by R. W. Holmes
Angelica scowled, but said, “Okay, that's a little true. I really like going after people for being shitty. Especially when they have severe advantages over people around them and abuse those advantages to put other people down.”
“This is really fascinating and all, but we're almost there” Emily chimed in nervously. “Angelica, Artemis... You don't really know what we're doing, so I'll give you the short version: some jerk who used to be one of my 'friends' stabbed everyone in the back and ran off. We don't punish people, or even hold it against them for leaving 'the group', but stabbing us in the back and stealing a bunch of things can't go unpunished.”
“D-Death wants me to be here” said Angelica. “I don't know why, but that's why I made Shay bring me. Maybe he hates Doug Gander?”
“That would be convenient” said Gael. “But not likely.”
“Hey, Angie?” added Zinerva. “Listen, I love you to death. You're the second human I ever met! But you're not allowed to go off on your own. Getting your soul back isn't worth it if it gets everyone killed, right? Because you'd just go to Hell anyway, so don't do that.”
“I'm not-,” Angelica started.
“Don't do that” Gael and Emily said in unison.
Angelica visibly shook with indignant rage, but kept her mouth shut. It was in her nature to argue back, but it was also in her nature to admit fault, and she was legitimately terrified of what she might do if her fears of an eternity in Hell got the better of her.
Finally, after another few moments of driving, the group arrived.
The building Emily ordered Gael to stop at was tall, plain, and woefully unassuming. It, like the one Kennedy had just purchased, and just about every other building in the area, was between three and five stories high, was clad in brick and mortar, and looked like it could be over a hundred years old.
“Oh gosh...” Shay groaned hopelessly. “It's a fortress.”
“Um, what?” Gael said as he looked back to Zinerva, Artemis, and Angelica curiously. “Is this a 'you can see but we can't' deal?”
“I mean, yeah, all the entrances have wards on them to alert Kiki to a breach” replied Shay. “But what I really mean is that there are very few entrances to this place.”
“Yeah... there will be no sneaking in” said Emily. “And Kiki, Doug's fae, she's a spriggan. A little ugly monster of a fae, which I used to say was pretty because I didn't want to hurt her feelings.” Everyone jumped as Emily slammed her hands on the dash and shouted, “I was nice to that cretin!”
“Well what if we don't care about sneaking in?” asked Gael.
“We can't have Zinerva blow the door down,” said Emily. “A giant fiery explosion would make way too much noise and be way too visible.”
“Okay” Gael replied with a shrug. “What if Artemis just runs the door over?”
“I like this plan” Artemis said immediately.
“No, that's...” Emily started. “Actually, that might be fine. There's a distinct possibility that some trap they've rigged kills Artemis immediately, though.”
“Do we have an extra knife?” Angelica asked with a sigh. “So, you know, I can do the thing...”
Emily passed Angelica an extra blade she kept hidden in a holster on her ankle as they and the others exited the truck.
“Right, we need to have a plan for what we do after Artemis busts down the door next” said Shay. “I suggest-,”
“TALKING IS OVER!” bellowed Artemis.
Gael and Zinerva leaped aside as Artemis charged at the building, his head down and his feet stamping away ferociously against the concrete as he stampeded up to the door and threw himself into it with everything he had.
There was a splintering sound as the deadbolt, the lock, and the hinges holding the door in place shattered upon impact, and then a moment of silence as the door careened through the air and clattered to the floor of a hallway beyond.
“Zinerva, back him up” Gael said quickly.
“I'm coming, Arty!” Zinerva cackled gleefully as she sprinted up behind Artemis and adorned her hands in a wreath of multicolored flames.
Artemis charged down the building's front hallway, headed towards the flight of stairs at the end where a creature sat hidden in the shadows watching. Then, he was immediately struck by a makeshift wall of spikes attached to a hinge from one of the doorways lining the hallway.
Deep, feminine cackling erupted from the creature sitting at the end of the hall, until Artemis revealed he'd reached up and absorbed the wall and its half a dozen foot long spikes with his hands.
“Excellent!” growled Artemis, before ripping the trap off of its hinges and casting it aside. “I've never fought one like you before.”
The creature stood up and ran upstairs, leaving Artemis to take another few steps forward and suffer the force of an entire tree trunk sharpened down to a point as it swung down on a mechanism in the ceiling and struck him dead in the gut.
“AH!” Artemis bellowed as he was struck, before looking down at the wound in dismay. “Fatal” he admitted. “Very well, but this body is not yet done. I have more to give!”
Artemis reared his arms back and swung them down, sundering the second trap and detaching it from the ceiling. He then sprinted forward once again, more a shamble than anything else, and willingly accepted the blow of a final, third trap when a series of holes in the walls began firing a veritable avalanche of arrows and turned him into a goat-shaped pincushion.
“Wow” Zinerva said as she watched Artemis collapse and burn away to ash. “He is really tough...” Zinerva continued to stare for a moment longer, before looking back and expectantly shouting, “Angelica!”
“Is he dead?” called Angelica.
“Yes.”
Angelica nodded and used the knife Emily had given her to cut her palm.
“Shay is going to take point now” Emily said as she and fairy proceeded and Angelica vanished on her journey across the cosmos. “She has better eyes than we do, and that has nothing to do with her being a fairy. She has always just been an exceptional spotter.”
“She should use me as a shield, though” said Zinerva.
“It's two weeks without me if I die” Shay said reassuringly as she fluttered ahead of Zinerva. “And Emily has a fantastic place to lay low right here in Eiffel.
Zinerva's face screwed up in confusion. “What did she mean by that?” she asked Gael.
“She meant us, you dork” replied Gael. “Let's go.”
The building was, as it had been for Artemis, very dark within. All of the lights were off, and much of the first floor was faded with age from disuse.
“They're living on the second floor” said Shay. “So there will be less traps up there.”
“The stairway is going to be a nightmare” Emily added pessimistically. “I'm sure they've got traps littered all over the damn thing, and our footing will be bad.”
“Okay” Zinerva said as she pushed past Shay and ran ahead. “I have a solution for that.”
“Zinerva, be c-,” Shay started, before Zinerva's flame-wreathed hands shot upward and loosed a surprisingly controlled blast of brilliant, multicolored fire up into the ceiling.
The wood of the floor, and any other materials separating the ground floor from the second, were incinerated with otherworldly efficiency, until a great and ominous groaning and cracking sounded throughout the hall.
“AH!” Zinerva cried out, leaping back just in time to avoid the sudden descent of an enormous iron cauldron filled to the brim with heated oil. The building shook as it crashed down, along with the person preparing to tip it over.
Luckily for everyone in the hallway, the immensely heavy cauldron remained upright, and only a small splash of blisteringly hot oil fell to the floor around it when it landed.
“Holy shit!” Zinerva cried out as she hauled the cauldron's 'operator' to its feet. “Look at this thing!”
The creature in Zinerva's hands, or rather, the spriggan, was not on the happy or pretty
side of the fae spectrum. It was gross, covered in warts, sported a large, comically bulbous nose, and even had the skin discoloration that made it look like some sort of goblin or gremlin.
“That's Kiki” Emily said bitterly.
“O-Oh, hi” Kiki rasped in her earthy, but unexpectedly smooth voice. “Was the big goat guy with you? I was just defending myself, and-,”
“Where's Doug?” asked Shay.
“Probably up there” Kiki said as she looked up to the hole. “You know, pissing himself... Are these the demons? They're nicer than I thought they would be.”
“Shay, peek the hole” ordered Emily.
Shay nodded and hovered up, carefully stealing a look of the hallway overhead and drawing in an incredible amount of information with her trained eyes.
“It's the living area” she said knowingly. “Probably a lot less traps up there now... Doug was never good enough to take on the lifestyle necessary to get the most out of a talented spriggan like Kiki.”
“Oh, that's very nice of you to say” said Kiki. “Now if it's alright with you, I'd prefer my death to be painless.”
“I'm okay with anything up to putting her in the cauldron” said Zinerva. “I won't kill someone with hot oil, because I read online that that's like... the most painful way to die.”
“Now it look really bad that I tried to kill you with a cauldron of hot oil...” Kiki remarked sourly.
“I'll tell you what” said Emily. “If you kill Doug, we'll let you live.”
Kiki paused to think. “Okay” she said plainly.
“What!?” Gael and Zinerva exclaimed in unison.
“Yeah” said Kiki. “'Okay'. You think I care about Doug? He's just my current ticket up here, okay? I wasn't the one who said we should run off and steal a bunch of stuff on the way out.”
“Why not just live in fairyland then?” asked Zinerva.
“Because they don't have Vienna beef hot dogs in fairyland” replied Kiki, a distant, longing expression coming over here.
“That's actually how I found them” mused Emily. “This property was purchased around when he fled, and it's near one of the only three Vienna beef hot dog dealers in the city.”
“Then I will add one hot dog from that place on top of you getting to live” said Gael. “Because now I want one too.”
“YES!” Kiki exclaimed excitedly, before suddenly and without warning growing to eight feet tall in nearly an instant. “I can't actually hurt him, though” she boomed. “Summoner orders and all... So I need to borrow this.”
Zinerva smirked as Kiki, who had finally slowed her growing at an incredible eleven feet tall, reached down with one of her now massive hands and picked the small imp up with ease.
“What the hell is going on...” muttered Gael.
“Spriggans are amazing” replied Emily. “And Kiki works for hot dogs. We should totally get her to help us fortify your place after we're done here. She can do a lot when someone like Kennedy is bankrolling it. I can't believe she isn't loyal to Doug, though. The money he's bringing in should have meshed perfectly with her greedy spriggan nature.”
“KIKI!” a yet unheard male voice cried out in horror. “WHAT ARE YOU-,”
The expected, violent, flaming explosion of one of Zinerva's fireballs striking Kiki's summoner rang throughout the building.
“Shay, do you have my fake FBI badge?” asked Emily. “I'm worried someone will come-, thank you.”
Shay smiled back at Emily as she produced the 'badge' from a small bag she hung at her side. In true fae fashion, it was a bag which, as far as the laws of physics were concerned, couldn't possibly have contained something so large.
At that moment, Angelica stumbled into the building with Artemis at her side, and was carefully cradling her head as she moved.
“Everything alright?” asked Gael.
“I keep hitting my head when I summon Artemis” Angelica replied drearily. “I need to find an open space to do this in from now on.”
Emily turned to Gael curiously and asked, “Haven't you done it without moving before?”
“It's a process” replied Gael, before he turned to Angelica and added, “It gets easier.”
“What is happening?” asked Artemis. “Why are we all standing in this hallway?”
“I was caught!” Kiki's voice boomed from above. She then climbed down through the hole, all twelve feet of her, and set Zinerva down on the ground. “And now Doug Gander is dead. Do you want me to disable the traps for you?”
“Ugh... this is what happens when I fall” Artemis groaned in dismay. “You settle things without fighting.”
“That would be wonderful, Kiki” Emily replied with a smile. “Gael, why don't you drive up to this hot dog place Kiki keeps talking about and pick some food up for everyone?”
“Sure” Gael replied nonchalantly. “Just, uh... Keep anyone from doing something they might regret until I get back.”
“I'm not gonna try anything!” snapped Angelica. “But yes, I would very much so like a hot dog now that you mention it.”
Ten minutes later, and only after Kiki had dug up her design plans that showed the location of every trap in the building, Emily and Angelica made their way upstairs alongside their demons and began a private tour of what Doug Gander now called home.
Doug Gander himself was there to greet them, albeit as a smoldering husk that was only still slightly humanoid in appearance. The kitchen and bedrooms showed little, except that Doug himself was a slob, and that while he'd gone through the effort of procuring an extremely nice bed and mattress for himself he'd left Kiki to sleep on the couch all the while.
“My God, Kiki. Doug really let himself go” Emily muttered concernedly. “And he tried to take you with him.”
“Oh, yeah, the back problems” Kiki said knowingly. “He wasn't actually very mean to me, he just always looked disgusted whenever we talked face to face. It made it really hard to complain about anything.”
“I can see why you agreed to kill him” said Artemis. “You might as well have been a prisoner.”
“Yeah, he was always really okay with letting things get worse for me” said Kiki. “Also, he put ketchup on his hot dogs. The man was twenty-nine years old, for crying out loud! What circle of Hell do you go to for putting ketchup on quality hot dogs?”
“You have a strange obsession for the meat of a canine...” Artemis muttered concernedly, before turning to Angelica and asking, “Did you not say they were beloved by your kind?”
“Hot dogs aren't made of dog” replied Angelica. “It's just... Ugh, Kiki! Where are the important things? You know, the stuff Emily came here for? Or did Doug sell it all?”
“Oh, no, we've only sold one thing so far” replied Kiki. “It was a magic puzzle box or something, I don't really remember. Follow me, we keep the 'stuff' in my workshop.”
The third and final room of the second floor, sans the bathroom, was exactly as Kiki had described it: a workshop. It was clear by the array of snack bags, empty, hot dog shaped paper cartons, and a pile of bedding that had clearly seen more use than her couch that Kiki spent the majority of her time in the room. Dozens of old fashioned tools hung from a pegboard mounted over a large, wooden workbench, and beneath this workbench was a collection of a dozen or so lock boxes and safes of varying shapes and sizes.
“They're down here” Kiki said as she knelt down and grabbed the closest one. “Not this one though, this one is booby trapped.”
“And what happens if we open it?” asked Emily.
“It blows up” said Kiki. “This is the one I'm supposed to give people if they ever sneak in while Doug is gone.”
“I'm still freaking out over how quickly you sold him out...” Angelica murmured nervously. “Is it a good idea to let you hold that?”
“I mean, if you try to take it away from me then I'm definitely going to open it” said Kiki. “So yes.”
Angelica frowned, still uncertain of Kiki's involvement, until a cold draft s
wept through the room and chilled her to the bone. Much to her surprise, no one else seemed affected.
“The safe.”
Everyone flinched as Angelica's body went rigid with fright.
“In the back, behind all of the others. It's in there.”
“It's here!” exclaimed Angelica. “The safe in the back!”
“What? How do you know that?” asked Shay.
“You mean you can't hear it?” asked Angelica.
“They can not...”
“No” said Shay.
“We can not” confirmed Artemis.
“Open the safe. Retrieve the scroll. Bring it outside.”
“Death wants me to take the scroll inside the safe and bring it outside” said Angelica.
“Okay, okay, hold on” Emily said as she began shoving lock boxes aside, before hauling the small safe nestled in the very back out for everyone to see. “Let's see what 'it' is first, okay?”
“That's the Four-Seal Scroll” Kiki said knowingly. “No one knows what it's for, just that all of the important fae and R'lyehans can feel a lot of power in it.”
Emily looked to Shay, who then looked to Artemis, who looked back to Emily again.
“We don't know anything about it” they all said in unison.
“I mean, it's gone unused for, well, ever” said Angelica. “Maybe it's important to Death that it stay that way.”
“Did he say that?” asked Shay.
“No,” Angelica admitted sheepishly. “All Death did was tell me to bring it outside.”
“Are we talking about actual Death right now?” asked Kiki. “Why are you doing things for Death?”
“Death has Angelica's soul” replied Artemis.
Kiki blinked. “That is a reason.”
The atmosphere of the room grew increasingly dour as everyone stared at the safe, unsure of how to proceed, until finally, Kiki knelt down and did something she figured they'd have to eventually: she opened the safe.
The ancient scroll within crinkled slightly as it was exposed to a rush of fresh air, but remained otherwise silent.
“Here it is” Kiki said as she held it up.
“Strange...” Artemis pondered. “The seals are mere wax. Why not simply open it and see what it is for ourselves?”