by K X Douglas
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Later that day, Peter walked over to Eric and Lachlan’s dorm, stack of books in hand. Once he made sure that nobody was around, he formed a third arm with which to knock on the door before quickly retracting it back into his body.
Eric answered the door.
“Hey, man. These the books?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck, they look heavy. I see you’ve already bookmarked the relevant parts.”
Peter walked inside and set the books on the coffee table.
“Yeah, you just need to go to the parts that I’ve marked and read through those. Better for your mind that way.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, if a human were to read through too much of any of these books, they would go quite mad. You need to remember that these books are incredibly dangerous; you should treat them like loaded guns, or better yet armed bombs.”
“So keep them hidden during parties and on inspection days. Got it.”
“Especially during parties. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if someone were to read from one of these books while they were drunk.”
“What kind of stuff can these spells do, anyways?
“A lot of them can summon various aliens and bind them to your will. Others can contact the Old Ones themselves or call them to the caster; you want to avoid those at all costs, because it is impossible to control such beings. There are many spells in there which are well-suited to killing people. I’m partial to the one that lights things on fire.”
“Got it. Looks like Lachlan and I have our work cut out for us.”
I really should have told Heidi and the others the truth by now. That way I could have them help with all this.
***
Several days later, Peter checked his inbox again and saw that he had an update from Brooke.
Okay, I think it’s time to start making preparations. I’ll have to get everyone I know involved in this if I want to succeed…I’ll even risk bringing Tadhg along if I can swing it.
He grabbed his phone and sent a text message to Silas.
Peter forwarded the email to the address in the text message.
***
Peter looked across the table at everyone. He had gathered Eric, Lachlan, Heidi, Victoria, Serena, Isabelle, and Silas in a room on the second floor of the college library. The door to the room was closed, but it was still possible to see inside through the window.
On the table was a map of the hotel where The Laughing Union was planning to meet.
“Hold on, you went to the shooting range to practice?!” Isabelle asked. “You’re completely serious about this?”
“Why am I not surprised that my brother is involved in this?” Serena asked.
“Serena, we can talk about that later,” Silas said. “There’s a lot that I still need to tell you about Dad. Anyways, we ran into this…creature…at the museum downtown. It told us that it had travelled through time to warn humanity of an upcoming disaster that would be completely irreversible. Peter seemed to trust the damn thing, but I’m still not entirely sure.”
“Yes, I trust it,” Peter said. “The information it gave us lines up with the dream I had. On the next full moon, on Halloween night, a man by the name of Kevin Wilkinson will initiate a ritual to summon one of the Old Ones. The Old Ones are beings akin to gods, who regard us as we might regard an ant or a flea. Just as we might crush ants underfoot without sparing a thought, so would one of them crush humanity itself without even realizing it.”
“No pressure, though,” Serena said. “No pressure at all.”
“So what’s the plan, dude?” Lachlan asked.
“First, we stake out this hotel over the next couple of days. Map out all the entrances, find out where their conference rooms are, et cetera. We’ll rent a couple of rooms if we have to, just to avoid suspicion. We’ll have to know the layout of the place as well as we would our own homes, so that we can prevent Kevin from escaping once we crash his little meeting.”
“And then?” Eric asked.
“The most important thing is to find out if anyone there is going to be armed,” Peter said. “There won’t be anyone openly carrying firearms there, so we have to assume the worst; assume every single person there has a concealed handgun that they could pull out at any moment. Unfortunately we can’t really get a hold of body armour, so we’ll have to rely on some protective magic that I’ve managed to find in one of Tadhg’s books.”
“Have you tested this spell out yet?” Eric asked. “Like, do you know how to cast it?”
“No, but we can test it on me if you want before we do this. I trust in magic enough that I’m willing to let you shoot me while the spell is active, because I know that the bullet won’t actually hit me.”
Everyone suddenly looked profoundly uncomfortable, with the exception of Peter and Silas.
“Okay, so since there are eight of us, we’ll have to book four rooms,” Peter said. “I’ll get on that right away, but we have to decide who’s going to stay with whom. As much as I’d like to get one of the fancy suites so that we’d have a secure place to plan all this, those’re simply out of our collective budget.”
“We’re obviously sharing a room, babe,” Heidi said. “Victoria, who are you going to bunk with?”
“How about Isabelle and I stay together, and Serena and Silas stay together?” Victoria said. “That leaves Lachlan and Eric; since they’re already roommates, there shouldn’t be any problem.”
“Okay, that sounds alright,” Peter said. “Any objections?”
Nobody said anything.
“Sounds good,” he continued. “I’ll start with the preparations.”
***
The day before the meeting, Peter booked a series of rooms at the hotel for everyone for the weekend. He sent an email to everyone telling them to meet in the lobby after class on Friday. He packed his things in the duffel bag that Silas had given him; he didn’t need to bring much for only a couple of days, plus campus was only a five minute drive away.
When they arrived, he checked in for everyone and obtained the room keys. Peter had booked rooms on the second floor, so that they could reach the conference room on the main floor quickly if anything unexpected happened.
I’m so glad that they don’t have any metal detectors or security guards here. Makes it easy to move around and scope the place out.
Once he was in his room, Peter tossed his duffel bag on one of the beds.
“You know, I wish we could do this in literally any other circumstance,” Heidi said.
Peter chuckled.
“I know,” he said. “This would be pretty romantic if we weren’t doing this so that I could kill someone.”
“It’s still pretty surreal to hear all this, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a lot.” He embraced Heidi and kissed her on the lips. “By the way, I brought condoms.”
“You naughty son of a bitch!”
They broke apart.
“But we can’t do anything now,” he said. “We have work to do.”
“Right.”
Everyone met in the hallway and descended the stairs to the first floor. They explored it thoroughly, taking note of all the entrances and exits.
“So how did you find all of this out again?” Serena asked.
“I hired a private investigator to follow Kevin. She showed me where he lives, and told me all about this meeting that we’re about to crash.”
“They’re just meeting in that conference room?” she asked.
“Supposedly,” Peter replied. “I think they’re trying to appear as innocent and above board as possible.”
“Makes sense,” Isabelle said. “So, do you have a plan, or are we just going to go in, guns blazing?”
“I’m going to go in guns blazing. The rest of you can keep watch over the entrances in case he gets away from me.”
“Okay, and what do we do about the cops?” Victoria asked.
“I have a contingency plan in place for that, but if everything goes well we won’t have to worry about the cops.”
As they made their way back to the stairwell, Peter’s phone began to vibrate. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that he had a text message from Eric.
He typed a reply before anyone thought to ask about the message.
Once they were in the hallway on the second floor and they saw that nobody else was there, Heidi led Peter by the hand back to their room. Once they were inside, she brushed the duffel bag off of the bed and onto the floor.
“Shit, be careful with that!” Peter whispered. “There’s a loaded gun in there!”
“Oops,” she said sheepishly.
Peter reached into his pant pocket, pulled out a condom, and set it on the nightstand. He removed his clothing as fast as possible. Once his hoodie was pulled over his face, he saw that Heidi was doing the same.
They both climbed onto the bed, and Peter started kissing Heidi; he started at her lips, then gradually moved down her neck.
I wonder what everyone else is doing right now. I hope nobody hears us.
He began to slow down before sinking his teeth into the side of her neck; not deep enough to draw blood, but enough to leave a mark. She arced her back and let out a moan.
“Keep doing that,” she whispered.
Peter continued kissing and biting her neck as their hands explored each other’s bodies. Suddenly, she grabbed his head and pushed it back slightly so that they could make eye contact.
“One thing I wanna ask before we continue,” she said.
“Yeah?” he whispered.
“This your first time?” she asked.
“Yeah. Yours?”
“Uh-huh.”
Heidi reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the condom.
***
Peter lay in bed next to Heidi. They didn’t bother getting under the covers; half of the bedding seemed to be only for decorative purposes and as such they had tossed it onto the floor.
“So, uh, what was the deal with that?” Heidi asked. “Are you sterile or something?”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “There’s not really anything in there.”
Heidi laughed quietly.
“All this fuss about condoms, and it turns out you’re sterile? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I thought you’d just think I just wanted an excuse to go bareback.”
“Fair point.”
Peter set the alarm on his phone to go off at seven in the morning. It didn’t take very long after that for Heidi to fall asleep, and Peter lay with her for most of the night. When morning came, the alarm woke her up and they showered together.
As they both got dressed, Peter saw that Heidi was shaking. He saw sweat trickle down her face. She looked at the guns in the duffel bag like they were the edge of a cliff.
He walked up to her and embraced her from behind.
“It’s going to be okay. I won’t let any of you die.”
“I know, Peter. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just don’t know if I have what it takes to kill someone.”
“Neither do I. But if he survives, and he completes that ritual, we’re all going to die…so I don’t have much of a choice.”
He broke off the embrace and took one of the guns out of the duffel bag. Holstering it in the front of his jeans, he made for the door.
“Are you ready, babe?” he asked.
Heidi took the other gun and holstered it.
“I think I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Peter sent a mass text to everyone; they had made sure to exchange phone numbers the previous day.
They left the hotel room. When the door closed behind them, Peter checked to make sure that it was locked. The two of them descended the stairs and sat at a couch in the lobby. Over the course of a half hour, the others joined them. Many of them were still wet from having showered, and the tension was palpable.
“Is everybody ready?” Peter asked.
Everyone nodded except Silas.
“Sec,” he said as he looked at his phone. “Dad’s on his way.”
“Wait, what?” Peter said. “Why is Tadhg coming here? He’s a wanted fugitive. We want to avoid the police, not lure them here!”
“Call it our insurance policy. In case Kevin does something drastic like, I dunno, summon a group of mi-go. Dealing with a single one would be simple enough since we have the numbers, but you said you saw a swarm of them in your dream, right? Or what if he summons a gnoph-kei?”
“Fine, you have a point,” Peter said.
Tadhg entered the lobby carrying a duffel bag that definitely wasn’t suspicious in the least. He waved at them as he walked over to where they were sitting. Serena immediately got up from her seat and embraced him.
“Hey, Dad,” Serena said.
“Hey, Serena, Silas,” Tadhg said as he returned the hug. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately, I-”
“It’s okay, Dad,” Serena said. “I understand.”
Tadhg didn’t say anything for a few seconds. He broke away from the hug and leaned against the couch.
“Silas explained everything to me. Are we ready?”
They all nodded.
***
People started to fill the conference room around noon. It was a large rectangular room with a podium on one end and rows upon rows of folding chairs facing towards it, with an aisle running down the centre. The majority of people inside were wearing casual clothes, so it was easy for Peter’s group sans Tadhg to blend in amongst them. Once he saw that everyone had found a seat, Peter left the room.
Leaning against the wall outside, he sent another mass text to the group, including Tadhg.
Peter then put his phone on silent before running back up to his hotel room and digging into the duffel bag that was sitting on his bed. He pulled out a different outfit; a button-down shirt, a pair of slacks and dress shoes. Once he changed clothes, he looked at himself in the mirror and transformed into a copy of Solomon Carter.
This should be convincing enough. It’s not like anyone’s going to take a really close look at me once they hear the gunshots.
He holstered his gun and returned to the first floor. When he walked back into the
conference room and took the seat that he had taken earlier, everyone that he knew started at him as if he had grown a second head.
Nobody said anything.
Kevin Wilkinson strode into the room and stood at the podium. The man looked much like he did in the selfie that Peter had looked at earlier; middle-aged, with thinning blond hair and a small goatee. He was wearing a shirt, tie, and slacks.
Peter paid zero attention to what the man was saying; instead, he looked around at everyone else in the room. Once he was sure nobody was watching him, he stood up from his seat and sprinted towards the podium. Everyone seemed to be taken by surprise; they could only watch, curious as to what was going on.
As soon as he thought he was close enough, Peter drew the gun and aimed it at Kevin. He pulled the trigger.
And missed.
Shit. Nine more shots.
Everyone in the room reeled from the sudden sound of gunfire. Some people ducked in their seats or dived onto the floor. Others ran.
Kevin, meanwhile, hid behind the podium.
Peter advanced steadily, trying to maintain his aim. It wasn’t long before he was close enough to aim around the podium.
However, several people tackled him to the ground at the same time. Hands pinned his limbs against the floor. Someone kicked the gun away from him.
I can’t afford to half-ass this. Not now.
Bending his limbs, he slithered out of their grip and sat up. Spinning his body around, he struck each person who had been holding him down with a closed fist. Each person was knocked back far enough that he could stand up.
Unfortunately, once he looked around the room, he realized that Kevin was nowhere to be seen.
Where the hell did he go? There’s only one entrance to this room. How did he get out so fast? I hope someone else went after him.
He looked over at the seats where his friends had been sitting and saw that they were empty. It wasn’t long before his face was being pressed into the floor, as people pinned him down again.
Finally, he gave up and transformed into his shoggoth form, slithering out of their grip and towards the gun. He consumed it, depositing it into his mass. Before making for the door, he slipped a tendril into the pocket of his slacks and pulled out his phone.
