Gerald reluctantly pulled out his phone and typed out a quick message. Within fifteen minutes, there were at least fifty baldies gathered in the main chamber, staring at me with dewey, unthinking eyes. Where did these drones go when they weren’t here? Did they have day jobs? I couldn’t imagine any of them manning the Cookout drive thru or installing someone’s internet. Then I thought of them all sitting at a long table for a corporate meeting — that seemed to fit a little better. I would’ve been shocked if they were anything but businessmen.

“Alright, let’s get down to business,” I said. “I, as your unholy messiah of darkness or whatever the fuck you want to call me, declare that there will be some changes made around here. I’ve already informed Gerald that he has been demoted to fourth in command, and he will be assisting Mother Dora and Darius, who are now second and third in command.”

There were some murmurs amongst the baldies — murmurs that vaguely sounded like disapproval. I guess they liked Gerald for some reason, and didn’t like him being made subservient to an old man and a woman they had never met before. Mother Dora stood to my right, smiled and waved, showing the crowd the red rune still cut into her hand.

“Shut the fuck up!” I yelled. The sound echoed through the tunnels, and they all stopped murmuring at once. “I’m going to be as straightforward as possible with you guys: I’m not the only person like me out there. The others want me dead. They can’t stand the idea of a lowlife like me harnessing their power. They have already tried to kill me twice, and both times, I whooped their asses. But they’re still out there, and they will be coming for me again. And if they know that you know about them, they’ll come for you too. I don’t know when, and I don’t know how many, so we must be ready. We need more people, and you all need to learn to fight. You need to learn how to kill. If we come out of this alive, there will be nobody left to stop us. We could take over the fucking world if we wanted. So, are you guys ready for some real fuckin’ dark magic?”

I hardly knew what the hell I was saying, to be honest. It all sounded so inauthentic coming out of my mouth. I wasn’t some badass that took on a gang of superhumans by myself. I barely got out of those fights alive, and that was with a lot of help. I didn’t know how we were going to turn these guys into fighters either. I just told them what I thought they wanted to hear, and it worked. At first, they were dead silent. Then they started chanting quietly — some weird shit I couldn’t understand, as they tend to do. The chanting built up until they were yelling, some screeching like chimps, others grunting like apes. Equally intense feelings of revulsion and secondhand embarrassment made me want to look away, but I forced myself to keep facing them, and I forced myself to throw a fist into the air. I was glad they liked me, I guess.

Darius sat to my left in a ragged black leather chair he dragged out from the library. He looked amused, like he was watching a TV show and somebody had just been shot. Gerald stood off to the side, keeping distance from me, looking into my eyes with no expression on his face. I couldn’t tell if he was studying me or trying to explode my head with telekinesis. Probably both.

“Ok boys, calm down. Jesus.” I held a fist in the air and they all immediately stopped hollering and paid attention. It was a nice feeling, having people doing what I want them to do, no questions asked.

“Like I said, we need more people. We need killers. You — where do you work?” I pointed to one of the baldies in the front of the crowd. He looked shocked to be acknowledged individually.

“Uhhhh… I work at a marketing agency.”

Fucking knew it.

“Any killers there?” I said.

“Not really,” he replied. “Well, actually, there’s this one guy. He hates the office, and sometimes he talks to me about how he wants to come in and shoot our boss sometimes. I don’t think he’s killed anyone, but he would probably like to.”

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“Perfect. Invite him to the next meeting,” I said. “All of you, find one person in your life who you think is a killer, and bring them here. You have two weeks to do it. You don’t want to know what will happen if you don’t. And don’t tell them they have to shave their heads. We’re done with that shit. I don’t like it, to tell you the truth.”

The singled-out baldie smiled.

“Oh, we’re not bald,” he said. He pinched the top of his head and slid off his bald cap to reveal a head of curly brown hair. The rest did the same, except for a couple of men who were actually bald.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples.

“Holy shit. Somehow, that’s even worse,” I sighed. “Just get the new fuckin’ recruits, alright?” I muttered fuckin’ weirdos under my breath. They all said “Yes master,” in unison like a kindergarten class.

“Cool, good,” I said. “Also, just come in your normal clothes. This robe shit is stupid. That goes for you too, Gerald.”

Gerald nodded slowly. The not-actually-baldies did the same.

“Alright. Class dismissed.”

I went back home, accompanied by Mother Dora. The Tunnels were only a few miles from the apartment, but she insisted on driving, so I sat in the passenger seat of the van.

“Do you think you can turn these guys into killers?” I asked her. “They’ll need to at least know some basic magic to last more than three seconds against Alec.”

“Hmmmm, perhaps I could,” she said, “but I don’t know if I should. This magic is fascinating, more fascinating than anything I have ever experienced, but I cannot say how much I would need to sacrifice to reach the level you want me to. For now, my answer is ‘We shall see.’”

That wasn’t good enough, but I didn’t think pressing the issue now would help anything. She had a stack of old books in the back seat — at least twenty of them. It was clear that her curiosity was already starting to consume her. Hopefully, it would consume her enough that I wouldn’t even have to try to convince her of anything.

“I have been learning something new, though,” she said, “Do you want to see?”

“Uhhh, probably not while you’re behind the wheel of a vehi—”

She chanted something under her breath, grabbed her left pinky with her right hand, and snapped it. Her left pointer finger glowed red and white like a lit cigar. She touched the side of my seat and seared a hole into it, filling the van with the smell of burnt polyester.

“Oh cool, it worked,” she said, seemingly completely fine with the fact that her pinky was purple and bent at an unnatural angle.

“Oh… uhhhh…. Wow,” I said. “I guess that’s a good start already.”

We were silent the rest of the way home, the silence only being broken by the occasional sizzle of her grazing something with her burning fingertip.

“What do you mean, Freddie knows everything and you let him escape?”

Anita was seething when Mother Dora and I got back to the apartment. Her left eye twitched a little in a way that made me wonder how much longer it would be before she has an aneurysm over all of this. All I was trying to do was tell her about my plan to save all of our asses, but I casually mentioned that Freddie hauled ass away from me, and of course she had to dwell on the one negative thing.

“Come on.” I said. “What’s he gonna do? Call the cops and tell them there’s a slime-slinging wizard leading a satanic cult underground? They’d lock him in an asylum.”

“We can’t be taking chances like this, Gus!” Anita said. She was pacing back and forth across the living room, gnawing on her fingernails. When I was a kid, she had gnawed her nails down the nubs, but had managed to go years, decades without doing it again.

“There are too many unknown variables already,” she continued. “We don’t need another one. He’s got to go.”

“What, like you want me to hunt him down and kill him?”

“You say that as if you don’t do that on a daily basis.”

I hesitated. I don’t remember telling her about that.

“I do it to criminals, scum of the earth. I don’t just kill people for fun.”

“I didn’t say it had to be fucking fun. Just do it,” she said.

“Maybe I could do it,” Mother Dora said, jabbing the air with her hot finger. How long was that shit going to burn?

“No. Nobody’s killing Freddie. He doesn’t need to die,” I said.

Anita’s eye twitched more dramatically this time.

“Gus,” she said with quiet rage, “What if the police believe him? What if he finds Alec, tells him where we are, and they swoop in here in the night? What if he drives his fucking car through our home in the name of God? We’re playing with our lives here. Take. Him. Out.”

“Fine,” I lied.