“Modern … like a gun?”
“No, the Order of the Immortuos Venandi never got the blessing to work for guns. It was just never successful, getting the blessing to pass through the firearm itself to the ammunition. They could bless the ammunition, but that’s a one-time use, and it takes a lot of time and resources to put each weapon through a ritual, so it’s practically not worth it. And if it misses, the piece of ammunition’s destroyed - wasted. An expensive waste. At least, so they say. The most effort they put into a blessed range weapon were stuff like harpoons and spears, where they didn’t break so easily.”
“So … “modern” like …?”
“Tactical knives or machetes. Axes.”
He nodded.
“Plus, at my puny size, I need the extra reach the longsword gives me.” Fiya glanced back out the window and noticed the truck was gone. She didn’t even hear the engine start, and now her car was out in open view. “Alright, guys, let’s get going! I can continue answering more questions on the road.”
At the wheel of her Challenger, Fiya drove north with the Bradleys in tow.
They left the motel, and because the clerk was still at the desk, they paid little mind to how quiet the area was and the lack of cars in the lot. She was cautious at first, making sure no one seemed to be following them, and relaxed after a little bit of road isolation.
Before they left, Fiya tried to send a message to both the Rome and Appalachian headquarters; both came back as “message undelivered.” She refrained from throwing her phone against the wall (again) and figured she would just try again later. Though her signal claimed to have full bars, the mountains could still be screwing with it, especially without the booster towers the Pacific Northwest Facility had.
Thomas insisted on watching the weather that morning, which told them that while it was cloudy, there was no chance of rain. He shut off the motel TV just as a live bulletin came on about some mysterious attacks in Seattle. Fiya was too close to her car to notice the bulletin.
A fat bug splattered on her windshield, and Fiya fought the temptation to use the windshield wiper; all the good that would do would be smearing it all over, even with the wiper spray. Though it annoyed her in her field of vision, it was better than trying to watch the road through smeared bug guts. She figured she’ll clean it at the next gas station with a squeegee.
“So, there are more like you?” Liama asked from the back seat.
Thomas turned and glanced at her, noticing something of concern. “Put your seatbelt on, baby, and don’t make me ask a third time.”
“Yes, Daddy.” Liama buckled up, planting herself in the middle. She enjoyed having the whole back seat to herself, spreading her twiggy legs.
Once she was sure Liama listened to her father, Fiya answered her question. “Not a lot, but, yes, there’s more.” She paused, wondering if she and Paul really were the only ones left on the West Coast. If she had bothered to get to know any of the others better, their numbers would be programmed in her phone, and she’d find out for sure.
Liama broke her train of thought, and it was the question Fiya dreaded most. “Where are they?”
“They, uh.” She paused, ignoring how Thomas noticed her stalling and cleared her throat. “They’re busy.”
“Busy?” Liama asked.
“Sí, busy. And nowhere nearby. Nearest ones could take days getting here.” She felt good not having to lie about that one. If the Appalachian facility sent agents our way, it could be hours by flight or days on the road, if there even were any available. “So, for now, I’m on my own on this.”
“See what?” Liama asked.
Fiya glanced at her in the rearview mirror, wrinkling her eyebrows in confusion.
Thomas leaned toward her, sharing a similarly confused stare. “What do you mean, baby?”
“She said, ‘see busy.’ What are we seeing that’s busy?”
Fiya let out a quick laugh. “No, no, ‘sí,’ as in s-i. It means ‘yes’ in Spanish, basically.”
“You speak Spanish?”
“Sure, a little bit. Used to do it more when I was really little, littler than you, because of my mama’s side.” Fiya paused for a moment. The feeling of disappointing her mama for not keeping up the practice swelled over her. “But most of it just sort of faded away, I guess. My peers don’t speak it, so it doesn’t come up.”
“You’re not alone now. You have us, sí?” Liama lit up the back seat with a huge grin.
Thomas watched Fiya’s reaction, a subtle smile that he sensed could be a façade. She dumped a lot of information on them earlier that day, but he got the feeling there was more being left out. “Where are we going?” he asked, changing the subject.
“North. When I said the other agents are far away, I meant the active ones. I know someone else who’s retired.”
An excited “Cool!” snapped from the backseat.
“I would’ve called him sooner, but he’s been enjoying his retirement, living like a hermit. No phones. No computers.” Fiya squinted her eyes in thought. “I’m not even sure he has a TV. But he’s far more knowledgeable than me. He also has a sort of library we can use.”
Thomas faced the road. “How far out is he?”
“If I don’t hit any bumps in the road, could be a little more than an hour.”
The car fell silent again. The trees seemed to get taller and the green getting darker. Though they headed north, the road swerved a little west, too, taking them closer to the mountains.
Not standing to be stuck in a lingering silence for too long, Liama broke the ice. “Fiya, that’s a funny name. Figh-yuh!”
Turning around in his seat with his angry-dad face activated, Thomas snapped, “Liama! That’s rude!”
Liama sank into her seat and pouted.
“It’s fine,” Fiya interjected. She glanced up at Liama in the rearview mirror.
Thomas turned back to face the road. “I’m sorry, sometimes she just asks whatever questions pop in her head. She hasn’t exactly developed a filter yet.”
Tears hadn’t come out, but Liama had the sad-puppy face look down like a master. She stared longingly out the windows, watching the tall wilderness pass them by.
“It’s okay,” Fiya reassured. “I do have a funny name; it’s fine. I’ve been used to it for 24 years. You can blame my dad for that one.”
Liama’s face shifted from a pout to a smelly fart-face. “Why’d he do that?”
Fiya monitored the road but occasionally looked back up at Liama. “Well, my papa was really into this band from the ‘80s, The Cult. Do you know ’em?”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Didn’t think you would, but ya never know. Anyway, the band had this song called ‘Fire Woman,’ and my dad really got a kick out of the way the singer would sing and pronounce the word ‘fire,’ so he named me after the way they pronounced ‘fire.’ ‘Figh-yuh’ is how he claimed they were pronouncing it. A lot of bands did that, but he was listening to that song in particular just before he found out he was going to be a dad, so it was fresh in his head. Or so he claimed. Mama loved it the moment he suggested it, so I can’t really hate on it.”
Just before another lengthy silence crept in, Liama asked, “Is that who we’re going to see? Your daddy?”
Fiya took a long, slow breath before answering, thinking of the shortest and most straightforward way to say it without gory details. “No, he passed away a long time ago.” Please don’t ask how, please don’t ask how.
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said softly. He glanced back at his daughter. “This one here got the name Liama because we thought we were having a boy. We planned on naming him Liam. Surprise! Not a boy. We’d grown so attached to Liam after nine months, we just simply added an ‘a’ at the end because we thought it was cute.”
“You thought I was a boy!!?!?!?!?”
“So, hey, your name is funny, too, Liam-UH!” Thomas mocked. A sly smile appeared on his face; a first in Fiya’s presence.
�
�You’re right,” Fiya said. “It is cute.” She looked into the mirror again, locking eyes with Liama, and winked.
Liama smiled, drifting off at the view of the passing trees again.
Glacier Peak, the fifth-tallest mountain in Washington State, a composite mountain with minimal volcanic activity during the past 300 years, towered over the wilderness below. Once known as the Great Parent to natives, it remains a place where a minimum of 10 miles of hiking is needed just to reach its base camp.
An old railroad track from a private company broke through, providing a faster route to Seattle, but it had been deserted for many decades, thanks to President Theodore Roosevelt and his iron fist clutching that big stick to preserve the natural parks. The tracks were not removed, and overgrowth eventually overwhelmed them. A majestic storm cloud brewed and teased a bit of drizzle.
Obfuscated by the mist around the mountain, nearly a hundred ghouls worked in one of the mighty Glacier Peak’s valleys, near the side of one of these railroad tracks. These tracks had become the closest pathway to this destination, and they had been freshly used by an old Ford pickup truck with rims converted to be used on the tracks.
Nearby were ghouls in dark coveralls with their heads covered, while others were not so discreet with simple casual clothes. Some even wore pajamas, as if they were plucked right out of their former homes. They had been digging for a long time, working with pickaxes and shovels, climbing in and out of a large crater. At the rim, Violess and Kael stood, overseeing the labor.
Violess bit her lower lip, aroused at the grand sight, while Kael had his arms crossed across his barrel of a chest, effortlessly intimidating any ghoul that walked near them.
“This is His resting place,” Violess said. Kael noticed the sultriness in her voice. Smooth like velvet, though dangerously sharp. “It took centuries to find Him, but He is here, buried, where they thought no one could find Him. But I did.”
Kael turned his attention back to the digging. A ghoul tripped over a sharp rock, and another helped him back up while smacking him in the head. He found this behavior odd for ghouls and was impressed: ghouls functioning and thinking, not ravaging aimlessly at any living thing they could get their hands on. Since he wasn’t exactly sure what Violess was talking about, he asked, “Who?”
“My lord and master, Bahtzuul the Devourer.”
“Never heard of him.”
She burned her gaze at Kael and then said, “Of course, you haven’t. He was slain long before your time. This is His rebirth.” Kael watched her run her fingertips from her throat down to her chest and found it just as odd as her sultry tone. She added, “The sheep are His.”
“The man and the girl?”
“And the others.” She flirted her eyes at Kael.
He remained stone-faced, even though after several years of working odd jobs for her, she seemed stranger than usual. The closer they got to the crater, the more aroused she appeared. This was the cherry topper of strange for him.
She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he looked down at her hand as if she just smeared feces on him. “He will need them to regain His strength,” she said. “All eighteen. The man and the girl need to come back.”
“Can’t we just replace them? The man and the girl?”
“Normally, we could. For example, if your pack managed to kill them in the process of retrieving them, then yes, we could’ve replaced them. But since they’re still out there, they could find help. They could tell someone about our location. Even if they find police who could find the school, they could ruin what I’ve been working on, and I’ve been at it for far too long to let some sheep put a stop to it. Your dogs failed the first attempt at retrieval.”
Kael narrowed his eyes at her while she squatted at the edge of the crater, watching her ghouls dig. His fists tightened, knuckles burning white.
“If that girl handled your pups the way you described, that means our time frame has shortened. It also means there are still some of the Immortuos Venandi out there.”
“She’s just one.”
“One who whipped your puppies pretty damn good without getting so much as a scratch. With a fucking sword!” Violess leered up at Kael, and she caught him rolling his eyes. She calmed her tone. “How are they, by the way?”
“Recovering. Reb is still unconscious. They’ll be fine.”
“If she’s out there, there could be others who were missed when we swept the area. Maybe our intel didn’t have the location of every one of them like we thought we did.”
“And maybe your ghouls aren’t as functional as you thought?”
Violess stood and slinked up to Kael, touching his chest again with a single finger. “That’s why you and your dogs are getting a second chance. My ghouls, as you wish to call them, are still limited. They can handle basic commands, but not much else. They were fine for sneaking around and infiltrating, and splendid for digging, but now we need swift action.”
She circled around him. He watched her through the corners of his eyes, with his arms still crossed. “The first fuck-up, they get a pass. They were surprised; that’s forgivable. Consider themselves lucky she didn’t have any silver on her, or they would have been royally fucked over.”
Kael watched her with suspicion and then peered out to the ghoul workers again. There were so many out there; difficult to make a headcount but it had to be in the hundreds, digging away. An epiphany bomb went off in his head. “Are they …” he started, hesitating for a moment, and then continued, “… like you?”
“What? A demon?” She rested her elbow on his shoulder, a tall stretch for her to lean, but she accomplished it. She smiled, “No, demons would want compensation. Some are members of Him, but not any of these here. These meat-puppets are still ghouls. They just have a little of my own blood flowing through their veins, so they are under my command. It makes them useful.”
“Like a vampire and their revenants.”
“Sure,” she laughed. “I stole the idea from them. Unfortunately, as they spread their contagion, my control becomes more diluted. So, the farther removed they are from me, the more like normal ghouls they’ll become. But that’s okay for that side of the mountain.” Violess thumbed west toward Seattle. “Find out what you can about the girl. What she knows, where she lives, her contacts. Kill her but bring the daddy and daughter back.”
“I think I know where to start.”
“Excellent. Get it done. By tomorrow you won’t even have to be shy about your superior form.” She flaunted her hand in the air, dismissing Kael.
He gave the excavation one more look before turning away. The view was an astonishing archeological discovery. From what Kael could see, Violess’s crew had unearthed something gigantic: a snake-like skeleton, far larger than the remains of a Titanoboa, and its claws and wingspan were also in the process of being unearthed. The only word he could think of was dragon. He questioned the karmic ramifications of his own actions. Could helping unleash this beast be a good idea? Still, Violess paid very well, and if that thing was coming back, he’d rather be on its good side. The dilemma was quite the damned pickle.
As Kael slipped away, he overheard Violess talking to herself, facing the skeleton, in a low, whispering tone. “Now, all I need is to get your heart back, baby.”
A simple chopping axe came down, splitting a wood block with a single whack. Its price tag had never been removed, still stuck to the grip, mostly weathered away from regular use. Dirt and grime clung to the sticker’s glue. A beefy hand brushed aside the splinters and placed another block on the tree stump. The new block didn’t last long, almost immediately shattered into multiple fragments by the axe.
A brief drizzle came and went, leaving grey clouds behind. The sun hid somewhere up there, too shy to come out and play.
The chopped wood was gathered, cradled by thick and powerful python-like wrists. The axe placed on top of the pile.
A large man carried the wood into a cabin. A rust-colored beard with wisps of wh
ite armored his face. His hair shaggy and unkempt. He stood over six feet and was as broad as a Kodiak bear. Hidden beneath a husky layer of fat, he had plenty of solid muscle.
A shadow crept from the woods, wobbling toward the cabin like a drunk. The door hung open, a habit of the large man who’s been living deep in the woods by himself for many years. The lurching thing took advantage. It didn’t know the man, but something deep inside its consciousness told it to come to this specific location and feed. And boy, did the large man look like quite the snack. The ghoul’s mouth watered with the foulest saliva.
Inside the cabin, the large man poured himself a cup of coffee from a kettle that hung over the fireplace. He smelled the cup, savoring the home-brew spiced aroma.
As the lurker peered into the cabin, the large man sipped a teeny bit from the mug so he wouldn’t burn his lips. The brew was so much richer than any of the corporate coffee shops. The generous amount of hazelnut and cinnamon brought it to his idea of perfection. He liked his coffee thick and strong. The sip was hot and tingled his tongue just before it could burn, but unfortunately that would be all he’d enjoy for the moment as he tossed the mug of scolding coffee over his shoulder, splashing into the face of the intruder.
The ghoul let out a screeching hiss, clawing at its face as the coffee burned into its decaying flesh. Stringy, greasy hair whipped around. It stumbled backward into the doorway.
The large man grabbed a different axe propped up near the fireplace, with the KNIV rune engraved in the steel. It had a thick oak shaft, long enough for the big man to wield dangerously with two hands, and the half-crescent blade had decorations reminiscent of 17th century Viking battle axes. Unlike the chopping axe left outside, this one was clearly the favorite.
“I thought I smelled you nearby,” he grumbled.
The creature slapped and scraped at its own face, peeling skin that sizzled, and it opened one pale yellow eye just in time to see a massive axe coming toward it. The axe slammed through the side of its head, smacking the ghoul into the doorframe. The front door, three inches thick of solid mahogany, rattled upon impact. The axe cut clean, leaving a fresh notch in the frame, joining a collection of other notches. The bottom half of the ghoul’s head, along with the rest of its body, oozed down the frame until falling backward out onto the porch with a gooey splat. The top of the head rested on the axe blade as a dull yellow eye rolled back into its socket. The large man tugged the axe loose, letting the rest of the head drop onto its twitching body.
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