Christy nodded, although her expression seemed troubled. “I was afraid of that. It’s possible she cast a glamour but one with a secondary mind magic element to it.”
“And you’ve lost me.”
She tented her fingers and closed her eyes again. Guess she was tired. I know I sure as hell was. “Again, this is mere speculation on my part. As far as I’m aware, nothing like what you’re describing actually exists.” I opened my mouth, but she wasn’t finished yet. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. What I mean is that simply seeing the moon shouldn’t be enough. Such a profound physical metamorphosis would likely require a lot more than mere visual stimuli. It’s like Sally said. Otherwise, you’d have people turning into monsters merely by watching the wrong TV show.”
“So, you’re saying she hypnotized these fuckers?” Tom asked.
“In a sense. Theoretically speaking, there would likely be a lot of factors at play for something like this to work. No, I’m not talking to you, honey.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
She held up a hand and continued. “What I’m trying to say is, there’s likely other factors at play – the tides, slight changes in gravitational pull, or maybe alterations in brain chemistry. If I had to make an educated guess, this spell didn’t simply make the moon appear. It caused those affected by it to actually believe – mentally and physically – that it was real.”
“So ... hypnotized,” Tom repeated.
“More or less.”
I turned to Sally. “And you’re certain you weren’t shitting me about this stuff?”
“Not with all the fiber in the world. But seriously, Bill, I asked the same questions back when I was first dragged into the fold ... perhaps not as pathetically, but I still asked. And not just to Jeff, because it was obvious from the start that dumbass didn’t know much about anything that couldn’t be snorted. Besides, you were there when shit went south, both in Canada and down in Calibra’s lair. We both saw a lot of weird crap, stuff I’d love to pretend didn’t exist, but at no point did I see any dog men running around barking at the moon.”
She had a point there. Although, speaking of dogs, I turned next to our resident blob. “How about you, Glen? You’ve been around a while. Any of this ring a bell?”
He’d thankfully shed his dog disguise at some point and was now merely a gross pile of eyeball snot. Definitely an improvement. His body quivered in response, his version of a shrug. “Nothing of the sort comes to mind, Freewill. Although, I once witnessed a pair of sea otters devouring one of the Forest Folk after it wandered too close to their...”
“That’s fascinating. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime,” I interrupted, trying to keep us on point. “What about the Jahabich? Could they have survived and somehow evolved ... again?”
It seemed a valid assumption to me, but even Tom was able to shoot that one down.
“Okay, but what were they doing in Buttfuck PA?”
“That ... is a good question.”
“A good question for a stupid theory,” Sally said. “Don’t forget, the Jahabich only took on the forms of the creatures they killed. So, for this to work, either they’d have had to kill a werewolf themselves or...”
“Or they killed a dog and a person together at the same time and somehow it all got frigged up in the mix.” That seemed a stretch, even for us. “Which brings us back to square one, having no fucking idea where these things came from. Or how they’re connected to vampires.”
“Wait,” Christy replied, popping her eyes open again. “What do you mean connected to vampires?”
“Something one of them said to me. Some jackass named Hobart. I mean, seriously, who names their kid that?”
“The point, Bill?” Sally prompted.
“Oh, yeah. Anyway, he told me that his people were free now and then he babbled on about top covens and being lorded over.”
“Top covens? You mean the First Coven?”
“Hard to say. The guy was a bit of an idiot. But yeah, I guess.”
Sally narrowed her strange eyes at me and took a deep breath. “And you didn’t think to lead with this tidbit?”
“Sorry, but I figured the part about almost getting my arms chewed off by imaginary monsters was headline enough.”
“That changes things,” Christy said, looking none too pleased. “If they knew about the First Coven, then it stands to reason the First Coven knew about them, too. But in what capacity?”
“Maybe not.” Sally picked up her glass from the coffee table and took a sip from it. “I’m not going to pretend James told me everything. But never once did he ever even hint at something like this. Not even in that smooth ‘I’m obviously hiding something’ way he had about him.”
It was quite smooth, my subconscious suddenly offered. I hadn’t guessed Dr. Death to be a fan of anything, much less James, but whatever. “Maybe they were, I dunno, a secret weapon.”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Christy said, although she sounded doubtful.
Sally, however, seemed even less convinced. “If that were the case, then why didn’t we see them in the final days of the war, when the Feet attacked Boston? Or when Alex’s troops stormed the Source chamber. You can’t tell me a platoon of werewolves wouldn’t have been useful down there.”
Christy nodded. “Sally’s right. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe they kept them as pets,” Tom offered, as unhelpful as always. “Can you imagine that – some redneck on a leash taking a dump on Alex’s rug? That would’ve been awesome.”
I couldn’t really disagree. However, during my brief time in the vampire headquarters, I hadn’t seen any sign of giant doggie beds or oversized piddle pads. I mean, shit, they’d introduced me to a fucking death god, so why bother hiding a bunch of hicks who put the doggy in doggy style?
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Christy replied, sliding over and putting a hand on my arm. “But we’ll figure it out. We always do.”
Tom, never one to let an opportunity for cock-blocking slip, immediately moved to her other side, putting an arm around her. “We’ll figure it out and kick their asses. Together.”
“Yes, together,” she confirmed with a smile, which quickly dropped off as she got back to the topic at hand. “But it still bothers me. I mean, I can understand them keeping it from you, Bill, and you too, Sally. You were part of the system and a good deal of that system involved secrets. But the Magi have existed side by side with the vampires since the beginning, and not always in harmony. What I’m saying is that each side kept tabs on the other. I can’t see the vampire nation having a hidden army without us having gotten even a slight hint of it.”
I opened my mouth to agree, but then a thought hit me. Hell, it was the same thought which had been bothering us all – except for Tom maybe – for a couple of days now: old things. “Wait, you said from the beginning. And we know that’s true since Calibra was both the White Mother and the first vampire. But is it maybe safe to assume that those early days were kind of chaotic? I mean, we have email now. But back then, someone probably had to send a messenger pterodactyl and hope it didn’t get eaten on the way.”
She inclined her head and gave it a half nod. “I suppose that’s not an entirely incorrect assumption.”
“Well, what if this is another thing like those proto-leprechauns? Something old that’s only coming back now because all the rules have gone out the window.”
“Possible...” Christy opined.
“If so, then books and scrolls wouldn’t bother mentioning them because there’s been nothing to make mention of, until now.”
“Yeah,” Sally replied, “but did any of those naked mouth breathers out there strike you as being thousands of years old?”
And there was my theory hitting a brick wall. “That’s ... a really good point. Remember some of the older vamps we used to deal with? You could tell right away they didn’t really belong – talking like
they’d just stepped out of a fucking time machine. But these guys, I wouldn’t have batted an eye if their dicks hadn’t been swinging in the wind.”
“Superman had kryptonite,” Tom replied. “Bill has cock.”
I absentmindedly flipped him the finger, while Christy shook her head before once more closing her eyelids.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Stop changing the subject. The problem is, regardless of whether these things are brand new or so old that even Magi history makes no mention of them, we’re stuck at square one. We have no way of researching what they are or how to fight them.”
“Assuming there’s even reason to,” Tom offered.
“How so?”
“Well, we’re in the city and their asses are back in the woods. Do we have any reason to think they’ll try following us here?”
“Ed,” I reminded him. “They were looking for him for whatever reason, and knew Pop was his dad. Now they know our faces, too.”
“Fuck! I forgot about that.”
“I’m not exactly expecting to go home and find these guys humping the neighbors’ legs down in the foyer, but I’m not so trusting these days that I don’t want to be ready for it.”
Christy nodded, before opening her eyes to look at us all. A thin sheen of sweat had appeared on her forehead at some point. What the? “I hate to ask him for more than we already have, but we’re going to need to bring Matthias into the loop on this. If these creatures were known to the First Coven, maybe there’s mention of them in their archives...”
“Which are now that crazy hosebeast bitch’s archives,” Sally said.
“True, but the Falcon Archives go back just as far. While Matthias is looking for clues about the entity Gan conjured, maybe he can also check to see...”
As this exchange went on, I kept looking expectantly at Christy, waiting for her to drop the bombshell I’d sent her but, infuriatingly enough, it didn’t seem to be forthcoming. Guess it was up to me to get this party started.
“Okay, hold on. We don’t need Matthiasshole’s help for any of this, not anymore.”
“I know you don’t trust him, Bill, but I really do think he’s the only shot we have at...”
“No, he’s not.” Then, after a moment, when it became blindingly obvious she had no idea what I was talking about, I added, “Seriously? Did you not check your email today?”
“What are you talking about?” Sally replied.
“My secret project, of course,” I said with a smile.
“You mean that wasn’t just some stupid scheme to get free porn for life?”
Tom immediately perked up. “Wait, free porn for life? And was nobody going to tell me?”
“There’s no porn,” I replied before turning back toward Christy. “You didn’t check your email, did you?”
“I checked it a few hours ago. Why?”
“Okay, and did you get what I sent you?”
“You’re sending my woman porn?”
I shot Tom a glare. “No! There’s no porn, free or otherwise. Well, there is, but that’s not the point here.”
Christy looked confused for a moment, but finally recognition dawned on her face. “Wait. You mean that message from earlier?”
“Yes!”
“The one with the random numbers and instructions that made no sense? I thought that was maybe a ... butt dial.”
“You can’t butt dial email.” Okay, this was going nowhere fast. I needed to remember I’d sent technical instructions to someone not in the IT field. It was like asking my mother to check her DNS settings. “All right, let’s back up a bit here. Do you have your phone on you?” She nodded. “Can I see it?”
Christy pulled it out of her purse and handed it over – a mid-spec Android model a couple of years old. I doubted it would be long before she was forced to upgrade, considering how our lifestyles had gone from normal to batshit, but for now it would do just fine.
I opened up her email, found my message, then got to work, all while – yep, you guessed it – she leaned back and shut her eyes again. Christ, it was like she’d developed narcolepsy in the few hours I’d been gone.
Okay, enough of that. I could ask if she was getting enough sleep once this was over. Hell, maybe we could even settle down for a nap together. For now, though...
“Those weren’t random numbers,” I explained as I typed. “It was an IP address. And those instructions were for an anonymous VPN I occasionally use when I ... um, don’t want to be tracked by ... my enemies.”
“Hey,” Tom replied, “is that the same one we use to download hentai ISOs?”
“No, it is not. In fact, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Was it getting warm in here, or was it me? Doing my best to ignore the eyeballs now turned my way, I continued to work.
“Is this one of those games you told me you used to build?” Glen asked hopefully.
“No such luck.”
“Too bad.”
He wasn’t wrong, I considered as I set things up on Christy’s phone. Some days I missed my old gig at HopSkotchGames.com. Making games had been a hell of a lot more interesting than debugging databases, even if I was now my own boss.
There was also the fact that I was a vampire again, meaning the chances of me working for another company and it not going tits up due to supernatural assassins or extradimensional incursions were...
My thoughts trailed off as my stomach grumbled, making me more than aware that at least a few of the people around me were edible. Hell, one of them was even menstruating, the scent so intoxicating that...
OH GOD! NO FUCKING WAY! I pushed that thought away, desperately wishing that brain bleach was a real thing. Gah!
“I ... I don’t suppose one of you wants to run downstairs and maybe see if our resident coven has any blood to spare.”
“It shall be my pleasure, Freewill,” Glen replied, oozing back into his nightmare dog suit.
Yeah, that was probably not going to go over well. “Um, anyone else want to go with him?”
“I’ll go,” Tom said. “Standing here watching you dick around with a phone is about as exciting as it sounds.”
“Thanks.”
He and Glen stepped out, their footsteps echoing in my ears as they walked away.
“Sending a zombie mutt and the Icon to talk to a bunch of already skittish vamps?” Sally remarked. “I’m almost tempted to see how that works out.”
“Maybe you can go all Dark Phoenix on them while you’re at it, because that can only make things better.”
“I’m going to pretend that actually meant something.”
“Whatever floats your boat because...” I hit the last sequence of keys then checked to make sure it all loaded correctly. “I’m finished. Woo!” I leaned over to Christy and held out the phone for her. “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey.”
“I wasn’t asleep.” She opened her eyes, took the phone, and looked down at the screen, raising an eyebrow.
“Pretty freaking awesome, isn’t it?”
Rather than offer up the gushing accolades I was waiting for, she simply looked confused. “It’s a ... web page?”
“Not just any web page. Do a search for werewolves or maybe leprechauns and see what comes up.”
“Why?”
I guess I was going to have to explain it to her. Ah, true genius is never appreciated. “The Falcon Archives.”
“What about them?”
“You’re looking at it.”
“What?!”
“Hold on a second,” Sally said, a trace of admiration in her voice. “You actually hacked the wizard Pentagon?”
“Hack is really too strong of a word. The protection on it is almost non-existent. No biometrics or two factor authentication, and the way they installed the SSL cert is a joke. Hell, they didn’t even change the name of the admin account. I figured there’d be something more there ... maybe a magical firewall or two. But nope. All I had to do was run a few brute force password cra
ckers and I was in like Flynn.”
Sally actually smiled. “Look at you being all black hat and shit.”
I grinned back, almost feeling like a supervillain monologuing his diabolical plan. “I got the idea the first time we met Falcon. He was busy sounding self-important, explaining how there weren’t a lot of techs in the Magi world. Well, he’s probably right. But he failed to take into account there’s at least one competent IT guy on the vampire side.”
“B-but, how did you even find this?” Christy asked. “There’s millions of web pages out there and...”
“That bit of brilliance required no technical skill whatsoever, just a bit of social engineering.” Seeing her blank look, I explained. “Remember when I got all up in his personal space when he was examining Sally? Well, I wasn’t merely trying to be annoying. I mean, I kinda was, but I was also scoping out the web address. The rest was all about getting in and making sure it couldn’t be traced back to us ... although, considering the security on display, I’m pretty confident about that one.”
“Not bad, Bill,” Sally replied. “Maybe you should hire yourself out.”
I chuckled. “Bill Ryder: dragging ancient knowledge into the twenty-first century. Gotta admit, that’d make for a hell of a business card. Right, Christy?” I turned to find her staring at her screen, probably too engrossed with all the secrets she was learning to notice what I’d said. “Christy?”
She finally met my gaze, the expression on her face somewhat less than the adoring admiration I was hoping for. “This is wrong.”
“What? Did I typo the password? Pretty sure it let me in just a moment ago...”
“No. What you did is wrong. You broke into the deepest secrets of Magi society.”
‘I know. Isn’t it Cool?”
Red power flashed behind her eyes, instantly erasing all traces of glib on my tongue. “No. It is not cool. It’s a violation of trust of the highest order.” Then she added, “It’s okay, I’m not mad at you.”
“Oh. That’s good...”
“Yes, I am mad at you, Bill.”
Huh?
Sally looked between us for a moment, then got up. “Think I’m gonna go top off my drink ... and maybe make some popcorn while I’m at it.”
Bill of the Dead (Book 2): Everyday Horrors Page 28