Ch.30
Federal Marshal Mark Sanderson’s phone rang. He'd stepped out of the office for lunch, if you could call a meal at eleven pm at night lunch, only fifteen minutes ago, so for Riggins to be calling him, something had to be on fire... at least proverbially.
“This is Sanderson.” he said.
“Get yer ass back here. We’ve got a BIG problem!” His boss was usually monosyllabic on the phone. Sanderson knew the fact that he’d uttered two complete sentences consecutively was a bad sign.
“Sure boss. Just got my food and headed back anyway. Be there in five.”
It actually took him about seven minutes, but his boss was waiting in his office and he looked pretty close to completely freaked out when Sanderson knocked on the door.
Well, Sanderson knew he was freaked out. Most people would say he looked mildly annoyed... but Sanderson had known his superior for over twenty years. In fact, he had helped train him, too. Mildly annoyed for someone else was John Riggins’s completely freaking the hell out.
If he was being honest with himself, seeing John Riggins freaked out had him on high alert already. He’d seen the man pinned down and surrounded by Mexican Cartel members, with no backup coming any time soon, and looking calmer than this!
“Get yer ass in here and close the damned door, Sanderson!” Riggins barked at him.
Wow. That’s... that’s not fantastic. What the heck’s going on? John never loses his cool like this... Sanderson thought to himself as he walked into Riggins’ office, closing the door behind him as instructed.
“Sanderson, I need you to watch this surveillance footage I just received from the FBI surveillance team keeping an eye on Vlad Federov’s mansion.” Riggins’ face was as grim as Sanderson had ever seen it.
“What the hell happened, John? That place is a goddamn fortress!”
His boss just frowned. “Just... just watch it. Tell me what you think.” Riggins started the video.
The mansion was up in the hills to the north of Hillsboro, off of Cornelius Pass Road. There were no other houses around for a couple of miles, and Vlad owned all of the land nearby. The five acres immediately around the mansion had a twenty-foot tall, ten-foot-thick concrete wall surrounding it, and the gates were solid steel, six inches thick!
It was basically a goddamned fortress!
The FBI had estimated that they’d need to climb the wall if they wanted to raid the place, either that or use a chopper for access, something dangerous in and of itself, with the high winds common in the hilly area where the house was located.
The mansion itself looked halfway between a modern home and a castle! The place always had at least a dozen men on guard duty, and a phone call could triple that number in half an hour.
The FBI had managed to get surveillance cameras and some parabolic microphones into place covering the exterior so they could see and hear what happened outside, but whatever they’d done to the building’s construction, they couldn’t get anything from the inside of the mansion itself – not even using tech that should allow them to do so.
Basically, the place was a fortress and guarded like one! That made it was really surprising when a guy dressed like a reject from the Matrix in all black combat fatigues, combat boots, a black flack vest, all in a hooded leather trench coat and wearing a full combat helmet with a blood red skull head painted on it, walked right in like he owned the place!
He had a big revolver strapped to each of his hips and slung low, like an Old West gunslinger. He also had two smaller semi-auto pistols on either side of his chest in shoulder rigs. On top of THAT, he also had a sword strapped to his back, like he was some kind of RPG cosplayer or something! He walked right past the gate guards; it was like they couldn’t even see him or something... then went into the guard shed and used the access door in the shed to walk into the mansion compound.
He passed five separate people, and none of them reacted to him in any way. It was like he was invisible to them or something.
It was damned creepy, like watching a ghost flit among the living. Some of them looked right at him and just completely ignored him, like he wasn’t even there!
He walked right up to Vlad, standing next to his wife and four other men and until he gets less than thirty feet away, none of them reacted to him at all, either!
Finally, at twenty feet away, Vlad glances towards the guy in the red skull helmet, blinks and then shakes his head, then stares directly at him. He then points at red skull helmet guy and says, “Get him!”
At that point, Red Skull guy pulls out one of the absolutely enormous revolvers that he’s wearing on each hip and starts fanning the hammer. Vlad shoves his wife into the pool they’re standing next to alongside him. Meanwhile, Vlad’s four men obviously are obviously just registering that the guy is even there... and seem to be struggling to even comprehend the fact, shown by them all shaking their heads and rubbing at their eyes.
It was damned spooky to even watch.
Sanderson reaches forward and pauses the video then looks at Riggins. “What the fuck is this bullshit?”
Riggins grins. “Welcome to my world for the past half an hour. Watch the rest of it, it gets crazier.”
Sanderson can’t help but wonder. How in the hell can it get crazier than this? He starts the video back up.
Sanderson resumes watching and sees that Red Skull Helmet Guy somehow managed to hit Vlad with two shots, and blood is very obviously spreading in the pool’s water. The two Federov mooks nearest Red Skull Helmet Guy charge him, pulling long knives from behind their backs... and Sanderson can hardly believe his eyes when all four of them start hulking out and growing fur!
“What the? What the fuck is this shit?” Sanderson whispers, glancing at Riggins.
Riggins looks back at him and shrugs. “Why in the hell are you asking me?”
“The Federovs are fucking werewolves or some shit?” Sanderson was pretty obviously having a hard time wrapping his head around what he was seeing.
Riggins started chuckling. “Wait until you see what Vlad and Victoria look like when they come out of the pool...”
Five minutes later, when the video is finally over, Sanderson sighs and sits back in his chair. “I’m not sure what the hell I would have thought about this insanity if I hadn’t met Ramirez. How’d you get this?”
Riggins groaned. “One of my buddies at the Bureau was having a shit fit, called me up to go grab a drink with him. We bullshitted for a while, and then he told me about this – happened two days ago. Apparently, the local field office chief is having the computer geeks go over it all to see if this is some kind of hack job, but to make something like this for a movie would be tens of millions of dollars, maybe more. I told him I might know a guy who could shed some light on all of this.”
Sanderson frowned. “You thinking about getting Ramirez in on this?”
Riggins nodded. “This is exactly what he was warning us about, isn’t it? Without a demonstration like what we were given, there’s no way in hell the guys at the Bureau will do anything but Section 9 this video... and this is the perfect chance to bring all of this to light.”
Section 9 was where anything that was too wacky for normal FBI agents to deal with got sent... well, not just the FBI. Marshal’s Service, DEA, CIA, and Secret Service, too. Heck, all of the Federal alphabet agencies as far as either of them knew. Sanderson and Riggins had talked about Section 9 at length after they talked to Ramirez and agreed that if anyone knew, Section 9 were probably the people in the U.S. government who already knew about the supernatural.
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Maybe. Neither of them was willing to risk their careers over that hunch.
Sanderson rubbed his temples – this was starting to give him a tension headache. “So, was that a yes about bringing Ramirez in on this?”
Riggins nodded. “Called him right after I called you. He should be here in about ten or fifteen minutes.”
Sanderson looked back at the laptop’s monitor, still wrestling with himself to believe that the hulking figure of the gigantic, as in well over ten feet tall, werewolf that Vlad Federov had turned into, covered in green and black flames from head to toe, was real. That was without mentioning the fiendishly beautiful woman that could only be Victoria Federov; complete with red skin, black ram’s horns, huge bat wings on her back, a long tail ending in a spade, six-inch-long claws, and even hooved feet!
Sanderson just shook his head. “What the Hell, Riggins?”
Riggins frowned. “I’m not a religious man, Mark, but yeah, I think that’s the problem. H E double hockey sticks.”
Sanderson started the video over from the beginning.
--------------------
Marshal Riggins had called me about half an hour ago and asked me to come to the U.S. Marshal’s Service branch office in Portland, telling me it was important but not an immediate emergency.
I could tell that he was having a hard time keeping his cool, though. It was more than enough to make me wonder what kind of craziness had gotten him to call me at quarter to eleven on a Thursday night.
Sanderson and Riggins were both outside waiting for me, smoking in the parking lot when I drove up.
I parked my Blazer and climbed out and walked over to them. It was only then that I realized they were passing a flask back and forth, their eyes a little crazy. “Damn, Marshals. The two of you look like you just saw some fucked-up shit.” I said with a little chuckle.
They exchanged a glance, then Riggins sighed. “You have no idea, yet.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed it out on the concrete, then nodded towards the door to the office. “Come on, Ramirez. We got some video we want you to take a look at.”
Sanderson sighed and also put out his cigarette. Then he followed the two of us inside.
I looked at how serious the two of them were acting and was a little freaked out. “What’s going on, Marshals?”
Sanderson shook his head. “Wait until we’re in Riggins’ office, kid.”
The building was good-sized, but not really huge. Riggins’ office was on the second floor. Riggins walked in first, I followed him, and Sanderson closed the door behind us.
Riggins collapsed into his office chair like he was exhausted. “Ray Ramirez, you showed me some crazy shit a few weeks ago and I’ll admit that I hoped that you were wrong or lying; just some kind of crazy freak who was messing with my head somehow. But you told us to call you if we ran into something we couldn’t handle.” He pointed at the laptop sitting in front of him. “We ran into something that we’re not prepared to handle. Give it a gander.”
The video was a bit under ten minutes long. Guy in black combat gear waltzes right past a bunch of guards, totally Jedi mind tricking them into ignoring him. Walks up to a group of people, two of whom Riggins identifies as Vlad and Victoria Federov, and opens fire.
Thirty seconds later, he’s fighting five werewolves and what looks like some kind of demon; a succubus, probably? Yeah, my Lore skills are telling me that Vlad is a Greater Werewolf with what’s probably a Demonic Warlock's Pact, because the green fire he’s covered in is almost assuredly Hellfire... which makes it even more likely that Victoria is either a succubus who shapeshifts to look human or a human being Ridden by one. Ridden meaning she’s willingly possessed and has full access to the succubus’s powers.
Nearly at the end, Victoria, whatever she is, I decided to think of her that way for simplicity’s sake, carves four runes out of Hellfire into the air! The second the first Hellfire rune is complete; I start feeling something assault my mental defenses!
One of the Psionic Talents I’d taken, by way of a Feat, basically the equivalent of a magic user’s Cantrips, was called Conceal Thoughts. It lasted an hour per manifester level, so three hours, and gave a +4 to save versus a single mind-affecting ability, after which it deactivated. Still Mind was a Monk ability that gave a +2 to save versus Enchantments and mind-affecting abilities. The Disciple’s arcane defense abilities gave a +1 versus magic, too.
The pressure was so subtle, but all of those different bonuses created a shield around my Will, already strong due to a 25 Wisdom, coalescing into a veritable Tower of Iron Will, stopping whatever that rune was supposed to do!
I slammed the laptop closed. A quick glance at the two Marshal’s told me that they were completely zoned out. Conceal Thoughts can be used on another person, so I immediately manifested it onto both of them.
It broke for both of them, right away. I manifested it again onto both of them and it shattered again. Since it’s a Talent, all I need to cast it is to discharge my Halo, so I could use it as many times as I wanted to, only needing to take a few seconds to do so!
Holy shit. Is this the magical equivalent of the Men in Black’s Neuralyzer? Probably with black magic consequences on them, too. Shit!
I could defend my own mind, I had made it a priority. But I had no real way to fix others. That would require a Divine caster or something similar; they were the healers! Monks had options for some of the minor stuff, but nothing that worked on mental attacks. Soulblades could qualify for some of that kind of stuff, but I needed three or four more levels before I had access to something that would be useful here.
After five Conceal Thoughts for Sanderson and six for Riggins, both of them blinked and seemed to snap out of it. They immediately looked incredibly confused.
Sanderson looked at me, mad for a second even though it looked like he could somehow feel that I hadn’t done anything to him. “What the fuck?”
The look on Riggins’ face said that he felt the exact same way.
“You two seen the movie, Men In Black? Will Smith? Tommy Lee Jones?” I asked.
They both looked at me like I was absolutely off my rocker. I sighed. “The flashy thing that the MiB used to erase memories in there? I think they called it a Neuralyzer? At the end of that video, Victoria Federov draws a magical rune in the air that does something like that even through a recording! It would have probably erased your memories of even seeing the video, at the very least.”
Riggins looked at me hard. “You did something to us?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s a special ability I have that gives a one-time bonus to defense against a mental attack or intrusion. It’s basically free for me to cast and keep up, so I’ve been doing so. Shit that messes with your head is some of the nastiest stuff around, so I have a lot of other little abilities that also help against that kind of stuff, so the second I saw it, my defenses all layered themselves up and let me resist it; that's why I closed the laptop. Anyway, giving people an improved chance to resist that kind of bullshit often gives them another chance to break free of its effects, but you had been affected by it multiple times... probably every time you watched it.”
The two of them looked grim. “There’s a lot of FBI agents in the local office that have seen it. Are they affected?” Riggins asked.
I nodded. “Probably. It's not a very strong effect, but it seems like it stacks, and it probably subtly influences you to rewatch it, too, which makes the effect stronger. Its evil magic, too, so there’s no telling what the heck it might do to someone besides that; demonic magic, actually, which is even worse.”
Sanderson looked mad. “What in the hell? Seriously! This shit; it makes no damned sense!”
I was trying to stay calm myself. Will save approximates to strength of Will, and mine was high enough that I was sort of keeping it together, but the implications of this were indeed pretty fucked.
How many people have been mind-fucked by something like this? Shit, they could murder somebody at halftime during the goddamned Super Bowl, carve one of those runes in the air at the 50-yard line, and the whole damned world would forget about it!
It took a little while but both of them finally calmed down. Both of them were combat vets who’d been through a ton of shit storms; their Will saves were probably pretty high to deal with the shit they’d seen, too.
At that point, we started to talk more seriously, as I filled them in on what was going on.
“Silver bullets? Are you serious?” Riggins asked me, an incredulous look on his face.
“Yep. Lycanthropes, that's any were-creature, including werewolves, are vulnerable to silver. Without silver weapons or a really powerful magical weapon, you’d probably need a .50 BMG, AT LEAST, to really hurt them... and even that won’t hurt Vlad.”
“A .50 BMG won’t hurt Vlad? Are you serious?” Sanderson asked me.
“From what I could see, he’s a Greater Werewolf. Notice how he was over fifty percent bigger than the others? Plus, that green and black fire on him? That’s Hellfire, so he’s probably a Warlock, too. Probably has a Contract with the demoness that’s in or masquerading as his wife. Silver will outright kill his men, but Greater Werewolves have regeneration, like Wolverine or Deadpool from Marvel. Silver will stop that, but Warlocks ALSO get something called Fast Healing, which is like a lesser version of regen. You’re gonna need to outright coup de grace Vlad, probably multiple times to make sure he’s dead and it NEEDS to be with silver bullets. Not even I can bypass that, though I can definitely hurt him.”
The two of them looked at me in horror. Sanderson shook his head. “That sounds goddamned impossible, Ray. Do you realize how crazy town you sound?”
Riggins just nodded in agreement, but I shrugged. “We haven’t even talked about Mr. Matrix-reject. I think he’s actually an Awakener, whereas I think the Federovs are something else entirely.”
That got both of their attention. “Why do you think he’s an Awakener and they’re not?” Sanderson asked.
“First off, he’s human. It's possible for a human to become a lycanthrope or be possessed, but I just have a feeling, and that’s all it is, that they aren’t. I told you what it took for me to become an Awakener and I also told you the criteria for becoming a Dreamer. What do you think the odds are that Vlad, his wife, and four of his top henchmen are avid gamers?”
Sanderson and Riggins looked impressed and nodded at me in unison. “That actually makes sense.” Sanderson told me.
“Not only that, but I recognize most of what Matrix Lad was using, or at least I think I do. It's all stuff he could have by 5th, maybe 6th level in a Primary class. Guy’s smart too, he ran like hell just a few seconds after Vlad and his old lady climbed outta the pool lookin’ like that. That tells us something, too. Despite him having powers, however he got them, he wasn’t expecting that. You all know more about professional hitmen than I do, obviously, but if you were a magical pro hitter in a world full of magical shit, would you walk into a fight without knowing what you were dealing with?” I asked them.
Both of them shook their heads no. Riggins looked at Sanderson. “Kid’s making sense, Mark.”
“A yup. But none of that’s what I wanna know. Do you think you could take them? If you had to?” Sanderson asked me.
I shook my head. “No way. I wouldn’t even try, and neither should you. If this was happening in the Dream, I’d probably be willing to give it a shot, but out here? No. No fucking way. Everything I know is based off of a goddamned GAME! This is the real world. Legends and Labyrinths could have been some kind of divinely inspired bullshit, and everything in the game is a hundred percent accurate, but without finding someone who actually knows what the hell is going on that I can ask some questions and make sure that what I know from my Lore skill matches the real world, it seems crazy to even try!”
Riggins nodded. “Yeah, that all makes sense, too. It's not like we have a reason to go after them, either. From what we can tell, the only person that was really hurt was Red Skull Helmet dude's cleaning lady! And that’s only from all the work she’s gonna have to do getting the brown stains out of his shorts from when he shit himself!”
The three of us all got a good chuckle out of it.
We talked for a while, but it was after midnight. “Look, gents, I consider myself pretty damned patriotic. If you want me to see if what I did for you two can help anyone at the FBI who got messed with like how you were, just let me know and I’ll give it a try. There’s no guarantee’s though, unfortunately. What I did for you was a side-effect as much as anything. I’m still willing to help with other stuff, too, but I think going after Vlad and Victoria Federov is basically suicide. If you absolutely have to go after them? Bomb the crap out of them and bring flamethrowers and silver bullets! Honestly, that’s not even enough for her, which is the real problem. That’ll probably kill Vlad, but you need holy magic to have a good chance at fight demons, or a +5 magic weapon, and I’ve got NEITHER of those. So, unless an angel or a paladin shows up, leave the Federovs alone, ok?
With that final warning, I headed home.