Gunfire.

A screech of agony.

Cries of panic.

The ringing of his ears.

Alan isn’t sure what is louder, but he knows for damn sure that the protective earmuffs of his loaned helmet aren’t working. He covers his ears with his hands, grimacing. It figures that would be the one place that Chase cheaps out.

The hunched, darkened figure that burst through the foliage behind the gnomes shrieks hideously as the rain of bullets tears into it. It raises its clawed hands to try and protect its face and stumbles backward before turning and fleeing, leaving the bush it flattened smeared with blood.

Chase swings his gun to follow the monstrosity, trigger still depressed. Each flash from the muzzle illuminates his grim face until the magazine clicks empty. In a flash, he discards the empty magazine and pulls a fresh one from his vest, reloading his rifle in a practiced movement. “Alan! It’s moving! NODs down!” He exclaims, pulling his night vision goggles back into place.

It takes Alan a moment to realize what Chase means by “NODs”, but when it clicks, he pulls the goggles of his own helmet down in front of his eyes, lighting up the dark forest in hues of ghostly blue and white.

He looks towards the frightened gnomes, who stand huddled around the sled holding their injured compatriot. Many of them are rubbing their ears or blinking stars from their eyes, dazed by the gunfire.

The monster, however, is nowhere to be found. In the short time it took the pair of men to turn on their visual aids, it’s already vanished, seemingly into thin air. Blood stains the ground and the foliage where it made its escape, and following the trail with his eyes, Alan sees that it looks as if –

At Alan’s side, Prim suddenly snarls, and Alan whirls around as the shrubbery rustles. The first thing he sees is a pair of round, dark eyes entirely too close to him.

“Shit!” He cries, raising his revolver with the sort of speed that only surging adrenaline can grant. There is no hesitation as he pulls the trigger once, twice, three times.

The .357 magnum bucks harshly in his hand, sending a slug right into one of the dark eyes, bursting it like an overripe grape. The second round flies wide, missing entirely. The third one strikes the thing in the leathery hide of its chest, sending it stumbling backward.

The thing recoils, shrieking once more as it covers its ruined eye with a pair of clawed hands.

From beside him, Alan hears the telltale click-clack of a shotgun pump.

Bang!

A blast of buckshot strikes the thing right in the neck, tearing chunks of gore and bone free. Its remaining eye widens, and it tries to gasp through its ruined windpipe. The creature falls to the ground heavily, choking and bleeding. It flails as lifeblood spills from its shredded jugular, before its remaining eye grows dim, and it goes limp.

For a moment, all is silent.

“Holy hell…” Chase nearly trips over his words. The man works the pump of the shotgun grafted to the bottom of his rifle, sending a spent, smoking shell to the ground. The entire time, he doesn’t stop pointing his weapon at the cooling corpse. “Aren’t you glad that I packed heavy, Alan?” He asks, sending Alan a reassuring smile.

His hands shaking, Alan lowers his gun and takes a moment to find his words, his adrenaline scattering his thoughts. “You know what? When you’re right, Chase, you’re right. I was going to complain about you deafening me and my dog, but I’ll give you this one,” he says, sending a glance downward to Prim.

The demon once more has her face schooled into forced neutrality, eyeballing Chase’s rifle. Alan’s begun to notice that she tends to do that whenever she’s uncomfortable.

Chase steps a bit closer to the dead monster and gives it a nudge with his boot. When the thing doesn’t respond, he finally allows himself to relax. “What do you think it is?” He asks, kicking the body and flipping it onto its back. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like this.”

“Has anyone?” Alan dryly replies. He takes some time to inspect the thing that was chasing the gnomes.

The first and most startling attribute is the round, lamprey-like mouth filled with thin, needle teeth. Alan can only wonder what this thing preyed on, as such a tooth arrangement seems strange. Its skin is a dark, weathered brown like leather, and a row of spiny spikes run down its hunched spine. Its long fingers end in hooked claws, and its long, sinewy legs look as if they could leap quite a distance.

…Well, they looked like they could leap quite a distance before one of them was shredded by Chase’s rifle. The cooling body is covered in so many bullet wounds, that this thing was surely on borrowed time before Chase dealt the last blow. Slaying Alan and Chase would have been a pyrrhic victory at best, and that’s assuming that Prim didn’t step in.

“This beast is a goat sucker.”

Alan, Chase, and even Prim whirl around toward the voice, and Chase raises his gun once more.

Standing there behind them is the lead gnome, the one who shouted and urged them to escape. The tiny, bearded man looks at the rifle pointed at him, his face growing pale. “W-Wait! Peace, lads! Peace! I wish only to speak with you!” He squeaks, raising his hands and waving his palms in surrender.

“Whoops,” Chase grins sheepishly and lowers the weapon once more. “Sorry about that. I got a little jumpy, there.”

The gnome breathes out a sigh of relief. “It’s no trouble, lad. Goodness me, it seems that times have changed, indeed,” he murmurs, sending a nervous glance to Chase’s gun. “You boys have my utmost thanks. That damnable thing has been chasing us for a fortnight. We’ve lost two good gnomes to it, and we haven’t even been given enough time to mourn.”

“There’s no need to thank us. It tried to kill us, too, so it had to go.” Alan waves the gnome off. He pauses for a moment, wondering if this should feel more absurd.

“That doesn’t diminish the fact that you saved our lives,” the gnome says, shaking his head. “Goodness! Where are my manners? My name is Barley, Barley Bramble, the headgnome of our village.” Barley glances over his shoulder towards his fellows.

Now that the danger has passed, the rest of the gnomes clamber around the fox-pulled sled, treating the injuries of the pale, groaning gnome inside. One shrugs off his backpack and digs within, pulling out a glass vial with a large crack down its side. Whatever concoction was inside has since leaked out, leaving only a drop of green left, much of the gnome’s visible dismay.

“… Or at least, I was the headgnome of our village…” The squat man mumbles sadly. He slowly takes his pointed hat off of his head and holds it to his chest, his knuckles white. “There’s no village left to speak of.”

A pang of sympathy courses through Alan, and he can see Chase’s shoulders slump.

“Jeez, man. I dunno what happened, but it sounds like you guys have had it rough,” Chase lets his rifle hang by its sling as he scratches the back of his head. He lifts his night-vision up and out of the way, smiling down at Barley. “The name is –!”

‘Wait. Didn’t Prim say that gnomes are technically fairies?’ Alan’s eyes shoot wide open, a half-remembered factoid about fairies in mind. ‘If you give a fairy your name, they can control you!’

Alan’s hand shoots out and clamps over Chase’s mouth, stopping the other man from speaking his name. The action is so sudden and so surprising, that Chase doesn’t immediately pull the hand off.

Looking down, Alan finds Prim already staring at him, having apparently anticipated this. There is a brief second where he debates trying to keep the pet dog charade going, but after tonight, it seems useless. Chase, despite his appearance, isn’t stupid. With the confirmation that gnomes and the like are real, he’ll sniff Prim out eventually.

“Are we cool to say our names, or is that no bueno?” Alan plainly asks the shadowy demon.

Prim sends Chase a sidelong glance. “‘Tis good to be cautious, but such a thing is unwarranted, here,” she says, watching as Chase’s eyes bug out. “True Fae are the ones you should take such safeguards around. I would offer you a warning if I felt it appropriate.”

The look in Chase’s eyes tells Alan that they are going to have a conversation in the near future, and for once, it’ll be a serious one.

Alan nods and lets his hand drop back to his side, freeing Chase’s mouth. “In that case, Barley, my name is Alan, and my trigger-happy friend here is Chase.”

Chase recovers from his surprise at hearing Prim speak and holds out a hand, one that Barley takes after replacing his hat. “Nice to meet ya, Barley. I wish it under better circumstances and all that,” Chase grins, shaking Barley’s hand so vigorously that the gnome is nearly thrown off balance.

“My other, furrier friend is Prim. She’s…” Alan continues, only to stop himself short.

‘Shit. I can’t just go out and say that she’s a demon, can I?’

“I am Alan’s Familiar,” Prim calmly interjects. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, headgnome Barley Bramble,” she says with a slight incline of her head, neatly skirting past the unspoken question of what she is rather than who.

The stare that Chase is beaming into the side of Alan’s head is so intense that Alan can almost feel it. He meets his friend’s eyes, mouthing the word ‘later’.

At the same time, Barley regards the black wolf at Alan’s side with suspicion, but doesn’t ask the question obviously on his lips. “I assure you, the pleasure is all mine,” he says, addressing all three of them. “I wish I had a home and a warm hearth that I could invite you into for some tea, as that would be the least I could do to repay your heroism. As it stands…” He shifts uncomfortably. “I’m afraid we haven’t anything that would be a proper reward for you.”

Chase scoffs. “The excitement tonight is enough of a reward to me. Hell, I haven’t had this much fun since I cut my grass with a push mower taped to my dirt bike,” he says. Then he sends a glance to the dead monster only a few yards away. “Actually, hold on. I wanna keep that. Lemme bag ‘em and I’m good,” he amends, pointing at the corpse with a finger. “I just got my new tanning rack hung up in my garage, and I need to break it in!”

Alan flips up the night vision goggles of his borrowed helmet and rubs his forehead with a sigh. ‘I really have no idea if his trailer trashiness is a bit or not,’ he thinks to himself, giving his grinning friend a halfhearted glare.

“Alan and I are of a contrary opinion,” Prim jumps in, finally allowing herself to sit on her haunches and relax. “A life-debt such as this is not something that will be easily forgotten.”

The comment earns her a frown from Chase, but Barley seems to have been expecting it.

“We’ll honor any request that you give us,” Barley promises, thumping his chest with a pudgy fist. “All we ask is time to recuperate and find a new home.”

“If you’re okay talking about it, what happened to your village?” Alan asks, holstering his revolver back in his waistband and leaning on the tree behind him.

Barley shudders, as if wracked with cold. “It… It vanished,” he says, shaking his head disbelievingly. “We were all nestled in our homes among the red oaks of the gentle river, trying to wait out an illness that had swept through the village in recent weeks. No tea nor elixir could break the fever, but none had perished and no one suffered from anything but exhaustion, so we sought to wait it out.”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

The gnome’s face twists into a grimace. “Then a stupor fell over the village, and…things are simply blank from there. When we awakened, we were strewn about on the hard ground, and everything had changed!” he cries. “Our trees and homes were gone, and all around us were towering buildings of steel and glass. It was all we could do to gather ourselves and flee as humans along the streets watched us.”

“Lethargy, followed by impairment and a deep, dreamless sleep,” Prim nods along. “I experienced much the same.”

Barley rubs his arms with his hands, as if to ward away cold. “We left what food we had with our wives and children, and used the last of our reagents to craft a mighty hiding place for them. If we do not find a worthwhile place to settle within the week, we’ll be forced to retrieve them and expose them to the dangers of travel. On that quest, my kin found our way to these woods with difficulty. Normally, a gnome’s sense of forestry is unrivaled, yet we struggled to find even this small sliver of refuge.” Barley is silent for a moment before speaking again. “Bah! Who am I fooling? These thin, weedy trunks are hardly refuge. Foul things lurk here,” he says, sending a pointed look towards the corpse of the monster.

Alan and Chase follow Barley’s gaze. “You called this beasty a ‘goat sucker’? Like a chupacabra?” Chase questions before turning his attention to Alan. “Aren’t we pretty far north for chupacabras?”

“Aren’t we pretty far north for chupacabras?” Alan mockingly parrots, rolling his eyes. “You tell me. You’re the cryptid hunter.”

Before Chase can snipe back, another gnome, one with tired eyes and an impressively large nose trundles up to the group. The interloper shakes Barley’s shoulder. “Barley, we have to make haste! Puddlefoot’s wound has reopened and Elmunder fears it may be infected. We must find a place to rest lest he lose his leg!”

Barley’s face looks as if he’d just bitten into a lemon. With a tired sigh, he drags a hand down his face. “Damnation.”

“Alan, Chase?” Prim looks between the two men. “Perchance, are one of you in possession of appropriate medicinals?”

“Yeah, I have an IFAK right…” Chase moves his hand to grab a pouch on his vest, only for the hand to land on a bundle of shotgun shells strapped to his side. “Uh… I could’ve sworn that I did? Maybe that was on my other plate carrier…”

Alan sighs, expecting nothing less. “Yes, Prim. I’ve got some first aid with me. I’m pretty sure there’s some disinfectant in there, too, if you guys,” – he addresses the gnomes – “are worried about your friend’s wound getting infected.”

Barley’s face twists. “It pains me to have to further indebt myself and my brothers, but I cannot in good conscience turn you away if you can aid Puddlefoot.”

Shrugging off his backpack, Alan gestures toward the fox-drawn sled. “Lead the way.”

Barley and the unnamed gnome take point, walking back to the sled surrounded by their fellows with Alan, Chase, and Prim in tow. The unnamed gnome with the large nose shoos the others away. The foxes tied to the sled grow restless as the humans and demon approach, but a murmured word from the smallest and youngest looking of the gnomes quiets the orange-furred animals.

The diminutive man in the sled, Puddlefoot, groans, looking up at Alan with bleary eyes. His pudgy face is flushed red, and the blanket that previously covered him is pulled away. One of the legs of Puddlefoot’s trousers is torn around the knee, exposing the red-stained bandages wrapped around his calf.

Alan drops his backpack and unzips it, groping the inside until he palms the small, unopened first aid kit that had been sitting in his car for the better part of a year. Popping the plastic case open, he takes the can of spray-on disinfectant out. “Barley?”

Barley turns to an especially squat gnome with a severe expression. “Unwrap the wound, please, Elmunder.”

The gnome, Elmunder, grumbles and does as asked. “What are a pair of lads and a…” He glares uncomfortably at Prim “… a something doing out here at this time of night? And what did you do to the goat sucker?”

“To make a long story short, you guys have probably been asleep for hundreds of years, and a lot changed during that time,” Alan says. “The woods and the dark aren’t scary when you can fight back.”

Elmunder grunts and finishes unwinding the bandages around Puddlefoot’s leg,

“Oh shit,” Chase hisses. “That chupacabra did a number on this dude.”

Silently, Alan can’t help but agree.

On Puddlefoot’s leg is a circular bite wound, one matching the mouth of the dead monster a dozen yards away. The bite is pink and puffy, and already weeps pus despite looking only several hours old.

“That already looks infected,” Alan frowns. “Not surprising, I guess. That monster – chupacabra – whatever the hell it is, probably didn’t brush its teeth.” He uncaps the antiseptic spray in his hands and looks at Puddlefoot. “Grit your teeth, pal. This is going to sting.”

Puddlefoot groans once more and squirms as Alan liberally sprays down his wound with the generic brand disinfectant. Then Alan hands the clean gauze from his first aid kit to Elmunder, who wraps the wound up tight.

“That should prevent anything new from getting into him, but that’s not going to do much for the current infection,” Alan shoulders his backpack after putting everything away.

Barley sighs once more. “Goodness, what a night,” he says, palpable exhaustion in each word. “Frights, flights, fights, it’s enough to wear one down to the bones.”

“Those bones are going to have to march on,” Elmunder bites out grouchily. “We’ve no deepwood distillate to help Puddlefoot break his fever. The last phial was cracked and leaked all over my reagents, ruining them. We must find more if he is to survive.”

“Did any of you lads happen to spot worthwhile herbs and shrooms as we fled the goat sucker?” Barley asks, scanning his eyes over the assembled gnomes. “Anything at all?”

All he gets is shaken heads and morose expressions, making his shoulders slump.

“Hey,” Chase begins, his face sympathetic. “If you guys are really out here in a bad way, do you want a lift to my place? I’ve got room for a coupla guests, or if you need room to do gnome things, my place is on a plot of land with some forest. I’m pretty sure that I got some antibiotics left over from a prescription for your friend. They might be a few months expired, but they should still help with his infection… assuming the infection ain’t some curse.”

Barley’s protest is preemptively cut off by Alan. “Just say yes. He’s going to keep asking until you accept, and I don’t think any of us want to be here all night.”

A tired smile rises to Barley’s face. “Very well, Mister Chase. If you insist, we will enjoy your hospitality.”

----------------------------------------

“Just push that to the front of the bed and find somewhere comfy! I promise that we’ll go nice and slow, so don’t you worry a bit if things move around!”

Leaning against the hood of his car with Prim at his side, Alan watches Chase corral the nervous gnomes into the bed of his idling pickup truck.

Barley didn’t need to pitch the idea of somewhere to rest too hard to his fellow gnomes, as they all agreed without much hesitation. Chase originally wanted to get the gnomes to his truck, then return to collect the body of the supposed chupacabra, but Prim easily lifted the body with a shadowy tendril, drawing a look of boyish awe from Chase and setting the gnomes on edge.

Once the chupacabra was wrapped in a tarp that Chase kept in his truck and loaded into the bed, Chase began the metaphorical Tetris game of securing all the gnomes between the junk he keeps in his truck.

“So, was that thing actually a chupacabra?” Alan idly asks the dark form seated next to him. “Or a goat sucker?”

“This is a subject where your knowledge surpasses my own,” Prim replies, watching the gnomes rearrange themselves in Chase’s truck. “I’ve not heard of such a creature before tonight. Perhaps I have encountered it under a different name, chupacabra and goat-sucker are designations I am unfamiliar with.”

Alan stuffs his hands into his pockets. “The chupacabra is supposed to be some kind of bloodsucking, livestock-killing monster. No one can really agree on what it looks like, with some people saying it’s some kind of reptile monster,” he nods towards the stained tarp in the bed of the truck, “or an ugly little vampire.”

“‘Tis no type of vampire that I am familiar with,” Prim says, blinking her luminescent eyes, “but it is not a possibility to be discounted. The vampire courts were notoriously cruel, even to their own fellows. Being forced into such a lowly existence, feeding on farm animals, seems a fitting torture for a vampire to force upon one of his lessers.”

‘And there’s the confirmation that vampires are real,’ Alan can’t find it in him to be surprised. If anything, it’s reassuring that one of the creepy-crawlies coming back to life has so many well-known weaknesses. “I’ll have to start making more Italian, then,” Alan smirks.

The garlic joke seems to fly over Prim’s head, and she looks at him with a raised eyebrow. “I feel as if I’ve missed the point of your words.”

Slam!

Before Alan can explain, Chase shuts the tailgate of his truck and addresses the gnomes once more. “Hang tight! I gotta talk with Alan real quick!” He says, turning and jogging over to Alan and Prim.

“It’s about time,” Alan takes the ballistic helmet off of his head and hands it over to Chase. “I think this belongs to you.”

“Thanks, friendo,” Chase smiles and takes the helmet, gripping it by one of the chin straps and letting it dangle at his side. “So…” He begins, looking down at Prim. “A familiar? Like, the magic ‘Dungeons-n-Dragons’ kind of familiar?”

“I am unfamiliar with the term ‘Dungeons-n-Dragons’, but there is indeed magic involved in the contract between Alan and I,” Prim nods slowly.

When Prim doesn’t elaborate further, Chase looks to Alan. Slowly, Chase nods and smiles. “Yeah…” He says quietly, his smile getting wider. “Yeah, oh yeah we can work with this!” He exclaims. “We got the handsome leader,” Chase begins, jabbing himself in the chest with his thumb. “We’ve got the pessimistic dog guy,” he points to a bemused Alan. “And we’ve got the dog mascot,” his finger points to a confused Prim. “All we need is a hot girl, a smart girl, and a van to transport our stuff around in, and we’ll be in business!”

Alan understands the reference quite quickly and rolls his eyes. “Zoinks, Chase. What did you actually want to talk about? It’s cold out here, and I kind of want to go home.”

“Hey, I’m being serious!” Chase exclaims, stepping closer and putting a hand on Alan‘s shoulder. “Look, you’ve seen the news recently, right? There’s lots of freaky shit going on recently, and I’m seeing a big ol’ opportunity here! If we become the guys for dealing with spooky-dooks, there could be some big money involved! I’ve got all my stuff and everything I know, and you’re over here being Mister ahead-of-the-curve over-achiever,” Chase says, nodding towards Prim. “And we’ve already got one on our side. This could be big, man!”

Alan looks at Chase skeptically, making the rifle-toting man sigh. “Look,” Chase begins again, removing his hand and schooling his face into something serious. “You’re always going on about how much you hate your job, so why not give this a shot with me? Being out here, doing stuff like this, has got to be way better than getting yelled at in an office, right? Freaky occurrences are going to inconvenience people, and they’ll be willing to pay out the nose for someone else to deal with it. We could be those guys and make a whole business out of this.”

A sarcastic retort, primed and ready to tear into Chase, withers on Alan’s tongue as his friend's words sink in. God above, how sweet would it be if he could march into Mindy’s office and tell her that he quits? How great would it feel if people were operating on his time, and not the other way around? How relieving would it be if he made enough money to finally push back the debt hanging over his head?

What do you want to do, then? Why be here if this isn’t what you want?

Prim’s words from several days prior come back to him. He pondered those words only two hours ago, shortly before Prim offered to begin tutoring him in magic.

Magic.

Magic sounds like something Alan wants to do, wants to learn, and the idea makes long-dead enthusiasm begin to bubble within his chest.

If Chase is serious, then being some kind of supernatural problem solver would give Alan a chance to put the skills Prim promised him to use.

Maybe this is the opportunity he’s been waiting for.

Slowly turning his head, Alan looks down at the shadowy demon next to him. “Prim?” He addresses her quietly. “What do you think?”

For a moment, the wolf-shaped blackness says nothing, and Alan can see her unknowable thoughts churning behind her white eyes. “Such a venture carries with it significant risk,” she says. “Not all threats, such as the one faced tonight, will be so straightforward. Upon awakening, many of the Old Powers will find their new situation vexing, making it imperative that all plans of action be thoroughly meditated upon. Failure to take proper caution will result in dire consequences. I –”

“I know that!” Chase insists. “Look at it from my perspective, would you? We can –”

“I’m not advising against this venture,” Prim interrupts. Her eyes glow a bit more fiercely as she narrows them. “If you would be so kind as to allow me to finish what I’m saying, then I could inform you that I am inclined to endorse your proposal, with the caveat that I am included in all decision-making. I have promised Alan my counsel, and to fulfill that aspect of our pact, I will need to be privy to the direction of, and contracts taken by, this hypothetical agency.”

“I was going to want you in on everything, anyway,” Alan says. “We need a tiebreaker for when Chase decides that bare-knuckle boxing with Sasquatch sounds like a good idea.”

Chase turns his head towards Alan, his eyes wide. “Wait? Do you actually want to do this with me? No fooling?” He asks, a smile growing on his face.

“Why do you look so surprised?” Alan frowns. “I hate working in that realty office with a fucking passion. If we can actually get this off the ground, then I’m game.”

Chase jumps into the air and pumps a fist with a loud whoop, startling the gnomes in the back of his truck. He pulls Alan into a hug, making Alan grunt as the side of Chase’s rifle smacks him in the gut. “Alan, my man! This is going to be big! Just you wait!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Alan pushes his over-enthused friend off. “Let’s hash out the details tomorrow after I get home from work, okay?”

“Mister Chase!” Barley the gnome calls from the bed of Chase’s truck. “Please, forgive me, but Puddlefoot’s condition is worsening! If you’ve medicine for him, the sooner, the better!

“My place! Show up whenever!” Chase calls over his shoulder as he whirls around and runs to his truck, throwing the door open. “Thanks for coming out tonight!”

With that, the rickety red truck roars, drawing exclamations of surprise from the gnomes as they all speed away.

Alan watches the truck and its mythical cargo disappear around the corner of the dark, forest road. “Huh. That was fun, I suppose.”

“’I suppose’, he says,” Prim’s voice is dry as sand. She slowly shakes her head. “Truly, nothing could have prepared me for this era.”