The Reaping Season
Posted: Wed Oct 13, 2021 4:37 am
Where Gallywix grew up, you'd hear about demons, and especially how demons weren't afraid of anything.
Pride Knights were big and boisterous and quite literally bursting with the passion and enthusiasm their leige-lord imparted them with. They were big on pomp, huge on circumstance, some pushed things so far as to display odd takes on honor or chivalry, and some did the same thing and instead ended up going native; melding in with the mortal plane's denizens and their sense of individualism - obviously something that had to have merit for armor-clad bruisers with swollen Egoes. They might be clumsy or slow or quick to anger in some cases, but you couldn't accuse them of fearing anything, ever.
Gluttony Wardens had no fear, as they only had hunger. They only had an insatiable appetite to nurse, and a bundle of attending urges to sate. What could be left to fear if you'd gorged yourself on friend and foe alike, if some centuries left you so blissfully full you left your watch to others and spent a few eternities basking in Sloth's siren-song? As for Sloth proper, there wasn't much of anything to fear if you avoided fear itself. The Prince of Sloth now graciously kept his demesne within the walls of a single suite in Hope's Greenvale Hotel, and there were weeks where if Eirean turned the lobby's music off and ensured elevators were locked in place, you could hear the humongous cat's snores from three floors down, and its faint chorus of attending wheezes and snorts. Belphegor only got up once an idea shot through his brain, and than half-ran and half-bounded the terminally diabetic anthro cat he inhabited to a surprisingly cordial tea-time to be enjoyed with Herbert Wormsworth, Prince of Pride, or occasionally with one of Shield's own. As ever, he was never entirely awake, and merely dialed his snores down to mere low, rumbling purrs. It was hard to imagine he could ever show fear, essentially being the only fully-conscious sleep-walker to ever walk the Earth. With his eyes pinched shut and his feline features suggesting a permanent smirk, fear didn't look like it could so much as be on the menu for him.
Volker, Benjamin Mathers - Prince of Wrath, knew fear well. He inflicted it on others, after all. By virtue of his Vice, he wasn't the type to be able to confine himself to Shield, Hope or New Dalarath's confines. He now walked a path similar to Jenkins', selling his soldiers and toolset for whomsoever had money to spare, and proper, justified Wrath to sacrifice. The gem having subsumed his right eye, it felt as though the former incubus' every single thought was underscored by a low, glacial current of churning rage, one well kept in check by the body's experience as a mercenary. Where his predecessor had delighted in spreading Wrath, the new Prince saw it as a necessary evil - strictly business.
Abuse of his moral code, however, and you'd find he had wrath of his own. The last would-be Columbian drug lord to hire him for a hit on a double agent's family had been found days after their contract had been signed, in a state that had prevented Bogotà's press from releasing pictures. This Wrath didn't know fear like you'd think.
As for Envy? Envy hadn't crossed over officially, and former thralls feared aplenty: they feared losing what little they believed to own, feared being duped on the quality of what was theirs, and many still feared that most of everyone else was out to get them. Paranoia ran deep in Envy - but they could still budge. All it took was patience, time and tear-proof clothes.
The Lustful feared the meaninglessness of their own pursuits, safe in a few individual cases, but not what they pursued. Excite an incubus' burden of Lust with violence, and you could create a full-spectrum warrior who would stop at nothing to chase their own climax and release. They were flexible, though, and many were proving to be too empathetic, too strangely wise in their own way to take the same route as Volker. Gremory's only fear was that he'd eventually find the one soul he'd be unable to crack - the one, slightly harder chestnut than most.
The Damned all feared something, in their own way, but Gallywix was just a line supervisor for Capstone Industries' forging and manufacturing plant, further up eastward along Point Judith Road. He'd lived almost like a mortal for what had felt like forty-eight years but had actually been eight thousand years in mortal time, and had effectively left one suburban area for another. One of the many nondescript Damned to have followed after Belial, he looked a bit like Nickar if the stylist had suffered from male pattern baldness and suffered from the kind of rail-thin scrawniness that hid latent cholesterol problems. He'd stopped in Solita to knock back a few beers at an Italian bistro of which he'd forgotten the name. Something about a girl, someone who'd been important for some big-shot Italian author in the before-times - right, Portinari's. Spaded tail awkwardly swishing, he grunted and blinked to try and clear the fog of booze as he sat down at his old 1993 Honda Civic's wheel. Another shift, done. Sighing in release, Gally switched his radio on and immediately picked up on CCR's Are you Reeling in the Years piping on the radio, his crimson beak pinching as he whistled and tapped his steering wheel along the beat.
Night had fallen. A few blocks, a few streetlights, and he'd return to his rather unremarkable block, where he'd crash on his bed in his ordinary apartment. Sleep wasn't too far off, already, and the sort of elastic ease exhaustion and inebriation brought on together felt warm and comfortable along his arms and legs.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't last.
It took almost a full corner, but he soon took notice of something in the rear-view mirror: a knobby and aged hand, the skin looking rough even in the gloom, affixed to the butt of a Capstone Haxan .357 Revolver, which almost looked like a Smith & Wesson revolver - if revisited by someone in the Goth crowd. The muzzle was set against its neck, diffusing the illusory warmth he recognized from the weapon specs, having prevented him from immediately reacting to its contact against his skin. The muzzle's hole felt faintly uncomfortable, and he knew exactly why: the far back of the barrel had C&C-machined Enochian runes etched into the blued and blackened steel-Brimstone alloy.
"Drive," said a low voice, raspy and taut. "Don't look at me. Look back, and there won't be enough of you left to make the trip back Downstairs."
Wix stammered. "I-I'm just a line supervisor at Capstone; I'm a nobody! If it's money you want, I can-"
Something glowed green above his cheap rear seats, swaying around like the least-determined fireflies imaginable - or like glowing millipedes dancing in an endless figure-eight. The stranger's head was obfuscated by some sort of burlap sack, dark and coarse.
"Talk again, and I'll choke you out in an instant."
Something like rough hemp rope suddenly encircled his throat, making him rasp. The stranger knew what he was doing, leaving just enough of an opening for him to be able to handle slow, ponderous and wheezing breaths.
"We're going to Pier Eight, past Fullerton. You're going to drive us past the eighth stack of containers. Nod."
Gallywix did as instructed, his eyes wide with fear. "Understand that I've got tools with me that'll make your recovery or your return to Pandemonium impossible if you disobey me. Nod."
Another one, sweat now dropping out of his meagre crown of hair.
* * *
You lived in Hope as long as Angus had, you picked up a few things. On the bright side, you realized that being an aging, overweight and gay Airedale Terrier anthro from Glasgow who'd managed to be certified for the American police academy in time to graduate in his mid-thirties and retire at sixty-five wasn't anything special. You realized that most people on the force could still be wholly overpowered by supernatural evils. You also realized that the nature of the crimes involved made approaches like his a little non-standard, even according to Arcane Forensics specialists. Having retired, he wasn't brought in unless the assigned Lieutenant was well and truly stumped. For Harry Benson to be stumped, the case had to be unusual even by Fae standards.
There wasn't much left of the wage-slave Fiend, other than arms pinned to the sides of a container by stakes that glowed magnesium-white when the sun's rays hit them, and a blackened and singed spine that looked like a grotesque cat's tail. Vertical roadkill, in a sense. The air was a veritable cornucopia of conflicting vibes, from the stakes' almost tinnitus-inducing Celestial chime to the way the demon's ashes simply refused to cool, the arms constantly glowing red along their igneous-like cracks, for what had apparently been six hour straight. One of the dockhands had spotted the scene at their shift's early opening, around 6 AM. Now, two-thirds of the city and county's electroncs stores wouldn't get their kit until the scene was scrubbed. That could take days.
"Feeeck me, boyo; that's a barmy one, isn't it?" Angus McGroof rhetorically asked, one hand in his pants' pockets and the other clutching his coffee cup. His fur allowed him to delay the usual autumn wear, so his green Gingham blazer, black dress slacks, blue vest and yellow necktie still felt quite comfortable. Add his avoirdupoids to the mix, and you had enough for him to tolerate maybe adding a basic scarf to the mix in mid-November.
Harry Benson wasn't as lenient towards himself. He had the fur to maybe make the same choices as Angus, but being a Bugbear, prided himself on his appearance. His full suit and overcoat were on, a few rings pinching the furry nubs of his massive fingers and a tie clip that had cost a year's worth of wages securing the length of bespoke Italian silk that added a touch of red to his seasonal browns and greens. "Wouldn't have had Stinson wake you up this early if it wasn't.
- Didja call it in?" he asked. Benson nodded in the affirmative and grunted, on the tone some idiots could've mistaken as standing as the prelude for fists coming down or someone being tackled into the next State. "Percy's on leave, Lowell's on PTO so Andrea goes on some Check Out Your Alma Mater Years in Advance trip for school. Kid's smack-dab in the Get a Dang Job phase of late college extracurriculars. Postgrad track's always an option."
Angus' eyebrow twitched. "Brown, eh?
- Nah, local. Student quad in Renton. Kid joked about practically calling The Last Round the campus cafeteria. Brown's more for Classical Arts studies. Literature, comparative theory - that sorta stuff."
Angus sniffed. "What was your minor in, by the way?"
Harry glanced at the corpse, raised his eyes and sighed. "Psychology, the bugbear said," he quipped, "wondering where the fat dog who thinks he's Columbo wanted to go with this not-at-all-germane line of inquiry..."
The anthro rocked on the soles of his aged Oxfords. "And what's Doctor Harry got to say about this?"
The bugbear shook his head. "Don't know. Too many clashing scents, there's about six or seven moods to all this, judging by the pheromones I'm picking up. I'm thinking, uh, that our guy really wanted this guy dead. Like, so extinct, in demonic or angelic parlance. Gone from Creation."
Grunting, the dog bent down to one knee and used the tip of a ball-point pen to lift up a glowing shell casing. "Still red-hot," he said. "Mundane gunpowder cannae' sustain this sort of heat; same for casings. Smells like Brimstone, glowing spents that can't cool down...
- Opposing stress?" tried Harry. "Like one of the Celestials' old hand cannons we saw during the War? The first thing mortal engineers tried once peacetime was declared was try exactly that. The stress was so hard on the gun and bullet they fused together. Gunpowder charge still went off, ripping through the ballistics engineer's hand and nearly wedging the firing pin three inches into the testing chamber's wall."
The bugbear smirked, the gesture looking mean on his face. "Seeing as it's a piece of Celestial engineering, not even fricking d'Aubignier managed to pull it out, and it's been sending corrective vibes throughout the Institute ever since. Zero incidents reported. Engineer's hand pulled a Wolverine right on the spot."
A sniff was added by the former detective. "So there's more to it, then. A different combination, probably custom-made. Every bloody git in his twenties with a computer and a 3D printer can handle basic machining jobs, now. Purpose-built diamond-tipped bits are cheaper than ever thanks to the Squids, now."
Benson nodded and reviewed the victim's details. "No priors - one of Belial's basically-mundane demons, if that makes sense. No Title, no Name, no Court affiliation - zippo. Just a taxpayer with a lifespan measured in thousands of years.
- Doubt that matters," replied the dog.
Benson's ears swiveled upwards. "Could be a message. Competitor looking to muddy the waters for the hybrid-plane arms market. Belial's guns are fucking haywire, buy our kit instead. Make the shareholders freak out, jump ship."
McGroof scoffed. "Laddie, now - people don't jump ship on Belial. You remember the inauguration, eh? How his own feckin' shareholders looked at 'im? He's playin' on Smith's level, aye - and he won't take no for an answer. He's the promise Allocer tried to keep, what broke down once Lucifer showed him for a bloomin' softie. He's just better at it - he smiles more, for starters. Remarkably genuine - 'leasaways, in appearance."
Benson rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure. Capstone posts memes on Twitter, and now Belial shakes hands with John Oliver and Stephen Colbert..."
Angus nodded and grinned, the gesture a bit lopsided. "He's playing a longer game than the feckin' Goat could, for sure. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Industrialist Demon, aye..."
The bugbear looked away, wincing as the morning's rain began to come in. "Donut at Holden's? Can't do shit until Forensics are done.
- You're just gonna hand this over to 'em? Just like that, eh?" asked the dog, even as he began to waddle alongside the bugbear, somehow keeping with his long strides.
"I just need a second opinion," grunted Benson, and I don't need you inferring all over my morning coffee, sir. Don't know any better pacifier for a nosy old mutt than cheap carbs," he said, a bit of professional affection glinting in his dark eyes.
"What can I say," grunted the dog as he slipped in their shared car, "the more contented I am, the sharper I get. Rangers F.C. on the telly, coffee in my hand and a little something to give me favourite officer a bit more of a pillow to rest 'is head on, and there ain't a grisly murder that could bring me down."
Benson rolled his eyes. "Woo, towing the line for diabetes is great as long as I get cuddles! That's a stellar model to keep, D.T."
Angus seemed more amused than anything. "Eh; once you get my age, you'll realize havin' someone to come back home to is all that matters, Harry-lad. I didn't leave Scotland to feel guilty because I don't do this for the badge anymore. I take cases once in a while so I can pamper my fellow a bit without eating into the old pension, eh?"
Harry smirked again. "Coulda stopped at without eating him.
- Now, izzat a bugbear joke or a gay joke?" asked Angus, narrowing his eyes. Laughing, the Bigfoot tapped the steering wheel.
"Take your pick, old man!"
* * *
Chauncey was at Magnus Tower as per his usual teaching protocol, last summer's weirdness having landed him with the oddest teacher a Void Weaver could've ever had, for the White Speech: a human. Aidan was teaching him on the thought-forms needed to effectively Speak the way he, Marius or Nereus could, in the hopes of eventually defusing the weird mental short-circuit that had caused his nocturnal episodes. The former soldier had requested part of the library's main area for their use, as well as a projector and laptop. He wasn't half-bad, as far as his old curator's insight could tell him.
"...so phn'glui is an Evocative. It's, um, a little bit like half of a gerund in some constructs and half of an adverb. Put stress on the P, and you're referring to a physical status. The N refers to N-protein chains in some constructs. It's easy enough to remember, seeing as Nadesine doesn't feature as an amino acid anywhere else than in Squid-designed Animates. Guadenine, Adenine, Thiacin, Cytosine, Nadesine. My own DNA strand might start with GATCATTG, but my Lexicon's has an N thrown in there."
Chauncey tapped his fingers on the table. "There's this Evocation in the Hours of the Seventh Black Dawn that says that you'd basically get more if you recombined these acids individually, reached other compounds entirely.
- Ask your dad," replied Three with a shrug. "Carbon-based life has its limits, Chauncey. You could do more with Elder Protis or Helena Nasir, but unless you can find the one alien on Earth that uses silicon or crude iron to fashion molecules, you're stuck with what's on the menu in a human like me, or a Void Weaver like yourself."
Hearing this made the middle-aged, bookish and sometimes rather frumpy son of the Augur scowl like a disapppointed boy. "I could say whatever I wanted when I was sleep-talking," he noted. "Why can't I do it now? It doesn't seem fair!" Aidan sighed at that, and turned off his projector.
"Chauncey, that thing you called the Defiler of Stars between snores is your unconscious perception of Chambers, rooted in what he did to you back when you'd just been born. That wasn't you, it was Chambers on Crack co-opting the sleeping mind that had birthed him and wanting to use your own flesh as the world's biggest neutron bomb. I don't need to remind you that we're all made of energy, at the most basic level and that forces that tear atoms apart or make protons decay are incredibly dangerous. We can't defeat the Defiler traditionally, not when your own imagination makes him unkillable by default. Our only shot is to make sure the processes he tried to use become conscious enough in you - enough so that he can't pull this shit."
Drake let his folder fall to the table. "Plus, our boy needs sleep, doesn't he?"
Chauncey's more childlike side always seemed to like it when his friends, colleagues and teammates kept him close. He looked away bashfully, tried to look unaffected, but still turned pinkish on his cheek dimples. "I need my strength to show you what I can do - eventually.
- Correct. The only way we can guarantee that without a REM-Skip prescription is through practice. A healthy mind needs to dream, and we can't keep you on these pills forever. You need a sanctum, and you need to revisit the Darkhallow. You lived there for centuries, without ever thinking you had a body - you'll take to it like a fish to water."
Chauncey grimaced. "I miss looking like Friendly Ike. Now I'm, uh, basically Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor minus the brain and Sonic Screwdriver, with two hundred pounds added on top."
Three smiled encouragingly. "Take it from my sister - you make that body work a lot better than Nick Buck ever could."
Pride Knights were big and boisterous and quite literally bursting with the passion and enthusiasm their leige-lord imparted them with. They were big on pomp, huge on circumstance, some pushed things so far as to display odd takes on honor or chivalry, and some did the same thing and instead ended up going native; melding in with the mortal plane's denizens and their sense of individualism - obviously something that had to have merit for armor-clad bruisers with swollen Egoes. They might be clumsy or slow or quick to anger in some cases, but you couldn't accuse them of fearing anything, ever.
Gluttony Wardens had no fear, as they only had hunger. They only had an insatiable appetite to nurse, and a bundle of attending urges to sate. What could be left to fear if you'd gorged yourself on friend and foe alike, if some centuries left you so blissfully full you left your watch to others and spent a few eternities basking in Sloth's siren-song? As for Sloth proper, there wasn't much of anything to fear if you avoided fear itself. The Prince of Sloth now graciously kept his demesne within the walls of a single suite in Hope's Greenvale Hotel, and there were weeks where if Eirean turned the lobby's music off and ensured elevators were locked in place, you could hear the humongous cat's snores from three floors down, and its faint chorus of attending wheezes and snorts. Belphegor only got up once an idea shot through his brain, and than half-ran and half-bounded the terminally diabetic anthro cat he inhabited to a surprisingly cordial tea-time to be enjoyed with Herbert Wormsworth, Prince of Pride, or occasionally with one of Shield's own. As ever, he was never entirely awake, and merely dialed his snores down to mere low, rumbling purrs. It was hard to imagine he could ever show fear, essentially being the only fully-conscious sleep-walker to ever walk the Earth. With his eyes pinched shut and his feline features suggesting a permanent smirk, fear didn't look like it could so much as be on the menu for him.
Volker, Benjamin Mathers - Prince of Wrath, knew fear well. He inflicted it on others, after all. By virtue of his Vice, he wasn't the type to be able to confine himself to Shield, Hope or New Dalarath's confines. He now walked a path similar to Jenkins', selling his soldiers and toolset for whomsoever had money to spare, and proper, justified Wrath to sacrifice. The gem having subsumed his right eye, it felt as though the former incubus' every single thought was underscored by a low, glacial current of churning rage, one well kept in check by the body's experience as a mercenary. Where his predecessor had delighted in spreading Wrath, the new Prince saw it as a necessary evil - strictly business.
Abuse of his moral code, however, and you'd find he had wrath of his own. The last would-be Columbian drug lord to hire him for a hit on a double agent's family had been found days after their contract had been signed, in a state that had prevented Bogotà's press from releasing pictures. This Wrath didn't know fear like you'd think.
As for Envy? Envy hadn't crossed over officially, and former thralls feared aplenty: they feared losing what little they believed to own, feared being duped on the quality of what was theirs, and many still feared that most of everyone else was out to get them. Paranoia ran deep in Envy - but they could still budge. All it took was patience, time and tear-proof clothes.
The Lustful feared the meaninglessness of their own pursuits, safe in a few individual cases, but not what they pursued. Excite an incubus' burden of Lust with violence, and you could create a full-spectrum warrior who would stop at nothing to chase their own climax and release. They were flexible, though, and many were proving to be too empathetic, too strangely wise in their own way to take the same route as Volker. Gremory's only fear was that he'd eventually find the one soul he'd be unable to crack - the one, slightly harder chestnut than most.
The Damned all feared something, in their own way, but Gallywix was just a line supervisor for Capstone Industries' forging and manufacturing plant, further up eastward along Point Judith Road. He'd lived almost like a mortal for what had felt like forty-eight years but had actually been eight thousand years in mortal time, and had effectively left one suburban area for another. One of the many nondescript Damned to have followed after Belial, he looked a bit like Nickar if the stylist had suffered from male pattern baldness and suffered from the kind of rail-thin scrawniness that hid latent cholesterol problems. He'd stopped in Solita to knock back a few beers at an Italian bistro of which he'd forgotten the name. Something about a girl, someone who'd been important for some big-shot Italian author in the before-times - right, Portinari's. Spaded tail awkwardly swishing, he grunted and blinked to try and clear the fog of booze as he sat down at his old 1993 Honda Civic's wheel. Another shift, done. Sighing in release, Gally switched his radio on and immediately picked up on CCR's Are you Reeling in the Years piping on the radio, his crimson beak pinching as he whistled and tapped his steering wheel along the beat.
Night had fallen. A few blocks, a few streetlights, and he'd return to his rather unremarkable block, where he'd crash on his bed in his ordinary apartment. Sleep wasn't too far off, already, and the sort of elastic ease exhaustion and inebriation brought on together felt warm and comfortable along his arms and legs.
Unfortunately, it wouldn't last.
It took almost a full corner, but he soon took notice of something in the rear-view mirror: a knobby and aged hand, the skin looking rough even in the gloom, affixed to the butt of a Capstone Haxan .357 Revolver, which almost looked like a Smith & Wesson revolver - if revisited by someone in the Goth crowd. The muzzle was set against its neck, diffusing the illusory warmth he recognized from the weapon specs, having prevented him from immediately reacting to its contact against his skin. The muzzle's hole felt faintly uncomfortable, and he knew exactly why: the far back of the barrel had C&C-machined Enochian runes etched into the blued and blackened steel-Brimstone alloy.
"Drive," said a low voice, raspy and taut. "Don't look at me. Look back, and there won't be enough of you left to make the trip back Downstairs."
Wix stammered. "I-I'm just a line supervisor at Capstone; I'm a nobody! If it's money you want, I can-"
Something glowed green above his cheap rear seats, swaying around like the least-determined fireflies imaginable - or like glowing millipedes dancing in an endless figure-eight. The stranger's head was obfuscated by some sort of burlap sack, dark and coarse.
"Talk again, and I'll choke you out in an instant."
Something like rough hemp rope suddenly encircled his throat, making him rasp. The stranger knew what he was doing, leaving just enough of an opening for him to be able to handle slow, ponderous and wheezing breaths.
"We're going to Pier Eight, past Fullerton. You're going to drive us past the eighth stack of containers. Nod."
Gallywix did as instructed, his eyes wide with fear. "Understand that I've got tools with me that'll make your recovery or your return to Pandemonium impossible if you disobey me. Nod."
Another one, sweat now dropping out of his meagre crown of hair.
* * *
You lived in Hope as long as Angus had, you picked up a few things. On the bright side, you realized that being an aging, overweight and gay Airedale Terrier anthro from Glasgow who'd managed to be certified for the American police academy in time to graduate in his mid-thirties and retire at sixty-five wasn't anything special. You realized that most people on the force could still be wholly overpowered by supernatural evils. You also realized that the nature of the crimes involved made approaches like his a little non-standard, even according to Arcane Forensics specialists. Having retired, he wasn't brought in unless the assigned Lieutenant was well and truly stumped. For Harry Benson to be stumped, the case had to be unusual even by Fae standards.
There wasn't much left of the wage-slave Fiend, other than arms pinned to the sides of a container by stakes that glowed magnesium-white when the sun's rays hit them, and a blackened and singed spine that looked like a grotesque cat's tail. Vertical roadkill, in a sense. The air was a veritable cornucopia of conflicting vibes, from the stakes' almost tinnitus-inducing Celestial chime to the way the demon's ashes simply refused to cool, the arms constantly glowing red along their igneous-like cracks, for what had apparently been six hour straight. One of the dockhands had spotted the scene at their shift's early opening, around 6 AM. Now, two-thirds of the city and county's electroncs stores wouldn't get their kit until the scene was scrubbed. That could take days.
"Feeeck me, boyo; that's a barmy one, isn't it?" Angus McGroof rhetorically asked, one hand in his pants' pockets and the other clutching his coffee cup. His fur allowed him to delay the usual autumn wear, so his green Gingham blazer, black dress slacks, blue vest and yellow necktie still felt quite comfortable. Add his avoirdupoids to the mix, and you had enough for him to tolerate maybe adding a basic scarf to the mix in mid-November.
Harry Benson wasn't as lenient towards himself. He had the fur to maybe make the same choices as Angus, but being a Bugbear, prided himself on his appearance. His full suit and overcoat were on, a few rings pinching the furry nubs of his massive fingers and a tie clip that had cost a year's worth of wages securing the length of bespoke Italian silk that added a touch of red to his seasonal browns and greens. "Wouldn't have had Stinson wake you up this early if it wasn't.
- Didja call it in?" he asked. Benson nodded in the affirmative and grunted, on the tone some idiots could've mistaken as standing as the prelude for fists coming down or someone being tackled into the next State. "Percy's on leave, Lowell's on PTO so Andrea goes on some Check Out Your Alma Mater Years in Advance trip for school. Kid's smack-dab in the Get a Dang Job phase of late college extracurriculars. Postgrad track's always an option."
Angus' eyebrow twitched. "Brown, eh?
- Nah, local. Student quad in Renton. Kid joked about practically calling The Last Round the campus cafeteria. Brown's more for Classical Arts studies. Literature, comparative theory - that sorta stuff."
Angus sniffed. "What was your minor in, by the way?"
Harry glanced at the corpse, raised his eyes and sighed. "Psychology, the bugbear said," he quipped, "wondering where the fat dog who thinks he's Columbo wanted to go with this not-at-all-germane line of inquiry..."
The anthro rocked on the soles of his aged Oxfords. "And what's Doctor Harry got to say about this?"
The bugbear shook his head. "Don't know. Too many clashing scents, there's about six or seven moods to all this, judging by the pheromones I'm picking up. I'm thinking, uh, that our guy really wanted this guy dead. Like, so extinct, in demonic or angelic parlance. Gone from Creation."
Grunting, the dog bent down to one knee and used the tip of a ball-point pen to lift up a glowing shell casing. "Still red-hot," he said. "Mundane gunpowder cannae' sustain this sort of heat; same for casings. Smells like Brimstone, glowing spents that can't cool down...
- Opposing stress?" tried Harry. "Like one of the Celestials' old hand cannons we saw during the War? The first thing mortal engineers tried once peacetime was declared was try exactly that. The stress was so hard on the gun and bullet they fused together. Gunpowder charge still went off, ripping through the ballistics engineer's hand and nearly wedging the firing pin three inches into the testing chamber's wall."
The bugbear smirked, the gesture looking mean on his face. "Seeing as it's a piece of Celestial engineering, not even fricking d'Aubignier managed to pull it out, and it's been sending corrective vibes throughout the Institute ever since. Zero incidents reported. Engineer's hand pulled a Wolverine right on the spot."
A sniff was added by the former detective. "So there's more to it, then. A different combination, probably custom-made. Every bloody git in his twenties with a computer and a 3D printer can handle basic machining jobs, now. Purpose-built diamond-tipped bits are cheaper than ever thanks to the Squids, now."
Benson nodded and reviewed the victim's details. "No priors - one of Belial's basically-mundane demons, if that makes sense. No Title, no Name, no Court affiliation - zippo. Just a taxpayer with a lifespan measured in thousands of years.
- Doubt that matters," replied the dog.
Benson's ears swiveled upwards. "Could be a message. Competitor looking to muddy the waters for the hybrid-plane arms market. Belial's guns are fucking haywire, buy our kit instead. Make the shareholders freak out, jump ship."
McGroof scoffed. "Laddie, now - people don't jump ship on Belial. You remember the inauguration, eh? How his own feckin' shareholders looked at 'im? He's playin' on Smith's level, aye - and he won't take no for an answer. He's the promise Allocer tried to keep, what broke down once Lucifer showed him for a bloomin' softie. He's just better at it - he smiles more, for starters. Remarkably genuine - 'leasaways, in appearance."
Benson rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure. Capstone posts memes on Twitter, and now Belial shakes hands with John Oliver and Stephen Colbert..."
Angus nodded and grinned, the gesture a bit lopsided. "He's playing a longer game than the feckin' Goat could, for sure. Your Friendly Neighbourhood Industrialist Demon, aye..."
The bugbear looked away, wincing as the morning's rain began to come in. "Donut at Holden's? Can't do shit until Forensics are done.
- You're just gonna hand this over to 'em? Just like that, eh?" asked the dog, even as he began to waddle alongside the bugbear, somehow keeping with his long strides.
"I just need a second opinion," grunted Benson, and I don't need you inferring all over my morning coffee, sir. Don't know any better pacifier for a nosy old mutt than cheap carbs," he said, a bit of professional affection glinting in his dark eyes.
"What can I say," grunted the dog as he slipped in their shared car, "the more contented I am, the sharper I get. Rangers F.C. on the telly, coffee in my hand and a little something to give me favourite officer a bit more of a pillow to rest 'is head on, and there ain't a grisly murder that could bring me down."
Benson rolled his eyes. "Woo, towing the line for diabetes is great as long as I get cuddles! That's a stellar model to keep, D.T."
Angus seemed more amused than anything. "Eh; once you get my age, you'll realize havin' someone to come back home to is all that matters, Harry-lad. I didn't leave Scotland to feel guilty because I don't do this for the badge anymore. I take cases once in a while so I can pamper my fellow a bit without eating into the old pension, eh?"
Harry smirked again. "Coulda stopped at without eating him.
- Now, izzat a bugbear joke or a gay joke?" asked Angus, narrowing his eyes. Laughing, the Bigfoot tapped the steering wheel.
"Take your pick, old man!"
* * *
Chauncey was at Magnus Tower as per his usual teaching protocol, last summer's weirdness having landed him with the oddest teacher a Void Weaver could've ever had, for the White Speech: a human. Aidan was teaching him on the thought-forms needed to effectively Speak the way he, Marius or Nereus could, in the hopes of eventually defusing the weird mental short-circuit that had caused his nocturnal episodes. The former soldier had requested part of the library's main area for their use, as well as a projector and laptop. He wasn't half-bad, as far as his old curator's insight could tell him.
"...so phn'glui is an Evocative. It's, um, a little bit like half of a gerund in some constructs and half of an adverb. Put stress on the P, and you're referring to a physical status. The N refers to N-protein chains in some constructs. It's easy enough to remember, seeing as Nadesine doesn't feature as an amino acid anywhere else than in Squid-designed Animates. Guadenine, Adenine, Thiacin, Cytosine, Nadesine. My own DNA strand might start with GATCATTG, but my Lexicon's has an N thrown in there."
Chauncey tapped his fingers on the table. "There's this Evocation in the Hours of the Seventh Black Dawn that says that you'd basically get more if you recombined these acids individually, reached other compounds entirely.
- Ask your dad," replied Three with a shrug. "Carbon-based life has its limits, Chauncey. You could do more with Elder Protis or Helena Nasir, but unless you can find the one alien on Earth that uses silicon or crude iron to fashion molecules, you're stuck with what's on the menu in a human like me, or a Void Weaver like yourself."
Hearing this made the middle-aged, bookish and sometimes rather frumpy son of the Augur scowl like a disapppointed boy. "I could say whatever I wanted when I was sleep-talking," he noted. "Why can't I do it now? It doesn't seem fair!" Aidan sighed at that, and turned off his projector.
"Chauncey, that thing you called the Defiler of Stars between snores is your unconscious perception of Chambers, rooted in what he did to you back when you'd just been born. That wasn't you, it was Chambers on Crack co-opting the sleeping mind that had birthed him and wanting to use your own flesh as the world's biggest neutron bomb. I don't need to remind you that we're all made of energy, at the most basic level and that forces that tear atoms apart or make protons decay are incredibly dangerous. We can't defeat the Defiler traditionally, not when your own imagination makes him unkillable by default. Our only shot is to make sure the processes he tried to use become conscious enough in you - enough so that he can't pull this shit."
Drake let his folder fall to the table. "Plus, our boy needs sleep, doesn't he?"
Chauncey's more childlike side always seemed to like it when his friends, colleagues and teammates kept him close. He looked away bashfully, tried to look unaffected, but still turned pinkish on his cheek dimples. "I need my strength to show you what I can do - eventually.
- Correct. The only way we can guarantee that without a REM-Skip prescription is through practice. A healthy mind needs to dream, and we can't keep you on these pills forever. You need a sanctum, and you need to revisit the Darkhallow. You lived there for centuries, without ever thinking you had a body - you'll take to it like a fish to water."
Chauncey grimaced. "I miss looking like Friendly Ike. Now I'm, uh, basically Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor minus the brain and Sonic Screwdriver, with two hundred pounds added on top."
Three smiled encouragingly. "Take it from my sister - you make that body work a lot better than Nick Buck ever could."