by Allison Hurd
“Well, I mean I’m not seeking them out, obviously. Think I’m still working through the toxin a little.”
“And the toxin is lowering your inhibitions.” I ponder for a second. If you were literally a sex god, and you had seven attractive people who wanted to vie for your attention, where would you go?
“Actually, maybe yes, that could be helpful.”
I pull up a map of the area and take a screenshot so I can manipulate it. I put marks where all of our victims were last seen, consciously not adding a dot for Lia. When all the lines intersect, there is a small part of town that it centers over. This part of town, I see with a little extra searching, is known primarily for the empty houses it contains, and several strip joints.
“That looks promising,” Lia says. “But what will we need to do to get rid of it?”
“I’d imagine most of the usual stuff, with a few symbolic offerings to...either thank the gods for sex or to encourage less of it. That’s a toughie.”
“To the interwebs!”
If you know where to go, the internet can be a veritable encyclopedia of weird happenings and how to stop them. I imagine that people who know how to pirate high resolution premium cable shows without getting viruses sort of understand the hunt. I spend hours going through things. Lia eventually nods off, but I know this will be another all-nighter on my part.
To get rid of something nonhuman, all of the pantheons require a banishing ritual. There are summoning rituals, and binding ones as well, but those are almost exclusively the province of the baddies we stop, not ours—our moral code is mostly about keeping humanity away from the predations of mythical creatures. So much so, that Lia and I haven’t bothered with summonings or bindings at all. The banishing rituals are plenty for our purposes, and are actually a lovely thing to experience—well worth the price of admission, in my humble opinion. The ritual changes from region to region, and sometimes even by deity, if you need to appeal to a certain one. But it’s all the same sort of dance: find out who needs to save you, tell it you love it, give it some things, and it will come down like a righteous Bunny Foo Foo, scooping up its field mice, and bopping them on the head. It being exceedingly difficult to kill an immortal, most of us consider this “good enough for government work,” or in our case “good enough for charity work,” and have done with it. But even for this level of resolution, it can get pricey. For example, I know for a fact that we’ll require a goat for this particular ritual. I haven’t ever found a need for a certain type of goat, but a quick search tells me the closest local goat farm wants about a third of what we have in liquid capital right now for a single gentleman goat. Living in the lap of luxury has its perks, I tell ya.
I get as much done as I can before yesterday’s sleeplessness catches up to me and I conk out.
When I wake up, I call the farm, redialing until someone answers. They don’t sound too happy with me asking for a favor on their day of rest, but I get them to agree to let us come by for the goat. So, we load up the car, put down a couple layers of newspaper in the newly cleaned trunk, and drive a couple hours to pick up our new scapegoat.
“What was it you said you needed it today for?” the farmer asks suspiciously.
“School play.” I smile as winsomely as I can.
“A play, is it?”
“Yep. We thought we had a fake one we could roll out, but it turns out we don’t and we open in...gracious! Two hours. Don’t worry, he’ll be in good hands! Soon as this is over, one of the students has already agreed to take it home.”
The farmer looks like he wants to argue, but then changes his mind. I feel a little bit guilty telling the “it’s going to a farm” lie to an actual farmer, but unfortunately this is not a job for the squeamish. We did ask for the oldest, sickliest goat, so this is really a very noble way for it to go. I know, it doesn’t make it feel much better to me, either. But thinking about seven humans slowly wasting away in an abandoned house a couple towns over stiffens my resolve. Lia sits back with it, giving it wreaths of flowers and pets and the best hay the farmer would give us. We’ll make it as happy as possible.
I must have been watching the goat in my rearview mirror too long, because soon, on top of its weird alien eyes, I see flashing blue and red lights.
“Aaah, crap.” I mutter, pulling over. At least we’ve taken the large part of our arsenal out of our car to make room for the goat. For whatever reason, the careful presentation of a revolver in the car with a permit is not nearly as suspicious to most cops as a goat and a bronze blade. I hope we don’t have to talk about guns. I have in fact taken all of the knives out, and the goat is, as I’ve just demonstrated, fairly distracting.
Lia quickly buckles up in the center seat and I carefully go through all of the recommended protocols: I turn on the overhead light, put all of windows down in the car so he can see in as he walks up, and turn off the car. I don’t even reach for my registration or my real license until he comes up, preferring instead to keep my hands visible on the wheel. As my sister and I do carry, it’s especially important not to spook anyone.
“My registration is in the center console and my ID is in my purse,” I tell him when he asks.
“Okay, just take it easy.”
I leave one hand on the wheel while I fumble for the needed documents, and hand them over.
He turns to run them through the system in his squad car, and notices our companion.
“Is that a goat?”
“Why, yes it is, officer,” I say brightly, hands still firmly on the wheel.
“Mind tellin’ me why you’ve got livestock in a luxury sport utility vehicle?”
“Yes!” I say again, thinking fast. “He’s our new pet.”
“Come again?”
“He’s old and sick, and we heard they were gonna have to put him down, so we decided to take him home! We’re just bringing him from the farm now.”
“In a Lexus.”
“Only car we got. Is that...is that bad?”
He either doesn’t know how to respond or doesn’t deign to, but as hoped, the goat is an excellent decoy.
Within a few minutes, we’re let off with a stern warning, and a less stern wink. If you intend to go into this line of work, I recommend at least three driver’s licenses or official looking forms of identification. One should be legitimate with your real last name and address. It’s linked in the system to your official record, so guard this one carefully. Use it only when you know your fakes will get found out, and remember that your future is tied to the bumps in its road. The second one is sort of like the decoy real one. Use this for petty stuff and semi-official things, like job applications, if you think you can get away with it—obviously, not for government work. And the third one...that’s the dangerous one. You will probably need to replace it more than once. Use that identification when you know you’re gonna get caught for something big, because you will get caught, at least once. You can’t use highways, work jobs, thumb your nose at things that become crime scenes and walk away from every single one. If you’re careful, though, you can keep stringing the devil along, never sticking around long enough for them to collect your debts.
I guess that’s the real rule. If you want to survive, never answer the door when the past comes to collect.
CHAPTER 6
Back at the motel, we suit up. It’s actually not as expensive as you would think to get pretty decent armor. We are fond of Motocross gear. Meant to withstand full speed impacts between human bodies and gravel, most of it is fantastic at dampening shock, withstanding blunt trauma and even most forms of cutting. It’s not great against piercing cuts, and it’s a far cry from bulletproof, but we haven’t had to dodge too many bullets—that’s more of a human thing than a monster thing. There are many different varieties of Motocross gear which allows for a customizable ratio of protection, maneuverability, and ease of cleaning. Also, it looks badass.
Sub in some Gore-Tex boots because Motocross boots make you walk like an
astronaut, and plumbers’ gloves for the best combination of breathability and waterproofing, and you’re all set. You’ll also have the added bonuses of feeling like a futuristic tac officer, and a built in alibi. All you have to do is tell whomever is asking that you’re about to go off-roading, and most people will believe it. If you think it might not work where you are, you can instead say you’re in a Darth Vader or Storm Trooper costume, depending on which color scheme you go with. That usually works, too.
We pull up to the neighborhood we think may be ground zero for ‘cubus activity and it’s...well, it’s bigger than we hoped. Not something I say often, or an accusation I make lightly. Urban blight is no joke, and most cities have at least one neighborhood that never seemed to regain its footing. Well, we’ve found Roanoke’s ghost town.
“This will take forever,” Lia breathes, surveying the rows of dilapidated homes and seedy sex shops.
Our car is wonderful for many things. We bought it because it was spacious, fairly comfortable, and above all, easy to maintain. Aside from routine maintenance, this baby’s never gotten sick. It can carry up to three goats in a pinch, and enough ammo to frustrate ten pantheons at once. What it is not good at, though, is being inconspicuous. While perhaps not as out of place on this street as if we’d been driving a vintage model or something really expensive, a Lexus on an empty block tends to be memorable. I really hope we don’t have to break in door to door to find this dill-weed.
“How do we wanna do this?” my sister asks me.
“I guess we start knocking down doors. Mmph. I bet there are spiders in these buildings.”
“Is that really the most pressing concern you have right now?” She demands incredulously.
“Eight legs is the wrong number of legs. Give me your roaches, your silverfish, your huddled mices …”
“Yes. Actual monsters from beyond the mortal coil strolling the streets, but daddy longlegs are the real threats,” Ophelia drawls.
“Hey. I’m allowed one irrational fear. So are you. Pick wisely. Or unwisely, as the case may be.”
“I’ll think about it, after we deal with the actual problem we’re dealing with.”
“That’s all I can ask of you.”
She ponders the situation a moment, while I try not to ponder spiders. “If we’re close enough to it, we might be able to do a divination….”
“Might be worth it,” I allow. The street seems to be getting longer and longer the more I look at it.
“‘Kay, let me get the stuff.”
Clyde the goat bleats softly from the trunk.
“I think the silk thread is in the back seat pocket,” I offer as Ophelia roots around our various equipment boxes and bundles.
Divination is sort of like a paranormal portable metal detector. You attune it to the thing you’re hoping to find, bring it nearish to where you hope to find it, and see which way the wind blows.
I get out of the car when she’s assembled most of the components. We’ve got an oak stick, ramrod straight and highly polished from long use. In this instance oak is the wood of Zeus, protector and father of the pantheon. If you’re ever serious about finding a wayward babe, invoke the parent.
Next is the silken thread. Silk is sort of a universal object. Neutral in all things, it takes no sides, but is strong enough to withstand contact with the supreme. We attach this carefully in a clockwise knot to the end of the stick.
The third component is our ballast. We find a rock in one of the overgrown yards nearby. This will tell the spell that we’d very much like it if it would focus in the surrounding area, pretty please. And finally, we wrap it in the towel I’d used to create my monster-proof gauntlet. It’s touched the being we’re seeking—it’s sort of like giving a shirt to a bloodhound for the scent. We assemble the wacky fishing rod-looking apparatus and chant over it in ancient Greek. I’m not entirely sure what all of the words mean, but roughly translated, I think it’s something to the effect of “here, incubus, incubus!”
We then begin walking down the sidewalk, roll stepping so as to avoid unnecessarily shaking the divining rod, and wait for it to do something. It’s slow going, but faster than breaking into each house and searching every room and possible hidden chambers. I’m glad that no one seems to notice the two girls in Motocross gear following a bar towel on a stick down the road. One or the other we could probably bullshit our way through, but together, it paints an unlikely picture.
“It’s not here,” Lia mumbles in frustration after forty-five minutes of painstakingly slow progress around the neighborhood.
“Or we did the spell wrong,” I add. Her face clouds up.
“Wait!” I exclaim after another step. We stop, and I tuck my elbow into my hip so that I can hold the rod with perfect stillness. Once it stops rocking from the sudden movement, you can tell there’s a definite tilt in the string. A small one, but it’s there.
“Yes!” Ophelia cries out with enough animation for both of us. We walk in the direction it’s pulling, and I can feel the spell latch on. It’s got the scent of its quarry now. It leads to a house that’s surprisingly well kept for the area and is immediately adjacent to a strip club. Vinyl siding means there is no peeling paint. The small front stoop is covered by a roof that still sheds water, protecting the step below. The glass around the door is dirty, but intact. And the door is locked. Once we confirm that this is where the divining rod is indicating, I move the car closer and stow the rod back in its case for future uses.
“Let’s see if we can find another way in,” I confer with my sister after this is complete. “You go right, I’ll go left. Whistle if you find something.”
We split up. I shimmy through the tight alleyway, trying the windows on what was once the dining room, then the kitchen. The kitchen door is also locked, but fortunately it is comprised almost entirely of glass, and has seen more damage than the front door. We should be able to break in with very little actual breaking. I wait for Ophelia to make the round.
I wait much longer than it should take for her to get from one side of the house to the other. And yet, there’s no sign of my sister. I’m not hearing a whistle. I also don’t hear signs of struggle, or any voice at all on this eerily silent street. I strain to hear something, anything, but all I get is the wind in the late summer grasses. How did she manage to find trouble less than sixty feet away from me? This girl is quickly losing all of her autonomy privileges. Investing in manacles seems like a wiser decision by the day.
I move in a stealthy jog around to the side of the house where she must have disappeared. This is where Motocross armor is a little less compelling, though I suppose it is better than some of my options when it comes to noise. Around the side of the house, I curse to myself. There’s a basement door on this side, and it is open. I slow back down and inch closer, making no more noise than the grass in the wind.
“How d-did you find me?” I hear my sister ask in muffled tones.
“Friends with the staties,” comes a gruff reply in a voice that sounds...familiar….
“I-I-I-I c-c-can’t believe it,” she stutters and my heart skips a beat. Stammering is our code for each other that there’s a gun in play.
“Well, believe it. Now shut your yapper, start walking.”
Why do I know that voice? And what does it mean “friends with the staties?” Oh. Oh, no. That cop wasn’t random happenstance. Which means the dude with the gun knows we have a goat, and what that means. As he’s holding up my sister, I assume he’s opposed to us going forward with our plan to banish the incubus. He also knows our real last names, and where we’re from, because I was fool enough to use our real identification. He’s got my whole family by the short ones, and I’m stuck up here like an idiot. But why? Why would someone want the incubus to hang around?
Well, first things first. I wait until I hear a door open and the voices grow fainter. Then I jump in the overhead door myself, trying not to think about spiders. Though Ophelia didn’t seem to say anything that
would have warned me about the presence of traps, it’s possible that one of us missed something. I carefully work my way through, looking for sensors, monitors, trip wires and so on. It’s a lot slower going than the divining rod, and I curse every second it takes.
My caution pays off. There is a tripwire at the bottom of the stairs leading to the rest of the house. Following it back, it appears to be connected to a flash-bang grenade. Probably not enough to kill me from the stairs, but I certainly wouldn’t have been a happy camper after. Well, now it belongs to me, sucker. It’s pretty nice—I’ve never had one before. I hear they’re hard to come by. I carefully disengage it and carry it in front of me, pin ready to go.
At the top of the stairs, I stop again to listen. I don’t hear anything, so I slowly open the door, sending a small plea out to whatever interested deity may be nearest that Lia is safe. Once I’m on the main floor, I bring out my semi-automatic in my free hand. I still hope not to use it. There are now eight humans I anticipate helping walk out of this house today, and I have no idea where they are. Therefore, I can’t get too trigger happy, as much as I’d like to empty a clip in the bastard who has my sister.
The first floor is clear, and that unnerves me. I take a deep, calming breath and approach the stairs leading up. Finally, I hear what sounds like Lia’s voice, muffled to incoherence, and the deep rumble of the man who’s got a gun to her. Thank God—she’s alive, at least.
These stairs seem to be un-booby trapped but it still takes time to slowly test my weight on each step. By the time I get to the top my legs are burning from the permanent crouch I’ve held. I knew I should have worked out more.
“S-s-o w-what n-now, then?” I hear Lia asking. “M’I g-gonna be a s-s-s-sacrifice?”
“Quit stammering for Pete’s sake, girlie. In fact I think I said you should stop talkin’ all together.” I hear a click that could be either a handcuff or a gun being cocked. So, definitely still a gun involved, then. And now that it’s not whispering, I know the voice, too. This is gonna get ugly.
