Mythicals

by Dennis Meredith

  “The Warden put me on probation for five years. Another incident adds thirty years to my sentence.”

  “Oh, no,” he groaned, kissing her gently. “Well, we’re in this together. I’ll go where you go . . . and stay where you stay.”

  She unlimbered her own wings and began to flutter them faster and faster until they lifted her lithe, naked, white body off the bed and carried her to her feet beside the bed. “Well, if it comes to a longer sentence, you’re going home when yours is up. I don’t want the guilt of knowing that you remained an exile when you didn’t want to.”

  “Absolutely not, and—”

  “And you could take the baby back with you.” She smiled. “That’s the great news.”

  He uttered an exultant fairy trill and willed his wings to lift him into the air, hovering and staring at her, wide-eyed.

  “Baby?”

  “Yes. Well, maybe babies. I sort of felt flutters . . . little baby wings. So, I ordered a test kit. It came in last night, and I tested positive!”

  Even in their high-ceilinged bedroom, it was a challenge to execute a loop, but he managed one, returning to an upright position to hug her. “Wow! Well, we’ll just have to celebrate!”

  “Of course, there are lots of logistics and problems, but—”

  “Forget problems! We’ve got two years to solve problems.”

  “I’ll get fat.”

  “Yeah, fairy-fat. That’s normal compared to these creatures’ fat. Nobody will notice. You’ll still be gorgeous.”

  They sat on the bed making plans for a long while, before she roused herself to business. The first task was to find out what was going on with the reporter who’d seen her. After she’d showered, oiled her wings, and donned her new and beautifully fitting flesh-suit, she phoned Anthony the bartender.

  He answered sleepily, and she apologized for waking him.

  “Don’t fairies ever sleep?” he grumped. She ignored the complaint. He’d been a faithful Ally since they’d recruited him. He became an Ally after he had stumbled on a drunken werewolf who had stripped off his flesh-suit and was taking a pee behind his bar.

  “Did you hear from the reporter?”

  “Yeah, he called last night. I told him what you told me to . . . that there was nobody with him in the bar.”

  “I really need to know what the reporter said when he heard that.”

  “Not much. I guess he bought it. But there was one thing that might worry you.”

  She tensed. “What was that?”

  “Well, he had a really clear memory of Sam. Described in detail of what she looked like, what she did. I’ve seen a lot of drunks with memory problems in my time. He didn’t strike me as one of them. And Sam . . . She is one memorable pixie!”

  • • •

  Bernie, a squat, round man with a scraggly goatee, plopped onto the park bench beside Jack. He tapped his battered briefcase significantly.

  “So, as of now, I don’t owe you shit,” he declared.

  “Well, as of ten minutes from now you don’t owe me shit, when you tell me everything that you found,” countered Jack.

  Bernie leaned toward Jack and pulled his baseball cap down lower, pushing his sunglasses up. “Okay, I was never here. You never saw me.”

  “Cut the spy shit, Bernie. You’re a lab tech. The Bureau doesn’t follow its lab geeks.”

  “Our agreement stands, even though you were fired from the paper?”

  “Laid off. And yes, you’re still a source. I don’t reveal sources. And I obviously won’t tell how I saved your ass during the lab scandal. And again, I wasn’t fired. I was laid off. Budget reasons.”

  “Yeah, you saved my ass . . . true. But you screwed my friends.”

  “They were guilty, Bernie. They’re the ones who faked the lab results, which ended up overturning a shitload of convictions. I had to report the truth.”

  Bernie stared at him for a full minute, then sighed and reached into his briefcase. He pulled out his tablet computer and called up a series of graphs. “Okay, we’ve got some usual results and some unusual results . . . even abnormal.”

  “What are the usual results?”

  “I ran your urine sample. You were dosed with a hallucinogenic and an anesthetic.”

  “No shit! I was having hallucinations. I saw . . .” He hesitated to complete the sentence. But he realized that Bernie didn’t know enough to realize Jack was on the trail of something really weird. The lab tech would think he was just describing a bad trip. “I saw creatures. A big hairy one. And a flying one.”

  “Uh . . . well . . . actually, that turns that same result into something unusual.”

  “How so?”

  “It means I may have missed something.” He swiped his finger down the screen, scanning through the results. “See, the hallucinogenic you were given doesn’t cause the kind of visions where you see things that aren’t there. It causes people to hallucinate vivid colors, and see objects, like, melt and distort.”

  “Yeah, I had those, but I also saw creatures. What would you have missed?”

  “I dunno, but there must have been something else in your system besides that drug. Tell me what you saw.”

  Jack hesitated again, but decided that describing the monsters wouldn’t give away the fact that he was coming to believe that they were real. He spent the next ten minutes describing the creatures that had so horrified him, in as much detail as he could remember. Bernie’s frown grew more and more pronounced.

  “Look, I’ve got degrees in pharmacology and psychology. I’ve got to tell you, I don’t know of any drug that produces these kinds of hallucinations. I’d normally think you were going schizophrenic, but schizophrenics don’t have those kinds of hallucinations, either. They hear voices or have delusions, like thinking somebody’s after them.”

  “So, my hallucinations were unusual. You said something else was unusual . . . you said even abnormal.”

  Bernie took the envelope containing the hair out of the briefcase and handed it to Jack. He then brought up an image on his tablet. “Here’s the hair you gave me, under the microscope. It’s totally abnormal . . . the ovoid bodies, the cuticle, the cortical fusi—”

  “Those are hair parts?”

  “Yeah, but . . . well . . . this is shaped like a hair . . . but it’s not a known hair.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s probably a strand of fur from an animal . . . but not any animal in our database.”

  “Could it be a werewolf?”

  Bernie rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Oh, hell, Jack, are you connecting your hallucinations with this hair? I am out of here!” He stuffed his tablet in his briefcase and leaped off the bench as if stung. “You’re crazy!” he exclaimed, hurrying away.

  Jack cursed himself for blurting out the question. The idea had just popped into his head, and he was stupid enough to express it out loud. If his reporter buddies ever found out that he was trying to prove the existence of werewolves, his career would be ruined. And he might even end up in a psych ward somewhere.

  He held up the envelope. This was solid evidence, though, that something weird really invaded his bedroom. Now he needed more evidence about the encounter at the embassy. He punched the number for Anna on his cell phone.

  Her first words were “You are still an asshole.” But he could tell it wasn’t the emphatic denunciation she’d spat at him before. Her voice was more subdued. “We’ve been getting calls from the guests saying that you’ve been trying to talk to them.”

  “I tried to be as discreet as possible,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry if it caused you trouble.”

  “Well, something did come up about your . . . person. I talked to one of our assistant protocol attachés. She said that before the toasts one of the guests left the table and didn’t return.”

  “Who?”

  “Senator Bright.”

  Deborah visibly flinched when she found Jack March waiting for her, as she lef
t the committee room. But she quickly recovered her composure, reassuring herself that he couldn’t possibly recognize her. The matronly senator was very different from the slender, winged creature that he had witnessed sailing out the embassy window.

  “Senator, could I have a minute of your time, please?”

  She continued walking down the wide hall, her heels clicking on the marble floor. She tried to calm herself, to not seem too much in a hurry to escape him. “And you are?” she asked.

  “Jack March. I’m a reporter.”

  “With what news organization?” She knew that would slow him down, perhaps fend him off.

  “Well, I was with the Capital Herald.”

  “Excuse me. Was?” She kept walking, now consulting her schedule on her tablet computer.

  “Well, I’m freelance now.”

  “And who are you freelancing for?”

  “Well . . . uh—”

  “Mr. March, the usual practice is that when a freelancer has a specific assignment, I’m happy to talk to them. So, when you get an assignment, contact my press secretary to arrange an interview.”

  Jack kept up with her, weaving his way through the crowd in the hall. “You were at the dinner for the new ambassador.”

  “Again, when you have an assignment, contact my press secretary.”

  “And you disappeared before the toasts. You didn’t return.”

  A slight hesitation in the steady click of her heels betrayed the impact of his words. “I didn’t feel well.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. But you didn’t leave . . . at least not by any of the exits. I have it from embassy sources that your car didn’t fetch you. And nobody saw you take a cab.”

  Deborah stared straight ahead, saying nothing, but quickened her pace, making it into an elevator reserved for senators. As the paneled doors closed, Jack noted that her expression was grim, her jaw set.

  Jack almost did a dance of delight. It was a bluff! He had no such information! But the bluff worked! It was her! It was her!

  • • •

  Jack had just reached a gloomy stretch of the quiet residential street midway between streetlights. His apartment building was two blocks away, so he was on automatic pilot, not paying attention, as he made his way along the familiar sidewalk. His mind was still in turmoil after the events of the day—the encounter with Senator Bright, and what he’d discovered from the hours of research on her in the main reading room of the National Library. To his skeptical reporter’s mind, her background was murky, particularly suspicious.

  That background became murkier when he’d called the development office at the university she’d graduated from. Using a trick that had worked before, he presented himself as representing an anonymous donor who wanted to endow a professorship at the university in Senator Bright’s name. He was immediately transferred to an unctuous fundraiser, who would be delighted to help the donor set up the professorship.

  He asked if he could obtain any information on her activities at the university “you know, clubs, organizations, photos, and so forth,” he had said. “I’d like to have something to talk about, when we get together to discuss the endowment.”

  “Of course,” said the chipper, young fundraiser. But when she called him back an hour later, she wasn’t so much chipper as puzzled. Yes, there was a record of the senator receiving her degree. But the university archives couldn’t locate any information on her activities while a student. No membership in a sorority or club, no student government participation, no sports clubs, no articles mentioning her in the student paper.

  “Uh . . . well . . . I guess the senator was just a dedicated student,” said the fundraiser.

  And a ghost, Jack had thought to himself. Or some weird, winged creature with silver hair and blue eyes.

  Now, he was plodding along the darkened street, head bowed in deep rumination. So he didn’t pay attention to the black van stopping past the next intersection to let someone out. And he didn’t pay attention to that someone approaching him.

  “Hello, Jack,” said the lilting feminine voice, jerking him back to attention.

  It was Sam! She stood there smiling, her mesmerizing green eyes seeming to glow in the darkness.

  It took a moment for Jack to tear his gaze away from her eyes, from her alluring face. “You did something to me . . . that night . . . you brought monsters with you.”

  She wrinkled her brow and made a puzzled face. “I don’t remember that.” Still she smiled—the smile of someone confident in their ability to dominate.

  “Well, I damned well do. And you’re going to tell me what happened.” He moved forward and grabbed her arm.

  “Sure, of course,” she said gently. Her response startled him. He didn’t expect such ready compliance. “You can come along with us, and we’ll tell you everything.”

  At first he didn’t get what she meant, but the sound of a vehicle zooming up from behind told him something bad was about to happen. It skidded to a halt, and she gently extricated herself from his grip and opened the front passenger door.

  “You can sit up here.” She gestured an invitation, and he looked in to see a small man . . . a very small man . . . driving.

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  She looked cautiously up and down the street. It was deserted. “Well, if you don’t want to ride up front, you can ride in back.”

  The back door slid open. Filling the opening was the same gray-green, hulking monster that had loomed over him that horrifying night in his apartment. It grinned, showing a jaw full of yellow fangs, its face a grotesque horror. It chuckled, making a sound that was a cross between a consumptive hacking and water gurgling down a toilet. A strong animal musk wafted out of the van. He remembered that smell.

  “OH, NO!” He backed up against a thick hedge, eyes wide with fright, jaw agape. “HIM!”

  “This is Mike,” said Sam sunnily. “He’s a very nice ogre. He’ll be coming along. He’d be glad of the company in back.”

  Jack stood transfixed, trying to process the stunning sight and sort out the warring emotions that slammed against one another in his mind:

  Flee! Get out of here fast and try to forget everything!

  Fight! Try to punch, kick, and gouge to escape whatever the hell these things have planned for him.

  Stay! Go with them and figure out what is going on.

  He realized that the third choice was the only possibility. He almost certainly couldn’t escape these creatures. He couldn’t fight them. And even amid his panic, his reporter’s obsessive curiosity told them this would be the greatest story ever!

  If he survived.

  The huge ogre just sat there, still grinning, staring at him with black-marble eyes, while Sam held open the passenger door.

  Without a word, he stepped over to the passenger door and slid in. He heard Sam step into the back and the door slide shut.

  • • •

  All was darkness for Jack during the long, winding drive out of the capitol. They’d asked him to put on a blindfold, so he could only guess where they were going by the speed of the van and the waning sounds of the city. They had begun on surface streets, then onto a highway, and now on quiet, winding country roads.

  The driver said nothing during the trip, but he could hear chattering from the back. Sam had begun talking . . . if that’s what it was . . . in a twittering, lilting language that was not only foreign. It was alien, like no language he had ever heard. From the pauses in her conversation, he could tell she was talking on a cell phone.

  Then, another pause, and she turned to English, still on the phone.

  “Yes, he went willingly,” she said. “I think he will accept. I don’t know. You will have to show him the alternative, I think.”

  The aroma in the van was decidedly mixed. There was, of course, the musk emanating from the massive Mike. But there was also the delicious scent emanating from Sam, whatever that was.

  The van stopped, and he could hear the metall
ic rattling of a large overhead door. The van rolled forward, and the echo of its engine noise told him they had entered a large building.

  The driver slipped off Jack’s blindfold, and with urgent gestures and in a squeaky, raspy gibbering—again like no language he had heard before—the driver indicated that he was to get out of the van.

  He found himself standing in a cavernous building that had probably once been a factory. There were windows, but they had been blacked out, and the only illumination came from overhead lights.

  With grunting and growling, the gray-green Mike hauled himself out of the back, followed by the sprightly Sam. She immediately began to remove her clothes.

  “Hello,” said a familiar voice, taking his attention away from the naked Sam. And thankfully from the hulking ogre Mike, who was now engaged in thoroughly scratching all parts of his body.

  Jack turned to see Senator Deborah Bright, standing beside a table loaded with a buffet and bar service.

  Beside her stood a large-chested man in an expensively tailored shirt and a red silk tie. Incongruously, he wore a broad-brimmed hat, the kind hunters wore. “You want a drink?” he asked. “We have some excellent choices.” The man took a healthy drink from a glass of amber liquid.

  “Uh, I don’t think so.”

  The man chuckled. “Well, you’ll sure want a big damn drink in a little while!”

  That booming voice triggered Jack’s recognition of the man. It was Senator Warren F. Lee, the ultraconservative, whose outsized presence dominated most events he attended. But perhaps not this one.

  Senator Bright stepped forward. “We usually introduce prospective Allies to ourselves gradually, so as not to terrify them. But we think you’re able to take the . . . well . . . the shock. After all, you’ve already had one encounter with Mythicals.”

  “Mythicals?” asked Jack.

  “That’s what we call ourselves.” She motioned for Mike and Sam to come forward. “You’ve been introduced to Mike . . . an ogre. And you certainly know Sam, but you don’t know that she’s what your culture calls a pixie.”