After the intrusions on their residences the night prior, Rick and Daisy were able to procure a stay at a local motel under the watchful eye of the Alton police. At least four armed officers were present in shifts to safeguard the pair as they slept. It was suspected that the federal agents were more than likely going to be the next targets of an attack, but the night passed by without any sightings of Jeff.
The two managed to survive the night, but there was still work to be done. After a call with Rita, the agents were told to postpone their trip back, as the possibility of them being intercepted and ambushed on the way was too great. They were, however, tasked to investigate the residence of a deceased Glenda Wheeler, whose home was confirmed to be Jeffrey Wood's most recent hideout.
Daisy stared at the old lady. Her complexion was colorless and her neck was clearly broken, yet she sat so peacefully on her rocking chair. On her lap sits a silvery pooch yapping away at all the cops flitting about in its master's home. Its barks going unheard by anyone while it and the old lady's visage were visible only to one person.
Daisy couldn't naturally see ghosts in the same way that she wasn't a born psychic, but with various tweaks to her minor ritual she could achieve the former and fake the latter. She was always intrigued by the psychic phenomenon. By her understanding it was just another of the many ways that magic took form. Despite the so-called scientific process that made them that way, the agents' abilities far surpassed what was possible for mere mental enhancement.
"Excuse me ma'am, we can't have you smoking in here." Daisy was approached by a tall dark skinned gentleman wearing a jacket bearing the logo of his precinct. If she wasn't distracted, Daisy would have also noticed his strong jaw, or the way his torso was abusing his button up shirt. Daisy had been going through a dry spell, but she wasn't the kind of girl who noticed or even cared that her dating life plummeted after joining VASCU.
"Sorry," Daisy said, as she took the cigarette out of her mouth. "It doesn't leave a residue and it helps me focus." She puts the cigarette out anyway and stores it with the others in the pack in her pocket. No use wasting her special blend — best to save it for later. Mrs. Wheeler wasn't being cooperative anyways, so it was ok to put a stop to the seance.
"Are you sure? That purple stuff could jeopardize the crime scene," said the investigator, crossing his arms.
"Yup, it'll be fine," Daisy said, waving the smoke away. As the lingering smoke cleared out, the image of the crooked old lady and her phantom dog dissipated along with it.
Daisy's magic shouldn't have even allowed her to see into the twilight, but during her first case she discovered something incredible. For a short time after their deaths, the victims of slashers made such a strong bond with the material world that even with Daisy's hedge magic she could hijack that connection. Almost as if the aberrant nature of their deaths, or the supernatural qualities of the slasher, created a small nexus point in the location of the victims' murders.
Daisy watched as the last vestige of her smoke faded, and with it the end of the draining ritual. With the right tools and with a good source of magic, a thaumaturge can enact miracles, but even with the minor nexus Jeffrey made here, the pragmatic non-believers milling about made the ritual all the more difficult to maintain. Mr. nosey here, arriving and challenging her smoking disrupted the ritual further, increasing the drain on her powers to an unbearable degree.
"You're the psychics aren't you?"
The question knocked Daisy out of her stupor and she looked at the investigator as if seeing him for the first time. "Excuse me," Daisy said.
"You and your partner —you're the psychological specialists from the FBI right?"
"Oh, I thought you said something else," Daisy said. In that moment she could see said partner waving at her from the den. He approached with his phone in hand and looked as if he was going to say something when the sight of her with the forensic investigator gave him pause.
The worried expression Rick carried all day was replaced with a grin at the sight of the pair. He came over and asked Daisy to the kitchen so they could talk in private. As they walked, he spared no chance to let the opportunity to tease her pass by.
"So, who's mister tall, dark and handsome?" Rick asked.
"I never actually got his name," Daisy said, sparing a glance behind her.
"Oh, so you do think he's handsome. He likes you by the way, thinks you're cute."
"No he doesn't," Daisy said. Her magic didn't detect any affections towards her in proximity. Hedge magic specialized in enchantment and gave her the ability to detect the emotions of others. Despite her affinity emotions, Rick's psychic empathy still trumped her magic so reading his emotions was beyond her.
"Yeah, you got me," Rick admitted. "How did you know? Woman's intuition?"
"Sure, now what were you going to tell me?" Daisy asked, as they made it out of the house through the kitchen's back door.
"Right, so I just got off a call with supervisor Durnam and like last night she said we can't leave yet, but she did arrange for us to meet a local hunter cell."
"There are hunter's this far south of the state?" Daisy asked. In hindsight, it wouldn't be unusual for monsters to frequent more inconspicuous areas. Where there are monsters, there will be hunters.
"Apparently so, and we have to meet with them tonight and get them up to speed on slashers," Rick said. He took his phone out again and showed Daisy an image of a caucasian man in his late forties. The photo looked to be a captured mugshot, with the man looking frigidly at the camera. "This guy is supposed to be the cell's leader, goes by 'Mad Dog'."
"So they're doing the whole codename bit," Daisy said. She takes a closer look at the picture. "He's missing most of an ear."
"Yeah, and let's hope that's all he's missing."
"What do you mean?"
"Guy is suspected to have a few screws loose. Him and his army buddies were camping with their families when they had a run-in with something."
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"Something?" Daisy asked.
"It was classified if you could believe it. As if we can't ask these guys what killed all their friends and family."
This was something Daisy could believe. While VASCU focused on slashers, they were still aware of the many other creatures of the night. Since Task Force Valkyrie was usually employed by the government to handle most of the other threats, the agency would withhold information on other entities from their own agents due to their screening process being not as secure as Valkyrie’s. This has led to a few casualties—mostly from agent encounters with vampire groups—after which a team from the task force is sent to handle the situation.
"And we're supposed to be working with these guys," Daisy said. She sighed, unable to keep her worry from showing.
"We're only supposed to stick with them until backup gets here," Rick said encouragingly. " It's just for tonight."
From where they stood outside Mrs. Wheeler's home, Daisy could see into the dining room and spot the gentleman she was talking to prior tagging various pieces of evidence. She takes a cigarette from her pack and
as she looks to her partner he's already handing her his lighter with a supportive smile. She lights her implement with it and takes a puff before handing it back. As she locked eyes with the investigator she experienced a small hint of attraction, which put a smile on her face.
"Well, I don't mind spending more time in Alton."
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“We’re the agents from the FBI’s special unit and you should have received a call from our supervisor, Rita Durnam.” Rick stared down the barrel inches from his face. When he and Daisy received the address to the hunter cell’s headquarters, they came upon an abandoned factory for a discontinued cereal brand, Goblin flakes. Investigation of the factory’s interior led the pair to discover a reinforced metal door with what looked to be a sliding aperture. A precursory knock on that door, which much to Daisy’s alarm, produced the shotgun aimed right between her partner’s eyes.
“Yeah we got a call,” said the man with the gun. If he could be called a man. The voice was deep, but Daisy thought it sounded too young to be from anyone over twenty. “But how can we be sure you’re the actual agents?”
Daisy whipped out her badge and flipped it open for the boy to see. The motion cause the gun to now be aiming at her chest. “See, we are from the FBI. Now please let us talk to the man in charge.”
“How can we be sure that’s not fake or that you and miss Rita aren’t all monsters,” said the boy, gun still aimed at her. ‘This was getting ridiculous’, thought Daisy. Beside her this whole time, her partner was stoically taking the whole situation in as calm as he was when the gun was pointed at him. She then wondered if he knew something she didn’t.
Suddenly she heard a smacking sound and the gun shift slightly, it seemed as though the boy behind the door was struck. “They’re from the FBI you idiot. If they were other then they wouldn’t go so far as to fake a badge.”
They heard the click of a latch and the metal door swung open to reveal smooth cemented walls and two men. The visibly younger of the two had dark skin and was taller than his senior, yet he was rubbing the back of his head where he was struck.
Daisy made a mental note to remember their use of 'other' in association to supernatural entities. Perhaps adapting their jargon would allow their assimilation to go smoother. Despite the older man accepting them into their HQ, his hand still hovered around the gun on his hip.
"So you guys use codenames in your operations," Rick said cooly, lightening the mood even after he'd had a shotgun ready to blow his face off moments prior. "We understand that this is to protect your identities even from fellow cell mates. Though the FBI has information on a few of your members, we are not opposed to calling you by the callsigns you use while hunting.
"Yours is Watchdog," Rick said, gesturing to the boy with the shotgun. "We don't know yours."
"My name is Peyton," the man was livid when we mentioned the FBI knowing their identities, then quickly began fuming by the time Rick got to mentioning callsigns.
The boy, watchdog, snickered drawing a scowl from Peyton. "Around here we call him Pinhead 'cause he's pale and bald like the movie."
Given his unfortunate name, Daisy could see resemblance; he even had some scars on his face that made him look more like the classic horror monster. She could only blame the screwed up naming scheme on their leader who probably expected his people to call him Mad Dog with a straight face. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry that these were the people her life relied on.
"You can call us agents Fuller and McCarthy," Daisy said, not wanting to abide by their group's ridiculous naming scheme.
“Sure thing,” Peyton said. Watchdog looked like he wanted to interject, but Peyton prodded him along towards the hall and gestured for the two agents to follow suit. He sealed the door behind them and kept a close pace. As they walked, Watchdog gave the rundown on how the bunker, which they used as headquarters, had come to be in their possession. The story goes that the owner of Goblin Flakes went crazy and started believing in a conspiracy that the government was creating a bioweapon that would turn the populace into flesh eating zombies. He built the factory around the bunker to hide it in plain sight, in preparation for the expected zombie outbreak. No one knew what caused him to believe such a delusion, but shortly after the completion of the factory, he and his family completely disappeared. Mad Dog was tracking a small group of vampires around their hunting grounds when he managed to follow one all the way back to this factory. After he and his cell of hunters dispatched the creatures by attacking them in the day and exposing them to sunlight. He discovered that the tunnel system that the creatures called home was actually a bunker. He made it his own and enhanced it further to be the fortress it was today.
By the end of the story the group had made their way through a winding hallway and down a ladder into the deeper sanctums of the base. The mention of vampires excited Daisy, reaffirming her stance that there were more dangerous quarries out there that even non government sanctioned hunters knew about. Rick didn’t take the revelation well, however, he actually froze for a good few seconds on the ladder and only Peyton requesting that he ‘hurry his ass up’ got him moving again.
“You ok?” Daisy asked her partner. The pause worried her and after they made it to the bottom, she could see that he was visibly paler.
“I’m fine, it’s just a lot to take in,” Rick replied. Daisy thought it was strange how he could handle chasing serial killers, but shuddered at the mere mention of supernatural horrors being real. Her partner sometimes showed an anxious side, but most of the time he was the stoney one, even talking through a gun to his face. She now realized that perhaps he’d been pushing himself in spite of the darkness that they witnessed and this whole ordeal with now being the hunted probably has him on edge.
No time to address that now, as soon they’ll be face to face with Mad Dog and the rest of his band. Perhaps when Jeffrey’s been apprehended and they’ve returned to Chicago, can Rick finally catch the break he so needed and quite frankly deserved. When they entered the room, Daisy counted five other members, but it was the leader’s missing ear that she was searching for, and it was that marker that let her identify the man, for it was practically the only thing that associated him with the mugshot Rick showed her. His hair was still grey with age, but instead of the long ragged mane he had it was now buzz cut all the way around. His physique was completely different from the 57 year old retired vet. He wasn’t big like a weightlifter or lean like a bodybuilder, but you knew it was built to perform. His file claimed that for the first few years he worked alone and Daisy wondered how an old man could stand up to the creatures of the night, but now she saw that this old man could eviscerate a regular person with his bare hands if he wanted to.
Our entrance drew the cell’s attention from the heated discussion they were having, which going by the last things Daisy heard was being said, was probably an admonition against Mad Dog for inviting outsiders and the man reminding the group that he didn’t give a fuck what they thought. The silence and the glares made the tension palpable. Mad Dog locking eyes with her didn’t help ease her twisting gut any, but he was the first to break the silence.
“Welcome to the Night Salvation Army!”