“Yeah.”
“Is it your dominant eye that’s swelled shut?”
“Now that you mention it…”
“Don’t shoot!”
“Well, what can I do?” he asked as the catfish stuck me with a spine, and I gritted my teeth against the pain, jerking away so hard that the spine stayed in my tummy, made vulnerable by the sweater unraveling that had occurred earlier. Spot shook with the effort not to eat me, practically vibrating like a tuning fork. I appreciated the not eating me very much.
“Get the exorcism materials and place them equidistant around the room in a circle!”
Zric jerked the balls and his head at Officer Bob and both spirits let me go to attack Bob. Bob did the smart thing, given the circumstances, and ran away. The fox was swift, but the fish wasn’t made for running of any kind, much less a full-on sprint from a man whose pants…were on fire?
“Bob! What the fuck?” I leapt to my feet, or, I tried to leap to my feet. My kneecaps were damaged, so I inched my way to my feet and chased after them, propelling myself along by holding onto display tables and walls for balance. My tomahawk was on the floor, and with alarming cracks, creaks, and an ear-splitting snap, I managed to bend and retrieve it. I owed myself a lot of pushups for swearing, but I’d have to wait until I could move again.
“Zric did some pointy thing with his gecko hands and now, I’m on fire! Ahhhh!” Officer Bob unbuckled his pants while on the run, dropped them to the floor, and pulled his feet through the legs, which only sort of worked. He got his left foot out, the shoe stayed behind, but his right shoe was stuck in the other pant leg, so he was running in circles, bleeding from one hand, blind in one eye, dragging flaming slacks behind him, which unfortunately smoked a painting and an exotic fan into ash. The fox loped behind him, unhurried, and the kappa flopped along in slow pursuit while I hobbled after them.
Zric shot flame out of his hand again, and a display curtain whooshed to light, burning bright for a moment before drifting to the floor like a blackened tissue. Bob eventually got his pants off and kept running a path through the Asian exhibits, to Gem and Minerals, past the Mount Vesuvius model, and back into the Asian collection. He was throwing something over his shoulder, which Zric tried to dodge.
“What are you throwing?” I yelled while collecting the exorcism materials.
“Rocks!”
“What kind of rocks?”
“I don’t know! I scooped them up from a broken case.”
I didn’t have time to think about it. I didn’t. Really. The Church was going to hate me for this one. In sheer destruction, this must be up there in the top five costliest missions. I estimated top five because I heard one happened at the Louvre, and another happened right outside the Vatican. Ballsy. Those had to cost more.
Every mission racked up dollars like a big-stakes poker game in Vegas. Given my track record, they’d probably taken out insurance just to rebuild everything I wrecked.
Chapter Eleven
My first official monster hunt was to rid a bank of an infestation, and I went without Liam. Father Paul declined to tell me the nature of the infestation, only saying that I would get the details when I spoke to the bank manager. I can’t say which bank, but let’s say it owns the tallest building in Ohio. ‘Nuff said.
The bank was closed when I arrived, since it was close to dinner time, but the manager paced at the door, waiting for me. I didn’t know someone could wear a path in granite.
“Mr. Tyndall?”
“Call me Rand. Thank you for helping with this unusual problem.” He led me to a chair posed randomly in the middle of the lobby, a lovely atrium with fresh flowers and ferns, and sat once I had taken my chair. We stayed in the lobby, not going back to an office or moving away from the front door more than a couple of feet. Rand wore a black suit with a pencil-thin black tie and a blue dress shirt. He might have been good-looking with the curly mop of hair and the green eyes, but it was hard to envision it with all the sweat, fear-stink, and rhythmic rocking.
“What is going on?” I asked. “You can tell me.”
“We have ROUSs.”
“Pardon?” I thought I had heard wrong.
“Rodents of Unusual Size. We have a nest below the bank.”
“They don’t exist.”
He huffed and ran his hands through his hair. “I assure you, they do exist.”
“The Princess Bride kind?”
He nodded. “Exactly like.”
“How many are in the nest?”
“I have no idea. The average Norway rat mother can have up to twenty or so young.”
“That’s a lot of rats.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” He stood, brushed off his spotless pants, and ran for the door. He managed a “Good luck!” and then he was gone.
Not knowing what I was in for, I’d brought equipment, but not rat poison. Maybe I could ask the rats to leave? Explain that living under the bank wasn’t good for business? Dragging my equipment along, I went off in search of rat tunnels.
Turned out they were easy to find because there were holes in the floors and walls large enough for a St. Bernard. I pulled a flashlight out of my bag of tricks and crawled through one in the wall near the CEO’s office.
“Helllllooooooo? I’m here to speak to the head rat? The king? The queen? The grand poohbah?”
Nothing. I continued and knew I was being watched by the creepy-crawlie feeling on my skin. I was still on all fours, awkwardly dragging my bag with one hand, holding the flashlight in my other. Until the floor disappeared.
I fell over the ledge before my light illuminated the drop. I tumbled head over heels, and gravity proved to be true to its word.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I yelled, dropping my flashlight and my bag, until all three things, meaning the light, the bag, and me, hit the floor at the same time. Again, science.
I landed on something much softer than I had expected, and braced as I was for hard impact and broken bones, I was happily surprised. I wasn’t quite as happy when the soft spot moved and snarled at me, snapping long yellow carving teeth, with chewing molars on the bottom. The red eyes freaked me out, but I couldn’t but admire the whiskers. They were several feet long. Incredible.
“Hey. Sorry about falling on you…” The rat wasn’t having it. The room, for surely it was a room since I could stand in it, was under the building and in the foundations, rocky ground mixed with concrete struts and metal poles. Detritus of every flavor decorated the ground, and describing the smell was impossible. Rats are typically clean animals, at least compared to mice, but this nest smelled like a men’s locker room after a championship game, complete with the celebratory spray of beer. Urine, feces, decaying food, and for an unknown reason, one men’s dress shoe, lay littered on the floor. This was the nest itself. The other entrances were tunnels that led to the nest from different angles. Now that I was at the bottom, I could see the connecting tunnels above.
My landing rat was about knee high and two feet long, with brownish fur that made it hard to see him, or her, if it stood still.
“Your camouflage is amazing. How do you do that? If I could take some of your fur with me, maybe I could figure it out.”
The rat bared its teeth again.
“I won’t hurt you, don’t worry. Oh, but you do need to move out. The bank doesn’t want you here. It’s time for a withdrawal. Get it? Withdrawal? Not funny?” Another rat showed up and growled at me like the first one. I had the same problem focusing on this second rat as I did with the first. If you weren’t looking for them and they were still, they were practically invisible.
“Honestly, I’m here to talk, and maybe take a sample of your fur. Would you mind?”
A fat rat growled behind me.
“Okay, I guess not. Anyone capable of speech here? I know that is a weird thing to say, but I’d like to talk this one out if you are of a magical variety.”
Silence. I tried again. “Anyone? Anyone at all? Bueller? Bueller?”
> I had hoped we could have a conversation, and having gotten to know the more mysterious, magical realm, it was possible that the ROUSs were from Faerie, but no, these seemed to be plain rats. Large, unusually so, but rats nonetheless. A sharp bark from the other side of the nest brought two more rats to the circle surrounding me.
A rat slinked out from behind the men’s shoe, and it sauntered over to join the party. I was surrounded by six ROUSs and there were no fire pits in sight. I reached into my bag, grabbing my long lighter, and flicked it to life. The flame was enough to push the rats away, and their circle widened, giving me some breathing room. I knew fire would work and briefly considered setting the gunk on the floor on fire, but rejected that plan when I realized I might be killed, too. Any plan that involved my death was not a good plan.
I had to find a way out, but the tunnels were far away, higher than my head. I realized that this didn’t make sense. There had to be lower entrances somewhere. If I were a rat, where would that be?
I dashed at the rat on my right with the lighter, waving it in its face so that it backed off, but while my attention was on that rat, another one attacked me from behind, snagging its yellow, cragged teeth into my waistband, pulling me back. That was interesting. It didn’t bite me; it stopped me. Maybe there was something to these rats after all.
I slipped a little more to the right, and the rats followed, but this time they crowded behind me, herding me away from…
…the shoe! I held up my hands in surrender and listened with everything I had. Only then did I hear the mewling noises coming from the shoe. There were rat pups in the shoe. These rats were protecting their babies. Well, there was no way I was going to kill them at that point. I couldn’t blame any species for protecting its young, but I did need to remove them.
An even blacker spot in the already gloomy nest attracted my attention, and I inched toward it. The rats seemed okay with this, hissing and growling, but they opened a path. Sure enough, this was an entrance to a tunnel. I grabbed my bag, put away my lighter, and flicked on the flashlight. I crawled in and went back to the surface. A single rat followed me, and when I stopped for a moment, it nipped my feet, not piercing my shoe but using enough pressure that I got the message.
It took a good five minutes of crawling to exit the tunnels into the bank proper. I sat on the floor, considering my options. I needed to get the rats to leave, but there was no way I was going to systematically kill them. I thought hard about where they could relocate. Public Square was a nice area, with a large green space and lots of interesting and respectable businesses. They even had…
…the casino.
I’m not making a blanket statement about gambling. Lots of people love it and can enjoy an evening out playing cards or betting on roulette, or what have you. They have the right to do that, and I appreciate the money they bring to the downtown area. It’s that I’ve seen a lot of bad come from gambling, including gambling addiction, drinking to excess, and losing a lot of money—like, a life saving’s worth. I’d seen marriages fall apart, kids separated from their parents, and jobs lost. A great deal of damage.
Since the building was so large, there would be plenty of space beneath for the rats. They’d never have to come to the surface. I propped a door open at the bank, ambled on over to the casino, and hunted around for openings. Oh! Lookee, there. A sewer that led directly to and from the casino. Bingo.
But, how to get them out?
I could flood them out. Rats were terrific swimmers, and if I pulled a fire alarm and got the big trucks to the building, I most certainly could get enough water pressure to force them to leave.
Another thought creeped into my head. No. Was it possible? I fished out my phone, opened it, sought a streaming program, and hunted around for what I needed. I pressed play, slipped in the door I’d left open, and headed to the tunnels.
I crawled back into the same tunnel I exited and held the phone up for the rats to hear. When I got no response, I crawled forward another dozen or so feet and turned the volume to maximum.
They approached, rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, swaying in time to the music, the pups hanging from the adults’ mouths like kittens. The flute music was a jaunty tune, not frantic, but rhythmic, and like the Pied Piper, I led them forward, through the open door and to the sewer entrance. I threw the phone in the sewer, and they followed it, dancing their little feet into a new home.
When I told Father Paul what I’d done, he expressed some dismay.
“You led the rats to another home next door to the bank?”
“Not exactly next door, but in the same general area, yes. Look, the casino has lots of places for the rats to hide and you only promised we’d get them out of the bank, not that we’d kill them.”
Father Paul rubbed his eyes. “What are we going to do when the casino wants them removed?”
“Honestly, Father Paul, I don’t give a rat’s ass, and I need a new phone.”
Chapter Twelve
The Pied Piper experience taught me to think outside the box, and my training made me stronger. I was hunting monsters left and right, but never saw or heard about Pascal again. Didn’t mean he left my memory, though. I’d have my day, and so would Liam.
One evening, Liam and I went hunting for a vampire who’d killed a family in Danville, Ohio, population, one thousand and twenty-four. He’d continue to move and killed a trucker and his wife in Brewster, Ohio, population, about two thousand. The vampire was hunting in small towns, making one kill and moving on to another. We’d tracked him to Cambridge, Ohio, a beautiful, historic town in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, and the birth place of John Glenn, the senator and astronaut. I’d been there once before with my family when we’d taken a long weekend at Salt Fork State Park.
Legend had it that this vampire was none other than George R. Tingle, a former resident of Cambridge from 1175-1830, known for building the town’s first tavern, which also operated as the county courthouse prior to 1813. People at that time had the right priorities and settled conflicts over a beer, so why build two separate buildings when you were going to the bar after the courthouse anyway?
“Why do you think old George came back to Cambridge?” Liam asked me, as we sat on the low roof of an antique shop on Main Street, watching for our target.
“I don’t know, but I think we should call him Vampire Tingle. It has a whole other ring to it, don’t you think?”
“You are such a pinhead.”
“Granted, but come on, that’s funny.”
“Nothing funny about a vampire,” Liam retorted, but he was smiling.
“Is that him?” I pointed to a shadow on Wheeling Avenue, near a gift shoppe, with an “e.” The olde English way.
“I think so, and if it is, he most likely knows we are here. We’re downwind,” Liam whispered.
“Which doofus put us downwind?”
“You did.”
“Yeah, I figured. Hey, is there another vampire with him?”
“Let’s go find out,” said Liam, and he jumped off the roof to the sidewalk below, while I had to run down the fire escape. I didn’t bother with the noise this caused; as Liam noted, we’d been made already.
I joined Liam and thought the direct approach might be the best one.
“Hey, boys? Vampire Tingle?” I gulped down a laugh and wound up snorting. Classy.
“Ma’am,” replied one of the vamps. “Yes, I’m George Tingle, and I think I sense another vampire next to you. Reveal yourself! Are you here for the assembly?”
Assembly?
Liam gave me a “what the hell do I say?” face. I rolled my hand to indicate he should continue improvising.
“Yes, I’m here for the assembly.” Liam announced this with all the seriousness in the world, like, where else would he be?
“Ah! Righteous brother, welcome. From whom do you descend, and why isn’t your forbear here? Have we suffered another death amongst the Founders?”
“I’m a descenda
nt of John Chapman,” Liam said, using the only name we could recall from the old Founder’s cemetery. “He who lost his three-year old daughter to the Indians and had to ride to get her back.”
“I am sorry to hear of John’s passing. How did such an old and powerful vampire die?”
“An unfortunate Cherries Jubilee incident.”
“What?” said Vampire Tingle.
“He caught fire during the flambé part of the presentation,” I responded, voice flat.
“How remarkable. Allow me to introduce the late, and still undead, Reverend Rowcliffe. It is well meet to see you again, old friend,” Tingle said to Rowcliffe.
Rowcliffe turned a suspicious eye to Liam. “Why do you travel with a human? Is she your pet? I do not see that she is colored.”
I almost dropped him right then, but I was curious about the assembly and how many vampires from Cambridge might be here, so I had to wait. Reverend Rowcliffe, however, had put himself at the top of my “stake with extreme prejudice” list.
Tingle continued.
“Let us proceed to the assembly. Onward! We shall see our compatriots again. Stranger, you have not given your name.”
“Liam.”
“Well met, Liam! You must come from the Black Irish side of the clan, eh? Come. You can bring your pet along. Good to travel with self-packed food. I’ve been dining on the road, myself.”
I grabbed Liam’s sleeve to keep from jumping forward with my hatchet.
The assembly was at the Performing Arts Center across the street. We slipped in and were hailed by six other vampires.
Rowcliffe and Tingle shook hands with the other vampires, who were either original Founders of Cambridge, or children made by Founders.
Tingle kissed the hand of a female vampire, introducing Liam to her. “Liam, son of John Chapman, since removed from our presence by a freak cooking accident, please meet the Lady Marietta.”
Liam kissed her hand as well. Lady Marietta may have been hundreds of years old, but she’d kept up with the times, wearing stiletto black leather boots and a dress I’d seen on the cover of a ladies’ magazine with a fabulous black leather jacket. Her dark eyes were sharp and her nose was a curved beak, making her not traditionally beautiful, but dangerously attractive, like fire to a moth. She scared me more than all the other doofus vampires in the room.
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