My talking crow, Cory, had said "I will cure your nightmares; I'll tell you something so frightening you'll never sleep again!" like a barker at a carnival. He wanted it on his tombstone, believing the opening line to be worth keeping his memory alive. I told my crow we're not yet dead and had a long way to go. Somehow I remembered that part the best of all.

I could see the end of it all in the distance, knowing its rude path through apocalyptic landscapes and being there at the summary end of if all. I must mention that I began to follow many headlines of horror-and-disaster around the world, all in the wake of dreadful monsters. The two we had to fear the most were the fact that the stars in the sky had changed course and continued to do so every night. The other problem was the moon getting further away. A deadly bloom had formed in the oceans that killed every living creature it met. The vastness of the bloom meant that its spores carried on the wind and it was everywhere within a year.

It was then that the FBI decided when Serephiel would return to the temple of Araek. We looked over the total pattern of her moves as we could find them and then discovered that Fetter Industries had levied bomb shelters, including one on the archaeological site: Araek's Temple.

We went back to the morbid La Cucharacha and got the lights to turn on with the use of a generator. QUIETUS set up all of their surveillance equipment and readied their vampire killing gear, in case the bloodthirsty ones came for us. We had reinforcements who had sworn that they believed in vampires and undergone training. I told the graduate Agents: "If you see a vampire, just run like hell."

The perimeter surveillance watched for signs of ghosts, or vampires. The equipment was similar. I wondered if it would work to alert them to vampire encroachments. The machineguns looked like better deterrents. The vampires never came to La Cucharacha, but the defenses the FBI set up were notable. QUIETUS headquarters was La Cucharacha. An old run down motel near a ghost town with a generator for power.

The binoculars on the ghost town watched the cultists as they came and went from the ranch. "I've seen the Marshals and the Sheriff." I told Cory.

"Vampires." Cory told me.

The Deputy knocked on our door. A huge man named Braid. He told us he was standing in for the sheriff. Sheriff Braid. He told us he had a deputy, who was taking the day off. "May I come in?"

"I guess so." Agent Saint agreed.

There was introductions all around before Deputy Braid said:

"We had a series of burglaries that match the description on our late Sheriff Regen and the U.S. Marshals that went missing." He gave Agent Saint the file. She started reading it.

"My Lord isn't telling this person everything?" Cory asked me in our Corvin hybrid.

"He hasn't asked." I told Cory, clicking to him.

We went outside and visited the monument to our friends that had fallen already. It was looking like a graveyard.

I watched then, in horror, as the robed intruder walked towards La Cucharacha from the desert. The FBI didn't seem to notice and I wasn't really sure I was looking at anything at all. Then it was all the winds and flames and shaking of the earth in a storm. The rains came down and then after the waves washed over there was still a dryness to the desert and the lightning started and cooked everything to a crisp.

There was nothing to shoot at and no static. Just Serephiel and a storm of all of her elements. She had decided to eradicate everyone at La Cucharacha, destroy the entire motel with one spell of destruction. Testing her Majara, three crowns in one.

"I have Pheriel's and Ariel's crowns." Serephiel said upon the wind and lightning strikes. She found the ranch in the horizon and blasted that place also. I just stood there and was soaked by the storm and horrified to see so much destruction. Many of the cultists fled and took refuge in camps while the storm raged over their holy home.

I looked over the devastated wreckage of the sides of La Cucharacha. Most of the ceiling still stood, the flash flood and lightning had only knocked out most of the sides of the building and then winds like tornadoes the size of dust devils had sucked everyone out into the storm and cast them all over the desert, I was certain, dead.

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The worst part was that I had lost Cory in the storm and I was weeping and crying out for my crow. I was alone in that desert, walking toward Araek's Temple where a light shone and all manner of birds and winged insects were flying around it. I watched as every living thing was being drawn to the light, walking towards it.

Serephiel's magic was truly diabolical! I resisted the sights and turned. It was as though all the living world walked past me and then there was no life in the desert. I knelt in grave horror and realized I might never see Cory again.

I heard voices and looked up to see that the cultists and the FBI were travelling toward the light. Some of them had survived and limped now to their certain doom.

It was then that Cory found me standing there and said: "Good show, my Lord."

"Good show to you, Cory." I told him.

We saw Detective Winters and he was kneeling and repairing Streetsweeper. "All the parts were in pieces everywhere." He complained.

Then Agent Saint found us and told us she had several more of her FBI agents and also Sheriff Braid and his deputy. We went with her and found they had arrested some cultists.

"What are the charges, Sheriff?" The cultist said.

"Yeah, this is a civil rights violation, arresting us without charges!" The other cultist said.

"Suspicion of Kidnapping Sheriff Regen and two U.S. Marshals." Sheriff Braid offered.

"Or I can citizen's arrest you with this." Detective Winters pointed his weapon at them. "If you want the restraints off."

"No thanks." The third cultist said. The other two murmured in agreement.

While the prisoners sat they worried about something they called Skinless. Cory told me it was a myth. there was no such thing as Skinless. I asked what it was and Cory told me it was a horrible creature. It was part horse and part rider, with neither the rider nor the horse having any skin. He'd said "The flesh bleeds a toxic blood as it rides to punish the stealers of salt. It has no heads but it has eyes and mouths and it has no hands or hooves but again eyes and mouths and as it gallops it does so on the air, floating and dripping its horrible blood."

"It is part of a curse on those who stole the salt, in the story." Cory told me.

"So it goes after those who are cursed?" I asked.

"Yes, until they are dead, my Lord." Cory explained.

"And it is after these cultists?" I asked.

"According to their mythology. The Skinless is not real, my Lord." Cory laughed with amusement.

That evening we saw the approach of a nasty looking cloud that had to be the Skinless. It came towards us where we were at what was left of the La Cucharacha; now mostly sandbags and chicken wire and Christmas lights and garden torches.

I went for the machinegun installment and fired at it. "What are you doing?" A QUIETUS agent asked me.

"Wasting ammo!" I said. I continued to shoot the approaching cloud. The cultists got up and tried to run away. Detective Winters told them to stop or he would shoot and then he shot them and killed all three of them. They lay dead and a weird yellow glow erupted from them and some of it went into Detective Winters and some of it went into his weapon and some of it drifted up into the cloud itself, Skinless.

"That's no cloud!" The QUIETUS agent screamed and ran away screaming in terror.

I kept shooting until I had to reload and then I reloaded. I started shooting Skinless some more. It was getting closer, I could see that the bullets were puncturing its bulky horror mass. They were just adding to the rate that it bled. It was so massive as it floated there that there was no other effect from the weapon. I stopped shooting.

"Rain go away and come again another day." Cory chanted at Skinless. A huge raincloud darkened the sky and cast a shadow over Skinless. With its yellow glow from the cultists it went into the darkness of the raincloud and froze up, ceasing to drip red horror upon the landscape.

"What happened?" Agent Saint asked, gasping in horror.

"I shot it." I tried to say, deafened by the weapon.

Cory hopped around and Detective Winters and his weapon had a slight aura of weirdness around them, an outline of yellowish energy, somehow imbued with part of the curse on the blood drinkers that was a curse against the cultists.

"That thing left when I shot the prisoners." Detective Winters set down his weapon as Sheriff Braid arrested him.

I looked around for Cory, worried the storm had swept him away, again. He was still there.

"You saw that thing, coming for them!" Agent Saint pointed out to Sheriff Braid.

"My son has a duty to uphold the law." Sheriff Braid's Deputy scolded her. It was Sheriff Braid's mom, as his deputy. She was handy was an assortment of firearms and a combat knife and had numerous tattoos and brandings. It was hard to imagine her as the clean shaven sheriff's mother.

"We have some of the camera's recording its approach and the fact that it left exactly when whey died and also a weird yellow light going to the departing cloud of doom and then into Detective Winters." Another Quietus agent told us.

"That's enough evidence of what went on here." A new U.S. Marshal arrived. He had walked in and spoken. Then he introduced himself and showed his credentials and promptly commandeered La Cucharacha and all the evidence and the corpses as evidence. Then he celled in for what he needed to contain it all.

"QUIETUS cannot be commandeered." Agent Saint sounded mad.

"What are you going to do about it?" Detective Winters asked her. The other FBI agents gathered around. Detective Winters was unarrested. Sheriff Braid and his Deputy were outside of La Cucharacha by the Dead Cat Tree talking to Marshal Uncles.

"We are going to commandeer him. All his stuff he is bringing in. For now, work with them." Agent Saint planned. She sounded very mad. Everyone liked it and agreed. Cory thought the plan was marvelous and cawed:

"A good day."