As I helped to gather the wounded men from outside I was amazed at how many of these men I recognized from my time in the Necro Labs. Many of these guys were just glorified lab assistants, while others were clearly hired muscle of some sort. All of them were wearing the dark suits and accoutrements that were normally the reserve of actual agents, so this was quite the attempt to present the image of being an FBI task force of some sort.
Each of the captives were stripped of weapons, wallets, cell phones, PDA’s and fake credentials. The credentials I threw into a pile to be destroyed, while the weapons were unloaded and stacked up for Herne’s growing collection of confiscated firearms. (Although Moira claimed anything and everything with a sharp point, she had nearly a dozen blades of various sizes.) The cell phones and PDA’s were piled up next to one of the many desktop computers in the room to be reviewed and data-mined by Jim once he had the time.
The wallets were stripped of cash, credit and debit cards, state issued identifications and driver licenses and tossed into a bag that would be sent forward with the wounded.
Dr. Geek was now sitting cuffed to one of the chairs and trying his best not to look Cerrydwen in the face as she questioned him closely on a number of issues. His shattered nose had been patched up the best that we were able to do so, while his two front teeth had been bagged and put in his pocket for future use if the dentist in his soon to be new location could restore them. Jim had Dr. Geek’s laptop computer and PDA booted up on the desk nearby and was busy prompting Cerrydwen with the right questions to make sure he got all of Dr. Geek’s passwords, PIN numbers and encryption codes to his various accounts and programs. Of particular interest were his e-mail accounts and the various Necro Lab files he had stored on the computer. It was a veritable treasure trove of information on Drake’s organization and its members, associates and secret allies. He was clearly trying to resist giving up this valuable information, but he was no match for the Will the Cerrydwen applied to him whenever he lied or tried to refuse to answer. She constantly moderated her voice between calm admonishment to motherly approval and back to stern disappointment as needed to elicit the answers she demanded. I almost felt sorry for his ass, especially since the more she questioned him, even I began to feel like a disobedient child who had deeply disappointed his beloved mother...shit, I don’t know if even Drake could have matched her Will for Will.
John Red Bear, the Frau and John’s two students were busy tending to the various broken limbs and bones among the poor bastards who had been trapped in the building with me, and were doing their best to alleviate the suffering of the wounded. John had found the small case of syringes that one of the lab geeks had used to subdue Ravyn and was using the 8 or 9 remaining needles to put those in the worst shape to sleep. After he injected each one, he carefully tagged them by sticking the needle through some visible article of clothing and bending the needle in such a way as to form a harmless hook. This served the humanitarian purpose of alerting whichever medical personnel who next treated them as to what was used to put them out.
The Frau didn’t seem to need any medical equipment, as she moved among the bleeding, and often unconscious men, she would touch many of them, mumble a few phrases and immediately ease their discomfort. The poor soul who had tried to face down Moira and was cut up pretty badly also benefitted from her ministrations, with most of his wounds closing up without obvious bandages at her touch. The wounds seemed to scab over surprisingly fast when she touched them. Her matronly manner and soothing words calmed the fears of the still conscious.
Ravyn spent her time examining the control panel for the Transit Room. She appeared to have an affiinity for the gems that were placed near each set of symbols. Every few minutes she called out the location of another one of the symbols, excited perhaps by puzzling out the answers, but maybe also because of the surging energies that seemed to flow in and around the panel. She was still upset at me, so I didn’t bug her, leaving her to the new toy she had found.
After twnety minutes or so, there was a few moments of excitement as a surge of power lit up the control panel and then dissipated after a muted flash lit up the sealed Transit Room.
There was a lot of pounding on the door and some muted voices heard screaming profanities, but they obviously couldn’t get through the locked portal.
Ravyn called out shortly after they arrived and disturbed our work, “It looks like whoever they are, they came from Atlanta!”
Jim broke off his work with Cerrydwen and Dr. Geek and came over to the control panel. “Let’s send them somewhere else. Don’t want to make it too easy on them.”
I joined them at the panel and asked, “Which symbol is Atlanta?”
Whehn Ravyn pointed it out, I quickly smashed the crystal that connected to that symbol, extinguishing the mild glow that persisted after their arrival. “That should keep anyoner else from coming from there, now let’s send them packing.”
Ravyn pointed out another symbol and said, “That should be New York. Hope they dressed warm!” With that she placed her hands on that symbol, energy seemed to flow from her hands into the symbol for New York and then up into the crystal that was connected to it. There was a throb of power and a flash of light from behind the shield covering the window into the room, and then silence. “They should be gone.”
I unlatched the window shielding and raised it up, observed that the room was indeed empty, then dropped the shield back down into place. Then I reached down and destroyed the crystal for New York. “There, they won’t be coming back this way from there either.”
Jim looked at Ravyn, “Which of these is the most remote location here?”
Ravyn studied the panel. “Well, this is Chicago, this one is Washington DC, let’s see...ooh here is Vancouver!”
“OK,” I said, “Who’s up for a scouting trip to Vancouver?”
“We’ll go,” said Herne, with Moira nodding excitedly. “But I’ll want to see how that thing works so we can get back easily enough.”
John piped up, “Shane here will go as well.”
With that, we unlocked the door quickly, Herne, Moira, Shane and myself piled into the Transit Room and closed the door behind us. We only had to wait for moment before a spinning sensation caused our vision to go dark, a sudden jerk and we were standing in another room just like the one we left, but with a slight variation on the painting scheme.
The door out was unlocked, in what must have been standard operating procedure when the places were idle, and the control room beyond was dark. A quick bit of exploring revealed this place to be remarkably similar in outlay to the place in Vegas, with computers, security cameras and desks lining the walls of the control room.
While the others checked out the outide perimeter, I went to the control panel and destroyed the crystals linking this place to Miami, Atlanta and New York, just to keep the chances of a nasty surprise reduced. I was careful to leave the Vegas symbol of a pair of dice alone.
The others returned shortly to report that the place did seem to be pretty remote. They confirmed that there were no vehicles in the parking lot.
“OK, let’s get back and report this to be a good place to send our captives. But first let me eliminate the possibility that anyone else will use the roundabout way of getting here.”
I then smashed all of the crystals in the control panel except the Vegas symbol, and then stepped back to let Herne set the panel for transport. He did so quickly as the rest of us got back into the room. He joined us moments later, shutting the door just in the nick of time to join us in our dizzying return trip.
Upon our return, I smashed all of the crystals in our own panel, except the one connected to the Bear symbol that represented Vancouver.
We then began the tedious task of loading 5 or 6 of the wounded at a time into the room and transporting them to Vancouver. I went on each trip, since the vertigo had less of an impact on me, and I could easily move event he largest of the wounded men. I quickly got the hang of activating the device and jumping back into the room just in time to make the return trip.
By the time Dr. Geek was the last of the wounded captives remaining, he looked thoroughly drained and beaten. Cerrydwen put her arm around his shoulder, consoling him as she escorted him away from the grinning Jim, who was in his glory with all of the data he had mined from the beaten scientist.
I went over and slapped the bastard on his back, “Gee Doc, aren’t you glad you didn’t get a chance to load me up with all those weapons you had planned? I don’t think you would have survived the results of that.”
He looked at me blankly, I’m not sure he even recognized me at that moment. I escorted him into the Transit Room and shut the door behind him.
Ravyn sent him to join his men. “There,” she said as she did so, “let him figure out what to do in a foreign country with no ID’s no money, and no way to get out quickly!”
I smashed the last link between this Transit Point and the rest of their network when I crushed the crystal connected to Vancouver’s symbol. “Now what?” I asked, looking at my friends, who all looked visibly relieved to be done with the prisoners.
Monday, April 18, 2005
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Seizing the Initiative...Part 2
In the end, it was a damn good thing that the captors weren’t actually law enforcement officers. No matter how much Dr. Geek’s Lab Rats would like to think that they too have what it takes to be agents, they showed on that night that they lacked the skills, training, and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances that all good law enforcement officers possess.
My trap wasn’t particularly well laid or executed, since it was pretty much a spur of the moment decision, but it certainly worked well enough to handle this collection of knuckleheads relatively easily.
When the door openned into a darkened room with broken glass on the floor and chairs pushed around randomly, there was some cursing and grumbling mixed with the questions thrown back towards Dr. Geek about whether to proceed or not. After about thirty seconds of debate, one scared looking man was sent in to find a working light switch.
I remained behind the now open door, waiting motionless in the total darkness, knowing that he wouldn’t find anything very easily in this darkness.
Before long, several others were sent in to stumble around in the dark to try and help their comrade. One guy can perilously close to me, but something seemed to guide him off to the side and away from my little patch of shadow.
Dr. Geek stepped into the doorway called out to the men inside, “Never mind about the lights, someone look to see if the Transit Room is still functional.”
That was my cue. I slammed the door shut with a strength that surprised even me, the satisfying thud and groan before it slammed completely shut told me that Dr. Geek was still in the doorway when I acted. The sudden cutting of even the dim ambient light from outside left the 7 or 8 victims inside stunned. Their moment of stunned silence quickly turned into a mini-inferno of pained screams, bone crushing thuds of my batons on legs, shoulders and arms, and the sobs of the still conscious wounded. The poor bastards never had a chance. This part of the battle was over in less than a minute.
As quick as all that was however, I was worried about my friends outside, so I didn’t take any additional time to make sure that no one was in jeopardy of dying, there was no time for niceties. I yanked open the door, bloody baton in hand, ready to leap into the fray outside as well, only to see that my companions were handling things rather well on their own.
Jim had one scrawny fake agent in a wrestling move over his head and was just in the motion of bringing the poor bastard down into another couple who were fumbling around trying to draw weapons that they were obviously not very proficient with.
Herne was busy pummeling a larger goon into senselessness with his bare fists while his wife, Moira, had somehow come up with a very wicked, very sharp knife that she was using with great skill to back down another goon. That poor soul was bleeding from several small cuts on his face and was busy holding his bleeding limp right hand with his still functional left.
John Red Bear was standing over a couple of fallen men, his bruised and bloody knuckles the only evidence of what was used to subdue them. He was now working on taking the hand cuffs and bags off the heads of his two students.
Cerrydwen was standing calmly among three other fake agents, their weapons dropped down at their feet as two of them were sobbing uncontrollably in the face of her dark glare, while the third just stood there with a slack look on his face that I had seen once before, back in Chicago, when she had subdued that bounty hunter.
The Frau was sitting on top of Dr. Geeks chest, his hands pinned at his side, his face a bloody mess from a clearly shattered nose and maybe now missing some teeth from the impact of the door on his face.
The only person of our group who I didn’t immediately see was Ravyn, I was just about to ask about her though when a concentrated bolt of flame erupted from behind one of the SUV’s and knocked me off of my feet and back into the control room. My one baton went spinning back into the room as well, falling with a clang near one of the downed Lab Rats. Luckily the bolt had been more solid energy than actual flame, so the only damage done was to my pride, but then I guess that was pretty well deserved at this point.
I sat up to see her standing in the doorway, an enormous image of the Fierce Phoenix filling the rest of the doorway behind her. Her fiery red glare held me silent as I sat up, brushed at my chest to make sure everything was still there. I could see the remains of the hand cuffs dripping off her arms in little molten drops, but remarkably, the rest of her clothing was untouched.
“I hope you REALLY enjoyed that look back in Chicago, because that’s the LAST such look you’re getting! Now you better fess up as to what the hell is going on around here or we’re gonna find out just how bad Zombie flesh smells when its fried!”
I raised my hands in a defenseive gesture, but dropped them down immediately when she raised her right hand, flame dancing from her fingers excitedly. “It’s going to take a few minutes to explain. I fell into a trap that Drake laid, and the only way I could see out of it, to protect you and the others was to play along with things until I could find a way to turn things back around.”
Her glare, and her flames, were still fierce and angry. “So when was this trap sprung on you, and why didn’t you tell anyone so that we could face this challenge together?”
“When I realized that the man you knew of as Agron was one of Drake’s agents, I didn’t know excactly who I could trust, so I went looking for him before he could try to alert Drake to everything that we were doing. But look, I wasn’t thinking straight, I was scared for you guys, I was scared for myself, I didn’t know what was going on.”
By now Ravyn had stepped into the room, allowing Jim and Cerrydwen to follow. Jim loomed in the doorway, blocking out the light from beyond with his bulk. “So you just let me lay there asleep, leaving a damn note? Do you know the danger you put us into?”
“Yeah, I found out afterwards. Look, Papa Locks has found a way to animate another officer who was killed after I was. I had helped to release his Spirit, so I was pretty surprised when I saw the face of my friend being used by that host of dark spirits that Papa Locks has animated that body with. He used that monster to kill everyone in the suite, making it look like I had done it. He disappeared right after I showed up. When the police came, I didn’t think it was too wise to resist. But even they had been coopted by Drake and his men. I was hoping that they just wanted me, and that you guys would be left alone if I cooperated.”
Herne came through the doorway, followed by Moira and John. “Fat chance of that, man,” said Herne. “I don’t think this Drake fellow is going to let us get away with the damage we’ve done to his network. It’s a war now and he isn’t going to stop until we are gone, or he is.”
“Yeah, I get that now. And I had already made the decision to try and get you guys out of whatever mess was being made, which is why I broke my deal and refused to leave here when they tried to transport me back to Florida.”
“So that’s why they were bringing us here,” said Cerrydwen. “I remember one of them referring to this place as a Transit Point and how they were going to send us somewhere far away, but I was puzzled when they didn’t take us to the airport.”
“I don’t know exactly how it works, but I can show you what I saw the guy do when he used it, although I am afraid I disabled the link to Florida. Can I get up now?” I asked looking at Ravyn.
The fire in her eyes and on her hands seemed to dim just a little during the course of our conversation. “I suppose, but I am watching you buster. There had better be no more nasty surprises out of you, or I’ll toast your circuits pretty damn quick!”
Cerrydwen put her hand on Ravyn’s shoulder, “It’s OK sis, I can see the truth in his words. I knew he wasn’t involved in the killings of the suite, just like I told you before. You know me, I don’t trust easily.”
Ravyn looked over her shoulder at Cerrydwen, “Yeah, that’s true. You don’t normally vouch for anyone. All right.”
John spoke up now, “We need to gather up all of these prisoners and bring them inside. We can interrogate them and find out how to use this device of theirs to send them somewhere far away were they can get medical attention, but can’t get us into trouble. Then we can discuss with more information what we need to do next.”
With those wise words, everyone pitched in, bringing in the wounded from outside, and the one man I had killed while I was in a hurry inside. I was saddened by his death, but resolved to continue the struggle against Drake and his minions.
My trap wasn’t particularly well laid or executed, since it was pretty much a spur of the moment decision, but it certainly worked well enough to handle this collection of knuckleheads relatively easily.
When the door openned into a darkened room with broken glass on the floor and chairs pushed around randomly, there was some cursing and grumbling mixed with the questions thrown back towards Dr. Geek about whether to proceed or not. After about thirty seconds of debate, one scared looking man was sent in to find a working light switch.
I remained behind the now open door, waiting motionless in the total darkness, knowing that he wouldn’t find anything very easily in this darkness.
Before long, several others were sent in to stumble around in the dark to try and help their comrade. One guy can perilously close to me, but something seemed to guide him off to the side and away from my little patch of shadow.
Dr. Geek stepped into the doorway called out to the men inside, “Never mind about the lights, someone look to see if the Transit Room is still functional.”
That was my cue. I slammed the door shut with a strength that surprised even me, the satisfying thud and groan before it slammed completely shut told me that Dr. Geek was still in the doorway when I acted. The sudden cutting of even the dim ambient light from outside left the 7 or 8 victims inside stunned. Their moment of stunned silence quickly turned into a mini-inferno of pained screams, bone crushing thuds of my batons on legs, shoulders and arms, and the sobs of the still conscious wounded. The poor bastards never had a chance. This part of the battle was over in less than a minute.
As quick as all that was however, I was worried about my friends outside, so I didn’t take any additional time to make sure that no one was in jeopardy of dying, there was no time for niceties. I yanked open the door, bloody baton in hand, ready to leap into the fray outside as well, only to see that my companions were handling things rather well on their own.
Jim had one scrawny fake agent in a wrestling move over his head and was just in the motion of bringing the poor bastard down into another couple who were fumbling around trying to draw weapons that they were obviously not very proficient with.
Herne was busy pummeling a larger goon into senselessness with his bare fists while his wife, Moira, had somehow come up with a very wicked, very sharp knife that she was using with great skill to back down another goon. That poor soul was bleeding from several small cuts on his face and was busy holding his bleeding limp right hand with his still functional left.
John Red Bear was standing over a couple of fallen men, his bruised and bloody knuckles the only evidence of what was used to subdue them. He was now working on taking the hand cuffs and bags off the heads of his two students.
Cerrydwen was standing calmly among three other fake agents, their weapons dropped down at their feet as two of them were sobbing uncontrollably in the face of her dark glare, while the third just stood there with a slack look on his face that I had seen once before, back in Chicago, when she had subdued that bounty hunter.
The Frau was sitting on top of Dr. Geeks chest, his hands pinned at his side, his face a bloody mess from a clearly shattered nose and maybe now missing some teeth from the impact of the door on his face.
The only person of our group who I didn’t immediately see was Ravyn, I was just about to ask about her though when a concentrated bolt of flame erupted from behind one of the SUV’s and knocked me off of my feet and back into the control room. My one baton went spinning back into the room as well, falling with a clang near one of the downed Lab Rats. Luckily the bolt had been more solid energy than actual flame, so the only damage done was to my pride, but then I guess that was pretty well deserved at this point.
I sat up to see her standing in the doorway, an enormous image of the Fierce Phoenix filling the rest of the doorway behind her. Her fiery red glare held me silent as I sat up, brushed at my chest to make sure everything was still there. I could see the remains of the hand cuffs dripping off her arms in little molten drops, but remarkably, the rest of her clothing was untouched.
“I hope you REALLY enjoyed that look back in Chicago, because that’s the LAST such look you’re getting! Now you better fess up as to what the hell is going on around here or we’re gonna find out just how bad Zombie flesh smells when its fried!”
I raised my hands in a defenseive gesture, but dropped them down immediately when she raised her right hand, flame dancing from her fingers excitedly. “It’s going to take a few minutes to explain. I fell into a trap that Drake laid, and the only way I could see out of it, to protect you and the others was to play along with things until I could find a way to turn things back around.”
Her glare, and her flames, were still fierce and angry. “So when was this trap sprung on you, and why didn’t you tell anyone so that we could face this challenge together?”
“When I realized that the man you knew of as Agron was one of Drake’s agents, I didn’t know excactly who I could trust, so I went looking for him before he could try to alert Drake to everything that we were doing. But look, I wasn’t thinking straight, I was scared for you guys, I was scared for myself, I didn’t know what was going on.”
By now Ravyn had stepped into the room, allowing Jim and Cerrydwen to follow. Jim loomed in the doorway, blocking out the light from beyond with his bulk. “So you just let me lay there asleep, leaving a damn note? Do you know the danger you put us into?”
“Yeah, I found out afterwards. Look, Papa Locks has found a way to animate another officer who was killed after I was. I had helped to release his Spirit, so I was pretty surprised when I saw the face of my friend being used by that host of dark spirits that Papa Locks has animated that body with. He used that monster to kill everyone in the suite, making it look like I had done it. He disappeared right after I showed up. When the police came, I didn’t think it was too wise to resist. But even they had been coopted by Drake and his men. I was hoping that they just wanted me, and that you guys would be left alone if I cooperated.”
Herne came through the doorway, followed by Moira and John. “Fat chance of that, man,” said Herne. “I don’t think this Drake fellow is going to let us get away with the damage we’ve done to his network. It’s a war now and he isn’t going to stop until we are gone, or he is.”
“Yeah, I get that now. And I had already made the decision to try and get you guys out of whatever mess was being made, which is why I broke my deal and refused to leave here when they tried to transport me back to Florida.”
“So that’s why they were bringing us here,” said Cerrydwen. “I remember one of them referring to this place as a Transit Point and how they were going to send us somewhere far away, but I was puzzled when they didn’t take us to the airport.”
“I don’t know exactly how it works, but I can show you what I saw the guy do when he used it, although I am afraid I disabled the link to Florida. Can I get up now?” I asked looking at Ravyn.
The fire in her eyes and on her hands seemed to dim just a little during the course of our conversation. “I suppose, but I am watching you buster. There had better be no more nasty surprises out of you, or I’ll toast your circuits pretty damn quick!”
Cerrydwen put her hand on Ravyn’s shoulder, “It’s OK sis, I can see the truth in his words. I knew he wasn’t involved in the killings of the suite, just like I told you before. You know me, I don’t trust easily.”
Ravyn looked over her shoulder at Cerrydwen, “Yeah, that’s true. You don’t normally vouch for anyone. All right.”
John spoke up now, “We need to gather up all of these prisoners and bring them inside. We can interrogate them and find out how to use this device of theirs to send them somewhere far away were they can get medical attention, but can’t get us into trouble. Then we can discuss with more information what we need to do next.”
With those wise words, everyone pitched in, bringing in the wounded from outside, and the one man I had killed while I was in a hurry inside. I was saddened by his death, but resolved to continue the struggle against Drake and his minions.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Seizing the Initiative...Part 1
After verifying that Dumbass was indeed gone, I took some time to examine the control panel for this ‘Transit Point’. It was a web of arcane symbols inlaid in a black panel. The palm tree symbol seemed to have a bit of an afterglow to it, perhaps residue from the trip that he just took. Just above each of the inlaid symbols, there were small colored crystals that were connected to the symbols by a small inlaid line of silvery metal. The green crystal above the palm trees was still pulsing slightly. I reached over to that crystal and placed my thumb on it, applied gradually increasing pressure until I could heard the crystal crack under the pressure. I pushed down sharply at that sound and was very satisfied when the crystal shattered and all residual glowing disappeared immediately.
I didn’t think it was going to take long for them to figure out that I didn’t cooperate in quite the way they were expecting me to.
I left the other crystals eight crystals in place and looked over to the door separating the transit room from the control room where I was standing. There were some very sturdy locks on this side of the door, probably to prevent unexpected or unwanted visitors from using the facility. Well that worked both damn ways now, didn’t it? I went over to the door and slid the large metal locking bolts into place.
Above the window between the control room and the transit room, there was a metal shield that appeared to be able to be brought down and locked as well. I reached up, moved the bolts holding it in the open position and dropped the thick metal shield down into place, effectively cutting off all visual contact between the transit room and the control room. I slid the thick metal bolts into place that locked the shield down into this closed position.
Given the size and strength of that door and the bulletproof glass and now the metal shield, I doubted anyone showing up in that room was going to be able to get out unless they had some explosives, which would pretty much doom themselves as well. I didn’t think I would even be strong enough to get through either the door or the window without some serious tools and a lot of time. That should keep the recipients of my surprise delivery from sending any surprises back my way, for now anyway.
As I was looking around at the various computers and monitors in the room, I could see one security monitor that appeared to be monitoring the gate in the fence at the driveway. I could see the headlights of several vehicles approaching the gate. Interesting. This was getting to be a busy place.
It would take several minutes for them to get to the parking area, so I went to my bag, pulled out the two batons, and decided to start taking out the lights.
I used the batons to knock out each of the long fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling overhead, a shower of sparks and broken glass followed each blow, the room growing darker with each bulb destroyed.
A second security monitor next to the first showed the parking area, so I had plenty of warning as the first of five SUV’s pulled up next to the one that brought me in. I poked out the first screen of the first one, reducing even more the light available in the room as I watched several men in dark suits get out of the first vehicle, with a groggy looking, hand cuffed Jim being dragged out of the back seat. The men were struggling with his strength and bulk, Jim wasn’t looking too pleased, as he seemed to be cussing out the men holding him.
Several of the men wore windbreakers with the letters “Federal Agent” emblazoned on the front and the back in big yellow letters, the kinds of jackets that are often worn on high-profile raids by federal agencies. Of course, even with the shitty security camera in place, I recognized a couple of the goons as some of Dr. Geek’s Lab Rats, not agents at all if my memory served.
The second vehicle pulled up and more men in jackets piled out, this time I could recognize Cerrydwen’s leather jacket, although there was a sack or something like that thrown over her head, and of ocurse her hands were cuffed behind her. She stood calmly and without apparent resistance as another man struggled with a second captive from that vehicle. Ravyn’s slim form was dragged out. She squirmed and kicked, lashing out at her captors, even though her head was covered. One of the men holding her legs doubled over as she kicked him in the gonads, but another man stepped in quickly and seemed to inject her with something, somthing that caused her to go limp almost immediately.
A third vehicle pulled up, as the men from the first two were just getting organized. I didn’ take any more time to watch though, I had some rescuing to do. I smashed the last monitor, which extinguished the last flickering light in the room. I waited for a second to get my bearing in the total darkness and for my nightvision to kick in.
Once I adjusted, I was in motion. I started pushing chairs out into random points in the middle of the room, they would hopefully become useful distractions when the shit hit the fan. Realizing that my time was very limited, I moved into position behind where the door would open into the room. I wanted to give as little warning as possible to these assholes.
So, El Diablito had lied right to my face, big fucking surprse there, eh? Well, now what little niggling conscience I had for breaking my part of the agreement was gone, they were obviously going after my friends as well anyway, using the guise of still being federal agents. I figured my friends hadn’t resisted much when a platoon of what appeared to be federal agents swarmed the casino and used the local police and casino security folks as dupes to help round up the ORCs who had helped me out.
As I stood there waiting for the coming fight, I took a quick second to slip out of my body and walk in Spirit Form through the wall and out into the night. I was taking a bit of a chance, since I didn’t know if there were any Casters among the fake feds, but it would make my surprise even more effective if Cerrydwen and some of the others could be aware of things ahead of time.
The last of the vehicles was still pulling up when I got out there, a total of about 20 of the fake agents were milling about, lining up the prisoners along the outside wall of the building. Ravyn’s unconscious form was the closest to the door. I lucked out, as the goons all appeared either too busy with the prisoners to notice me, or were not sensitive enough to do so. Of course Papa Locks and his pet weren’t there, as it would be hard to pass either of them off as an agent, and El Diablito was likely in Florida cursing at my own little surprise.
Jim, Cerrydwen, the Frau, John Red Bear and two of his young students, Herne and his wife were all being lined up, facing the wall, behind Ravyn’s limp form. I moved up riight next Cerrydwen’s right ear and whispered, “It’s Rusty, I am inside and will be attacking once they get inside. Be ready.”
Her covered head bobbed just once, almost imperceptibly.
I looked down at her cuffed hands and concentrated on something that John Red Bear had once told me I should be able to do in Spirit Form, if I practiced, and felt the locking mechanism of the hand cuffs. At least this was something I had practiced countless times in real life, with all of the practice I had as a local cop, using hand cuffs. I concetrated on forming a semi-solid key out of the energy that I saw swirling everywhere. Once it was lined up properly, I exerted my will on it, and succeeded in turning the lock on the right cuff.
Cerrydwen’s head bobbed one more time, obviously she had felt the trick work.
As the last load of men were getting out of the last vehicle, I could see Dr. Bernstein getting out, appearing to take command of the men.
Hurriedly, I moved over to John Red Bear and Herne in succession, doing for them what I had done for Cerrydwen, unlocking the right cuff of each of them. Both could feel my presence and understood what was going on, even though they each had covered heads. Not knowing if Moira, Herne’s wife was a caster or not, I approached her the same, and found that she was indeed very sensitive. Her head cocked as I gave her the same message as the others and unlocked her right cuff as well.
The group of fake agents was finally done milling about and appeared to be getting ready to move when Dr. Bernstein reached for his cellphone. Worried about my surpise being messed up, I swooped over to the phone and pushed my Spirit Hand through his hand and into the phone itself as he pulled it up to his ear. Using all of the rage I had built up to this point I focused on funnelling that energy into the phone itself.
Dr. Geek gave a very satisfying yelp and dropped the suddenly very hot and sparking phone from his ear onto the ground. The gadget broke into several rather useless pieces.
The men gathered around him looked almost as shaken as he did, I heard him blurt out dismissively, “That was probably the Director telling us to hurry the hell up. Damn phones, I’ll be getting a better model for the next one. All right men, let’s get this show rolling, we’ve got lots to do tonight.”
That was my signal to swoop back through the wall, but on my way I made sure to apply my newfound skill on Jim’s right cuff as well. I couldn’t warn him like the others, but at least he would be able to see what was going on and would have a chance to react with free hands. We’d need his strength.
My final Spirit Walking act before I slipped back into my body was to lean through the wall and touch my head to Ravyn’s unconscious head. I could feel the fierce Phoenix looking back at me with angry, glowing eyes, almost like it blamed me for the mess her mistress was in. I whispered into Ravyn’s subconscious, “You better wake up darling or you’re gonna miss all the fun.”
I could feel just the tiniest bit of stirring deep inside, so as a last straw, I went for the big guns. “You know, you have a very nice tushie. Can’t wait to see you naked again!”
I felt a roaring flare of very conscious indignation in response to this. If she was half as strong as I suspected, whatever they had injected her with would be burned out of her system very soon. I slipped back through the wall and jolted into place just as one of the goons raised his own proximity card to the locking pad next to the door. The small clicking sound I heard signalled that the mechanism worked as designed, and the door openned easily to the dark room where I was now waiting and ready to pounce.
I didn’t think it was going to take long for them to figure out that I didn’t cooperate in quite the way they were expecting me to.
I left the other crystals eight crystals in place and looked over to the door separating the transit room from the control room where I was standing. There were some very sturdy locks on this side of the door, probably to prevent unexpected or unwanted visitors from using the facility. Well that worked both damn ways now, didn’t it? I went over to the door and slid the large metal locking bolts into place.
Above the window between the control room and the transit room, there was a metal shield that appeared to be able to be brought down and locked as well. I reached up, moved the bolts holding it in the open position and dropped the thick metal shield down into place, effectively cutting off all visual contact between the transit room and the control room. I slid the thick metal bolts into place that locked the shield down into this closed position.
Given the size and strength of that door and the bulletproof glass and now the metal shield, I doubted anyone showing up in that room was going to be able to get out unless they had some explosives, which would pretty much doom themselves as well. I didn’t think I would even be strong enough to get through either the door or the window without some serious tools and a lot of time. That should keep the recipients of my surprise delivery from sending any surprises back my way, for now anyway.
As I was looking around at the various computers and monitors in the room, I could see one security monitor that appeared to be monitoring the gate in the fence at the driveway. I could see the headlights of several vehicles approaching the gate. Interesting. This was getting to be a busy place.
It would take several minutes for them to get to the parking area, so I went to my bag, pulled out the two batons, and decided to start taking out the lights.
I used the batons to knock out each of the long fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling overhead, a shower of sparks and broken glass followed each blow, the room growing darker with each bulb destroyed.
A second security monitor next to the first showed the parking area, so I had plenty of warning as the first of five SUV’s pulled up next to the one that brought me in. I poked out the first screen of the first one, reducing even more the light available in the room as I watched several men in dark suits get out of the first vehicle, with a groggy looking, hand cuffed Jim being dragged out of the back seat. The men were struggling with his strength and bulk, Jim wasn’t looking too pleased, as he seemed to be cussing out the men holding him.
Several of the men wore windbreakers with the letters “Federal Agent” emblazoned on the front and the back in big yellow letters, the kinds of jackets that are often worn on high-profile raids by federal agencies. Of course, even with the shitty security camera in place, I recognized a couple of the goons as some of Dr. Geek’s Lab Rats, not agents at all if my memory served.
The second vehicle pulled up and more men in jackets piled out, this time I could recognize Cerrydwen’s leather jacket, although there was a sack or something like that thrown over her head, and of ocurse her hands were cuffed behind her. She stood calmly and without apparent resistance as another man struggled with a second captive from that vehicle. Ravyn’s slim form was dragged out. She squirmed and kicked, lashing out at her captors, even though her head was covered. One of the men holding her legs doubled over as she kicked him in the gonads, but another man stepped in quickly and seemed to inject her with something, somthing that caused her to go limp almost immediately.
A third vehicle pulled up, as the men from the first two were just getting organized. I didn’ take any more time to watch though, I had some rescuing to do. I smashed the last monitor, which extinguished the last flickering light in the room. I waited for a second to get my bearing in the total darkness and for my nightvision to kick in.
Once I adjusted, I was in motion. I started pushing chairs out into random points in the middle of the room, they would hopefully become useful distractions when the shit hit the fan. Realizing that my time was very limited, I moved into position behind where the door would open into the room. I wanted to give as little warning as possible to these assholes.
So, El Diablito had lied right to my face, big fucking surprse there, eh? Well, now what little niggling conscience I had for breaking my part of the agreement was gone, they were obviously going after my friends as well anyway, using the guise of still being federal agents. I figured my friends hadn’t resisted much when a platoon of what appeared to be federal agents swarmed the casino and used the local police and casino security folks as dupes to help round up the ORCs who had helped me out.
As I stood there waiting for the coming fight, I took a quick second to slip out of my body and walk in Spirit Form through the wall and out into the night. I was taking a bit of a chance, since I didn’t know if there were any Casters among the fake feds, but it would make my surprise even more effective if Cerrydwen and some of the others could be aware of things ahead of time.
The last of the vehicles was still pulling up when I got out there, a total of about 20 of the fake agents were milling about, lining up the prisoners along the outside wall of the building. Ravyn’s unconscious form was the closest to the door. I lucked out, as the goons all appeared either too busy with the prisoners to notice me, or were not sensitive enough to do so. Of course Papa Locks and his pet weren’t there, as it would be hard to pass either of them off as an agent, and El Diablito was likely in Florida cursing at my own little surprise.
Jim, Cerrydwen, the Frau, John Red Bear and two of his young students, Herne and his wife were all being lined up, facing the wall, behind Ravyn’s limp form. I moved up riight next Cerrydwen’s right ear and whispered, “It’s Rusty, I am inside and will be attacking once they get inside. Be ready.”
Her covered head bobbed just once, almost imperceptibly.
I looked down at her cuffed hands and concentrated on something that John Red Bear had once told me I should be able to do in Spirit Form, if I practiced, and felt the locking mechanism of the hand cuffs. At least this was something I had practiced countless times in real life, with all of the practice I had as a local cop, using hand cuffs. I concetrated on forming a semi-solid key out of the energy that I saw swirling everywhere. Once it was lined up properly, I exerted my will on it, and succeeded in turning the lock on the right cuff.
Cerrydwen’s head bobbed one more time, obviously she had felt the trick work.
As the last load of men were getting out of the last vehicle, I could see Dr. Bernstein getting out, appearing to take command of the men.
Hurriedly, I moved over to John Red Bear and Herne in succession, doing for them what I had done for Cerrydwen, unlocking the right cuff of each of them. Both could feel my presence and understood what was going on, even though they each had covered heads. Not knowing if Moira, Herne’s wife was a caster or not, I approached her the same, and found that she was indeed very sensitive. Her head cocked as I gave her the same message as the others and unlocked her right cuff as well.
The group of fake agents was finally done milling about and appeared to be getting ready to move when Dr. Bernstein reached for his cellphone. Worried about my surpise being messed up, I swooped over to the phone and pushed my Spirit Hand through his hand and into the phone itself as he pulled it up to his ear. Using all of the rage I had built up to this point I focused on funnelling that energy into the phone itself.
Dr. Geek gave a very satisfying yelp and dropped the suddenly very hot and sparking phone from his ear onto the ground. The gadget broke into several rather useless pieces.
The men gathered around him looked almost as shaken as he did, I heard him blurt out dismissively, “That was probably the Director telling us to hurry the hell up. Damn phones, I’ll be getting a better model for the next one. All right men, let’s get this show rolling, we’ve got lots to do tonight.”
That was my signal to swoop back through the wall, but on my way I made sure to apply my newfound skill on Jim’s right cuff as well. I couldn’t warn him like the others, but at least he would be able to see what was going on and would have a chance to react with free hands. We’d need his strength.
My final Spirit Walking act before I slipped back into my body was to lean through the wall and touch my head to Ravyn’s unconscious head. I could feel the fierce Phoenix looking back at me with angry, glowing eyes, almost like it blamed me for the mess her mistress was in. I whispered into Ravyn’s subconscious, “You better wake up darling or you’re gonna miss all the fun.”
I could feel just the tiniest bit of stirring deep inside, so as a last straw, I went for the big guns. “You know, you have a very nice tushie. Can’t wait to see you naked again!”
I felt a roaring flare of very conscious indignation in response to this. If she was half as strong as I suspected, whatever they had injected her with would be burned out of her system very soon. I slipped back through the wall and jolted into place just as one of the goons raised his own proximity card to the locking pad next to the door. The small clicking sound I heard signalled that the mechanism worked as designed, and the door openned easily to the dark room where I was now waiting and ready to pounce.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
"Angry Rusty"
I followed the Suit out of the interrogation room and into the brightly lit hallways of the Las Vegas City Police Headquarters. He carried himself like an FBI Agent, arrogant and disdainful for the poor lesser mortals who could only qualify for mere ‘local’ law enforcement. He had the schtick down perfectly as he led the way past the Duty Desk and the overworked Sergeant answering two phones, working on several files simultaneously, and watching the rogues gallery of goons shackled to the steel and plastic chairs in what passed for a lobby.
I could feel the dozen sets of eyes following us as we left, half from the aforementioned goons, half from the various officers moving about the room. The Suit flashed his leatherbound credentials at the Sergeant and made a dismissive head nod in my direction indicating that I was going with him and that no questions were going to be asked, or answered for that matter.
The only cracks in this seeming armor of FBI-ness came as soon as we walked into the cool night air and towards the large parking lot where he had apparently parked. His shoulders seemed to droop just a bit, his swaggering walk seemed to soften. He still didn’t look back at me as we walked, he was moving quickly, obviously anxious to make it to his vehicle. I could make out the smallest hint of nervous sweat beading up around the stiff white collar of his shirt...something was not quite right. I knew the temperature was not higher than 60 degrees out here, but he seemed to be sweating now.
Looking around, I could see that the City didn’t bother to put HQ on the ever-so-famous Strip, land prices must be too high for such a non-revenue producing eneterprise. We seemed to be well away from all of the famous landmark casinos, and closer to the seedier part of town of strip clubs, small rent-by-the-week motels, and liquor stores on every corner. Close to where the others had rented a room, as part of that contingency plan we had set up only the day before.
The Suit was leading me to very un-FBI like vehicle, an upscale dark blue or black, but foreign made, SUV. Not the sort of vehicle that the Bureau leases for its agents. As he approached the vehicle, he used the remote control to unlock it, and indicated for me to get into the back seat, saying only, “You’ll find some equipment that you’ll want in the backseat there, as well as a supply of special ‘juice’ that Dr. Bernstein says’ll give you a nice boost of power.”
I looked at him before moving towards the rear door. “You’re not an agent, are you?”
He grinned, looking more weasily than anything else, “No. Please, I’ve got better things to do with my time, and my talents, than to play cops and robbers.”
“I don’t recognize you from my time in the Labs, how do you know Dr. Bernstein?”
He seemed to clam up, perhaps feeling that I was fishing just a little too much, “That’s none of your business Bones. I need to get your ass to the transport point and get back to my other tasks. Get in the car.”
I could see he was trying to bring back that hard veneer he had worn in front of the cops. But I could see it for the facade that it was now. He was nervous about something. I got in the truck and saw that there was indeed a bag of equipment to do a ‘flush and gush’ as well as a couple of unmarked bottles of a purplish liquid and a pair of my collapsible batons, cocky fucking bastards.
“So where you taking me to?” I asked as I moved the bag over and settled in right in the middle of the back seat. “I take it you are not driving me to see Drake?”
He got into the driver’s seat and shifted his rear view mirror so he could use that to keep an eye on me. He sneered at me, “Look, we’re just heading to a research facility on the edge of town that the Organization owns. There’s a Transit Point there that will send you to Florida.”
“Transit Point, what the hell is that?” I asked with more than a little curiosity.
He laughed. “You’re pretty fucking dumb aren’t you? Transit Points are like permanent portals that can take you long distances away, sort of like that shit they do on Star Trek man, except you don’t need a Scotty to operate them.”
“So how do they work? How do you know where it takes you?”
He started the car, put it into gear and backed out of the parking spot. We were soon on the major road heading west out of town. He took a little time before he replied. “There’s probably a reason why they haven’t told you about this shit. Let’s just say that it’s pretty damn complicated magick to make one of these things, but it’s pretty easy to operate one if you’ve been keyed to use it.”
I picked up one of the batons laying loose in the bag, making sure he saw me fondling it in the mirror. “You seem pretty damn comfident that I’m not going to hurt you, or try to escape, how come?”
His eyes grew wide, he stammered a just a little. “I-I-I’ve been told you are willing to come back now. Besides, it’s not like you can really escape. If you hurt me and escape again, they’ll just track you down with the...oh, well, you know you are pretty damn easy to find.”
Something clicked in my memory with his stuttering and the way he tried to avoid saying how exactly I could be tracked so easily...
“Th-th-this ch-ch-chip at the b-b-b-base of his sk-sk-skull will be our way of tra-tracking him.” That was the voice of the Tinker, talking to Drake before I had been ‘activated’.
“Why not bury inside his chest cavity with the Chakra, for extra protection?” That was Drake’s dry voice.
“B-b-be-c-c-cause too m-m-much inter-f-f-ference w-w-with the metal, it-it n-n-needs to be f-f-fairly free of s-s-such pr-protection.”
“I see. So what range will we have on his location?”
“Un-un-unlimited range, it is-s-s G-G-GPS enabled, and w-w-will tr-tr-transmit even if th-th-the unit is d-d-d-deactivated.”
“So even if Rusty is severely damaged and inoperable, this chip will transmit his location to our OpCenter?”
“Y-y-yes sir.”
“And you feel that this is the best location for it?”
“Y-y-yes sir. Th-th-the chip is st-st-st-still protected by his sk-sk-skull, but is a-a- accessible for tr-tr-transmission and r-r-repair if necessary.”
“Very well.”
As these memories of that conversation flooded back to me, I let the baton lay in my lap and clasped my hands behind my neck, appearing to stretch back and relax. Once the driver seemed to be satisfied that my questions were over and had his eyes firmly back on the road, I used my fingertips to feel the base of my skull....There, I felt a lump that I didn’t remember from when I was alive. I had real sensitivity in my fingers, but the shape of it was clear, about the size of a couple of quarters stacked on top of each other, distinctly round and foreign feeling.
That fucking Drake, he was tracking my movements all the damn time. No wonder they always found my ass so quickly. No wonder they weren’t worried about me jumping this schmuck and bolting again. If I did, they surely would see my movements on their fucking computers and send in the goons to take out my friends.
But then again, how did I know these assholes weren’t already moving against the ORCs? I sincerely doubted that Drake and El Diablito and Papa Locks were just going to forget about the how those folks had helped me out. No, these assholes weren’t the forgive and forget types. Something was going on. And I was not about to let it happen without doing something about it.
We were out beyond most of the sprawl that was Las Vegas now and were slowing down, approaching a paved driveway that led to a gate in a fence. The driver leaned out the window, held up some sort of card to a proximity reader, the gate opened. We drove down the long driveway towards a smallish looking building, lit only by a couple of outside lights.
I still had my fingers on that lump, hands clasped behind my head. I dug my fingers into the flesh covering the lump, feeling the old dead skin part easily under my determined pressure, grasped the slick metal disk and twisted ever so slightly. It came off with a little click. I palmed the disk with one hand, brought it down into my lap, with my other hand, I tried to push the flaps of skin back into place, hoping I wasn’t leaking too much.
The truck stopped just outside a steel door. He looked back at me, trying to show some bravado, but clearly a little nervous. “Bring you shit buddy, there ain’t no coming back to the car if you forget something.”
I grabbed the bag with my free hand after shoving the baton back into it. My other hand held the damnable chip. I made sure to let him go first towards the door.
As he used the same proximity card to unlock the door, I pocketed the chip in my front jacket pocket, then I reach out and held the door open for him and nodded for him to go in first.
The dumbass was showing his nerves now, but clearly committed to putting on a brave face. He went inside the building, lights flickered on automatically with his movement into the room.
Inside, the room was a jumble of desks along the walls with numerous computers cluttering the tops. On the far wall there was another steel door with a thick window that looked into a smaller room, which was painted a very strange shade of lime green that was interrupted only by bright red runes in strange patterns. Next to the door was another window that looked into that smaller room, and underneath that some sort of control panel.
Dumbass went up to that panel, clearly anxious for me to get going to wherever in Florida he wanted to send me. I watched over his shoulder as he touched a number of symbols on that panel that seemed to glow at his touch. The last such symbol appeared be a set of palm trees.
“So where in Florida am I heading? Maybe I can catch a tan?” I inched up behind him.
“Nothing much to look at down there, you’ll be stuck in the middle of the Everglades.” He laughed nervously, turned aournd when he sensed me coming closer. “Y-y-you just need to go through that door there, it’s all set to go in 1 minute...”
I belted him across the mouth, careful not to break his jaw, but hard enough to send him sprawling.
“Hey! What are you doing...” He shouted as he fell against the door. “You can’t escape! They’ll find you!”
I reached down with one hand and picked him up, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the door. He grunted in pain. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the disk, showed it to him.
His eyes went wide with shock and fear.
“I’m no one’s fucking pawn anymore, you pissant. Swallow this!”
“I-I-I can’t it’s too big!”
“You better swallow it , or I’ll fucking stick it down your throat for you with my goddamn fist!”
He took the disk, put it on his tongue, and with a little assistance from my evil glare, swallowed it in obvious pain and more than a little disgust.
I slammed his head against the door once more, knocking him out, then opened the door and threw him into the room, shutting the door quickly. I stepped back as a bright light flashed and then disappeared, leaving the room as empty as it was when we entered the building.
I could feel the dozen sets of eyes following us as we left, half from the aforementioned goons, half from the various officers moving about the room. The Suit flashed his leatherbound credentials at the Sergeant and made a dismissive head nod in my direction indicating that I was going with him and that no questions were going to be asked, or answered for that matter.
The only cracks in this seeming armor of FBI-ness came as soon as we walked into the cool night air and towards the large parking lot where he had apparently parked. His shoulders seemed to droop just a bit, his swaggering walk seemed to soften. He still didn’t look back at me as we walked, he was moving quickly, obviously anxious to make it to his vehicle. I could make out the smallest hint of nervous sweat beading up around the stiff white collar of his shirt...something was not quite right. I knew the temperature was not higher than 60 degrees out here, but he seemed to be sweating now.
Looking around, I could see that the City didn’t bother to put HQ on the ever-so-famous Strip, land prices must be too high for such a non-revenue producing eneterprise. We seemed to be well away from all of the famous landmark casinos, and closer to the seedier part of town of strip clubs, small rent-by-the-week motels, and liquor stores on every corner. Close to where the others had rented a room, as part of that contingency plan we had set up only the day before.
The Suit was leading me to very un-FBI like vehicle, an upscale dark blue or black, but foreign made, SUV. Not the sort of vehicle that the Bureau leases for its agents. As he approached the vehicle, he used the remote control to unlock it, and indicated for me to get into the back seat, saying only, “You’ll find some equipment that you’ll want in the backseat there, as well as a supply of special ‘juice’ that Dr. Bernstein says’ll give you a nice boost of power.”
I looked at him before moving towards the rear door. “You’re not an agent, are you?”
He grinned, looking more weasily than anything else, “No. Please, I’ve got better things to do with my time, and my talents, than to play cops and robbers.”
“I don’t recognize you from my time in the Labs, how do you know Dr. Bernstein?”
He seemed to clam up, perhaps feeling that I was fishing just a little too much, “That’s none of your business Bones. I need to get your ass to the transport point and get back to my other tasks. Get in the car.”
I could see he was trying to bring back that hard veneer he had worn in front of the cops. But I could see it for the facade that it was now. He was nervous about something. I got in the truck and saw that there was indeed a bag of equipment to do a ‘flush and gush’ as well as a couple of unmarked bottles of a purplish liquid and a pair of my collapsible batons, cocky fucking bastards.
“So where you taking me to?” I asked as I moved the bag over and settled in right in the middle of the back seat. “I take it you are not driving me to see Drake?”
He got into the driver’s seat and shifted his rear view mirror so he could use that to keep an eye on me. He sneered at me, “Look, we’re just heading to a research facility on the edge of town that the Organization owns. There’s a Transit Point there that will send you to Florida.”
“Transit Point, what the hell is that?” I asked with more than a little curiosity.
He laughed. “You’re pretty fucking dumb aren’t you? Transit Points are like permanent portals that can take you long distances away, sort of like that shit they do on Star Trek man, except you don’t need a Scotty to operate them.”
“So how do they work? How do you know where it takes you?”
He started the car, put it into gear and backed out of the parking spot. We were soon on the major road heading west out of town. He took a little time before he replied. “There’s probably a reason why they haven’t told you about this shit. Let’s just say that it’s pretty damn complicated magick to make one of these things, but it’s pretty easy to operate one if you’ve been keyed to use it.”
I picked up one of the batons laying loose in the bag, making sure he saw me fondling it in the mirror. “You seem pretty damn comfident that I’m not going to hurt you, or try to escape, how come?”
His eyes grew wide, he stammered a just a little. “I-I-I’ve been told you are willing to come back now. Besides, it’s not like you can really escape. If you hurt me and escape again, they’ll just track you down with the...oh, well, you know you are pretty damn easy to find.”
Something clicked in my memory with his stuttering and the way he tried to avoid saying how exactly I could be tracked so easily...
“Th-th-this ch-ch-chip at the b-b-b-base of his sk-sk-skull will be our way of tra-tracking him.” That was the voice of the Tinker, talking to Drake before I had been ‘activated’.
“Why not bury inside his chest cavity with the Chakra, for extra protection?” That was Drake’s dry voice.
“B-b-be-c-c-cause too m-m-much inter-f-f-ference w-w-with the metal, it-it n-n-needs to be f-f-fairly free of s-s-such pr-protection.”
“I see. So what range will we have on his location?”
“Un-un-unlimited range, it is-s-s G-G-GPS enabled, and w-w-will tr-tr-transmit even if th-th-the unit is d-d-d-deactivated.”
“So even if Rusty is severely damaged and inoperable, this chip will transmit his location to our OpCenter?”
“Y-y-yes sir.”
“And you feel that this is the best location for it?”
“Y-y-yes sir. Th-th-the chip is st-st-st-still protected by his sk-sk-skull, but is a-a- accessible for tr-tr-transmission and r-r-repair if necessary.”
“Very well.”
As these memories of that conversation flooded back to me, I let the baton lay in my lap and clasped my hands behind my neck, appearing to stretch back and relax. Once the driver seemed to be satisfied that my questions were over and had his eyes firmly back on the road, I used my fingertips to feel the base of my skull....There, I felt a lump that I didn’t remember from when I was alive. I had real sensitivity in my fingers, but the shape of it was clear, about the size of a couple of quarters stacked on top of each other, distinctly round and foreign feeling.
That fucking Drake, he was tracking my movements all the damn time. No wonder they always found my ass so quickly. No wonder they weren’t worried about me jumping this schmuck and bolting again. If I did, they surely would see my movements on their fucking computers and send in the goons to take out my friends.
But then again, how did I know these assholes weren’t already moving against the ORCs? I sincerely doubted that Drake and El Diablito and Papa Locks were just going to forget about the how those folks had helped me out. No, these assholes weren’t the forgive and forget types. Something was going on. And I was not about to let it happen without doing something about it.
We were out beyond most of the sprawl that was Las Vegas now and were slowing down, approaching a paved driveway that led to a gate in a fence. The driver leaned out the window, held up some sort of card to a proximity reader, the gate opened. We drove down the long driveway towards a smallish looking building, lit only by a couple of outside lights.
I still had my fingers on that lump, hands clasped behind my head. I dug my fingers into the flesh covering the lump, feeling the old dead skin part easily under my determined pressure, grasped the slick metal disk and twisted ever so slightly. It came off with a little click. I palmed the disk with one hand, brought it down into my lap, with my other hand, I tried to push the flaps of skin back into place, hoping I wasn’t leaking too much.
The truck stopped just outside a steel door. He looked back at me, trying to show some bravado, but clearly a little nervous. “Bring you shit buddy, there ain’t no coming back to the car if you forget something.”
I grabbed the bag with my free hand after shoving the baton back into it. My other hand held the damnable chip. I made sure to let him go first towards the door.
As he used the same proximity card to unlock the door, I pocketed the chip in my front jacket pocket, then I reach out and held the door open for him and nodded for him to go in first.
The dumbass was showing his nerves now, but clearly committed to putting on a brave face. He went inside the building, lights flickered on automatically with his movement into the room.
Inside, the room was a jumble of desks along the walls with numerous computers cluttering the tops. On the far wall there was another steel door with a thick window that looked into a smaller room, which was painted a very strange shade of lime green that was interrupted only by bright red runes in strange patterns. Next to the door was another window that looked into that smaller room, and underneath that some sort of control panel.
Dumbass went up to that panel, clearly anxious for me to get going to wherever in Florida he wanted to send me. I watched over his shoulder as he touched a number of symbols on that panel that seemed to glow at his touch. The last such symbol appeared be a set of palm trees.
“So where in Florida am I heading? Maybe I can catch a tan?” I inched up behind him.
“Nothing much to look at down there, you’ll be stuck in the middle of the Everglades.” He laughed nervously, turned aournd when he sensed me coming closer. “Y-y-you just need to go through that door there, it’s all set to go in 1 minute...”
I belted him across the mouth, careful not to break his jaw, but hard enough to send him sprawling.
“Hey! What are you doing...” He shouted as he fell against the door. “You can’t escape! They’ll find you!”
I reached down with one hand and picked him up, lifting him off his feet and slamming him against the door. He grunted in pain. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the disk, showed it to him.
His eyes went wide with shock and fear.
“I’m no one’s fucking pawn anymore, you pissant. Swallow this!”
“I-I-I can’t it’s too big!”
“You better swallow it , or I’ll fucking stick it down your throat for you with my goddamn fist!”
He took the disk, put it on his tongue, and with a little assistance from my evil glare, swallowed it in obvious pain and more than a little disgust.
I slammed his head against the door once more, knocking him out, then opened the door and threw him into the room, shutting the door quickly. I stepped back as a bright light flashed and then disappeared, leaving the room as empty as it was when we entered the building.
Monday, April 11, 2005
A Fateful Choice
I watched as he left the clearing, wary of any change of heart he or those wolves might have. He almost pranced on the way out, returning to that affected craziness that he normally exhibited. He made a strange clucking sound a couple of times as he slipped into the shadows, which seemed to be a signal to circling wolves. They melted into the deeper shadows beyond the clearing without a sound.
I was left standing there in the clearing I had met John so many times before. This was the place that he had taught me to come to, where I had learned what few lessons I have been able to master of this Spirit Walking.
Why hadn’t John or any of my other friends responded to the Call I had sent out?
Were any of them even still alive at this point?
Why did I have to go seeking answers on my own?
Would the others even believe in my innocence?
How could Drake always know where I was and how I would react, even before I did?
What the Hell was his agenda anyway?
Why does he seem to want me back in his control so badly?
Do I even know if he hasn’t been controlling me in some unknown way up until now?
These questions and dozens of others rattled around inside my mind as I tried to make sense of everything that had happened recently. It all boiled down to some simple choices, and I felt I needed to make the options clear in my head to make the best decision possible. So, either my friends were either already dead, or the were alive but still in grave danger.
If they were still alive and I refused to follow El Diablito’s instructions, I would definitely be placing them in grave danger if I remained in police custody, unable to help them when they did get attacked. If I followed those instructions and went with Drake’s plan, I would have no real way of knowing whether my friends were harmed, and had no real assurances that they would be left alone in any event.
It was pretty damn clear that I lacked any real, actionable intelligence on Drake and his motives, but Drake seemed to have plenty of knowledge about the ORCs, and clearly had the resources, the will and the ability to attack almost at will. The ORCs were too scattered, and individually too weak to hold off an assault by Papa Locks and that monster they had made out of Greg’s body. If El Diablito was involved in the finishing of that thing, then it was pretty certain that it would be immune to just about any magick that Herne, Cerrydwen, or even Ravyn could throw at that thing. Physically, I would be the only one to have any chance of holding my own against it, especially since the ORCs wouldn’t resort to things like RPG’s and explosives, even if they could get them.
If I played along with Drake and his crew for a while, I might be able to gather some much needed intelligence, and perhaps even find a way to disable or destroy that monster before it was unleashed on anyone else. But how much would Drake think to trust me, especially after his little fail safe device failed so miserably?
So my choices looked pretty grim. So many of these folks had gathered together in Vegas to try and help me out, and now at least eight of them were dead. The rest were surely in danger, although the danger was absolutely certain if I continued to resist Drake and his ‘final offer’. Well, they were probably already in almost as much danger right now, even if I did cooperate, but there was at least a chance that they would be left alone if I wasn’t with them.
I am what Drake wants so badly.
Well, you know what they say, sometimes you need to be very damn careful what you wish for, you might just get more than you bargained for. Dammit, it’s time to make that bastard pay, not only for what he had done to me, but to the other officers on the team, especially Greg, and for what he has done to those poor innocents who died in that suite.
It was at that moment, that I decided, I was going to go to Drake, and he was gonna be made to pay the piper. I needed to take that bastard out and find a way to destroy the creature that Papa Locks was dragging around, and ideally to make that Haitian bastard pay for what he did to John Red Bear.
It meant that I was going to have to be prepared to kill. But that wasn’t going to be a problem any more.
I looked to where I had dropped the baton. I went over to it, picked it up and held it, remembering the time I had picked up John’s pouch beside his truck. In this world, charging an item with that kind of spiritual energy should be easier, and the others were far more skilled at the use of their talents than I was then. I focused my thoughts, my emotions, my fears for their safety and channelled everything I could right into that cold, metal weapon that was so much my signature now. Before long, I felt the crackling energy contained in it. I grasped it in both hands, and plunged it into the soft earth of the clearing, until a good several inches of it were embedded in the earth. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I felt a flicker of electrical energy erupt from the end of the baton that was standing upright.
I stood back up and turned and walked back out of the clearing, heading back to the my own entry way back into the realm of the living, feeling even more than ever before a stranger in a strange land.
As my Spirit Body collapsed and I made my way back up into the tunnel that ended in the bright lights of that interrogation room, I could make out the shadowy forms of a couple of others in the room with my body. I slipped up from the drain in the floor and observed for a second the men trying to talk to my unresponsive body.
Like hearing voices shrouded by being underwater, I listened to the garbled words of the unifromed figure who was touching my body on the shoulder, shouting, “Hey buddy, wake up! It’s time for you go!” He then looked to the other figure in the room, a tall, thin man in a dark suit, and said, “I don’t know whats wrong with him, sir, maybe its the drugs.”
The Suit seemed to be unperturbed, and looked right at my drifting spirit without expression, “There’s no rush Sergeant, I am sure he will come to any moment now.”
So the asshole has some knowledge or talent, I thought, as I slid back into my body and made connection with all of the little gizmos that eneabled my to move.
With a start the Sergeant jumped back as I closed my hands into fists, and tilted my head, and said “Boo!” right in his face.
“Son of a fucking bitch...!”
I smiled. “You called?”
He kept his distance, still cursing.
I looked at the Suit “So, are we going somewhere?”
The Suit looked over to the Sergeant without comment towards me, “Unlock his cuffs and his leg shackles. He’ll be going with me.”
The Sergeant looked aghast, “Sir, are you sure you want that thing freed? You should have seen what it did in that suite!”
The Suit looked nonplussed, “Release him. He’s not a threat, he was trying to save those people. He’s a special agent too. Now, Sergeant, I don’t have all fucking night for your games!”
The Sergeant seemed to find his spine at that last bit. He began fumbling with his key chain.
Smiling right at the bumbling cop, I reached my arms out towards him and snapped the chain connecting the cuffs with little effort. I stretched my legs quickly, snapping first the hook embedded in the floor, and then the chain connecting the ankle cuffs together.
His mouth agape, the Sergeant dropped the keys he had been fumbling with, they landed with a loud chink!
I leaned over, scooped up the keys and quickly unlocked first my ankle cuffs and then each of the cuffs dangling from my wrists. Each piece fell to the floor with another loud clink!
The Suit stood there, unimpressed, waiting for the show to end.
I looked up at him, “Alright then, let’s get out of here.” I handed the key chain to the stuttering Sergeant on my way out the door. “Let’s go find the real killer, shall we?”
“Indeed.”
I was left standing there in the clearing I had met John so many times before. This was the place that he had taught me to come to, where I had learned what few lessons I have been able to master of this Spirit Walking.
Why hadn’t John or any of my other friends responded to the Call I had sent out?
Were any of them even still alive at this point?
Why did I have to go seeking answers on my own?
Would the others even believe in my innocence?
How could Drake always know where I was and how I would react, even before I did?
What the Hell was his agenda anyway?
Why does he seem to want me back in his control so badly?
Do I even know if he hasn’t been controlling me in some unknown way up until now?
These questions and dozens of others rattled around inside my mind as I tried to make sense of everything that had happened recently. It all boiled down to some simple choices, and I felt I needed to make the options clear in my head to make the best decision possible. So, either my friends were either already dead, or the were alive but still in grave danger.
If they were still alive and I refused to follow El Diablito’s instructions, I would definitely be placing them in grave danger if I remained in police custody, unable to help them when they did get attacked. If I followed those instructions and went with Drake’s plan, I would have no real way of knowing whether my friends were harmed, and had no real assurances that they would be left alone in any event.
It was pretty damn clear that I lacked any real, actionable intelligence on Drake and his motives, but Drake seemed to have plenty of knowledge about the ORCs, and clearly had the resources, the will and the ability to attack almost at will. The ORCs were too scattered, and individually too weak to hold off an assault by Papa Locks and that monster they had made out of Greg’s body. If El Diablito was involved in the finishing of that thing, then it was pretty certain that it would be immune to just about any magick that Herne, Cerrydwen, or even Ravyn could throw at that thing. Physically, I would be the only one to have any chance of holding my own against it, especially since the ORCs wouldn’t resort to things like RPG’s and explosives, even if they could get them.
If I played along with Drake and his crew for a while, I might be able to gather some much needed intelligence, and perhaps even find a way to disable or destroy that monster before it was unleashed on anyone else. But how much would Drake think to trust me, especially after his little fail safe device failed so miserably?
So my choices looked pretty grim. So many of these folks had gathered together in Vegas to try and help me out, and now at least eight of them were dead. The rest were surely in danger, although the danger was absolutely certain if I continued to resist Drake and his ‘final offer’. Well, they were probably already in almost as much danger right now, even if I did cooperate, but there was at least a chance that they would be left alone if I wasn’t with them.
I am what Drake wants so badly.
Well, you know what they say, sometimes you need to be very damn careful what you wish for, you might just get more than you bargained for. Dammit, it’s time to make that bastard pay, not only for what he had done to me, but to the other officers on the team, especially Greg, and for what he has done to those poor innocents who died in that suite.
It was at that moment, that I decided, I was going to go to Drake, and he was gonna be made to pay the piper. I needed to take that bastard out and find a way to destroy the creature that Papa Locks was dragging around, and ideally to make that Haitian bastard pay for what he did to John Red Bear.
It meant that I was going to have to be prepared to kill. But that wasn’t going to be a problem any more.
I looked to where I had dropped the baton. I went over to it, picked it up and held it, remembering the time I had picked up John’s pouch beside his truck. In this world, charging an item with that kind of spiritual energy should be easier, and the others were far more skilled at the use of their talents than I was then. I focused my thoughts, my emotions, my fears for their safety and channelled everything I could right into that cold, metal weapon that was so much my signature now. Before long, I felt the crackling energy contained in it. I grasped it in both hands, and plunged it into the soft earth of the clearing, until a good several inches of it were embedded in the earth. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I felt a flicker of electrical energy erupt from the end of the baton that was standing upright.
I stood back up and turned and walked back out of the clearing, heading back to the my own entry way back into the realm of the living, feeling even more than ever before a stranger in a strange land.
As my Spirit Body collapsed and I made my way back up into the tunnel that ended in the bright lights of that interrogation room, I could make out the shadowy forms of a couple of others in the room with my body. I slipped up from the drain in the floor and observed for a second the men trying to talk to my unresponsive body.
Like hearing voices shrouded by being underwater, I listened to the garbled words of the unifromed figure who was touching my body on the shoulder, shouting, “Hey buddy, wake up! It’s time for you go!” He then looked to the other figure in the room, a tall, thin man in a dark suit, and said, “I don’t know whats wrong with him, sir, maybe its the drugs.”
The Suit seemed to be unperturbed, and looked right at my drifting spirit without expression, “There’s no rush Sergeant, I am sure he will come to any moment now.”
So the asshole has some knowledge or talent, I thought, as I slid back into my body and made connection with all of the little gizmos that eneabled my to move.
With a start the Sergeant jumped back as I closed my hands into fists, and tilted my head, and said “Boo!” right in his face.
“Son of a fucking bitch...!”
I smiled. “You called?”
He kept his distance, still cursing.
I looked at the Suit “So, are we going somewhere?”
The Suit looked over to the Sergeant without comment towards me, “Unlock his cuffs and his leg shackles. He’ll be going with me.”
The Sergeant looked aghast, “Sir, are you sure you want that thing freed? You should have seen what it did in that suite!”
The Suit looked nonplussed, “Release him. He’s not a threat, he was trying to save those people. He’s a special agent too. Now, Sergeant, I don’t have all fucking night for your games!”
The Sergeant seemed to find his spine at that last bit. He began fumbling with his key chain.
Smiling right at the bumbling cop, I reached my arms out towards him and snapped the chain connecting the cuffs with little effort. I stretched my legs quickly, snapping first the hook embedded in the floor, and then the chain connecting the ankle cuffs together.
His mouth agape, the Sergeant dropped the keys he had been fumbling with, they landed with a loud chink!
I leaned over, scooped up the keys and quickly unlocked first my ankle cuffs and then each of the cuffs dangling from my wrists. Each piece fell to the floor with another loud clink!
The Suit stood there, unimpressed, waiting for the show to end.
I looked up at him, “Alright then, let’s get out of here.” I handed the key chain to the stuttering Sergeant on my way out the door. “Let’s go find the real killer, shall we?”
“Indeed.”
Sunday, April 10, 2005
To (Un)Live and Die in Las Vegas...Part 6
So there I was, sitting in the perp chair, waiting for a detective, or someone with some rank on their shoulders to come and talk to me.
It is simultaneously easier and harder to wait patiently in one place now that it was when I was alive. It is easier because I don’t have any of those pesky biological urges that people get when they are forced to sit in one place. I never have to yawn, sneeze, fart, belch, or even take a leak. It is often harder though because without any of those biological distractions, I am left with the racing thoughts of an otherwise undistracted mind. This can lead to running through a lot of different scenarios in one’s head.
As I sure you are well aware of by now, I was never mistaken for a person who had problems with overthinking situations. That was one reason I was pretty good at most sports that I played in my youth, and probably the best reason for why I was a good fighter, both before and during my police career. When you can just free your body to act and react according to situations as they develop, you can become a pretty good athlete, and a great fighter. Often, when you see a great athlete fail in a crucial moment, it is because he is running through all of the consequences of failure or success in his mind, and his thoughts get in the way of his natural, honed abilities to succeed.
I was never a great athlete, I simply lacked the raw talent to excell in any sport, but I was a great scrapper, or fighter. I often took down guys nearly twice my size when they needed taking down. My fearless tenacity and ability to ignore pain allowed me to win a number of fights that even I would have figured I couldn’t win.
But lately, I have found myself more often distracted by my own racing thoughts. It’s almost funny in a way, now that I truly don’t have to fear death, or even pain anymore, I can’t stop thinking about things.
Sometimes I focus on past events, either in my prior life, or events that have happened more recently. At other times, I try to bring some order and sanity to various possible futures, if I take certain actions.
At this moment, sitting in that interrogation room, I seemed to have two simultaneous thought patterns running through my head. On one thought track, I kept thinking back to that bloody suite and how Papa Locks and that monster were able to hide in what must have been almost plain sight and why exactly Drake would have wanted them to make such a mess of things. The second track of my thoughts, was on my possible actions from this point, do I cooperate with the Police and expect them to believe the truth of my innocence? Can I hope that my friends will believe in my innocence as well and that they will do what they can to free me? Are my friends even still alive? Did Papa Locks get to them as well?
I cannot tell you how long I sat there exploring these various thoughts, they don’t allow clocks in interrogation rooms-you want the perps to be divorced from as much reality as possible in those rooms, but I finally came to the conclusion that I couldn’t wait any longer to find out some information on what was going on at that resort.
I opened myself to the Spirit World and allowed my Spirit to slip from my body, still sitting there defiant and stiff, and to slide down the drain in the floor underneath the table. (These rooms all have tiled floors with a slight dip in the center with a drain at the center of the dip--it is much easier to clean up the blood and such with a hose, you know, in case things get rough.)
That drain openned up into my usual entry into the Underworld. I was in my usual form, which looked an awful lot like how I looked when I was alive. I breathed deep the air in the clearing, enjoying the scent of pine and clean, fresh air. The breeze felt so good on my skin. I could standf there and enjoy the feeling of being alive forever, but Ihad people I needed to call and things I needed to find out, so reluctantly, I took of at a slow jog for the meeting place where I usually met John Red Bear.
Within minutes, I was in our special meeting place. I sat down in the middle of that place, crossed my legs and raised my arms and my voice to the darkened sky. I started softly, but gradually raised my voice in that rhythmic chant that John had taught me what seemed like ages ago, the Spirit Call Chant. I don’t know what the words meant, only how to pronounce them, and in what order to recite them. If John could come, he would. But to be sure of some sort of response, I also pictured the images of Herne, Ravyn, the Frau and Cerrydwen, hoping that one or all of them could come to me.
My first warning that tings weren’t going to as well as I would have liked was when I heard the distant howling of wolves. The sounds grew closer and closer as I finished my chant, and the grew silent when I did as well. I could hear the rustling of branches and could just make out the multiple sets of red colored eyes as the shadow wolves padded about the clearing, but stayed just on the outside.
Realizing this did not bode well, I got back up and prepared for a fight. I could feel my body form shifting into my current form in the real world. It was strange, sort of like putting on a suit of armor. I flicked my wrist, and my familiar baton dropped into place. A second flick and its length was extended. I wasn’t at all sure how effective this thing would be against these kinds of foes, but I was ready for action nonetheless.
What I wasn’t ready for however, was that all too familiar cackling laughter of El Diablito. His bony little form emerged from the darkness of the forest edge and he virtually pranced into the clearing. The wolves paid him no heed as they continued to circle without advancing.
“Hee hee,” he cackled. “Do you like my friends Rusty? That is what you are called now, isn’t it my friend?”
“Yeah. Thanks to the shit you and those other pricks did.”
His eyes danced nearly as much as his feet did, “Woo hoo! Don’t you like your immortality Rusty? So many others would give nearly anything to have eternal life!”
“Some life, you prick. What the fuck are you doing here anyway?”
“Ah, so direct. I am fine, thank you very much. We haven’t seen you in quite some time now, and you are missed my son. Drake wants you to come back to us. He has read your words, he feels your pain. Won’t you come back to us now? Can’t we end this little fight between us?”
“Fuck you. I have seen the shit you would have me do. That monster that Papa Locks was dragging around has your fingerprints all over it, you sick bastard. I can’t believe that you would kill so many innocent people just to get me into trouble. Why?”
“Hee hee! Innocent people indeed. Don’t you know my boy, there is no such thing as innocence? Evil lies within us all. It is who and what we are. Most humans deceive themselves into thinking they are good at heart even though they are as evil as the rest of us when it comes down to it. The Darkness Within is what gives us all strength and desire, what drives us to survive in the face of insurmountable odds. It is that which allows you to continue to survive even after my best spells and charms were destroyed! You have such strength, child. Come with me, join us! I will teach you how to harness that Darkness and to become greater than you could ever imagine!”
“You shit, I’m not falling for any damn Join-the-Dark-Side fucking speech. This ain’t no fucking
George Lucas movie, this is life! There are real damn people dying up there, and for what?”
That tirade stopped his dancing. He stopped, turned towards me, eyes locked into mine and spoke with a clear, dangerous voice. “You are right. This is not a movie, there are real consequences to your choices Rusty. If you continue to fight us, if you insist on joining forces with this group you have cast your lot with, they will have to be eliminated.”
“Wait a minute...”
“No, there is no more waiting. You have seen what we are capable of. We have other tools at our disposal that you have not even imagined. If you value these people, these ORCs,” he practically spat that word out. “Then you will stop this nonsense and come back to us now. Otherwise, we will have to treat them as more than the mere nuisance they have been up to now.
“We have had spies in that group for sometime now. We have not had to move against them until now because they were of no real consequence. They are charlatains and apprentices playing at being sorcerors. But since they had been keeping to themselves and hadn’t overstepped their abilities, there was no need to deal with them previously. If you insist in throwing in your lot with them, they will pay a price that you will have caused them to pay. Can your recently found conscience stand that?
“This is your last to save the lives of those dear, sweet people. There will be no more offers, no more subtle messages.”
“Subtle, my ass. Your monster killed eight fucking people. I don’t even know what you want me for, I won’t kill people like that monster!”
“No, we have never asked you to kill, Rusty. We have only killed because we have needed to, in order to save others. Come back to us and your role will be properly explained to you. But be assured, your role is absolutely vital.”
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. “Even if I wanted to join you again, I’m sort of stuck you know. I am presently in an interrogation room at Police Headquarters. I don’t exactly have the option to get up and leave.”
He smiled, the kind of cold, dead smile I that remembered Drake making when he spoke. “If you agree, here and now, to stop this resistance, to come back to us peacefully, all of this will be cleared up quite quickly.”
“How do I know you haven’t already hurt or killed some of my friends?”
“You don’t. But that uncertainty will disappear if you don’t agree. You know all too well how long the process can take with some police departments. By the time you make any headway in that, I can guarantee that none of your friends or their allies will survive until you are freed if you don’t agree.”
“Well, that just leaves me with a real damn choice now, doesn’t it?”
He held out his hands to his sides, palms up in the way that says, ‘So what?’
A moment of silence passed, before I decided to play along, at least for now. I took my baton and tossed it to the side, still within the clearing, but no longer in the middle, where I was. I looked around at the still circling wolves and then back to El Diablito. “Alright, I’ll come back. I promise to behave this time. I’ll do anything you ask, as long as I don’t have to kill anyone.”
He smiled, this time with what seemed like genuine affection, “Very well then. Return to your body and wait there. Someone will come for you soon and release you to the custody of another FBI Agent. Go with that agent, he is an ally of ours. He will take you to a warehouse where you will be given further directions. But be warned, if you resist in any way, or bring any danger or unwarranted attention to our operations, you will be neutralized but only after we destroy the ORCs.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
It is simultaneously easier and harder to wait patiently in one place now that it was when I was alive. It is easier because I don’t have any of those pesky biological urges that people get when they are forced to sit in one place. I never have to yawn, sneeze, fart, belch, or even take a leak. It is often harder though because without any of those biological distractions, I am left with the racing thoughts of an otherwise undistracted mind. This can lead to running through a lot of different scenarios in one’s head.
As I sure you are well aware of by now, I was never mistaken for a person who had problems with overthinking situations. That was one reason I was pretty good at most sports that I played in my youth, and probably the best reason for why I was a good fighter, both before and during my police career. When you can just free your body to act and react according to situations as they develop, you can become a pretty good athlete, and a great fighter. Often, when you see a great athlete fail in a crucial moment, it is because he is running through all of the consequences of failure or success in his mind, and his thoughts get in the way of his natural, honed abilities to succeed.
I was never a great athlete, I simply lacked the raw talent to excell in any sport, but I was a great scrapper, or fighter. I often took down guys nearly twice my size when they needed taking down. My fearless tenacity and ability to ignore pain allowed me to win a number of fights that even I would have figured I couldn’t win.
But lately, I have found myself more often distracted by my own racing thoughts. It’s almost funny in a way, now that I truly don’t have to fear death, or even pain anymore, I can’t stop thinking about things.
Sometimes I focus on past events, either in my prior life, or events that have happened more recently. At other times, I try to bring some order and sanity to various possible futures, if I take certain actions.
At this moment, sitting in that interrogation room, I seemed to have two simultaneous thought patterns running through my head. On one thought track, I kept thinking back to that bloody suite and how Papa Locks and that monster were able to hide in what must have been almost plain sight and why exactly Drake would have wanted them to make such a mess of things. The second track of my thoughts, was on my possible actions from this point, do I cooperate with the Police and expect them to believe the truth of my innocence? Can I hope that my friends will believe in my innocence as well and that they will do what they can to free me? Are my friends even still alive? Did Papa Locks get to them as well?
I cannot tell you how long I sat there exploring these various thoughts, they don’t allow clocks in interrogation rooms-you want the perps to be divorced from as much reality as possible in those rooms, but I finally came to the conclusion that I couldn’t wait any longer to find out some information on what was going on at that resort.
I opened myself to the Spirit World and allowed my Spirit to slip from my body, still sitting there defiant and stiff, and to slide down the drain in the floor underneath the table. (These rooms all have tiled floors with a slight dip in the center with a drain at the center of the dip--it is much easier to clean up the blood and such with a hose, you know, in case things get rough.)
That drain openned up into my usual entry into the Underworld. I was in my usual form, which looked an awful lot like how I looked when I was alive. I breathed deep the air in the clearing, enjoying the scent of pine and clean, fresh air. The breeze felt so good on my skin. I could standf there and enjoy the feeling of being alive forever, but Ihad people I needed to call and things I needed to find out, so reluctantly, I took of at a slow jog for the meeting place where I usually met John Red Bear.
Within minutes, I was in our special meeting place. I sat down in the middle of that place, crossed my legs and raised my arms and my voice to the darkened sky. I started softly, but gradually raised my voice in that rhythmic chant that John had taught me what seemed like ages ago, the Spirit Call Chant. I don’t know what the words meant, only how to pronounce them, and in what order to recite them. If John could come, he would. But to be sure of some sort of response, I also pictured the images of Herne, Ravyn, the Frau and Cerrydwen, hoping that one or all of them could come to me.
My first warning that tings weren’t going to as well as I would have liked was when I heard the distant howling of wolves. The sounds grew closer and closer as I finished my chant, and the grew silent when I did as well. I could hear the rustling of branches and could just make out the multiple sets of red colored eyes as the shadow wolves padded about the clearing, but stayed just on the outside.
Realizing this did not bode well, I got back up and prepared for a fight. I could feel my body form shifting into my current form in the real world. It was strange, sort of like putting on a suit of armor. I flicked my wrist, and my familiar baton dropped into place. A second flick and its length was extended. I wasn’t at all sure how effective this thing would be against these kinds of foes, but I was ready for action nonetheless.
What I wasn’t ready for however, was that all too familiar cackling laughter of El Diablito. His bony little form emerged from the darkness of the forest edge and he virtually pranced into the clearing. The wolves paid him no heed as they continued to circle without advancing.
“Hee hee,” he cackled. “Do you like my friends Rusty? That is what you are called now, isn’t it my friend?”
“Yeah. Thanks to the shit you and those other pricks did.”
His eyes danced nearly as much as his feet did, “Woo hoo! Don’t you like your immortality Rusty? So many others would give nearly anything to have eternal life!”
“Some life, you prick. What the fuck are you doing here anyway?”
“Ah, so direct. I am fine, thank you very much. We haven’t seen you in quite some time now, and you are missed my son. Drake wants you to come back to us. He has read your words, he feels your pain. Won’t you come back to us now? Can’t we end this little fight between us?”
“Fuck you. I have seen the shit you would have me do. That monster that Papa Locks was dragging around has your fingerprints all over it, you sick bastard. I can’t believe that you would kill so many innocent people just to get me into trouble. Why?”
“Hee hee! Innocent people indeed. Don’t you know my boy, there is no such thing as innocence? Evil lies within us all. It is who and what we are. Most humans deceive themselves into thinking they are good at heart even though they are as evil as the rest of us when it comes down to it. The Darkness Within is what gives us all strength and desire, what drives us to survive in the face of insurmountable odds. It is that which allows you to continue to survive even after my best spells and charms were destroyed! You have such strength, child. Come with me, join us! I will teach you how to harness that Darkness and to become greater than you could ever imagine!”
“You shit, I’m not falling for any damn Join-the-Dark-Side fucking speech. This ain’t no fucking
George Lucas movie, this is life! There are real damn people dying up there, and for what?”
That tirade stopped his dancing. He stopped, turned towards me, eyes locked into mine and spoke with a clear, dangerous voice. “You are right. This is not a movie, there are real consequences to your choices Rusty. If you continue to fight us, if you insist on joining forces with this group you have cast your lot with, they will have to be eliminated.”
“Wait a minute...”
“No, there is no more waiting. You have seen what we are capable of. We have other tools at our disposal that you have not even imagined. If you value these people, these ORCs,” he practically spat that word out. “Then you will stop this nonsense and come back to us now. Otherwise, we will have to treat them as more than the mere nuisance they have been up to now.
“We have had spies in that group for sometime now. We have not had to move against them until now because they were of no real consequence. They are charlatains and apprentices playing at being sorcerors. But since they had been keeping to themselves and hadn’t overstepped their abilities, there was no need to deal with them previously. If you insist in throwing in your lot with them, they will pay a price that you will have caused them to pay. Can your recently found conscience stand that?
“This is your last to save the lives of those dear, sweet people. There will be no more offers, no more subtle messages.”
“Subtle, my ass. Your monster killed eight fucking people. I don’t even know what you want me for, I won’t kill people like that monster!”
“No, we have never asked you to kill, Rusty. We have only killed because we have needed to, in order to save others. Come back to us and your role will be properly explained to you. But be assured, your role is absolutely vital.”
I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. “Even if I wanted to join you again, I’m sort of stuck you know. I am presently in an interrogation room at Police Headquarters. I don’t exactly have the option to get up and leave.”
He smiled, the kind of cold, dead smile I that remembered Drake making when he spoke. “If you agree, here and now, to stop this resistance, to come back to us peacefully, all of this will be cleared up quite quickly.”
“How do I know you haven’t already hurt or killed some of my friends?”
“You don’t. But that uncertainty will disappear if you don’t agree. You know all too well how long the process can take with some police departments. By the time you make any headway in that, I can guarantee that none of your friends or their allies will survive until you are freed if you don’t agree.”
“Well, that just leaves me with a real damn choice now, doesn’t it?”
He held out his hands to his sides, palms up in the way that says, ‘So what?’
A moment of silence passed, before I decided to play along, at least for now. I took my baton and tossed it to the side, still within the clearing, but no longer in the middle, where I was. I looked around at the still circling wolves and then back to El Diablito. “Alright, I’ll come back. I promise to behave this time. I’ll do anything you ask, as long as I don’t have to kill anyone.”
He smiled, this time with what seemed like genuine affection, “Very well then. Return to your body and wait there. Someone will come for you soon and release you to the custody of another FBI Agent. Go with that agent, he is an ally of ours. He will take you to a warehouse where you will be given further directions. But be warned, if you resist in any way, or bring any danger or unwarranted attention to our operations, you will be neutralized but only after we destroy the ORCs.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
To (Un)Live and Die in Las Vegas...Part 5
Once at Police Headquarters, I was hustled out of the van quickly and taken back to be fingerprinted. I was being escorted by two of the burlier officers who clearly had no idea that I could have easily snapped the cuffs on my wrists and the chains that they had placed around my ankles before we got out of the van. I had no intention of resisting though, since I knew how dangerous and often thankless a job it can be to be a police officer in a large metro area. I knew I was innocent and that it would only be a matter of time before they would release me, even if Papa Locks and Drake had done their best to set me up. I was confident that Jennifer's spirit would help to provide the details to my friends of what actually happened.
Imagine the surprise on the fingerprint tech's face and on the faces of the officers who were with me when they uncuffed me and then took my leather gloves off, only to see no flesh from which to obtain fingerprints. He (the fingerprint technician) actually recoiled in shock and horror to see hand comprised only of metal plated bones connected by strange wires that served as both nerves and connective tissues.
I do my best to clean away any decaying flesh as I see it, but the place where the flesh from my arm ends, is pretty gruesome looking, and is probably putrid smelling as well, so I usually make sure to wrap my wrists in clingy plastic wrap and then keep my gloves on almost all of the time, especially when I am out in public.
The officer on my left gasped as he saw (and maybe smelled) bare hands and the raw, ragged edge of the flesh at my wrist. He seemed to turn several shades of green, and shifted his weight ever so slightly away from me.
The other officer was more blunt, "What the fuck..?"
The technician looked up from my skeletal hand, "What are you mister?"
I tried to keep the smile from my face, "It would take more than a little explaining. But as I told the commander back at the scene, I am an FBI Agent. You obviously will not be able to take my fingerprints. I would recommend that you take me to a holding cell or to an interview room and I will be more than happy to explain myself and this whole situation to someone. I would prefer to do so only once."
The officer on my right, a sergeant according to the stripes on his sleave, said, "Uh yeah Charlie, I don't think we'll be needing you to print this guy. We'll take him to room 6, do you think you can call the Captain of the Watch and ask him to call me?"
Charlie nodded, holding out my gloves towards me with the very tips of his fingers, still obviously repulsed. He visibly flinched when my shiny, skeletal hand reached out and grabbed the gloves. He backed away from the processing counter to a smaller desk just behind him, where he busied himself by picking up the phone and dialing some numbers on the keypad.
The sergeant pointed down the hall to our left, so I shuffled off in that direction, still holding the gloves in my left hand. They followed, each to side, just a half step behind me.
We got a lot of strange looks from other officers and from several detainees, one such guy was obviously inebriated and therefore seemed a little less shocked than most of the others, probably saw me as just another alcohol induced vision.
A couple of turns later and through an alarmed, locked door I was led to a short hall where there were a number of interview rooms, each with the required audio-visual equipment for taping confessions and the one-way windows that allowed folks outside of the rooms to observe what was happening inside.
Room six was your standard interview room, pretty barren inside, with only a single large table and four chairs by it. All police departments must order from the same Korean War-era catalogs, since this old, dented furniture could have easily been in my own department back in the day. Once inside the room, I was told where to sit, as the junior officer reached down behind me and snapped my leg iron chain into a solid steel ring that was underneath the chair. Ideally, that would prevent me from being able to escape.
Once I was 'secured', the sergeant and his young partner left, looking back uneasily as they secured the door.
For the first time in my exsistence, I was sitting in the 'suspect' chair.
Imagine the surprise on the fingerprint tech's face and on the faces of the officers who were with me when they uncuffed me and then took my leather gloves off, only to see no flesh from which to obtain fingerprints. He (the fingerprint technician) actually recoiled in shock and horror to see hand comprised only of metal plated bones connected by strange wires that served as both nerves and connective tissues.
I do my best to clean away any decaying flesh as I see it, but the place where the flesh from my arm ends, is pretty gruesome looking, and is probably putrid smelling as well, so I usually make sure to wrap my wrists in clingy plastic wrap and then keep my gloves on almost all of the time, especially when I am out in public.
The officer on my left gasped as he saw (and maybe smelled) bare hands and the raw, ragged edge of the flesh at my wrist. He seemed to turn several shades of green, and shifted his weight ever so slightly away from me.
The other officer was more blunt, "What the fuck..?"
The technician looked up from my skeletal hand, "What are you mister?"
I tried to keep the smile from my face, "It would take more than a little explaining. But as I told the commander back at the scene, I am an FBI Agent. You obviously will not be able to take my fingerprints. I would recommend that you take me to a holding cell or to an interview room and I will be more than happy to explain myself and this whole situation to someone. I would prefer to do so only once."
The officer on my right, a sergeant according to the stripes on his sleave, said, "Uh yeah Charlie, I don't think we'll be needing you to print this guy. We'll take him to room 6, do you think you can call the Captain of the Watch and ask him to call me?"
Charlie nodded, holding out my gloves towards me with the very tips of his fingers, still obviously repulsed. He visibly flinched when my shiny, skeletal hand reached out and grabbed the gloves. He backed away from the processing counter to a smaller desk just behind him, where he busied himself by picking up the phone and dialing some numbers on the keypad.
The sergeant pointed down the hall to our left, so I shuffled off in that direction, still holding the gloves in my left hand. They followed, each to side, just a half step behind me.
We got a lot of strange looks from other officers and from several detainees, one such guy was obviously inebriated and therefore seemed a little less shocked than most of the others, probably saw me as just another alcohol induced vision.
A couple of turns later and through an alarmed, locked door I was led to a short hall where there were a number of interview rooms, each with the required audio-visual equipment for taping confessions and the one-way windows that allowed folks outside of the rooms to observe what was happening inside.
Room six was your standard interview room, pretty barren inside, with only a single large table and four chairs by it. All police departments must order from the same Korean War-era catalogs, since this old, dented furniture could have easily been in my own department back in the day. Once inside the room, I was told where to sit, as the junior officer reached down behind me and snapped my leg iron chain into a solid steel ring that was underneath the chair. Ideally, that would prevent me from being able to escape.
Once I was 'secured', the sergeant and his young partner left, looking back uneasily as they secured the door.
For the first time in my exsistence, I was sitting in the 'suspect' chair.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
To (Un)Live and Die in Las Vegas...Part 4
I have gathered myself and have resolved to continue with the narrative where we last left off...
Looking around the at the carnage in the suite, and being faced by several members of a Las Vegas Police Department tactical squad with weapons drawn, I dropped my baton and raised my hands.
I could see that at least one of the younger officers was about to lose his dinner, so I complied with all the instructions I was given. I didn’t need to add to the chaos by trying to resist these guys. I did indicate that I was an FBI Agent and that my credentials were in my jacket pocket.
They still handcuffed my ass, which is pretty much standard procedure when responding to a scene like this, so I didn’t take any offense. As they began to survey the room for any survivors, I was led from the room into the hallway. Two officers remained with me as another 4 searched the suite. The young man I had bribed on this floor by the elevator was busy talking to another officer further down the hall, clearly indicating that I was the only to come up the elevators in a little while, but I was too far away to hear any of the details.
Instead I listened as the team checking the suite called out that there were a total of 8 bodies inside the suite, and that no one was left alive. Since we were standing still, I used that chance to leave my body briefly to make contact with those spirits of the deceased that might still be lingering.
Jenny’s spirit was the only I could locate immediately, she was looking down at her broken body, still stunned in the way that some victims of sudden, violent deaths can be.
“Jennifer, I am so sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I tried to save you.”
She looked back at me, eyes shimmering. “I know Mr. Bones. This whole gathering was a trap. That mean man with the dread locks told me about it just before you came up.”
“What happened, exactly?”
“Mr. Tinker invited us up for a little party to celebrate our first night of Convocation. I thought it would be a fun thing to see what the suites looked like here.”
“Who else was with you?”
She sobbed, “Eric was with me, and a couple of other students from different parts of the country. I don’t remember their names.”
“Then what happened?”
“While we were playing some music and starting to mingle, Mr. Tinker came out from his bedroom after making a phone call. Shortly after that, that evil man showed up with his monster that looked like you in some ways, but was so evil...it just started swinging it’s weapon. I don’t remember too much after that.”
“Did Mr. Tinker get attacked as well?”
“Yes. He was the first one that monster killed. He was screaming about b eing on their side, but it clubbed him down. It was horrible Mr. Bones.”
“Jennifer, can you do me a very big favor?”
She nodded.
“I need you to seek out Cerrydwen or John Redbear, they need to know what happened here, and that they are all in danger. Tell them I will be at the police station, under questioning. Please let them know that I didn’t have anything to do with this massacre. It looks like I have been set up to take the blame for this. Can you do this for me? It is very, very important?”
She nodded again, became even more translucent, and disappeared as she left to go find the others, or so I dearly hoped.
That whole conversation happened in the matter of seconds in real time, so it wasn’t even noticed that I was immobile for a moment by the officers who were watching me. I slid back into my body, felt the connection reform and shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
The one officer was done questioning the young man down the hall and was walking towards me. He was apparently the lead officer on the scene, as he directed the officers guarding me to take me down for transport, and to use the service elevator to avoid the public areas of the resort.
With a grunt, I was lead away and escorted down to a waiting police van. They were very careful to keep me out of sight from the general public. I walked with them calmly. There wasn’t much to say at this point, they hadn’t even read me my miranda rights, but I attributed that to the shock they must be experiencing, and hopefully to the doubts in their minds (however small they might be) that I was not the killer.
It was a quiet, lonely ride to the City of Las Vegas Police Headquaters.
Looking around the at the carnage in the suite, and being faced by several members of a Las Vegas Police Department tactical squad with weapons drawn, I dropped my baton and raised my hands.
I could see that at least one of the younger officers was about to lose his dinner, so I complied with all the instructions I was given. I didn’t need to add to the chaos by trying to resist these guys. I did indicate that I was an FBI Agent and that my credentials were in my jacket pocket.
They still handcuffed my ass, which is pretty much standard procedure when responding to a scene like this, so I didn’t take any offense. As they began to survey the room for any survivors, I was led from the room into the hallway. Two officers remained with me as another 4 searched the suite. The young man I had bribed on this floor by the elevator was busy talking to another officer further down the hall, clearly indicating that I was the only to come up the elevators in a little while, but I was too far away to hear any of the details.
Instead I listened as the team checking the suite called out that there were a total of 8 bodies inside the suite, and that no one was left alive. Since we were standing still, I used that chance to leave my body briefly to make contact with those spirits of the deceased that might still be lingering.
Jenny’s spirit was the only I could locate immediately, she was looking down at her broken body, still stunned in the way that some victims of sudden, violent deaths can be.
“Jennifer, I am so sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I tried to save you.”
She looked back at me, eyes shimmering. “I know Mr. Bones. This whole gathering was a trap. That mean man with the dread locks told me about it just before you came up.”
“What happened, exactly?”
“Mr. Tinker invited us up for a little party to celebrate our first night of Convocation. I thought it would be a fun thing to see what the suites looked like here.”
“Who else was with you?”
She sobbed, “Eric was with me, and a couple of other students from different parts of the country. I don’t remember their names.”
“Then what happened?”
“While we were playing some music and starting to mingle, Mr. Tinker came out from his bedroom after making a phone call. Shortly after that, that evil man showed up with his monster that looked like you in some ways, but was so evil...it just started swinging it’s weapon. I don’t remember too much after that.”
“Did Mr. Tinker get attacked as well?”
“Yes. He was the first one that monster killed. He was screaming about b eing on their side, but it clubbed him down. It was horrible Mr. Bones.”
“Jennifer, can you do me a very big favor?”
She nodded.
“I need you to seek out Cerrydwen or John Redbear, they need to know what happened here, and that they are all in danger. Tell them I will be at the police station, under questioning. Please let them know that I didn’t have anything to do with this massacre. It looks like I have been set up to take the blame for this. Can you do this for me? It is very, very important?”
She nodded again, became even more translucent, and disappeared as she left to go find the others, or so I dearly hoped.
That whole conversation happened in the matter of seconds in real time, so it wasn’t even noticed that I was immobile for a moment by the officers who were watching me. I slid back into my body, felt the connection reform and shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
The one officer was done questioning the young man down the hall and was walking towards me. He was apparently the lead officer on the scene, as he directed the officers guarding me to take me down for transport, and to use the service elevator to avoid the public areas of the resort.
With a grunt, I was lead away and escorted down to a waiting police van. They were very careful to keep me out of sight from the general public. I walked with them calmly. There wasn’t much to say at this point, they hadn’t even read me my miranda rights, but I attributed that to the shock they must be experiencing, and hopefully to the doubts in their minds (however small they might be) that I was not the killer.
It was a quiet, lonely ride to the City of Las Vegas Police Headquaters.
Monday, April 04, 2005
My apologies...
It has not been my intention to have a lag of this length at a time in the narrative that leaves you wondering what happens next.
However, events of the moment have overtaken my attempts to tell this story. Even now, it is with a heavy heart, mourning the loss of a dear friend who has all too soon taken that last journey to the Otherworld, that I write these words.
The events that I am speaking of now follow as a direct result of the situation that developed in Las Vegas, so I must continue with that story when my fingers become less clumsy and my heart grows lighter, most likely tomorrow evening.
Until then...call someone you love and tell them so, hold someone dear to you close, and value what time we all have here together, because for some of us, it is too short indeed.
[Editor's Note: The posts in the blog, including this one, relate solely to the fictional world of Agent Rusty Bones.]
However, events of the moment have overtaken my attempts to tell this story. Even now, it is with a heavy heart, mourning the loss of a dear friend who has all too soon taken that last journey to the Otherworld, that I write these words.
The events that I am speaking of now follow as a direct result of the situation that developed in Las Vegas, so I must continue with that story when my fingers become less clumsy and my heart grows lighter, most likely tomorrow evening.
Until then...call someone you love and tell them so, hold someone dear to you close, and value what time we all have here together, because for some of us, it is too short indeed.
[Editor's Note: The posts in the blog, including this one, relate solely to the fictional world of Agent Rusty Bones.]
Thursday, March 31, 2005
To (Un)Live and Die in Las Vegas...Part 3
So there I sat in the dark of night, wrestling with demons of my own conscience. Should I take some sort of unilateral action separate from my new found friends and compatriots, or should I take the well reasoned, rational approach of mentioning my suspicions to those I knew to be true allies and come up with a common approach to the problem of a traitor?
Well, as I am relatively sure you have guessed by now, I am not yet the well reasoning, rational human being that I sometimes wish to become. Perhaps it was some last vestige of testosterone flowing through what circulatory system I have, or perhaps it just a plain fact that it is not merely testoterone (of which I likely have none) that makes men do the often stupid, irrational things we do.
Either way, you guessed it, I got up in the quiet dark of the room, making sure to move quietly so as not to wake poor Jim from his slumber. I put on the long, dark trenchcoat that was now part of my image and loaded my collapsible baton into its little drop holster that I had fashioned into the right sleeve...I figured there was some head cracking to be done.
I did have enough sense to scribble a little note and place it on the table where Jim would be able to see it when he woke up. I wrote:
“J- Agron is an ally of Drake, I knew him as the Tinker. He can’t be allowed to contact Drake. See you soon.--Rusty”
I left the room, letting the electronic lock click into place as I shut the door quietly. I made my way to the elevator and punched the button to take me to the ground floor. I needed to visit the check-in desk.
A quick check with the listless clerk behind the counter told me that Agron was spending someone’s money well, he was on the top floor of the building, in the suite level. The prick was practically rubbing it in my face, he was using the full name of Agron Tinker. I got the room name (no mere numbers for the suites!) by slipping the kid a twenty dollar bill and headed back for the elevator.
Coming out of the elevator, I was met by another young man I had to bribe in order to have my run of the floor, he was dressed in the uniform of the hotel staff, and looked all officious at first, but a twenty dollar bill and a stern, no-nonsense look from me caused to find renewed interest in the scandal sheet he had been reading before I got out of the elevator.
The hallway of suite level was pretty impressive. Instead of a narrow, empty corridor, this floor was marked with tasteful lamps, discrete alcoves with sets of chairs outside of each door. The rooms were named for various personalities and place names based on the theme of the resort itself, and there weren’t any nice little signs showing which way to go like you see on the common levels of these kinds of places.
After a few minutes of wandering, I came upon the alcove marked by a placard for the name of the suite I was looking for. There were no goons sitting outside, so that was a good sign. I approached the door and was just about to knock on it when I happened to notice that it was slightly ajar.
Now, looking back on things with 20/20 hindsight, this should have been my last, best clue that things just weren’t right. Hindsight, however, is only useful after an event, and as you well know, I have made a rather bad habit at becoming very good at hindsight.
I pushed open the door to see a horrific sight, a landscape of elegant, very expensive furniture laying in ruins, much of it coated in bloody splatters. Several bodies lay strewn about the room, most with their heads bashed in, many with obviously broken limbs. Blood and what looked to be brains were splashed on a nearby wall as if a mad painter had thrown a can of the stuff to make some kind of statement.
All of the hard won instincts instilled by my former career as a police officer screamed at me to turn around and leave, right then, before the authorities arrived as they undoubtedly would. But I saw in the far shadows of the living room, almost behind a plush couch, there was a female figure cowering and wimpering in pain or shock. I could just see enough of her face to recognize her as one of the young women who had come from Chicago with us in the caravan, Jennifer, I think her name was.
When she saw me, her eyes grew wide with fear, and then seemed to relax with recognition. She cried out in a small, wavering voice, “Help me!”
I rushed into the room towards her, my vision tunneling in on her battered form, she had obviously been attacked as well, appeared to be suffering from a broken arm and her left knee was bent in a way that it shouldn’t have been.
My only warning to the coming attack was to see her eyes widen once more in fear, causing me to tspin around and throw up my right arm in a blocking motion. What I saw left me nearly as stunned as the powerful blow that came crashing down on me!
Greg, or rather Greg’s animated body had come out from a door that I had not noticed when I was rushing to help Jennifer. He was covered from head to toe in blood and gore as he brought his own collapsible baton down on my right forearm with incredible force, knocking me backwards and down onto the already trashed coffee table.
Luckily, the baton was no real match for my reinforced bones and my own baton that was still in its drop down sheath, but the force of the blow was enough to knock me off balance and into a couple of bodies.
As I was recovering my senses, I looked into what passed for Greg’s eyes, opening my own third eye, to see if Greg’s spirit was in this body, but what I saw only horrified me more. The darkness that passed for spirit in the body was definitely not Greg’s Spirit, but seemed to be a teaming mass of partial or incomplete spirits of some sort. Their sheer malevolence was almost palpable. My own Spirit shuddered to see such evil incarnate and in such a dangerous, human looking form. The foul creature raised its arm to continue its attack.
Behind me, I could hear Jennifer scream in fear and obvious pain.
Ignoring the threat of the coming attack, I was able to glance over and see Papa Locks emerge from the shadows beside Jennifer, smile in obvious glee as he reached out to Jennifer and snapped her neck in his huge hands in one fell motion all before I could do anything to help her out.
Distracted as I was, I was unable to prevent the foul creature that was using Greg’s body from raining blows down upon me, all I could do was shield my head as best as possible and try to roll in a kneeling position to try to regain balance to counter-attack.
Just as managed to get to my knees and rise up, ready to face the beast, I heard Papa Locks bellow out an order in what I assumed to be Creole. The creature grunted something back at him, dropped his baton to floor at my feet and lunge for the shadows to my side. It and Papa Locks disappeared into the shadows just as I heard that all too predictable cry of:
“Freeze motherfucker, Police!”
I looked over to the wide open door to see several armed members of Las Vegas’ finest standing there with weapons drawn. I dropped my own baton, and raised my hands....
Well, as I am relatively sure you have guessed by now, I am not yet the well reasoning, rational human being that I sometimes wish to become. Perhaps it was some last vestige of testosterone flowing through what circulatory system I have, or perhaps it just a plain fact that it is not merely testoterone (of which I likely have none) that makes men do the often stupid, irrational things we do.
Either way, you guessed it, I got up in the quiet dark of the room, making sure to move quietly so as not to wake poor Jim from his slumber. I put on the long, dark trenchcoat that was now part of my image and loaded my collapsible baton into its little drop holster that I had fashioned into the right sleeve...I figured there was some head cracking to be done.
I did have enough sense to scribble a little note and place it on the table where Jim would be able to see it when he woke up. I wrote:
“J- Agron is an ally of Drake, I knew him as the Tinker. He can’t be allowed to contact Drake. See you soon.--Rusty”
I left the room, letting the electronic lock click into place as I shut the door quietly. I made my way to the elevator and punched the button to take me to the ground floor. I needed to visit the check-in desk.
A quick check with the listless clerk behind the counter told me that Agron was spending someone’s money well, he was on the top floor of the building, in the suite level. The prick was practically rubbing it in my face, he was using the full name of Agron Tinker. I got the room name (no mere numbers for the suites!) by slipping the kid a twenty dollar bill and headed back for the elevator.
Coming out of the elevator, I was met by another young man I had to bribe in order to have my run of the floor, he was dressed in the uniform of the hotel staff, and looked all officious at first, but a twenty dollar bill and a stern, no-nonsense look from me caused to find renewed interest in the scandal sheet he had been reading before I got out of the elevator.
The hallway of suite level was pretty impressive. Instead of a narrow, empty corridor, this floor was marked with tasteful lamps, discrete alcoves with sets of chairs outside of each door. The rooms were named for various personalities and place names based on the theme of the resort itself, and there weren’t any nice little signs showing which way to go like you see on the common levels of these kinds of places.
After a few minutes of wandering, I came upon the alcove marked by a placard for the name of the suite I was looking for. There were no goons sitting outside, so that was a good sign. I approached the door and was just about to knock on it when I happened to notice that it was slightly ajar.
Now, looking back on things with 20/20 hindsight, this should have been my last, best clue that things just weren’t right. Hindsight, however, is only useful after an event, and as you well know, I have made a rather bad habit at becoming very good at hindsight.
I pushed open the door to see a horrific sight, a landscape of elegant, very expensive furniture laying in ruins, much of it coated in bloody splatters. Several bodies lay strewn about the room, most with their heads bashed in, many with obviously broken limbs. Blood and what looked to be brains were splashed on a nearby wall as if a mad painter had thrown a can of the stuff to make some kind of statement.
All of the hard won instincts instilled by my former career as a police officer screamed at me to turn around and leave, right then, before the authorities arrived as they undoubtedly would. But I saw in the far shadows of the living room, almost behind a plush couch, there was a female figure cowering and wimpering in pain or shock. I could just see enough of her face to recognize her as one of the young women who had come from Chicago with us in the caravan, Jennifer, I think her name was.
When she saw me, her eyes grew wide with fear, and then seemed to relax with recognition. She cried out in a small, wavering voice, “Help me!”
I rushed into the room towards her, my vision tunneling in on her battered form, she had obviously been attacked as well, appeared to be suffering from a broken arm and her left knee was bent in a way that it shouldn’t have been.
My only warning to the coming attack was to see her eyes widen once more in fear, causing me to tspin around and throw up my right arm in a blocking motion. What I saw left me nearly as stunned as the powerful blow that came crashing down on me!
Greg, or rather Greg’s animated body had come out from a door that I had not noticed when I was rushing to help Jennifer. He was covered from head to toe in blood and gore as he brought his own collapsible baton down on my right forearm with incredible force, knocking me backwards and down onto the already trashed coffee table.
Luckily, the baton was no real match for my reinforced bones and my own baton that was still in its drop down sheath, but the force of the blow was enough to knock me off balance and into a couple of bodies.
As I was recovering my senses, I looked into what passed for Greg’s eyes, opening my own third eye, to see if Greg’s spirit was in this body, but what I saw only horrified me more. The darkness that passed for spirit in the body was definitely not Greg’s Spirit, but seemed to be a teaming mass of partial or incomplete spirits of some sort. Their sheer malevolence was almost palpable. My own Spirit shuddered to see such evil incarnate and in such a dangerous, human looking form. The foul creature raised its arm to continue its attack.
Behind me, I could hear Jennifer scream in fear and obvious pain.
Ignoring the threat of the coming attack, I was able to glance over and see Papa Locks emerge from the shadows beside Jennifer, smile in obvious glee as he reached out to Jennifer and snapped her neck in his huge hands in one fell motion all before I could do anything to help her out.
Distracted as I was, I was unable to prevent the foul creature that was using Greg’s body from raining blows down upon me, all I could do was shield my head as best as possible and try to roll in a kneeling position to try to regain balance to counter-attack.
Just as managed to get to my knees and rise up, ready to face the beast, I heard Papa Locks bellow out an order in what I assumed to be Creole. The creature grunted something back at him, dropped his baton to floor at my feet and lunge for the shadows to my side. It and Papa Locks disappeared into the shadows just as I heard that all too predictable cry of:
“Freeze motherfucker, Police!”
I looked over to the wide open door to see several armed members of Las Vegas’ finest standing there with weapons drawn. I dropped my own baton, and raised my hands....
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
To (Un)Live and Die in Las Vegas...Part 2
To get to the location of the meeting, we had to make our way through the main gambling floor of the hotel. The amazing display of sounds and sights of the slot machines, roulette wheels, video poker machines and gaming tables made this huge room seem like an adult version of a video arcade. Everywhere you looked there were lights flashing, alarms and screams of joy from happy (but temporary) winners, scantily dressed cocktail waitresses and costumed characters from the theme of the hotel itself to distract the unwary gambler.
It’s quite ingenious actually, to package the experience of losing one’s money in games chance as entertainment, so that when the majority of patrons walk away from the place lighter in the wallet, they often do so happily, thinking that at least they got their money’s worth of free alcohol, wondrous sights, and adrenaline rushes of temporary wins. Looking around at all of the poeple, from retired grandmothers and grandfathers, to blue collar factory workers, to single moms, to normally bright and fiscally conservative businessmen all lining up to have their chance to flush away some money that may or may not be extra in their budgets was very depressing.
I couldn’t help wondering if my detached attitude towards the sights and sounds that the resort owners were employing to detach theses folks from their money was related to my lack of hormones and the limited amount of stimuli that I could actually now experience. I remember having made trips before to Vegas, and that I was as enthralled by the experience as many of these poor, sleep deprived people now seemed to be.
I was walking with the Frau, Ravyn, Cerrydwen and Jim.
The Frau seemed to be her normal, happy self as she toddled through the maze of machines, tables and people. Smiling at some folks, pointing out machines that were celebrating winners, but otherwise unaffected by the hustle and bustle of activity. She used her cane artfully to clear a path without actually offending anyone with her gentle touch and her kind smile and easy laugh.
Ravyn seemed to be a bundle of energy, barely contained within her small frame. She smiled more than the Frau, and exclaimed for joy when a nearby older gentleman leaped from his stool in front of the machine he had been almost praying at before hitting his small jackpot of a couple of hundred dollars. She pranced through the crowd like someone who felt herself to be actively involved in the excitement of the moment, like she gained strength and energy from the underlying buzz of the room.
Cerrydwen, on the other hand, walked like she was shielding herself from a constant assault on overwhelming stimuli, like the same energy that boosted Ravyn actually brought her pain. Her eyes were squinted, she walked with one hand seemingly shielding her eyes and her temples from the bright light of the sun. When a nearby blackjack table exploded in laughter and joy as the dealer busted, she winced in pain and staggered in her step before I caught her elbow and steadied her.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
Without looking at me, she choked out, “I will be once we get out of this madness. Sometimes it sucks to be an empath.”
Jim towered over most of the crowd, easily using his bulk and strength to intimidate opennings in lines or crowds just before he reached them. People almost unconsciously moved out of his way as he approached. His eyes were darting everywhere, taking in probabilities of winning and losing and quickly assessing the losing odds at nearly every game we passed. Passing a completely full poker table, he nodded in the direction of a couple of young men sitting across from the dealer who was placing cards in front of them and said to me, quietly, “There’s a set-up, see those young men, they’re playing that drunk guy in the middle, he’ll likely never know what hit him and how he lost all of those chips before dusk.”
The gaming hall was immense, crowded with machines, tables and activities that had been artfully arranged to make passersby move through every conceivable type of gambling in order to get anywhere in the room. Just about everywhere you went, employees of the resort seemed to invite or even implore you to join in a simple little game or to sample some free drink. It was an orgy of activity clearly designed to overload the senses of even the savviest consumer into trying just one pull at this machine, or one hand at this table. Why not take one good roll of the dice? It might be your lucky day! You know, you can’t win in Vegas if you don’t play!
But beneath all of the happy, exciting buzz was an undetow of desperation and seriousness to the room that was also visible, if you were lucky (or unlucky-depending on your persepctive) enough to be immune to many of the other distractions. I could almost feel the desperate, nearly hopeless need of the single mother pushing in the last of her rent money, praying for the miracle that she was just due for to finally come through, and the despair she felt when the symbols aligned to reveal the loser that she knew in heart that she likely would always be.
I could feel the stares of the hard edged men and women looking out from the ‘pits’ as they watched everyone, assessing who was cheating and who needed to be stopped. Their faces betrayed the fact that they had long ago become immune to the ebb and flow of emotion stemming from glorious victory and crushing defeat. I felt in these stares, a strange sense of kindred with these last folks, knowing all too well how much that loss meant.
We reached the buffet-style restaurant that lay on the far edge of the room and made our way inside. The columns and artfully placed plants that formed the only wall between the seating area of the restaurant and the gaming hall beyond provided just enough relief from the sights and sounds of the gambling to allow Cerrydwen to emerge from her self-imposed cocoon, but allowed enough to get through to be a constant reminder of the seemingly endless bounty of winning that lay beyond this temporary respite.
Everyone got their trays and made their way through the buffet line, I stayed near Cerrydwen, grabbing her tray for her, making it look like we were a couple. I made sure to grab enough food and drink to maintain the appearance of a tray for two, so as to remain inconspicuous in the crowds of the restaurant. I paid for the both of us and we made our way from the line to the large table where there were a dozen other folks already waiting.
Even in this place, in this city, it was fairly easy to tell that the people waiting for us were other ORCs, marked in some strange way as special and talented in ways that most people only dreamed of. John was already there, with one of the young men from the attack on the canyon. The group was quite an eclectic mix, as diverse in apparent race and ethnicity as they were in talents. There was a small, older chinese man who easily could have played a character in any number of Hong Kong made martial arts movies. To his side was a younger woman with black, colorfully braided hair and the brown skin of latin american heritage. Dominating others near him was a large, african american man with a clean shaven head, a hearty laugh and large, gnarled hands. Herne and his wife, Moira, also were there, satisfied smiles on their faces.
My companions were greeted as friends who had returned as if gone from a long journey, I was introduced as ‘Randy’ a prospect from the Chicago area, which was the agreed upon disguise until the full, private meetings with the membership were to take place, probably tomorrow.
Everyone seemed genuinely happy to meet me, as they introdced themselves and indicated where they were from. (As they become important to the story, I will present their names and such so you can remember them as well.)
Everything was going fine, until a small, rather indistinct man to the left of the older chinese man (who had given his name as Wang and his home as Los Angeles) introduced himself as Agron, from Virginia, and said, “N-n-nice t-t-to m-m-meet you, R-Ru-Rus-Randy, I-I-I’m p-p-pleased t-t-to f-f-fin-finally m-m-m-meet you.” Something about his voice, his stutter, jarred something in my memory. It wasn’t after the dinner though, and after the plans for the meeting to take place the next day were laid, that I started to recall where I had heard that voice before.
Later that evening, after the others had gone to bed, or gone to gamble, I finally recalled what struck me about that Agron fellow. His voice, his stutter recalled a voice I had heard in the first few days of my awakening in the NecroLab, a voice that could only belong to another assistant of Drake’s who had helped Dr. Geek to get my Chakra embedded properly. I never saw his face, since at that time my Spirit had been forced back inside the Chakra for the transition. But his voice, and his damnable stutter, were unmistakably unique. He had been called the Tinker by Dr. Geek and his staff, who had spoken on him after he finished his work, with awe and with not just a little bit of fear.
I sat there, alone, meditating on just how to handle the situation. There was a traitor, or at least a double agent in our larger circle. This man knew of the plans for the corporate meeting, and had been told like all of the rest of those at the table to read my blog, that the importance of it would be revealed at the meeting. I can remember now how eager he was to take down that website address, and how the gleam in his eyes seemed to glow bright with understanding and anticipation.
I had that sinking feeling in my virtual stomach as a I knew for a certainty that tomorrow, everything would change....
It’s quite ingenious actually, to package the experience of losing one’s money in games chance as entertainment, so that when the majority of patrons walk away from the place lighter in the wallet, they often do so happily, thinking that at least they got their money’s worth of free alcohol, wondrous sights, and adrenaline rushes of temporary wins. Looking around at all of the poeple, from retired grandmothers and grandfathers, to blue collar factory workers, to single moms, to normally bright and fiscally conservative businessmen all lining up to have their chance to flush away some money that may or may not be extra in their budgets was very depressing.
I couldn’t help wondering if my detached attitude towards the sights and sounds that the resort owners were employing to detach theses folks from their money was related to my lack of hormones and the limited amount of stimuli that I could actually now experience. I remember having made trips before to Vegas, and that I was as enthralled by the experience as many of these poor, sleep deprived people now seemed to be.
I was walking with the Frau, Ravyn, Cerrydwen and Jim.
The Frau seemed to be her normal, happy self as she toddled through the maze of machines, tables and people. Smiling at some folks, pointing out machines that were celebrating winners, but otherwise unaffected by the hustle and bustle of activity. She used her cane artfully to clear a path without actually offending anyone with her gentle touch and her kind smile and easy laugh.
Ravyn seemed to be a bundle of energy, barely contained within her small frame. She smiled more than the Frau, and exclaimed for joy when a nearby older gentleman leaped from his stool in front of the machine he had been almost praying at before hitting his small jackpot of a couple of hundred dollars. She pranced through the crowd like someone who felt herself to be actively involved in the excitement of the moment, like she gained strength and energy from the underlying buzz of the room.
Cerrydwen, on the other hand, walked like she was shielding herself from a constant assault on overwhelming stimuli, like the same energy that boosted Ravyn actually brought her pain. Her eyes were squinted, she walked with one hand seemingly shielding her eyes and her temples from the bright light of the sun. When a nearby blackjack table exploded in laughter and joy as the dealer busted, she winced in pain and staggered in her step before I caught her elbow and steadied her.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
Without looking at me, she choked out, “I will be once we get out of this madness. Sometimes it sucks to be an empath.”
Jim towered over most of the crowd, easily using his bulk and strength to intimidate opennings in lines or crowds just before he reached them. People almost unconsciously moved out of his way as he approached. His eyes were darting everywhere, taking in probabilities of winning and losing and quickly assessing the losing odds at nearly every game we passed. Passing a completely full poker table, he nodded in the direction of a couple of young men sitting across from the dealer who was placing cards in front of them and said to me, quietly, “There’s a set-up, see those young men, they’re playing that drunk guy in the middle, he’ll likely never know what hit him and how he lost all of those chips before dusk.”
The gaming hall was immense, crowded with machines, tables and activities that had been artfully arranged to make passersby move through every conceivable type of gambling in order to get anywhere in the room. Just about everywhere you went, employees of the resort seemed to invite or even implore you to join in a simple little game or to sample some free drink. It was an orgy of activity clearly designed to overload the senses of even the savviest consumer into trying just one pull at this machine, or one hand at this table. Why not take one good roll of the dice? It might be your lucky day! You know, you can’t win in Vegas if you don’t play!
But beneath all of the happy, exciting buzz was an undetow of desperation and seriousness to the room that was also visible, if you were lucky (or unlucky-depending on your persepctive) enough to be immune to many of the other distractions. I could almost feel the desperate, nearly hopeless need of the single mother pushing in the last of her rent money, praying for the miracle that she was just due for to finally come through, and the despair she felt when the symbols aligned to reveal the loser that she knew in heart that she likely would always be.
I could feel the stares of the hard edged men and women looking out from the ‘pits’ as they watched everyone, assessing who was cheating and who needed to be stopped. Their faces betrayed the fact that they had long ago become immune to the ebb and flow of emotion stemming from glorious victory and crushing defeat. I felt in these stares, a strange sense of kindred with these last folks, knowing all too well how much that loss meant.
We reached the buffet-style restaurant that lay on the far edge of the room and made our way inside. The columns and artfully placed plants that formed the only wall between the seating area of the restaurant and the gaming hall beyond provided just enough relief from the sights and sounds of the gambling to allow Cerrydwen to emerge from her self-imposed cocoon, but allowed enough to get through to be a constant reminder of the seemingly endless bounty of winning that lay beyond this temporary respite.
Everyone got their trays and made their way through the buffet line, I stayed near Cerrydwen, grabbing her tray for her, making it look like we were a couple. I made sure to grab enough food and drink to maintain the appearance of a tray for two, so as to remain inconspicuous in the crowds of the restaurant. I paid for the both of us and we made our way from the line to the large table where there were a dozen other folks already waiting.
Even in this place, in this city, it was fairly easy to tell that the people waiting for us were other ORCs, marked in some strange way as special and talented in ways that most people only dreamed of. John was already there, with one of the young men from the attack on the canyon. The group was quite an eclectic mix, as diverse in apparent race and ethnicity as they were in talents. There was a small, older chinese man who easily could have played a character in any number of Hong Kong made martial arts movies. To his side was a younger woman with black, colorfully braided hair and the brown skin of latin american heritage. Dominating others near him was a large, african american man with a clean shaven head, a hearty laugh and large, gnarled hands. Herne and his wife, Moira, also were there, satisfied smiles on their faces.
My companions were greeted as friends who had returned as if gone from a long journey, I was introduced as ‘Randy’ a prospect from the Chicago area, which was the agreed upon disguise until the full, private meetings with the membership were to take place, probably tomorrow.
Everyone seemed genuinely happy to meet me, as they introdced themselves and indicated where they were from. (As they become important to the story, I will present their names and such so you can remember them as well.)
Everything was going fine, until a small, rather indistinct man to the left of the older chinese man (who had given his name as Wang and his home as Los Angeles) introduced himself as Agron, from Virginia, and said, “N-n-nice t-t-to m-m-meet you, R-Ru-Rus-Randy, I-I-I’m p-p-pleased t-t-to f-f-fin-finally m-m-m-meet you.” Something about his voice, his stutter, jarred something in my memory. It wasn’t after the dinner though, and after the plans for the meeting to take place the next day were laid, that I started to recall where I had heard that voice before.
Later that evening, after the others had gone to bed, or gone to gamble, I finally recalled what struck me about that Agron fellow. His voice, his stutter recalled a voice I had heard in the first few days of my awakening in the NecroLab, a voice that could only belong to another assistant of Drake’s who had helped Dr. Geek to get my Chakra embedded properly. I never saw his face, since at that time my Spirit had been forced back inside the Chakra for the transition. But his voice, and his damnable stutter, were unmistakably unique. He had been called the Tinker by Dr. Geek and his staff, who had spoken on him after he finished his work, with awe and with not just a little bit of fear.
I sat there, alone, meditating on just how to handle the situation. There was a traitor, or at least a double agent in our larger circle. This man knew of the plans for the corporate meeting, and had been told like all of the rest of those at the table to read my blog, that the importance of it would be revealed at the meeting. I can remember now how eager he was to take down that website address, and how the gleam in his eyes seemed to glow bright with understanding and anticipation.
I had that sinking feeling in my virtual stomach as a I knew for a certainty that tomorrow, everything would change....
Saturday, March 26, 2005
To (Un)Live and Die in Las Vegas...Part 1
Las Vegas is one of those vibrant cities of which it can truly be said that it never sleeps.
We rolled into Vegas with a plan, with all of the vehicles except the psychedelic van heading for the hotel in which the Convocation was to take place. Rowan and Morrigan would be a problem at that particular place, so the young couple who had their private time interrupted so rudely by my makeover assailants were headed to the western edge of town, far off the famous Strip, and were going to get a room in a residential style motel that rented rooms by the week. We already knew which place that was going to be, as one of the John’s students from the reservation had scouted it out for us and rented the room during our trip from Chicago. This place accepted pets, even large, fearsome looking beasts that might better belong in zoos, as long as the desk manager received his extra $20 (each) at check-in.
Actually, there were several rooms rented in that off-site motel, since Jim felt we might need a a place to fall back to in the event things got squirrelly, as somehow we knew they woould.
The rest of us joined that vast stream of nearly parked traffic that passed for the Strip nowadays. The hotel for the Convocation was one of those really big, really famous places that could be identified by just about anyone from just about anywhere solely based on its name, which I will avoid mentioning at this time for legal considerations.
(You just don’t fuck with the people who run these things, after reading about these events you will understand why I have chosen not to identify the exact location.)
I had my trepidations as we approached the hotel, I simply was not used to being around this many people. I had carefully examined myself with a mirror after my makeover and didn’t see how anyone would be able to recognize me, since the ladies had done such a good job blending everything together and putting together such a complete look. But I still felt unsettled. Perhaps it was a general anxiety about being in such a public setting, but something was gnawing at the back of my mind.
No one else seemed to have these same feelings, except perhaps Cerrydwen. She had returned to her dour, gloomy self shortly after the makeover, and was no longer smiling. She seemed almost as nervous as I did, staring at all the people with a challenge in her eye, like she was daring them to mess with her. Hardly anyone met her gaze for long without looking away or looking down quickly.
I was riding in the back seat of Jim’s truck, with Herne riding shotgun (almost literally if you counted all of the hidden weapons on his person, from his semi-automatic pistol to the newly confiscated stun gun to the hunting knife he kept sheathed in the small of his back). Cerrywen was sitting right behind him, spending most of her time staring out at passersby, while Ravyn sat in the middle between Cerrydwen and myself. She seemed her normally bubbly self as she kept badgering Jim about how much money he was going to give her to gamble with. She seemed to think she had some special skills that would help her with Roulette and some of the dicing games.
Jim remained stoic throughout her banter, making non-committal noises about gambling being risky and how the house had all of the built-in advantages. As we approached the parking garage for our hotel, Ravyn turned her attention to Cerrydwen, “Sis, isn’t this going to be great? I just love the energy of all these people, all this stuff that is going on here. I can’t wait to get inside.”
Cerrywen turned her glare back to Ravyn, a withering look if I had ever seen one, “Yeah, great. All these people. I can’t wait.”
Oblivious to the tone Cerry was using, Ravyn blurted out, “I’ll bet you and I can make a killing at the tables. You know, if we got you in the right poker game, your winnings alone could pay for this whole trip!”
“I’m not playing poker against her,” said Herne, smiling as he looked back. “But we need to focus on the matter at hand of the Convocation, darling, gambling will have to wait until afterwards.”
Ravyn sat back, crossing her ams, lips drawn down in a pout, “You guys are no fun. I’ve been cooped up all winter long!”
Jim pulled into a parking spot on a lower lever of the garage, followed soon after by the other vehicles that remained in our group. We grabbed what bags and stuff we didn’t want to leave in the truck and went inside to get our rooms.
It felt strange walking so freely, so openly, in the middle of the afternoon among crowds of people, and not attracting the stares of fear and revulsion that I normally get. The worst I got now were looks of amusement and curiousity. It was like a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I felt free and easy as I walked through the teaming crowds, I even loved having to push my way through like a normal person. With my normal look, people made sure to keep as far away from me as they could manage. Perhaps everything was going to be OK after all.
Jim handled the check-in, which went smoothly. I am pretty sure that I saw him wince in pain though as he reached for his wallet and pulled out the corporate charge card to pay for all of the rooms. I got the distinct impression that spending money was NOT one of his favorite activities, even if it wasn’t his own. No wonder he did so well in building up the finances of the group so quickly.
Our rooms were in mostly adjoining blocks on the tenth floor, while the conference room we were assigned for the Convocation was on the second floor above the main casino floor but near some of the private gambling rooms that the hi-rollers used for their private gambling with other rich folk.
I ended up bunking down in the same room with Jim, since Herne’s wife, Moira, was already checked in from the day before. Herne was grinning like a fool as he waved at us on the way up to go see her, obviously intent on catching up with some much needed private time with his wife.
John was met in the lobby by a gaggle of his students from the reservation, they seemed amazed at seeing him again, but happy. The various students we had brought with us took off in groups of two or three for their own rooms.
Cerrydwen, the Frau and Ravyn were in the adjoining room. I unlocked the privacy latch on our side of the door between the rooms and knocked.
Ravyn peeked through the cracked door, smiling as she exclaimed, “We’ve got hot tubs in these rooms, Jim I’m going to give you a big hug!”
Jim looked down at his feet, “Yeah, well, you don’t need to be SO surprised, I’m not that cheap!”
The Frau called out from behind Ravyn, “Remember, we’ve got a meeting with the council at dinner, everyone should get freshened up and ready for that!”
I closed the door and looked for the remote control for the big, flat screen television that hung on the wall opposite the beds. Jim already had it in his hand, he turned it on and we vegged out to a couple of hours of SportsCenter.
After about the fourth cycle of hi-lights we got a call on room phone, Ravyn letting us know in which of the many restaurants in the hotel to meet at for the council session...
We rolled into Vegas with a plan, with all of the vehicles except the psychedelic van heading for the hotel in which the Convocation was to take place. Rowan and Morrigan would be a problem at that particular place, so the young couple who had their private time interrupted so rudely by my makeover assailants were headed to the western edge of town, far off the famous Strip, and were going to get a room in a residential style motel that rented rooms by the week. We already knew which place that was going to be, as one of the John’s students from the reservation had scouted it out for us and rented the room during our trip from Chicago. This place accepted pets, even large, fearsome looking beasts that might better belong in zoos, as long as the desk manager received his extra $20 (each) at check-in.
Actually, there were several rooms rented in that off-site motel, since Jim felt we might need a a place to fall back to in the event things got squirrelly, as somehow we knew they woould.
The rest of us joined that vast stream of nearly parked traffic that passed for the Strip nowadays. The hotel for the Convocation was one of those really big, really famous places that could be identified by just about anyone from just about anywhere solely based on its name, which I will avoid mentioning at this time for legal considerations.
(You just don’t fuck with the people who run these things, after reading about these events you will understand why I have chosen not to identify the exact location.)
I had my trepidations as we approached the hotel, I simply was not used to being around this many people. I had carefully examined myself with a mirror after my makeover and didn’t see how anyone would be able to recognize me, since the ladies had done such a good job blending everything together and putting together such a complete look. But I still felt unsettled. Perhaps it was a general anxiety about being in such a public setting, but something was gnawing at the back of my mind.
No one else seemed to have these same feelings, except perhaps Cerrydwen. She had returned to her dour, gloomy self shortly after the makeover, and was no longer smiling. She seemed almost as nervous as I did, staring at all the people with a challenge in her eye, like she was daring them to mess with her. Hardly anyone met her gaze for long without looking away or looking down quickly.
I was riding in the back seat of Jim’s truck, with Herne riding shotgun (almost literally if you counted all of the hidden weapons on his person, from his semi-automatic pistol to the newly confiscated stun gun to the hunting knife he kept sheathed in the small of his back). Cerrywen was sitting right behind him, spending most of her time staring out at passersby, while Ravyn sat in the middle between Cerrydwen and myself. She seemed her normally bubbly self as she kept badgering Jim about how much money he was going to give her to gamble with. She seemed to think she had some special skills that would help her with Roulette and some of the dicing games.
Jim remained stoic throughout her banter, making non-committal noises about gambling being risky and how the house had all of the built-in advantages. As we approached the parking garage for our hotel, Ravyn turned her attention to Cerrydwen, “Sis, isn’t this going to be great? I just love the energy of all these people, all this stuff that is going on here. I can’t wait to get inside.”
Cerrywen turned her glare back to Ravyn, a withering look if I had ever seen one, “Yeah, great. All these people. I can’t wait.”
Oblivious to the tone Cerry was using, Ravyn blurted out, “I’ll bet you and I can make a killing at the tables. You know, if we got you in the right poker game, your winnings alone could pay for this whole trip!”
“I’m not playing poker against her,” said Herne, smiling as he looked back. “But we need to focus on the matter at hand of the Convocation, darling, gambling will have to wait until afterwards.”
Ravyn sat back, crossing her ams, lips drawn down in a pout, “You guys are no fun. I’ve been cooped up all winter long!”
Jim pulled into a parking spot on a lower lever of the garage, followed soon after by the other vehicles that remained in our group. We grabbed what bags and stuff we didn’t want to leave in the truck and went inside to get our rooms.
It felt strange walking so freely, so openly, in the middle of the afternoon among crowds of people, and not attracting the stares of fear and revulsion that I normally get. The worst I got now were looks of amusement and curiousity. It was like a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders, I felt free and easy as I walked through the teaming crowds, I even loved having to push my way through like a normal person. With my normal look, people made sure to keep as far away from me as they could manage. Perhaps everything was going to be OK after all.
Jim handled the check-in, which went smoothly. I am pretty sure that I saw him wince in pain though as he reached for his wallet and pulled out the corporate charge card to pay for all of the rooms. I got the distinct impression that spending money was NOT one of his favorite activities, even if it wasn’t his own. No wonder he did so well in building up the finances of the group so quickly.
Our rooms were in mostly adjoining blocks on the tenth floor, while the conference room we were assigned for the Convocation was on the second floor above the main casino floor but near some of the private gambling rooms that the hi-rollers used for their private gambling with other rich folk.
I ended up bunking down in the same room with Jim, since Herne’s wife, Moira, was already checked in from the day before. Herne was grinning like a fool as he waved at us on the way up to go see her, obviously intent on catching up with some much needed private time with his wife.
John was met in the lobby by a gaggle of his students from the reservation, they seemed amazed at seeing him again, but happy. The various students we had brought with us took off in groups of two or three for their own rooms.
Cerrydwen, the Frau and Ravyn were in the adjoining room. I unlocked the privacy latch on our side of the door between the rooms and knocked.
Ravyn peeked through the cracked door, smiling as she exclaimed, “We’ve got hot tubs in these rooms, Jim I’m going to give you a big hug!”
Jim looked down at his feet, “Yeah, well, you don’t need to be SO surprised, I’m not that cheap!”
The Frau called out from behind Ravyn, “Remember, we’ve got a meeting with the council at dinner, everyone should get freshened up and ready for that!”
I closed the door and looked for the remote control for the big, flat screen television that hung on the wall opposite the beds. Jim already had it in his hand, he turned it on and we vegged out to a couple of hours of SportsCenter.
After about the fourth cycle of hi-lights we got a call on room phone, Ravyn letting us know in which of the many restaurants in the hotel to meet at for the council session...
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Gals Gone Wild
In the last major stop before we made it to Vegas, I was ambushed by Ravyn, the Frau and Cerrydwen and dragged in to the psychedelic van for my own personal 'ambush makeover'.
The wenches must have been planning the event for quite some time, as I saw that Ravyn was carrying a couple of bags from that Outlet Mall we hit sometime a ways back. Inside I could see the tendrils from what I hoped was only a black haired wig. The Frau appeared to be holding a large make-up bag with a set of industrial sized application brushes. Cerrydwen was smiling for I believe the first time since I had met her. She appeared to be holding some folded up clothes that almost seemed ridiculous to have ever been folded, a set of jeans that already looked ragged and frayed, a black T-shirt of some sort, and a set of very large, very brutish looking studded leather bracers all piled on top of a long black trenchcoat.
I was helpless under their relentless onslaught, as they pulled me into the van, kicked out the young couple who had taken this moment to grab a little nookie, and stripped me down to my skivvies faster than a lone Chippendales dancer at a bachelorette party, giggling (even cackling!) like schoolgirls over their first crushes.
In less time than it would have taken that horny young man to reach for the sky, so to speak, I was transformed from a pale, bald, but semi-respectable looking zombie with a few scars, to a passing fair impersonation of a trenchcoat wearing throwback to an 80's rock band, with hair-sprayed, spikey bangs sticking up from my head and hair cascading around my shoulders.
Looking in the mirror when they had finally exhausted themselves into a giggling pile of breathless women turned to schoolgirls, I saw a stranger who could have easily been a member of that quintessential hard rock band, Kiss. Everything from a silver sword earring dangling from my right ear to the several silver chains now dangling from neck simply screamed white trash. The Ozzie Ozbourne concert T-shirt and the huge bracers that covered most of my forearms just seemed to finish the ensemble. I threw my shades back onto my face, put down the mirror, and held up my left hand in that Heavy Metal, 'devil's horns' sign and said "Dudes, let's rock!"
The shrieking laughter that erupted from my attackers sent them into asthmatic fits of coughing, tears flowing down their cheeks.
Somehow, these three women had transformed my image and hid my true nature from casual observation better than all of the Dr. Geeks' lab techs could manage in a half a day, and probably for a fraction of the cost! Little did I know just how valuable my makeover would become in the coming days...but that is for the next couple of posts....
The wenches must have been planning the event for quite some time, as I saw that Ravyn was carrying a couple of bags from that Outlet Mall we hit sometime a ways back. Inside I could see the tendrils from what I hoped was only a black haired wig. The Frau appeared to be holding a large make-up bag with a set of industrial sized application brushes. Cerrydwen was smiling for I believe the first time since I had met her. She appeared to be holding some folded up clothes that almost seemed ridiculous to have ever been folded, a set of jeans that already looked ragged and frayed, a black T-shirt of some sort, and a set of very large, very brutish looking studded leather bracers all piled on top of a long black trenchcoat.
I was helpless under their relentless onslaught, as they pulled me into the van, kicked out the young couple who had taken this moment to grab a little nookie, and stripped me down to my skivvies faster than a lone Chippendales dancer at a bachelorette party, giggling (even cackling!) like schoolgirls over their first crushes.
In less time than it would have taken that horny young man to reach for the sky, so to speak, I was transformed from a pale, bald, but semi-respectable looking zombie with a few scars, to a passing fair impersonation of a trenchcoat wearing throwback to an 80's rock band, with hair-sprayed, spikey bangs sticking up from my head and hair cascading around my shoulders.
Looking in the mirror when they had finally exhausted themselves into a giggling pile of breathless women turned to schoolgirls, I saw a stranger who could have easily been a member of that quintessential hard rock band, Kiss. Everything from a silver sword earring dangling from my right ear to the several silver chains now dangling from neck simply screamed white trash. The Ozzie Ozbourne concert T-shirt and the huge bracers that covered most of my forearms just seemed to finish the ensemble. I threw my shades back onto my face, put down the mirror, and held up my left hand in that Heavy Metal, 'devil's horns' sign and said "Dudes, let's rock!"
The shrieking laughter that erupted from my attackers sent them into asthmatic fits of coughing, tears flowing down their cheeks.
Somehow, these three women had transformed my image and hid my true nature from casual observation better than all of the Dr. Geeks' lab techs could manage in a half a day, and probably for a fraction of the cost! Little did I know just how valuable my makeover would become in the coming days...but that is for the next couple of posts....
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Slow Road to Vegas
This road trip was a heck of lot different from my last road trip out west. Before, I travelled alone, so the only stops I had to make were for gasoline for the car, or to break up the monotony of the drive.
Now with with five vehicles of varying fuel efficiencies, two large animals, fourteen living people, and myself, we simply couldn’t make the kind of time that I had become used to making when I travelled alone. So, the drive out to Vegas lasted almost a full week.
This week long odyssey provided ample opportunities to get to know these strange people who had taken me in so quickly, some of whom had risked their lives for an undead man that they themselves knew so little about. I alternated driving and riding in just about every vehicle, so that I could get to know these people even better.
I will spare you the details of the journey for now, since much of what I came to learn about these folks in the course of that journey will come out in future posts anyway, but this will also be an opportunity to catch the blog up closer to my more recent experiences.
As an example, all of the entries from ‘On the Warpath, Part 1’ until the last post related the events of Saturday, February 26, 2005 when we rescued John and then were in turn rescued by Ravyn. We left for Las Vegas in the afternoon of Sunday, February 27. The events of that day were truly remarkable, so I felt the need to take the time to detail exactly what happened.
After what seemed an eternity, we arrived in Las Vegas on the evening of Friday, March 4. That is, of course, when the shit hit the fan again...
Now with with five vehicles of varying fuel efficiencies, two large animals, fourteen living people, and myself, we simply couldn’t make the kind of time that I had become used to making when I travelled alone. So, the drive out to Vegas lasted almost a full week.
This week long odyssey provided ample opportunities to get to know these strange people who had taken me in so quickly, some of whom had risked their lives for an undead man that they themselves knew so little about. I alternated driving and riding in just about every vehicle, so that I could get to know these people even better.
I will spare you the details of the journey for now, since much of what I came to learn about these folks in the course of that journey will come out in future posts anyway, but this will also be an opportunity to catch the blog up closer to my more recent experiences.
As an example, all of the entries from ‘On the Warpath, Part 1’ until the last post related the events of Saturday, February 26, 2005 when we rescued John and then were in turn rescued by Ravyn. We left for Las Vegas in the afternoon of Sunday, February 27. The events of that day were truly remarkable, so I felt the need to take the time to detail exactly what happened.
After what seemed an eternity, we arrived in Las Vegas on the evening of Friday, March 4. That is, of course, when the shit hit the fan again...
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Preparing to Leave
The clock was ticking on the next surprise that Drake might pull, so affairs in Chicago had to be wrapped up pretty damn quick. While Herne and I caravaned our van load of (soon to be former) bounty hunters to the nearest Saintly Sisters of Mother Mary’s Mercy Hospital, the others were preparing for our newest journey westward.
Jim, the Professor, had suggested four possible locations for an organized-on-the-fly, semi-covert Convocation of the Clans--all in places that are normally warm and sunny this time of year, since Ravyn insisted--Disneyworld in Orlando, Disneyland in Anaheim, New Orleans, or the original Sin City, Las Vegas. The choices were limited not only in terms of climate, but in places that handled large amounts of tourists, usually had plenty of meeting places and hotel rooms, and where up to a few hundred Casters of various types ranging from Native American shamans to Jedi-like New Age sorcerors could come together in a fairly inconspicuous manner, and yet still be public enough to provide a modicum of safety in numbers.
His reasoning was solid, any gatherings made in places similar to the co-op offered Drake and his followers too many opportunities to drum up some local goons and buy off the local police force. He was obviously willing to set those types on us with the possibility that people would be killed or seriously hurt. But, Jim argued, in a place like the four locations he pointed out, the sheer size of the gathering places and the publicity that any possible attack would draw on the attackers made them the safest and most convenient choices for this improvised gathering.
I had no idea how large this group was, or how much financial support they had until Jim started this discussion. I was further amazed to learn that he had helped to establish all of this while he was still a graduate student nearly fifteen years ago. In that time, I later learned, he had helped turn a fairly modest endowment from the estate of a modestly wealthy benefactor of a couple hundred thousand dollars into a private corporation with a net value in the low eight figures.
Everyone I spoke to about the Professor marvelled at how he was a financial wizard, that eventhough he disavowed any magickal talents of his own, he seemed to have a true knack to know how and when to invest in various market instruments, diving into the stock market with seemingly reckless abandon just before stocks exploded, while also pulling out just before major crashes. He would just shrug when I asked him about such things and say it really, really paid to know how to research and recognize the small little signs that signalled big changes to come.
Amazingly though, he had a deep disdain for personal wealth and for those who sought such riches for their own sake. He presented himself as a man who lived modestly and who helped others out of a genuine interest in seeing good done in the world.
So it seemed to make a perverse kind of perfect sense that his final recommendation for the convocation was Las Vegas, a place that represented the antithesis of everything he stood for.
The preparations for the trip were done before dawn. I, of course, travelled light. I still didn’t have my own vehicle and equipment back from the my first southwest trip, since there just hadn’t been time for John’s students to make it to Chicago yet. Ravyn called them and had them redirect towards Vegas, asking them to start making arrangements for lodging for as many of the 80 or so Casters and as many of their several hundred students as would be able to make it.
Ravyn spent much of her time on the phone calling other Casters and sending them towards Vegas instead of Chicago. The Frau and Cerrydwen though, seemed to communicate with others through less conventional means, spending their time in a trance-like state that I recognized from my own Spirit Walking.
That left most of the packing and other physical work to the half-dozen or so students of Ravyn that were coming with us on this trip.
By the time everything was packed and ready to roll, there was a small caravan comprised of Jim’s truck, one of the appropriated SUV’s from the bounty hunters, an older van decked out in the psychedelic colors of someone who spent too much time smoking dope and wathcing old Scooby-Doo cartoons, and a couple of smaller econobox cars.
Luckily, John did come awake during the time spent getting ready and was able to recognize everyone and thank each of us for the rescue before drifting back into a healing sleep.
Shortly after noon, the Professor led the motley group of vehicles onto the Interstate and we headed west. For me, it was the second time in less than a week that I making this trip. Thius time however, I went forward with hope and friends at my side.
There was no way to know what dangers may lie ahead for us at that point, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to face those dangers alone.
Jim, the Professor, had suggested four possible locations for an organized-on-the-fly, semi-covert Convocation of the Clans--all in places that are normally warm and sunny this time of year, since Ravyn insisted--Disneyworld in Orlando, Disneyland in Anaheim, New Orleans, or the original Sin City, Las Vegas. The choices were limited not only in terms of climate, but in places that handled large amounts of tourists, usually had plenty of meeting places and hotel rooms, and where up to a few hundred Casters of various types ranging from Native American shamans to Jedi-like New Age sorcerors could come together in a fairly inconspicuous manner, and yet still be public enough to provide a modicum of safety in numbers.
His reasoning was solid, any gatherings made in places similar to the co-op offered Drake and his followers too many opportunities to drum up some local goons and buy off the local police force. He was obviously willing to set those types on us with the possibility that people would be killed or seriously hurt. But, Jim argued, in a place like the four locations he pointed out, the sheer size of the gathering places and the publicity that any possible attack would draw on the attackers made them the safest and most convenient choices for this improvised gathering.
I had no idea how large this group was, or how much financial support they had until Jim started this discussion. I was further amazed to learn that he had helped to establish all of this while he was still a graduate student nearly fifteen years ago. In that time, I later learned, he had helped turn a fairly modest endowment from the estate of a modestly wealthy benefactor of a couple hundred thousand dollars into a private corporation with a net value in the low eight figures.
Everyone I spoke to about the Professor marvelled at how he was a financial wizard, that eventhough he disavowed any magickal talents of his own, he seemed to have a true knack to know how and when to invest in various market instruments, diving into the stock market with seemingly reckless abandon just before stocks exploded, while also pulling out just before major crashes. He would just shrug when I asked him about such things and say it really, really paid to know how to research and recognize the small little signs that signalled big changes to come.
Amazingly though, he had a deep disdain for personal wealth and for those who sought such riches for their own sake. He presented himself as a man who lived modestly and who helped others out of a genuine interest in seeing good done in the world.
So it seemed to make a perverse kind of perfect sense that his final recommendation for the convocation was Las Vegas, a place that represented the antithesis of everything he stood for.
The preparations for the trip were done before dawn. I, of course, travelled light. I still didn’t have my own vehicle and equipment back from the my first southwest trip, since there just hadn’t been time for John’s students to make it to Chicago yet. Ravyn called them and had them redirect towards Vegas, asking them to start making arrangements for lodging for as many of the 80 or so Casters and as many of their several hundred students as would be able to make it.
Ravyn spent much of her time on the phone calling other Casters and sending them towards Vegas instead of Chicago. The Frau and Cerrydwen though, seemed to communicate with others through less conventional means, spending their time in a trance-like state that I recognized from my own Spirit Walking.
That left most of the packing and other physical work to the half-dozen or so students of Ravyn that were coming with us on this trip.
By the time everything was packed and ready to roll, there was a small caravan comprised of Jim’s truck, one of the appropriated SUV’s from the bounty hunters, an older van decked out in the psychedelic colors of someone who spent too much time smoking dope and wathcing old Scooby-Doo cartoons, and a couple of smaller econobox cars.
Luckily, John did come awake during the time spent getting ready and was able to recognize everyone and thank each of us for the rescue before drifting back into a healing sleep.
Shortly after noon, the Professor led the motley group of vehicles onto the Interstate and we headed west. For me, it was the second time in less than a week that I making this trip. Thius time however, I went forward with hope and friends at my side.
There was no way to know what dangers may lie ahead for us at that point, but for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I had to face those dangers alone.
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