by P. S. Power
Tremble In The Dark
A Gwen Farris Novel
P.S. Power
Orange Cat Publishing
Chapter one
The slap came in hard. It was done with intent, which made a huge difference to such things, Gwen knew. In practice such things were generally soft, and done with control, no matter how wild the movement looked. The woman hitting her however wanted her dead, and even a simple blow to the side of the face showed that.
Hope left her then, draining out, as she sat tied to the plain brown kitchen chair. It had been purchased from a wholesaler down the street, and delivered just a few weeks before. It was going to end up being ruined now, she knew.
Then she pushed herself backwards, as her friend and mentor, Bethany, charged into the room, her Power Conduit, the small red metallic rectangle that only the most magical of people could use as a weapon, held out in front of her.
"I highly suggest you let her go. Now." There was no menace to the words, just a cool certainty that left Gwen feeling much better, as the young University girl that was trying to kill her turned to face the good-looking Detective.
"Never! She's thwarted far too many of my master's plans. I have my orders, and I will see them done." The girl, who was a bit dowdy, bookish, and quite mad, lunged at Gwen, the ceremonial dagger shining a bright silver, already well coated from the blood of her previous victims. "Now die!"
Then without even twitching, without breathing hard or even seeming out of sorts, Bethany cast the woman against the wall, using the weapon in her hand to push her back.
"Luckily for you, Miss Forester, I've borrowed Gwen's practice PC. Else you would be dead now, instead of merely nursing a headache in the morning. Now, I ask you again, please give up your evil ways, and release my companion. She is blameless in this, as you well know." There was-
Gwen looked up from what she was writing, to see the object of it, Beth, her friend, smiling.
"Well, we have the travel itinerary all set. Finally. I do wish we could travel by airship for it. Teletransport is out, since we're being requested to aid the local constabulary, but there have been reports of magical properties not functioning right in the area of the murders. So we travel by train, where we can at least get off and walk if it comes to it." She didn't seem upset by the idea at all, because very little ever really disrupted the good-looking blonde woman.
She was in a dress, which had a practical air to it, compared to the rather lacy and frilly thing that Gwen was wearing. It was a plain, and rather heavy, blue dress with a matching jacket. The styles here in this new world were a lot different than back home. She was starting to get used to some strange things since she'd been there and in the body of Katherine Vernor for over a year now. It wasn't that easy of a transition.
For one thing, everything in the new place ran on magic. She could do that too, make magic, but it was a lot harder than most stories or television shows made it seem like. Katherine had been a top end natural talent, like Bethany was. The difference had been that Beth was a Westmorland, a brainwashed and enslaved orphan, tortured into becoming a super-soldier. Katherine had been an heiress. It wasn't the same thing at all.
It meant that Gwen had been borrowing the clothing of Katherine the whole time she'd been there though, which, as Ethyl Vernor had recently pointed out, needed to be updated. Otherwise people would think the Vernors were trying to keep her in poverty. The kind woman had even offered to pay for them herself, but Gwen had demurred. She had enough for a new wardrobe already, and the Vernors had already been so kind to her, trying to make up for what their daughter had done.
Stealing her from another world, and, it turned out, murdering her in the process. Her real body was a rotting corpse now, thanks to Katherine. The little bitch.
The fact that they'd offered to give her every penny they owned, including their businesses and properties, to make up for it needed to make it into the story she was writing somewhere. No one realized that they'd done that and had really meant it. It had been so hard for them, for the last months, since it had become common knowledge that their daughter had stolen her body. Not that her body had died. People thought that Katherine had just traded with her, which was bad enough. If they knew the whole story, people would freak. Big time.
Almost no one knew that Katherine was inside her still.
Beth moved in beside her, sitting very properly, and looked at the notebook, her keen detective's eye scanning the page a lot faster than Gwen would have managed. She'd probably been forced to learn to read that fast. It was what they did to her kind, after all.
"That... Are you writing your memoirs? I can't say that I recall the events described as going exactly that way. In fact, I believe that I was the one tied up, naked, lying face down on the sofa, and it was you that fought and captured her. A bit different, don't you think?" She seemed a little odd, and looked away for some reason. Gwen hadn't really expected that, but she didn't do it herself, trying to guess what the woman was feeling.
Gwen was good with recognizing anger and hostility, having had a lot of that in her life, in her own world. She was pretty much an expert on being hated and reviled really, having been horribly deformed before. Like the elephant man. Except that he'd actually been a bit better looking. Not that anyone knew who that was here. Now she was pretty, but she'd lived a lot of her life isolated from others, and thinking the worst of them. It had left her deficient in some ways. Emotionally crippled. That was a thing she could fight against however, and she was good at fighting, so she stared at Beth, and tried to work it out, instead of assuming her friend was disgusted by her, which was what she'd nearly done. One year didn't outweigh over thirty that way, it seemed.
"Um. You don't like it?" That was possible. She'd never really written anything before, but she'd been asked to write about her experiences in her new world, since she was, as odd as it seemed, popular here. As in a minor celebrity. It had been a bit convoluted, but it turned out that she'd sort of ended up helping to save the world. People liked that for some reason.
"It's well written, I just don't know that it reflects reality well. I... You can tell the truth, Gwen. I won't be insulted by it. Westmorlands can't afford to let minor things like embarrassment derail them, after all. We aren't allowed that luxury."
Gwen smiled and patted her buddy on the arm gently. These people may not touch a lot compared to what she was used to from movies and television, but compared to her real life, the place was a virtual hug fest. Beth returned the gestures by patting her leg a few times and looking at her.
"Also, this says I'm pretty. That's a bit... Shall we say, generous?"
Gwen let her eyebrows go up, which was a thing that she'd been practicing lately. It was good that she finally got to use it.
"Nope. You're very attractive. As for the rest, well, selling this as a Bethany Westmorland adventure was my idea. The publisher wasn't wild about the idea at first, but I told him that I didn't need more fame or his money, so if he didn't want to get the sales from having me do the work for it, he could go and shove his head up a mule's ass. I even offered to buy the mule for him." She winked, not really getting that one right yet. It was still more of a blink. "Not that I'd really do that. I don't support animal cruelty. He broke though, when I told him that I'd write it for free, if we did it my way." He'd actually gotten a lot more supportive of the plan, after that.
Beth stood and fought a smile, shaking her head just a bit. She had light colored hair, that fell just below her collar, but was put up loosely in the back at the moment. It was nice and straight too, unlike Katherine's dark brown curls. Gwen had always just worn a short crew cut back home, so having
to manage hair had been a real chore. She envied her friend in that. It pretty much had to be easier to manage. Though, glancing down, she did remember that she had a better bust line. Symmetrical and everything. Her whole body was, which meant that she woke up in the middle of the night, stumbling and confused, more than once a week. Normally in abject fear, but that had to do with other things. The stumbling was just because she still wasn't perfectly used to her new body. Not without thinking about it.
They were at Park Street, which was the Vernor's house. Calling it a house was a bit wrong though. It was like referring to Buckingham Palace as a cottage near the river. The first time she'd seen the place she'd thought it was an extremely wealthy neighborhood. A gated community with a high, and rather attractive, wall. It wasn't, and this room showed it.
It was small for this place, her bedroom, which was actually a set of three rooms. This one was just for sitting in, and, as she had been doing, working. The bench they were on was made of sturdy polished oak, but had soft fluffy pillows on it for comfort. Ones stuffed with goose feathers. Real ones. Those cushions were in a soft amber color, a tight weave of cotton that made it shine a bit like silk. That was a thing they'd never come up with back home. It influenced styles here a lot, especially for men's suits. The whole thing had a shiny look, but was a lot more like styles from the nineteen-twenties than not.
The Westmorland Detective didn't speak for a long time, so Gwen just sat and waited. People could be very slow about some things here, and even normal conversations were often spread out over hours, when a few sentences could have cleared things up almost instantly. It was, she reminded herself, a different world. Not always a better one either. In some ways, it was, but in others it was a dark and grim place. Just because Gwen herself was making out like a bandit, that didn't mean everyone was.
Her friend sighed.
"To what end? Why give up funds from your work? Anything written by you is bound to be a top selling piece, given your fame, but why write it to... Showcase me in such a positive light? I'm only a Westmorland." She had another funny look on her face.
Gwen couldn't tell what it was, exactly, but then thought she had it. She was having a low self-esteem moment. That was something that should have been recognizable to her having lived it often enough, but there it was, right on Beth's face, bafflingly enough. The woman normally seemed pretty confident.
She shrugged, then tried to copy the mannerisms of the place, and flipped her palms up instead. That's what they did to show they were baffled or exasperated here.
"Because you're a Westmorland. People here need to learn to see you as people, not as potentially world killing bombs. If they can see one of you as good, and fair, trying to fix things through reason and peaceful means first, only using violence as a last resort, to protect them, maybe they'll eventually get it?" Not that it would work instantly. People were afraid of the Westmorlands, mainly because some of them really could explode like a nuclear weapon.
Really, all of them could, Gwen was pretty sure. That part was a secret though, and she wasn't supposed to know about it. It was the only way that they could get their jobs done most of the time. Claiming that they weren't that kind of Westmorland.
Beth didn't seem convinced that it would work, but she held her tongue. That was another thing that was different about this place than back home. People didn't explain things here. Not publically. Even knowing that she had no way of understanding the rules and conventions, they just ignored her lapses, and let her carry on, more or less. That didn't help her adapt though, did it? She was about to mention that to Bethany, for about the five hundredth time, since it was a real social rule, and the topic came up a lot, when her friend flipped her own hands up and then made a slight tossing motion at her.
That meant she was basically saying it was up to Gwen. If it pleased her or not, she couldn't tell. That was confusing, but she let it go. Asking people what they were feeling constantly just didn't work here. If you asked that of a crying and grieving widow at her husband's funeral, she'd simple turn and sob that she was doing fine. Thank you for asking.
No, she simply had to learn what the different expressions meant. Some of them were different she thought, from the ones that people had shown around her while she grew up. It basically meant she didn't have context for anything. On the good side, she also didn't have a lot of bad habits to unlearn.
All Gwen needed to do was develop telepathy now, and she could just read people's minds in order to figure them out. That got her to smile a bit and shake her own head. Bethany could do that. Read minds. It was risky though, if you were too strong, because you heard too much, and that could drive you mad. Beth had been tortured into learning to use it only on demand. That was the secret Westmorland method. It worked really well. It was also a horrible thing to do to children. Or to adults that couldn't say no.
Gwen put the pad away and stood, then stretched a bit, her arms going over her head. It wouldn't have been polite, to do that in public, but it was her own room and Beth was a bit more free spirited than some of the people here. She didn't seem to notice at all.
In fact, she seemed a little preoccupied.
"The first leg of our journey will begin in the morning. We're likely to be gone for several weeks, and possibly longer, depending on the nature of the case. There are some strange reports from the area. Mainly the ones of magic simply not working at times and then restarting later. It's one of the reasons that Central is sending us in. If my abilities falter, it may be up to you to ensure our safety."
Gwen rolled her eyes.
"I'm sure Adam put the request in for me personally? He does love me so." There was sarcasm in her words, and she smiled after them. The man didn't love her. In fact, if she had a Westmorland enemy, it was Adam, their boss. She thought it was just that she was an unknown, or something like that, but whatever it was, they didn't get along well at all. It was his fault too. She had her moments, and could be a bitch, but that man was an asshole all the time. To her at least.
"No, I believe it was actually Darrick that put in for you and I to catch this one. He holds your capabilities in high esteem you know. Especially your ability to get things done without utilizing magic. Adam wanted to send in a whole Special Service cohort, but that was overruled. The odds of this being more than some kind of magical ritual sacrifice are low. Most crimes such as this, multiple murders, are, after all." Bethany smoothed the front of her dress with her right hand, moving over the small bulge made by her power conduit. Gwen didn't have one on her, since no one here walked around armed all the time. Except for the super-soldiers.
Well, and her, but this was part of her own bedroom, in a safe place. She'd actually forced herself not to carry anything for the moment, to try and keep from moving into full blown paranoia. So far it wasn't helping, but she kept trying. Taking little steps.
After all, it wasn't like the universe itself was really going to rip open in front of her, releasing things from an unknown hell dimension to destroy them all. It just felt like it would. All the time. It was the one thing that everyone that had been there for the event, when Doctor Debussey had tried to pry open reality using mass death, to let the Elder Gods into their world, agreed on. It felt like they were going to be eaten up by a mountain of fear and death at any moment.
All the time.
She looked up and didn't let that sense of things win. It wasn't going to happen, and pretty much couldn't. It had taken the fear of a good chunk of the world's population, and a lot of human sacrifice to get it nearly done that one time. She and the others, mainly Westmorlands, had closed the rift themselves. It wasn't an easy thing to do, either way. Some man or woman in their basement wasn't going to manage it by accident. Her fear wasn't going to accidently cause it either. She'd checked on that with experts, several of them, and they all agreed. They were safe from that.
"Ah. Well, part of my new wardrobe should be in tonight. We'll need to travel light, and be ready to leave anyth
ing that's too heavy, if we're going to have to walk. Are we going in as innocent travelers, or as Special Service? The uniforms at least don't have a skirt. Well, at least if we don't get invited to a fancy dinner." She was joking, a little, since it was well known that she wasn't wild about dresses and skirts. Some of her new clothing reflected that, being what people called women's suits.
Wearing one pretty much told the world that she was either a magician or a lesbian, but Gwen didn't care about either of those things. They were a lot more practical, if you had to fight, which always took top billing in her own mind. The uniforms were even better, and while hers were tailored, they were still cheaper. All in a nice dark blue too. It worked, as a color for her now. Not that she was getting vain, but Katherine was only in her early twenties, and her face and body were attractive. Like the plucky sidekick on the vampire detective show she used to watch. So a real world eight or so. Solidly good-looking.
Beth nodded, almost making Gwen blush, fearing the woman had been reading her mind or something. She could do that, with work. The Westmorland protocols had been used to help make that difficult for her, to protect her mind. She didn't do it often however, which was nice. They had a signal worked up, in case Gwen needed to tell her something in secret, which was touching her left temple. She hadn't done that though, so it was probably safe.
"My thought as well. We'll go in as officials, in working uniforms. If nothing else it will keep the mashers off of us. A bit at least. There are always some. Well, that can't be changed today. What do you have planned for the afternoon? More writing?"
She shook her head and put the pad away, though she was going to take it with her on the trip. That was one thing she'd learned about this place. You learned to keep busy. If you weren't actively working on something you had to make some kind of entertainment. That or go to a show, or, as a last resort, listen to the Telesar. That was basically radio, but if it was built by mean spirited hate mongers to spread their message. Not all of it, but the majority was that way. Even the nice stuff could be a bit catty at times. Some of the music was catchy enough however.