RaReason

Things are getting better!

My drive to write is returning along with my health. I'm not going to make any promises right now about the schedule because the last two times I did that, something bonkers went wrong and swept my legs out from under me, but I'm happily writing again.

Here's where I bitch about a small problem that maybe you all have a solution to: I write in Libreoffice because 1: it's free and 2: It doesn't have a pop-up every fifteen minutes. I tried using Word a year or two ago, and it was so gross and... just a bad experience compared to what I grew up with.

Anyway, when I'm done with a chapter, I reread it a few times, editing as I go, before I post it on patreon and go over it with Grammarly and discover how many commas I forgot to use or how many times I didn't type "the." For the most part, the formatting stays the same except for line breaks (hitting "Enter" a few times) or indentation. For instance, when you see a

*

In Libreoffice, that's me hitting Tab 3 times, putting an asterisk down, hitting tab 3 more times, asterisk, and then once more, so the chapter break has 3 spaced asterisks.

Is the fact that they're disappearing on patreon have to do with it being eaten up by the site's editor or some HTML shenanigans? If there's a quick fix I couldn't find with Google, that'd be fantastic, otherwise, I'll just deal.

That's all from me!

Hope you're all having a wonderful week, and I'll see you with another chapter (hopefully) soon!

Book 3, Chapter Eight

Whisper

Whisper trudged through the underground tunnel they had dug many years ago, more tired than they could remember being in years. Being on the run was a special kind of exhaustion they had only experienced once before. A little over sixteen hours had passed since they had pressed the panic button, over thirty hours since they’d slept. They had the early stages of frostbite forming on their fingers and ankles, having driven a motorcycle at suicidal speeds to make it back home in Alberta, only stopping once they reached the area around Fort Vermilion.

There, they had ditched the motorcycle and found the entrance to their tunnel. Whisper’s magical talents leaned toward information gathering and possession, so when they had started the tunnel, they had only planned to dig for a quarter mile, creating a bolt-hole for them to escape an attack on their base. But Whisper discovered, almost by accident, that with the help of a few dozen badgers and a friendly moose, the tunnel progressed at a pace far exceeding their most hopeful projections. The only thing slowing progress was Whisper having to step in to clear the rock themself.

Now, Whisper had a ten mile tunnel with several fail-safes built into it. No one knew about the tunnel, and no one had been to their base besides Whisper in over a decade. Their home was self sufficient and completely off the grid, aside from some pirated satellites that civilian authorities had no hope of tracing with the magic Whisper had laid.

Whisper finally reached the end of the tunnel, setting reminders to run maintenance on it… Then, shaking their head, they snorted with amusement. Whisper would never see this place again after today.

They typed the ten digit code into the keypad beside the bulkhead style door that separated the tunnel from their basement. There was a beep and a loud click. Whisper reached out and cranked the wheel on the big steel door three times to the right, then once left before tugging it open.

The tension in their shoulders began to ease as they crossed the threshold. On the other side of the door was a small workroom with several alcoves, some filled with equipment ranging from mountaineering, others full of automatic weapons. The two closest to the door were empty. Whisper crossed over and began taking off their mask.

Whisper’s mask was a simple, black acrylic face plate mounted to an experimental helmet designed for special forces. It was designed to be comfortable with a substantial amount of equipment mounted on it, with the intention of low-light optics and a suite of electronic sensors being deployed. The designers were worried that all that extra weight on a soldier’s neck and spine would lead to unneeded strain and injuries. Whisper just knew they’d be wearing a helmet for the majority of their waking hours and wanted one that wouldn’t make them miserable.

Whisper took off their helmet, feeling their persona fall away, allowing Carrie Dogwood to exist again. She made a face, getting a smell of herself as she undid the neck seal that housed her voice changer. She quickly stripped out of the padded armor she used to hide her figure (as well as for protection), her expression dropping further seeing her underclothes soaked with sweat, despite having driven through the night at near freezing temps.

She put the costume in the alcove, making sure everything was right and in place by habit before stopping with a rueful laugh. All this would be ashes in a few hours. She leaned her head back and inhaled deeply through her nose, frustration—

That smell shouldn’t be here.

It was a smell most people were familiar with. The smell of grease and oil, of fast food. It was a smell she was intimately familiar with, having worked at McDonald’s for two summers during high school.

Her first instinct was to grab her go-bag, which was right by the door she had just entered, and run with all haste down the tunnel. As her analytical mind kicked in, she realized the futility of such an action. She was exhausted, physically and mentally. Still…

Carrie reached over and pulled an assault rifle from another alcove, checked to make sure it was loaded. It hadn’t been used or cleaned in two years, but it should still fire with minimal risk of jamming. She pulled the cocking lever and crossed the room to the door to the rest of the house, sliding up to it and listening.

She could hear… murmuring. Someone—likely him—was definitely here. She eased the door open, bracing the rifle against her shoulder, aiming through the crack and scanning the room like she’d seen mercenaries do. Carrie had practiced with weapons enough to know she could hit a target, but she’d never done any actual training. She was doing what she’d seen on TV, but it made sense.

In the living room, the murmuring became louder, as well as the smell of fast food. It was coming from the basement, her workroom. Carrie resisted the urge to curse and, as silently as she could, crossed the room toward the basement door and eased it open.

“...o’s a good boy?” The murmuring became distinct. “You are! Yes, you are! She’s coming down the stairs right now! Are you ready for dinner? You ready? Of course you are!”

Carrie descended into a bizarre yet familiar scene. Familiar because it was her work area, where she had gotten her start as an information broker, enchanting a few cases of thumb drives. The center of the room was taken up by a large shock-absorbing gym mat, six by six, which she had drawn her standard spell formations on. The far wall was her workstation, a suite of monitors and the best computers she could get her hands on three years ago.

Aside from the mat and workstation, the rest of the room was an old carpentry workroom. An old, hand-built bench was on the left wall, a bat she had given up trying to enchant wedged in the vise. The right wall was taken up with large tools she had never touched and never bothered to move.

And sitting on the mat, rubbing the belly of the most gorgeous golden retriever she’d ever seen… was Colm Avery, AKA Liam Hayes. The room was hard to look at, because the defenses she’d laid into the floor, ceiling, and four corners were trying their damnedest to kill the man, only for him to not react to the pink lightning that was supposed to liquefy his insides. He was also doing something to prevent the lightning from touching the dog.

“And there she is!” He said, reaching behind him and producing a large bag of McDonald’s. “You ready, boy?”

“Boof!”

The dog was on his feet in an instant, doing a funny little walk backward as Colm got ready to throw. Throw? Is he going to hit the dog with the food? Carrie thought.

Colm made a big show of it, throwing the bag in an arch that almost hit the ceiling before falling right toward the dog—

The dog opened up and swallowed the bag.

The gun fell from Carrie’s shocked hands, her first instinct was to flee from the room, but she found herself locked in place. The dog rippled and flapped—which is when Carrie realized it was fucking chewing—before releasing a belch and doing a quiet bark.

“Boof!”

Colm crossed over to the monster and rubbed his ears with both hands. “You did a wonderful job, Bogo,” he said, kissing the monster on the forehead that Carrie had just seen open up into a horrifying field of teeth that’d give the monster from The Thing a run for its money. “You tell your dad you were excellent and that I’m very happy.”

“Boof!”

The monster disguised as a golden retriever turned, glanced at a frozen Carrie, then trotted off to a corner of the room and simply disappeared.

“I was really irritated when you bolted, but it gave me an excuse to see Bogo again,” Colm said as he pulled her work chair out. Whatever force was keeping her from moving suddenly lifted her off the ground, floated her across the room (and through the lightning that was still going and doing nothing), and placed her in the chair. “So I guess it’s a wash. Though, it did waste an entire fucking day when kids are dying, so I guess I’m still pretty irritated.”

Carrie found that she could talk. “What? Kids?”

“If you had bothered to wait around or even ask a follow up question, you would have learned I’m looking for Keeper because he’s the only one who can lock down the motherfucker causing all the stillbirths,” Colm said, pushing a keyboard aside and sitting on her desk. “It’s called the Nursemaid, and it exists in a space between the material and astral that’s a real pain in the ass.”

Carrie’s mind was running a million miles an hour. Three years ago, the cases of stillbirths and SIDS leapt, and continued to rise to the present day, to the point that one in four children died before their first birthday. “You’re saying someone is doing that?”

Colm snorted. “They ain’t a someone,” he said. “It’s a thing. A personification of a single aspect of a being so great and alien that if it dipped a toe into our universe, all life would cease. It and two others are paving the way for Daddy to make his entrance, and it’s imperative they are stopped as soon as possible or you and everyone you’ve ever even HEARD of are fucking dead.”

Colm raised two clawed fingers. “There are two—“ he paused, cocked his head in thought, then raised a third. “Okay, three ways this could go. The first option is the one you should take: You tell me how to find Keeper and I give you a thumb drive that has the location to half a bil’s worth of gold saved on it. Everyone’s happy, except maybe Keeper, but if he’s the kind of man that doesn’t wanna save children then he can get fucked. I’ll get what I want from him, use him up like a dirty rag, and throw him away.

“Two: You refuse, and I go digging in your head. I don’t have the time or patience to do it nice or slow, so you’d be a different person afterward, or perhaps an amnesiac or brain-dead. You don’t want that.”

The lightning from her defenses was finally winding down, and it was getting hard for Carrie to see without the light it provided. Colm gestured, and a flame appeared above his head, casting light and long shadows across the room.

“Three: You pull some shit and try to kill me and/or run away, which is when option two happens, and then I kill you.”

Carrie’s lip was trembling, and tears were falling from her eyes. Even if she wanted to make a run for it—she couldn’t move. She might be able to reach into the nearby woods and possess some wildlife, but it’d take time for them to get here and, and besides, the house’s entries were all fortified with steel doors. Even a moose would need some time to get through them.

“You aren’t going to kill him?” She asked, hating the quaver in her voice.

“Nope,” Colm said simply. “I mean, I don’t plan to. If he shoots me we’re going to have words, but I need his ass alive to deal with the Nursemaid. I have to hope he’s the kind of guy who’ll jump at a chance to save all the world’s children, but I’ve met some real douche bags in my life so I’ll wait and see.”

Colm’s head shot to the side. “No, I don’t want to know,” he hissed. “Keep that shit to yourself.”

Carrie’s eyes widened with a new kind of fear. The man in front of her had been calm and in control the entire time she’d been aware of him, but that behavior was startling. Colm relaxed and saw her expression. “Shit,” he said, shoulders slumping. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”

Unsure if the question was rhetorical or not, she nodded anyway.

“Balls,” he muttered, rubbing his eyebrow with the heel of his palm. “Look, just give the crazy man what he wants so he stops bugging you, okay? And to be clear: I am being facetious. The crazy man is me, not some imaginary new person I added to the conversation.”

Carrie wrestled with herself for all of thirty seconds before she settled on a fact about herself: She wanted to live. Keeper had saved her life, and she doubted he wanted her to waste it on his secrets.

“Mexico City,” she said, deflating in the chair. "Hotel Rio Bravo. Tell them Poncho recommended you and ask for the Presidential suite. He’ll make contact in an hour.”

“Jesus,” Colm said, running his hand through his hair. Carrie noted that the ends were all burnt, some fused in clumps. He had to shake his hand as the clumps got caught on two large rings he wore. “Guy likes his privacy.”

He sat, watching her, looking like he was having an internal debate. “Sorry,” he said as he reached out for her. “Gotta be sure.”

Carrie screamed.

*

Colm

I winced as she screamed just before I touched her wrist. I viewed her recent memories, and what do you know, she told the truth. I leaned back and stuck a knuckle in my ear, wiggling it around.

“Helluva set of pipes you got,” I muttered.

“What did you do?!” She demanded, more tears falling. It made me feel pretty shitty. She was a lot younger than I thought she’d be from what I had sensed over the cameras.

“Verified you were telling the truth,” I said, lowering my hand. “I can’t read minds, but I can read memories, which is just as good in most cases. Thank you for your help,” I pulled a small thumb drive from my pocket and placed it on her desk. “And here’s payment.”

“Also,” I began, gesturing at the wall behind me. I put more power into the fire above my head, lighting up the room as I etched a new spell into the wall with telekinesis. “Start implementing this methodology into your spell work. It’ll reduce the trace magics you leave behind and give you more bang for your buck. I didn’t track you, I tracked the biggest concentration of your magic.” I gestured at the room around us.

I stood and stretched my back, my spine popping in that “hurts so good” way. “Also, gunna have to knock you out for a day or two, just in case you have a way to warn Keeper. Water and food will be ready for you when you wake up.”

Her eyes went wide, then rolled up into her head as I finished subvocalizing the spell that removed the salt from her blood. The spell would wait two seconds and then add it back in. Doing that to someone multiple times was incredibly bad, but once was minimal stress to the body. I brought down a few bottles of water from the pantry, as well as some Graham Crackers and an MRE I found with my senses. They all floated around me as I moved Whisper to the mat in the center of the room and put her in the recovery position. I waited a minute or two to make sure she didn't go into shock before leaving the room.

I closed the door behind me as my magic set the water and food next to her for when Whisper woke up. I climbed the stairs, planning how I was going to get to Mexico from Canada. I could probably risk using an attention ward and flying across, but borders are usually more heavily monitored, and I didn’t want to risk another run-in with Elysium.

It is good you treated her kindly, Other Me chimed in. She will be one of the Great—

“I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!” I shouted, the noise shattering the windows in the kitchen.

STOP TELLING ME ABOUT THE FUTURE, I screamed in my head. I CAN’T KNOW!

Other Me quieted down, but it was only a matter of time before he started to chatter again.

I snarled, snatched a bottle of water, and walked outside throughthe hole in the wall I had made when the door had turned out to be stronger than the walls around it. I had accidentally pulled it and its frame right out of the house.

I pounded the water, not really feeling thirsty but knowing I needed to at least act human if I wanted to stick around. I tossed the empty bottle back into the house and grew my wings.

They weren’t actual wings. They were made mostly of flat, fused tentacles that I then manipulated with two additional arms grown from my back, with a few extra joints to help facilitate flight. It’d taken a few days to figure out, but that, coupled with my telekinesis, and I could fly faster than a single-engine Cessna.

I decided to risk flying over the borders. Every second I wasted was a life lost. With a final glance back at another life I’ve bullied into and ruined, I bent my knees and leapt into the sky.

Book 3, Chapter 7

One week later...

“I gotta say, Stanley, you make a pretty fuckin’ good poutine,” I said around a mouthful of gravy fries and cheese curds. I was sitting in the kitchen in a chair I had pulled from the office, using Stanley’s compatriot (whose name I didn’t bother to learn) as a footstool. Well, him and two others had the bad idea to be unhelpful when I was looking for information.

The thugs were piled up on each other in a cartoonish fashion, my heel digging into the top ones tailbone. He’d probably find it very uncomfortable if he were conscious. Standing near the fryer, a few feet away, was Stanley, a man with some mixed Latin descent and a terrible comb-over. He was shaking like a small dog, glancing nervously at the tentacles that hovered around him and in front of the door. He didn’t look like someone who knew their way around a griddle and fryer, with his leather jacket, silk shirt and expensive white pants, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t the best poutine I’ve ever had. I’ve only had it a total of three times, but still, it was excellent.

We were in the kitchen of a little mom-and-pops place that was the front for some small-time organized crime outfit in Toronto. I was wearing a new trench coat, as I’d lost the last one in a fight with the Canadian officials when I’d crossed the border. Learned my lesson there: always cross a border under attention wards. Some people take their jobs seriously!

“Now that we all know where we stand—“I paused and shifted my feet. “—so to speak—now you’re going to tell me where Whisper is. Is it Whisper? Or Whisperer? I’ve heard both.”

Stanley turned his eyes away from the tentacles and looked at me, his fear ratcheting several degrees as he searched for something to appease me. “I-I-I-I d-don’t know! No one does! Th-th-th-they only work through d-d-drops and burners! I don’t know anyone who’s actually s-s-s-s-spoke to them!”

Same as the last place. I scooped the last of the fries into my mouth from the little paper… tray? What the fuck were these things called? A basket? I shrugged internally and tossed the paper receptacle onto the counter, and stood. “Let’s go make a drop, then,” I said as I crossed over to Stanley and put a firm hand on his shoulder. He nervously looked at the claws on my fingers, particularly the pinky claw, which had accidentally poked a hole in his leather jacket as if it were tissue.

“Th-th-they’re probably watching the drop locations,” Stanley said hurriedly, but not resisting as I began to guide him out the back. “They’ll see you and know you’re watching.”

“Then they probably saw me at the last four drops, then,” I said amiably, pushing him through the fire door with a small shove. “I imagine they’ll look at the other drops from sheer curiosity or annoyance if I’m persistent enough. Each message is the same.”

Stanley almost tripped over a bag of trash and took a moment or two to regain his balance. “O-o-other drops?”

“Yeah, I’ve been looking for this asshole for the better part of a week,” I said, slipping a mask out of the front pocket of my coat and onto my face. The mask disappeared, and what remained it was my normal face, sans black skin and fucked up eyes. “Which way to the drop?”

As I stepped into the alley, I could feel several cameras pick me up as most of the businesses on this block had them mounted over every entrance, especially in the alley. I hunched my shoulders and tilted my head down so my hair covered my face in profile.

I could see Stanley hesitate, and as his eyes hardened, I could see him find his spine. Ah fuck, he misread my body langauge. No, I wasn’t nervous, you asshole, I just don’t want to destroy cameras unless I have to. I sighed and, before he could react, crossed the distance between us and knocked him out with a slap to the temple. The blow knocked him off his feet, his head hitting the ground with a “crunch” that made me wince.

“I try to do things the hard way, for you fuckers,” I muttered as I squatted next to the dying man. “I don’t want to see the things you’ve been doing, but you had to go and decide dying was better than snitching.”

I touched a finger to his forehead and began to rummage through his memories. His most recent ones erased any guilt I had over killing him. This asshole was in charge of a local prostitution ring and was… Jesus. The less I think about it, the better.

I rushed through the memories, destroying most of them in my haste to find what I wanted. I only had a minute or two before he died from shock or brain swelling. Luckily, he had made a drop just last month, and I got what I needed from him as he slipped off to whatever was next for him.

Other Me kept hinting that he knew what the afterlife entailed, but I refused to let him share the knowledge with me. Not knowing shit about specific aspects of existence is kind of crucial to the human condition. Until such knowledge was so widespread that it was part of all society, I didn’t want to know it.

I didn’t need another thing separating me from everyone else.

With a glance down the alley, I sighed and cast a small hex that specifically targeted video data, killing any recording storage and broadcasts within a square block. I adjusted my coat and debated dumping Stanley into a dumpster, but decided to leave him where he lay. I enveloped myself in an attention ward and left the alley.

I got a few looks as I rode the bus to Stanley’s drop location. My mask hid my weird skin and eyes, but did nothing to hide the unsubtle power hiding under it. People had varying degrees of awareness, whether from life experience, training, or natural inclination. You probably had a person in your friend group who always spotted a cat first, or could spot who was holding, or who was a cop, or just always knew where north is. My brother was like that last example, in that he never gets lost or can find the most obscure locations with the shittiest directions.

The skills/senses apply to the esoteric and eldritch too. I had a high school teacher, one of the few I liked, who could guess any number you picked between one and ten on the first try. He grew up in a carnival and worked one of the tables, winning quarters off the guests. Knowing what I know now, I wonder if he had some fey blood in his ancestry.

So even with subtle attention wards layered into my coat, people still felt the inherent danger I represented. That’s when I pulled out the big guns, the most powerful of techniques for getting people to consider you less of a threat:

I yawned. Big and loud. I even got my eyes to water a bit and wiped my eyes.

Imagine a big, scary man. Muscles bulging, bloodshot eyes, twitching with suppressed energy. Those are all signs we’ve evolutionarily learned are preludes to possible violence. Now, if we take away that nervous energy and replace it with a big, sleepy yawn—you get a much different picture. That’s a tired man. He’s much less dangerous because those eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep. That man doesn’t want to hurt me; he just wants to lie down and fall into a coma.

That big, jaw-cracking yawn from me shed attention almost as effectively as a powerful ward, and was more efficient.

I yawned twice more as people came and went, and then my stop was up. I hopped off the bus and walked two blocks, into an even shittier part of Toronto, until I found a warehouse with a reinforced door on front, painted a vibrant red. I was supposed to use chalk, but I forgot to grab some, so I just scraped the paint off the door in a big X with my claws.

I spun up my future sight, scanning the futures, and grinned. I began whistling as I walked back to my hideout.

*

Whisper

“What was that about…?” Whisper muttered, their voice changer turning the utterance into a muted gurgle. Why was he smiling?

The man who had been attacking their information cells showed a worrying mix of complete competence with an uncaring disregard. He went to extremes to make sure nothing recorded his face, and seemed to know when a camera was pointed at him. Whisper was only able to get a visual of the man by possessing the senses of a red-tailed hawk.

Regardless, he was causing too much disruption and needed to be dealt with. Whisper pressed an icon and their tablet, sending the confirmation code to the mercenaries they had hired yesterday.

Each man was equipped with a gun-mounted camera and microphone, as well as bodycams so that Whisper could issue orders in real-time with the most recent data. The mercenaries had been instructed not to aim the cameras at the target before they were ready to engage, lest they alert him to their presence. Whisper had had to make up some excuse that the man had a special EMF reader that allowed him to know when he was being recorded.

Of course, Whisper knew the man's name. Whisper just didn’t enjoy using names when there was a very real chance they would have to kill someone. Made it easier to ignore the blood on their hands.

The man was living in an abandoned warehouse at the edge of the city, and her mouse and bird scouts showed he had made his living space in the office on the second floor. The mercenaries moved with smooth, practiced motions, clearing corners and silently communicating as they moved through the first floor. Half of them had entered via the first floor, while the other half were descending from the room, ready to burst in through the two large windows, their target had helpfully removed the boards from when he had moved in.

Just before Whisper was going to give the order to breach, the man spoke.

“Come on in,” he called out, loudly and clearly. “I just need to talk to your boss.”

The mercenaries paused for two seconds before the squad leader clicked his mic, silently asking for orders.

Whisper sighed, their voice changer turning the noise into a robotic hiss. They engaged their radio. “Team one enter, but do not engage unless threatened. Team two, standby.”

Both teams acknowledged by keying their mics. Team one opened the door to the office slowly, finding it unlocked. Whisper leaned close to their main monitor, watching as the many bodycams revealed the same man she had observed, except his skin was coal black… There was an air of danger around him, so much so Whisper could feel it through the connection.

“Oh,” he said with disappointment. He was sitting at a rotting old desk, both hands visible on top and spread wide. Whisper immediately spotted what looked like claws on each of his fingers. Not long, claw-like nails, but claws, like you’d see on a tiger or a raptor in Jurassic Park. “I was hoping they’d be with you. So be it, so long as they can communicate with you lot, we might all walk away from this happy.”

Whisper keyed her mic. “Ask him what he wants.”

“Keeper,” he said once the leader of Team One relayed the question. “I need his services, but he is proving beyond my capabilities to find.”

“There are channels,” Whisper snarled, the voice changer pitching the noise into an electric distortion. “If you want information, you pay—“

“And I am happy to do so, I just don’t have time to wait the three months for your little vetting process,” the man said, cutting off Whisper before the mercenary could repeat what they said. “I’d be willing to pay whatever price you want, to waive the whole song and dance, as a great many lives are in danger unless I get to that man.”

Whisper’s eyes were wide behind their mask. They almost hit the panic button, which would tell the mercenaries to engage and start the timer on the self-destruct sequence on their equipment.

“Oop,” the man said with urgency. “Now don’t go getting all skittish on me! Have one of your boys pull up that sheet on the floor there.” He angled his head to the left, where there was a bundle of cloth on the ground Whisper had noted and disregarded.

“Do it,” Whisper said after half a minute of consideration.

One of the mercenaries broke formation and approached the bundle. Without taking his weapon off the man, he knelt and jerked the cloth to the side, revealing three gold bars. On top was a picture that Whisper couldn’t make out.

“Hold the picture up to your bodycam!” Whisper demanded.

After a few frustrating moments, the mercenary got the picture in a position where the camera focused on it. It was a Polaroid. Of the man, sitting on a small pallet of gold bars. Whisper quickly did the math of how much money he was sitting on, using only the bars Whisper could see. It was over fifty million.

“I’ve got three of those,” the man said. “Pallets, I mean. If the gold market doesn’t crash in the next few weeks, I figure I’ve got around half a billion in gold. All yours, if you just tell me how to find the Keeper.”

Whisper estimation of the man grew and grew with each second. He used a Polaroid, because while they can be faked, they are a pain in the ass to do so. The gold on the ground can be fake, but the rat they had sent in behind the mercenaries was telling Whisper it smelled real.

Half a billion dollars wasn’t an unimaginable sum for Whisper. Their organization made roughly half that in a year. To make more than double their yearly income with one deal, however… that was something to consider.

All it would take would be to betray their only friend.

Whisper sighed, the sound sparking and electric. They hit their panic button as they grabbed their go bag, hurrying toward the nearest exit as all the electronics around them started to be consumed by thermite.

*

“Balls,” I said as I felt all the mercs tense. With a thought, I broke all sixteen of their hands, followed by their shins with sharp pokes of telekinesis. They had protection amulets, I assume that Whisper had provided, but I just bullied my way through them, causing them all to overheat and burn the chests of the mercs—which gave them another reason to scream. Only one managed to get a shot off, poking a hole in my belly that I fixed with a grunt and a few seconds of concentration. With another thought, I caught the rat that was trying to flee and brought it over, floating through the air in my telekinetic grip.

Whisper was good. Good instincts, very little hesitation, worked through intermediaries, and rarely in person. Unfortunately for them, I’m a bit much these days. My senses had traced the video feeds back to their base, which… was being destroyed. I felt the connection to the cameras in the room go dead, as well as any data that had been captured about me.

“Goddamn, Whisper,” I muttered, stepping over a groaning mercs on my way out, rat floating behind me like a panicking balloon. “You don’t do things by halves, do you?”

I brought the rat forward and took it in my hands, implanting many years' worth of memories of me feeding the little guy. It instantly calmed in my hand. Whisper had severed the spell connecting to the rat in the same instant they had told the mercs to attack, but it didn’t matter. Their magic was all over the little thing.

It was time to call an old friend.

Book 3, Chapter 6

“Eh,” I said with a shrug. “It’s a gift.”

Trix’s laughter echoed across the flat planes of North Dakota as the two other figures regarded me with far cooler reactions. Trix had shown up tonight as 1990s Salma Hayek, wearing a nice sundress that was plastered to her body by the rain. The being next to her looked like Vincent Price if Vincent spent his whole life chugging protein shakes and competing to be Mr. Universe. His irritated glare went from me, to Trix, back to me, never settling. He was wearing a leather outfit that looked like something a cast member of Game of Thrones would wear if Game of Thrones were also a cyberpunk show.

The third being looked just like me, but that’s normal. They’re the Mirror, and they appear as whomever (or whatever?) is observing them.

“Why did you summon us, ant?” Vincent demanded, his voice crowding out Trix’s laughter with a wave of power. Three years ago, it would have made my ears bleed and knocked me back. Now, it just made the prisoners behind me scream in pain and terror while making my trench coat flare out behind me all cool-like.

I gestured behind me at the prisoners. “Wanna make a deal,” I said.

“I don’t deal with vermin,” Vincent sneered and turned around, making to leave.

“Whelp, looks like I’ll be needing two signets from you, Trix,” I said casually.

I felt three perceptions slam down on me. Vincent didn’t even turn around—one second he was about to step away, the next he was at the edge of the circle I had summoned him in, as close to me as possible, and glaring. The weight of their full attention felt like extra gravity trying to mash me into the ground. I felt my feet sink a half-inch into the dirt.

“How do you know about them?” Vincent asked.

“Ask the Orphan next time you run into them,” I said with irritation. “Do you wanna hear my deal or are you going to fuck off?”

Vincent’s eyebrow arched at the mention of the orphan, and his expression became hate-filled at my casual address.

“Oh, come on #%###%##,” the name Trix uttered sounded like the clash of weapons over the screams of the dying. Summoning him had been a big pain in the ass because his name doesn’t translate into any human language. “It’s sure to be at least entertaining. Colm has yet to disappoint.”

“I admit to some interest,” the Mirror said in my voice, but with an accent that sounded like someone took a sander to English and buffed off all the edges.

Vincent didn’t immediately respond, so I began my pitch. “The three hundred and change behind me are payment to be split evenly between you three, in exchange for a one-use signet each. I will be using that signet to mark the Avatars of the Distiller that are currently running amok in my reality.”

“What would you want then?” Mirror asked.

I pointed at my noggin. “I gotta passenger that’s a copy of a me from an older universe,” I said. “Sometimes goes by the moniker Wake of Dead Stars? Ring any bells?”

Trix’s eyes widened, and Vincent drew back a step from me. Other Me started laughing hysterically in the back of my mind.

“Oh, so you’ve heard of him,” I said. “I want this thing out and returned to its original owner. It keeps leaking, and soon I’m going to either punch my ticket or stop being human. I want to be human. There’s a lady I wanna kiss.”

“What else?” Vincent asked, his posture no longer threatening.

“That’s it,” I said, making a cutting motion with my hand. “The real service you’d be providing is getting those pieces of the Distiller out of my universe, which will hopefully have some calming effect as those aspects of big D won’t be fucking with the makeup of creation anymore. Maybe then the authorities will be able to do their job, and I can go back to being a neurotic mess who obsesses over Diablo lore.”

The three began to speak in a language I didn’t understand. Other Me did, but I stopped him from sharing the info with me. The more I got from him, the harder it was to remain me.

The argument continued for several minutes, mostly Vincent and Trix shouting at each other, with the Mirror looking bored. There was another meaty “thwak” behind me as one of my boys stopped a runner. I theatrically looked at my wrist.

“Look,” Trix said in English. “You’re going to agree, otherwise I’ll be providing two signets and the potential power will be mine to claim, regardless of the risks.”

“You assume Mirror will be going along with this nonsense!” Vincent snapped back.

“Oh, I am,” Mirror said, making Vincent gape like a fish. “The opportunity to strike a meaningful blow against the Distiller? How could I pass it up?”

Hearing my voice sound so… flat was weird. It was like when AI got close to someone’s voice, but not close enough.

Trix shifted into a relaxed posture, a self-satisfied smile gracing her lips as she arched an eyebrow at Vincent. Vincent spat to the side in disgust (which hit the ground like a small cannon, a plume of mud and water geysering away from him) and growling out a “fine.”

“Yeah? We good?” I said, producing a stack of contracts from within my coat. It was as thick as my wrist, and each piece of paper contained five to ten signatures.

What followed was an hour of arguing between me and Roided Price, with Trix stepping in to mediate as we argued over the terms of the negotiations. During which, two of the prisoners died from shock and hypothermia as the storm grew worse, the temperature dropping as sleet mixed with the rain.

“Look, asshole, your payments are dying,” I said, holding myself back from jabbing a finger in his chest. “And I mean YOUR payments, as YOU are the one holding this up.”

Price snarled, a sound that made the ground ripple around his feet. “I will peel the skin from your flesh and roll you in a salt heap, you fucking insect!”

“I grow weary of this,” Mirror said before I could respond. “I find the terms acceptable. You’re just unwilling to concede without getting the better of the human. Either accept the terms or I will provide a second signet in your stead.”

Roid Rage Price looked like he was going to fucking explode before he calmed down through visible effort. “Fine,” he said. “I accept the terms.”

The three extradimensional beings gestured, their signatures appearing on the contracts I had been editing in real time with telekinesis. Copies appeared in each of their hands as over three hundred prisoners behind me began to scream in pain and horror as their souls were ripped from them. Normally, the soul exchange would happen once they died, but signets are special and need to be buoyed by power from both this side of reality and theirs.

Mirror nodded and raised his hand, the gesture simple yet still like nothing I’d do. Silver power gathered around his fingers, pulsing gently before four strands of silver force shot into the sky, only to shoot back down and stab into my index finger. Pain rocked through me, originating from the finger, a unique and strange pain unlike anything I’d experienced. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever felt, but it was decidedly strange, feeling like the end of my soul was being pinched and twisted like the tail of a balloon animal.

I grasped my wrist with my other hand, falling to my knees as the power slammed into my finger, dragging it and me to the muddy ground. It wasn’t until mud soaked my pants that I realized I was screaming through clenched teeth.

The spell ended, trailing off like the final wisps of smoke in a burnt-out campfire. On my finger was a ring, reflective and silver, its single ornamentation a small representation of an old mirror, like you’d see in a Victorian manor.

“’Til we meet again,” Mirror said, disappearing in the middle of a lightning strike.

Without giving me time to recover, Schwarzenegger's Stand-in, Price, thrust his hand forward, shooting a red beam from his finger that hit me in the chest. I began to scream again as the power traveled through the puncture in my sternum to my other index finger. I wanted to thrash, to avoid the pain, but something about the spell Price was using kept me locked in place. Amidst my failed thrashing, I could see the smirk on his face at getting to put the “ant” in his place.

A too long of a time later, another ring appeared on my other index finger as I flopped forward into the mud. Whatever had been holding me up had ceased along with the spell. I shuddered and gasped, coughing as a bit of mud made it down my airway. I slowly pushed myself to my knees, holding up my new ring. It was hard to tell what color it was with only the occasional lightning to see by (I could still see thanks to my upgrades, but color starts to wash out with less light), but I knew it was a vibrant, blood red. Its ornamentation was an engraving of a Rondel dagger with a triangular blade. By the time I looked up to where Price was, he was gone.

I looked over at Trix, who was giving me a sad smile. “Are you sure you can handle a third?”

I sat back on my heels and shrugged. “No,” I said honestly. “But I got three assholes to get rid of, and this is the only way I’ll be sure.”

Trix nodded and, without further ado, raised her hand and blew me a kiss. Where Mirror’s power had been invasive and Price’s power had been torturous and strong, Trix’s just felt heavy. Like “moving a piano upstairs,” heavy. I’d expected it to come from her direction, but it fell upon me from all around, smothering, suffocating. It was a different form of pain, but no less traumatic. Instead of focusing on my index finger, however, it centered on my ring finger. On my left hand.

And then it was over. I found myself on my back, having sunk several inches into the mud from the force of Trix’s power. I groaned, my throat raw, and lifted my hand in front of my face to examine my new signet. The ring was gold, struck through with black marbling. Its sole ornamentation was a pair of stylized lips. On a hunch, I looked away and back, and it had changed to be a delicate-looking hand clenched in a fist. I looked away again and back, and it was a heart with a knife in it.

“Are you alive?” Trix asked, concern in her voice.

She could plainly see me moving, but she probably wanted to make sure this night hadn’t affected me too severely. “Yeah,” I said, the end of the word changing into a groan as I rolled out of the muddy depression I had made. “I’ll be alright after some rest.” I said, leaving the additional “I hope” unsaid.

“You know,” she began once I was back on my feet and rolling my neck back and forth. “You could have negotiated for a lot more. Using our signets on Avatars of the Distiller would be very beneficial to us.”

“Yup,” I said. “I know. And I’m counting on it.”

Trix frowned in thought. Then grimaced in anger. “You’re planning on dying.”

“Hopefully not,” I said with a shrug. “But I didn’t want any ties to you folks that’d mess with the next leg of the trip. My Roommate has let some things slip that lead me to believe that you aren’t actually taking these guys' souls,” I said, jerking my thumb to the hundreds of corpses behind me. “But I still don’t want anyone tripping me on the way to whatever’s next.”

Trix was furious. “Colm, you need to fight to win. You can’t be going into a fight with the wrong mindset.”

I laughed hollowly. I pulled on some of Other Me’s knowledge and snapped my fingers, a sudden wave of power booming from my hand and washing the storm away, leaving a clear, sparkling night sky for miles around in a perfect circle centered on me. My skin began to bubble, my muscles bulged, and bones began to twist and grow as the use of power beyond my reality pulled me away from humanity. I kept myself here through sheer willpower, glaring at Trix the entire time until my power and body became my own again.

“I’m not afraid of dying, Trix,” I said, barely above a whisper. “I’m afraid of becoming like you.”

I turned and began walking toward the buses, collecting my humonculi along the way, pretending I hadn’t seen the mixture of concern and hurt on Trix’s face as I walked away.

This chapter was supposed to be done a lot sooner

But I got hit with norovirus and spent a good long time hanging out with the toilet. The good news is that all that time being miserable meant I didn't have much to do except think about Colm and his many problems, so I got some good material plotted out.

Hope the bug missed you all and I'll see you again soon with another chapter.

Book 3, Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Albright

Albright laid his glasses on the desk and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Run that by me again?”

He was in his office, which was seeing much more use this last month with the boss “indisposed” with his sudden inhumanity. His desk was covered in papers, folders, two laptops in addition to his desktop, open bottles of Pepto-Bismol, Advil, and Tylenol, as well as a fetish Dr. Skirrah gave him that was supposed to keep disorganized energies away. It smelled like formaldehyde. It mixed well with the smell of his half-eaten lunch (it was well into the evening), which itself was trying to overpower the scent of several takeout containers overflowing his waste basket.

“Everyone we assign to scry Hayes comes back with the same thing,” replied Marta, his new assistant. The woman was a good head taller than him and built like a Valkyrie, with cold blue eyes, pale skin, and pale blonde hair. Broad shoulders filled out her combat uniform she insisted she wear despite the fact that her job was mostly clerical. On one hip hung a battle ax that he knew from the one time she’d allowed him to hold weighed a good thirty pounds.

She pulled a folder out from under her arm and began to lay out a series of reports and some pictures, making his desk even more of a mess. The pictures depicted a star in space. Albright replaced his glasses on his face as he skimmed the reports. He didn’t need the glasses to read things right in front of him, but it strained his eyes to go from close to far repeatedly and he didn’t want to add to the already massive headache he was fighting with far too much Advil and Tylenol.

“A star?” Albright asked.

“Specifically, a star about to go supernova,” Marta clarified, not quite falling into parade rest.

Albright pondered the mystery for a few silent moments, going over what they had discovered about the strange man. With a slow inhale, he snapped his fingers. “Attention wards.”

“Sir?” Marta asked.

“Hayes is an accomplished warlock and summoner, but views his best proficiency as attention wards. It took us weeks of dedicated searching after we imprisoned him to find his place of residence, and it was so coated with differing layers of attention and obfuscating wards that it drove several of our investigators to have nervous breakdowns. They kept forgetting their own names,” Albright reached over and tapped a quick sequence on his desk phone.

“Scatton,” answered a rough voice surrounded by cacophonous background noise.

“Bill, it’s Albright,” Albright began. “Got a puzzle for you; how would you use an attention ward to keep people from scrying you?”

“Huh,” said Bill. Albright could just make out the sounds of him chewing on the end of a pen. “Well—one second, boss.” There was a rattle as the phone was lowered. “YA’LL SHUT UP! I’M ON THE PHONE!”

Marta raised an eyebrow at Albright, which he ignored.

“Sorry about that, boss,” Bill said on a suddenly much quieter line. “Attention ward for scrying? Huh. Hmmm. Well, normally, attention wards are about diverting attention. The problem with being scried is that if you’re being scried, you’re either doing something that's gathering attention or the people doin’ the scryin’ know who you are. That’s why we call ‘em ‘wards,’ for the most part, because they ‘ward away’ attention, as it were.

“But if someone was fixin’ to shove their nose in my business, I’d find something either in my past, present, or future that would be eye-catching, that I was involved with, and I’d place the biggest, meanest attention ward on it. At that point, it wouldn’t be an attention ward because instead of warding attention, it’d be directing it. I guess it’d be an attention charm, I reckon? Or a geas? You know I’ve been pushing for a magical standardization of terms. It’s bad enough when the French and Egyptians get in the same room without all these Celtic and Welsh terms—“

“Thank you, Bill,” Albright cut off the man. “That was a great help.”

“S’what I’m here fer,” Bill replied. “ALRIGHT I’M OFF THE P—“ the line went dead.

Albright had been watching Marta’s eyes as Bill started the second half of his explanation, and her expression matched what he felt; disbelieving dread.

“That—“she began, pausing to look at the image of the star on his desk. “If Hayes is using that same technique—“

“—It would imply that he has something to do with a supernova,” Albright finished.

“How are you not alarmed by this?” Marta asked.

“Oh, I am,” Albright replied with a sickly grin. “I just have context. You weren’t there when we went into that warehouse. He went from taking on a shoggoth mostly by his lonesome, to killing several hundred cultists, to breaking into a greater summoning ritual, to beating an avatar of the Distiller in a fist fight.” Albright reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “The one thing I can say with certainty when it comes to Colm Avery, AKA Liam Hayes, is that the man shines under pressure.”

Albright began laughing, his silent chuckles shaking his shoulders. “Then he takes a three year nap, beats up most of our guards and two of our most seasoned strike teams, does something to the boss where he turns into a giant, angry fire cloud and escapes—all without killing anyone.”

Albright continued to laugh. Thanks for that, by the way, Colm. I didn’t think you’d remember… or even pull it off.

“If he wasn’t an abomination, I’d offer him a job!” Albright took a moment to get his mirth under control. “Tell the seers to focus on other avenues—a few can keep trying, just in case something changes, but if they aren’t getting results, we need to try something that will.”

Marta nodded and made a note in her phone. “On that note, we have some info on what he’s been doing in the last month.”

“Oh?” Albright said, hiding his disappointment with practiced ease. “To what do we owe our sudden luck?”

“One of our analysts, Chad Hesch, was looking into his online activity,” Marta began. “Which was mostly YouTube tutorials and true crime podcasts. Apparently Chad got it into his head that if Hayes went around hunting unconvicted murderers, he might try again.”

“And did he?” Albright prompted, reaching for the report and beginning to scan it.

“Not as such,” Marta replied, but seeing Albright read the report, went silent.

“...He’s hitting prisons?” Albright said slowly, lowering the report.

It was kind of brilliant. He didn’t have to do any investigating, just sweep through death row. Albright looked down at the report, but couldn’t find what he was looking for. “How many has he hit?”

“That we know of? Eleven,” Marta said. “The problem is that he can manipulate memories, so unless someone thinks to check physical records, no one suspects anyone of being missing.”

“So he just cleans out a prison’s death row, wipes everyone's memory, and moves on?” Albright asked.

“Pretty much, except he skips an inmate every now and again,” Marta replied.

Albright blinked up at her, before snapping his fingers. “They’re likely innocent. Make a note that as soon as we’re out of this crisis to send a screener to check out the prisoners Hayes skipped.”

Albright paused, not wanting to know but having to ask. “Do we know how many prisoners he’s taken?”

“That we know of, a little over a hundred,” Marta replied. "But until we check with every prison, it could be many times that. There's over two thousand prisoners on death row in the United States."

“Christ,” Albright said, reaching for the bottle of Pepto.

  *

Colm

“This is a big fucking spell,” I muttered.

When I had planned this spell out with Other Me, I kind of had an idea of how big it had to be. It was the most complicated spell I’ve ever seen, maybe one of the most complicated spells done by humanity up until this point (if I was still counted as a member of team human).

I put the last line down with the field chalker I had stolen from a Big 5 and stepped back to examine my work. Over two square miles of North Dakota were covered in big, sweeping chalk lines that were themselves covered in additional spells to protect from the wind and rain that had been plaguing me for the past couple of days. The moonless night and the overcast sky made it so that there was practically no light to see, but I didn’t really use light to see anymore, so I wasn’t bothered.

The spell had to be this big because the energies being manipulated needed the surface area to not burn the spell out once activated. If Other Me were to cast the spell in his true form, he could do it with a thought because he was simply that powerful, and rules like thermodynamics and physics were suggestions he humored because the sound of the universe having a hernia was irritating. Since I wanted to continue to exist on Earth as a human, I needed to take steps to keep reality intact.

I turned and regarded the three buses filled with my sacrifices. I guess it was go time.

I walked up to the first bus and opened the doors with a slight push of my mind, walking in. The terrified passengers all watched me, some forgetting to breathe. I let my voice take on the double-harmonic quality that was easier to use now than my natural voice.

“Okay, so, good news and bad news,” I began, standing in the middle aisle and regarding my captives. I must look like a nightmare with my light-absorbing, coal black skin, shaggy, knotted hair, and eyes as dark as my skin. When I had first seen my reflection in a gas station bathroom the first night of my breakout, I had thought they were all black like those contacts you see in movies, with no variation. But upon closer inspection, you can make out my iris and pupil if you squint. I had discovered that maintaining eye contact with my prisoners unnerved them greatly, and I wasn’t sure if it was because they’d seen me destroy reinforced concrete with my mind, grew tentacles, or because of my fucked-up eyes. “The good news is that this is almost over. The bad news is that you’ll see some shit tonight that might make you insane.”

I turned and gestured at the driver, a homunculus I’d bound a lesser servant spirit to. It looked like a five-foot Ken doll someone had microwaved until it just became goopy and then dressed in whatever was lying around. “You’ll all follow my assistant, they’ll show you where to stand. Move single file, no pushing or shoving. If you run, I’ll break your knees, and the guys in front and behind you will carry you.”

As I said the last bit, I grew several tentacles that writhed through the air and moved down the sides of the bus, coming close to but never touching many of the inmates. I was wearing a brown leather trench coat that had a mantle, which hid the rips in the back of the coat my tentacles made when they emerged from between my shoulder blades. To these guys, it must look like I was growing tentacles out of the mantle of the coat.

When their fear grew to the point I thought they’d break, I pulled the tentacles back in a slurping motion, like I was drawing in spaghetti. “Let’s get started,” I said and exited the bus.

I did the same spiel on the next two buses and only had to break one guy's legs with a couple of telekinetic pokes. Three hundred and thirty-one murderers stood in the center, some huddled together for warmth while others were trying to project some strength by standing apart from one another. Two meaty-sounding “thwacks” alerted me to a homunculus breaking up a small fight between a few of the prisoners.

Once the prisoners were settled I went and repaired the lines they had marred with their passage, then grew some tentacles with eyes on the ends. I stretched them high into the sky and looked over my work, touching up a few lines that had gotten a little blurry despite my protective spells.

After an hour, I knew I was putting off the spell and pulled the tentacles back into my body. I stepped into a smaller circle built into the grander design of the whole spell and gathered my will and power, throwing it into the lines around me.

“I, LIAM HAYES, KNOWN TO MOST AS COLM AVERY, SUMMON THE THREE ARCHONS OF THE CROSSROADS!” I bellowed to the cloudy sky, the wind suddenly kicking up and rain falling in a thick sheet over me. “I LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN, I HAVE PAID THE PRICE, AND I AWAIT YOUR ARRIVAL!”

Suddenly, the white chalk lines exploded in light, as the power I had dumped into the spell ran through the lines radiated heat and light. There were several cries of pain from amongst the prisoners, some being too close to the now molten-hot chalk turning the dirt into slag. Lightning struck the edges of the spell, adding further power to the spell. I hid a smile as more strikes hit the spell, making it pulse with each additional strike. That had been my idea; turning the spell into a lightning rod. I had almost impressed Other Me with it. These giant workings tended to bring crazy weather as a sort of karmic feedback. As I understand it, people expect thunder and rain during huge fuck-all magic, so you got thunder and rain. I figured, since there’d be thunder, there must be lightning: why not use it?

It made the spell a few degrees more complicated because I had to build resistors and transistors into the spell to keep the flow of energy steady. But it was already so complicated that no one but me and a few demigods or gods could comprehend, what’s a few more lines?

In front of me, three larger circles, each sized so that a minivan could rest comfortably inside, began to pulse. As the rain turned to steam as it hit the spell, the three circles began to draw in the steam in three vortexes. The vortexes soon changed from white steam to a variety of colors, which resolved into three portals.

Simultaneously, three beings stepped through the portals, two looking irritated and the third looking positively thrilled.

“Oh, Colm,” Axtrixxinizinia said, hugging herself as she met his gaze. “You sure know how to make things exciting.”

Book 3, Chapter 4

Jager leveled his polearm at me. I tensed, but no more lightning followed. In the moment that followed I took a moment to look him over. His armor looked like a mix of Viking armor and English plate mail, with chain mail crammed in places that weren’t covered by steel. On his shoulders rested a cape made from the hide of a bear, the head of the beast incorporated into his helmet. Normally, I’d think a person in that much mismatched armor would look goofy, but Jager pulled it off. It was the way he carried himself. The armor was less armor and more of a second skin, something he was completely comfortable in.

“Maybe you should have,” I said with a sigh. “So much death because of one mistake.”

That made Jager pause.

“What?”

“I’m… responsible for what’s happening in the world right now.” I shuddered. “Jesus, that’s hard to say out loud.”

“Explain,” Jager demanded, lightning playing over his halberd.

I nodded, spitting to the side to clear my mouth of blood. “Well, when I was in college I fell into a group of friends who were exploring magic,” I began. As I spoke, I sent a tentacle through the floor from my ass, gradually making its way toward Jager. “Somehow we got a hold of a ritual to summon the Doorman.”

Through the slits in his helm, I saw Jager’s eye narrow. “No…”

I nodded. “Dunno if it was one of the cults that we got it from, as I was relatively new to the group and wasn’t involved in the acquisition. What I do know is that the Doorman killed all my friends and chased me through the night. To survive, I managed to create a shielding circle, cutting off a piece of the Doorman in the process. Inside the circle I summoned the Orphan, who traded that piece of the Doorman for what I thought was knowledge to banish it, but was in actuality a piece of the mind of a being known as The Wake of Dead Stars.”

“Bullshit,” Jager said. “Your mind would collapse even glimpsing a piece of something so powerful.”

I gave Jager a sickly grin. It was nice to talk to someone who had context for once. “I had a couple of things going for me,” I elaborated. “The first being that the Orphan is fair in his dealings and sealed the sliver so only a trickle could escape. The second, and probably more important thing, is that the sliver and I are oddly compatible, as in its—or should I say ‘in his’ dimension, he was born Liam Hayes.”

Lightning suddenly played all over Jager in a quite frightening display of power. I held up my hands in a warding gesture. “Now, you should be aware of a couple things before you resume your attempt to kill me: One, I plan to fix this. Second, I am…” I shuddered again. “Trying VERY hard to keep my humanity. The Waker took all my memories and I had to rebuild them from scratch, but in doing so I’ve had to basically break open the sliver and… His early life and mine are similar, but there are—it’s—let’s just say that I can see why he became known as the Wake of Dead Stars.”

I tapped a finger against my temple. “And that knowledge is here,” I said with sudden vehemence. “And every time some motherfucker comes after me, I get stronger. Just fighting your employees, I felt the pull of that knowledge, the desire to shed this shell and expand past mortality. That… terrifies me, Jager. I don’t want to not be human. I never wanted any of this! I JUST WANTED NOT TO BE AFRAID ALL THE TIME!”

The sudden volume of my outburst surprised me, but shocked Jager as he was hit with a concussive blast that knocked him back a step. I took several deep breaths to calm down. “Other Me has been dealing with the Distiller and his avatars for eons. I know I can get to them. I know how to kill them. The only trick is doing it in a way that I remain human in doing so, because I have a feeling if I loosen my grip, even slightly, I’ll pull a Doctor Manhattan and just stop giving a shit.”

Jager’s posture changed, not understanding my reference but getting enough from context.

“You’re asking me to let you leave,” Jager said with a growl that sounded like thunder, shaking dust from the ceiling.

“Pretty much,” I said with a shrug. “A fight between us would result in three things, as I figure it; I die, or you die, or I transcend and you die. Pretty sure this facility is collateral in all three scenarios. But if we came to blows, I’d stop pulling my punches.”

I pulled on some of the more subtle knowledge from Other Me. The shadows of the room lengthened, the temperature dropped and colors muted. A normal person under this effect would be struggling to breathe, their heart under strain just to beat. Jager, I was pretty sure, didn’t have a heart or organs unless he wanted them, but he was still affected by it.

After a moment I let the effect go and panted heavily, black sweat covering my skin. “I—“ I coughed. “I’m not gasping because that was hard,” I met Jager’s eyes and glared at him. “I’m gasping because it was so, so easy. Now, unless you want a second Wake of Dead Stars being born on your doorstep, let me go clean up my mess.”

Jager stood, considering me, the point of his halberd not moving, as if held by a statue. “I’m sorry, but—“

I sighed as he began his refusal. I had hoped Jager would let me leave. I spun up my future sight and as he was mid-word, dozens of tentacles sprang from my body, shooting in every direction only to change and home in on the giant warrior. He was ready for me, sweeping his halberd through the air as if it were nothing, slicing through the wave of tentacles like a blender.

“—you are too dangerous to let live,” he finished, taking a step toward me as lightning began to build in his halberd.

That step took him within reach of the tentacle I had sent through the floor. It shut up, under the rim of his sabaton, into the flesh of his ankle. He reacted instantly, jerking his foot away, but it was already too late. I was in his memories, and I took a select few of them. Mainly, the ones that allowed him to not be a giant angry pyroclastic cloud.

As a roaring superheated storm suddenly burst from Jager’s armor, I yanked back my tentacles and dashed from the room as the primordial storm that was Jager expanded after me, and I suddenly knew what people in Pompei must have felt. I followed the hallways that my senses have been mapping out since my escape, bursting through a couple of large stone doors that shattered as my shoulder crashed into them.

Beyond the rubble of the doors was the familiar room where I had first met Jager. My magic flew out of me, making subtle changes to the spells and protections laid into the foundations. For this working, I pulled heavily on the knowledge of Other Me, as I could not escape without it. The entirety of this facility was so deep underground I could not sense the surface, nor could I sense any kind of ventilation or tunnels that led up. Surrounding the facility was an endless expanse of rock and granite. The only way in or out was by teleportation, which is fucking bonkers. The amount of effort and power just to render transportation to this place is staggering. It’d be like building a bullet train to go down the street to the liquor store.

The massive room shook as I reshaped tiles, shaved away columns, turned other features to dust. It was also shaking because a massive, several thousand degree storm made of anger was squeezing through the hole I had made in the doors, intent on turning me into a pile of carbon. As more of the storm got through the doors, the faster it became, taking up more room. My clothes suddenly combusted as the temperature got to the point where nothing that wasn’t stone or my reinforced flesh could not be on fire.

The room had originally been designed to look like a bigger version of the Roman senate, which hid its purpose of funneling magic away from anyone that wasn’t Jager. I was fighting against that purpose now, using sheer magical might and cunning borrowed from Other Me to get around the restrictions and destroy them, while also taking hold of the teleportation enchantments and brute forcing my way past their security.

All while fleeing for my life.

I felt my skin bubble and cook, my hair long since burnt away as the edge of Jager crossed the final few feet to reach me. With a sudden panicked burst of magic, I slammed the last changes to the room in place and felt the teleportation take effect.

I appeared in the middle of the Nevada desert in an explosion of fire as the part of Jager that had been trying to consume me teleported with me. Several thousand degree clouds dissipated around me, setting the dry vegetation within a few hundred feet ablaze and creating a mini inferno.

I slapped the fires out with a few bats of telekinesis, even as I collapsed to the ground. I felt my mind reaching beyond—beyond the world, trying to reach past the fetters of humanity. The struggle to remain what I am was reflected in my body, as it bulged and thrashed, new organs and limbs sprouting and fading from me in a kaleidoscope of struggle.

“God fucking damnit!” I screamed from eight mouths. “I’m not going to lose at the fucking starting line!”

I roared, loud enough to be heard miles away as I forced myself to remain in my mortal constraints, shoving the knowledge I had borrowed from Other Me back at him and erasing the memories of it. It took several minutes, but I was able to calm down, mashing my body into the form I wanted through sheer grit.

As soon as I had two legs and two arms again I laboriously climbed to my feet and began running north. The teleportation was off by several hundred miles and I needed to grab some shit before meeting up with Alice in a few months. I needed to lay false trails and make it so they focused on other shit so I can see my friends.

I… needed to see Ida. It had been over a year.

Feeling as if the world was too fragile to contain me, I lengthened my stride and began the long trip to Oregon.

Book 3, Chapter 3

I shot forward just as they opened up. Both squads had two big men with belt-fed machine guns, filling the hallway with lead (or, more likely, copper jacketed steel). One fellow was prone on the ground and opened up with a fucking fifty cal.

Thirty-six tentacles sprang from me, twelve from my back and six from each limb. My clothes were so shredded I was basically wearing a loincloth. The tentacles shot forward, breaking four of the five machine guns and wrapping around their owners.

The fifth machine gun was being operated by Roy, who had been ready for me. As soon as he saw the tentacles, he drew the sword on his hip and brought it down with his considerable might on my extra limbs before I could react, neatly chopping through them, which sent several sharp spikes of pain through my head and core. I snarled through the pain and ramped up my future sight, feeling my temperature rise as the world unfolded before me.

I fell into Kristy’s squad, grabbing her right tank by the collar of his breastplate and hurling him with enough force to deform the metal at Roy, who was in the middle of increasing his weight. He noticed the human projectile with just enough time to drop his magic and collapse with the man instead of being a solid wall for him to crash into.

Seeing a future where a dozen tentacles were severed, I snapped them up and out of the way as Walt came through. His eyes widened in a comical show of surprise as my heel connected with his shin, snapping it neatly as he hit it at over ninety miles an hour and crashed into the back line. Defensive enchantments sprang to life around him, saving his and his companions lives as a balloon-like bubble of telekinetic force kept the collision from being lethal, but sending him and three others careening down the hall like knocked bowling pins.

The second front-liner of Kristy’s squad lunged for me, having produced a machete that looked more like an arming sword—no, it was an arming sword. I ducked and pivoted, his arms flying behind my back as I scooted past him, then slapped him away with five tentacles wrapped together into a single limb with enough force that I felt ribs break.

Kristy was bringing her small machine gun to bear on me and with two flicks of my wrist I severed the strap and knocked it away. Following the second motion I reached up and placed my hand on her cheek and quickly dove into her memories, then slightly deeper into the memories of her body. Yup, the Waker had made her body forget how to breath. It was trying to re-learn, but the body wasn’t really set up to learn how to breath twice. I quickly set up a patch job that should at least make her nights more comfortable, while also making it so the genetic memories would (hopefully—I’m learning as I go here) soon settle and become natural.

As I came out of her memories my hand trailed down to her chest and I shoved her at the wall, quickly shooting lashings from my fingers to adhere her there with a resin collar around her neck.

Just in time to duck a swing from Greg’s sledge hammer. I grabbed him with my magic and flung him up high on the wall, before covering him completely in lashings thick enough to hold an elephant still. Hopefully his regeneration doesn’t also make him super-strong.

I turned to find the final two people kneeling over Albright’s prone form. I briefly scanned my memory of the fight and recalled that Walt had clipped the poor guy when he flew past at highway speeds. Beats ignored me as she focused her hands over Albright’s forehead while the other guy… I couldn’t remember his name. He stayed behind and I only interacted with him maybe twice? He’d been the one to give mouth-to-mouth to Kristy when I was fighting the Waker. He was deeply tanned, looked amused and nervous in equal measure, and held his hands in the air.

“I’m good,” he said, a drop of sweat trickling down from his hairline.

I snorted and eased off on the future sight.

The entire fight had taken less than ten seconds.

“Sorry about this,” I said, then took off down the hall, quickly passing a groaning Walt and his three colleagues. I managed to get around the next turn in the hallway before the shaking in my limbs caused me to collapse into a loose pile, sliding across the polished floor for several feet.

I gasped and panted, rolling onto my back. I placed my hand over my heart, feeling it beat faster than I ever had before as I struggled to pull the tentacles back into myself and calm down. I struggled to quantify how I felt. I was tired, but I also felt… bloated. Like something inside of me was pushing against the lining of my being, and every time I flexed my abilities it got stronger.

Need to eat, Other me chimed in. Need to interact with other humans without fighting them. Need to laugh, hug, kiss, fuck, joke, compete, watch movies, play Skip-Bo, build a gingerbread house, fart and get laughed at—

Need to be human, I boiled down.

In essence, Other me confirmed.

Without further input, I picked up what he was putting down. I’d spent so long pretending not be human that it was started to become true. Once one accumulated enough power, what you wanted to be true tended to happen. Even without magic. Just look at despots with their propaganda divisions, or the billionaires of the US. When magic and other eldritch forces got involved, it compounded the issue. Magic was all about breaking the rules of reality and making what you wanted to be true, true. Magic made the saying “Fake it until you make it” much, much more literal.

Gotta get outta here first, I muttered mentally.

No shit, Other me said with an echoing laugh that I pretended wasn’t unsettling.

I dragged myself to my feet a few moments later, still trailing a score or more of tentacles that I was gradually reeling back into wherever they go when I’m not using them. I knew they weren’t going back inside me, because I didn’t gain or lose mass when summoning or dismissing them.

I found several more, much larger if not as powerful security forces over the next ten minutes. I relied less on future sight and more on overwhelming magical might and just slowly mashed them all to the floor with a giant telekinetic mattress. Once they were all mashed to the floor with just enough room to breath and nothing else, I disarmed them and pasted them to the walls with lashings. Using that much magic strained me, but in a different way than using my tentacles and future sight.

Then I cottoned on that I was much faster than most of the personnel in the facility, only seeing three speed specialists, including Walt. My solution then became to power through them at forty miles an hour, covering myself in a telekinetic wedge that acted as a makeshift cow-catcher and bullet shield. By the time they were picking themselves off the floor, I was already on my way.

I forced yet another giant door (gotta find out what the official name for these things are, I keep wanting to call them “bulkheads” but I know that’s not right) open, letting it slam down behind me as I finally found myself in something other than a hallway. It was a landing with a stairwell going up.

I started up the stairs in a run, forcing my senses up them in a flood. Several magical wards and other defenses lit up as I approached, but I crushed them with liberal applications of telekinesis despite the growing pain in my temples. I’ve probably used more magic in the last hour than I had in my whole life, but it was oddly easier to use raw magical might rather than the combination future sight/eldritch powers. Overusing magic just brought pain; pain and I were long acquainted.

… I think. With every thought I had, there was an undercurrent of “I think,” as by and large my whole personality and everything I knew was based on a series of stacking guesses facilitated by powers I reverse engineered from the being that nearly killed me, based on pure instinct and some help from Other Me.

I burst through a heavy set of security doors, the normal kind you’d see in an office building and not the Dr. Evil lair doors I’ve been dealing with so far. Just as I got the last of my tentacles absorbed back into my body (or wherever they go) and began to take in the room, my future sense warned me too late about a lightning bolt.

If it had acted like a normal lightning bolt, I would have been fine. I dodged while throwing up a screen of telekinetic force. Instead of shooting past me and grounding itself out on the wall or the floor, the lightning paused for an instant before redirecting itself around my hasty defense and arcing into my chest, hurling me across the room, through several things that may have been walls or desks before slamming into a wall that wasn’t made of drywall, but concrete.

I tried to spin up my future sight, but I was too disoriented. Luckily, the guy who ambushed me seemed to want to chat rather than finish the job.

“I should have killed you years ago.”

Clouds, angry and flashing with red and white light, materialized in the corners and crevasses of the room and gathered a few feet away from me, coalescing into the shame of a large man in medieval armor, holding an ax-headed polearm that was a good two feet taller than me.

I coughed a glob of black blood and phlegm onto the floor and dragged my forearm across my mouth. “Hey Jager,” I said with a rasp. “Nice to see you again.”

Book 3, Chapter 2

I felt my perception of time expand as my precognition gift from Trix commingled with my expanded powers from Other Me. Instead of seeing what I now knew as the most likely outcome of the future in three seconds, I perceived the world in front of me like someone had overlayed an x-ray of possible futures in front of me.

Future sight is an incredible power, Other Me chimed in. It’s one of the abilities almost any being that transcends mortality pursues to one degree or another during their ascension. The fact that you got even a crippled and nearly useless version of it from Trix for a few sinners souls is a testament to how powerful she is.

Barely any time had passed since I slammed open the door, Other Me’s needless explanation having taken place at the speed of thought. We more or less shared the same mind-space at this point, and I had gotten used to him running a play-by-play on my life.

As the milliseconds ticked by, I examined the thirty or so guards in front of me. Most of them had guns that were annoying at best, but one small group of guards near the side were all operating one gun that thought would look right at home on a Gundam. My newly awakened magical senses condensed around it, and the power it was giving off made me worry.

One second was quickly becoming two, and I knew I needed to act if I wanted a chance of keeping this conflict as bloodless as possible. With a grunt, I shot down the corridor, the dozens of tendrils and tentacles I had sprouted moving me down the hallway like someone had strapped a jet engine to a spider from hell. I arched into the air, thankful for the high ceilings, my loose clothing snapping and flapping in the sudden wind. I heard several guards scream at my approach as they opened fire.

Only a few bullets hit me as I sprouted a dozen new tentacles from my midsection, bursting through my shirt like some horrible combination of a Chia Pet and an alien chest burster. The screams of panic from the guards turned to screams of pain as each tentacle snapped out and crushed the guns in their hands. I mentally winced, knowing I probably broke a finger or wrist here and there.

Another two dozen of the smaller tendrils I had left over from opening the door shot to the side and yanked on the big sci-fi gun with enough force to rip it out of it’s mooring. Which is when I learned it had been riveted to the floor.

Quick recoil lesson: You know in crappy action movies, you often see a guy getting shot by a shotgun and flying back? You likely had a friend or were the friend that noted such a feat is impossible. Because if the pellets/bullets/slugs of a gun have enough force to impact a human body with such force, that force would need to come from somewhere, right? Something has to move the bullet forward. If that force is strong enough to hit a human and knock said human away, that same force would also be strong enough to send the guy holding the gun just as far.

That was a long winded way of saying that I didn’t have enough tentacles anchoring me to the walls or floor to keep me in the air as I yanked the science gun out of the concrete.

I let out a comical “OOF” as the large piece of metal equipment slammed into me. Luckily I had a brand new bunch of tentacles sprouting from my stomach, which helped disperse the impact. I quickly adjusted in mid-air and threw the big gun behind me while desperately trying to slow myself before I crashed into the front row of guards.

I met some success, as I didn’t kill anyone. I did break a few bones (none of mine), however, which I felt bad about. I gently climbed out of the mess of bodies while directing my tentacles to break the rest of the firearms of the guards in the back. One guy had gotten especially unlucky with a snapped collarbone. A few of my tentacles set him aside as I began to Lash all the guards together on the left side of the corridor.

“Sorry about this!” I said as I felt my perception return to normal. My head felt hot and I was breathing heavily. Other Me had warned me that future sight usually came with a heavy cost, but even his frequent and stressed warnings didn’t prepare me for the fact that using it for two seconds had me feeling like I’d used my biggest spells. I took several deep breaths before continuing. “Hopefully someone will be by to cut you guys free. When they do, tell them Jeremy is tied up too.”

Some of the guards who hadn’t been injured tried to fight against me but—but it was like fighting children. Or maybe the blind? I was so much faster and stronger than any one of them. Not only that, but I could tell what they were going to do almost before they did. Whether that was a facet of Trix’s precognition gift or just the mental improvement of our last deal, or the changes coming about from incorporating more of Other Me into myself OR a combination thereof, I had no idea. All I know is that these Elysium agents didn’t have a chance.

Which is great, because if I had to spend more effort on incapacitating them I don’t know if I could have kept them all alive. I looked over the group one last time to make sure I hadn’t accidentally covered anyone’s airways before reabsorbing the tentacles back into my stomach and shooting down the hallway. It was a good quarter mile before the first turn arrived, and I rounded the corner with dread. When I didn’t see or sense another trap I slowed to a jagged stop and collapsed against the wall, gasping for breath.

You are pushing too hard, Other Me chastised. Your substance is deteriorating under the strain.

Yeah, thanks, I replied with a mental eye roll.

This was something we had figured might happen, along with the strain of using what Other Me called future sight. He used a bunch of fancy words to say that I had too much power and no foundation with which to hold it. If you’ll forgive the shitty metaphor, I was a Power Wheels car someone had shoved a V8 in. Every time I pushed my limits I risked breaking my body (the words “catastrophic molecular failure” were used when I discussed it with Other Me), or—and this is almost as scary—ascending mortality.

Ascending mortality sounds good, if you’re familiar with Xianxia fiction, but it’s not something one does without being ready for it. Other Me ascended after being alive for eighty years, becoming a thing so vast and powerful he has to hang out in the void between galaxies lest his mere presence start to corrupt the matter around him. For all that amazing power, the majority of his existence has been one of utter loneliness, having to interact with others via intermediaries and cat’s paws.

I gave myself a minute to rest before starting up a slow jog down the hallway, where a “slow jog” for me was faster than the speed limit of school districts. I could have gone faster, but that’d require I exert my magic to reduce the air resistance on my body. My baggy clothes were acting like parachutes, slowing me down every time my feet left the floor.

I turned another corner after another mile of running and slowed to a stop at what greeted me. Two squads of elite Elysium agents, their black tactical/fantasy armor gleaming in the fluorescent lights. I saw Kristy on the right, issuing quiet instructions to hold fire until her go.

“Kristy!” I shouted with a grin, waving my hand above my head in genuine excitement. “You got promoted!

The tension in the room ratcheted up and also smoothed out at my outburst, like some kind of emotional paradox. They had been prepared for monster Colm, who never showed any emotions except mild disappointment and mild interest.

“Colm?” Kristy called down the hallway. They were about a hundred yards away.

“Yep!” I shouted back. “Sorry for pretending to be dumb for so long,” I apologized, lowering my hand to scratch my scalp through the main of hair I hadn’t cut in three years. For some reason, out of all my body functions, hair growth was the hardest to control, so I stopped bothering. “It took a while to put my mind back together.”

I felt Albright slam his full mental power against my mind and I slapped his attempt away like a mother warding her kids from a pie right out of the oven. I saw the group on the left shift as someone I hadn’t seen lost their footing.

“Albright, you should know better,” I called out, then turned back to Kristy. “Are you doing okay? Any lingering effects from the Waker?”

Even as far away as they were, I could make out her expression easily. I’d had plenty of time to adjust my eyes to fix my nearsightedness, plus the upgrade from Trix just made everything about me better. As I watched her struggle to decide what to tell me, I noted the new lines on her face, the heavy bags under her eyes, the new, pixie haircut that showed off her ears that at one point had many piercings but were now nude of any metal. I scanned the other soldiers, those whose faces I could see, and not one among them looked like they’d had a good night of sleep in months.

“A bit,” Kristy said with a sigh. “I have some pretty bad sleep apnea.”

I clicked my tongue in sympathy. “I’ll see what I can do about that.”

“What do you mean by that?” A voice I recognized as Roy’s came from the left squad.

“You’ll see,” I said while shaking my head and rolling my shoulders. “I’d love to catch up with you guys, but I got shit to do. You’d be doing me a real solid if you all could just pretend I overpowered you and let me past.”

Albright shoved to the front of the left squad, his eyes bloodshot and blood dripping from his nose. Oops, slapped him a little too hard. “You know we can’t do that,” he said as he produced his Garand and sighted on me.

“Sure you can,” I replied mildly, shrugging. “You just won’t. No hard feelings. I’ll try to avoid breaking any bones. Best I can do.”

I sighed and looked at the twelve individuals, some of which I could consider friends if things had panned out different. I didn’t want to hurt them, but the people who held their reins didn’t want me around. Trouble is, I’m uniquely qualified to stop the end of the world.

I just wish I didn’t have to beat up people just trying to do their jobs to do it.

I'm back

Some stuff happened that I won't go into too much detail. My body is doing an impression of the Blues Mobile pulling up to the Cook County building. One thing led to another and it made it harder and harder to write or post what I've written and here we are exiting month 4 so I'm saying "fuck it" and posting what I got and writing what I can.

These next few chapters will probably be full of errors as I am not in the headspace to edit as thoroughly as I normally do.

Hope you all are having a better new year than I am.

Book 3, Chapter 1

“I’m nervous,” I admitted, putting my Accord in park.

“Why?” Asked Alice. “It’s Ida.”

I grunted and climbed out of the tiny sedan. I opened the trunk and dropped the Webley in the hidden compartment. Alice joined me after grabbing her sign from the backseat, leaving her chain in the trunk as well. I’ve never gone to pick someone up from the airport before and wasn’t sure if we’d have to go through security. Alice wasn’t sure either, so we’re leaving behind our armaments.

“I mean, it’s one thing to flirt over FaceTime or Discord chats,” I began as I closed the trunk. “It’s different meeting her in person. We haven’t been in the same room in over a year.”

“It’ll be fine,” Alice said, slapping my shoulder. “She was already flirting with you after barely knowing you for a few days.”

I grunted again and began walking to the arrivals terminal. I pulled out my new phone and checked her flight information. “She landed a few minutes ago,” I told her. “So, five to ten minutes for the plane to pull into the airport, another five to ten for her to disembark, another five to make to baggage claim and then however long it takes for her bags to make it there.”

“Sounds right,” Alice said.

I stopped and asked an airport employee where we could wait and got directions, which led us to a room on the other side of security. Through the opening of the automatic doors, we could see Baggage Claim and I felt some of the anxiety I was feeling bleed away.

Only to be replaced a few moments later as the wait started to get to me.

“Will you fucking relax?” Alice asked, not unkindly.

I realized I’d been fidgeting like mad. I took a deep breath and did my best to calm down. Alice was looking at me with mild concern. “Dude, you weren’t this nervous when you had to fight those pirates.”

“Yes I was,” I corrected. “I’m just more used to violence.” My voice had gone flat with the second statement.

Alice winced. “I noticed you weren’t surprised when your dad took a swing at you.”

“Only that it took him that long,” I muttered.

“...Wanna talk about it?” Alice asked softly.

I glanced around. There were a couple of people waiting with us, but no one was paying too much attention. “Nothing much to tell, really,” I said.

“When you said you came from an abusive home, I don’t think I… really understood what you meant,” Alice said in the same soft tone.

I sighed. “If he doesn’t get his way, he becomes violent. If something isn’t the way he expects, he corrects it violently. He expected me to be a manly man who manly mans and instead got a nerd who loves to read and find secrets.

“Luckily Conner was more predisposed to ‘correct’ pursuits and received a lot less of his attention,” I unclenched my fists. I had felt my nails beginning to dig into my skin. “But the first time Conner ‘disappointed’ the old man I made sure I was his main focus from that point onward. If he was too tired from beating me, he wouldn’t focus on him and Mom.”

“Jesus,” Alice muttered.

I shook my head like a dog shaking water off. “But that doesn’t matter anymore,” I said with more emotion. “After I find Conner, I’ll find him a better place to live that’s out of the old man’s reach and explain to the old fucker, in no uncertain terms that if he so much as thinks a negative thought at us I’ll give him a heart attack so mom can collect the insurance.”

I saw in my peripheral vision Alice giving me a wide-eyed stare. “I have a feeling that wasn’t metaphorical.”

“Different application of a spell I found to render fat,” I admitted. “Change the target, effect the organ instead of adipose, lower the ‘wattage.’ Instead of melting fat, strains the heart. Keep it up for a half hour and bam, dead dad.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“I don’t think you should do that,” Alice began slowly. “You… already worry about yourself. However justified, I think ki—“she paused and looked around. “I think taking that step would probably do more harm to you than help your family. Maybe just get a restraining order?”

I turned and looked at her incredulously. Before I knew what was going on, I felt laughter bubble up and force its way out of me. Deep, chest-compressing laughter overcame me, forcing me to double over and place both hands on my knees to keep from falling to the floor. The laughter had a helpless quality to it that I’m sure was gathering a lot of attention. Alice shifted her sign to one hand and placed a hand on my back, rubbing it back and forth.

I hadn’t seen what the sign said until that moment when it briefly faced me as she moved it. It read “Looking to pick up 1 cute French Girl” with “French Girl” being the biggest part of the sign. Seeing it triggered another wave of helpless laughter that made me fall on my ass.

It took some time to calm down, and by that point, I was red-faced and panting with little hiccuping moans as I clutched my sides. I was sitting, hunched over and breathing hard with little tremors of laughter bubbling up.

“You are,” I paused to giggle. “One hundred percent right. Also, that sign is great. You do realize that most of the ladies on that flight will be French?”

“Yes,” Alice said with a mixture of concern and amusement. “But only one will see the sign, turn bright red, and walk over to us.”

I took several deep breaths in a row to try and kill the lingering glee. “I—“ another deep breath as I felt a laugh bubble up. “I don’t think she’ll be that embarrassed,” I said, finally leaning back enough to catch her eye. “She’s a badass undercover cop with a six-pack you can grate cheese on. Have you seen her Instagram?”

“Oh my God, her Instagram,” Alice said with a grin. “I thought my workout posts were full of thirsty idiots but hers are on another level. But to your previous statement, I disagree. Whenever you compliment her she gets all flustered and changes the subject. I’m betting you standing by the sign will light her up like Rudolph’s nose.”

I pulled out my phone and checked Ida’s flight info again, but found nothing had updated. “I think she’s still on the tarmac.”

“Wouldn’t be an airport if you didn’t have to wait,” Alice said. She looked around, shrugged, and plopped down next to me.

We sat in companionable silence, our knees touching, for a good five minutes. I sighed and hung my head. “Sorry for going all… nega-Colm for a second there. With Conner missing and what Perry told us, I’m—I’m—“

“Don’t worry about it,” Alice interrupted, patting my knee. “We all have our dark moments. I will say, however, that this is a prime example of why you need to visit more often or move down here. I can’t pull you out of your ass if I’m not around to do so.”

I huffed a laugh and pulled her into a one-armed hug. “Please feel free to de—de-assify? De-ass? To Unass my head? There’s a joke in there somewhere but I can’t find it. Anyway, feel free to do that.”

“Like you could stop me,” Alice said.

Alice spent the next thirty minutes distracting me, talking about her brothers, pulling up memes on her phone, and pretty much keeping my mind occupied.

“It’s none-pizza with left beef,” Alice said, showing me her phone.

“Yeah? And?” I asked with a frown.

“Read the meme!” She insisted.

I read it, my frown staying in place. “Funny?”

“There’s something wrong with your humor,” Alice said. “This is a classic meme that is universally liked.”

“Maybe I haven’t accumulated enough brain rot,” I countered. As I did, I noticed through the automatic doors that the baggage claim things were moving. What are they called? Was it just called conveyors?

“What? You’re on the internet just as much as I am,” Alice said, noticing where I was looking and sighing in relief. “Finally.”

We both stood, Alice put away her phone and held her sign in both hands. “Yeah, but I listen to podcasts and look for estate sales. You’re apparently on Reddit all the time,” I countered, straitening my shirt and pants.

“Birdsforscale soothes me,” Alice said.

“Eh?”

“It’s a subreddit for art of giant landscapes or cities with some birds on it to give it perspective,” Alice explained. “It’s really pretty.”

We talked a bit more about her favorite subreddits before she cut off and held her sign as high as she could. I looked toward the baggage claim and instantly spotted Ida, dragging a big suitcase and carrying a jacket under her other arm. Her eyes landed on Alice, read the sign, and instantly blushed.

“Pay up,” Alice said.

“I never agreed to a bet,” I said, smiling wide at Ida’s reaction.

Ida drew near and stood with a hip cocked, a small smile on her face that looked quite lovely with her rosy cheeks. “Has the position been filled? I fear I am not cute enough.”

Alice snorted loudly and nearly tackled Ida in a hug. “Bullshit,” she said as she lifted the smaller woman off the ground, who made an indignant squawk as she was spun around. “You’re the cutest!”

Ida started saying something in French. Something about “stupid Amazon woman” and a bunch of grumbling I didn’t catch. I’d been boning up on my French with whatever free time I had but it would still be a long time before I’d be fluent enough to hold a conversation.

Alice planted Ida back on her feet, grabbed her bag, and started walking away before either Ida or I could react. “I’ll put this in the car!”

Suddenly I was paralyzed. Without Alice to act as a buffer, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to act with Ida. Ida seemed similarly flat-footed, watching me as passengers passed us on the way out of the airport.

“It’s good—“

“I’ve missed—“

We both started at the same time. I returned her grin, waving for her to go first.

“I—I know this probably isn’t the best time, with what’s going on,” Ida said. “But I’ve been thinking about this meetup and… and how it’d go and I—Should I wait?”

As she asked the last she took a step closer until she was almost looking directly up at me.

Okay, I know I’m thick at times, but even I can read the situation.

I put a hand on her hip, and when her grin got wider, went ahead and put the other one on the back of her head. “I’ve been thinking about that kiss on the island every night.”

Ida’s hands were on my chest, idly running her nails over me in slow, repeated curls. “I wish I’d done more—mph!”

I cut her off with a kiss.

This is the third time you’ve gone over this memory. It’s as done as it’s going to be! WE NEED TO GO!

***

I opened my eyes to my cell, irritated with the Other Me for interrupting my dream.

While he was technically correct, that particular memory felt important and I wanted to make sure it was as it should be before I made my escape. That memory… It was part of the first “bunch” that were taken from me, and that particular one has a strong significance.

Losing it had affected me more than I had known at the time. At that moment, when I kissed Ida, I had an emotional breakthrough. Ida had known everything going on with me, knew my struggles with powers and my fears of losing my humanity, and kissed me anyway.

I had a lesser version of that breakthrough later in the week at the motel, but it was severely undercut by the loss and confusion of having my memories altered.

Stop with this introspection shit. If we don’t leave this place in the next hour I swear to God I will find a way to destroy the continent, even as diminished as I am.

I rolled my eyes at Other Me and stretched my back for the first time in years. My spine popped like a series of firecrackers going off and I let out a low groan of “hurts so good,” as my brother would say. At the same time, I focused on the tendril I had been growing for the last six months. It was one of my tentacles, growing out of the flat of my left butt cheek. The trick to growing it had taken a long time to figure out, as I had to be able to detach it for periods of time and reconnect it to resume its growth.

Six months of slow, monotonous growth while I pretended to stare off into space, or listen to Jeremy talk about League of Legends. Six months of avoiding the many protections placed around me. Six months of burrowing through reinforced concrete and a substance I was 95% sure didn’t exist elsewhere on the planet. Six months of crawling through what I estimated to be three miles of material.

Just to poke through the floor and touch Jeremy’s ankle.

I dumped the memories I had prepared in that one instant, as I stretched further, throwing my arms and legs out and craning my head back. As I did, I grabbed my powers and forced my body into a more humanoid shape. I was still taller than normal, and my skin refused to change color without taking significant concentration, but at least I didn’t look like a low-rent Violator from Spawn.

I leaned back, extending a claw to cut a strip of cloth from my bedding to make an impromptu belt for my now very baggy pants. I then cut the hems off so they wouldn’t trip me in the coming moments; even if my plan went off without a hitch (which I did not expect), I was about to do a lot of running.

The lights dimmed as Jeremy began to operate off his new memories. This was the trickiest part. I had just dumped several years of an incredibly boring job into his head, establishing a routine he followed and never deviated from. From his perspective, I had been executed several years ago, and he had been assigned to this position permanently to keep an eye on the ambient energy that resulted from my death.

If he was following the routine I had set for him, he was playing a phone game with on hand while he absently sent commands into his console to step down security and extend the bridge so he could take his daily readings of my cell.

There were several potential hurdles to this stage of the plan; the first being that I misjudged how strong Jeremy’s mind and mental protections were. Even if my new memory powers grew from the blueprint of an incredibly powerful memory being, I was still a novice when it came to manipulating them in other people. The only other practice I’ve had was with Alice, and there had been a butt-puckering moment when her defenses almost destroyed my working. I’d had to scramble to avoid them and slip through without destroying them, as the prison detection web set up around me would have noticed and vaporized my ass.

The second hurdle would be if Jeremy just glanced at his monitor and noticed there was someone in the cell for the first time in five years (from his perspective). I was sitting in a spot that was partially obscured by the shower, and I was much smaller than I was moments ago, but the cell was designed so that there was no privacy from any angle. When I had remade enough of my mind to realize how horrible that was, I had a moment of outrage before I realized it didn’t really matter if they saw me naked. It was a gross violation of personal privacy, but they didn’t see me as human—which was to my benefit, as it helped me maintain my deception.

...And, if I'm being honest, I’m not sure I disagree with them anymore.

The third hurdle was that this might be one of the days when Jeremy’s superiors stopped by. Unlike the memories I had manufactured, Jeremy was closely monitored, along with the guards who covered the other shifts. They had regular mental screenings and psychic evaluations to make sure their minds had not been tampered with. Sometimes they were scheduled, but often they were random.

I had picked Jeremy simply because he was the most friendly, which was unfortunate for him. The other guards never spoke to me, so it was much harder for me to create memories that would be believable.

Poor Jeremy, however, talked about almost every aspect of his life. I knew more about Jeremy than I do about Alice and Ida, at this point. Which is kind of sad. I knew more about my jailer than about my closest friends.

But it was something I was going to correct as soon as I was free.

My anxious thoughts ground to a halt as the bridge began to extend. I let out a breath of relief but otherwise held still. I was sitting so I was partially obscured by the shower, but it was just a few pipes and a stand that served as a towel rack.

The bridge connected with my platform with a smooth-sounding thud. A moment later, I heard footsteps. I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding. When Jeremy was halfway across the bridge, I stood, snapping the off tendril, and rushed across.

I almost flew off the platform. I had just remade my body to be as close as I could make it to how it was during my fight with the Waker, and apparently, that meant I was fast. I sprouted several tentacles and grabbed the sides of the bridge to keep myself from flying off the side. Before they could grab anything, however, I bounced off the invisible walls of the bridge.

Oh! They had magic guard rails. That’s neat.

Now that I wasn’t pretending to be dumb, I let my magical senses unfold from my mind. If this facility was a boat, my magical senses were water rushing out from a large hole, gradually—though not slowly—filling up the vessel. Alarms began to sing across the entire facility.

Jeremy finally noticed a black and tan blur approach and let out half of a startled scream before I scooped him up in my tentacles. A few strides later we were approaching the first security door, which was slamming toward the ground with powered servos aided by gravity. I slid forward on one knee and got my hand under it. There was a loud crash that shook the walls, the sound of tearing metal that I assumed was stripping gears, and a slight grunt from me as I stopped it from hitting the ground.

I was tempted to try and lift it with just one hand, but my only audience was Jeremy at the moment, and I doubted he was in any state of mind to appreciate the show of strength. I set my feet in a better position, got my other hand under the door, and lifted. The door resisted for a moment before there was a great crash coming from behind the walls. All the resistance behind the door disappeared and I merely had to deal with its thousand-plus pounds of weight. I hefted it up and moved myself and Jeremy to the other side before letting it drop with a clang.

I walked over to Jeremy’s booth and into it, Jeremy had left the door open by long pseudo-habit. I pulled him over and dropped him into his chair.

“Hey, Jeremy,” I said as I squatted and extended a finger to the thread-thick tendril poking out of the floor. I began to reabsorb it into my body. I don’t think I needed to, strictly, but I didn’t want to leave anything of myself behind in case they could track me with it. “You’re probably, understandably confused right now.”

“Y-y-you died!” Jeremy breathed.

I shook my head. “Nah, I tricked ya,” I said, rolling my shoulders. “I just made you think I was dead. The memories will begin to degrade after a few days and they’ll just be like a weird dream and, I’m like, ninety percent sure they won’t do any lasting harm. The other ten percent might be some weird habits left over from the memories I shoved in your noggin.”

The alarms were getting louder. I could feel dozens upon dozens of security spells and defenses activating, as well as many… beings? That’s a new sense. Huh. I felt people now. And boy were they all moving around in a tizzy.

Man, absorbing a few miles of tendril took a while. “Anyway, no hard feelings, yeah? You’ll get out of Emerald one day. But, also, find another hobby. Spending that much time in League can’t be healthy for you. I’m not saying give it up! But like, split your time. Maybe knitting. Or cave diving. Or talking to real, human people, and not weirdo monsters like me. Get a dog, maybe.”

Jeremy seemed to have forgotten his fear and was now in shocked astonishment. That’s fine, as my finger was slurping up the last of the tendril-like the final piece of spaghetti.

Finally! Free of that boring fucking room!

I agreed with Other Me. Perhaps the hardest part of pretending to be a dumb monster was the boredom. Also, strangely, not being able to complain. I like to think under normal circumstances I don’t do much complaining, but holy shit, when you can’t complain yet have adequate reason to? That’s its own special torture.

I strapped Jeremy to his chair with parts of myself I dubbed “lashes” on the spot. They were created mostly from inert magical matter and parts of myself that I severed fundamentally from my being so they couldn’t be used to track me. I didn’t think to use the same process on the tendril before I started making it, otherwise, I might have tried to use the new process instead. I don’t think it would have worked without further research, however, as lashes became inert a few seconds after creation and I needed to be able to work through the tendril. Oh well.

But hey! Now I’m a low-rent Spider-man! I pressed my middle and ring finger into my palm and shot lashes from my wrist, finished tying Jeremy to the chair with a spray of black stuff that wasn’t exactly webbing and was definitely not tendrils. The sight of my hand gave me pause, however. The black skin, the claws.

I’m probably closer to Venom.

I don’t know how I feel about that, so I’m not going to think about it.

Jeremy was screaming as his legs, arms, and torso were effectively glued with a fast-acting, if flexible resin to the chair. I paused as I stood from my squat. I hope the lashes are safe to use on skin. I peeled some off of his hand, which didn’t seem to be irritated other than losing a few hairs. Whelp, nothing for it.

“Someone will be by soon to cut you free, I’m sure,” I said with a wave and turned to leave the booth, toward the other security door. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hope for both our sakes that we never meet again!” I called over my shoulder.

The second security door had closed at the exact same time as the first one, which made it harder to deal with. The bottom of the door was in a recessed lip in the ground that was almost flush with the door itself, and I’d bet a million dollars that once it was down there were further mechanisms holding it in place than there were when it was in motion.

I squatted and tried to dig my claws into the metal, but all they did was scratch it. Whelp, nothing for it. With a low exhale, dozens of tendrils sprang from my fingers, wrists, and forearms and squirmed into the tight space under the door. I felt them spread out under the door and reach around to the other side, and once they had a good enough “grip” I heaved.

There came a deep thud followed by a groan of metal from behind the walls as whatever mechanism held the door in place resisted me. I strained against it for another few breaths before I acknowledged that I was not strong enough to move the door.

Not without my magic, anyway.

I had… I had not been avoiding using my magic, exactly, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about how it’d react. I had to remake my understanding of magic as well as my other memories. If I was wrong—things could go badly.

Just do it! I want to see the sky!

I let out a grumbling sigh and let my magic loose.

If my magical senses had filled the boat like a fast leak, my magic exploding out of me was like a tidal wave. The door was ripped from my grip and sent crashing into the ceiling…

Where it stayed.

The sounds coming from behind the walls sounded a lot like one of those Looney Tunes where a character fell down the stairs, only much louder. I winced.

The guards on the other side of the door were caught by surprise, so it took them a second or two to open fire.

Book 3, Prologue—Part 2

Prologue—Part Two

Alice

Alice sighed as she stuffed her bag. Colm was working through books faster than she could provide new material. Elysium only allowed her to bring one bag, so every week she had to figure out how to best stretch the material. This week she’d settled for several thick history textbooks with small font and very little in the way of pictures.

In a moment of weakness, she wondered why she even bothered. Then she scowled at herself for the thought. Alice “bothered” because Colm had saved her life several times. If there was a chance to get him back, she’d work herself to the bone to do so. One visit a week was the bare minimum of effort she could give him.

...Even if she couldn’t recognize her friend anymore.

It had started so well. For the first weeks, Colm had been flip-flopping between vegetative and acting like a toddler with a toothache. Elysium had called her in several times to calm him down. Because, unlike a toddler, Colm had undergone a transformation sometime between when he left the Albright’s team on his own and when he reappeared on the surface. The first few times she tried to calm him down, she felt like Scarjo trying to calm down the Hulk.

After that period, Colm seemed somewhat normal, even if he was simple and mute. He reacted well to direction, and picked up reading and writing easily. It was as if he was picking up a skill he hadn’t used in a long time, rather than picking up something anew. It had given her great hope.

But the more he learned, the less he… emoted, for lack of a better word. Like something “human” in him was being chipped away with every piece of knowledge gained. Alice even experimented by not bringing any new materials for him a few times. He didn’t complain, but what few emotions she could get out of him disappeared and he almost went mute again.

Alice grunted with frustration, shoving “A History of Western Philosophy” with a little too much force and bursting the corner of her bag. She inhaled deeply and struggled to keep herself from shouting in frustration.

It was good that she did because she heard her front door open. “Mija?”

Her mother. Alice sighed.

“In here!” She called.

Alice felt a light brush upon her mind, as her mother tried to gauge her mood. Alice knew she had been less than… social, of late, but she had great excuses.

Everyone did.

Maria Martinez entered Alice’s office, which used to be the house’s dining room. Alice had never entertained, so she had turned the dining room into a place where she could edit photos and answer emails. Not that there was much demand for photography at the moment.

Her mother “tsked” at the bag full of books. “I wish they’d let me send food with you.”

Alice smiled at that. The one complaint Colm voiced is that the food had no variety. “Same,” she said.

Alice began digging in a drawer for her duct tape. She’d patch the corner she busted on the bag as best she could and get a new one tomorrow. She felt her mother touch her mind again, some of her frustration bleeding through her mental defenses.

“Wish you’d join the family,” Maria complained.

“It’s easier to keep my guard up all the time,” Alice said. “Elysium has the strongest telepaths in the world working for them.”

“Let them look,” her mother replied. “The family has nothing to hide.”

Alice paused in her work of unloading the bag to give her mother a glare. “I’m not protecting the family—I'm protecting Colm,” she said through her teeth. “And you know that.”

Maria sighed and leaned against the desk. “Mija, look, in all the futures—“

“Yeah?” Alice interrupted. “How many futures did you see Colm saving that cruise ship? Or defeating an avatar? Or his goddamn family showing up when he visited?” Alice was almost yelling now. “The future isn’t set in stone, and your ability to read it is FAR from perfect!”

Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“I just worry about you,” Maria said softly. “You said yourself that he’s looking less and less human with every visit. You’re putting all this work into something that isn’t even a man anymore.”

Alice opened her eyes with a snort. “We’re the descendants of a demon, mom,” Alice said with derision.

“Or whatever the hell Gran is,” she added under her breath. Louder: “None of us are exactly human. As bad as the world is right now, it’d be infinitely worse if Colm hadn’t been there and paid the price with his mind. He may not have set out to save anyone but his brother, but when he saw what was happening, he stepped up.

“No children have been born alive in two years,” she continued, using a bit more force on the bag than what was required. “Imagine what the last two years would have been like with another one of those monsters free? One that effected memories?”

Alice threw the bag to the side in frustration. Colm can go one week without books, she thought. She moved past her mother and grabbed her keys off the coffee table, stopping short of running for the front door.

“Mija—“ Her mother called after her.

Alice closed the door behind her.

  ***

After being brought to Elysium from a secure Corvus facility, Alice cooled off in the waiting room. She reasoned her mother had set her off the way she did because Alice had been having similar thoughts and took her anger out on the wrong target.

Price was on duty again and was sheepishly glancing at her. Alice assumed he had a crush on her as he always did his best to make her visits go smoothly to the point that she was sometimes worried about his job security. So many rules he was willing to bend for her sake.

Plus, he wasn’t as good at hiding the frequent glances at her ass as he thought he was.

Normally she’d just peak in his mind and find out, but in order to be sure her own mental defenses were as impenetrable as possible, she’d closed all doors to her mind. She hadn’t used her telepathy in months.

Maybe mom’s right, Alice thought. I could ease up during the week and spend some time with the family… I mean, that’s why I moved back to LA in the first place. Colm wouldn’t want me to isolate myself for his sake… well, he might. That man was paranoid.

For a communal family like hers who were each born a telepath, cutting oneself off was similar to shutting oneself away in a room and never leaving. The Martinez family spent the majority of their time living in other people's minds—almost literally, when it came to the twins. Alice didn’t know how they kept the personalities separate with how much time they spent being one another.

“Okay, go ahead and stand in the square,” Price said, interrupting her thoughts.

Alice nodded and crossed the room, fishing her ID out of her pocket. She had figured out months ago the ID portion of the procedure was a subterfuge to draw attention away from the verification magics. Not the obvious ones that sent a tingle across her skin, but the more invasive ones that scanned her far more thoroughly and were a good deal more subtle and creepy.

It made Alice worried there might be a vat in a basement somewhere with her clone.

But she put up with it because Jager was growing more and more prickly every year. The last time Alice and her family had made a stink he’d threatened to end visitation rights altogether, no matter who or what was backing them. Alice had been tempted to call Gran up then and there but didn’t want to cash in Colm’s favor and negate what little hold they had over Jager.

“All good,” Price said as the steel door began to rise. “Have a good visit.”

“Thanks, Jeremy,” Alice said and began to walk down the long hall to Colm’s “cell.”

Alice was lost in thought, her mind revolving around what her mother had said. Before she knew it, she had crossed the bridge and was standing in the square designated for visitors. She shook her head to clear it and looked him over.

She was relieved he didn’t look any different than last week. Sometimes he changed from week to week and it made treating him the same very difficult. One week he had changed so drastically they hadn’t let him have any visitors at all.

Colm’s expression—usually a small polite smile—fell when he noticed she wasn’t carrying anything. “No books this week?”

“Sorry buddy,” Alice said, sitting cross-legged in the yellow square. “I was trying to fit as many as I could into the bag and it burst, then I had an argument with my mom and I—I’m sorry. I’ll make sure to bring some next week.”

The small smile came back as Colm nodded once. “Okay. What are we talking about this week?”

Alice had been thinking about this. Colm wouldn’t be thrilled, but without new materials, there was little else to do. “How’s your handwriting coming along?”

Colm frowned. “Handwriting is hard,” he said. He lifted his long and thin hand. “The pencils keep breaking.”

“That’s okay! You have plenty of pencils,” Alice said with forced cheer.

Colm’s head swung to the left like a giraffe, looking at his desk. There was a ream of paper and a cup filled with charcoal pencils. “I guess,” Colm said.

“Permission to use the desk?” Alice called toward the air.

“Permission granted,” came a booming voice. “Prisoner to the secondary square.”

Colm bobbed his head and climbed to his feet. Standing, even with the severe slouch, he was over eight feet tall. Price had told her the last time they weighed him he clocked in at just under four hundred pounds. Which must be mostly bone, as there was barely any muscle on the guy.

Colm crossed to the table and sat down on the floor. He was so tall that he didn’t need a chair. He placed both hands flat on the table and waited.

“Visitor to the secondary square.”

Alice repeated the process but sat across from Colm. She placed her hands flat on the desk, marveling at how small they looked compared to Colm’s. His hands looked like spider crabs' legs. As she thought that, his index twitched and touched her finger—

Hi Alice! Said Colm. The real Colm. The Colm she remembered. He had somehow slipped right past her mental defenses like they weren’t even there. First, I need to apologize for playing dumb for nearly three years. There’s a faction in Elysium that was pressuring Jager to kill me and for some reason the dumber, monstery-er I behaved the less traction they got. Other than that…

Jesus, where do I start? Whelp, the Waker did a doozy on me. Took nearly all my memories except for some food. I’ve been spending most of my waking moments these last few years getting them back—no wait, wrong phrasing. They aren’t really “back.” I’ve had to… remake them? For lack of a better word.

Imagine you live in a house for thirty years. You’re a neat freak and you know where everything is, from the coasters to the odds and ends in the coupon drawer, to the furniture, to that one picture on the wall that is always crooked no matter how much you fiddle with it. The house has been basically the same for most of your life.

Then you die and your estranged sister inherits the house, but before she arrives someone comes along and steals everything inside the house from the carpets to the fucking sink. But she’s determined to remake the house as you lived in it, so she goes about imagining how the house was based on the indentations on the floor, the discoloration on the walls, to the era furniture would have been bought.

That’s… kinda what I had to do to my memories. I had to remake them based on the shapes they used to take up in my mind. I think I did an okay job, but I’m sure there are a LOT of fuck ups.

I’m saying this upfront because when next we meet, I’ll… probably not be the same Colm you remember. I’ll be close enough. I know I love you almost as much as Conner. You’re my ride-or-die bitch and I’d lay down in traffic for you.

But, like… the couch might be a different color, even if it’s the same brand and model, you know? One thing I know for a fact will be different is that the memories that involve trauma won’t pack as much punch. They’re memories I created, at this point, and it’s way harder to hurt yourself intentionally than for others. Does that make sense?

God, I hope this makes sense.

Also, don’t worry about not being able to respond, we’re not actually talking right now. You won’t remember any of this for a couple of months… so sorry about that. I just needed to pretend to have a real conversation with you for my own sanity. Jeremy’s a good guy but talks about League of Legends way too fucking much and if I have to hear another thinly veiled discussion about how much he wants to fuck Miss Fortune I might make all their fears about me come true. I don't even know who Miss Fortune is, for Christ's sake.

What I’m really doing is altering your memories similar to how I did to myself. I kinda had to learn how to be the Waker in order to fix myself, so now I have a bunch of… honestly quite scary memory powers. I’ve only developed them to be touch-based and not that area-of-effect thing he was doing because I don’t wanna sneeze one day and accidentally make everyone around me forget their PINs. Also, I didn't want to trip the alarms in my cell. But mostly the PIN thing.

Also… so Elysium doesn’t figure out that I’m back before I’m ready, I’m going to have to plant some false memories. I don’t want to but it’s safer for both of us. I’m taking that discussion with your mom and kinda… making you agree with her. It’s not mind control, but I’m betting that a little nudge will make you visit me less and less in the coming months before stopping altogether.

I have to do it this way because they have someone who can read your mind. It’s less magic and more of a… fuck I dunno. From what I can taste in the air, it feels like they can copy minds. Maybe something to do with that security scan? Oh shit, I bet they’re copying your brainwaves or whatever to get at your memories.

Well, that means I got to be on my A-game so they don’t suspect anything. So, uh, I hope you aren’t too pissed when you suddenly remember this in six months. You’ll also remember where to meet me at that time as well. You can hug or slug me. Maybe both? I’m hoping for a hug. Though I understand if you wanna hit me.

You’re the coolest person I’ve ever met and I’m so, so glad you’re my friend.

See you soon.

Alice blinked and looked at Colm, who was smiling his small smile.

“Sorry,” Colm said. “My hands are big.”

The buzz sounded, which let them know they could move so long as they didn’t leave their squares. Alice smiled, trying to keep her frustration out of it. She wished her mom had waited until after she had got home to have their little chat. She didn’t want Colm to pick up on what was wrong.

“Let’s see how you’re doing with lowercase letters,” Alice said, grabbing some paper and charcoal pencils.

***

Three months later.

Someone was pounding on Alice’s front door hard enough that it startled her awake from a deep sleep from the other side of the house. Reflexively, she cast about with her mind and slammed into a very familiar type of shielding. Shielding that is used almost exclusively by Elysium agents. She cursed under her breath, blinking sleep from her eyes. She got up and grabbed a bathrobe from the hamper and threw it on. She was wearing a threadbare tank top to sleep and she didn’t want to give whoever was at the door a show.

The pounding continued as she trudged through her house, turning on lights as she went. Now that she was becoming fully awake, she could hear a helicopter and sirens as well. What the hell was going on? Worry about her family suddenly grew in the pit of her stomach and she rushed the rest of the way to the front door, stopping only to grab her chain from the hallway closet.

She opened the door to find Albright standing there with his hand up. Behind him were six fully armed and armored Elysium agents. Any thought of using her chain left her mind and she shifted it behind her.

Albright looked tired and irritated. “Is Colm with you?” The question came with a blast of psychic force against her mental defenses, which almost folded before she could firm them up with a glare at Albright.

Her glare fell into astonishment, however, when his words registered. “He escaped?!”

Albright sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “I’d appreciate it if you let me scan your mind so we can eliminate you from our search.”

Alice gave him a flat look.

Albright grunted. “It was worth the ask,” he said, then turned his head to look behind. “Walt, check the house.”

A vaguely familiar man who looked like a weird mix of ninja, knight, and cyberpunk nodded once and disappeared. Something moved past her into the house, creating a blast of wind that blew her hair back.

“H-hey!” Alice shouted, moving to close the door but then realizing it was too late.

“Sorry, Miss Martinez,” Albright said tiredly. He sounded sincere. “But we need to apprehend him as soon as possible. No time for warrants or due process.”

“Like you ever use either,” Alice fired back.

Albright tilted his head in a “meh,” gesture.

Alice was wondering where her goddamn wards were. She wasn’t near Colm’s ability with them, but he’d taught her a fair bit—

There was a deep thud from beneath the house. Alice returned Albright’s raised eyebrow as if to say “You’re facing the consequences of your actions.” A minute later Walt showed up, one hand pressed against his back. “House’s… clear,” he grunted. He gave Alice a sour look. “Nasty wards on your basement.”

Jesus, Alice thought. Those wards were meant to kill or disable.

“Colm hasn’t contacted you?” Albright asked as Walt was seen to by another vaguely familiar agent.

“You have me under surveillance, Albright,” Alice said with irritation. “Are you asking me if I’ve somehow circumvented it?”

“Have you?” Albright asked archly.

Alice glared at him. “Fuck you.”

Albright watched her for nearly a minute. Alice could tell he was debating if it was worth antagonizing her further. Finally, he rolled his shoulders and waved a hand behind him. “Search the rest of the houses.”

The agents around him fell out and now Alice could see the rest of the street. It was absolutely crawling with Elysium personnel, more Elysium agents than she’d seen during the fight with the Waker. The fact that they mobilized more people for Colm than for an avatar of the Distiller infuriated her.

Her fury was undercut with a wave of shame. She hadn’t gone to see Colm at all this month. Now… Would she ever see him again?

Would she want to? Would he want to see her?

Alice sighed, closed the door, and went to make coffee. Elysium wouldn’t leave anytime soon and she doubted she’d get any sleep.

Book 3, Prologue—Part 1

Prologue—Part One

Kristy

“You don’t have to come back if you’re not ready,” Albright said distractedly as he typed out a quick email. Kristy resisted the urge to curse his laptop.

They were in Albright’s seldom-used office. This was probably the second or third time Kristy had been here. She could see from her seat a coat of dust on the sparse shelves lining the west wall, which held a single picture of Albright and his folks and a few knickknacks Kristy suspected were gifts from co-workers. Aside from the chair she sat in, the only other furniture in the room was the desk in front of her and the office chair Albright occupied. Even before the world had started falling apart, Albright had always been a “lead from the front” kind of boss. It was one of the reasons Kristy liked him. But the constant coddling since The Incident—as she referred to her near-death experience—was beginning to grate.

“You need the help,” Kristy said instead of the deluge of profanity that had bubbled up.

Albright sighed explosively, startling Kristy. She was further startled when he slumped and all but slammed his head on his desk. “Don’t I know it,” he said. He lifted his head slightly and met her eyes above his glasses that he somehow hadn’t mashed into his face. Without the glasses blocking his eyes, she could see how red they were and the bags under them. “But if I push you into the field too soon and get you killed, we’ll all be worse off. So, I’ll ask again: Are you sure?”

“I am,” Kristy said with more certainty than she felt.

Nearly eighteen months ago, a monster had touched her and made her forget how to breathe. Even the autonomous systems of her body had been altered, somehow. It had taken her six months to be able to breathe on her own again, coupled with thousands of hours of therapy—physical, magical, and mental—just to get her back to any form of normalcy… or as close as she could get. She had to sleep with a CPAP mask now because sometimes she just stopped breathing in the middle of the night.

Her answer seemed to bleed some tension out of Albright's shoulders. He straightened and finished his email before rising from his desk and holding out a hand for her. She rose as well and gripped his hand. “Welcome back,” he said with a bittersweet smile.

She returned it. Under normal circumstances, there’d be a bit more fanfare. But Elysium was stretched thin, and her old team was out in the field pretty much constantly. In fact, would she even have a place on her old team?

Albright answered her, as if reading her mind—or perhaps, because he had. “You’ll be placed with a new unit. Half of them are contract workers and the Boss and I would feel better with another seasoned officer with them.”

Translation: We don’t trust them and want them outnumbered.

“Got it,” Kristy said.

Albright released her hand and tapped a few keys on the laptop. “Lastly, about your request…” he led, raising an eyebrow at her.

She knew what he was talking about, but decided to wait him out. When it became apparent that Kristy wasn’t going to speak, Albright sighed again and rubbed his nose where his glasses rested. “Why?” He asked as he squinted into the air.

“He saved my life,” she replied. “Hell, he saved all of our lives. The two avatars out there are bad, but can you imagine the damage the Waker could have done? The loss of memory—” she stopped abruptly, unable to finish the sentence.

“He won’t remember you,” Albright said softly. “Your thanks won’t mean anything to him.”

Kristy had her doubts about that but didn’t voice them. “That’s not the point,” she said instead. “When someone saves your life, you thank them. It’s—it’s literally the least I can do.”

Albright dropped his hand, then brought it up again to adjust his glasses. The look he gave her was a mix of pity and understanding. “It’s—it’s not easy talking to him. In a lot of ways, he’s like a child. In others, like a monster. We’d only known him for a day, but it’s hard to reckon that one day against what he is now.”

Kristy shook her head. “I still need to do it.”

Albright inhaled deeply and tapped a key on his keyboard. “They’ll be expecting you at eleven hundred. You depart to meet up with your new team at thirteen hundred,” his smile was much more genuine for all the weariness that shone through it. “Good luck.”

Taking the dismissal for what it was, Kristy nodded and left. She had an hour to kill before the prison expected her, which was useful because she had never been there and had taken two wrong turns. Nobody knew exactly where the Citadel had come from or who built it, but it was evident it had been constructed with defense in mind. It was very easy to get lost, as Kristy demonstrated trying to get to the holding area. She had only been down there once about a decade ago when she had been first recruited.

A blush colored her grimace as she remembered how she had been back then, but she shoved the old memories aside out of habit. She was working on accepting her mistakes, but they still made her cringe when she thought of them. She distracted herself by studying the halls around her as she entered the holding area.

It had changed. The simple, almost medieval-style prison now looked like something from a sci-fi movie with scanners, enchanted turrets mounted at every intersection, and six-inch thick steel doors that slid up into the ceiling to let her pass. She eyed the turrets nervously as she handed her ID to the first checkpoint, sliding the card through the slot in the bullet-proof glass.

“Are those safe?” She asked as the guard clacked away at his keyboard, nodding at the turrets.

“Haven’t killed anyone yet,” he drawled, glancing at her with slight amusement coloring his eyes.

She made a face at the “yet” which earned her a chuckle.

He finished whatever he was typing and slid her ID back through the slot. “Down the hall, two rights and then a left down the stairs. It’s a long walk.”

“Thanks,” she said with a bemused frown, the door to her right sliding up into the ceiling.

After walking for ten minutes, she came to the first right. She grimaced and picked up her pace, nearly jogging. She only had an hour for her visit and she’d already eaten into a sixth of it. Thankfully, all the physical therapy she had been doing had kept her cardio in top shape. She decided to speed up yet again and broke into an easy run.

She was twenty-five minutes into her hour visit when she finally reached the checkpoint to the main holding cell. Sweat beaded her lip and temples but she was otherwise presentable as she slowed to a stop at the station.

The station was two heavily fortified booths with a reinforced steel door between them. There was a good fifty feet of open space in front of the booths, with a yellow square marked on the ground dead center of the room. As she entered, four large turrets oriented on her, pulling her up short.

“Please step into the yellow lines and present your ID to the camera,” a voice said through the intercom.

Keeping her hands open and spread to the side, she slowly walked forward until she was within the marked area. Making her movements deliberate and smooth, she produced her ID and faced it forward.

“Little to the right.”

She adjusted.

“Uh, sorry, your left.”

She adjusted further while resisting the impulse to roll her eyes. She got the feeling they didn’t get a lot of new people down here.

“State your full name,” the voice said as Kristy felt the tingle of magic settle over her.

“Kristen Hortense Coolidge,” she said. “I go by Kristy.”

She didn’t know if that last part was needed but a lot of verification magic can be finicky.

“Aaaand you’re good,” said the voice as the magic left her and the turrets powered down. “Come on over and I’ll go over the rules real quick.”

She hesitated a moment before stuffing her ID in her pocket and crossing to the door, which lifted into the ceiling with a quiet hiss of well-oiled metal. On the other side of the door was a small walkway with two reinforced booths with glass panels on either side like you’d see at a bank in a shitty neighborhood. Only the left booth was occupied, a man in his early thirties with a high hairline sitting in a computer chair.

“So, real quick, there will be two yellow squares like the one you were just in,” the man began before she even reached the glass. His name tag read “J. Price.” “You’re going to step into the one closest to the walkway and stay there. He’ll already be in the other one. Under no circumstances are you to leave that square unless you are leaving, do you understand?”

“Will I be shot?” Kristy asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh no,” he said, waving his hand like the idea was silly. “Bullets don’t bother him much anymore so we don’t use them. No, enough lightning will pour into the room to vaporize steel. The yellow square is the only safe spot.”

Kristy’s eyes widened. “Jesus,” she said. “Is that necessary?”

He shrugged. “Someone thinks so,” he said as he slid across the booth to another terminal. “In my opinion, he’s an ideal prisoner. Polite, quiet, remembers everyone’s names. He should be angry as a hornet with how he was treated by the old guard but he’s been nothing but cooperative and chatty for me.”

Kristy frowned. “Was he mistreated?”

Price looked at her, then at his monitor, then back at her. He seemed to make a decision with a shrug. “Officially, no. Unofficially, they found any excuse they could to shoot him. It’s one of the reasons bullets don’t work on him anymore. Albright found out about it and made a big stink, which is when this facility was made in a hurry and the personnel switched up,” he rolled back to his other terminal and typed rapidly. “Now I have a cushy, boring office gig babysitting the most polite monster I’ve ever met.”

“He’s not a monster,” Kristy said without thinking, with heat. She regretted it but didn’t lessen the glare she shot at Price.

“You haven’t seen him,” Price said, not noticing or not caring about her anger. “Alright, you’re good to go. Place your hands on the yellow squares.”

Kristy blinked and looked down, there were two squares on the booth. She put her hands on them. A moment later, the door behind her slid closed and the door on the other side slid open.

“Remember: Stay in the yellow square,” he reminded her.

She nodded and started to walk down another long hallway. About a hundred feet down another, thicker door slid up into the ceiling. She passed three more doors until she entered a large, cavernous room. Most of the room was a pit that fell away… apparently endlessly, as she couldn’t see a bottom as she approached. In the center of the room was a platform supported by a pillar. The platform was about a hundred and fifty square feet and contained a small bed, a sink, a shower, a toilet, one chair, and one table. The platform was dead center in the room and was two hundred feet from any wall.

Sitting on the floor in the only clear space on the platform, was a man with pitch-black skin.

Kristy wondered how she was supposed to go over when a walkway began to extend from under where she was standing. Red LEDs spelling out “DON’T WALK” lit up on the floor in front of her, so she waited impatiently for the bridge to finish extending. It took over a minute, but once it was done the lights fleshed to green and the “DON’T” disappeared. Kristy snorted and began to cross.

Before, if you had asked Kristy if she was afraid of heights, she would have said no. Now, on a walkway above a bottomless chasm that didn’t have handrails, that was barely wide enough for two people to pass each other… she might have to amend that.

She frowned in thought. They wouldn’t allow a civilian to be in danger of falling, and Kristy knew he received regular visits from friends and family. She reached out to the side and was relieved to find her fingers brushing up against an invisible barrier.

She stepped off the bridge onto the platform and hurried to stand in the yellow square marked a few feet from the edge, before getting a good look at the man who had saved her life. She absently noticed the bridge retracting behind her.

Kristy hated to admit it, but Price had a point. Colm didn’t look the same. Even when he had been breathing air into her with his black skin, he hadn’t looked so… alien. There was something still human about him. But the thing—the man in front of her now looked like something out of a horror movie.

He still had the basic shape of a human. Two hands, feet, and a head. But his limbs and torso were stretched, grotesquely so. They were too long, with tendons and veins standing in sharp relief against his too-tight skin. His head seemed to float in the air on a neck that looked too thin and long to support it. His prison uniform hung off him like a tarp.

Kristy’s mouth was suddenly dry.

“Do,” she paused to clear her throat. “Do you know who I am?”

He shrugged, and despite his weird proportions, the movement didn’t look alien. “Jeremy told me you were one of the people I knew before.”

Jeremy must be Price.

Kristy nodded, sitting down on the floor like he was. “You saved my life.”

He smiled. The expression was small, muted. On other people, it might be one of those smiles that didn’t reach the eyes. “I did?”

Kristy nodded, giving him a fragile smile. “You did,” she said. “The monster that took your memories did something to me and—and I couldn’t breathe. You were the only one who noticed and helped me long enough for our medic to come and help me.”

His smile grew more genuine. “I’m so happy.”

There was something wrong with his voice. It was wrong to say it didn’t change, but the emotions she was used to hearing… there was something off.

“Yeah,” Kristy said. “And, well—now I’m returning to duty. To help people like you helped me and—and I wanted to thank you. I know you don’t remember, but, but it’s important to me that I thanked you in person.”

He nodded. “Alice says that if someone does something you like, you thank them.”

This wasn’t how she imagined this.

She knew that most, if not all, of his memories were gone. But when she heard that he had started speaking again, she thought—she thought that there’d be something of him there.

“You’re welcome,” he said after a moment. “Conner says that’s what you say when someone thanks you.”

Kristy smiled while she cringed inwardly. This isn’t the man she needed to thank. That man might… probably doesn’t exist anymore. She sighed.

“It’s hard,” he continued. “People come here and they tell me about me. But that’s not me. That other me isn’t here anymore. And it’s hard. Hard for you, because you want the old me. Hard for me, because I can’t be him.”

Kristy watched in wide-eyed fascination as he straightened and stretched, growing a couple of feet while still sitting. So much of his height had been hidden by his slouch.

“But if I meet him, I’ll tell him you stopped by,” he said, his smile changing subtly to be a little more inclusive.

Kristy finally realized what was wrong with his voice. It wasn’t monotone, but it was like what Beats did with certain sounds. All the sharp edges and deep valleys had been removed as if the emotions had been bleached away from his personality. He still felt them, she hoped, but they were—they were blunted, for lack of a better word.

“Are you okay?”

Kristy had no idea why she asked. She’d barely known him before the Incident, and he seemed—if not content, then at least calm. But something about his voice just called out to her.

There was a flash of emotion on his face that he quickly hid. If she hadn’t been focused on him she never would have noticed. He regarded her silently for a moment before his eyes twitched behind her and back.

“I’m fine,” he said, his voice losing even more emotion.

She didn’t know how—she had no basis to judge any of this on. But she knew for a fact that the man in front of her was more than he seemed. That flash of emotion she saw unlocked some insight into his character. She almost pressed him for more information but paused. She looked around at where she was, remembering what Price said about the previous guards.

This… shouldn’t be how you treated someone who had saved millions of lives.

She tried to engage him in conversation, but his responses were simple and monosyllabic. It was clear he was done talking, and when the bridge started to extend behind her, she was relieved.

“Thank you for talking to me today,” she said.

He watched calmly as she rose to her feet and straightened out her clothes. She turned to leave.

“What do you call me?”

The question brought her up short. She turned back to him. “What?”

“Conner calls me Liam,” he clarified, lifting one massive—if thin—hand as if holding the name. He lifted the other. “Alice calls me Colm. What do you call me?”

Kristy blinked. “Uh. I called—call you Colm.”

Colm dropped the hand that held the “Liam” name and made a fist with the other. “Colm. Hm. Thank you.”

The bridge finished extending and a loud announcement forcefully suggested Kristy vacate the platform. She hesitated for a second before giving Colm a final nod and leaving.

“You’re supposed to say ‘you’re welcome,’” she heard him say.

She turned back with a wry smile. “You’re welcome. Goodbye, Colm.”

She wasn’t sure what to make of the meeting, except that the man in that room wasn’t what he seemed. She placed her suspicions in the back part of her mind where Albright wouldn’t be able to see them with a casual inspection and went to meet her team.

Before she crossed the first door, she paused and looked back. Colm was standing now, and without a frame of reference, looked gigantic. He was taller than the shower by several feet. He gently raised one hand and waved. Kristy waved back.

She sighed and went through the doors. Her new team was waiting for her.

Another Update

First, chapters incoming. Two right after this post and a third tomorrow.

Second: Fuck this month.

It's been shit, life's been rough, but it's smoothing out. That's the main thing I wanted to get out and tell you. I'll try to be more communicative in the future but I have a bad habit of turtling up when things are bad.

Anyway, hope you'll all have a fantastic Halloween. I'ma post those chapters now.

-RaReason

Update!

Got two chapters done. Doing a new editing process this time around and want to hang onto the chapters for a little longer as there were times during book 2 that I wanted to go back and change things a smidge but held back because they were already up in front of readers.

Once they feel good (not perfect, because fuck perfection. I don't know where the quote came from, but "Perfection is the enemy of 'done'" is right on the money.) I'll throw them up in a bunch up here. Prolly be 3-4 chapters by then. Longer wait between updates but at least there'll be more to read.

Thank you for being patient and I hope you're all having a wonderful September.

-RaReason

I'm back!

VERY sorry for the long absence. A lot of shit happened, but the main thing that I was having trouble with was the direction of the third book.

I have learned after trying to write a couple hundred aborted books that I need to have an ending firmly in mind before I really start the process so that the book doesn't peter out like a deflating balloon.

As I've mentioned, I started this whole thing one day because I had a dream and went "that'd make a fun book." I then put it on Royal road as a means to make sure I actually finished the damned thing. It worked! But now I have this trilogy/quartet (we'll see how it goes) and I don't want the ending to land like a Hefty bag filled with soup.

I've got an idea of how I want the book to end now, and a direction to take the third book. And because of that, I've revised the jacket blurb I posted over a month ago.

***

Perdition Embraced

Colm has been through a lot. Pirates. Cultists. Existential nightmares. Literal nightmares. The latest in a long line of insanity inducing trauma is the loss of his memories.

But he doesn’t let that stop him. Slowly, achingly, Colm remolds his memories. It’s a unique process that leaves him… different. But the question: “is he the same man as before he lost his memories?” isn’t important to him. The process of regaining his memories may have changed him, but what hasn’t changed is his desire to protect those important to him.

After three years, he finally deems himself healed. Now, there’s a few problems he needs to handle because everyone else has cocked it up: two avatar’s of the Distiller, the impending collapse of society (he’s hoping killing the former will handle the latter), the various organizations that want him dead, the sudden explosion of amateur magic that tore the curtain on the hidden world of the Occult, and…

It’s time to kill the Doorman.

Of course, before he can do all of that, he needs to escape super magic prison—without, you know… killing anyone. Or getting into a fight with the prison’s demigod warden.

Oh, and he should figure out a way to keep reality from being devoured by an infinitely vast cosmic entity that wants to reduce everything in existence to it’s base atoms. Just… you know.

Throw it on the list.

***

Chapters will be coming soon! Thank you all for your patience and support, it means the world to me.

-RaReason

Unfathomable Power, Book 3 Jacket Blurb

(Or Story Question as Jim Butcher calls them)

Perdition Embraced

By RaReason

Colm has been through a lot. Pirates. Cultists. Existential nightmares. Literal nightmares. The list goes on and on. After some reflection, he realizes that most of his problems stem from one defining moment in his past: the night the Doorman killed all his friends.

Thus, Colm makes a decision: the Doorman has to die.

There’s a few snags in the plan, of course. He has to escape magic jail. Further; he has to do it without killing anyone. He needs to makes sure the operators of said jail don’t chase him until the end of his days. There’s also a nasty thing called the Nursemaid causing havoc and he’s kind of the only one who stands a chance against it.

He needs to achieve all his goals while still being the man his friends and family know and love. A task that grows more difficult with each passing day.

American Eldritch, Chapter 10

My mind finally caught up with my feet when I crested a ridge, the quarry falling away before me. It wasn’t a big one, maybe a few hundred feet across. To the right was an old abandoned foreman’s office, a loading dock next to it with an overturned crane. Wagons would have been loaded up there and headed up the disused trail, which was now blocked off by a rock slide. The ground sloped down towards the west, becoming a dark pond.

The goblins were all over the pond. Little islands were dotted in the pond; an overturned cart, the boiler from what looked like a train, several posts that looked like all that remains from an old water tower. The Goblins hopped from island to island, shoving each other in an attempt to get at something on the western wall of the quarry.

Clinking to the wall was another one of those weird trees. It was young, only twenty-five feet tall. And within the “hand” of its trunks was a girl, screaming her head off as goblins tried to get her. The goblins seemed unusually hesitant to rush the girl. As I watched, one of the goblins made a leap for the tree. He got his hands on the wood but a swift kick from the girl sent him tumbling into the water.

The water… was wrong. It was too solid. The goblin hit the water and, instead of splashing, just kinda went “plat” before sinking beneath the surface. Even at this distance, I could tell the goblin could swim, yet it availed the little monster nothing as he quickly sank to the bottom. The water barely rippled.

Right. Don’t fall in the water.

Whatever plans I was making went out the window when I saw a few goblins produce bows. Seems they were done trying to get their hands on the girl and just wanted the situation over with. I drew my pistol and aimed down the sights, bracing my right hand with my left. The Colt is an impressively accurate handgun, and I’m a good shot to boot, but pistols lose a lot of punch at range and I want to make sure every bullet was a kill shot. Luckily I had elevation to aid so I wouldn’t have to angle my shots much. As I aimed down the sight I pulled back the hammer.

Right when the first goblin knocked his arrow, I squeezed the trigger. I cocked the hammer, switched targets, and squeezed. Repeat. Repeat. In under two seconds, four goblins were down. One had twitched when I squeezed the trigger so I wasn’t sure if it was dead, but it would be slowed, at the very least.

Several dozen heads snapped in my direction, with alarming cohesion. One that was slightly bigger than the others, wearing a tattered war bonnet with many feathers missing, let out a screeching howl. As if that was the starting gun, the goblins charged in my direction, screeching with a horrifying harmonizing unity. It didn’t sound like a horde; it sounded like one giant beast had been enraged and vied for my blood.

I maintained my calm for just long enough to shoot one of the leading goblins before surrendering to my instincts and running like a bat out of hell. As I fumbled with the loading gate of my pistol, I vowed to practice running reloads at the earliest opportunity, should I survive the day. I also wished I had thought to load all six chambers when we had discovered the goblin tracks.

I had tangled with goblins before, so I was aware of their speed. However, that had been against ten or so of the little bastards who had scattered as soon as Willy and I had started to take shots. It was an altogether different experience when fifty of the green-skinned humanoids were chasing after me and baying for my blood like high-pitched wolves. I kept my eyes on my surroundings as I ran, dropping a bullet or two but not daring to look down in case I lost my footing and got overrun.

I realized I was leading the goblins back to the posse and changed course. If I led them straight back I might just get shot by the excited volunteers in their desire to help. Or, they might hold their fire until I was clear, reducing the time they had to shoot before the goblins were on them.

What I needed was a narrow alley or a ledge I could use to lessen the impact of their numbers. I was also tempted to just keep running. If I put my gun away and just focused on running, I would be just a bit faster than them. The problem with that is I didn’t know how long they’d chase me or if they would just give up and search for easier game—namely, Tilly or the posse.

Finally, I got the last bullet into my revolver, dropping three bullets during the process. What normally took me a handful of seconds took nearly a minute during a sprint, as I began to orbit the quarry. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the horde had gained on me, now within a hundred feet. I ducked my head and poured on the speed, hugging the edge of the quarry.

I heard distressed screams and smiled grimly, glancing back to see several goblins had been pushed over the ledge as the tight group of bodies pressed those unfortunates closest to the edge into the empty air. The quarry wasn’t the deepest I’ve seen, but it was still a thirty-foot drop on a rocky wall. I doubt any survivors would give me trouble.

I kept sprinting, my lungs becoming dry, my legs burning (a blister was forming on my heel, as well. Damnable new boots.), sweat beading on my face, my shirt damp on my chest and under my arms. I wish I had thought to take off my jacket. Surprisingly, my hat was still on my head.

I had nearly run a full circuit around the quarry when I came upon the rockslide-blocked road. It was nestled between the two hills that made the southern walls of the quarry. The road had been dug between the hills, giving it vertical walls that likely precipitated the rock slide that now blocked it. The walls were about thirty feet apart.

I can make that, I thought, not really knowing if I was right.

I pulled on what remained of my reserves and leaped for all I was worth, sailing through the air over a twenty-foot drop. Time seemed to slow, affording me the chance to truly consider what a twice damned moron I was. As the far wall approached, I realized I wasn’t quite going to make it. I raised my legs as much as I could as I thumbed back the hammer on my revolver, then put my thumb between the hammer and the chamber. I didn’t want a misfire and to put a hole in my leg when I fell to my death.

My shins collided with the wall. In a panicked frenzy of reactions, I tucked my left shoulder down as much as I could and turned the sudden motion into a roll. At least, that was my intention. What happened in reality: I smashed my legs into the wall of the road, slammed my shoulder and head into the ground, and slid for a foot as my momentum played out.

Miraculously, my hat stayed on.

My bell truly rung, I dragged myself the rest of the way over the wall and rolled onto my back, awkwardly pulling the hammer off my thumb with my left hand. I noted through the pain in my shoulder and face that the firing pin had punched a neat hole in my thumbnail. That was a new one for me.

I forced my eyes to focus on the goblins. The ones in front were trying to slow down, but the ones behind hadn’t gotten the message yet. A few of the front goblins were trampled in the resulting tussle. I had no hope that they were dead, however. Goblins were light but surprisingly tough, seemingly made out of driftwood and hate.

The goblins that were shoved into the twenty-foot drop, however, I had better hopes for. It was less than a dozen, but from the cries of pain that resulted, I knew many were injured.

I was tempted to begin firing into the crowd that was just thirty feet away but held off. Gritting my teeth through the pain, I jerkily got back to my feet. I was relieved when the pain turned out to be awful, rather than debilitating. Nothing seemed to be broken.

While I was regaining my feet, there seemed to be a schism amongst the goblins. About half started to climb down the road wall, determined to get at me, while the other half began to pick up and hurl rocks in my direction. Suddenly I was glad for my jacket, as it provided enough cushion that the goblin-fist-sized rocks hurt but didn’t much damage me.

Gunfire to the south startled me. It was close but had the echoing quality that told me that whoever was shooting wasn’t in sight. For an instant, I was hopeful that I was receiving help, but when none of the goblins jerked or even reacted to the gunfire I knew it to be false. I remembered that the Sheriff and Dane had said the tracks we found amounted to around a hundred goblins. I had seen about half that in the quarry.

An arrow cut a line across my left bicep and my attention locked back onto the goblins. The moment I had been waiting for had arrived, where five goblins had produced bows. I dove to the side as they loosed, one arrow hitting me in the hip. I hit the ground hard, nearly biting my tongue. I waited for the motion in my body to settle before raising my revolver.

Click.

Panic seized my guts and threatened to loosen my bowels. A dud. Please, I prayed. Please let the rest be good.

Suddenly with no margin for error, I closed one eye and awkwardly steadied my right hand with my left while lying sidelong on the rocky ground, an arrow sticking out of my hip like a miniature flag pole. Ignoring the pain flaring in my thumb, I pulled the hammer back and squeezed the trigger.

The relief that flooded me when the gun bucked in my hand was almost intoxicating. I adjusted my aim.

Fire. I adjusted my aim.

Fire.

And again. And again.

Five more goblins; dead.

More rocks came my way but I ignored them as I—again—struggled to my feet. The goblins who had decided to climb the wall were just now crossing to my side, giving me time for another reload.

As I went through the motions, my hands slick with blood from my injured thumb, I discovered one of the chambers was empty. I almost laughed. Apparently, I had fallen back on habit during my sprint, leaving an empty chamber for safety. Did I mess up leaving the firing pin on an empty chamber? It should have rotated onto a live round if I had loaded it correctly. It would be funny if I hadn’t almost shit myself.

With my only distraction at the moment (aside from my looming death by being torn to shreds by frenzied goblins) being the rocks coming my way, I was able to reload with no complications. I was lucky in that none of the goblins were ball players. I approached the ledge and calmly executed the six goblins that were closest to reaching the top. I tried to aim at the ones that would fall on their comrades.

I started to reload again as I counted how many remained. With the ones still throwing rocks, it was about thirty. I only had time for three bullets before the first goblins began to reach the top, so I rotated the cylinder and killed three more.

I holstered my revolver and pulled my two daggers from my back scabbards, feeling somewhat confident in my chances now that I had taken out a third of their number. As the first goblin climbed the ledge I pounced forward, my dagger chopping down into the face of the thing. Its face contorted into an almost comical expression of surprised pain as the edge of my blade bit into its brain. I yanked the dagger free and lurched onto another, stabbing this one in the eye.

I cried out in sudden pain and jerked back, finding a spear wet with my blood in the hand of a goblin I hadn’t seen, just now finding his feet on the ledge. I felt strength flee my leg as the pain blossomed in my thigh—the same thigh that was attached to the hip with an arrow in it. I grit my teeth and forced the leg to hold my weight.

The goblin dashed forward and stabbed at me with the spear. I knocked aside his weapon with my own and used my longer arms to step forward and impaled him with my other dagger. I lifted him then, using the dagger as a skewer, and hurled him off the end of it at another goblin just gaining his feet. They collided with a satisfying thud and a scream as they went tumbling.

It was then I realized how much stronger I was than they were. It wasn’t a huge surprise; it was rare that I found a man stronger than me, let alone a child-sized monster. But I wasn’t utilizing advantages in this fight.

I had a brief moment of respite so I gripped the shaft of the arrow in my hip and chopped it off, leaving only an inch or two sticking from my hip. I needed to be able to move my arms without interference.

The goblins had figured out that offering themselves to me one at a time wasn’t feasible, as they came at me in a sudden rush of three. Just behind the three, I could see several more sets of hands reach over the lip of the ledge. I snarled, blocking a club that I idly noted was a rusted revolver tied to a stick, and shoved the goblin back with the same motion. I pivoted around another spear thrust from a second goblin, swiping my dagger across his eyes. As he cried out his horrified pain the third goblin came at me with two stone axes raised high. My arms weren’t in a position to block, so I snapped a kick forward. The steel tip of my boot crunched into his chest and kicked him back with enough force that he bounced once and then over the ledge.

A part of me noted that the gunfire to the south was still ongoing as I plunged my dagger into the face of the club-wielding goblin. The goblin seized and went still, but something in his skull wouldn’t let go of my dagger. I shrugged and used his body to batter two new goblins who harassed me with spears. The goblin corpse flew free on my second swipe and I used the flying body as a distraction to get some distance from the growing number of goblins climbing the ledge.

I parried one thrust but my return strike was spoiled as a thrown stone ax collided with my forearm. Luckily it didn’t have enough force to stick into it, but it cut through the jacket sleeve and left a nasty gash on my right arm. Before I could course correct, the owner of the ax appeared, screaming as he leaped from my blind spot.

Thanks for the warning, I thought as I spun, slamming the back of my dagger into the airborne goblins temple, which resulted in a sickening crunch. As the body tumbled past, I took two steps back to avoid the spear users, parrying another club wielder with my right hand. It was an awkward parry, and my hand, slick with my own and goblin blood, couldn’t maintain the grip on my dagger. It tumbled from my hand and all I could think was “Dammit, I just got that.”

When another spear thrust in, I grabbed it behind the head with my now free hand and yanked the goblin off balance. With a quick, zigzag motion, I plunged my other dagger into his throat and brought it out in a slash across the other spear user's torso. The goblin brought his spear up to block, but I dragged the blade along the shaft and sheared three fingers from his right hand. I pulled the spear up, spun it in my hand, and hurled it at another approaching goblin. Disappointingly, it dodged.

I danced back away from a new group of goblins, reaching into my jacket and pulling out a knife. Hoping the blood on my fingers wouldn’t ruin my attempt, I flipped the knife and caught the blade, then heaved the knife forward. A goblin gurgled out its final breaths, a knife suddenly appearing in its chest. I pulled another knife from my harness, as two ax-wielding goblins rushed me.

I gave ground, but stumbled on a rock I hadn’t seen, nearly falling on my ass. The goblins' eyes widened in frenzied glee as they pounced, followed closely by three more wielding stone daggers. I managed to keep my feet under me, but my injured leg was slow to respond. I accepted a couple of glancing blows to my shoulder and chest to impale the left ax wielder with my dagger, then slammed him into his comrade. I used their bodies as makeshift shields against the dagger trio as I firmed my balance.

The next few seconds were a panicked blur. I came out alive but covered in cuts. I’m not sure how, but I had lost my dagger and was wielding my knife and a stone ax, which I realized was more of a club because the goblin hadn’t bothered to knap it. Two goblins came at me with clubs, but in their haste to get at a weakened enemy had run ahead of the main pack. I contemptuously knocked aside their attacks and crushed their skulls with my club.

The fight had taken me close to the rock slide. My footing was spotty with the shifting rocks under my feet—which is when a rock from across the way hit my shoulder and gave me an idea. I stuck the knife into the haft of my club and picked up a rock three times bigger than the ones being thrown at me, but still felt comfortable in my hand. I looked up at the closest goblin, who—in an uncommon moment of comprehension—seemed to understand it wasn’t long for this world.

Its premonition was proven true a moment later as a rock the size of its head slammed into its chest, caving it in like a tin lunch box. Years of playing baseball at the orphanage were paying dividends. I hurried and picked up another rock and hurled it, breaking the leg of another goblin.

They were on me again, and I barely had time to pry my knife from the club. A surprising feeling of ironic gratitude overcame me as I quickly ended the lives of two goblins with the club. What had been a giant weapon for the goblin I took it from felt weighty and effective in my hand, and gave me the reach I needed to kill the goblins without giving them the same opportunity.

Suddenly the goblin with the bonnet appeared, carrying a cavalry saber that appeared to be a great sword in his small hands. The little bastard used it with some skill, managing to exchange a few blows with me and scoring a shallow cut across my abdomen. I was unable to retreat fast enough across the rocks, allowing the goblins to flank me. It was all I could do to ward off their blows for the next several moments.

Finally, luck lent me some aid. The saber-wielding goblin lunged but lost his balance when the rock he was standing on shifted. It started a minor landslide that I just barely avoided. Fortunately, the goblins on my right weren’t so lucky and were taken for a bruising ride down to the road below. The saber goblin attempted to slash at me in passing, which I blocked with the haft of the club. The blade bit surprisingly far into the wood, nearly pulling me into the rock slide as the goblin clutched to the hilt of his blade.

I grunted and set my stance, then hefted the goblin into the air and into the group on my left. I took a spear thrust into the small of my back, but it was a shallow blow. At least, I hope it was. All the wounds had started to combine into one blaring note of pain.

I couldn’t allow my energy to flag. I pulled deep with a roar and punched the goblin holding the spear so hard, that his face crunched and blood splattered in a wave behind his head. I stepped forward, planting my boot on the chest of the bonneted goblin as I lifted the club. The little bastard refused to let go and the saber pulled free of the club with a “ting” of metal. I brought the club down on his face with another roar, splattering his head.

I snatched up the saber from his now limp hand and began to lay about with it, club and saber whistling through the air as I reaped goblin lives.

I don’t know how much time passed. I just know that at some point I realized there were no more goblins. Even the ones throwing stones had disappeared. I was heaving breaths, every part of me hurt, and if there was a part of me that wasn’t wet with blood, I couldn’t feel it. I found myself at the bottom of the rock slide, surrounded by goblin bodies. The saber had snapped at the middle at some point.

I almost collapsed, but one thought kept me on my feet: Tilly. Got to make sure she was safe before I rested.

I began to walk down to the quarry, but my first step nearly sent me tumbling. I looked down and, to my surprise, found a stone dagger had been stabbed into the top of my foot. Now that I was paying attention, I could tell it hadn’t impaled my foot, but the blade was most probably interacting with my bones in some fashion. With a groan and then a scream, I bent down and tugged it out. I hissed fast breaths through my teeth as I reached behind me into my back pocket. Yes! It was still there. I said a silent thanks to Layla for insisting I carry all my things for today's fitting.

I pulled the hip flask up and opened it, giving it an experimental sniff. It was near rancid, but I knew from experience that even rancid drake blood would work. It’d just give me the runs for several days. I took several deep breaths then took as long a pull as I could.

I coughed and gagged but managed to keep the foul stuff down. Over the next few seconds, I could feel the energy radiating from within. As I watched, the blood seeping from my boot grew thicker, slowed, and then stopped. I debated taking another pull, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I screwed the cap back on and returned it to my back pocket.

Surprisingly, the club survived the fight. I felt an odd urge to take it with me, feeling a sentimentality for the weapon that was, largely, responsible for my breathing at the moment. As big as the club was, however, it would just be more weight and wasn’t big enough to use as a cane or walking stick. I looked around for a bit, finding one of the thicker spears, and decided it was as close to a walking stick as I’d get.

It was slow going. I have been in worse shapes before, but this one was definitely in the top five. Every other step squished with my blood, my foot floating in my boot. Small trickles of blood leaked from dozens of wounds across my body. I hope Layla isn’t pissed I ruined my new outfit.

The thought sent me laughing, which was unfortunate as it was that moment that Tilly came into view. I imagined what she must be seeing, a man in black, covered in blood, his clothing in tatters, laughing insanely as he used an appropriated spear as a walking aid.

It made me laugh some more.

I sobered up when I saw the terrified expression on her face. I crossed the expanse of the quarry, stopping a foot from the pond. “Tilly? I’m a friend of your pa’s.”

She gasped when I said her name. “W-where is he?”

I glanced south. “Hopefully on his way,” I said. “I heard you first and ran ahead, but later I heard gunfire back a ways. I think the Sheriff is handlin’ the rest of the goblins.” At least, I hope so.

“The rest?” She asked.

“I took care of the ones here,” I said, a shudder of pain making my voice catch on the last word.

She squinted at me, something I recognized I used to do when I thought an adult was bullshitting me. “Just you?”

I raised a bloody hand. “Weren’t easy,” I said with whatever humor I could scrounge up. “What about you? Did they hurt you?”

She shook her head. Amidst the trunks of the tree, I couldn’t see her well, but there was a brief cascade of golden curls with the movement. “I-I ran here as soon as I saw them,” she said softly. “I was hoping more of them would fall into the water.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I was going to ask if she could make it over to me. But looking at the water and remembering what it did to the goblin, I was hesitant to ask a girl to cross it. I mean, she had gotten over there safely enough, right?

“Is it safe to come out?” She asked, unaware of my internal debate.

“The goblins are gone,” I said slowly. “I’m just worried about this death trap of a pond.”

“It’s easy to cross if you know how,” she said, confidence returning to her voice. She climbed out from under the tree, and I saw a young girl that pretty much matched what I’d expected.

She was a little older than I thought. With how Ulysses talked about her, I’d gotten the impression she was ten or younger. If the young woman in front of me was younger than thirteen, I’d eat my hat. She was wearing a nice, if used, dress, in summer colors. Her hair was light blonde and with loose curls, which seemed to float on her shoulders and moved in waves with her movement. She quickly hopped from post to post across the pond, and I discovered that she was wearing jeans and heavy boots under her dress. How delightfully practical.

I was frowning when she got to shore. She saw my expression and shied away. I softened it and pointed a bloody finger at her boots. “Where’d you get those?”

Her face tinted a shade of pink. She gestured at the foreman’s office. “They were in there. They’re easier to move around the quarry in!” She finished the last in a defensive rush.

I nodded and started limping back the way I came. A moment later she appeared at my side. I got the impression that if I weren’t covered in blood, she’d be clutching my sleeve. “And they fit?” I asked after a few yards.

I noticed her blush deepen, but she didn’t reply. Was she lying? Why?

Noticing my scrutiny, she hid her face in her hair. “Bret says I have feet like a man,” she muttered.

I’m glad she wasn’t looking at me because it was taking all of my willpower not to laugh. I almost told her to go retrieve her shoes but decided against it as I didn’t know if any more goblins were hiding nearby. That thought sobered me and reminded me that my gun was currently unloaded.

I drew my gun, the motion introducing a wound I hadn’t known I had across my right shoulder. I didn’t feel any dampness, so I must have taken a club hit. A groan escaped me as I pushed through the motion and began to pick bullets from my belt, holding the spear in the crook of my arm.

“Did you… did you really kill them all?” She asked as she watched me load my gun, which had blood crusted on it from my earlier handling. I needed to clean it soon or it’ll rust.

“Probably not,” I said, glancing around. Oh, I still had my hat. By God, maybe that elf did rub magic into it. “Some were injured and couldn’t fight anymore. Towards the end there I… don’t remember much. Some coulda run away.”

She got as close to me as she could without touching me. I closed the loading gate on the revolver, making sure the hammer was on the empty cylinder before holstering it. Oh, I was probably supposed to say something comforting to her. I didn’t have the energy for that kind of consideration right now. What I did have were a few spare knives. I reached under my coat and—okay that one is gone. And so is that one.

I soon discovered I had gone through a lot of knives in the fight or they had just fallen out. I managed to find my last knife, which I assumed was still there by dint of it being in the most inconvenient place. I groaned as I had to stretch a bit to grab it with my right hand. I reversed it in my hand and held it out to her.

She took it from me slowly. “My dad would never let me have a knife,” she said.

I snorted. “That, more than anythin’, tells me your dad’s a city boy,” I said with a shake of my head. “I like Ulysses a good deal, but everyone should have a knife. Even if personal defense weren’t a consideration, they’re too damned useful.”

We walked until we came upon the rock slide, which was carpeted with over a dozen goblin bodies. As we walked, I reversed the spear and stabbed each corpse that was within reach, making sure none were playing possum. I was about to start the arduous task of climbing the rocks when I noticed Tilly wasn’t at my side anymore. I turned and regarded her tiredly.

She was looking a little green. I realized this was probably her first brush with death, and aside from maybe stumbling upon the odd dead animal while she was exploring, was otherwise a sheltered kid from a loving family. I buried my irritation and called out to her.

“Don’t look at them,” I said, waiting until she looked up. I caught her eyes with mine. “Keep your eyes on me. You just got to keep your eyes on me and walk over here, yes, good—eyes on me! Good. Slow steps. Just keep walking. Your ma and brother are waiting at home.”

At the mention of her family, her steps sped up until she was next to me. “Good,” I said with a tired smile. “We just gotta get over these rocks and we have a straight shot home.”

We climbed over the rocks. At least, she did. What I did was stumble, groan, close-mouth scream, stumble, fall twice, stumble, nearly cry, and stumble my way over the rocks. I was so pitiful that Tilly got over her fear and began to help me, getting my blood all over her dress and hands.

“How are you even still standing?” She asked as I, coincidentally, took a seat on a boulder to catch my breath.

“I’m tougher than I look,” I muttered.

“You look pretty tough,” she said with a frown. “You also look like you should be dead.”

I grunted in reply.

Whatever she was about to say was interrupted when I heard something. Before I could register what it was, I was on my feet with my gun in my hand, the flare of pain running through my body giving me the adrenaline I needed to be alert. I began to relax in increments as I recognized the sound: horses. Goblins don’t ride horses.

Around the bend, two faces appeared that I didn’t expect. The first was Deputy Bill on a red roan, holding a lever-action shotgun with the kind of confidence that said he knew how to use it. Next to him, seated on a horse I didn’t recognize, was Layla.

I was so relieved my legs gave out.

Just a heads up

If you weren't here or on RR last year around this time, you probably don't know that I am deathly allergic to mosquitos. This is a brand new thing that has manifested within the last two-to-three years, and each summer since has resulted in between one-to-three visits to the ER. It's a frustrating fact of my life that the older I get, the more allergies I pick up.

But this year is better! Kind of. A single skeeter got in my room and bit me six times. I initially thought it was just three times on my elbows but about an hour later I discovered the little bastard had somehow bitten me through my shirt too. But this year I'm prepared with steroid ointment and three kinds of anti-histamines! And an electric fly swatter! And three kinds of skeeter repellent! And one of those UV lure fan-powered-fly-traps! AND A GUN.

I'm on day four and the bites are not the size of baseballs or hot to the touch so I'm in the clear. Why am I bringing this up? Well, because last year I kinda went dark for a month or two and felt real bad about it after the fact, and this year wanted to get ahead of it. I have my defenses set up against the bloodsucking scourge, but if I suddenly go dark for longer than a week you know the likely answer.

On the writing side, I have one more chapter to throw up for American Eldritch which clocked in at over 5500 (just need to edit it) and then I'm going to start in on Unlimited Power 3. I had a plan initially of what I wanted it to be but the new directions the last book went kinda threw them out the window so I need to sit and think about this new direction.

Anyway, I hope you're all having a wonderful week and I'll see you later.

-RaReason

American Eldritch, Chapter 9

I tried my best to mimic the bird call Dane taught me. I had just wanted to shout his name, but he cautioned against making too much of a ruckus in case the girl was in a less benign form of trouble than simply being lost or having a broken leg. The tracks in front of me made me glad for Dane’s caution.

Dane trotted up and I gestured wordlessly at my discovery. “Satan’s cock-flavored hooch,” Dane swore. I noted it down for future use.

“Please tell me I’m wrong and that these ain’t goblin tracks,” I pleaded quietly.

“It’d make a liar outta me,” he said, grabbing his hat and throwing it to the ground.

“What the hell are goblins doin’ this south of the mountains?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

“Haven’t seen goblin sign in these parts for over a decade,” Dane said, followed by more inventive swearing.

We shared a bleak look before he turned and began to flag down the Sheriff and the men we had gathered during our search. Among them was Ulysses, and I dreaded what my discovery would do to the man's state of mind.

One of the first acts of the reformed United States government after it rose from the ashes in DC a hundred years ago was to enact the “Goblin Free America” Act. It basically put a half-dollar reward on the little bastards in an attempt to eradicate them. I’m not a big student of history, but Mrs. Daugherty had done her best to educate me—what I recalled is that program after program was issued to try to handle the “goblin problem,” yet none were completely successful. There’d be lulls in their numbers and raids for a few years, but they’d crop up again like a bad case of lice.

I’d run into a few bands, no more than a dozen at a time. Usually, a few shots into a crowd of them was enough to scatter the little monsters, but in my experience that just made them come back with bigger numbers. When found, you had to kill them all.

When Mrs. Daugherty first told me about the program, I was shocked by her approval of it. She was the kindest, warmest person I’ve ever met. If she found a spider in the house she caught it in a cup and put it outside. Thus, my surprise at her endorsement of wholesale genocide of an arguably intelligent race.

I remembered her pained expression as I expressed these thoughts to her. “You haven’t seen the aftermath of one of their raids,” she had said, quietly. I remember her putting down the shirt she was mending so she could focus on me. I put down my pencil in the middle of the book I had been reading to listen to her.

“Every attempt to communicate with them, barter with them, or even just chase them away ends in the loss of human life,” she said, her big brown eyes wide with intensity. “It took humanity fifty years to figure out that the sight of their green skin means one of us has to die. I hope you never meet one, but if you do—kill it. If you can’t, you run. You run until you find someone who can kill them. Letting them live is tantamount to smoking in a dynamite magazine.”

Dane returned with the Sheriff and the men, breaking me out of my memories. I indicated the tracks I found, which cut across Tilly’s. The Sheriff didn’t swear as Dane had, but he growled so deeply in his chest I was expecting the ground to rumble around him like a steam engine was passing. I watched Ulysses’ expression, and though it didn’t change, his shoulders dropped and he seemed to age several years.

The Sheriff turned and pointed at one of the men I didn’t know. “Clint, you’re unarmed. Run back to town and let them know goblins are in the area. Tell them I want a posse formed and to send a runner to Johnstown to let them know. Bill, go with him and keep him safe, and bring back our rifles and shotguns. All of them.”

Once again Bill nodded and executed his orders without a word. Was the guy mute?

The Sheriff gave a pointed look at one of his other deputies, who grabbed Ulysses and took him aside. The Sheriff lowered his voice and brought Dale and I, into a circle with him. “How likely is it that girl is still alive?” He asked. “No bullshit, Dale.”

Dale made a pensive noise. “We’ll know in a bit when we continue north. These tracks cross hers, so they aren’t following her yet. Goblins hunt more by scent and sound,” he dragged his eyes up and met the Sheriffs. “You know how they are with kids, though.”

The Sheriff saw my confusion. “They prefer to eat kids,” he clarified.

My knuckles popped suddenly. I hadn’t realized I had been clenching my fists. I shook them out. “What are we waitin’ for, then? Let’s go.”

The Sheriff held me up with a raised hand. “Look at how the earth is churned up,” he said. “There are a lot of them, maybe a hundred. I don’t know that we have a hundred bullets between us.”

I counted the men with us. Counting myself, we had gathered ten men. There were more searching for the girl, but they were spread out east and west. Only the Sheriff, his three deputies, and I had extra ammo for our guns visible on our belts. I had five reloads in my belt, which amounted to over thirty-six bullets just to myself, but I understood the Sheriff’s hesitation. A pistol against goblins was only good for six shots, and by the time you reloaded, they were on you.

And that was only if you landed your shots. I’m a fantastic shot, and I say that with no humility. I can put two holes into a flipped quarter. Most of my modest earnings went to buying ammo so I could keep my skills sharp.

The Sheriff had the air of a man who, when firing a gun, hit what he was aiming at. Looking at him, I figured “What’s the use of a bullet if you can’t hit what you’re aimin’ at?” was his motto. Hell, that’s my motto, now.

So I wasn’t worried about the Sheriff if it came to a fight. The rest of the men, however? The deputies might be worth two or three a piece, but townsmen I couldn’t rely on. The majority had pistols stuck into their waistband and had the presence of men who weren’t used to violence. That wasn’t a bad thing… unless you were faced with goblins.

Goblins had some crude cunning, but their real danger was their willingness to die to cause harm. You could startle them into fleeing, but once they got their blood up and decided a fight was happening, they only stopped when dead or everything else was. Luckily, they didn’t seem to have the higher thought processes one needed for planning, or they’d save bullets for when they needed them. Whenever they got their hands on a gun, they used it for everything as soon as possible.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, barely keeping my anger from boiling over. I wasn’t angry at the Sheriff, just the situation. But the Sheriff was here, so he was getting the brunt of it.

“We’ll keep following the girl's tracks,” the Sheriff said. “Hopefully the goblins haven’t sniffed her out. We need more information.”

Dale nodded and went to retrieve his hat. I drew my pistol and waited for the tracker to return before we resumed our search.

The landscape was becoming progressively hilly, the tan grass replaced by rocky terrain covered in a patchy moss-like growth that Dale mentioned was good for toilet paper in a pinch. Trees became more prevalent, a twisted species I wasn’t familiar with that looked like someone had tied a bunch of eucalyptus in knots and stood them up. Each tree had several trunks that created what looked like a hand that was stabbing into the earth, with the hand's “wrist” being where the trunks met and rose into the air for several dozen feet before the first branches appeared. The trees were huge and gave the landscape a rather ominous feel. It felt like we were walking amongst judging giants.

We finally picked up Tilly’s tracks again after a mile, relief flooding through our group when we didn’t spot goblin tracks near hers. The relief was short-lived, however. After another mile and a half, we found goblin tracks crossing hers, which turned in the direction she was heading. We picked up the pace.

Ulysses came up to the front, looking pale and clutching an old, rusted pistol in a white-knuckled grip. “We told her to keep the house in sight!” He was muttering.

“You didn’t know she was comin’ out this far?” I asked, trying to keep judgment out of my tone.

“No!” His response told me I’d failed. “The first couple of times I went with her to make sure she knew what was too far. After that, Margarette accompanied her as I could only take so much time off work. I—“

The normally jovial man trailed off, shaking his head. I gripped his shoulder. “After a while, you thought she was doin’ what she had while you were around. Seems she started rangin’ further afield.”

“I don’t know what will become of me if something happened to her,” he said. “I… I—“

He trailed off again and I gave his shoulder another squeeze.

Dale paused and waited for the main group to catch up before addressing the Sheriff and Ulysses. “The quarries’ just up ahead, and I’d bet my horse that’s where these tracks lead,” he began, standing so that he could keep us and the tracks we were following in vision. “There’s at least fifty individuals. If they have any ranged weapons, we won’t be able to fight them without losses.”

“Goblin’s don’t use guns,” one of the men scoffed.

“They do if they can get their hands on them,” I replied. “They ain’t too good about conservin’ ammo, however, so after a few days they just start usin’ ‘em as clubs.”

The Sheriff gave me a measuring look. “You tangled with goblins?”

I nodded. “A’few times,” I said, passing my eyes over the group. “If you’ve never tangled with the little shits, be prepared for their speed. They’re small but are quick like a grayhound. Aim for the head or the heart if you have smaller calibers, anywhere else will just piss them off. Forty-five’ll—“I displayed my Colt. “—stop ‘em with a chest or stomach shot, but they treat losin’ a hand or foot as extra motivation. Seen one stab a feller in the eye with their arm stump.”

The men turned to the Sheriff, who nodded. “They’re fast and tenacious, but only weigh about eighty pounds. The alphas are just as quick and mean, but are the size of a man and twice as strong.”

Dale cleared his throat noisily and spit to the side. “Luckily I haven’t seen any alpha tracks, but that don’t mean there aren’t any where we’re headed.”

The men started talking about what we should do, with the majority wanting to wait for Deputy Bill to return with the rifles and shotguns. Ulysses was obviously in the “go now” camp. I had similar thoughts but kept them to myself. As much as I wanted to rescue a little girl, I didn’t want ten men to die in the attempt.

“Look, all I got is a .38.”

“Same here.”

“I got a .44 but only four shots.”

The discussion became an inventory of our collective ammo. I stood apart, keeping an eye out. I climbed up a hill to get better vision, which is when I thought I heard something. I strained my ears. What was that? Was it…?

“Shut your holes!” I shouted at the men. “I hear somethin’!”

I climbed to the highest point of the hill. The land stretched out before me, and about a quarter mile away the hills abruptly ended and fell away. I figured that was the quarry Dane had mentioned.

The Sheriff and Dane scrambled up to me, and I shot them a dirty look for the noise they were making. They paused and I cupped my hands around my ears.

Nothing happened for a few moments, and I started to think I had imagined the noise. I dropped my hand and opened my mouth to apologize—

A scream.

“I hear a girl’s scream,” I blurted.

Before I knew what I was doing I was down the hill and rushing for the quarry.

American Eldritch, Chapter 8

“So?” Layla prompted excitedly, two days later. “What do you think?”

We were standing in what I now knew was called her parlor, which means “living room,” but fancier. Layla had requested a full length mirror be brought up while I put on my new clothing. I stood in front of it, seeing the transformation Ulysses had begun now completed.

I was standing in a black suit made from a sturdy material that breathed better than wool. A leather vest, the same shade of maroon as my hat, rested over a black shirt, closed with black buttons. A maroon tie hugged my neck. Going down was my new gun belt, stained black with maroon accents. The pants were similarly black. Finally, my boots were polished black with steel caps on the toes. I missed my original vest with it’s hidden sheaths, but Layla said I needed some color to balance all the black and my vest had been too dark.

“I thought the idea was to make me look like I’m not a mark?” I asked.

“You don’t,” Layla said, almost giddy with how much she was enjoying the results of her work. She was wearing a new dress done in golds and browns, her hair in a bun I was told was a different style than yesterdays but I couldn’t, for the life of me, tell in what way. “Do a spin!”

I gave a long suffering look to Mable and did as instructed, to which the Storm Born clapped excitedly. “Polishes up like a new penny, doesn’t he?” She said to Mable.

“Yes,” Mable replied, the professional diffidence she usually adopted replaced with a far warmer, more admiring, tone. “It is quite the change.”

“Oo,” Layla said teasingly. “Seems like you have an admirer.”

I felt my face heat up, seeing a similar reaction in Mable as she stood straighter. “Stop teasing her,” I demanded.

“I’m not,” Layla shot back with a grin. “I’m teasing you.”

I snorted and turned back to the mirror. I reached behind and under my coat and pulled free the dagger—more of a short sword, the blade being fifteen inches and weighing almost two pounds—from the scabbard attached to my new, second favorite possession; my knife harness. The action wasn’t natural. Not yet. I had only had the harness for a few hours, but hadn’t wanted to put it on until everything was ready.

I flipped the knife into the air and caught it with my left, drawing my gun in the same motion while keeping my eyes on my reflection. I have to admit, I liked the way I looked. I looked… dangerous. Competent. Nothing like the scared seventeen-year-old I had been just a few days ago. I spun the revolver into the holster and began to the awkward process of returning the knife to the scabbard.

“That’s going to take some gettin’ used to,” I muttered, finally getting the knife in the scabbard after half a dozen attempts. I had initially balked at Keith’s (the leather worker) insistence in a hard scabbard, as I was rightly afraid it would be uncomfortable. But the older man had insisted, saying I would want one after using it. He had been right. A leather sheath would have made sliding the large blade home even more problematic, and without the reinforced covering, might result in me getting stabbed by my own blade should I fall in a fight.

As I watched myself in the mirror, I began to pull and sheath each of my new knives, one after another, watching the movements of my body to see which ones stood out the most. Layla had been surprisingly indulgent, spending as much on my new knives and harness as she had on my entire new wardrobe. A part of me felt I was taking advantage of her kindness, while another part argued that I didn’t know the value of the favor she would demand once my sister was safe. Both were drowned out by the fact that saving my sister was beyond any compensation, which made me feel more guilty.

After the final blade slid home, I stood and regarded the man in the mirror, resting a hand on the grip of my revolver in a relaxed pose. Yeah. That’s a man who could rescue his sister.

“You approve?” Layla asked. She was trying to hide it, but I could tell she was anticipating my answer.

“I do,” I said with a smile. In a flash, I drew my revolver and pointed it at my reflection. I returned it to the holster and turned to the Storm Born. “Though, all this black will be hell once summer arrives.”

She waved away my concern. “You’ll survive.”

I sucked air in through my teeth. Since we’ve arrived in town, a growing sense of urgency had been building in the back of my mind, ready to boil over. Grigs, Marlowe and I weren’t due to report back yet, but that day was fast approaching. The wiggle room was shrinking fast. Now that our preparations were mostly finished, the itch to make for Sheer Creek with all speed was growing like an untreated rash.

Layla noticed. “We’re almost done,” she assured me. “Just waiting on the last of my orders. We’ll be leaving tomorrow.

I gave a tense nod. Layla gave me a searching look before nodding to herself. “Why don’t you take a walk? Break in those new boots. I’ll see if I can speed us along.”

“Sure,” I said. I tipped my hat to Mable and left the big room.

I stopped by the Ulysses’ work space but he was absent. Layla had gotten me a shaving kit and I had learned how to use it from the older man, the barber’s infectious enthusiasm worming it way into a friendship. Disappointed by not finding him, I left through the lobby and started to walk down Main Street.

Despite being new, the boots actually fit me and were already a good bit more comfortable than my old pair. I was also wearing new, thick socks, which surprised me with how much comfort they gave.

As I walked down the street, I noticed many eyes on me. I felt my anxiety spike and fought the urge to hunch my shoulders and hide my face. I glanced around, trying to find the source of the looks. I was surprised when the majority of the eyes on me were from women. What was happening?

I wasn’t used to attention from the fairer sex. I remembered Layla’s comment to Mable. Hmm. I recalled what I looked like just a few days ago. Scruffy, dirty, wild. Ill fitting clothes, patched many times. Probably wild around the eyes. I can’t imagine the look in my eyes changed much, but maybe without the dirt and grime, the look gave me a hard bent instead of a crazy one.

As I studied my surroundings, I noticed that many of the men who were watching me were mostly clerks and craftsmen. None called out to me, which I found odd. Shopping with Layla had made me accustomed to being accosted by all sorts of merchants trying to catch her eye. I was dressed as finely as she had been, so why wasn’t I being hassled? Is this why she had been so sure I didn’t look like a mark?

I had a sudden urge to get off the street. I wasn’t used to the attention and needed a moment to settle my nerves. I crossed the street, pausing to let a passing coach pass. My target was the Sheriff’s office. I had a habit of checking the bounty boards to see if I or anyone I knew was up there. Normally I had to sneak peaks during busy times or through the window, but I was growing more and more confident in Layla’s “disguise” and boldly walked into the office.

A deputy looked up from the local gazette he was reading on his desk. One of his hands disappeared under it as his eyes narrowed a fraction. I nodded to him. “Mornin’,” I greeted. “Just here to take a look at the bounty board.”

My tone put him at ease and his hand appeared above the desk, picking up the corner of the paper that had dropped. He was young, only a few years older than me. He was trying and failing to grow a beard, the wispy red facial hair growing in unsightly patches. His hair of the same color was plastered to his scalp with wax or sweat, his hat hanging off the corner of the desk. His deputy star was pinned to a suede vest, which itself was over a checkered work shirt.

He jerked his head to the side and went back to reading the paper. “On the wall yonder.”

“Many thanks,” I said and crossed the small room. The bounty board was a good deal smaller than the one in Sheer Creek. My first scan didn’t show anyone I knew, not even Layla. Maybe her bounty hadn’t made it out to the smaller towns in the region.

Not recognizing anyone, I relaxed and allowed myself to study the faces, crimes and bounties. I didn’t consider myself a bounty hunter, but if I ran into any of these folk, I wouldn’t mind trussing them up to earn a buck.

The peaceful morning was broken by a woman’s voice at the edge of hysteria. I turned just in time to see a woman chase an older man into the office, who after a moment I realized was the Sheriff. He had an impressive handlebar mustache and a gun belt with two holsters, both well worn which suggested he could draw both with equal skill. His coat was as old as he was, thick leather worn thin at the elbows.

“I’m doing all I can, Mrs. Hastings,” the sheriff said in a voice like gravel, not turning to look at the woman following him. My ears perked up at her name. “Bill, go wake up the other deputies. We got a missin’ kid to look for.”

Without a word, Deputy Bill dropped the paper he was reading, grabbed his hat and was out the door.

“She’s never not come home before!” Mrs. Hastings said, her eyes red but dry. She was a handsome woman, maybe twice my age. She was wearing a simple, white linen dress that I assumed she threw on for expediency.

“Are you talkin’ about Tilly?” I asked as I approached.

Both Mrs. Hastings eyes and the sheriff’s latched onto me with an intensity. The sheriff didn’t reach for his gun, but I could tell he wanted to. “What do you know, boy?”

I raised my hands. “Nothin’,” I said, nodding toward Mrs. Hastings. “I’m just acquainted with Mr. Hastings. He’s been talkin’ about Tilly’s habit of bringin’ home lizards for the past three days. I’d like to help, if I’m welcome.”

The sheriff’s mouth pinched like he tasted something sour, but whatever he was about to say was interrupted by Mrs. Hastings. “You’re Patton?” She asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a nod.

“Ulysses hasn’t stopped talking about you since you first sat in his chair,” she said, then turned to the sheriff. “We could use all the help we can get.”

Her statement felt more like an order. The sheriff rolled his eyes but nodded. “You run along, Mrs. Hastings. We’ll meet at your house once I’ve rounded up my deputies.”

“I’ll walk with you—if you don’t mind, ma’am,” I said, walking forward to hold the door for her.

“Please,” she said, giving me a shaky smile that didn’t quite form. As I closed the door, the sheriff’s eyes studied me until it clicked closed.

She latched onto my arm and dragged me at a half-run toward the northern part of town. “Ulysses told me she’s been leaving the house pretty much daily,” I began.

Mrs. Hastings nodded and slowed to rapid walk, slightly out of breath. “Y-yes, she read a penny novel and got it in her head she could be just like that McKendrick woman.”

“You said she didn’t come home,” I prompted. “When did she leave?”

I may not be the manhunter Marlowe had been, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been paying attention. People think tracking is all about reading the wind or looking for tracks, which is only true if you’re hunting game. When it came to people, it was usually people who told you where they went.

“Just after lunch,” she said, her voice breaking. “She asked me to pack her a big sack lunch, because she didn’t want to have to come home for dinner. She put up such a fuss I did—I did it.”

She was nearly sobbing. I patted her hand. “Do you remember what the lizards she brought home looked like?”

She slowed abruptly, looking at me with wide eyes. “W-what?”

I gently pulled her forward, getting her moving again. “The lizards,” I repeated. “If I know the breed, it could help narrow down where to look for her. What did they look like?”

She blinked rapidly. It took her several moments, but she started to guide me again. “Brown,” she began.

“How big?” I prompted.

“About as long as my hand.”

“With or without the tail?”

“Without. They, they had two stripes running down their back,” she was warming up to the process now. “One hissed, and it’s neck expanded red. It spit up slime.”

“Did it have a crest on its head and neck?” I asked.

“Yes!” Mrs. Hastings exclaimed, looking at me with wide eyes.

“Were they always the same kind of lizard, or did she bring homes many different ones?”

“They—they all looked the same. Except a few didn’t have the crest.”

“Colony anole,” I said with a nod. “The ones without the crest are female. She must have found their nest. How long did she stay out, previously? When would she leave and when would she get back?”

We turned down a street, leaving the businesses of the town behind. The area became more residential. “She’d leave after her lessons, after lunch. She’d leave sooner if I didn’t make her sit down and eat. She’d come back, usually in time for dinner.”

“When do you eat dinner?” I asked, scanning the windows around us.

“A-around seven, when Ulysses gets off work.”

I didn’t spot anyone watching us from inside, though several women called from their porches that they were keeping an eye out for Tilly. Mrs. Hastings thanked each one.

The Hastings’ property was at the edge of the northern part of the town, the backyard open to the wilderness. It was a two story, white washed building that surprised me in that it was owned by a barber. Shaving must pay well.

A younger version of Ulysses was sitting on the porch, his worry hanging on him like a shroud. “Any word?” Mrs. Hastings asked, letting go of me and rushing to her son.

“No, not yet, mama,” the boy replied, eyeing me curiously.

“Did you ever go with your sister to catch lizards?” I asked, studying the ground around the property. There had been a lot of traffic recently. I assumed the husbands of the women we passed had come and started to help look for the lost girl.

When no answer came, I looked up in time to see Mrs. Hastings prompt the boy with a touch on his shoulder. “Answer him, sweetie. He’s a friend of your father’s.”

Bret shook his head. “No, sir,” he said sadly. “I-I’ve been trying to get an apprenticeship at the farrier. I clean the shop in the afternoon so he can teach me.”

I nodded and circled the house, following the myriad tracks left by this morning’s traffic. I heard Mrs. Hastings following me. Entering the back yard, examined the horizon. Back west was the flat expanse of the prairie, which I would hazard a guess wouldn’t hold the attention of a little girl. East tended toward civilization—I could see smoke from a settlement a few miles down the road. Directly north were hills that slowly transformed into the Canadian mountains, which afforded plenty of places for a child to get lost.

I started walking in a zigzag, scanning the ground. In their haste to look for the girl, the neighborhood had destroyed evidence of the girls passing, making my job harder. I didn’t blame them, but I wish the Hastings’ had thought to call a tracker first before calling for a search.

Five minutes later, the sheriff arrived with his deputies. I barely spared them a glance as I continued my work. I heard footsteps approach from behind and caught sight of the sheriff approaching, hands on his hips (and close to his guns).

“You a tracker?” He asked, his voice catching on the last word, prompting him to noisily clear his throat and spit to the side.

“Not by trade,” I said. “Though I ran with a fella who was a deft hand at it, and I like to pay attention.”

“What’ve you found?” He asked. I got the feeling the question was a test.

“Whole lot of nothin’,” I said. “The rush to find the girl destroyed all the tracks near the house,” I gestured north. “I’m guessin’ she headed out that way, as west is flat and borin’ and there ain’t adventure to be found east. Mrs. Hastings said she brings home colony anole, so if you know any trappers or hunters who know the area and can point us toward the nearest nest, we can probably get a good idea of where she went.”

The sheriff grunted and turned toward his deputies. “Bill! See if you can find whatever rock McCormick is under and drag him out of it.”

Again, the deputy wordlessly turned and dashed off.

“The rest of you fan out and see what you can find,” the sheriff instructed.

I kept up my search but there was either nothing to find, or I just didn’t have the skill to pick up the kids tracks amidst so much traffic. I kept at it, widening my search the further I got from the house. The sheriff, annoyingly, stayed close and watched me work.

I was still searching twenty minutes later when Deputy Bill returned with a bleary eyed man in a suede, leather tassled outfit looking like a native. Deputy Bill was practically dragging the still obviously drunk man by his collar.

“Dane, glad you could join us,” the sheriff said. I stopped my search and watched the interaction. At least, that had been my intention, but the sheriff gestured toward me and included me in the conversation. “This young feller says the girl was bringing home—“the sheriff turned toward me. “What’d you call them?”

“Colony Anole,” I said. “I was hopin’ you might be able to point us to a nearby nest.”

Dane blinked at me owlishly, trying to focus his eyes. Deputy Bill shook him, which resulted in Dane violently shoving the deputy away. Bill looked like he was about to respond in kind but paused when the sheriff held out a warding hand.

“Y’want a cliff, or a gully wall,” Dane eventually said, grimacing as he rubbed his head. It was as if speaking caused him pain. “Colony Anole make their nests on walls or trees, but the trees around here don’t take to it.” He gestured vaguely north.

Before I could disparage his information, he continued. “There’s two or three gullies about an hour out, along the old creek bed before they diverted it to make Myer’s Lake. There’s an old granite mine—“he pointed northeast. “About two hours fast march that way. Lotta places for a kid t’hide.”

That was much better. I gestured at the ground around us. “Can you track her?”

The inebriated man squinted at the ground, then shook his head. “M’by if I was sober. Too many folk have been through. Where’s the ma?”

I looked past him to the back porch of the Hastings property, seeing Mrs. Hastings watching us. I waved her over.

“Yes?” She asked breathily upon arriving.

“What kind of shoe yer girl wear?” Dane asked her.

“I—girls shoes,” she said, bewildered.

“Aye,” Dane said, nodding. “With a heel? Flat? Leather? Soft soled or hard?”

“Th-they were leather, with a small heel,” she elaborated.

“They click on the floors?” Dane prompted.

“Y-yes,” she said.

“Were they muddy when she came home?”

“Yes!” She said. “I was constantly scolding her for tracking mud into the house.”

Dane nodded. “That’ll make it easier t’track. Ma’am, if I could trouble you for a cup of coffee, as strong as you can make it, I can add my eyes to the search.”

“Of course!” She said, rushing back to her house.

I resumed my search, adjusting my trajectory based on the information Dane had supplied. Fifteen minutes later, in a clear patch of dirt between two tufts of crab grass, was a small, square indentation. Much too small to be a man’s heel. I called out to the trapper.

“Yup, that’s her,” Dane said once he got his eyes on it. He was nursing his second cup of coffee. “Or there’s another twelve year old wearing Mary Jane heels out here.”

He finished off the coffee with a grimace and handed it back to Mrs. Hastings, who stood nearby with the percolator. “Thank you for the drink, ma’am. Let’s see about findin’ your girl.”

Dane and I took point and began to track the missing girl.

American Eldritch, Chapter 7

I didn’t sleep soundly, but I slept. The unfamiliar noises of the unfamiliar town kept waking me up, and once I rolled out of bed and had my gun pointed at the door, having heard someone walking in the hall. I crouched, using the bed for cover, listening. When the footsteps receded, I lowered the hammer on the gun and stuck it back in the holster. I slipped back into bed and went back to sleep.

Now that I was more or less healed, I guess my normal sleeping patterns were resuming. It had been nice sleeping through the night while it lasted.

When the morning came, I once again awoke to the sounds of footsteps. Again I rolled out of bed and had my gun pointed at the door. The door opened a few moments later, a woman in the hotels livery stepping through with a tray laden with food. She stopped with a gasp when she saw me with my gun drawn and pointed at her.

“B-breakfast service,” she stammered, eyes wide.

I sighed and lowered the hammer of the gun, sticking it in the holster hanging from the headboard. I grabbed the robe from the floor and slipped into it before rising. I glanced around the room, then gestured at the desk, whose chair I was using as a laundry hamper.

The maid hurried and deposited the tray on the desk while I grabbed my gun belt and debated the merits of wearing it over the robe versus not looking like a lunatic. I settled on carrying it with me as I circled the bed and approached the maid, who was doing her utmost to appear calm and collected and not scared half to death.

“I apologize,” I said. “Not used to this kind of livin’.”

“I—it’s fine,” she stammered. “Miss Mills said to be careful, but I misinterpreted her warning.”

I huffed a laugh through my nose and looked at the food. Eggs, bacon, a thick slab of ham, toast, two kinds of jam, coffee and even a glass of milk. I grabbed my hat from the chair and put it on my head, then tossed the rest of the clothes on the bed so I can sit down and dig in. “Sounds like we’re stayin’ here for at least a few days, if my guess is correct,” I said around a mouthful of bacon. “You might wanna warn your coworkers to start knockin’ before they enter my room.”

Her face colored prettily. “O-of course, sir,” she said, not meeting my eyes when I looked up at her. “Is there anything else you need?”

I shook my head. “This is more than enough. Thank you.”

She gave one of the little bows that I was beginning to understand was the trademark of the hotel and hurried to leave. I watched her go with my peripheral. In her haste, she forgot to close the door to the living room. Sitting room? I made an irritated noise and got up to close the door. When I came back to my meal, I stopped before sitting. Why the hell did they put the desk with my back to the door?

Irritated, I grabbed the heavy desk and pulled it away from the wall, having to lift it awkwardly so it didn’t catch on the carpet. It was a fancy writing desk with little drawers rising from the back of it, so I had to spin it too so I could eat while watching the door. The milk and coffee spilled a bit during the move, but it landed on the tray so I wasn’t too put off.

Paranoia suitably assuaged, I pulled the chair around and sat down to enjoy a good meal. Halfway through I got irritated with the crumbs falling into the bathrobe and took a break to slip into my clothes. I was pleased to find that someone had patched the hole in my boot. It was ugly, but at least it would keep the trail dust out.

Some time later there was a knock I heard from the next room. “Come in!” I yelled around a piece of toast.

Layla walked in a few moments later and snickered at what she saw. She was wearing a black and blue dress that flared at the hips, her hair done up in a pretty bun that showed off her attractive neck. “Didn’t like the décor?”

“Get antsy with my back to the door,” I declared unapologetically, crunching on the toast.

Layla’s mouth opened in an “ah” of understanding. “You about done? We have some shopping to do.”

I chased the toast down with the last of the coffee. “For what?”

“Well,” she crossed the room until she stood next to my bed, eyeing my boots critically. “Some boots that fit, for starters.”

I frowned uncomfortably. “Should you be throwin’ this money around? You have a bounty on your head.”

A sly grin spread over her face and she took a step back. “Do I look like the woman on the wanted poster?”

Now that she mentioned it, she did not. The sketch on the poster showed a woman with frizzy hair and a tattered blouse, face heavily lined from living in the sun. Layla had done something to her face, likely cosmetics, and she looked a decade younger. That, plus the new hairdo and outfit, and there was no way I’d place her as the woman from the bounty without knowing who she was.

“No,” I said, still with some dissatisfaction. “I suppose not.”

“We’re going to do the same with you,” she said, jerking her head toward the door. “Now up and at ‘em.”

I drank the last of the milk and went to put my boots on.

We arrived at the cobbler right as he was opening, and I got to have another new experience of getting fitted for boots. Layla once again had me model as the cobbler brought out what seemed to be his entire stock of boots in my size, and many that weren’t just so Layla could see “how I looked” in them. I was much more amenable to her demands with my gun returned to me, my nerves calmed by its presence.

Layla determined getting me a pair made would take too long, as she hated the way my current pair “flopped around like a pair of bags.” She bought me a couple pair, but still demanded some alterations to be made, to which the cobbler told us he’d have them delivered by the end of the day.

The next stop was a stable at the edge of town, where she sold our horses. I learned a lot about Layla then, because she knew who to talk to and the appropriate comments to make to sell the horses without the appropriate papers. As we walked away from the stable, she caught me staring at her.

“What?” She asked. “We needed to at least sell your horse so she wouldn’t give us away.”

“No, it’s not that,” I said as I shifted my gaze to the surroundings. “Just didn’t expect you to know how to talk to a horse fence, let alone find one.”

“It was one of the reasons I wanted to stop in Jute’s Love instead of one of the other towns on the way. And see? The disguise is working already,” she said with a wide smile, producing a fan and fluttering her face teasingly with it. “Now that I’m an upstanding lady, no one will suspect me of being a dirty ne’er-do-well.”

I barked a surprised laugh.

Next, we went to a leather worker’s shop that was next door to a gun store, where Layla attempted to once again get me to model various gun belts. That was where I drew the line.

“Now, Patton,” she began.

“Nah!” I snapped, lifting a finger. “Nah-ah! I’m fine with lettin’ you pick out my wardrobe, but the kind of holster I carry could affect my draw. Too loose and the damn gun will fall out in a scuffle, too tight and it might spoil my speed. The belt needs to sit on my hips just right, so it doesn’t interfere with me pullin’ my knives.”

Layla’s eyebrows climbed as I spoke, and she looked like she was holding back laughter. She glanced at the middle-aged gentleman who ran the shop. “Apparently I touched a nerve.”

The fellow shrugged. “Boy knows what he’s about.” He was a tall man, half a head above me. He wore a work shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his impressive biceps. He was completely bald, but sported a full beard that was braided down to his navel. His hands were tough and covered in thick skin. He looked me up and down, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t see any knives on you.”

It was a statement, but I heard the question in it. “Lost ‘em recently,” I said without glancing at Layla.

“Would you be interested in a knife harness?” He asked, including Layla in the discussion as he correctly assumed she was the one making the purchases.

  ***

Layla watched in amazement as the hard living young man reacted with joy for the first time since she met him. Apparently the magic word had been “knife harness.” The serious youth suddenly lit up like he had received a puppy and demanded to know what exactly a knife harness was with the air of someone who hoped he knew what was coming. It was honestly a relief to see him act his age.

She shook her head while he was distracted. Boys and knives.

“It’s basically a shoulder holster for knives,” the establishment owner explained, pulling a series of leather straps from a peg on the wall that Layla had dismissed upon first glance. Now that she was looking at it more closely, she could see it was designed somewhat like a mountain backpack harness, just without the backpack. It went over the shoulders and had a leather back, but clipped secure in the front. “These clips and these ties allow you to customize where you can store the sheaths. The back is set up for bigger weapons, though in my experience, the best fit is to secure them hilt down for a quicker draw—and allowing you to draw while wearing a coat.”

If anything, the explanation excited Patton more. Layla smiled in contentment, amending today's plans to include a trip to the bank. Hopefully they had a line of credit with her bank in Chicago she could draw from.

As she watched Patton discuss the harness with the owner, a wave of nostalgia washed over her, dampening her smile. A similar scene flashed in her mind, taking place many, many years ago. She allowed herself to wade into the bittersweet memories, embracing this rare time where they weren’t brought on by tragedy.

When she came back to the present, the two men—no, boys, she amended—were having an animated discussion about Patton’s vest. As she watched, Patton took it off and displayed several hidden sheaths, prompting the store owner to stroke his beard thoughtfully. Layla sighed.

She had been hoping to offset some of the costs by selling the horses. You don’t have to buy everything for the boy, she said to herself, knowing she wouldn’t listen.

It wasn’t that he was young, or the terrible life he’d lived so far that was making her dote on him. Or even the person he reminded her of. It boiled down to the simple fact that it was just… wonderful, to do something nice for a change. That it served her purposes was a happy bonus.

Plus, she continued a moment later. I have a feeling he’ll be needing everything bought today, sooner or later.

American Eldritch, Chapter 6

I couldn’t get comfortable in the bath with the door behind me, and turning around in the tub proved to be worse for different reasons, as the tub was sloped and had a drain on the other side that felt unpleasant on my rear. Eventually, I just got out and dried myself off.

It took longer than I’d like to admit to figure out that the robe was supposed to be tied closed. It was the first time I’d ever worn one, and I spent a bit looking for buttons or toggles before I found the rope, or whatever the proper name for the belt of the robe was. I tied it off and stepped into the slippers before cracking the door open.

Jeffrey was waiting out in the hall, hands clasped behind him and back ramrod straight. “Hello, sir. I hope you enjoyed your bath?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Was alright.”

The guy smiled. “I’m happy to hear it.” He gestured down the hall. “Miss Mills suggested you might want to avail yourself of our barber.”

I ran a hand through my two weeks of beard. “Never had someone else shave me, before. Sure, why not.” I opened the door fully and stepped out.

The barber was in a room down the hall and two doors down. He had a round belly and a ruddy face, heavily lined around the mouth and eyes, suggesting he laughed a lot. He was hairless except for his eyebrows and a mustache so thick I could barely see his bottom lip.

Jeffrey led me into the small room that was dominated by the sole barber chair, then stepped aside and waved me forward. As I stepped into the room, the barber gave a nod of his head that suggested a bow. “Good afternoon,” he said. “My name is Ulysses Brant and I’ll be taking care of you for the next little bit.”

“Patton West,” I said, offering my hand. Ulysses took it and gave it a firm pump, then ushered me to the chair. Jeffrey chose that moment to step out, closing the door behind him.

“What will we be doing today?” Ulysses asked, pulling out a bib that was as big as a cloak and securing it around my neck.

“A shave and a haircut,” I said. “You can take the entire beard, but I’d like to leave it up to your experience what to do with my hair. I usually shave my head every three months so, you can imagine I am a little out of my depth here.”

“Let’s see what we can do to make sure you turn the heads of all the young women in town, eh?” Ulysses said jovially as he began to prepare some foam in a mug.

“I’ll settle for not having my face itch and my hair not gettin’ in my eyes.”

Ulysses began to pat my face with his hands, then added some liquid from a bottle from the cart next to the chair to his hands and began to massage my beard. He produced a comb and worked it through a few times, after which he applied the foam.

“I take it you just got to town?” He asked as he finished foaming my face and began to prepare the razor.

“Yeah, stopping for a night or two before we continue out east.”

Ulysses engaged me in conversation while he worked on me. When it became apparent that I wasn’t willing to talk about myself much, he easily took control of the conversation and began to tell me funny stories about his youth, or his two children, Bret and Tilly. Bret was a troublemaker but was dependable where it mattered, while Tilly was giving him daily heart attacks because she had gotten it in her head to be an adventurer, and kept sneaking out of town to do just that.

“She keeps bringing home lizards,” Ulysses said in a tone I’d use to describe a murder scene while putting the finishing touches on my hair. “Her mother is at her wit's end!”

I was holding back a grin. The jolly barber had done a lot to lift my mood. “Better figure out a new hobby for her before she moves up to more challenging game,” I said.

“Heaven forbid,” Ulysses said with a glance upward. “With my luck a field moose will follow her home and I’ll have to figure out how to get rid of it without being trampled.”

Ulysses produced a hot towel and gave me a final wipe-down before lifting a large hand mirror. “How did I do?”

I almost didn’t recognize the man in the mirror. I’d made it a habit to keep my beard as thick as I could ever since it started as a few patches on my chin, in an effort to look older. The man looking back at me was young, yes, but you could see the hard life he’d lived in his gaunt cheeks and the lines already setting in his brow and around his eyes. Despite this, his strong jaw and prominent cheekbones went well with his piercing gray, almost silver eyes. Ulysses had cut my hair close to the scalp on the sides and styled the top with pomade. I very much liked the way I looked.

“Well, if I ever roll through these parts again, I’d say you have a repeat customer,” I said with a smile.

Ulysses beamed and went at my neck with a brush, finishing his ministrations by lifting the tarp/bib with a flourish. I got out of the chair, running a hand over my clean jaw. “How much do I owe you?” I asked. I was then I realized I had left my change in my pants.

Ulysses instantly waved me off. “Miss Mills is covering your expenses. I’ve been instructed to take you to her room once we’re done here.”

I set aside the worry over my money and gestured for the door. “After you.”

I followed the barber through the main lobby, feeling the peculiar anxiety of walking through a public space in nothing but a bathrobe. But no one paid me any attention as I followed Ulysses up the stairs. We passed several rooms before turning down a long hallway that only had two doors on either side about midway down. Ulysses stopped in front of the door on the left and rapped it with his knuckles three times.

“Yes?” I heard Layla’s voice from within.

“I have brought the young man as instructed,” Ulysses said, his demeanor having changed to be much more professional.

“Oh, wonderful,” she said. “Just a moment.”

I heard some movement from within. The door opened, revealing the uniformed woman from earlier who stepped back and waved me inside. I stuck my hand out to Ulysses. “Thanks for makin’ me look sharp,” I said.

Ulysses took my hand with a wide smile. “My pleasure,” he said while shaking my hand vigorously. “You take care.”

“Back atcha,” I replied, ducking into the room.

The room I entered was perhaps the nicest I’ve ever seen. It was also huge. The room was decorated in dark woods and red carpet, with brass fixtures that made the other colors stand out. It was set up to resemble a family room with a long couch, a loveseat, and a small stove for what I assumed was to prepare tea or coffee. Aside from that, there was so much empty space. Why have a room this big in a hotel?

Layla came in, and I shot my eyes to the ceiling as I realized she was in her underthings. “Oh, you cleaned up marvelously,” she said. “This’ll work better than I hoped. Mable, could you fetch the tailor?”

I felt the woman in uniform—Mable—give a small bow and leave the room, closing the door behind her.

Layla came over and gave me a look-over. “Something interesting up there?” A floral scent was wafting off her.

My face was heating up. “You’re, uh, in a state of undress.”

She snorted—actually snorted, as she laughed suddenly. “Arguable. It’s just a corset and shift. I’m barely showing more skin than I was on the road. But if you’re uncomfortable, I’ll throw on a robe.”

“Thank you,” I said, which elicited another laugh.

When she reentered the room, she was wearing a robe similar to mine. “Better?” She asked.

“Sorry,” I said. “I—I’m not—“

She shook her head and waved away whatever I was about to say. “I keep forgetting how young you are,” she paused long enough to change the subject. “You’re probably anxious to get to planning.”

“To be honest, I got swept up in all this fanciness,” I said with a look around and feeling my jaw. “I’ve never been to a barber before.”

A look of pity flashed through her eyes before she hid it. “Well, it isn’t without purpose. What we’re doing here is creating your disguise.”

I felt my eyebrows climb. “What? Why? What Disguise?”

She gestured to the side, where I discovered my clothing and new hat in two neat piles on a table against the wall. “I assume all of your clothing is of that quality?”

The way she said it made my face heat with shame. “Yes.”

“I’m not condemning or judging,” she said. “Just showing you my thoughts. We’re going to dress you up nice, so even if someone from your gang spots you, they won’t be able to recognize you. The trick will be to strike the balance between nice, but not so nice they take you as a mark.”

As she talked she walked over to the clothing and put the hat and vest aside. “I think we’ll keep the vest. It’s good quality and will go with most outfits. And we’ll of course keep the hat.”

Next, she lifted my obsidian dagger, and I had the good grace to grimace. She huffed a laugh. “It’s fine,” she said. “I think we’re past the point of plotting against each other. Aren’t we?” She put stress on the question.

“Yes ma’am,” I said with a nod.

She tucked the dagger back into its hidden sheath, then leaned back against the table with her arms crossed. “After some initial preparation here, we’ll head to Sheer Creek. We’ll need to stay incognito for as long as it takes to find where they are keeping your sister. I have friends among the indegen who are good at finding missing persons, so I don’t expect it to take too long. The main wrinkle I want to avoid is you being spotted before we’re ready to move and grab her.”

I felt my pulse pick up. “And dressin’ fancy will help me stay hidden?” I asked, my incredulity thick despite my excitement.

“Think about it,” she said, gesturing at me. “They’re used to seeing you dirty, unshaven, wild-haired—I bet you have a new hat every week, too.” I tilted my head in a gesture that said “You’re not fair off.” She smiled and continued. “The trick to not being seen is not drawing attention. With the right clothes and attitude, eyes will slide right off you until you’re ready to act.”

“Not that I don’t believe you,” I said hesitantly. “But I assume you know this from practice?”

She nodded, waiting for my real question.

“Well,” I walked over and sat on the arm of the loveseat. “Then what happened with the Senator’s kid?”

Layla’s expression darkened. “I thought he was an ally,” she said, her voice colder than when she had just killed Grigs and Marlowe. “But he—let us just say he was a wolf in sheep's clothing. I won’t be making another mistake like that again.”

I nodded slowly. I was saved from having to come up with a reply by a knock on the door.

“Yes?” Layla asked.

“Ma’am, I have returned with the tailor.”

“Perfect!” Layla said happily, rubbing her hands together. “This’ll be fun!”

  ***

It was not fun.

For me, anyway.

The tailor had arrived and Layla had me move some furniture to make a space for the clothing rack on wheels he brought, despite the room being mostly empty. How the older man had gotten the rack up the stairs I didn’t know and didn’t have time to ask before he had me standing in my underwear and measuring every inch of me with tape. I was saved another wave of embarrassment by a quickly produced privacy screen. That part had at least been interesting, as I learned a lot about how clothes were supposed to fit when properly made by a tailor.

The next two hours were a huge pain in the ass as Layla made me try on so many different outfits. When I was changing I’d duck behind the changing screen Mable had produced from somewhere, then walk out to get critiqued by Layla and the old tailor who introduced himself as Kester. He didn’t elaborate on whether that was his first or last name.

During the entire exercise, Layla looked like a small child in a petting zoo. She was full of smiles and wide-eyed glee as she dug through the clothing samples Kester had brought with him, mixing and matching and holding things up to me before shooing me to change into them. I think I had worn every item multiple times before I had had enough.

“Okay, so give these a try—“ Layla was saying, shoving another ensemble at me.

“I think I’m done,” I said. “We must have found somethin’ suitable by now, right?”

“Nonsense,” Layla said dismissively. “A good disguise requires thorough planning and forethought.”

I glanced at Kester, but he reacted to her comment the same way he had to everything else since his arrival—with a calm disinterest that was borderline apathy. If we weren’t in the room, I had no doubt the older man would be asleep.

I made a frustrated noise in the back of my throat—then I had a brilliant idea. “Alright,” I said, lifting a finger into the air. “I’ll play along for a while more if I can have my gun back.”

In my mind, I had expected some back-and-forth discussion with my demand. I had built it up, from good reactions to heated arguments.

“Sure,” Layla said with a shrug. “I was planning on giving it to you with a new belt.”

Oh.

It took another hour and a half before she was done throwing clothes at me, and by then even Kester was showing some signs of impatience. Or what I felt were signs of impatience. He might just be experiencing mild indigestion. He brightened up considerably as Layla handed him a list of what she wanted made.

“You sure you don’t want some brighter colors?” Kester asked in a voice that sounded like groaning support beams. “Wouldn’t want people to think him some kind of knave.”

Layla nodded with a smile. “I’m sure.”

Kester nodded and folded the paper away. “I’ll have the first set to you by the end of the day tomorrow,” he said as he started to push his rack to the door. Mable stepped forward and opened it for him. “The rest will be another two or three days.”

I was back in my robe and I shot Layla a look. “How many sets did you order?”

“Not enough for a full wardrobe, but a good start,” Layla said, finishing with a yawn. She left the room into what I assumed to be the bedroom proper and came back with my gun belt. I took it from her and felt a shuddering wave of relief run through me with the iron back in my hands.

Without thinking, I took it out of the belt and ran my hands over it, checking for rust or any damage. Finding none, I nodded in satisfaction before spinning it two times for the hell of it and returning it to the holster.

“It probably should have occurred to me that your gun was important to you,” Layla said.

“A lot of my problems in the gang became less severe when I bought it,” I said, running my thumb over the grip. “Antagonizing someone is different when they have a gun. It’s become somethin' of a security blanket.”

Layla smiled and was about to say something that was interrupted by another yawn. “Okay, I’m kicking you out,” she said instead, chivying me toward the door. She stopped long enough to put my clothes in my arms and to slip a bill into Mable’s hand as we exited her room. “Thank you for your help today, Mable.”

Mable bowed. “Of course, Miss Mills.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Patton,” Layla said, closing the door.

I was about to ask Mable if she knew where my room was when she produced a key and opened the door across the hall, stepping aside. She left the key in the lock. The room beyond was exactly like Layla’s except the carpet was deep blue instead of red. “That’s my room?” I asked slowly.

Mable nodded. “Yes sir. Do you need anything before you turn in? If you desire company, some can be sent for from the best establishments, all guaranteed clean.”

I kept my voice steady despite the blush that flared up my face. “No, no that won’t be necessary. Thank you.” I hurried into the room and stopped short of slamming the door on Mable. I reopened it and retrieved the key before I hurried to close it again.

I shook my head to clear the embarrassment away. I crossed what I’d call the living room into the bedroom. It was furnished much like the living room, except there was a small fireplace, and the biggest bed I had ever seen dominated much of the room. Everyone I had met today could sleep comfortably on that bed with room to spare.

I approached it slowly, putting my clothes on a nearby chair distractedly. Who would need a bed this big? I slipped out of my robe, hanging it on the same chair as I circled to the side of the bed furthest from the door. I hung my gun belt from the corner of the headboard and hopped into bed.

I groaned as my tired body sank into it. Feather mattress? I thought those were fake. How many birds had to die for this giant bed?

That was my last thought as I drifted off to sleep.

So that wraps up book 2.

I wrestled a lot with this book. Unlike the first one, which came to me mostly fully formed in a dream, Book 2 was the answer to the question of "where does this go?" The ending changed multiple times, the first being because it was 2 books worth of content to make it make sense, then changed again when I didn't like the direction it was going, then changed again simply because my fingers sometimes are assholes and the story often shifts as I'm writing it.

I sat on this particular ending for a while before uploading it. I wanted the ending of Book 2 to shake things up, for both Colm and the world. I wanted the familiar setting to be turned on its ear and Colm to lose more of what makes him human.

Originally I had planned for 4 books, but with this ending a lot of that plan goes out the window—so we'll see how many I end up with. It might just be a trilogy, but I kind of doubt it.

I hope you are enjoying the ride as much as I am! Going to write some American Eldritch before I get started on book 3. I'll post the story question (cover jacket blurb) in a few days when I come up with it.

Hope you all have a wonderful week!

-RaReason

Unfathomable Power, Book 2, Epilogue

Box room was boring. But I learned that if I hit enough things and made enough noise, they’d shove things through the little hole in the door. Well, first they’d shoot me until I couldn’t move anymore. But after doing that a few times they started to bribe me. The markers and Crayons were fun for a while, but I got tired of them quickly. There was only so much space on the walls to draw on.

I wanted to make noise to see what I’d get today, but today was visiting day. Visiting day was when Alice came and taught me words. If I made too much noise on visiting day, visiting day would be over, so I did my best to be patient.

I felt bad for tricking Alice. I knew more than I was letting on. I knew I wasn’t in a safe place, even if they fed me and gave me markers. A safe place wouldn’t stop me from going outside. A safe place wouldn’t shoot me if I played with the door.

I don’t know how I knew, but being dumb made them think I was not dangerous. So even though Alice did her best to teach me words, I pretended to learn them slowly. I even shoved her away when she tried to touch my thoughts—not with my hands, but with my brain. Alice was like Think-man and could touch my thoughts. But she wasn’t as strong as Think-man. Well, she could beat him with punches, I was pretty sure, but her thinking wasn’t as strong.

At night, when the place got quiet, I pretended to sleep. I was missing many, many thoughts. So at night, I did my best to remake them. I had to start early, but I didn’t like my early thoughts. They were about the bad man who hit my brother and me and my mom. Because I didn’t like them, I might not have been as diligent as I maybe should been. But I had nothing but time, so I worked until it got bad and then slept for real.

But today was visiting day, so I sat on the floor in the middle of the room and did my best to wait. Alice was so pretty and nice! She was the best part about this place. She told me she was my friend, and I was very glad for that. I didn’t have any other friends.

I heard activity outside the door and grew excited. Visiting day! But, my excitement dampened when I heard a difference in the footsteps outside. Those weren’t Alice’s feet. Was it food time? I just ate. DID THEY CANCEL VISITING DAY?! NO! I WAS GOOD! YOU CAN’T CANCEL VISITING DAY IF I WAS GOOD!

I was about to charge the door when I heard the lock click and the very heavy metal door was pushed open, revealing a man. Who is this? Where’s Alice!? Visiting day is for Alice!

I studied the man as he handed a cane to one of the gun men. He shuffled into the room, his clothes hanging off him like tarps. He was very thin. His eyes were sunken, and he had a few days of growth on his face. He looked familiar.

“Hey, Liam,” the man said as the door closed behind him. “Mind if I sit?” He pointed at my bed.

Frowning, I shook my head. The man shuffled across the small room, before sitting heavily on my bed with a sigh. “I’m not supposed to be walking this much, but they wouldn’t allow me to bring a wheelchair,” the man said, rubbing his hips and thighs.

I scooted closer, looking up at his face. He was so familiar!

“Do you recognize me?” The man asked.

I shook my head.

The man’s expression fell. “Alice warned me you… weren’t the same. I thought she was mostly talking about—“ he gestured at my skin.

I smiled. I like my skin. At night, I did fun stuff with it. I couldn’t do fun stuff during the day because the guards shot me. They kept getting bigger guns, too.

The man sighed. “I’m your brother. I’m Conner.”

I don’t know what happened. One second I was happy on the floor, thinking about the shapes I could make with my skin, the next I was hugging the man—my brother.

There was shouting behind me and I knew I was about to be shot. Every time I did something too fast they’d shoot me until I couldn’t move anymore. But they might shoot Conner! I might have to kill the guards—but I wasn’t ready. There were more of them out there. I needed my thoughts back. Thoughts meant power, but I didn’t have enough.

“Stop!” Conner shouted. “It’s fine! It’s fine. He’s just hugging me. He’s… he’s my big brother.”

The noises from the door stopped. “Are you sure?” Asked the mean guard. He was always ready to shoot me.

“Positive,” Conner said, wrapping his thin arms around me.

I really wanted to squeeze him, but he was so thin! I felt like I would break him. So I just rocked us back and forth.

“You remember me?” Conner whispered.

I made a frustrated, whining noise. I didn’t remember him, but I knew him. He’s my brother. As soon as he said the words, I knew it was true.

“It’s fine,” he said, patting my back. “I’m told some of the agents that lost their memories are starting to get theirs back. You… were exposed a lot more than them, though. Targeted, likely. It’d make sense that you’d take longer.”

I vowed at that moment to make much more effort in getting my thoughts back. I needed to remember my brother!

Conner tried to pull away, but I whined again and held him tight. He laughed. “Come on,” he said, gently pulling away. “Let me look at you.”

I reluctantly let him pull away. He patted the bed next to him, and I sat next to him, our hips touching. He pulled on the sleeve of my jumpsuit. “Is that comfortable?”

I shrugged. Truthfully, it was annoying when I had to poop, as I had to take the whole thing off. I solved that problem by just not pooping anymore. I had to make a few changes to my insides, but now I didn’t need to bother with that boring chore.

Conner seemed to be at a loss. He spent the next fifty minutes trying to engage me in conversation, but I remained mostly mute. I felt so bad. I could say many words, but I needed the guards to think I was dumb. Just a dumb animal that they could shoot until I behaved. Until I had enough thoughts back to leave.

Our time was coming up. I heard the guards engaging the locks on the door. Conner sighed, turning to give me a weak smile. “I’ll keep visiting,” he said. “Once I recover a little more, Alice and I will trade-off. Maybe we can talk them into letting us both visit.”

He stood slowly, and I helped him to his feet. I glanced at the door. No one was watching through the slat while they wrestled with the locking mechanism. I grabbed Conner’s face and made him look at me while putting a finger to my lips. “Shhh,” I said.

His eyes widened as I pulled up the sleeve of my jumpsuit, my skin writhing on my forearm. I squinted in concentration, the words “Love you” forming. I pointed at the words, then at my brother.

He gaped but quickly schooled his expression. He smiled and drew me into another hug. “I’ll see you soon, Liam.”

I squeezed him as much as I dared, then sat on the ground as the guards got the door open. I was supposed to be sitting on the floor when they opened the door. Conner shuffled out of the room, giving me a final wave. I waved back, a big smile on my face.

Visiting days were the best!

  *

I got another visitor. And on the same day! But it was think-man.

Think-man entered my room and waited for the door to close behind him before addressing the guards. “Take a walk, gentlemen. Come back in five minutes.”

There was a pause. “You sure, boss?”

“Get going,” Think-man said. He waited until their footsteps faded before squatting in front of me.

“If you’re going to pass secret messages,” he began, and I felt panic rising in my chest. He pulled out a glass rectangle and showed me a picture of—of me! Me and Conner, from above. The words “Love you” clearly defined on my forearm. “You need to be a little more circumspect—I mean careful.”

He pointed up to the corner of my room. Following his finger, I saw a little piece of glass I’d never noticed before. I turned, and in each corner of the room, there was a similar piece of glass. I looked at the rectangle, then at the glass. The glass can make pictures?! WHY THE HELL WAS I GIVEN SHITTY MARKERS THEN? Gimme the glass picture maker!

I arrested my thoughts and pulled them back. I looked at Think-man. Why was he telling me this?

“No one but me saw this,” he said. “But I won’t always be around to cover for you. I would just like to ask that when you make a break for it, avoid killing people. I won’t be able to help, but I can buy you time. Also, just because you can stop me from reading your mind, doesn’t mean I can’t read the mind of people who visit you. Remember that.”

Oh my! Think-man was so smart. But that makes sense, he can take thoughts from other people. With so many thoughts, he must be so strong! I nodded quickly.

“Good,” he said, standing. “Remember: no killing.”

I nodded vigorously.

Albright waited for the guards to return and left without a word. I climbed into bed and knuckled down for some real work.

Time to get my thoughts back.

Time to… to be me again.

Unfathomable Power, Book 2, Chapter 58

He kept laughing at me. Laughing as I struggled to breathe. I tried to think of anything I could use to escape him, but my attempts to push him away or hit him were pathetic. I tried to writhe, to buck and shake, to wrap what remained of the things coming out of my back around his arms, but they were so weak. Everything about me. I couldn’t—I couldn’t figure out how to do anything! AND HE JUST KEPT LAUGHING!

That was maybe the worst thing of all. I knew he was making all of this hard. Making me—making me not know things. But for some reason, I kept knowing what mocking laughter was. He wanted me to know he was laughing at me as he killed me. He wanted me to know I was helpless, reveled in allowing me just enough knowledge to know what I was lacking, to know that I should be able to fight back but not being able to.

And he laughed. Laughed and laughed.

A sudden anger swelled in my chest. My chest burned, and my vision was narrowing. I could feel things popping in my head. But that didn’t matter. I was angry. I was ANGRY.

I lifted my all-but useless arms, with those things on the end that I had forgotten how to use—or even the names for. I didn’t care. I didn’t need to know what to do—because he was showing me. Let's give him a taste of his… own something. Ignoring another forgotten memory, I lifted my arms and awkwardly clamped my arm-things around his neck. It was fumbling and incompetent, which made the laughter grow in volume in pitch. But I flexed my neck and continued to try. He was taking my memories—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t learn. And I have always been a good student.

The laughter cut off with a rasp as my arm-things clamped on the bad man's neck. Pain bloomed in my left arm-thing and behind my right arm-thing, but I ignored it. The bad man had made a mistake. He had left me enough of myself to know fear, to know how bad this was. I clung onto that with all my being and transferred that strength to my arms.

The bad man let out a squawk as my arm-things began to crush his throat. The distortion around his face lifted for a split second, allowing me to see the fear in his eyes as I used everything in me to grab his neck. To crush it. To squeeze his head off like forming a fresh mozzarella ball. Huh. Funny that he left me with memories of cheese but I can’t remember what arm-things are.

He fought back, trying to crush my throat—but we were both shocked to discover that I was stronger. He could choke me, but I was crushing him. I manic smile warped my face as I leaned forward off the ground, giving my all to crushing his neck. I felt something snap.

With panicked strength, the bad man suddenly rolled to the side, doing something with his legs and hips and flinging me away. I gasped even as I hit the ground in a roll, rubbing my neck with my arms-things, coughing, and trying to get air into my lungs.

I couldn’t help the smile on my face as I heard the bad man wretch and cough and gasp a few yards away, slamming his chest with his arms things. Even as he fought to breathe, I felt his attention latch onto me. I felt more of myself start to seep away, and in a rising panic, I shot to my feet.

Or I tried to. I can’t walk anymore! I managed to get a foot under me but as soon as I tried to take a step I lost my balance and fell in a boneless heap. I snarled wordlessly and dragged myself across the ground toward him, my arms and chest a river of pain, but it didn’t matter. He could try to take the knowledge of how to crawl out of me, but even babies figured that shit out.

The bad man staggered to his feet and tried to get away, but even crawling I was able to get on him. Instead of trying to hit him, I grabbed his knee and squeezed with all my might. The… thingies on my arms responded and grew spikes, shredding the joint. The bad man, for the first time (I think) that night, howled in pain.

His arm thing slammed into the side of my face, trying to knock me away. I kept myself from flying away by keeping my hold on his leg. I didn’t know how to fight anymore, but I knew what he did had hurt me, so I did it back to him. I closed my arm-things little arms into the smallest space they could be in and brought it up and down, like a hammer, on the bad man's hip. It felt incredibly satisfying, and it knocked the bad man off his feet.

I realized I was screaming. Wordless, insane-sounding gibberish flying from my mouth with almost equal amounts of saliva and blood. The bad man rained more blows upon me, but I ignored them. Now that he was back on the ground, I crawled up him like a felled tree. He tried to shove me off, and it was all I could do to hold onto him. I wanted to hurt him, like he was hurting me, but both my arm-things were occupied holding onto him.

So I bit into his stomach.

It wasn’t effective, at first. The bad man's clothes got in the way. My teeth weren’t sharp enough to cut through them, though I managed to crush some skin in my first few bites. I finally got some success when I bit down right when a blow hit the side of my head, tearing his shirt and a bit of skin. We both paused, both of us seeming to realize his mistake. I reacted first, getting a mouthful of shirt and skin and then straining my neck back, ripping it off.

A rasping scream was torn from his damaged throat. He began to fight and thrash with frenzied energy, the panic giving him renewed strength. I weathered it. The bad man needed to die so that… someone would be safe. Many someones. I can’t remember them, but I knew they were there.

...I hope.

I began to tear pieces of the bad man out, one bite at a time. Image, scent, and sound-laden not-blood covered my face and neck as I used my teeth to disembowel the bad man. He began to weaken, and I climbed higher now that his blows weren’t raining with as much force or frequency. He said something, his tone pleading, but satisfaction bloomed in me when I realized he had taken my capacity to understand what he was saying. I nearly laughed at the irony of him trying to plead with someone he had effectively rendered an idiot.

As I became face-to-face with him, he slammed his head into mine. I maintained my grip and shook my head with a snarl. I slammed mine back down. That felt… good. Effective. I repeated it. His not-blood started leaking from a cut from between his eyes. I slammed my forehead down again. And again.

And again.

At some point, the bad man’s head was a pile of mush I was beating into the desert dirt, and my head hurt a lot. He wasn’t moving, and bits of him were fading away, flaking like ash that gave off weird sounds and images. I…

Where am I? I hurt.

I heard a voice behind me and turned to see a small man. I don’t know his name, but he… does something with thoughts. I will call him Think-man. Think-man was saying things to me, holding up his arm-things, showing they were empty. He kept making noises at me, and I grew bored and looked at the sky. The dots in the sky were pretty.

I think… I think I am tired.

I looked down at the body underneath me. He had been important, but I don’t know why. I didn’t like all the noises and smells coming out of him, so I crawled away. I found a part of the dirt that had no rocks or plants and tried to find a position that didn’t hurt my arms or chest. I did the best I could, closed my eyes, and drifted off to sleep.

I hope I felt better when I woke up.

  ***

Two Days Later

Albright

Albright walked the long hallway to the boss's office. The onyx and marble hall echoed with his footsteps. Ever since the boss returned from Brazil, he had been avoiding Albright’s telepathy. Jager said that with his injuries, he was unable to properly shield Albright from his mind, but Albright suspected Jager didn’t want him to know just how injured he was.

Jager had been forced to flee, after all.

Albright was managing six communication lines with his telepathy. The one that had the majority of his attention right now was to the guards who were observing Colm. After the fight with the Waker, the terrifying man had curled into a ball and slept. Jager had arrived, missing an arm and an eye, and had attempted to kill what he thought of as a danger to humanity.

Colm had woken up and, in the ensuing fight, Jager had lost a leg. It had only been Albright’s quick intervention that had saved his boss. Using the last of his fading stamina, Albright had poured everything he could into putting Colm back to sleep. Jager and Albright watched in horror as the wounds that the Waker and then Jager had inflicted on the man began to—to heal, for lack of a better word. Colm’s injuries began to pulse and twist in on themselves, looking like a swarm of maggots under his skin that resolved into undamaged flesh. Flesh that was so dark it barely reflected light.

Currently, Colm was awake, and using his claws to draw stick figures in the ground of his cell. The cell that was supposed to be resilient enough to weather tank rounds without taking damage. Nothing was supposed to be able to leave a mark on those walls and floors. Yet, Colm did so with a casualness that was frightening.

Maybe I should call him Liam, Albright thought. Colm’s background check had finally come in, too late to matter, but it shed a light on the man. Liam Hayes' friends had disappeared during one night, with signs of violence. Only a few drops of blood had remained. Liam Hayes had also disappeared, though his parents had reported he was alive. Police had briefly tried to locate him for questioning, but after several weeks of fruitless effort, the investigation was dropped. Someone higher up would put the authorities back on the scent of the only survivor and suspect of several violent disappearances, but again, nothing was found and investigators routinely… just forgot.

The first time Colm Avery appeared in public after Liam’s disappearance was during a traffic stop, driving a car whose plates were registered to Colm but whose VIN was linked to Liam. Despite this glaring contradiction, no one seemed to notice.

Albright now knew why. Alice had mentioned Colm was exceptionally deft with thaumagraphy, despite only recently learning the term. His main tools were attention wards, complicated spells that gently directed focus away from whatever the spell desired. Elysium had a few in every field office, and it was the work of a special team of mages to set up each one. Apparently, Colm could whip one up in a few minutes—which was baffling and impressive, for a self-taught man.

Or, at least, he had been able to. The current Colm was basically reverted to a child. Not all of his memories were gone, but enough of them had been taken that he was non-verbal, prone to tantrums but also, strangely, easy to please. Said tantrums are why Colm had two of Albright's best guards watching him, despite being in a cell that could stand up to heavy missile fire.

Albright spent a moment organizing his thoughts as he stepped through the door into Jager’s “office,” the giant room where he spent most of his time. Stadium seating surrounded the onyx and marble floor, each piece enchanted to funnel power to the room's only occupant. When two people were in the room, the enchantment was disrupted, which switched to distortion. Albright felt his telepathic connections strain to near breaking as he crossed the vast space to Jager’s desk.

Jager looked pretty much like he always did. A human that had lost two limbs and an eye might have worn the trauma on their face—maybe circles under the eyes, bruising, maybe a sheen of sweat from fighting infection. Jager, however…

From where his eye used to be, billowing clouds threatened to erupt. Dark gray mixed with fiery orange, lit with internal flashes of scarlet lightning. The same clouds slowly grew from his two stumps. After two days, Albright noted the progress of the storm clouds emerging from his boss. He hid a wince as he did a mental estimate of how long it’d take him to heal.

“How are plans for the execution?” Jager said as Albright slowed to a stop in front of the desk.

Albright sighed. “About that,” he said. “The Martinez Family are throwing their weight around, and are gathering support from some of the major powers. They aren’t openly threatening us, but they are making it clear that they won’t be happy if Colm—“

“The Prisoner,” Jager corrected.

“The Prisoner dies,” Albright finished.

Jager gestured dismissively with his remaining hand. “One little branch is nothing to worry about—“

“You misheard me, sir,” Albright interrupted. “The entire Martinez Family is protesting. Their Patron has made its wishes known.”

Jager froze, but not like a human would. It was like someone had pressed pause on him. When a human froze, they continued to breathe, maybe blink—sometimes you could see their pulse on certain places of their body. Not so with Jager. The absolute stillness lasted for several seconds before his face contorted into a snarl. “Why? What makes this asshole so important?”

Albright lifted his phone and quickly tabbed over to the report. “According to Alice Martinez, the Prisoner owes the Martinez Patron a favor. They have alluded that should the Prisoner be executed, the onus of returning the favor would fall on you.”

Jager let out a very human groan. “Damn it all.”

Albright’s eyebrows rose. “Do you know who their Patron is?”

Some lightning storm leaked from Jager’s eye wound, and he distractedly pushed it back with his fingers. “I do. But I won’t be telling you,” he quickly added before Albright could ask. “I don’t want them to have any more attention than they already have.”

Albright frowned. Jager was possibly the most powerful being on the planet. Even if Colm had gotten the better of him, the big man who was currently leaking storm clouds had been fighting avatars popping up all over the globe. If he had been fresh, Albright doubted Colm would have been able to put up a fight.

The big man was trying to hide it, but Albright had been working with him for decades. He might not behave exactly like a human, but the tells were there all the same. The Martinez Patron scared Jager. The avatars hadn’t scared him. Talk of the Distiller hardly worried him.

What could scare Jager?

“Fine,” Jager said after a tense minute. “We’re keeping him locked up, though. He’s a danger to everyone in his current condition.”

Albright glanced back at his phone. “They’re going to want visitation rights.”

Jager let out a low growl Albright could feel in his chest. “Once a week. One hour. Heavily supervised.”

Albright was relieved. Despite himself, he did like Colm. What little he had been able to pick out of the man's head said he was just interested in being left alone. That knowledge, coupled with seeing him in action, gave Albright the opinion that the young man didn’t deserve to be put down—hell, it could be argued the man had saved the world—twice. Being executed was a poor reward, in Albright’s eyes.

“What’s the other thing?” Jager asked, breaking Albright out of his thoughts.

Albright tabbed over to another report on his phone. “It’s as we feared. Infant fatalities are on the rise. Stillbirths and cases of SIDS are climbing.”

Jager’s face fell. His one eye tracked to the stump of his arm, and his remaining fist clenched with such force it sounded like leather grinding. “And?” He grated.

“Still no sight of the avatar,” Albright said quietly. “Analytics has dubbed it The Nursemaid.”

“Top priority,” Jager said through gritted teeth. “Pull everything, everyone. It needs to die. You have full authority.”

As the words left Jager’s mouth, Albright felt a pressure in his chest, like a cage had been put around his heart. Over the next few heartbeats, the pressure eased but never vanished. The full weight of Elysium was at his disposal.

Albright nodded curtly. “I’ll see it done.”

Jager didn’t reply as he stared into the distance. Albright spun on his heel and rushed from the cavernous room, a question at the forefront of his mind.

How was he going to kill an avatar?

Unfathomable Power, Book 2, Chapter 57

I backpedaled as quickly as I could, avoiding the pole that the old man whipped back and forth with speed that cracked the air. I attempted to grab it on a backswing, nearly losing two fingers. Instead, they were broken, maybe shattered. The pole, when in motion, felt like it weighed several tons. Trying to grab it had been like trying to grab onto a bullet train.

He used my moment of distracted pain to land a haymaker on my jaw, the blow sending me tumbling across the desert for several yards. I managed to keep moving with the momentum, throwing myself up and to the side just in time for that pole to slam into the dirt hard enough to blast me back with a small explosion.

The old man was laughing again.

“You’re so fun!” The weird, static-filled, record-scratch voice of the Waker grated upon my psyche. The pole came again, a wide-sweeping strike that I was sure would obliterate my stomach if it hit. I awkwardly leaped up and lifted my legs perpendicular to the ground as it barely missed hitting me, with its passing tearing at my Clothes of the Other Side. I felt them shudder in discomfort at the near miss.

Before I could get my feet under me, the Old Man dropped the pole and caught it in his other hand, but brought the newly freed hand back in a backhand that I barely got my hands in front of. It sent me sailing again.

Jesus Christ, he’s knocking me around like a tetherball.

I roared, tentacles bursting from my thighs, shoulders, and back as I sailed through the air. I felt my skin go back to the void coloration as I stopped holding myself back, and I even grew a few inches. My spine, thighs, and biceps were cracking and popping along with my fingers and toes as I stretched out, topping seven feet in height. Half a dozen tentacles stabbed into the ground and halted my flight, and with a mighty flex moved me aside as the old man appeared, leading with the pole. Another crater was born as the pole narrowly missed slamming into my clavicle.

I lashed out with the remaining tentacles, sending them in low and stabbing them into his legs. I lost a good quarter of them to a flick of the pole but traded the explosive pain for three nasty holes I tore into his thigh and calf. With a mental flex, the tentacles grew wicked barbs, and I rattled them in the wounds before ripping them out.

The Waker didn’t bleed. Instead, hazy images poured out of his wounds, accompanied by myriad smells and sounds that you could just barely detect. The images and sensations poured from his wounds, at one point a liquid, next a gas, then back to a liquid. I didn’t have time to see much more as the old man roared like an old modem mixed with an air-raid siren and snapped the pole in my direction.

I wasn’t close enough for him to reach me, so I assumed I was safe. I was wrong. A blast of compressed air slammed into me and sent me tumbling, my body feeling like I had just been in a car crash. I shakily got to my feet just as the Waker hobbled up to me, his ridiculous speed making his hobbling gait look ludicrous and horrifying in equal measure. He reeled back with his rod and I saw my chance.

I dove forward, bringing my elbows into my chest in a tight boxer’s stance as I got within his weapons reach. His face cleared for a second and I saw his eyes widen in alarm as my left hand (the one with the broken ring and pinkie finger) jabbed out and struck his wrist, spoiling his strike and sending pain exploding up my arm. I screamed through the sensation and planted my right foot between his, stepping into him as I executed the best uppercut of my life. I felt the Other Side coated knuckles of my right connect into the soft tissue under the Waker’s jaw and rocked his head back like a Pez dispenser. His feet left the ground from the power of the strike, but I wasn’t done.

I shuffled closer and brought my elbow down, a sudden inspiration blooming mid-strike as I instructed the LotOS to grow a spike out of my elbow. A thrill of victory ran through me as the black, living armor followed my command in the split second before impact, stabbing three inches into the Waker’s chest as my elbow halted his upward momentum and sent him back to the ground. I moved forward to pounce on him, but a stray kick to my hip sent me tumbling away.

“I’m—“ the Waker coughed an image of a strange tool made of bone. The image clung to his chin and dripped down to his throat, before changing into the sounds of some animal I had never heard before. “I’m no longer having fun.”

The Waker rose to his feet and slowly advanced on me. Slow compared to his previous speed, that is. He was still moving faster than an Olympic sprinter. Instead of the huge, telegraphed swipes of his rod, he now moved it much like a saber. A nine-foot saber that hit like a wrecking ball. I rolled away from his first few probing attacks, barely managing to get to my feet.

I began to lose tentacles as I was forced to use them to keep him at bay. One by one he’d clip them off me, like he was pruning a bonsai. I was down to four when that rod clipped my left forearm, a grazing blow that felt like being hit by a truck. It transferred enough kinetic energy that I felt my arm wrenched in its socket and made me stumble down to a knee. The Waker’s body language lit up with excitement as he pressed his advantage.

Which is when I hit him with a harpoon of telekinetic force.

I may have forgotten how to use my silent passengers new trick, but I was still a goddamned wizard/warlock. I had magic, goddamnit. The Waker took the hit in the abdomen and was thrown back, and was so surprised that he dropped his rod. Unfortunately, avatars of the Distiller seemed to have some innate magical insulation, as the magic failed to penetrate. The Doorman hadn’t been too bothered by my magic, either.

I growled, clutching my arm to my chest as I rushed after the Waker. My arm was a mass of pain, a pulsing sensation of pure pressure, but I didn’t think it was broken. Probably fractured, with how much it was hurting. I think the LotOS had distributed the energy over a wider area to save my arm. I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow my arm wasn’t a giant bruise… if I could even bruise anymore.

The Waker rolled to his feet as I arrived. I went to close the distance on him again, and I could tell by how quickly he tried to get away he was now well and truly wary of me. He shook his hand, once again summoning back his rod, but I knocked it out of his hand with a bar of telekinetic force. Static exploded out of the Waker in what I assumed was a growl of frustration, but I didn’t give him time to wallow in it. I stepped into him and prepared to hammer him with a right cross.

Only, my footing was wrong. I didn’t generate the power I needed, and something was wrong with my right hand. My fist connected badly with the Waker’s face, and I felt something in my wrist snap. I was so surprised I didn’t notice the Waker’s fist until it landed on my ribs with enough force to send me into the air. I heard several snaps.

I landed several yards away and quickly, ungainly got back to my feet just in time for the Waker to arrive. He started pummeling me, a wave of panic searing through me as I was unable to defend myself. My movements were ungainly, my reflexes shot. If I blocked a punch it was only due to instinct rather than skill, often pure chance.

I don’t know how to fight anymore.

I shoved him away to buy time, screaming as the movement made my fingers and wrist explode with pain. I cast a glance over my shoulder at the Elysium agents for help. What I saw made my stomach fall. They were all… on the ground, drooling. Only Albright, Calhoun, and Kristy seemed to be paying attention, Albright holding his hands forward in a warding gesture that I assumed was to combat whatever memory attack the Waker was doing.

I snapped my eyes back in time to awkwardly dodge a hit from the Waker. I fell on my ass and scrambled away, each movement sending forks of lightning up my arms of pain.

“Sheb Benfomat Dedend,” the Waker said.

I—I couldn’t understand him. I felt like I should.

More of that horrible laughter tore through the night as the Waker casually kicked me, in the same spot he had punched earlier. I couldn’t even react. The pain was such that I blacked out. I came to moments later, rolling to a stop next to… a prickly thing. Oh god. What is this?! I SHOULD KNOW WHAT THIS IS! I latched onto anything I knew about it, trying to dredge up what it was. It was green. It had… things on it. They poked you. WHAT IS IT?!

The Waker laughed again, the noises horrible but I had no words for them anymore. I just knew they were wrong. I tried to stand but I was having trouble moving. I barely saw the Waker approach as he hit me across the face with the back of his… end of arm. Oh no.

Something in my jaw snapped as he hit me, and my head hit the ground and bounced. I made wordless noises, crawling away from the… the bad man that was hurting me. Why was he hurting me?

I felt my thoughts become simpler. There was so much less to draw from. I knew I had magic. I don’t know how but I knew I did. I screamed and threw it at the bad man. The result was a slight fluttering of the dust on the ground and of the bad man's clothes, which caused him to laugh horribly again.

The bad man kicked me, almost lazily, onto my back. Before I could do more than whimper his arm-things grabbed my neck and began to squeeze. I tried to fight him off, but it was like my arms were broken. I think they are. There’s so much pain.

The bad man spoke again but I couldn’t understand him. My chest hurt so much, but now there was a new pain. I needed to use my neck, but the bad man kept crushing it. I—

I—

I don’t know what to do.

The profession he is referring to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up

Unfathomable Power, Book 2, Chapter 56

As I started walking back to the warehouse, I remembered I did kind of have something… clothing adjacent.

I had been avoiding the Limps of the Other Side because I had thought they were the cause of my transformation. They might have had a hand in accelerating it, but now that I knew they weren’t the cause—dare I not use them, with what was coming?

My transformation ability already made my skin tougher. Adding another layer of protection should be a no-brainer—but I remembered the difficulty I had getting them off. They had torn up my skin and refused to let go of me, and I had to physically wrestle them into their cubby.

Assuming I live through this, I’d only be wearing them for a little while, not the days I had previously. I was also way stronger, and more magically competent.

Okay, yeah. Let’s bring ‘em out.

I walked away from the drive to the warehouse and found a spot of desert that was somewhat obscured by some yucca plants and started the chant that would open the interdimensional cubby. As I uttered the guttural and throat-singing-like chants, it occurred to me that I hadn’t used these spells since I put the limbs away. Had I even looked at my spellbook in all that time?

I don’t think I have. I know most of my common, thaumographic spells without needing to reference them, and the whole point of Circe’s method is that you know the spell so well is that it becomes reflexive and doesn’t cause the feedback that’s the price of all method-less casting. Feels weird that I haven’t thought about what was once my most prized possession.

I arrested my thoughts and brought them back to the task at hand, lest I flub the complicated spell and suffer a severe migraine. That would be amazing right before a big fight.

As the spell concluded, the slit in reality appeared. It was barely an inch wide when black, tar-like mass began to pour from it in convulsing pulses. My regret was immediate and massive as the mass tore its way out and dove at me like a hungry dog at a T-bone. I prepared my pyrokinesis but hesitated. That hesitation saved the Limbs, as it became apparent they weren’t attacking me. They jumped on me like a bunch of happy dogs and began to clean every inch of me of blood and other effluvia that had gathered on me until I was squeaky clean. They even cleaned my undies.

Once they were done, they separated into their four parts and just… waited. In front of me, on the ground, very much like dogs. Not in shape, but in attitude. Their shape right now would be best described as “blob.” But I could tell they were watching me and waiting for orders.

They were also bigger than I remember them being. Maybe they had continued to grow when I put them away? Or did they grow just now from all the demon blood and guts on me? Ah, fuck it. Better yank this tooth and get it over with.

“Alright,” I said with a sigh. “Hop on.”

Before the “n” in “on” was out of my mouth, the little fuckers were on me. Their formless bodies stretched over my limbs, covering my feet and hands, ankles and wrists, elbows and knees, hips and shoulders, and kept going—what the fuck?

At the same time as their simultaneous comforting and alien presence covered me, I felt them. Not physically, not mentally, but… metaphysically? It was like I was contacting another layer of their existence that had been hidden from me before. Or, perhaps a better way of putting it would be that I wasn’t capable of feeling it before. Whether it was from my new understanding of my powers from the Orphan, or the power boost I got from Trix less than an hour ago, I could feel more from the Limbs of the Other Side. It was what I imagined being colorblind and getting those shades that allowed you to see color. Only with weird, extradimensional long johns with a taste for blood.

Once they had settled on me, they covered everything from the neck down in a skin-tight suit. Paint a big white Spider on me and I looked like emo Spider-Man from that one movie, without the mask or embarrassing haircut. But as I had that realization, I came to understand it didn’t need to be that way. I tugged, prodded, and pulled, and the bodysuit quickly morphed so I was wearing black jeans and a t-shirt… over a black bodysuit.

“Beats being naked, “I muttered.

I flexed my hands, watching as three-inch claws snapped from my fingers. I nodded to myself. I relaxed my fingers and the claws retracted.

I breathed deeply through my nose, tilting my head back with my eyes closed. This thing I was planning on fighting was as strong as the Doorman. I barely survived the Doorman when it was missing a hand (or whatever the fuck it had at the end of its sleeve) and a good portion of its power.

I tilted my head in thought. Then again, I had been nearly dead by that point. I had fought three warlocks and about a dozen goons. Would I have made a better showing of myself if I hadn’t been so exhausted? Or would the Doorman not have played with its food and just killed my ass?

I looked down at my hands. I was… very much different from the scared man that had fought the Doorman. I have grown, not only in power but in… acceptance, of myself. I know I’m not a good man, and I’ve made my peace with that. Some might consider me evil, but I don’t. I doubt anyone truly thinks of themselves as evil.

“I try,” I muttered, dropping my hands to my sides. During the darkest nights I’ve had in the last year, I gave myself a mark. Something to tell me when I’ve truly crossed a threshold. If I could see the suffering of the innocent, and not be moved to do something, then… Well, it doesn’t need to be said.

This past week hasn’t allowed me a lot of time for introspection. I’ve just been focused on getting Conner safe. Now that he (relatively) is, I find myself in a kind of low-wattage turmoil. I had barely thought about what I was doing when I decided to sacrifice those cultists. I just did it. Just a year ago, I would have had to wrestle with every kind of justification, every reason why it needed to be done to even start on it. But there I was, no hesitation. I needed power, and they were the means.

Do I feel bad about it?… not in the least. Those assholes want to allow the Distiller into our reality. They kidnapped hundreds, maybe thousands of people so they could murder them to fuel the ritual, whose product I am now preparing to fight. I’m mostly concerned about the change in my overall decision-making process—the lack of that little voice in my head that is supposed to tell me what I’m doing is fucked up. I’m—

I’m afraid that without that voice, I’ll be dancing down the oft-referenced slippery slope.

I stood that way for a few minutes, my mind oddly quiet. It didn’t last; my solemn reflection shattered by a wave of magic lighting up the twilight desert. Several large spells went off, targeting a man-shaped form exiting the warehouse. Grand circles of complicated, intricate design lit up in the sky, firing beams at the lone figure… But they all missed.

Each beam, the size of my chest, slammed into the ground around the line figure and created an explosion. If it bothered the figure, I couldn’t tell from this distance.

I started to run forward, spotting Elysium personnel yelling at one another and pointing. I couldn’t see Albright initially, but then bullets started to fly from a familiar squad. Suddenly, the figure was amongst them, and I got a better look at...him? It?

It looked like an old man, wearing dated clothing from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution or even prior. It was hard to get a good look at him because looking at him was like looking at an old, faded photograph that was submerged in murky water. In his right hand was a long pole, about eight feet long, with a round cap at the top of it. He was wearing an old hat—no wait, no he isn’t. Wait, is he?

Something about the thing was fucking with my perception. I snarled away the confusion and focused on what I could see, and that was Albright’s squad getting thrashed. The old timer swung his pole, which bent like a willow switch and hit Roy and Greg like a battering ram. The two big men went flying. Greg seemed to take the worst of the blow, his chest concave as he hit the dirt and rolled to a stop. Roy’s left arm was bent in a direction it shouldn’t be, and he landed with a deep thud and a gasp.

Then the old man reached out with his left hand and touched Kristy’s cheek. A caress, really. Kristy reacted with wide eyes, her mouth opening but no sound coming out. She began to panic, swinging her gun like a club at the old man. She missed, spilling to the ground in a messy stumble.

Light exploded, a laser fired from Calhoun’s index finger from less than three feet away. Unlike everything else, this attack actually hit, making the old man stumble away from Kristy.

All this took place between two of my strides.

Calhoun, Albright, Walt, and Beats worked to push the old man away, who seemed to have to use some effort to avoid their attacks. What I could see of his expression was mild, like he was cleaning a particularly dirty dish.

I arrived on the scene and slid to a stop next to Kristy. She was in full panic, her eyes wide and mouth gaping like a fish. Her hands clamped onto me, yanking me toward her with surprising strength. She tried to speak but no sound emerged.

I ran my magical senses over her mouth, throat, and chest, trying to detect if anything was obstructing her airways. What I got instead of information overload, as my magical senses were picking up way more than they were supposed to. I tore my mind off the sudden knowledge that Kristy had pierced nipples (because of course she did) and narrowed my focus, searching only for the energies that would obstruct airflow or prevent the body from breathing. I found nothing. In fact, I only felt Kristy’s own magical signature—if what I was feeling was accurate, the old man hadn’t done anything to Kristy.

Her lips were turning blue and her eyes were bloodshot. I expanded my search again, to try and find foreign magic on her anywhere. I… think there was something with her head, but I couldn’t tell with all the other magic in the air. If I wasn’t imagining things, whatever it was was subtle as fuck.

“He’s done something to Kristy!” I yelled. “She can’t breathe and I can’t figure out why!”

I had an idea that made me wince. “Kristy, I’m going to give you mouth-to-mouth; don’t fight me.”

She nodded and pulled me close. I angled her head up, pinched her nose, created a seal over her mouth with my own, and breathed out—only, her lungs were already full. I pulled back and placed my palm on her sternum, clasping my other hand over, and looked her in the eye. “This’ll probably hurt.”

She rolled her hands in a frantic “get on with it!” gesture. I began the compressions. She wheezed out a breath on the second compression. I watched for a moment but her panic only grew. I once again gave her mouth-to-mouth, compressions, and another mouth-to-mouth in quick succession. Color was returning to her lips but she was still unable to breathe on her own.

Calhoun arrived in a slump, his right hand missing two fingers, but the flesh was charred in what I assumed was a quick cauterization. “What’s wrong with her?” He asked.

“She can’t breathe, but I can’t find out why,” I said quickly. “There might be something wrong with her head but I can’t be sure. Mouth-to-mouth works to keep air flowing.”

He nodded, beginning to cast some spells over her. “Go help them, I’ll keep her alive.”

I squeezed Kristy’s shoulder and stood, turning in time to see Walt take the pole to the back of his knee, which exploded in shards of bone and blood. I flexed my hands, extending and sheathing my claws, and shot forward.

I had a strange sense of déjà vu as I shot forward with more speed than I anticipated. I had had a moment just like this back on the island, I thought.

I had a hunch, based on what I’ve seen. As the old man turned on Albright, I positioned myself to pass next to Albright in my charge. Just as I expected, the old man suddenly appeared just behind me, swinging that pole for Albright. Extending the claws on my toes I arrested my forward momentum, reaching out with my hand and grabbing the pole before it could gather momentum. The Old Man’s head turned further than a human’s should be able as he shot me a look, and I wish I could tell what his expression was but I still couldn’t make it out. I imagined it was a very “Nani?!” face as I yanked the pole with enough force to pull it free of his grip, making him take a step in my direction to catch his balance. Which is when my other hand came up and slammed a haymaker punch into his spine with enough force to knock him tumbling away.

The Limb that was touching the pole suddenly shuddered and forced me to drop it. I frowned at it, lifting my hand to see the Limb of the Other Side on my right hand covered in what looked like sickly welts.

“What,” Albright spoke between gasping breaths. “Are you still doing here?”

“Your job,” I replied with a shrug. “I’m going to do some shit that you and your people won’t like. I’d appreciate it if you stopped them from shooting me until I kick that thing’s ass.”

“Knew you were a warlock,” Albright said with resignation.

“Yeah, but you like me anyway,” I replied, earning me an amused snort.

Albright and I flinched as the old man spoke. There was distortion in his voice, the scratches of an old, abused vinyl record playing over shitty audio of an early internet Skype call with a shitty mic. It was incredibly grating, and seemed to come from far away—yet despite all that noise, was enunciated and able to be understood.

“Mr. Hayes,” the old man said the words like he was tasting them, the sibilance in his voice painful to hear. He didn’t so much stand as rise like a marionette being dragged up by its strings. “I didn’t expect to taste you again so soon.”

Albright was shooting me an accusing glare. “Look, man,” I said defensively. “I don’t fuck on the first date.” I turned to the old man. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

I still couldn’t make out his face, but I got the impression of a sadistic grin. “Did you know that your memories don’t come back?” He flicked his hand and his pole reappeared in it. He planted it on the ground and leaned on it, gripping it with both hands near his head. “They grow back, like scar tissue, the gaps filling with the mind's best guess—plugging the potholes with rushed asphalt over the concrete of your mind.”

I felt my face harden in a snarl. “The cultists don’t erase memories—they steal them.”

“Ha!” The old man barked a laugh that felt like sticking a wet nine-volt battery in your ear. “You’re a sharp boy. Yes. A little here, a little there. Those memories help me understand how best to—to continue the road metaphor—pave the way.”

He laughed again, long and loud. I resisted covering my ears just to prove a point. Albright did cover his, and I was aghast at the blood pouring from his ears.

The laughter abruptly stopped. “You hurt me.”

Suddenly the old man was in front of me, bringing that pole down with whistling speed. I managed to barely dodge. The pole hit the ground with the force of a meteor, the shock wave sending Albright ragdolling away.

The same shock wave slammed into me, and I used the momentum it lent me to roll away from the old man and gather some space. I summoned my magic and my fire. Let’s see how this asshole—

My thoughts ground to a halt. I—I couldn’t remember how to make my fire whip.

The horrible laughter came again, the old man straightening and shooting an unidentifiable look that his posture suggested was flirtatious.

The memories, the weird distortion of his face. Kristy—Kristy’s inability to breathe. I felt my jaw hang as I put the pieces together. Even his weird dated clothing.

“You’re getting it!” More horrible, feedback-laden laughter.

This asshole had a schtick just like the Doorman. Where the Doorman was just that he was wherever a door was, this thing seemed to be a lot more debilitating. He took memories. Did he make Kristy forget how to breathe?

“Like all the other avatars of my progenitor, I think I shall take a name,” the old man said after his laughter calmed down. “I shall take the name of an old profession, all but forgotten. Just like you’ll be,” his mouth was suddenly in focus, and it was in a wide, cruel smile. “Allow me to introduce myself…

I am The Waker.”

The old man appeared next to me, and it was all I could do to dodge.

Chapters coming, edits coming

I've been going down a rabbit hole of 1800s census data and the university of Missouri prices and wages archive to learn more about the nitty-gritty details of cowboy life. I wanted to clear my head before I start the final stretch of Unfathomable Power book 2 and kind of bit off more than I anticipated.

With that said, I have some edits to make to the American Eldritch chapters that I've put up. Basically I wanted to call elves "natives" because they are native to the new world America finds itself in but I ran into some problematic trouble when I thought about "...well what the fuck do I call Native Americans?" Having two groups of people called natives would be confusing and irritating. So I erred on showing deference to real people with real history and I'm calling elves something else. I'm workshopping words with a friend who is a better judge of this stuff, as I am whiter than Casper.

The wild west is an incredibly fun setting but it also was a period of time awful or downright horrific for anyone that wasn't a White Male and I don't want to diminish the peoples of that time, unknowingly or not.

So if you go back to those chapters and see changes, that's why.

I have a few things to get out of my head, which should be done by the end of the day (tomorrow at the latest), and then I'm back on Colm's big fight.

Hope ya'll had a good weekend and have a peaceful week incoming.

-RaReason