by N. P. Martin
“A weekly post?” I laughed at the caller’s presumptuousness. “I don’t usually—”
“You will when you find out all the stuff I know. It’s damn juicy, I’ll tell you that.”
“Does any of this involve Ethan Drake?” I asked on a hunch.
“Involve him?” The caller made a strange guffawing noise, sounding almost like a horse. “He’s right at the center of it all!”
“I see,” I said, intrigued now, thinking this guy might be worth meeting. “All right, I’ll meet you. Where and when?”
“Tomorrow at midnight. The underground parking garage on Main Street.”
“Fine, but just so you know, I’m always armed. Just in case you’re thinking of trying anything untoward.”
“What? Do you think I’m going to rape you or something?”
“Rape me? I sure hope not.”
The caller laughed raucously. “Don’t worry. You’ll be safe with me.”
“I’ll guess we’ll see, won’t we? Do you have a name?”
“A name?” the caller said. “You can call me…Deep Throat.”
The line went dead as the caller hung up.
“Honestly,” I said as I started the Corvette. “Sometimes I think I should’ve become a lawyer instead. At least they get paid for listening to people’s bullshit…”
I stayed in the apartment for the rest of the daylight hours, working mostly, finishing up a few articles I’d been working on, and writing up a piece warning people to be on their guard against the Fae, and if possible, to always have a piece of iron handy, just in case…and to keep a good eye on their kids. I also gave people an update on the incubus spawn, explaining that the spawn had now increased in size and looked like a kid now.
On the DC forum, I answered some questions from people and gave advice on protecting against vampires after one poster said a person in their street was attacked and killed. To be honest, there wasn’t much you could do if a vampire set its sights on you. If you were going out, don’t go out alone. Numbers provided some safety. Also, if you were that worried, carry a stake. Or get religious. Vampires could still be repelled by strong religious conviction, though I wasn’t sure how that would play out now that Lucifer was on the Silver Throne.
But that was the thing about being asked for advice to protect against supernatural creatures and entities—there wasn’t much you could tell people. At the end of the day, the supernaturals had the advantage, and unless you were a seasoned hunter or knowledgeable magician, if a supernatural attacked you, you were a bit fucked. Attacks from supernaturals were like attacks from humans, or any other danger you could think of—it all came down to luck, mostly. Sure, you could learn to stay away from places where attacks were more likely to happen, but mostly, it was just a question of hoping you didn’t run into anything. Just as some people were unlucky enough to die in unfortunate accidents, some people were equally unlucky to die at the hands of a supernatural. It was simply the way of the world.
To prepare for my infiltration mission into the offices of GeekMind, I spent some time charging up a physical disguise sigil, which I was going to need. The building were Martin Phillips worked was occupied around the clock by a skeleton staff, so I would not be able to just walk inside unchecked. I would have to disguise myself first, and magic was the best way to do that.
10
It was past dark by the time I had successfully charged up the sigil card, which took me a few hours to do. Once I was done, I headed out and drove to the GeekMind offices for the second time that day, parking a block away so no one would see my car and put two and two together.
Before I went inside, I called the front desk and asked in a stupid sounding voice if Martin Phillips was in, and the receptionist—the same guy I had spoken to earlier in the day—informed me Phillips was no longer in the building, which was exactly what I wanted to hear, as it would be his office I would be breaking into.
While still in the car, I took out the sigil card for the physical disguise spell and held it up in front of me, concentrating on the disguise I wanted to take on. I needed to look like Martin Phillips to anyone who saw me, so I focused on the asshole’s appearance, and how he looked when I saw him earlier that day. When I had a clear picture of Phillips in my mind, I then said a few words which sounded completely nonsensical, but which were actually a condensed version—minus all repeat letters—of the sentence: IT IS MY WILL TO LOOK LIKE SOMEONE ELSE ENTIRELY.
As soon as I said the “magic words” I felt a familiar shuddering wave of energy run through my body, which felt like a mild orgasm. Once I felt that sensation, I knew the spell had been activated. I hadn’t physically transformed myself, but merely cloaked myself in a glamor. To all outside observers, I would look like Martin Phillips, right down to the purple Adidas tracksuit and mirror shades. It was a trick of the mind that would last a couple of hours before it eventually wore off. If I had wanted to stay in disguise longer, I would’ve had to have spent more time channeling energy into the sigil card. An hour or two was all I needed, though. Just enough time to get in, check the computers, and then get out.
Walking through the front doors into the lobby, I barely acknowledged the receptionist on the front desk, who said, “Mr. Phillips, sir. I thought you’d left. Did you forget something?”
“I had left…obviously,” I said in my most arrogant, obnoxious voice. “I wouldn’t be coming back in again if I hadn’t left, would I?”
“No, sir, I suppose not.”
“Jesus, why’d I even hire you? Do you have a brain in that fag skull of yours?”
All right, don’t overdo it or anything.
The receptionist dropped his head, making me feel bad for him. “My apologies, sir.”
I stopped halfway across the lobby and looked over at him. “No, it’s me. I’m a fucking asshole. In fact, I don’t deserve you…whatever your name is.”
“It’s Brian, sir. Brian Connolly.”
“Next time I give you shit, Brian, feel free to tell me to go fuck myself.”
Brian looked shocked. “I’m sorry, sir?”
“Stop apologizing, Brian. You heard what I said. Let’s try it. Tell me to go fuck myself.”
“But, sir—”
“Tell me to go fuck myself, Brian.”
Brian sighed. “Go…fuck yourself…sir.”
“That was pathetic, Brian. Say it again. Like you mean it this time.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“I said, like you mean it, Brian. Come on!”
“Go fuck yourself, you fucking asshole!” Brian suddenly screamed, spit flying from his mouth as he tapped into every grievance he ever had against his boss. Shocking himself, he covered his mouth with his hand for a second, and then said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Phillips. I didn’t—”
“Hey,” I said. “What I just tell you about apologizing? Stop it. Now.”
“Yes, sir,” Brian said, well and truly weirded out by this point.
“Next time I give you shit or treat you like a second-class citizen, you have my permission to react just like you did a second ago.”
“Are you…sure, sir?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “I’m going up to my office now. Have someone send me a burger up, will you? Just plain with ketchup. And a coke.”
“Yes, Mr. Phillips. Right away.”
“Good man, Brian.”
Smiling, I walked into the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor, wishing I could be a fly on the wall the next time Martin Phillips gave his receptionist shit and Brian reacted in the way that I had told him to. Brian would probably get fired. If he did, I would have done him a favor, so I didn’t feel bad about it.
Once I reached Phillips’ office, I wasn’t surprised to find it locked. God forbid anybody should break in and steal his plaster cast cock or anything. Taking out the sigil card I made for opening locked doors, I held the card against the door and said a brief incantation. Once the sigil on the card glowed wit
h a faint red energy, I heard a click as the door unlocked, and I smiled as I opened the door and walked into the office, closing the door behind me before turning on the lights.
After taking a moment to once again be repulsed by the ghastly decor of the office—practically shuddering at the designer filth surrounding me—I went straight to Phillips’ desk and switched on his computer. As I waited on the computer booting up, I noticed the pile of plaster on the desk as well. It seemed Phillips couldn’t even bring himself to dispose of his broken cock ornament. What was he planning on doing, gluing it back together? For God’s sake. Or should that be, for Lucifer’s sake, a phrase that was slowly taking hold in this new post-God society?
After the computer booted up, I was hit with the inevitable password screen. For a moment, I thought it might be fun to guess the password, but then decided I didn’t have the time for that. No sense messing about when I had a sigil card in my pocket that would crack the password in no time flat. I took the sigil card out and pressed it against the computer screen, watching the sigil glow as I said the incantation. Magically, the password entered itself on the screen and Phillips’ desktop soon popped up, the background of which was a photo of Phillips—what else?—posing within a red magic circle with a pentagram in the middle, dressed in black robes as he held up what looked like a human heart in both hands. Surrounding him were three naked women, all clutching at him like he was some dark messiah.
“Jesus,” I said with disgust. “You’re in it up to your fucking neck, Phillips, aren’t you?”
As I sat down in Phillips’ oversized but comfortable leather chair, the door knocked, and I asked who it was, using a tone that said I wasn’t happy about being disturbed.
“It’s Brian, sir,” Brian called. “I have your burger, sir.”
Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that. My stomach growled at the thought of food. “Well, bring it in then, Brian. I’m fucking starving here.”
The door opened, and Brian walked in with a brown paper bag and a large cup with a straw poking out the top. Slightly nervously, he brought the food and drink over and placed them on the desk. “Enjoy, sir.”
“Thanks, Brian,” I said, reaching for the bag to get my burger out. “And Brian?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Why you such a useless fag, Brian?”
Brian stared at me for a second, looking unsure of himself, before shouting, “Go fuck yourself, sir!”
I smiled. “Good man, Brian. You can drop the sir, though.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
“That’s more like it. Our relationship is on a more equal footing already. Doesn’t that feel better, Brian, putting me in my place like that?”
Brian smiled. “Yes, sir, it does.”
“All right then. Get the fuck out of my office now.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
“Don’t push it, Brian.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Don’t apologize either.”
“Right. Enjoy your burger, sir.”
After Brian left, I locked the door after him to guard against any unexpected intrusions. Then I started eating the burger—which tasted great—as I went through Phillips’ many files, accessing the Intimate Connections database first, shocked at how many users the site had. “Jesus. It’s like the whole country is into meaningless, casual sex now.”
With a quick search, it wasn’t hard to find Angela Smith’s name in the database, and once I found it, I was able to see all the other users she had been in contact with through the site. In her two years as a member, Angela Smith had spoken to dozens of users, but her conversation history said she had only met about ten of those, the last of whom was someone called Rick Marino. “There you are,” I said to the screen as I munched on my burger. “Now let’s bring up your details, as false as they probably are.”
Accessing Rick Marino’s profile, I saw he had only joined the site a few days ago. Angela Smith was the first person he had met. His date of birth showed he was twenty-eight years old, and his address was listed as being in Little Italy, if indeed that was his real address. As a demon, the incubus would’ve had to possess a human to exist in this world, just like every other demon had to. It was probable that Rick Marino was the person the incubus possessed, and the incubus had now taken on Marino’s personage. Looking at Marino’s profile picture, he was a handsome guy with dark hair and striking blue eyes, with a smile that could be described as sharkish, in that he looked like he wanted to eat you. Though that could’ve just been my imagination, given that I knew who Rick really was. Regardless, at least I now had a name and address for the incubus, and a face to go with the name as well. After printing out Marino’s profile, I folded up the paper and slipped it into my coat pocket.
“Now,” I said after sipping on my coke. “Let’s see what other secrets Phillips has on here.”
Most of the files on the computer were related to Phillips’ various businesses, containing facts and figures that held little interest unless you happened to be a forensic accountant, which I wasn’t. There was no question Phillips was as crooked as every other shark in the business world, but I wasn’t interested in getting the guy arrested for tax fraud or some other financial malpractice charge that his expensive lawyers would get overturned in an hour. No, I was looking for the juicer stuff I knew he had to have had on the computer somewhere.
After nearly an hour of sifting through files and folders, I didn’t find anything juicy that related to Phillips personally, but I came across information on a website run by Phillips that at first glance seemed to be one of his infamous monster porn sites, only this one appeared to be hosted on the Dark Web. The files I saw relating to the website—which was called Monster Voyeur—contained the handles and personal details of everyone who paid a monthly membership fee for entry onto the site, a fee that can only be described as extortionate. But then, what did I know? Clearly there were plenty of people out there willing to pay such high prices to get their kicks.
When I put in the Dark Web address for Monster Voyeur, I was asked for a username and password, which I picked at random from the list in Phillips’ admin database. Upon gaining entry to the site, I was confronted by a series of windows that appeared to link to various videos. Clicking a video entitled “Bloody Kisses” brought up another window containing first person video footage of someone stalking a young boy—a rent boy perhaps—in a back alley somewhere, the young boy unaware that he was even being stalked until the person wearing the camera ran at him so fast that the footage was just a blur until the boy’s terrified face came into view in extreme close-up. Then the boy screamed as he was attacked by the camera-wearer, and a series of sucking sounds could be heard. When the camera drew back a few moments later to show the boy, he was dead, his face deathly-white like all the blood had been drained from him.
“Jesus…” I said, realizing I had just watched a vampire stalk and kill their victim.
What the hell?
Closing the video, I checked out several other videos, all of which were first person views of supernaturals stalking and killing humans, sometimes even torturing them first. The torture videos had the most views, unsurprisingly, and contained scenes so sickening that I could barely even watch for longer than a few seconds.
Disgusted, I was about to close the website completely when I noticed a thumbnail for another video, the title of which drew my attention—”Demon Impregnator.” When I clicked on the video, I was shocked to see the face of Angela Smith on the screen as she sat in her apartment, smiling at the person wearing the hidden camera. It wasn’t hard to work out that the camera wearer was Rick Marino, though quite were the camera was hidden, I wasn’t sure, as it was like looking out of Marino’s eyes the way Angela Smith seemed to look right into the camera. I sat for ten minutes as I listened to the two of them talk, sounding just like two normal people who had met up for a casual date. Angela sounded shy, as I expected, and sweet as well, almost innocent. Marino sounded as suave
as I thought he would—he was an incubus after all—saying all the right things to make Angela laugh and put her at ease. Clicking forward on the video soon had me looking at Angela Smith’s flushed face as Marino looked down upon her while they had sex. The sex was almost gentle until after Marino came, at which point he slashed his long claws across Angela’s throat, throwing her back on the bed and standing back to watch as her blood jetted everywhere. When Angela was dead—which didn’t take long—Marino used his demonic powers to raise her up and suspend her above the bed. “Be a good mother to my spawn now, won’t you?” Marino said with a cold chuckle, just before the video ended.
“Fuck me,” I breathed, my heart beating like crazy because of what I’d just watched, and because I knew I had a killer story that was going to sink Martin Phillips and land him in jail where he belonged. All I had to do was download the files on to the thumb drive that I’d brought with me, and then give the files to Murtagh so he could do his thing and arrest Phillips. I could already picture the headline on the DC website: GeekMind Owner In Snuff Cam Shock! Something to that effect, anyway.
But as I was about to insert the thumb drive to download the files, the door to the office knocked suddenly, causing me to freeze as I stared at the door. A second later, a loud, familiar voice shouted from the other side, “Open this fucking door, asshole! Whoever you are, you’re fucking dead! You hear me? My security guys are gonna tear your fucking head off, and then I’m gonna shit down your fucking neck!”
“Fuck!” I hissed as I wondered what to do now, pissed that I wouldn’t be able to download the information from the computer. I hadn’t been expecting Phillips to show up. Damn it, I should’ve brought another sigil card, one that would allow me to escape from the office, like a spell to create a door for me to escape through.
Outside, I heard Brian’s voice as he said, “I’m sorry, sir. I really thought it was you. It was you.”
“How the fuck could it have been me when I’m standing right here, you stupid little fag?!”
