by J. S. Volpe
Reynard slunk from the bushes, scurried across the sidewalk and the stretch of open grass, and crouched down next to the marble plinth atop which stood the bronze statue of Adam Frankenstein that dominated this section of Ravenshaft’s Cryptic Acres Park. There he paused a moment, watching and listening.
Crickets chirred in the darkness beyond the yellow circles of light cast by the black cast-iron lamps that lined the park’s paths. The lamps were solarite-powered, a touch of the old-fashioned that fit the locale well. The spiders and webs decorating them were old-fashioned, too, being completely non-interactive. They didn’t move or scream or display informative diagrams, no matter how many times you scanned them with your Realms+ Card. Which didn’t prevent the occasional idiotic tourist from trying, though.
Reynard saluted Ravenshaft’s refusal to change its venerable ways. That alone was what made it Belladonna’s last tolerable city. The rest of the realm had become far too tame and commercialized, campily playing up its weirdness and spookiness to attract new residents in an effort to mitigate the population drain caused by the ongoing space migration. But then, most realms had been reduced to the same thing, desperately flaunting their every plus like aging whores trying to compete with the younger, fresher girls down the block. And like those aging whores, the realms were doomed to lose. Why would anyone bother with a mere realm when whole planets had been terraformed to meet the needs and desires of every species, race, and lifestyle?
Ravenshaft, though, remained one of a kind. Unlike Lachrymont or Vile Vale or any other big city in Belladonna, Ravenshaft was still genuinely scary. The danger wasn’t just theatrics to wow prospective denizens. It still had murky byways and labyrinths of alleys any halfway sane person would stay out of. Ravenshaft’s disappearance rate was five times higher than anywhere else in the United Realms. No one knew why, or where those missing persons might be ending up, though many claimed this was where a lot of the nastier vampires gangs had decamped to, the ones who refused to play nice with the UR government and give up victimizing innocents. Reynard had also heard that Ravenshaft still had serial killers.
If so, they weren’t in Cryptic Acres Park at the moment. Nor were the nasty vampires. Nor, thankfully, was anyone other than Reynard. The park’s paths were silent and still. Even in sinister Ravenshaft most folks were fast asleep at three a.m. on a weeknight.
Most, but not all. Local Watch patrols, he knew, checked the park periodically throughout the night, so he had to act fast.
From a small cloth shopping sack he pulled a smoke bomb, a foot-long purple dildo, and a roll of thick tape sticky enough to adhere to cold marble. He tore off a strip of tape with his teeth and taped the dildo into the recess under the plinth’s chilly stone rim. He had just bitten off another strip to do the same with the smoke bomb when his communicator shrilled.
“Thit,” he hissed around the tape as he scrambled to yank the small silver device from his pocket. He cursed himself for forgetting to mute it.
He almost turned it off without answering it, but then reflected that it might be his lawyer with an update on the Charon property Reynard was bidding on.
He hit TALK and said, “Yeth?”
“Um…hello?” said a puzzled and very familiar female voice.
“Tholath?” he said, all his panic and plans momentarily erased by astonishment.
A pause on the other end, then: “Reynard? Is that you?”
He pulled the tape from his mouth. One sticky edge caught on his upper lip and tore away a sliver of skin, producing a quick, sharp pain like a bee-sting.
“Yeah,” he said. He touched the tip of his tongue to the wound and tasted blood. “It’s me.”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Sorry, I was eating.” Over the uproar of thoughts and feelings and questions her call had unleashed, his instincts shouted at him to hurry up and finish the task at hand because the longer he squatted here with it half done the greater his chances of getting caught. He clamped the communicator to his ear with his raised left shoulder, and carefully taped the smoke bomb next to the dildo. “So, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“I…” She paused, took a breath. “I need your help.”
“You need my help,” he said slowly and precisely, as if he were having trouble comprehending a statement so ludicrous. “It’s funny, I seem to recall that the last time we got in touch, you abruptly cut ties with me without even—”
“Reynard, I don’t have time for this,” she said. The desperation in her voice stopped all his words. “We can talk about it later, if you want.”
He stood up, knees cracking. “What do you need me to do?”
“Do you have a car?”
“Sure.”
She heaved a relieved breath. “I need a ride.”
“Don’t you have a car?”
“Yes, but…I can’t use it.”
“Why?”
An exasperated grunt. “Reynard, please, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know later. We need to get moving.”
He sighed. “Okay. Fine. Where are you now?”