As the slightly-too-old hot dogs spun in slow circles on the rotating gas station grill, a silvery-metal face with glowing emerald-like ‘eyes’ leaned in close to watch them. “These meat selections have become unsuitable for human consumption. They should be discarded immediately and replaced.”
The response to that announcement came from the dull-faced, bored woman standing with a pair of tongs in one hand and a magazine in the other. “Dude, you want a hot dog or not?” The Bystander Effect assured that she saw not a robot in front of her, but a slim, fairly androgynous-looking figure with a pale complexion and light hair.
“We would like the dangerous meat to be discarded and replaced,” the metal man informed her.
“Discarded and–who the fuck do you think you are?” she demanded, her annoyance not quite rising to the point of anger simply because she was too bored and tired to care all that much. Still, the idea of a customer insisting that she put brand new hot dogs out to cook ticked the woman off a bit. Did he have any idea what her boss would do if she wasted that much meat?
The figure blinked once, then again before answering in a simple, yet pleasant voice. “We are Robin. I am the Medical One. You may call me Med if you wish. Others do.”
“Medical–what, you trying to say you’re a doctor?” Vana, the gas station clerk, squinted that way. If this guy was really a doctor, maybe he did know something about the hot dogs.
“I am medically licensed in every state in this country, as well as several others, yes,” came the flat answer. “It is quite important in our line of work to understand how to aid others who have become unwell.” There was a brief pause before they added, “We understand the common phrase is that you care for the patient, but we attend to injuries and illness whether we care for them or not.” Another pause, then, “Which is good, as we often do not.”
“Uhh riiiight…” Slowly taking a step away, Vana looked them up and down as she took a moment to consider her response. “You’re… Doctor Robin, then. Sorry, Doctor Robin, my boss’ll really hang me out to dry if I throw that much expensive meat away, and I need this job. My kids enjoy eating and having a roof over their heads, you know? They’re selfish like that.”
“Med, please. We have far too many names to add more to our individual facets. Medical One or Med is quite enough,” the metal figure politely, yet firmly requested.
Almost as soon as they finished saying that, their head tilted to one side, then turned back to her and smiled broadly as their eyes flipped from emerald green to a light blue. “Hey there, sorry. I’m the Chatting One. You can call me Chat. What my headmate was trying to say is that that meat over there is gonna make people really sick if they eat it. You don’t wanna be responsible for that, right? Sending people to the hospital with food poisoning would be pretty bad. So let’s see if we can sort this out in a way that makes everyone happy, and keeps your customers from having their stomachs pumped.”
Vana opened and shut her mouth a couple times, staring that way. Had his eyes always been blue? Yes, of course they had. “I… have no idea what–what?” Her head slowly tilted, gaze narrowing suspiciously. “Are you fucking with me?”
“Absolutely not,” Chat assured her as politely as he could. “We would like to help you, and I have an idea as to how. Here.” Reaching into their pocket, he produced a well-worn wallet and selected three twenty dollar bills before passing them over. “We would like to purchase every piece of meat on that grill.” Turning, he plucked a small box of white garbage bags from the nearby shelf before setting it on the counter. “And these as well.”
Vana hesitated, but she certainly wasn’t going to give up that big of a sale, even if it was from someone as weird as this. And hey, at least he was relatively polite. She’d certainly served worse customers, especially with the station situated just off the side of the busy freeway like this. So, she shrugged and took the money, as well as the box. Ringing him up, she passed the box back to him, waiting until Robin, Med, Chat, or whatever he was calling himself tore open the box, took out a trash bag, and shook it out. Then, one by one, she used the tongs to pick up each hot dog and drop them into the bag as he held it up, until they were all gone. “Satisfied now, sir?”
Before they could answer, the bell over the nearby door jingled as a slim, quite attractive woman with dark blonde hair poked her head in. When she spoke, it was with a distinctly Russian accent. “Robin, are you coming or what? Where are the snacks?”
The metal figure looked at her, then to Vana, then to the trash bag in their hand, before slowly turning away. “We’ll ahh, find some chips and jerky. Be right there, Stasia.”
“Yeah, well get a move on,” Stasia retorted. “We’ve only got a couple hours before the sun comes up and I’d like to get to the motel so we can reach Roanoke first thing tonight.”
“Roan–oh you’re tourists!” As if that explained everything, Vana shook the lingering confusion off. “Gonna head over to see the lost colony then. Planning to watch the show, are you?”
Dropping an armful of various snacks on the counter, before adding a couple of large sugary drinks, Robin offered her another couple twenty dollar bills. “Yes, ma’am. Stasia there is just a little anxious. She’s been looking forward to this for a long time.”
For a moment, it looked as though Stasia was going to say something else. Instead, she just stepped over and took the half-full garbage bag from them. Her nose wrinkled as she sniffed once, before grimacing. With that, she executed an about-face, walked out of the store, and dropped the bag of old hot dogs in the nearby trash can without a second glance.
Once she had rung them up for all the snacks, Robin gathered them in a couple bags, thanked the still fairly-confused woman, and walked out with them. Once the door had closed behind them, they paused, head tilting once more. “Ah, well. She’s gonna have a story to tell.”
“Hood?” Stasia asked, standing nearby with a curious expression.
“Yup,” came the reply, as Robin Hood gave a short nod and glanced to her with amber-brown eyes. Robin Med and Robin Chat had both done their best to handle the situation inside, but none of them believed that the woman actually understood what was going on. Not even the understandable, Bystander version of it.
The Hooded One, or Hood, was their leader, the default facet of the Robin system. They were the one who had first awakened here on Earth after they had been damaged and buried for so long, the one who had met Marian and Sheriff Wendenal of Nottingham. They chose to operate under gender-neutral pronouns both as the collective being now known as Robin, and as their individual facet of Hood. Meanwhile, their other headmates, like Med, Chat, and others, sometimes chose gender-neutral pronouns as well, but sometimes didn’t. Med preferred they or them. Chat was more of a he and him person. It all depended on their individual choices. They were each individual pieces of the same whole.
Taking a sip from the soda that she had been handed, Stasia made a face before promptly dumping three-quarters of it out. From the pocket of her jacket, she produced a small bag of blood, tearing a hole in one end before emptying the bag into the soda bottle. Tossing the bag into the trash, she shook up the soda and blood mixture, then took a sip of the dark red liquid and smiled very faintly. “Better.”
Robin and Stasia were joined there on the sidewalk just beside the gas station by the final member of their group, the olive-skinned man with sleek black hair known as Judas. Where Robin wore simple jeans and a hoodie, and Stasia a pair of army camo pants, black shirt, and her favorite green leather jacket, Judas had a perfectly-tailored suit with a silk shirt, tie, and expensive italian loafers. He looked completely out of place standing next to the other two.
“Well,” Judas announced after joining them, “the van’s full. I see we have snacks for the rest of the trip. Should we get a move on?” His gaze flicked toward the sky. “I think we have just enough time to make it to our motel before the sun becomes an issue for Miss Stasia.”
The others agreed, and the three headed back to the simple, unassuming-looking red minivan parked at one of the pumps. Judas took the wheel, while Robin and Stasia climbed into the back. They all situated themselves, before pulling out and away from the gas station.
“We’ll check the possible burial sites on the mainland first,” Judas noted while weaving the van through the predawn traffic. “Sundown’s around six-thirty, and the last ferry’s at 4:30, so with Highway 64 closed from that storm, we’ll have to rent a boat anyway. We’ll check the mainland burial sites as soon as we get up and situated, and if we don’t find Odysseus’s body in any of those places, we’ll rent a boat and go over to the island to check the list there.”
“Oh good,” Robin abruptly put in as their eyes shifted to a light pink color, “so we get to go scour through a bunch of graveyards trying to find a single, specific dead body. Can’t imagine why people get weirded out by us, no sir.” That was The Quipping One, or Quip, the facet of themself who tried to make light of situations they were discomforted by, or simply wanted to make people laugh. She preferred female pronouns.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It’s okay, Quip,” Stasia flatly assured her, as well as the rest of Robin, reaching out to squeeze their shoulder. “You can stand guard. I don’t mind being the one who digs around and identifies the corpses.” She paused briefly before adding, “I’ve created enough of them.”
“We’ll need to use the spell to identify the correct body anyway,” Judas noted. “It’s been far too long for even your senses to pick him out. The man has been dead for well-over four hundred years. Even with the preserving spells that were supposed to have been put in the coffin, it will have… it will be hard to recognize.” He grimaced slightly at his own words.
“You take us to all the best places, you know that?” Quip informed the man with a somewhat weak, shaky smile. “Just a few months ago, it was that cannibal cult in Morgantown, then the Mausoleum with that Lich in Kentucky right after we met Stasia here. Now this.”
Stasia, for her part, offered a shrug. “I didn’t mind the Lich.”
“You stabbed the Lich in the throat, cut his head off, and punted it into the blast furnace,” Quip reminded her.
“Yeah…” Stasia smiled fondly at the memory, leaning back a bit. “Good times.”
Over the next couple of hours, the three of them ate their snacks (Robin didn’t particularly need food, being what they were, but did enjoy feeling like they were a part of things) while continuing down the freeway. Eventually, with the sun just threatening to make its appearance, they arrived at the motel they had already made reservations for. The other two got out to stretch their legs and walk around the lot, while Judas went inside for their keys.
The clerk behind the desk was watching a boxing match when Judas stepped inside, barely glancing up before distractedly murmuring, “We’re full-up, sorry.”
“Actually,” Judas informed him while stepping to the counter, “we have a reservation. It’s under Jude Holiday.” While saying that, he produced his wallet with an ID and credit card naming him as such.
Clearly disappointed that he would have to turn his attention away from the match after all, the clerk rose and began to take down the information. “Let’s see, three rooms with a single king sized in each for two nights. That’ll run you three hundred and seventy two bucks. On a card, okay, let’s…” He ran it through, humming to himself while sneaking the occasional glance back to the television. Once the system was satisfied, he held out three keys. “You’ll be right across the lot over there in the corner. Anything else?”
Judas nodded while taking the keys. “We’re going to be sleeping all day, so we’d prefer no maid service or any other interruptions. Believe me, my friend Stasia out there gets very grumpy if her rest is disturbed. I’d hate for her to leave a bad review.” With that, he offered the man a friendly smile. “This place seems too nice to unleash her sleep-deprived self.”
The clerk promised to make a note of that for the housekeepers, before Judas returned to his partners with the keys and began to hand them out.
“You know, you get annoyed when your beauty sleep is interrupted too,” Stasia noted casually while examining the key in her hand.
“I forget just how good your hearing is,” Judas murmured before nodding. “Yes, but I only burst into flames metaphorically, not literally. Better that they be more afraid of what will happen if they bother you.”
“Either way, we’ll keep an eye on things,” Robin’s security-minded facet (The Security One/Sec) announced as their eyes shifted to a very dark blue. “We don’t need to sleep. You two do.” They tucked the key into their pocket, adding, “We’ll walk the perimeter first and get the lay of the land before posting up by the window so we can see the whole lot and the entrance. If anything happens, one of us will let you know.”
Judas shrugged toward Stasia. “I guess I can’t argue with that. It’s nice having a near-invulnerable android buddy around. And not just because being mechanical means they’re immune to a certain species of body-snatching dictators.”
“I like the invulnerable part,” Stasia replied while reaching out to lightly tap Robin on the forehead. “You’re a lot of fun in a fight.”
Plucking a pair of sunglasses out of their pocket, Sec held them loosely in one hand while scanning the parking lot for any threats. “We’re all glad to be of assistance. Perhaps none as much as Brawl…”
Their eyes shifted to a bright red briefly as Brawl put in, “Ya got that right. So if someone does poke their noses into our business, we might have to shout it out to ya while we’re bashing their faces into the concrete.”
Clearing his throat, Judas gracefully noted, “If such an unlikely situation does arise, it would be good to have an intruder left to question.”
Robin’s eyes shifted back to dark blue once more as Sec nodded. “We will take care of it. Now please, find your way to your room before that sun gets any higher.”
Without wasting any more time, the other two retired to their rooms to sleep, leaving Robin to watch over the area. Though the three had only been working together for just over a month, Judas and Robin had been partners for some time before that. And regardless of how long Stasia had known them, she already trusted both the Mevari and the old Seosten-Heretic implicitly. Which was an odd feeling for her. Throughout her extended life over the past century, Stasia had seen herself as a loner. Yet, she found herself caring deeply about Robin and Judas in such a short time. They had found their way through her defenses, and now she couldn’t see herself anywhere else.
Once they found the body of Odysseus for the woman who wanted it, she would give them the location of Grigori Rasputin. Then she would finally get her revenge for what the man had done to her, and to her family. After which, she would be able to move on for the first time since… since she had been turned into a vampire to begin with.
And she could think of no people she wanted to move on with more than them.
*******
Much later that evening, the three of them stood in a small grove of trees. They had already searched half a dozen cemeteries on the mainland with no luck, before renting a boat to come out to the island. The spot they were at was one of another fifteen noted possible locations for Odysseus’s hidden grave, marked only by a boulder with a single cross carved into it. They’d had to hike through the forest to find it, here only a few feet from a deep ravine. With the moon high in the sky casting its illumination over the trees, the trio worked to dig up the body.
Well, two of them did. Judas and Stasia did the actual digging part under the light of a hanging lantern, while Robin stood watch a few feet away. Their eyes scanned the surrounding woods suspiciously, taking in every heat signature within the surrounding area. None were human, or any other sapient for that matter. The currently-closed highway lay roughly six hundred meters south, with the Coastal North Carolina Refuges Gateway Visitor Center just beyond that. Northwest Point, a small housing area, lay to… well, to the northwest. But right here, they were alone save for the rather large assortment of animals who were either curious or afraid. Some of them both. Robin’s more innocent, childlike facet, who called herself The Sprightly One or Sprite, wanted to go explore and talk to the animals. But Hood and Sec kept them on task. There would be time later to enjoy the island. Right now, their job was to watch over the other two while they dug up and tested yet another body. Their eyes shifted rapidly back and forth between various colors, including Sprite’s soft yellow, as they internally conversed and debated.
Robin was pretty sure they had not always been like this. When they had first been dug up and awoken by Marian, there had only been Hood. Yet there were other portions of their identity, of their mind, which gradually became unlocked and grew into their own distinct selves. Collectively, they would always be known as Robin, while these separate selves chose their own additional identifiers, such as Hood, Med, Quip, Sec, Brawl, and Sprite. They shared this body and worked together to take care of their friends.
That, after all, was why they were here, why they had met up with first Judas and now Stasia to begin with. They had been looking for Marian for a very long time before finally getting this lead. Hopefully, it would pay off. Rasputin had to know where Marian was, and what had happened to her. If he didn’t, if all of this was for– no, either way it would not be for nothing. Because finding Rasputin would help both Judas and Stasia. And as much as Robin wanted to find their old friend, they also wanted their new friends to get what they needed as well. So either way, this was worth the trip.
Still, they had waited a very long time to see Marian again. Hopefully… hopefully their wait would soon be over.
Even as that thought crossed their mind, Judas spoke up. “Okay, there’s the lid. Stasia?”
The vampire woman promptly leaned down, catching hold of the sealed coffin before tearing it open with one hand. Despite not looking, Robin could guess what the body inside looked like, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Yeah,” Judas murmured with a glance toward Robin’s back. “Consider yourself lucky that you’re standing over there. Either this isn’t our guy, again, or he’s been preserved just enough that it looks like he’s been dead a few years instead of four hundred.”
“Test him,” Stasia replied, straightening up before cracking her neck. “He looks right to me. Close enough to the drawing.”
Judas nodded. “Sure, at least this one isn’t a woman. Or a kid.” Grimacing at those memories from earlier attempts, he drew a knife from his belt and activated the prepared enchantment before kneeling next to the hole. The light from the lantern danced eerily in the light breeze while he leaned down and drove the knife into the corpse as gingerly as possible. Waiting a moment, he drew it back and squinted at the blade.
After a moment of no reaction, Hood spoke up. “Okay, well, if that’s not the right–” Abruptly, he was interrupted by a bright blue light that filled the small clearing, overwhelming the lantern for a second before fading.
“That’s it?” Stasia demanded, her eyes flicking from the body to Judas and back again.
Judas, for his part, gave a slow smile and nodded. “This is it. We found him.” He rose to his feet, brushing off his hands before giving a long, slow exhale. “Now we just need to get him out of there and trade the body for what Inanna knows.”
Robin finally turned, as the three of them exchanged looks. They were so close now. After a month of chasing down leads, getting a map of various potential burial spots, and finally finding the right place itself, they had the body that their benefactor had been searching so long for.
“Call her,” Stasia told Judas in a flat voice. “She will want to know.”
With a nod of agreement, the man slid a phone from his pocket and found the contact he wanted before hitting the button. Then he held the phone to his ear, waiting as it rang. The other two listened, their own senses good enough that it might as well have been set to speaker mode.
“Yes?” came the by-then-familiar woman’s voice.
“We have it,” Judas informed her. He said nothing else, no introduction, no small talk. Only those three words.
“Good,” Inanna replied. “Give me the location and I will send someone to pick it up. There is no need for you to carry it out of there. Once the body is secured, I will call you with the information you wanted. But in the meantime, I have something I want you to check in on. Someone who has been asking about me. Investigate and handle the situation however may be required.
“Her name is Asenath.”