Stepping back from the rock face, Will looked at the hole for a moment, knowing what he would have to do. If there was more time he would perform a spell of devinitation before clearing the area, but that could be done afterwards, for night had indeed long since fallen, and more lizards could appear at any time.

Will took out a piece of chalk from his bag and drew a rough circle along the rock face, making sure there were no breaks in the line. He stood back and peeled off his shirt, revealing much of his lithe frame, and drew a line of blood across the top of his left bicep. Standing ten feet away from the chalk circle, Will spoke.

“May the fires of Abbadon purify this place in my name, for I am of the Cause.”

The chalk circle lit up, burning a brilliant bright blue, singing deep into the rock on which it was drawn. Suddenly a wild blue fire rose up from the hole Will had dug, splashed with strokes of shimmering purple, bursting out and reaching high up into the air above Will, barely avoiding his windswept hair.

The fire calmed and shrunk back into the hole, leaving the entrance ablaze, almost crawling around the rock, acting more like some kind of animal than a fire.

Will felt the tension drop from his shoulders and he stumbled into the sand beneath him. Now… his thoughts hurled around his brain like runners on a race track, and he felt unable to catch any of them. The blood on his chest was drying, the line he’d drawn already sealed with a kind of deep blue scab. When that peeled away, there would be no visible scar, such was the way Abbadon chose to do business. He still couldn't think straight, though.

When his thoughts came back to him, he would perform a divination spell, just to be sure there weren't any more of the bastards hiding in the ocean nearby. Then… then he would get ready to go home.

---------

Buck’s Diner was located in a quiet part of town, just off of the maindown town road, next to a laundromat and an apartment block. It had been there for 40 years, and might be there for 40 more.

The woman gazed into the diner through it's glass windows. Practically everything inside had been polished beyond the pale at some point, and the chrome (and there was a lot of it) gave off more light than it reflected. The big, gaudy, LED meatloaf sign hanging above the door swayed back and forth ever so slightly. After eyeing the 5-star hygiene rating stickered by the door (no surprise there) she went inside.

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She held herself with a sort of aloof confidence, as if she were prepared for something, but nothing that she would encounter here, in a small diner in the middle of downtown Asheton. The woman took a seat at the bar.

Buck eyed her from the soda machine and walked over. “Howdy.”

“Hi… what’s good to eat here?”

“Oh uh, I’d say pretty much everything. But, we only have three main meals. Most people recommend the meatloaf though, we’re kinda known for it.” Buck chuckled. “You want a menu?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Sarah looked over the menu idley. She already had half an idea of what she wanted.

“Is it usually this quiet here?”

The way she said it, Buck couldn't quite tell if it was a statement or a question. “Eh, usually. We make most of our money with deliveries.”

“Can I get a cheeseburger, without the pickles and the mustard?”

“Of course you can. One extra special cheeseburger comin right up.” Buck disappeared into the kitchen.

The woman smiled. She’d only been here for five minutes and already the small town kitsch was getting to her. She hadn't been to a place like this since she was 5 years old. And while the city had it’s charms, many of them, it also had a sort of self-consciousness, a self-seriousness, that wore down anyone who stayed there for long periods of time.

----------

After a while, Micheal crept back up the stairs and left his Mother to finish.. whatever it was she was doing. He didn't want to pry, he couldn't imagine what she was feeling-- Micheal stopped at the landing and looked over to Kyle's old room. A slim crack of light was pouring out through the open door. Micheal opened the door and found his father sitting, hunched over with his hands clasped together, on the edge of a blow up mattress. No doubt his mother had blown it up earlier in the day.

“You bastard,” he muttered.

Felix looked up.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me. Why’d you have to be such a fuck up?”

Felix lunged at Micheal, pressing him against the wall and almost lifting him up by his neck. In an instant the delicate lattice of veins in his father’s forehead, of which he was so familiar, had risen into ugly blue/green tracks, bulging out under the skin, almost begging to be freed in some way.

“That's rich coming from you,” Felix sneered. “Look at yourself, 21 years old and you’re still living with your parents, with no aspirations for higher education, no idea what you want to do with your life, and as far as I can tell, you haven't been interested in the good book since you were five. God, at least Kyle could be bothered to read the damn thing, even if he probably *is* a queer, at least he shows sexual interest in *something*. You’re just a piece of shit.”

Felix shoved his hands off of his son and he fell forward a bit.

“You make me sick. Get out of my sight.”

Micheal looked at his father with a red glint in his eye, his head full of thoughts of slaughter. Felix flinched. Micheal shambled out of the room, being sure to not make so much noise that his mother would hear, or worse, learn of his confrontation with his father.