was having an anxiety attack for a moment. Rapid heartbeat, loss of breath, compression in her chest. It was either that or a migraine. She cried out a small, helpless sort of angry groan, in frustration and pain. This is not happening. I am not sick. I am fine. I am going to stand up, and march right out of this disgusting alley, and go straight back to the office and get back to work, she told herself forcefully.

"I'm fine.. I'm fine.." she said softly, trying to TALK her sudden.. panic attack/migraine off.

Her cell phone rang, and she picked it up, leaning against the wall as she tried to breath steadily. "What, Lupe?" she barked. She was quiet for a moment, closing her eyes and tipping her head back slightly.

"No, not until later. Just watch him! He's four, how hard can it be?" She made a groaning noise and hung up the phone. That's it; she was going to vomit.

The fact that she knew his name did not entirely surprise him.  He half-expected people to simply know who he was.  This was not to say that he consciously believed it, but it certainly was something that occurred to him every so often.  This fact was especially so with people like Orion who spent their spare time trying to cut up the police force.  His respect for her was more than likely as low as hers was for him.

Her escape simply made Jaime crack a smile.  So, she wasn't planning on listening to a word he had to say?  How dreadfully, dreadfully sad.  He was, after all, trying to help her.  He knew, positively knew what was going on with her but alright, so she didn't want to hear any of it.  Not his problem.

She had to run into an alleyway, though.  God, if he wasn't a cop and this wasn't New York City, he would have just left her there.  No, no he just had to be in his position.  If she got murdered there though, he would never forgive himself.  So, still peeved, offended and a little amused, he leaned on the entranceway to the alley and watched her with vague interest.  Jaime waited to say anything, though, until she was off of her cell phone.

A four year old?

"Maybe I should be more clear with you, Miss Orion."  He frowned at her, surveying her actions in a very strong, professional manner.  "If you were attacked recently, you might be experiencing an after effect.  Sometimes, these things can make you very ill..."  He needed to know before moving on; had she been attacked?  If she had, he knew he was on the right path.  Her scent was enough to make him believe that, indeed, he was completely on track.

"And, although given your previous attitude, this probably won't please you, I might be able to help you, or at the very least clue you in."

"Didn't you see the report?" she asked, cringing in pain. All she'd done was dry heave - not even stomach acid came up. She felt like her stomach was in a popcorn machine. It suddenly occured to her than she hadn't even eaten, and she leaned against the dirty wall and drew her knees up to her chest, resting her head on them as she tried to cope with the spotted vision.

"I was attacked, and in the last week I've had.. I've been tested for every bloodborn pathogen known to man, Mr. LeCroix," she said firmly into her knees, unable to un-tense her body for the moment. She kept alternating between cold and hot, and it was driving her crazy.

"What side effects could you possibly be talking about?" At least she was being somewhat reasonable. She couldn't do much else at the moment, it wasn't like she could get up and leave. Suddenly, she had a rush of fear that she'd never really felt before.

"Am I sick? Is this contagious?" she asked rapidly. She'd just gotten Ty from his father and the custody hearing was soon; if she got HIM sick, it would be a loss in her favour. She wasn't even sure if she wanted custody, but she couldn't... couldn't let him go back to that. She was an emotionally unattached parent, but she wasn't.. wasn't going to hurt him.

"Oh my god," she whispered. The fear was.. crippling. And completely new to her. She had to get out of this alley and get... elsewhere. She felt suffocated; trapped.

No, he hadn't seen the report.  Jaime's cases were generally a little bigger than someone getting attacked, although now he wondered why he hadn't even heard about it.  Well, no, perhaps he had.  Sometimes Jaime didn't remember things...

"I'm not exactly sure how to put this, but it can be contagious.  It's a conscious choice though, whether or not you pass it along, so you really don't have to worry about spreading it to people if you don't want to."  He was glad that she was being reasonable in return, and for that, he was going to be as helpful as possible.

"The concept itself though," he started offhandedly, "Is rather far fetched.  I feel that I have reason to believe that you were attacked by a shape shifter.  These people have the ability to change into an animal, however it's only one and it's the animal that you were attacked by.  Like, for instance, I, as ridiculous as it was, shared blood with a friend who was a lion."  He paused, realizing just how unbelievable it sounded.  "Of course, if you don't believe me, I can show you."

He probably was going to have to if she didn't simply think that he was insane and hightailed it out of there.  Orion, though, seemed like a very proud person.  Most proud people didn't hightail it out of anywhere.

This was madness. Absolute and complete. She wanted to laugh at him, but something seemed to stick with her from her attack. To be jumped in the private parking garage on the upper level of the Valefar and Scarapino firm was almost unheard of - and something about her attacker suddenly seemed to jump out at her. His eyes.

"The.. he bit me. I don't mean bit me in the small sort of self-defense bite; I mean he took a good chunk out of my arm. I'd show you the marks, but..." she trailed off. But they had already healed. Sometime over the course of the week, when she'd gone in for a check-up, the marks were just gone. The doctor chalked it up to an amazingly resiliant immune system and his own genius prescriptions, but Arielle was unnerved, at best.

Her phone rang again, and she glanced down at it. The housekeeper/nanny, again. She picked it up with a shaking hand, and held up a finger for a moment. "Lup?, what?" she demanded. There was a long pause, and Arielle closed her eyes, trying to search for the right thing to say. She had spent very little time with Tyler; hell, she didn't know what to do. Lup? had three kids and a grandchild already, so why did she keep calling her?

The feelings of detachment were mixed with something else, another creeping sensation of fear. Tyler'd taken a header down the stairs and she could hear him crying in the background - the sound was like nails on a chalkboard to her suddenly, and she just sat there with the phone to her ear, dumbfounded.

"My son fell down the fucking stairs," was all she could manage in a broken voice. "I have to go home." And, SHIT, her car was still at the firm. The other officer had picked her up after a small court appearance. She looked at Jaime helplessly, and it was a BAD feeling. Arielle was far from helpless, and right now...  

She had been bitten.  There it was, all the proof he needed.  From the sound of it, she didn't have a mark to show him either.  She had healed, healed like a shapeshifter.  The smell she gave off, that mildly inhuman scent that laced with the lingering cement and metal; it was enough to speak volumes that she could not.

Her phone rang again.  Jaime waited patiently, watching as her face contorted, jumping between aggravation and anxiety.  Her son had fallen--the four year old.

"Do you need a ride?" he asked her, standing straight backed with his arms at his sides, open.  The way that she was looking at him suggested that yes, she was in need of a ride.  "I don't have a car, but I have a motorcycle.  I can get you there pretty quickly if you want me to."

There.  He was doing his civic duty as a police officer.  He was helping those in need.  As disagreeable as she had been initially, she wasn't doing anything that he could hold against her anymore.  More importantly however, she had a child that she needed to tend to.  He would not deny her of that.  He could not deny her of that.

Arielle blinked rapidly. A motorcycle? She didn't think she could stomach it right now. She couldn't explain why suddenly Ty's tumble down the stairs (he was probably fine, anyways, he was quite active) had gotten her so worked up. Normally she'd have just brushed it off, but today she couldn't, and it was twisting her in half. She felt like she was going to cry, because she was aware of how alarmingly bad of a mother she was. She stood, using the wall for support, and tried to ignore the feverish sensation she felt.

How could she tell Jaime she was scared of the bike? It would sound stupid; Arielle wasn't afraid of anything. She looked past him, to the traffic that cluttered the streets, and shook her head. "I don't think I can," she said softly. She would fall. She would. She just knew it.

Jaime watched her, no longer looking as detached as he had previously been aiming for.  Instead he frowned, appearing mildly concerned.  She didn't think she could?  What did she mean?  Was she afraid that she was far too ill to be able to hold on correctly?

"Well," he tried again, weighing his options.  "How far do you live?  If it's not too far, I can walk you there.  I don't think it'd be the smartest to let you get potentially ill along the way."  He was trying, really he was.  He didn't have a car to offer her.  He supposed that he could use the cop car in the lot that he used occasionally, but he wasn't too sure of how happy that would make her.

If she didn't want him to help though, and if she did just really want a car ride, she had a cell phone.  There had to be someone she could call.  A boyfriend, husband, friend, someone.  He just really didn't want her to get home alone, not in the condition that she was in.

He hated caring sometimes.  God, did he ever hate it.

That was the glamour of Arielle's life; she didn't have a single person to call on, not unless she called the personal driver for the firm, whom she did not want to see her reduced to such a state. She took a few breaths, wondering if this was how it was going to end. She felt like she was dying, literally, cooking alive. She'd not felt this bad since she'd gotten strep as a child; by the time her parents actually responded, she'd almost had a fever of brain-damaging proportions. She'd only been five, but she remembered it.

"I don't know, I might be able to try and hold my lunch through a taxi ride," she tried. If he could flag her a Taxi, she supposed she could get home. It was maybe fifteen minutes from the metropoliton area, thanks to her fabulous landlord recognizing her work schedule.

What if something was really wrong with Ty? What if she had to get him to the hospital? She kept having strange pangs in her stomach, and she fought them, trying to reason with herself. Her housekeeper would have said; she'd have taken him to the ER if it had been necessary. He was fine, and this was a stupid thing to panic about.

So apparently walking wasn't a good idea either.  Jaime looked mildly perplexed, but he considered the taxi ride.  It didn't take him very long to decide that it was definitely a better idea than leaving Orion in the alleyway.

"Alright," he agreed.  "But if you're getting a taxi, we may wanna relocate to the street so they can find you.  Allies are pretty unbecoming."  It could have been a joke if he had bothered to smile, but he hadn't.  He kept his expression as even as possible, although there wasn't any true reasoning behind it.  It was more or less just because Jaime was in a very strange situation that he wasn't used to and was doing his best to be useful.

"Would you like some help out of here or would you rather do it alone?"

He was then attempting to be considerate of her boundaries.  He supposed that if she was as ill as she looked, which he knew that she was, the help might be beneficial.  There was the issue that some people simply refused help, and seeing as Jaime didn't know this woman, he would leave the decision making up to her.  He was only offering.

Arielle didn't rightly know if touching anyone would be a good thing right now. She felt really... light and floaty. She was getting damned tired of this, that was certain. Whtever it was, it felt like it would never end. She looked at Jaime, and then pushed off the wall of her own accord, trying to prove that she could be trusted to walk upright and in as much of an unsuspiscious manner as she possibly could. Which she did, and managed for the length of the alley into the sidewalk, where a taxi was immediatly hailed.

She fell inside of it, and put her purse on her lap, resting her head on it. She muttered her address to the cabbie, and then hid in her mass of blonde, arrow-straight locks. "How long does this last?" she moaned. Now she felt horribly nauseous. Car-sickness? Arielle hadn't been car sick in ages, but this was definitely a case of it.

She managed not to puke. Good for her.