Adrian Birch's page

"Listen- I gotta say I'm not all that interested in playing stakeout with an off duty cop and a gang of inexplicably armed dudes who are ready to rumble when the assassin van rolls through." Adrian shrugs and lets that hang in the air for a moment.

"I'll tell you what I am interested in. That rune on Papi Charcoal's hand last night, that knife looking sparkling new when it was supposed to be over a thousand years old, mysterious sourceless face-melting explosions, and petite little," he does air quotes, "dead ladies who stop running away just long enough to bite a full grown man and knock him on his ass."

"I did a little looking around this morning. So that rune I basically had right last night. It is supposed to block spirits from entering or leaving a place. Here's something I didn't know- people used to think you could use it to bind a spirit into a mortal body. So you might use it to lock an enemy out of the afterlife as a final f$#+ you. There were also some references on using it to raise up living dead." He grins and winks, "So if that gunman turns out to have been a zombie, I'm all on top of that."

"The dagger- here's the weird thing with the dagger... So it's a sacrificial knife, right? Nothing unusual there. Standard silver for purity kind of thing. But check this out," he pulls a couple of crumpled photocopies out of his back pocket. "These corroded hunks here are the same basic design 'cept nobody ever found one all sparkling new. But look at these reproductions of the patterns on the hilt and blade." He gestures to an image. "This one is Minoan like I was talking about, this one here is Phoenician," he flips the page, "look here, same pattern to the T, but this is Incan and the one below it is Mayan. Coincidence most likely, but strange anyways."

"Look- I'm not interested in sitting around in a car eating beans waiting on this guy to show or not. But if you decide you want to get up in that place, I'm dying to know what other kind of mysterious antiquities this guy might have lying around. Maybe they turn out to be stolen, I can get a little Indiana Jones credit for helping return them to museum rotation. Couldn't hurt getting a little publicity for the business especially if they'd at least grant me a little research access in appreciation."

Adrain shrugs, "Or she faked her death. Insurance claims, dodging criminal charges. It happens."

Adrian wanders in a little after two in loose cargo shorts and a wrinkled button up shirt. "Hey, lemme grab a coffee and I'll be over."

A few minutes later he slouches into a chair next to Garabina, "So how's your bosses taking the sourceless explosion and excessively rich vampiress on the loose? I bet that went over well."

The next morning Adrain wakes up still groggy and laying in bed takes a few half awake moments to decide if he dreamed some of the events of last night or whether they were real. By the time he sits up and lights a cigarette he awake enough to decide that really did happen. When he finds the sketch of the rune that he saw burned into the palm of some gunman's hand he shakes his head and cracks open a battered laptop.

"Google, what can you do for me today... how about 'Miami occult library'... Ah, here we go. Jackie Gleason collection? What the hell? Who knew?"

Within the hour he heads out for the University of Miami thermos of coffee in hand. It's a needle in a haystack looking for something so specific, but Adrain didn't have anything else to worry about this morning and even in his thirties still loved getting lost in library.

Adrian sees the look on Anu's face and says, "Whoa! You alright there buddy?"

"Gabe, you ever see a blade thousands of years old that wasn't a corroded hunk of green and brown metal? This thing could been knocked out last year nice as it looks."

"Huh. This one blade is pretty detailed, but I don't know enough to say much offhand. Old though. Much older the the Egyptian stuff. Maybe ancient Sumeria? I'd have to do a little research to take a decent guess at what the detailing is about."

In response to the policewoman, Aidrian shrugs. "Nah, I just live across the street. I know Gabe here a little and it looked like he was about to get himself shot." Aidrian laughs, "If I'd known he had such a killer right hook, I might have finished my cereal."

Once inside the museum, he turns around slowly taking it in. "Holy f@**! What in the hell? Who bombs an auction and everyone in it?"

Aidrian walks over to the undamaged dagger and leans in to get a better look. "So about the amulet... I thought I recognized it from somewhere. Turns out the symbol is Egytpian, around 9th century, but it pops up here and there throughout history as far back as the Minoan civilization."

He scans over the warped and damaged auction items and continues, "Supposed to be for protection from spirits- bind em in place, bar passage, that kind of thing. They find em mostly around burial sites, sometimes around the estates of the rich and powerful in those eras. I can see a gunman wanting a little hoodoo on his side, but that is pretty obscure for your random hired gun."

Adrian kneels down near the burned corpse covering his nose over the stench. "Hey lady!" Adrian calls the officer. "Check this out!"

He indicates a jade amulet clutched in a charred skeletal claw. It seems completely unharmed by the fire.

Aidrian looks at Gabriel like he might be nuts, but doesn't mind, then points down at his bare feet, "I ain't gonna get far like this. Little too much busted glass for me right now. Hold up while I grab some shoes."

[ooc]Wow. You guys did a lot of posting today. I have a friend in town and tomorrow we are going to the beach and to see the Pixies. Then we'll be out of town Fri - late Sun. Fates can pose Adrian as needed, or I don't mind too much if Kiioro includes Adrian in his posts tagging along with him once he has some shoes."

Adrian looks back across the street at the door of his apartment building and then at Gabriel. "Unless you've got a gun and some body armor in there" he nods at the bag, "I think it's time to get the hell out of here. Follow me..."

Aidrian watches for an opportunity and when it presents itself scrambles across the street keeping low and darting between cover if available.

"What the hell Gabe? I never took you for a part-time crime fighter. Just goes to show what I don't know." Adrian glances up at the woman with the child with a hard look, then back to Gabriel asks "You alright man?"

Aido had been fixing a bowl of cereal and planning to sit down and watch the domestic soap opera play out, but as he steps back to the window the scene has changed entirely.

Is that Gabriel? What the hell is he doing?

About then the gun goes off...

"Oh hell no."

Aido drops the cereal on the table and takes off thundering down the stairs to the street in cut-off camo-shorts and a sleeveless tanktop with no shoes. From street level he stares down the man wrtestling with the cop and his friend, "Drop the gun fcuknuts! Before you regret it." Barefoot with his rough beard and unwashed hair he definitely presents an element of uncertainty, but he has a big frame and is more or less in shape enough to wrestle around with a grown man.

I'm more or less ready. Will try to finish up tonight.