Freezing Shadows, Chapter 34

Chapter 34: Strange Allies

Iceblade’s Etiquette check: 11d6 = 5 Hits, 1 Miss

DeeDee’s resistance: 12d6 = 4 Hits, 4 Miss

“Peace,” I said, holding my hands well away from my weapons. “So long as you’re no threat to me and mine, I’m no threat to you and yours. I’m Iceblade, and this is Sexkitten, Twilight, Shadowgirl, Babydoll, and Berzerker. You’re DeeDee, I take it?”

The human didn’t quite relax, but she didn’t seem as on edge now. “I can respect that. And yeah, I’m DeeDee, along with Tricky and Tiny. So, Honeypot didn’t say much about what you were wanting, just that you needed information on the locals. What gives?”

“You know the Brotherhood of Unity?”

All three stiffened slightly at the name. Clearly, there was more going on here. You didn’t react like that to people asking if you knew the local church nuts. Something about the Brotherhood put these girls on edge. Much more cautiously, DeeDee asked, “Yeah, we know about them. Why you want to stick your head into that mess?”

“Friend of ours is doing us a favor. We’re repaying her by doing a favor in turn. Her nephew fell in with a bad crowd, so she said, and left home. She tracked him to the Brotherhood of Unity retreat, and asked us to go in and find him, bring him home.”

“How long has your friend’s nephew been missing?”

“About a week, since he left Ola Serin.”

The three gangers looked at each other, and said, “How much do you actually know about the Brotherhood?”

I sighed, and said, “Not much. They give off cult vibes, but don’t have any of the religious markers of a cult. But their public image is too clean, you know? Like someone went in and scrubbed the Matrix, hard. And I’ve heard people start getting in ‘accidents’ when they try to look into them.”

“Don’t forget the giant bugs roaming around,” added Berzerker. “Something’s gotta be up with that.”

“And you came in, knowing that there’s giant bugs in the area?”

I shrugged. “We do what we can for our friends. So, by your tone, and your… unique look in the astral, I’m assuming you know more than we do about what’s going on, there. Anything you can tell us?”

DeeDee sighed. “First, don’t suppose I can convince you to keep what you saw to yourself?”

“I’m not being paid to care about your secrets more than they affect me and mine. So long as you don’t go trying to bite my head off, I’m content to let things lie. Won’t go beyond my team, here.”

“Fair. Not like anyone will believe you, even if you go spreading tales. And if you talk too much, the people who have been scrubbing the Matrix, as you say, will go looking to scrub you. No threat, just facts.”

I grinned at the way she said it, just a simple statement of fact that we’d get ourselves killed if we started talking. “Straight up, and to the point. I’m good with that. Lay all the cards on the table?” Deedee nodded, so I continued. “So, I can see that at least two of you are either free spirits, or being possessed. Care to share?”

I ignored the various looks and sounds of surprise from my team. I was the only one on the team who could look into the Astral, after all, so made sense that they were surprised. The bikers, on the other hand, just nodded. They’d seen me looking, after all.

DeeDee looked at me. “Close, but not entirely. You know how possession works, right?”

“Yeah, my tradition is a possession tradition, after all. In order to summon a spirit, a possession magician has to have a vessel to put the spirit into. That vessel can be a sword, or a scarecrow, or a person. Preparing a vessel makes it easier for the spirit to possess it. The spirit takes control of the vessel, even if it is a living creature. The vessel becomes dual-natured, can shrug off nonmagical attacks, and its physical form is strengthened by the spirit’s power.”

“That works. But not all spirits come from the same place,” she said, and my eyes widened slightly. This was new game lore! Something that we hadn’t heard about in the beta! DeeDee continued, “For spirits that live… further out, the transition is more like a one-way trip, and they need to permanently take a vessel, or they wither and die. Even though they were drawn here by another’s will.”

Iceblade’s Judge Intentions test: 10d6 = 3 Hits, 1 miss

DeeDee’s opposed test: 12d6 = 4 Hits, 2 miss

I frowned as I considered the implications of that. She didn’t sound like she was lying, at least from what I could tell. Didn’t mean she was telling the entire truth, but it was something, at least. And if this was like a permanent form of possession…

“So, if they use a living person as a vessel, what happens to the person?” Twilight asked the question I was thinking.

“Gone,” DeeDee said, simply. “Sometimes there’s memories left over, but the person is gone.”

“Right,” I said, cutting through the heavy atmosphere that was threatening to roll in. “So, given your description, I’m guessing we aren’t going to be dealing with the typical spirits I know of. Are they going to be more like you?”

“Yes, and no. Yes, they’ll be spirits, which look like insects, to your eyes. Only, the ones you’re looking for will be ants. But there are three basic types, what we call ‘merges’.”

I nodded slowly. “You two,” I said, pointing at DeeDee and Tiny, the troll, “are one type of ‘merge’. And she is another,” I pointed to Tricky. It wasn’t a question. “What is the third?”

“The giant bugs you’ve heard about.”

“Right, should have guessed that,” I sighed. “So, next big question, why are you telling us about this? I am guessing that you’re not exactly friends with these ant spirits?”

“Your kind refer to us as Mantis spirits. Let’s just say that, like the mantis you know, insects are our prey.”

“Work together, then? You help us, we help you, and then, if everything goes well, we at least stay out of each other’s way from then on?”

DeeDee actually chuckled at that. “You’re taking this pretty well. I was expecting more screaming and wild threats when you looked at us.”

“You haven’t taken anyone I know, and haven’t done anything to me or mine. My sword arm is only so long. Now, would I stand around watching someone steal another person’s soul, or whatever happens, to make them a vessel for another being like you? Probably not. But that’s not what we’re talking about right now, is it? We’re talking about this Brotherood compound.”

“Fair enough,” DeeDee said, grudgingly. “So, you’re just after one guy, right? Either find him and extract him, or avenge him?”

“Pretty much,” I nodded.

“Fine. We were already planning to get some more girls, and make a move on the compound. Depending on how many there are. Having more guns on hand, well, that will help make sure none of the hive scurries away.”

“How long would it take to get them here? I know it takes time to prepare a vessel for a spirit to possess, unless the summoner uses their own body as the vessel. But how long does it take for a person?”

DeeDee considered for a moment, before answering, grudgingly, “Could get a few more of the girls in by tomorrow if I put the call out now. As for the vessel? Depends on how healthy they are, in body and mind. But the shaman doing the summoning would not risk having too many new spirits at a time, in case he lost control of them, and the hive. Or, worse, got discovered in a way too messy to clean up. And the hive can use unchanged members, if they’re brainwashed hard enough, as a distraction, or a way to draw in more vessels.”

“So, good chance he’s still him, for now?” I asked, and she nodded. “Then, how about this: we team up, take out the compound, and everyone in it. We get the boy, one way or the other, and you ladies get all the snacks you can get from the rest. Burn the place out and get the fuck out of town. Sound like a plan?”

“Fine. You can crash here, provided you don’t cause trouble. Not pretty, but there are some couches and old mattresses lying about in there, for when gangs need to crash. But you can’t go into town, if you want this to work.”

“How so? These ‘ant spirits’ infiltrating the town?”

“This isn’t Seattle, you hear? The locals in Yakima like to think there aren’t any big-time criminals around here, and that all that kind of trouble is a ‘big sprawl’ problem. So long as bikers like us stay on the outskirts, or are just passing through, they ignore it, but you lot will get made for sure the moment you try and stop at a hotel. And you can bet the Brotherhood has ears in the local PD, at the very least. And as soon as one part of the hive knows, they’ll all know, unless you take them out before they can even think.”

I looked at the girls, and they didn’t look exactly pleased about the sleeping conditions, but what the hell. Sometimes you had to make do.  Looking back at DeeDee, I said, “We’ll take you up on that, then.”

DeeDee just nodded, and pulled out a commlink as she stepped away. Tricky, the elf who didn’t look completely like a bug in the Astral, led us inside the former bar. I’d been expecting the thing to be torn up and wrecked, but the surprises kept coming. The place was actually set up with a few bare mattresses where the tables and booths had been. However, they were all unstained, and I could smell disinfectants in the air. Not only that, but the wallpaper was at least patched, and there were only the usual holes in the wall from darts and other such games, and the electricity was on. Clearly, despite the place being ‘abandoned’, someone was footing the bill to keep it in a fairly functional, if spartan, state.

Once we were alone in one corner of the bar, Shadowgirl looked to me. “So, boss, not that I’m questioning you or anything, but what the hell?”

“Simple. We knew magical weirdness was going on when we heard about giant bugs wandering around in the area. We got lucky with Sexkitten having a contact with some gangers who knew about things, so we aren’t going into this blind.”

“Yeah, but what about the part where they admitted that they eat people, or near enough, to make that new ‘vessel’? They pretty much came out and say that each of them used to be someone else! Like they just scooped them out and started wearing the bodies as a suit!”

“Like I told them, I am not being paid to care about their situation. They haven’t done anything against me, or those I care about. I can’t change anything about how they came into this world. They’re already here, after all. So, if we’re going to fight monsters, I would rather have more monsters on my side, than throw away that help, or maybe even cause them to turn on us and try and silence us. Plus, if we have our monsters with us, that will give us a bit of protection.”

“What do you mean?” Berzerker asked.

“He means that this Brotherhood of Unity isn’t just some local outfit,” Twilight cut in. “They’ve got reach, both in the Matrix, and in real life. And they have deep pockets to extend that reach. We make noise about this place, or what they’re doing, then we might be dodging hit teams looking to either silence us, or ‘convert’ us.”

“Precisely,” I nodded. “And, if this goes well, maybe we can count on Sexkitten’s contact to give us a heads up if more monster activity is going down near us. Either way, when we’re done here, we take whatever’s left of Tyler, and split.”

Babydoll looked my way. “What will we tell Alisha, though?”

“Alisha is a pro, she’ll know what ‘you don’t want to know’ means. Make sure she knows that the Brotherhood is bad news, but that she doesn’t want details, and she’ll make sure to double-check any info that comes in about them, hopefully in ways that doesn’t set off any tripwires they have out in the Matrix, sniffing around.”

Babydoll sighed. “I don’t like it. But I guess that’s the journalist background. This is a big scoop, and I want it out there, with my name on it.”

I reached out to pat her on the shoulder. “I get that. But big scoops don’t mean anything if you’re dead, or worse.”