by Sean Davies
Chloe unpacked her bag again, but this time she also dug out an orange and a bottle of fresh water. She quickly unpeeled the orange and wolfed it down, ever vigilant for the lurking Freak and his pet mutt, and the food from the real world restored her stamina enough for her to carry on. She uncapped her bottle and took a few mouthfuls of water before pulling her gloves back on. The Gloom had water, but it was a foul black liquid that reeked of death, and Chloe was inexperienced but even she knew better than to try drinking it.
She continued to fill the second container while checking over her shoulder every few seconds. Chloe wished she’d been allowed to cross over in a more built-up area, as the puppet Freaks that existed in the reflections of the densely populated areas were often open to making a trade. They would accept raw meat, fish, fresh fruit, or vegetables for safe passage, and the guttural gibberish they spoke would lighten in tone once they had tasted the real world’s produce – although they would still remain just as creepy, regardless of their mood. The Freaks in the quieter areas were just savage murderers through and through, and Chloe had more chance of becoming head of the Golden Fangs than coaxing them out of their homicidal ways for even one minute.
“I had to find that fucking map,” Chloe grumbled under her breath. “I could have just left it in the Overlord’s tower, but no… I had to get it for Seth and his bling-loving wanker squad…”
A growl answered her complaints, and Chloe looked above the light blue bushes of Nightmare Nettle to see that the dog-wolf had returned. Its mouth opened up from a vertical slit, displaying an array of yellow and brown fangs.
As the beast leapt across the clearing, Chloe searched desperately for her hairspray and lighter. Just as the dog-wolf was ready to pounce, the Book Wielder struck her lighter and sprayed the creature with a jet of fire. It yelped and rolled across the floor, and Chloe made a run for it. She remembered that the Golden Fangs would punish her severely for leaving the goods behind and stopped in her tracks. Swearing loudly, she ran back towards the dog-wolf that was already recovering angrily from her attack, and hurriedly packed her bag. A savage roar erupted from the trees, which was then echoed in the distance several times along with loud eerie howling. The Freaks had found her, too.
Chloe grabbed the bag and sprinted wildly back to the farm. She hopped the dilapidated excuse of a fence and ran towards the creaky shed, completely disregarding the now silent fields. She pushed open the door and skidded to a halt. A scarecrow grinned stupidly from the other side of the door. Ten wicked scythes lashed out for her a split-second later. Chloe leaned backwards just in time and only lost a few strands of her ginger curls. She swore as she fumbled for the hairspray and lighter whilst dodging its wicked blades, and blasted the mouldy scarecrow. It screeched as it went up in flames, and the fields rustled with activity.
Chloe kicked out at the burning monster, causing it to topple over, and ran over its immolated body whilst swearing repeatedly and praying that her trousers didn’t catch fire. Scarecrows were charging out of the fields and Freaks were flooding out of the forest with their trained hounds, so she didn’t have a moment to lose. She placed a hand on her glowing book and braced herself for the dizzying transition into reality.
✽ ✽ ✽
Genevieve paced across the shed as Archie rocked himself back and forth on one of the wooden chairs. He’d spent most of the time on guard duty with his feet up as he whistled an annoying tune, or looking in a pocket mirror whilst styling his highlighted hair, leaving Genie to keep an eye out for danger.
“Is it normal for them to be gone this long?” she asked, concerned for Chloe’s wellbeing.
“It is for Chloe o’Crappy,” he sneered. “Partying Paul would’ve been out and turning that nettle into a juicy batch of Dreamleaf by now. He was a pro at making Rushdust, too,” Archie added with a wistful sigh.
Chloe suddenly reappeared, taking deep panicked breaths as she patted out the lingering embers from her trousers. Genevieve jumped backwards in shock at her abrupt arrival, and Archie laughed hysterically at Genie’s surprise.
“Are you okay?!” Genevieve asked, rushing to the girl’s side.
Chloe nodded solemnly. “Just had a shit-ton of Freaks after me, but managed to get out in one piece, if not a little charred.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” Archie said dismissively. “How much did you get?”
“Two small cases of Nightmare Nettle,” Chloe replied quietly.
“And…?” Archie pressed angrily.
“That’s all,” she muttered, as she put the farmer’s tools back in their correct places.
The bulky Vampire shook his head in disappointment. “Get in the fucking car. Let’s go.”
The short drive back to the fort was miserably silent, and Genevieve had to open the windows to fight off the strong smell of smoke and damp mouldy wood that Chloe had brought back from the Gloom. Genie wanted to grill her about her experience within the creepy magical dimension, but Archie’s very apparent foul mood kept her silent.
When they arrived back at Fort Dominia, Archie marched the girls back up to the War Room, where Gaius had joined Chaz and Seth around the central map table. The Werewolf nodded curtly at Genie and she gave a small smile in return.
“Two boxes of nettle,” Archie announced loudly instead of a greeting. He grabbed Chloe by the shoulder and shoved her towards the table.
“What you got to say for yourself, missy?” Seth growled.
“I had Freaks, scarecrows, and hounds on my tail!” the young Book Wielder exclaimed. “I told you – if you gave me some decent weapons, like a shotgun or something, I could do better!”
“We’re not kitting you out until you earn it,” Chaz said angrily. “You bring us crap and so you get crap in return.”
Chloe sighed in exasperation. “But if I can’t defend myself properly then I can’t do better.”
“She has a point,” Gaius said with a shrug, “and Book Wielders don’t grow on trees.”
Seth nodded slowly for several seconds, deep in thought, and then moved over to Chloe. Without saying a word, Seth slapped her in the face so hard the young girl flew across the room and landed with a thud.
Genie darted across the room to check on the Book Wielder. Half of her face was covered in a massive swollen red mark, and her eyes were wide and full of tears, but she was still relatively okay. She helped Chloe to her feet and then drew her sword defiantly.
Archie’s fingers became long thin bone claws, Chaz’s hands ignited with intense flames, Gaius smirked as if he was extremely amused by the whole scene, and Seth glared at Genevieve with unbridled fury.
“Chloe, get that shit turned into Dreamleaf by the morning,” he said through his clenched teeth and gold fangs, “and Gaius, get her a shotgun. Make sure she knows how to use it.”
“Of course, boss,” the sly Werewolf replied charmingly.
Chloe got up and scrambled out of the room without looking back. Genevieve sheathed her Katana, and Archie and Chaz also backed down.
“You can go,” Seth said harshly, “but when we call you, come running. You wouldn’t want to piss me off any more, Genevieve, believe me.”
Genie turned on the spot and left the War Room. She stormed out of the fort, got into her jeep, and headed back home.
Chapter 5
Back on the Home Front
She parked up her sporty blue jeep beside the apartment and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that the Golden Fangs had left her old car alone. Genevieve had calmed down slightly during the drive through the dark country lanes, but they were still her least favourite people in the world, and Genie begrudged the fact that she was stuck with them - at least, for the time being.
Genevieve unlocked her front door and was pleasantly surprised by what she saw. The apartment had been tidied, Seth had kept his word and fixed the door she’d broken, and all her windows now sported thick blackout curtains instead of her spare sheets. Genevieve saw that an answer phone had been installed unde
r her telephone, and her eyes went wide when she saw that six crisp Fifty-Credit notes had been slotted underneath it, along with a yellow sticky note with ‘pocket money’ scrawled onto it. She eagerly stuffed the notes into her purse.
The kitchen fridge had been stocked with blood packs, one of which she drained immediately, and she sighed with relief as the blood revitalised her body and mind. After Genie had thrown away the flimsy plastic remnants of the blood pack, she took the spare car key off the metal keyring that Seth had given her and tucked it away at the back of a drawer filled with loose documents.
Sitting atop her small dining table was a brand-new beige computer, monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and Genevieve’s jaw dropped when she saw the make and model. It was an Imperator 3000, the world’s latest and most advanced personal computer featuring a full colour display.
With the Great War and subsequent resistance stretching across decades, most technological advances had been made in the field of warfare, and they were only starting to leak out to the public in Genevieve’s lifetime. However, she had heard a theory that the severe difference in available technology between military and civilian use had been created deliberately to keep the populace lagging far behind, in case anyone got brave enough to challenge the Autocrat’s rule. She had also heard rumours that the Central Isle’s facilities were regularly dabbling in areas of science that most people would consider to be science-fiction, but there was no real evidence other than poorly shot pictures of floating metallic triangles and weird blue lights snapped by anonymous individuals. Genevieve had never given the stories much merit, but now that she was a member of the Supernatural world she wondered if the sci-fi conspiracy theories had some truth to them, too.
A network cable had been run from the back of her new PC to the previously unused telephone port near her kitchen, and Genevieve was grateful to have access to Rura’s unreliable but extremely useful computer network from the comfort of her own home.
She exhaled angrily, and wondered why Seth and his friends had to be such pricks. They were showering her with gifts left, right, and centre, but in-between their generosity they acted like simple-minded thugs. Genevieve pondered the point as she switched on the Imperator 3000 with a sense of nerdish glee, and could only surmise that their positions of power had warped their sense of morality.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” she muttered to herself as her monitor displayed a red background with a pixilated rendition of the World Banner, with ‘Imperator 3000’ above and ‘Imperia Absolute’ in a formal black font beneath.
Genevieve was glad that Seth and his cronies didn’t seem that smart, and she didn’t even dare to think what they’d be able to accomplish if they were all as switched-on as Gaius.
As her desktop screen loaded onto the monitor, Genie immediately began password protecting everything she could, and used her limited coding knowledge to make the PC as secure as possible. While she was in the mind-set of securing her privacy, she looked over to the front door and considered getting the locks changed, but then abandoned the idea when she realised a locked wooden door was about as secure as a sheet of paper against a Supernatural’s power.
Genevieve took her time familiarising herself with the computer’s software, and wrote a long list of the programs and games she would purchase at the first possible opportunity. Genie grumbled when she remembered that she couldn’t go out in the day and wondered what shops opened after dusk, and how much Sunshield potions cost. She decided to ask Kaylie and the girls next time the Golden Fangs summoned her to the fort.
After quite a few hours she managed to pull herself away from the computer, and changed into a pair of light pink pyjamas. Genevieve crawled into bed, grateful of the fact that she was finally going to sleep on her own accord, and dozed off shortly after her head hit the comfortable pillow.
Genevieve dreamt of thick purple clouds above a hazy sky and tall black towers with glowing green windows. She was running down a cracked road with Annabelle and Chloe. All around them were grubby man-sized puppets of varying builds and colours, and they swarmed out of the buildings’ windows and crawled down the walls like spiders. They ran as fast as they could until their path was obstructed by a roadblock of burnt-out vehicles. A tall Demon stood before them, completely veiled in a dark red robe, aside from a full golden masquerade mask over its face. The Demon took its mask off and revealed itself as Seth, and he laughed madly at their shocked faces. Genie expected something bad to happen as the army of material creatures advanced from behind, but Chloe and Annabelle rushed forward and began beating Seth to a bloody pulp. She wasn’t sure what the dream meant, if it meant anything at all, but she woke up feeling well-rested and cheerful.
Genie instinctively reached for her curtains, but luckily stopped herself from revealing the daylight. She sighed and pulled her hand away from the thick black fabric before putting on a small silver watch, as the time of day mattered more than ever to her. Her stomach ached, and her throat was beginning to feel dry and scratchy, so she headed to the kitchen to empty another blood pack, and then searched the cupboards for something to get the metallic taste of blood out of her mouth. Genevieve made herself a cup of black coffee and chucked an assortment of cookies, crisps, and sweets together on a small plastic tray, and carried them over to the dining table. She powered up the Imperator 3000 and added ‘food & drink’ to the bottom of her shopping list.
She spent a good portion of the day typing up the details on her investigation of Annabelle’s disappearance, which she had reconstructed from memory and the notes the Golden Fangs hadn’t trashed, and added notes on where she had checked, who she had spoken too, and what they had said in response. The exercise seemed slightly pointless, but she felt better for getting it out of her head. Then she created another document and quickly typed up everything she’d learnt about the Supernatural world so far, and her experiences within it. Genie titled it ‘Dreamleaf Blues – A Tale of Love, Loss… and Vampirism, in a Modern-day Dark Fantasy World’, just in case someone ever did manage to see it. The last thing she wanted was to answer to the Trinity of Old, too. Afterwards, she double checked that both documents were protected by a password that Seth and his cronies would never guess, as she didn’t want the Golden Fangs knowing how badly she thought of them and that they weren’t above her suspicions when it came to Anna’s whereabouts.
Then, someone knocked on her door in a polite series of taps. Genevieve got up from her makeshift desk, unsheathed her Katana and placed it against the wall beside the door, making sure that it was just out of eyeshot but close enough to grab in an emergency. When another series of taps rang through the wood, Genie took a deep breath and opened the door.
A good-looking man was standing on the other side of her doorway. He was dressed smartly in an outdated brown suit, and had black neatly spiked hair and a well-trimmed brown beard. Behind a pair of gold rimmed circular spectacles she saw that his gentle eyes were coloured purple, making him a Mage, and Genie shuffled a little closer to her Katana.
The man eyed her pyjamas with an amused smirk before speaking. “Good afternoon, my name is Jonathan Knight, I’m a representative of the Trinity of Old. May I come in?”
“No, you may not,” Genevieve replied with a posh accent and big fake smile.
Jonathan stifled a laugh and then whispered to her, “What I have to say concerns matters of… our kind. Matters that your neighbours really shouldn’t be hearing.”
Genie poked her head out into the hallway while keeping one hand near the hilt of her weapon, and Jonathan moved slightly so she could get a better view of the door closest to them. It was slightly ajar, and an elderly woman was peeking out of the crack.
“Hello, dear,” the old woman called once Genie had locked eyes with her. “Are you well? I’ve heard an awful ruckus from your side over the past few days. Why, even my dearest Arthur could hear the din and he’s half-deaf!”
“Hello, Mrs. Mayflower,” Genie said, inwardly cursing her bad
luck. “Yes, sorry about that. We had to get some urgent handy-work done around the place. Plumbing, heating…”
“…Gas,” Jonathan added cheekily.
“Oh, I see!” the old lady said merrily, satisfied that the noise problem was at an end. “Now, where is that friend of yours? I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
Genevieve’s heart ached with sadness as she struggled to think of a convincing and potentially permanent lie.
“I’m ever so sorry, Mrs. Mayflower, but I must cut in,” the Trinity representative said, oozing charm. “Genevieve here is helping with an active MPK investigation and I must speak urgently with her in private.” He opened his wallet quickly and flashed it in the direction of Mrs. Mayflower before putting it away again, but Genie’s sharp eyesight didn’t detect any sign of a badge. “She’s helping us take down some real scumbags – undercover – and she was just about to invite me in. Weren’t you, Genevieve?”
Genie felt torn between congratulating the cheeky Mage for a game well played, or just simply punching him in the face. Instead she nodded, smiled, and waved goodbye to Mrs Mayflower.
“Yes, do come in,” the Vampire said with a clenched jaw.
“Why, thank you,” Jonathan replied, overly polite. “Good day to you, Mrs. Mayflower, and do pass my best on to Arthur,” he said as he strolled into Genevieve’s apartment.
“I shall do,” the old lady said happily while closing her front door. “What a lovely man! And to think, my neighbour is an undercover MPK…”
The moment Genevieve closed the door she grabbed her Katana and pointed it towards the Mage. He turned and looked fascinated by the blade.
“A Spell-forged steel Katana… what a beauty!” he said, admiring the blade that was just inches away from his chest. “I never thought I’d see the day Gaius let that out of his sight.”