Outfit
Cinder (Resisting the song) Exceptional success
The night was dark and cool, the industrial harbour side bathed in darkness. Pools of dirty orange light were scattered down roads, a half-hearted effort to make the place less desirable to undesirables. Off the sea, the scent of brine and engine exhaust blew towards land, the air that foul mix of industry and salt just along this stretch of the inlet. As the black waves splashed against the dockside, the orange light caught the rainbow patterns of leftover oil leavings from whatever ship had been moored there.
Further along, a fenced in section served as the container hub, but here it was mostly small boats and sea-oriented businesses that didn't deal in national or international trade. Fishermen's bars and tackle shops, a boat mechanic. Everything a stretch of dock might need, for private citizens or businesses. It wasn't the most attractive spot, that was along the harbour side in Old Town or Newton, but the rent was cheap and the space was plenty.
Theo was not a boat enthusiast. Far from it. There'd been a half-hearted attempt at it, when he'd first moved, but then after the trouble with the siren matriarch he'd left the sea behind. He had other sports to keep him occupied, he didn't need to fish.
The trouble with sirens persisted, though, which was only natural for a place so dominated by populated coastline. Theo even took advantage of it, letting the bodies of creatures he'd killed slip into the ocean to be preyed on by scavengers who liked that sort of thing. An odd symbiotic relationship, although that didn't stop them from trying to kill him.
This time, Theo wasn't the target. Punters from the local bars had been slowly turning up missing, the stories mostly explaining it by way of drunk men wandering too close to the dockside and taking a dive in. Drowning because no one was around to see their drunken fumble. Theo was sure some cases were exactly that, but the spike in missing men had caught the attention of the agents assigned to monitoring missing persons cases and suspicious disappearances or deaths.
And here he was, in the middle of the bloody night. He'd changed out of the suit for this one, the neighbourhood only likely to give him trouble for walking around in suits worth as much as his were. He'd changed into something more business casual, warm enough in the cool evening, and not likely to get him noticed any more than anyone else. What set him apart was the holsters around his shoulder, the Sig's snug in their cradles, but he had his license if the police were around. His sword was a familiar weight at his hip, but the enchantment obscured it to onlookers.
So far, the dockside had been quiet, beyond the burst of laughter and chatter each time a nearby bar door opened. Like static in a radio suddenly bursting before fading out as quick as it'd come. The businesses around him had dark windows, only the neon signs of a few of them providing light beyond the dirty orange of the streetlights.
Theo was about to call the night a wash when a haunting song reached his ears. He felt that otherworldly tug, the temptation, tickling at his consciousness, but then he harshly pushed it down. He was too irritated to even need to be here to fall for the luring song of a siren eager to feed.
Common sense dictated that he put distance between himself and the song, but Theo was here for a reason. Instead, he began jogging down the dockside, following the sound to its origin point. He had to pause from time to time, disoriented in the echoing streets, the sound coming off oddly with the vast harbour inlet next to him, but he was closing in.