Chapter 4

Change in Plans

“This is absolutely horrifying,” Dana said, looking at her left shoulder. She was lying on her back on an operating table, and the skin of her shoulder was splayed open like an ominous dissection to reveal the musculature underneath. Hunched over her stomach was an unconscious man in his sixties, his glasses askew on his face. “If I was still alive, I would never eat chicken again.”

Lily stood over them both. She had one hand on the man’s forehead, her thumb and pinky on his temples. In her other hand was a needle threaded with sutures, and she wore a labcoat and safety glasses.

“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate here.” Lily’s tail had a sharp barb on the end, and she was using it to hold the tendon of Dana’s bicep in place while she sutured it into some holes she had drilled. While Lily was stitching Dana up, she was in the Dreamscape with Dr. Feldman, one of the teaching vets at Colorado State, attending his classes.

“This probably would have been better at a hospital,” Dana noted, watching with interest as the sutures moved in and out of her bone. There was no pain, but definitely an odd, buzzing pressure. “I’m sure they have better equipment.”

“Hospitals have way more cameras than a vet school does. Now shut the fuck up, he’s going over some new technique on a horse and it might help here.” Lily’s eyes flashed, and she gazed into the distance for a couple minutes before continuing. “Nope, doesn’t apply. Well, unless your hoof is fucked up.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m supposed to just shoot you and make glue out of your bones.” Lily let go of the doctor’s head and used both hands now, her tail withdrawing. “We just need to keep it in place long enough for your body to heal it.”

“Yeah.”

After Lily had found Dana, the two of them had broken into the vet hospital to try and find an x-ray machine. Instead, they had run across Dr. Feldman, who was staying late to go over some of his notes. Lily had knocked him out and, once they had found a room to operate in, had enrolled in Dream University. While Lily swore that she was just getting the necessary info, Dr. Feldman had grinned more than once in his sleep.

Now that the first tendon was in place, Lily began working on the second. This one went much quicker, and once she was done, Lily pulled the pins out of Dana’s skin that held her wound open.

“By the way, I’m way outside your HMO,” Lily told her while holding her skin flaps together. The healing took a little bit, but once Dana’s skin sealed shut, all she had left was a ragged scar.

“It’s okay. I gave a fake name in the lobby.” Dana waited a moment before flexing her hand, then tried to lift her arm a couple of inches. There was an odd pulling sensation in her shoulder, but everything else felt fine. She had been right in her assessment that her injured cells needed to be pushed together again, and apparently her tendons took a bit longer than skin to heal. She wondered if it would be different if she had just eaten, but now was not the time to think about food. Her hunger had returned, and the professor was starting to smell like beef jerky.

“Let’s get the good doctor back to his office. Unless you’re going to eat him?”

“Sadly, no.” Lily tossed the safety glasses across the room and pulled off her surgical gloves, all of which puffed into pink smoke. “Other than banging a few co-eds, he’s a decent guy. Even offered to tutor me after school. Help me work on my technique.”

“You totally did him, didn’t you?”

“Who, me? I never kiss and tell, darling. Besides, I wanted the full May-September college experience, you know? Be with a man who reminds me of my father.”

“Gross.” Dana sat up and slid out from under Feldman.

“Daddy Feldman didn’t think so.” Lily licked her lips and winked. “Here, let me get him. I need your arm in good condition and don’t want to try and fix you up again.”

“Could you fix me, though? Without him?”

“I did go through an entire course on animal surgery, so maybe.” The succubus chuckled. “If we come across a dog in distress, I have a few tricks that could help.” She tossed Feldman over her shoulder and Dana made sure the operating table was cleaned up properly, then threw away the scalpel, drill, and needle. The last thing she needed was for a zombie outbreak to occur because they had been sloppy. She picked up her backpack with her good arm and headed for the exit.

She held the door for Lily, and the two of them returned Feldman to his office. Once inside, they propped him up in his chair. He had a stupid grin on his face and a small wet stain on the front of his pants.

“That’s so gross,” Dana said, twisting her face into a frown.

“Oh, we are way past judging people for cum-stained underwear. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

Lily led the way through the dark halls of the vet teaching hospital. They snuck outside a side door and walked a few blocks in silence before Lily threw her arm around Dana’s shoulders.

“How does it feel?” she asked.

Dana flexed her arm. The weird sensation was passing, and her arm felt mostly normal. “Fine, I think.”

“Good. Because I need you to be functional for what’s going to happen next.”

“You mean the drive back? I really only need one arm for that.”

They passed under a street light long enough for Dana to see the maniacal grin on Lily’s face.

“Oh, we’re not going home. Not yet. Remember that guy I fought with at the hotel?”

“The one you knocked out?”

“Same. When I was going through his head, I spotted something interesting. You see, we aren’t too far away from one of their storehouses. Well ... not far is a relative term. They have a place in Montana where they took the things they found in Unearthly Delights.”

“But isn’t that place heavily guarded?”

The succubus laughed. “Well, yes and no. Between the two of us, I think we can be in and out before they know we’re there. Besides, I know for a fact that they have the marbles, and I even saw a rough sketch of that necklace thing inside Cyrus’ mind.”

“I don’t understand.” Dana stopped walking and put her hands on her hips. She had given up hope on finding the lost items from the thrift store. “I thought these people were too dangerous to mess around with.”

“Well, they are. So here is what you need to know. Right now, there’s a really good chance they are trying to track us down. It’s only a matter of time before they find our trail. If we head back to the house, we lead them there, and that’s no good. I feel like having assholes on the front lawn of Mike’s house is a bit cliche. So, we lead them somewhere else, and they definitely won’t be expecting us to go to them.”

“And?” Dana expected there was more.

“After we raid this place, I know somewhere we can go to lay low for a bit, until they’re off our trail. Well, your trail. You see, I can be quite impossible to trace. I can fly and change shape. You? Not so much. If we’re lucky, they still have no idea who you even are, and I intend to keep it that way. But they have access to everything. Cameras, records, the whole nine yards. When you drove away from the hotel, I’m willing to bet that they got a rough idea of where you were headed just by monitoring security cameras. Crazy big brother stuff.”

Fuck. Dana looked around the neighborhood they were in, and grabbed Lily by the hand and led her out into the street. Even though it was an older neighborhood, she was certain that several of the houses had video doorbells, and it would be easy to look through motion logs of such devices. “They probably know where I parked the bike.”

“Well, that’s easy. Tick Tock can just bail on the bike and—”

“No.” Dana stopped moving. “The bike comes too.”

“Be reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable.” The bike had been Alex’s, and Dana had spent the last year fixing up her dead girlfriend’s bike. It was the only link she had to her old life, and she simply couldn’t leave it behind to rust in some college town. It was an act capable of breaking her cold, dead heart and she refused to even consider it. “The bike comes with us.”

Lily sighed and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Fine. If that’s the case, then I guess we had better scope out the neighborhood first.”

The bike was still over a mile away from where they were, so they took a break at a local park and Dana sat on the slide and opened up her phone to check a map of the area. The neighborhood she had parked in was older homes, and even the online satellite map had tons of cars parked there. Most of these would be students who didn’t feel like buying parking passes, so it should be busy enough for her plan to work.

Lily had transformed into a little girl and was busy swinging on the swings. When Dana came over, she got behind Lily and gave her a push to get her higher.

“So, I think we can get him during the day,” Dana said. “There will be a ton of people headed for their morning classes, and it will be easier to blend in.”

“If they know where your bike is, I can’t do it. They could have laid wards for me like last time. Wards don’t give a shit about disguises.” It was weird to hear Lily swear in a seven-year old’s voice, and more than a little unnerving.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Dana asked. “After we get the bike, I mean. Going after the marbles?”

“Can I tell you something?” Lily shifted in her seat and launched out of her swing at the height of her jump. She transformed into her normal form in mid-air and landed gracefully on the damp mulch of the playground. “I am sick and tired of being pushed around by men who think they are better than me.”

“Aren’t we all?” Dana asked.

“It’s more than that. I’ve been having these...” Lily’s face scrunched up, then she sighed. “This is hard for me to say, but I’ve been having these weird dreams lately.”

“Aren’t all of your dreams weird?”

Lily shook her head. “Let’s just say that I don’t have dreams. I haven’t had dreams of my own since ... it’s a long story. Succubi don’t dream. But now I am. And these aren’t happy dreams, either. I am being reminded of things I don’t like to think about.”

Dana didn’t say anything. She felt it was better to let Lily say her piece, because this was the first time that she had ever seen the succubus truly bothered.

“I’ve seen this before in humans,” Lily continued. “They dream about their regrets, or their worst moments. They see them, as if on a theater screen, and are forced to relive them again and again. And the part that really cuts deep is that I shouldn’t be this bothered. I really shouldn’t. Do you know one of the reasons I was so eager to come with you? Because you’re a lot like me. Dead inside. Don’t take it the wrong way, it’s a simple fact.”

“No offense taken,” Dana replied.

“I thought it might be nice to be around someone who doesn’t care about the edges, the flaws, or even the fact that I’m a heartless cunt of a demon who would just as happily walk into your home and murder your whole family just for fun. I’m this evil, vile thing that swallows souls and strips them bare of their individuality. You’ve already seen me kill someone and didn’t even blink. You accept me, and I like how that feels.”

“On some level, everyone wants to be accepted,” Dana said. Logically, she knew that seeing Lily kill someone had bothered her, but that was a part of her that had been cut out.

“But it’s more than that. I wanted to rush across the continent and feel the wind in my hair. To see the world through your eyes and maybe crack some heads along the way. I wanted to blow off some steam, to figure things out before going home.”

Dana waited.

Lily scowled hard enough at the closest group of houses that she imagined the occupants were all now having terrible nightmares as a result.

“These memories in my head are awful, but they shouldn’t bother me. Being forced to relive them should, at most, just piss me off because my time is being wasted. But they cut deep, and keep reminding me of what I lost, once upon a time. Something is going on inside of my head, and I don’t know why. I thought maybe someone cast a spell on me, but now I’m not so sure.”

“How does this relate to our current situation?”

“Because once upon a time, I was convinced to do something very stupid, and it broke me. And now that I’m reliving these painful memories, I just wanna tear someone’s head off, to take back some of my power. I can’t change the past, but if we have a shot at sticking it to the Order and getting some of that magic for you, then let’s go for it. Let’s get you one step closer to a future you can actually live for. I know that I could use the win.” Lily sniffed, looked away and then wiped her cheek.

“Are you crying?”

“I had some mulch on my face. By the way, never trust a crying demon,” Lily told her with a slight hitch in her voice. “They don’t feel sadness or empathy, and will only do it to manipulate you.”

Dana noticed that her question wasn’t actually answered, but let it go.

The early light of day cast dark shadows, which were flooded with students on foot who headed for the college with a sense of purpose. Cyrus watched them as they passed by, his eyes flicking to each one.

Is it you? he wondered. Each student was a potential suspect. Though he knew he couldn’t draw a large enough ward to catch the succubus if she came for the bike, the small ones on the sidewalk would be enough to halt her motion for a few seconds.

Amida, Tasia, and a few others were scattered amongst the scene. Amida wore a sweater vest and sat on a nearby bus bench with a coffee and a journal. He looked like a figure straight out of a college brochure. Tasia was dressed as a student trying to get signatures for a petition, and the others were walking in circles around the block, appearing in appropriate intervals. However, one intrepid Knight was actually mowing someone’s lawn. Cyrus had no idea how they had managed that, but made a note to speak with them later about their ingenuity.

The motorcycle in question had been easy to track. There were so many traffic cameras along the main roads that they had jumped on and watched their prey flee the scene. Cyrus had been concerned to see that the young woman’s arm was somehow reattached, and more than a little bothered when they couldn’t get a positive identification on her or the bike. The license plate on the bike belonged to a young woman who had died in an accident over a year ago, which made him think that the bike was stolen. He had even called the parents of Alex Cross and discovered that they had junked the bike, which confirmed his theory.

So what could he be dealing with? Vampire didn’t make sense, because their target had no issues being out in the sun. Witch, perhaps? He had seen a witch use a spell to reattach a limb before. Or maybe the limb wasn’t even hers to begin with? He had gotten into a rough fight once with a man who had animated a pair of wooden arms for himself. So maybe some kind of artificer or alchemist? That would explain how the arm was reattached.

However, Tasia swore up and down that she had stabbed the woman through the heart, and that bothered him. Necromancers were extremely rare, and very difficult to deal with. However, if it had been a necromancer, Tasia and Amida would likely be dead and under her thrall already.

He sipped at his coffee and frowned. Even though he had ordered it black from the little cafe just down the road, somehow the roast tasted sweet as if the syrups they used had permeated the air and ruined his morning cup of joe.

Oh well. He couldn’t really complain. Other than hunting a potentially dangerous woman and her pet succubus, it really was a lovely day. He kept watching from inside the back of his town car. His windows were enchanted so that the car looked empty. In fact, the whole car should look like a beaten-up old Honda—or something to that effect. He hadn’t been big on the particulars, but he did need to be somewhere to keep an eye on things.

There was always the chance that this stakeout was meaningless, and that the bike had been abandoned. If that was the case, he still had the necklace. However, it was not only good practice for the others, but wonderful to see how they functioned together in an operation of this magnitude.

“Can you tell Sister Dina to slow down a bit?” he asked his driver. “She’s showing up too much. Have her hang back and change her clothes before the next rotation.”

The driver passed along the instructions through his headset. Sister Dina didn’t react, but Cyrus suspected that next time he saw her, she would be wearing something other than a lightweight brown jacket and leggings.

In fact, most of the women on his team were wearing leggings. Was this really a fad now? He had spent so much time in the classroom that he had lost touch with current trends. He wouldn’t even pretend to understand the fuzzy boots he saw some of the college girls wearing. Then again, he was a product of a completely different time. How long until he became obsolete and was replaced by someone like Amida? When he retired, where would he go?

Truthfully, he would probably just hole up with the Order. Maybe devote himself to research, or spend some time assisting on smaller missions. The Order took care of its own, of that he had no doubt. The last thing anybody wanted was a former member going rogue out of boredom or spite.

A young woman with her hair pulled up beneath a baseball cap came around the corner at a light jog. Curious, he watched her as she ran along the sidewalk toward the bike. She seemed to be the right height and build based on Tasia’s description, and his gut told him that this was who they were waiting for.

“Tell everyone to standby,” he said, then opened his door. The wand in his hand vibrated with power, but he kept it mostly hidden in his sleeve. If they got into a fight here, it would take them forever to contain it. Luckily, the other mages were ready with spells of their own.

It was no hard feat to shut down technology in a block radius. Memory wipes took a bit longer, and, if push came to shove, America would wake up to news of another school shooting. If there was one thing that turned his stomach, it was pinning a monster’s activity on some innocent victim of circumstance, but the Order’s business was rarely pretty.

The woman tripped near the bike and fell to the ground right by it. Cyrus was already moving across the street, ready to summon lightning from the sky if he needed to. The Knight who was mowing the lawn stopped to watch, and Tasia was already moving toward them, one hand in her pocket.

When Cyrus came around the bike, the woman was brushing gravel out of her hands and muttering to herself. She didn’t seem armed, but he knew better. He also didn’t sense any magic around her, so if she was a witch or necromancer, then she was poorly prepared for what was about to happen.

“Need help?” he asked, his muscles tightening in anticipation.

“Nah,” she said without looking up. “Trying to run while hungover is all.” He expected her to jump on the bike, or maybe even tackle him, but she adjusted her hat, let out a loud belch that stank of death, and then kept jogging around the corner.

“Shit,” he muttered, then walked back to the car. Now that he had blown his cover, he could only hope that—

“Master Cyrus!” Tasia pointed the direction the jogger had gone. “That was her!”

“You sure?”

“Definitely!” Tasia turned to give chase, and he saw the others change directions to head after the jogger. Someone was giving orders now, and it wasn’t him. Amida tucked his journal in a pocket and went after everyone.

Something was wrong, he could feel it, but he couldn’t order the others back into position. As everyone moved away from the block, he made it to where the jogger had turned when he heard the roar of a motorcycle engine behind him.

“Hmm?” He looked over his shoulder and saw that the bike had turned itself on and was making a U-turn on the road. Students walking nearby had pulled out cellphones to catch it on video, and he pushed his way past a young man talking about how it was probably a ‘social experiment’ to see the bike turn the corner and vanish, the engine singing in delight.

Just one more mystery to add to the pile. If the others had stayed, they may have been able to grab the bike. They had been played, and played hard. However, unless their mystery woman was a world class marathon runner, Tasia would be able to take her down without any problem.

He got into the town car. “Who ordered the pursuit?”

“Amida,” his driver replied.

“Interesting.” He chuckled to himself. If the woman was caught, then no harm done. If she got away? Well, then he would have to have a chat with the ambitious mage about pulling rank.

He waited anxiously for nearly an hour when the driver turned in his seat. “They lost her. She got away.”

Cyrus shook his head in disappointment. “And how exactly did that happen?”

The driver repeated the question and then listened. “Tasia couldn’t catch her, and then the motorcycle came to pick her up. The succubus was on it.”

“Oh, she was, was she?”

“Yes sir. They got a picture before she got away. It’s being sent to you right now.”

Cyrus pulled out his tablet, and sure enough, a photo had been taken. The succubus was sitting backward on the back of the motorcycle, both hands in the air in a one fingered salute. She wore a black tank top with clearly visible words that made him laugh.

The Order Eats Dicks

“Oh, it will be fun to break you,” he said, then pulled the necklace he found from his inner pocket. It didn’t bother them that their target had gotten away, because now he knew that the succubus was with her. “I’m going to need a map of the United States. Oh, and let’s go pick up Amida. I’m going to make him cast the locator spell, because it always gives me a nasty headache.”

The driver nodded and started the car.

When Dana had fallen on purpose, she had given the mimic instructions on where to go, and then continued on her way. The foot chase with the Order had been easy. Dana looked back once after rounding the corner and had broken into a sprint when she saw them give chase. The woman who had stabbed her came within twenty feet of her, but dead girls could sprint indefinitely.

Live girls, not so much. Her pursuer had fallen back, unable to maintain such a pace.

Tick Tock and Lily had picked her up as she left the Order behind, and once they were on the highway, they went north. Even though they were probably being tracked, the Order was going to have a tough time following them with cameras, because Wyoming was a big, empty place with a whole lot of nothing in between towns. They broke the speed limit, averaging nearly a hundred miles per hour for most of it. Eventually, they did have to stop for gas, but the station looked old, and Dana hopped off and let Lily fill up the tank disguised as a biker bitch with blue hair just in case there were video cameras watching.

They pulled into Butte, Montana at half past ten in the evening, and found a cheap hotel on the edge of town. Lily rented the room with cash as a Latina woman in her forties, and the two of them hunkered down for the night as a storm blew in.

Between watching movies on a small flat screen mounted to the wall, Lily explained the plan to Dana. They would be going somewhere called the Berkeley Pit. Despite its prestigious sounding name, it was actually a former copper mine that was currently a superfund site that was being used by the Order as a means to store dangerous objects.

In the early hours of the morning, the succubus stepped out to hunt, leaving Dana behind to watch the parking lot, fearful that a squadron of cars might show up at any moment. In those dark, lonely hours, she looked through Ratu’s notes, binge watched a show on Netflix, and even sat outside with Tick Tock to keep him company.

When Lily returned, they traveled to the pit. After paying a few bucks apiece in the gift shop, Dana grabbed a pamphlet and they went outside to travel through a long, white tunnel with an opening decorated to look like the entrance to a mine. On the other side of the tunnel was an observation deck that looked over a chain link fence with barbed wire, and the Berkeley pit was below. It was full of dark red water, and occasionally they would hear a distant blast, a deterrent for birds to keep them from landing.

“It’s pretty,” Dana commented, gazing across the water.

“Mmhmm.” Lily walked along the length of the observation deck, her hands wrapped around a pair of binoculars that she wore around her neck. Today she was dressed as a soccer mom with a floppy hat, and fit in perfectly with some of the other tourists who had stopped by to see the lethal lake.

They stayed for a while, and eventually hit a break in foot traffic. A family with two kids were the only other visitors, and they had taken up residence on the other side of the deck. Lily and Dana moved into a corner where they knew they wouldn’t be overheard.

“So?” Dana asked. “Anything to share?”

“Yes.” The succubus handed the binoculars over. “There are some magic wards along the outside of the pit. If we fly in from above, we can avoid detection. Even if someone gets to the water’s edge, it would be nearly impossible for a human to survive going in the water to the entrance below, and there’s no way you could sneak a submersible in without being spotted.”

“So that’s it? We just dive in the water?” Dana looked through the binoculars and realized she couldn’t actually see the magic wards, so handed them back.

“Yep.” Lily pointed along the shore. “There are several alarms and protective spells along the water’s edge, too. Those blasts you keep hearing? Those are small animals being vaporized. Well, and they are actually trying to chase away birds. However, over there are a couple of blank spots with no wards because they aren’t reachable, like the other side of that short cliff. Once there, we can get in and go for a swim.”

“Hmm.” Dana pulled the pamphlet out of her pocket. The acidity of the lake wouldn’t hurt her, but what about the heavy metals? Is that something that would stay in her system, killing her later, or would it eventually leech out? It was one of those questions that she knew wouldn’t be answered on WebMD. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to take lead on this once we are down there. I don’t want to open my eyes and go blind or anything.”

“Please, it would probably just...” Lily tilted her head to one side. “No, you’re right. If that sword could leave a scar, the last thing I want is for you to have shit vision. I should be fine.”

“What’s down there? I mean, once we get into the storage facility.”

“Not much, I imagine. Cyrus has only been once, and apparently there were only a couple members of the Order present. Their job is to categorize and research, and that’s it. If someone breaches the perimeter, there are plenty of locals who are actually retired Knights and such who can be here soon.”

“They make their members retire here?”

Lily nodded. “In a way. You see, they obviously don’t want people breaking in and taking something, but it’s more than that. They don’t want what’s in the pit getting out.”

“Like what? Are they storing something in there that’s dangerous?”

“Oh, I’m sure, but it isn’t that.” Lily looked over Dana’s shoulder and went quiet. One of the two children had come close and was taking a picture of the lake with a cellphone. A few minutes passed and they were alone again.

“What is it?” Dana asked.

“They delved too greedily, and too deep,” Lily said, her voice ominous and her eyes on the dark water. “I learned about the storage facility through Cyrus, but what I’m about to tell you I knew from before. This place used to be a mine, that part is true. But the miners found something they shouldn’t have, and when the Order found out, they took over and made a cover story about the place flooding. This was before the internet, so that stuff was easier to fix after the fact.”

“What happened?”

Lily scowled. “That part is a little fuzzy, but there’s a good reason. When they dug, they disturbed something that shouldn’t exist in this world. Have you ever heard of the Old Ones?”

“You mean like Cthu—”

“Shhh, don’t say its name! It might wake up!” Lily put a hand over Dana’s mouth, a look of panic on her face.

Dana turned her head away from Lily to break the seal on her mouth. “Seriously? It can hear me?” She looked out at the lake in awe and a small bit of terror. Would saying its name really invoke the end of the world?

“Nah, I’m just fucking with you.” Lily let out a hearty laugh that drew attention from the nearby family. “But you should have seen your face.”

“Okay, so not Cthulhu. And yeah, you got me, ha ha.” She shook her head, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Actually, you’re on the right track. Kind of. The Old Ones are supposed to exist outside of time and space, so where are they?”

“I don’t know, somewhere else?”

“Not just somewhere. Somewhen. Everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time, but also never. At least, that’s how it was explained to me. At the bottom of that pit is part of an Old One. Maybe an elbow, knee, or even a lung, if they have them. Granted, this is all metaphorical, because they don’t have forms, but what is down there is some piece of some powerful entity that may be there for five more minutes, or five hundred years, nobody knows. But that shit is volatile. If you poke it, the creature it belongs to might notice, and the last thing you want is for an entity like that to notice you. Because if it did, its attention could be drawn here, and may even manifest in this very lake.”