by P W Hillard
"Good thing your job isn't to think. Carls up for this right?"
"Absolutely, these people killed my brother. I'll rip out their arms and stick them up their arseholes. I'm ready when you are." Carl's face was an angry snarl, visible even beneath his balaclava.
"Right then boys. Visors down, let's do this shit," said Vlad, slamming his visor closed.
Jess tried desperately not to roll her eyes. She had undergone every test for the supernatural she could possibly imagine. Not content with the silver and iron at the door, the two men had subjected her to one test after another. As she sat there, a cloud of sage wafting around her, she took stock of what she had seen so far. It had all been a bit underwhelming. Jess had expected maybe robed figures, secret furtive whispers and bizarre rituals. So far it seemed like two blokes living in a disused warehouse-like squatting students. Martin had explained that the legion could trace its roots back to ancient Rome. If that was really the case, then they had fallen a long way indeed. She was certain that they currently didn't even have running water, a famously Roman invention.
"Right, that's long enough. I think we're all good now," said the man who had introduced himself as Maximus. "Sorry about all that but we had to, you know…be sure."
"Be sure of what, what was all that about?" said Jess, feigning ignorance.
"That last test was to check you weren't a spirit. They supposedly hate sage, especially its smoke when its burned like that." He bent down and snuffed out the sage incense sticks they had clearly bought pre-packaged. They aren't even that well informed thought Jess. Sage was a common herb to keep spirits away, but it was a purely new age spiritualist invention with no real basis in anything truly supernatural. Completely useless against any actual real spirit.
"As you can see I am totally real. At least I hope so," Jess smiled awkwardly.
Maximus chuckled. "Glad to see it too. Can never be too careful. Monsters are insidious. Some spend their days pretending to be human, worming their way into our communities. Like what happened to you. Agrippina told us. I am sorry for your loss. What you saw was a werewolf. Nasty things, masquerading as something they aren't looking for their next victim. That's why we do what we do, working to stop these…things before they hurt anyone else. No-one else will do this. Most people won't believe you. Not your friends, not your family. Not even the police!" Maximus took Jess by the hands and looked into her eyes. "We do though, we believe you."
"Thank you," replied Jess removing her hands. "It means a lot to me. Who…who are you exactly, you haven't really explained."
"Oh, where are my manners!" exclaimed Maximus. "I do apologise. We are members of what's known as The Silent Legion. Our organisation is a proud one, tracing our lineage back to ancient Rome itself. Two thousand years we have worked to protect mankind. That's why we gave you the coin, it's almost like our logo. Once you're inducted you'll also get one of these!" Maximus reached behind himself, his hands wandering underneath his jumper. He produced a large blade. It gleamed even in the dull light from what Jess knew was silver plating. Its handle was like Linda's knife, a twisted double helix ending in another coin. "This blade can kill a wide array of monsters, the perfect tool for us." He stared at the weapon almost longingly. "Still, we won't start you off with one of these right away." He grinned, tucking the dagger back into his waistband. "Where was I? Oh yes. So myself, Anthony, Agrippina and Commodus, who you haven't met. We would be your maniple."
"Maniple?" asked Jess. This was all a bit too easy, Maximus had launched straight in with talk of killings and weapons. There were only four of them. They must be truly desperate for recruits.
"Yeah, maniple is a Latin word. I guess unit or regiment might be the best translation. The legion is split into maniples, each operating independently. That way should monsters get at one, the others are still safe. Each maniple is led by a Centurion, that's me for us. I get information fed to me from the oracle and I use that to dispatch people to deal with whatever comes up in our patch. The oracle is like our central hub, it oversees all the maniples. For example, they gave us information recently about a selkie, that's a kind of water-based monster, in Broadstairs. That's where Commodus is now." Maximus smiled, a kind of grotesque grin, radiating strange happiness at the thought one of his colleagues was out there hunting someone down.
"A trip away from home base then?"
"Hmm, we don't normally have a set…base. This," said Maximus gesturing around himself, "is temporary. We dealt with a gang of vampires recently. We got them all, but I thought it was prudent to keep everyone together for a little while, just in case. It's just a formality really. Normally you would just go about your day, living your normal life. There are some signals, some procedures that you'll learn when we arrange to meet or gather."
The mention of vampires set Jess on edge. With the recent blood theft case that couldn't be a coincidence. She listened, only half paying attention as Maximus continued his impassioned recruitment spiel. There was an odd noise, like metal rattling. Maximus had reached the part of the pitch where he was promoting the enchanted coins. A cynical trick really, promising fleeting visions of dead loved ones as payment. The rattling continued, louder now.
"Hey," said Jess, "Do you hear that?"
Chapter Twenty
It was a few hours earlier, the morning light creeping in from under the curtains, and Lucille was fed up. Fed up with waiting. Fed up with being locked inside constantly. It occurred to Lucille that she had spent most of her recent history trading one prison for the other. On first escaping to Earth she had made a deal, going into witness protection. Now she had moved from the confines of her flat and bar to the safe house. She missed the bar. She might not have been able to leave, but at least it was hers. Doing the books, auditioning bands, tasting new microbrews. At least it was freedom of some kind. She wondered if Abbie felt as trapped as she did. The terms of Abbie's witness protection weren't as strict as Lucille's. Sometimes fame had its disadvantages.
Lucille was sat on the sofa, legs raised onto a small distressed coffee table. She was wearing heavy Doc Martins over black leggings. The leather of the shoes clunking as she wiggled her feet back and forth. She stretched her arms, a black and white spotted playsuit covering her slight frame. She glanced around the room. Abbie was reading a paperback novel, seemingly about erotic werewolves. Lucille wasn't sure if the werewolves were romancing humans, or each other, or just normal wolves and she wasn't going to ask. She could hear Dale pottering about upstairs, Aasif and Rajan having left on another shopping trip.
"I'm sick of this," Lucille said out loud. She was more vocalising her discontent than trying to start a conversation. "It somehow feels more trapped in here than that stupid ice throne."
Abbie grunted in response. There was a lingering silence before Abbie realised she was supposed to respond. She dog-eared the corner of her page and closed the book. "That's just a metaphor," Abbie said. She was wearing another set of black velvet pyjamas, this time of a slightly different design.
"What's a metaphor?" asked Dale as he carefully descended the stairs, a large basket of clothes in his hands. The house had a large open plan design, the staircase being located on the far side of the living room.
"Lucille being sealed in a throne of ice," said Abbie. She flicked the book impatiently, eager to get back to reading it.
"What like in Paradise Lost?" asked Dale. He stood there for a moment, the two women staring at him. "I had to read it in school," he admitted quietly.
Lucille chuckled. "Yeah something like that," she said. "Abbie's right about it being a metaphor but the way things work down there, you can literally be trapped inside a metaphor. It's not a nice feeling. Especially not for a few hundred years."
"A few hundred?" asked Dale, carrying the wash basket across the room. "Thought you were…down there, a lot longer than that?"
"Oh, I was, but Paradise Lost only came out a few hundred years ago. Reality is…fluid I guess is the best word, down there
. It's like a mirror of Earth, an echo. Or more accurately a reflection of what people up here think of being down there," explained Lucille.
"Or a combo of the both really," added Abbie," you should see our London."
"Yeah, so Paradise Lost comes out and boom, into the ice bath I go. The whole circles of hell thing really caused some problems too. Imagine, minding your own demonic business when suddenly, whoops, you're tumbling into some weird new layer of hell." Lucille bounced her legs into the air, placing them onto the carpet with a clomp. "Right, that's it," she declared. "I've had enough of sitting around doing nothing. I need to take things into my own hands."
"Oh no you won't, sit down!" ordered Dale, stamping in from the kitchen. "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but we have a sting operation later today, we'll get the lot of them then and it's back to normality."
Lucille collapsed back down onto the sofa, crossing her arms like a petulant teen. "Normal," she grunted under her breath, "little sick of that too."
Her plan was perfect. Or at least, Lucille thought so. She had spent the next hour sneaking around the house, gathering the materials she needed. She sat now in the bathroom, the door locked, taps turned fully to hot. A thick mist was crawling up the glass mirror, creeping its way up like a vine. In the sink, floating amongst the water was a cluster of hair and nail clippings. Lucille had removed her clothing, now wearing only her underwear. Across her body, she had scrawled twisted arcane shapes. Bizarre runes drawn onto her flesh in thick vivid red lipstick. The shapes seemed to shift, writhing across her skin as though alive.
Lucille inspected herself, happy with the work. Satisfied, she raised her hand, and with one finger began to draw on the misted mirror. Her fingertip danced across the glass, drawing an odd collection of jagged lines. The markings were mirrored, the left and right sides of the mirror reflected. She lifted her hand, allowing the mist to take her drawings. Then she waited.
She didn't wait long. She stood there silently for a few minutes before her spell began to take effect. There was a strange low drone, like the tearing of thin plastic. Lucille stared ahead at her reflection, its image half lost behind the misted glass. With a jolt the reflection raised its arm, pressing it against the mirror. Lucille stood perfectly still, her arms locked to the sides of her body. The mirror began to bend, the reflection pressing against it. The mirror seemed to split, the reflection sliding through, like a new-born lamb breaking free of its amniotic sack. Lucille stretched out and grabbed her reflection, catching her before she collapsed onto the sink. She helped her down, allowing the copy to get her footing. Lucille looked her up and down. She was perfect, an imperceptible copy. She grinned, and her reflection grinned back.
Lucille smiled, her face feeling odd. It didn't feel like her face, the muscles not responding the way she had anticipated. That's largely because it wasn't. To any onlooker Detective Sergeant Dale Cooper walked that street, striding confidently towards Scotland Yard. Lucille did feel guilt at what she had done but staying locked up in that house had been driving her slowly insane.
She had dressed her reflection, ordering the docile almost mindless thing to sit in her room and pretend it was reading a book. Then she had sauntered downstairs and before he could stop her, Lucille planted a kiss onto Dale's lips. Shocked by her sudden forwardness she was able to easily slip Dales key card from his pocket. Without saying a word, she jogged back up the stairs. She knew from experience that Dale would spend the next two hours avoiding her, or perhaps, more importantly, her reflection, who wouldn't have been able to reply anyway. It had occurred to Lucille, -as she slipped out the bedroom window onto the low roofed garage- that what she had done was the magical equivalent of stuffing some pillows under a duvet.
It had been a simple matter once she was clear of the house to take on Dales form. Lucille's appearance was mostly an illusion anyway, all she had to do was simply will herself to swap, changing so quickly that it would have been imperceptible. She took a deep breath in through unfamiliar lungs and stepped into the revolving door, emerging in the reception of New Scotland Yard. A uniformed officer smiled at Lucille as she swiped her stolen key card at the security turnstile. She nodded nervously, hoping desperately that the officer wouldn't want to start up a conversation. Copying someone's appearance was easy. Copying their mannerisms, their personality, the unquantifiable spark that made them who they were, that was near impossible. Her entire plan relied on simply getting in and out quickly, avoiding talking to anyone.
Lucille had been to the department a handful of times, normally to be pumped for information on some new creature or the other. The actual department itself was hidden away in the bowels of the building. Getting in meant wandering down a maintenance corridor, taking the lift down to the basement and then following another corridor to yet another lift. That was where the Special Investigations Department sat, buried away beneath the Earth. The irony of her trying to break into such a place was not lost on Lucille. The lift doors slid open, into another corridor, this time with a large set of double doors. Lucille lifted her shoulders, braced herself, and pushed them open.
If it weren't for the lack of windows, the office that lay before Lucille would look just like any other. Dull grey carpet tiles. A thick foam ceiling. Tables laid out in a vain attempt to be "open plan" before someone had realised that it was a terrible idea and erected a handful of stone-coloured dividers. There was a constant low buzzing from the ceiling set halogen lights. They cast a strange light, making everything seem slightly off colour. Immediately to the left-hand side of the doorway was a large curved desk made of cheap veneered wood. A young woman sat behind it. She wore a police officer's uniform.
"Morning Dale," said Shauna. "Didn't expect you to be here, aren't you covering that safe house?"
"Uh, yeah, I am. Rajan is there at the moment, thought I would pop in, check my emails and all that," replied Lucille. It felt strange to hear Dales voice booming from her throat. "They haven't moved my desk whilst I've been out have they?" Lucille forced a laugh, trying to mask her query as a joke.
Shauna smiled back. "Nope, still right next to the break area. Jammy bastard, less distance to travel to make tea. Want to swap? I am recovering after all?"
"Recovering?"
"Yeah, from the whole hospital thing," Shauna clarified. "Boss said I'm going to get a commendation for that apparently."
"I mean, you should," bluffed Lucille. "Would never have got them without you."
Shauna visibly swelled with pride. "Well those fuckers were killing supers, that's my people, in a way. Feels good to make a difference."
Lucille nodded and then began to stroll across the office. She smiled, this was good news. It meant Dale was right and they were making headway towards arresting the people who had arranged the attack on her bar. Still, it wasn't quite quick enough for Lucille, who continued onwards across the department, eager to do what she could.
Lucille found Dale’s desk easily enough. A large photograph of him had been attached to the divider. He was huddled together with four other men, arms outstretched around each other. They were all wearing vivid green football shirts paired with plain white shorts. They were grinning and sweating profusely. One man held his hand out in a thumbs up. Dale had never mentioned playing football to her, and Lucille felt odd. Almost as though she was stampeding uninvited into his life, harvesting secrets like a hummingbird drains nectar. Pushing the thought out of her head, Lucille sat down into the worn black office chair. She moved the mouse connected to the computer that sat on the desk to wake it, stared at the screen, and groaned.
Lucille had never felt stupider. The computers login screen reflected in her eyes. A boring blue page with two entry fields, each ominously empty, white boxes waiting to be filled. Username and password. Lucille very rarely used computers. She had set up social media accounts for the bar at Abbie's insistence but generally tried not to use the thing. Her laptop was currently propping up the coffee table in her flat above the bar. Th
ere was something about computers that unsettled her. Lucille was an ancient powerful magical creature, but technology was almost like its own new magic. Newer, flashier and easier to use than her own, she somehow could feel her obsolescence looming. She wondered if her siblings felt the same, then laughed at the thought of her former compatriots despairing as they watched humans dealing out more misery to each other through the internet than any demon could ever hope to achieve.
Leaning back in the office chair, Lucille placed her hands on the back of her head. She panicked momentarily as she couldn't feel the hair she usually kept in a bun, before remembering she currently wore the short dark blonde hair of Dale. So, her initial plan hadn't worked. Log in to a computer and find Jess with the tracking device they no doubt would have placed on her. She sat there thinking for a moment. Then Lucille realised that there was someone who knew where her attackers would be, and that she would be here, now.
Linda lay on the small cot that ran from end to end of her cell. A simple thin mattress laid over a shelf cut into the concrete. She had no idea how long she had been there, there being no clock or calendar at all. She assumed this was by design. She didn't even know where she was, having been unconscious when they had brought her in. Linda had begun to quietly assume that she would just disappear, be swept under the rug and left to rot, either in this cell or one very much like it. There was a high-pitched scraping noise, one she had grown to know as the bolt on the outside of the solid metal door that sealed the cell shut.
"More questions?" Linda groaned as the door swung open.
"Yeah, something like that," said the voice, one Linda hadn't heard before. She sat upright and swung her legs over the edge of the cot. In the doorway stood a man she hadn't seen yet. Tall and broad-shouldered, he had dark blonde almost mousey hair and eyes the colour of jade. In a past life, Linda would have found him reasonably handsome. "Come on get up."