Fate had a funny way of catching me up. It’d allow me to get ahead and allow me to delude myself into thinking I was no longer being pursued. Unfortunately for my tired legs, it was persistent. Any brief respite was just to guilt me into thinking a life of normality was what I had earned for all that I had suffered. I couldn’t, though. I was meant for more. More suffering.
I paid the cab driver with normal human money. A totally bland interaction for a man that had recently burst from the seams and become part demon, part divine. The driver didn’t seem to notice my internal screaming, which wasn’t as relieving as I’d hoped. Perhaps I wanted my call for help answered.
“You alright, Eric?” Rodney furrowed his brow at me. “Fares have gone up, but that’s why you should get your own car.”
My eyes blinked, and I refocused. “You don’t drive either.”
“I also don’t stare at cab drivers like they murdered my…” his eyes turned back to his home. Where his mother had been murdered. “Huh. You didn’t get his name, perchance?” He gave me a grim smile and walked toward the door.
His use of perchance was slightly more concerning than his matter-of-fact attitude toward his mother’s death. We all dealt with loss in different ways, and his way was a lot healthier than my own when my family had been murdered, so I couldn’t judge. He had support around him that I never did. For the most part, he kept a stiff upper lip around me, but I’d overheard him pouring it all out with Pearl comforting him a couple of times. We all bled, in some way.
The Blank unlocked the door, and we stepped inside. Immediately, the soft comfort of a real home washed over me. A place so cherished and well lived in, it made my heart ache that he had been staying here despite her death.
“I’m going to get a suitcase from upstairs and pack some clothes. Make yourself at home, just don’t do anything…” He paused on the first step up to the next floor. “…weird.”
I opened and closed my mouth, but all I could manage was, “Okay.”
What weird could I possibly even accomplish? I walked into the small living room where she had been killed and put my hands on my hips. Worked my jaw. Everything was pristine. Rodney had been using his idle time to clean and tidy. Trying to accomplish some mental satiety, perhaps. I stared at the carpet and it returned silent judgement. Detective work was difficult as shit.
With a sigh, I pushed my glasses up and activated
Blue.
Usually, the skill would bring up things in red to complete the picture, generally something with demonic power or of particular interest to me. Judging by the light hue in here and the trail of blue leading upstairs, it seemed like it also picked up divine energy now, too. Not that it helped with my current search.
After almost seven seconds, normal vision returned, and I was no more enlightened than before. Perhaps I wasn’t cut out for this after all. Without Wight here to bounce ideas off, I felt a little out of place. A tool only useful for beating in nails in Hell, but nothing much beyond that. Well, Pearl might disagree, but…
I paused and furrowed my brow. Looking at the pictures lining the wall, all the happy faces of Rodney and his mother throughout the years… I heard him come down the stairs lugging a heavy case.
“Hey, Rods,” I gestured for him to come in. “One of these pictures is off.”
“Huh?” He tilted his head. “Oh, you’re right… that’s odd. I hadn’t noticed - was it always like that?”
At a quick glance, the frames looked sporadic and equally aligned along the wall. But there was a pattern, and one of them was breaking it. Only by a small amount, but enough to be obvious if you knew what you were looking for. I didn’t, but I didn’t let luck get in the way of progress.
Gently, I grasped the frame and lifted it from the wall.
There was a hole. Maybe not much wider than a finger-width. It cored through the brickwork and out into the beyond, eventually.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
It was angled to the point where I didn’t need a better picture to join the dots together. Gunther, the Hunter with a sniper rifle, was a possible culprit. There were loose threads that could tie him to it. Enough where I wanted to tug and see if I could wrap them around his neck. A weaker shot, perhaps? It wasn’t as wide as what I had seen him use usually.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“I don’t know if it was Gunther, or even a Hunter at all…” Angered thoughts of the Org being responsible cracked at my cool mood. Ice giving off steam as it melted away. “But that seems like a good place to start."
I raised an eyebrow at the Blank. He didn’t look okay. My arm raised, and he came in for a hug. Guilt riddled at me for pulling the curtain back while he was here. Intent on shining the light on the whole event, I had just blinded him.
“Here,” I said, giving him a pat on the back. “I’ll help you pack and we’ll get going.”
“Thanks, Eric.” He pulled away, and we set about scouring the place for whatever he wanted.
I tried to not look at the real world too much as the next cab took us back to the mansion. The thicker my lungs felt with the weight of my profession, the less I cared to see everything that I couldn’t have. A normal life. I had a weird reflection of it, sure… I had love and friends. But there was no real rest, even in the times where the Org ignored me as I recovered. There were demons that needed killing, always.
There was no returning home from a hard day of the office of boring meetings and quarterly reports to turn off for the weekend. Have a beer and watch TV, walk in the park with a human wife, and just exist for the fun of it. My best friends were another Org employee, and a demon that was bound to me. My lover was a powerful demon who I’d somehow charmed into a normal relationship. A week ago I had wings.
I paid this cab driver in the same manner, this time practiced in my efforts. I smiled. He took a glance at my outfit, and then beyond to the house. “Enjoy your party,” he grinned.
He pulled away down the drive and I gave Rodney a shrug, taking one of his luggage handles to pull one each.
“I hate to ask this kinda thing, Eric… but, we aren’t in danger of any little Eric’s running around in the near future?”
“No.” I pulled a face at him, the answer already leaving my mouth before I had fully wrapped my mind around it. “For three reasons. Demons and humans can’t make babies like that, no matter how much they try.”
“Gross.” He rolled his eyes.
“Second, Org mandates the snip. Too many risks to allow us lunatics to breed. And third, it’s just a terrible idea considering I might die at any point of any day. Even right now.”
He narrowed his eyes and looked around. “You know better than to tempt fate. Yeah, I knew all of that. But you are kinda part demon now, right? Plus, did your demonic regeneration fix your… unsnip you?”
I sucked my teeth. As much as I would like to wave him away, he actually had a point there. “Fuck. It’s not like I could go to a doctor and check, though. Right? Maybe an Org doctor, but I don’t want them knowing more than they need to.”
“They still believe they made you kill Pearl, after all.”
Silly Org, always thinking they had control over me.
Rodney’s phone beeped, and he pulled his luggage to a stop outside the front door. His face fell. “Guess who?”
I rolled my eyes. “Org. What do they want now?” I unlocked our front door and let him in first. Gave the outdoors a glare in case anything untoward was lurking around before I shut and locked it again.
“They’re calling us in. Debrief and next steps.”
Next step should be me sticking my boot up their collective asses. “A welcoming parade with confetti and a raise I hope, after I saved the universe?”
“Easy there, Captain Ego. I’m sure you’ll get yours for what you did. My bet is that they’re stuck on themselves trying to get at this underground danger. They need-“
“Captain Ego to save the day again, I got it.” I clicked my neck and placed his luggage down. “I want to go to the Mids and they’re still having me scoop up pigmen shit. It’s unbecoming.” With a gesture toward the basement, we went ahead. No point keeping them waiting.
“They don’t want you ‘becoming’ a pile of ash when you bite off more than you can chew.”
When had I ever done that? I said it in my head rather than out loud, as I didn’t want to be challenged. It amused me how similar the basement here was to the old house. A stone staircase down under the main house staircase that led to a gray room where we had everything set up.
Rodney’s chair sat opposite the inert portal, my recliner now joining it alongside a shelf with the emergency meds we would sometimes need. I had still sworn off anything the Org produced, but it was there if things got dire.
This basement had another doorway that led to a similarly sized section. We called this the Time Out Room. It had a hospital bed in the middle with restraints and soft padding along the walls. No sharp edges or anything too easy for me to cause damage to myself. Intended for the most dire of time when corruption overloaded me, or I had suffered enough damage to need emergency procedures. Although for medical purposes, the cuffs and bed were also useful for-
“Eric, you okay?”
Rodney snapped the rails and my train of thought plunged into the nether. “Just thinking about how much the Org sucks.” I nodded slowly.
“Well, don’t think it too loud when we’re there, please. I’m half convinced Partridge is looking for any excuse to twist my head off and berate my very organs for bleeding too much as they spill out.”
“Only half convinced?” I grinned. The old trainer was a piece of work, and we were surely about to learn some new curse words alongside what Quest they next expected of us. There was a tiredness to him, though. Maybe he had softened to our continual success despite the odds.
The Blank had set up the portal runes and a blue shimmering oval spooled into the middle of the metal circle.
“After you, Captain Ego,” he bowed.
I grinned as I stepped toward the portal, ready to be hailed a hero.
Blue light flooded my vision as vertigo took me straight into the darkened receiving room of the Org headquarters. The usual robotic voice hissed from above, ready to clear me to enter.
~Eric Redd. Standby…
~Error. Do Not Move.