Chapter forty nine

          I woke up feeling groggy and disoriented.

          I had spent the past four days going to the new office that Fairweather tech had opened and following different Atelli around town trying to figure out what they were doing in Oslo. Unfortunately I had not gotten lucky so far, all I had seen them do was go to their homes at the end of the day and visit a construction site which was going to become the fairweather tower in the near future.

         While I spent my days following Atelli, I had ordered Delilah to make herself look exactly like me and go around town doing things like visiting museums and going to malls, things that would make her visible without making her conspicuous. I had this strange feeling that I was under surveillance so I sent her out as a red herring and tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. Delilah was only too happy to accept this task because it was a rare opportunity for her to go out and just have fun and experience the world. According to her she had seen and experienced most things from the memories of the souls of sinners being tortured but seeing and feeling things in person was just so much more wonderful. Even though she was having a blast going around and having fun she still insisted on being rewarded at night which was the reason why I was groggy and disoriented as I woke up entangled in the limbs of said succubus.

        I slowly unwrapped her tail which had wound itself around my stomach and slipped out from underneath her carefully so that I wouldn't wake her up. I had gotten good enough with my healing that a simple application of my power later I was feeling as fresh as a spring Daisy. I silently went out of the bedroom and to the luggage in the living room where we had dumped our stuff and never bothered to move it. I took some clean underwear , my last good pair since Delilah keeps ripping them off with her claws, and some nondescript clothing then proceeded to the bathroom to go through my morning ritual and take a shower. I ordered some breakfast from room service then proceeded to eat the eggs and sausages with great gusto. Once I was done I exited the hotel to a carpark where I kept my car.

       I drove to the modest office that Fairweather Tech was currently occupying and parked across the street waiting for the next Atelli I was going to have to tail.

       Right away I knew that I had finally stumbled on something interesting. The Atelli that came out of the office was one of the more humanoid ones. She, because it was so obviously female, had the normal body of a woman with no strange appendages or grotesque additions I could see, but her head was a different matter. For one thing she had three heads, a normal sized one where a normal head should be and two smaller ones growing our from her right and left shoulder. The center head had no hair or any facial features , it was just a smooth ball covered with skin. The head on the right had white glowing hair, white glowing eyes and even light spilling out of its mouth. The head on the left had dark hair that seemed to absorb all the light around it, its eyes were like a bottomless pit and the light around it was dim even when sunlight was shining directly at it but it wasn't the strange appearance of the Atelli that tipped me off that something was gong on, it was the disguise that she was wearing. 

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         On the outside the Atelli looked like a slightly overweight dark haired woman wearing a frumpy dress and glasses. What really made me suspicious was that she had a bruise on her left cheek as if she had been punched. I have seen a lot of Atelli but what I have never seen was an Atelli showing an image to the world that was less than a hundred percent healthy, but that was what I was seeing now.

        I followed her as she drove her red Hyundai to the community center. I followed her inside and saw her enter a room. The room had a sign that said 'battered women support group.'

        Now the bruise on her face started to make sense but why would an Atelli pretend to be an abused woman to enter a support group?

       As I stood there wondering what the connection could be when a slightly older willowy woman with very light brown hair and brown eyes with green flakes in them approached me with a big friendly smile on her face,

       "Is this your first time here? Don't worry , there is nothing to be ashamed of or to be afraid of. Most of the women here have gone through the same thing and they will not judge you but if the sunglasses and hat make you feel safe then we won't force you to take them off. Believe it or not most of our first timers come here dressed exactly like you, large shades to hide bruises and hats to hide their identity. We won't make you do anything you don't want to so you don't have to hesitate to come inside. Oh by the way I am the psychologist who started this group, my name is Brenda."

       Apparently Brenda had seen me staring at the door and thought I was a new member having doubts, which was a fair assumption seeing how I was dressed. I automatically scanned her with what I was now calling soul vision which I always use on new people I meet. It was a precaution I had started taking after I had seen what my mother could do.

     And sure enough there was more to Brenda than meets the eye.