by Jamie Davis
Dean suspected that it might have more to do with wrangling an angel, who had what amounted to a divine case of ADHD, than pure micromanagement. He tried to get her back on track with what he wanted to know. What was she doing to find her sister?
“All I know is that she is somewhere in or around the Elk City region. That could mean anything within a few hour’s drive,” Ingrid said, grabbing a handful of sweet potato fries and dumping them on the paper plate she pulled over to her lap. She continued eating as she talked. “I also know that you are going to have to pretty much find her on your own. I’ve already done too much to meddle in what I’ve been told is none of my business.”
“Is it Artur?” Dean asked. “Are there more members of The Cause that we didn’t find when we broke up the group a few months ago?” Artur was an ancient vampire who tried to organize a hostile take-over of the rule of Elk City from the vampire James Lee. He attempted it by starting a terrorist organization of humans focused on getting rid of the Unusuals in their community. Dean and Ashley had helped shut down the conspiracy, and he thought they had rid the city of the problem. Artur fled the area as soon as his plans fell apart. Dean knew Ingrid and Ashley had a history with the meddling vampire. He also knew Ingrid still sought revenge against him.
“No, it’s not him,” Ingrid said with a snarl. “As much as I’d like to pin this on the little ferret, Artur is hiding out somewhere in East Asia and has nothing to do with this as far as I can tell. This is some sort of struggle between the powers that be. The divine and nefarious Gods are arguing about something, and Ashley got stuck in the middle. Frankly, it is just like her to get her nose into something with which she has no business getting involved. She was always the crusader for lost causes. Maybe that’s why she was so attracted to you, Dean.”
“Well, I don’t know about that…” Dean started to object.
“Don’t take it personally, lover boy,” Ingrid continued, shoving another sweet potato fry into her mouth. “You’re not the first stray pup she took under her wing. All things considered, you are one of the better ones and you might actually be useful since you are the one who is going to have to track her down and free her all on your own.”
“What do you mean, ‘on my own’? Aren’t you going to help your sister escape from whoever has her?” Dean asked.
“Like I said. I’ve been told that it is not my job,” Ingrid repeated. “I was not asked to stop. I was not requested to stop. I was told, in no uncertain terms, ‘stay out of it’.” She finished the last of her fries and got up to check the refrigerator. “What? No beer?” She grabbed a Mountain Dew, opened it and took a long swig from the bottle. “Look, Dean, I did some checking when no one was looking, and whatever Ashley is mixed up with falls into the realm of humans. That means some human or humans need to work to solve it. She found out that someone on the side of evil was making a direct assault on the area. That’s a violation the rules the Gods set up a long time ago. Still, the forces of good are going to play by the rules and rely on humans and other free-willed creatures here to solve the problem on earth. So that means it is up to you to figure out.”
“Me?” Dean asked. “But I don’t even know where to begin. How am I supposed to find Ashley if I don’t know where to start looking?”
“Calm down. I was able to dig up a few items that might be of help to you.” She glanced at the watch on her wrist and walked over to one of the windows overlooking the parking lot. She glanced outside and turned back to Dean. “I don’t have a lot of time, so listen carefully to what I tell you. You can’t find her on your own. You will need the help of two others.” She rolled her eyes again. “This is so typical of how my bosses operate, by the way. They love to operate in threes. It has something to do with being a prime number or something. Anyway, back on track. You need three things to work in tandem to find Ashley and free her. You need a magical human, an anti-magical human, and a mundane to find her. You’re obviously the mundane. I mean, look at you. You are the perfect average guy, just the kind of person the Gods use in all the stories.”
Dean wasn’t sure he liked the way she blew him off as average. He was, after all, the one who helped defeat the recent takeover attempt in Elk City. He was an accomplished paramedic, and had become something of a hero to his Unusual community of patients. He didn’t think he was average or mundane at all.
Ingrid interpreted the look on his face correctly. “Don’t take my words personally, Dean. Heroes don’t look like some action guy in a film. They are ordinary men and women who choose to do extraordinary things. Don’t forget that. What makes a hero is that they are mundane until they are called to act.”
“So, if I’m the mundane in this equation,” Dean asked, “How do I determine who I’m supposed to choose to fill the other roles? I mean, knowing I have to find the right person among both magical and anti-magical beings doesn’t give me much to go with here.”
“Hey, it would not be a quest if there weren’t some work involved,” Ingrid said with a shrug. She started towards the parking lot door. Grabbing the knob and pulling the door open, she turned and looked at Dean. “I may be able to come and help you, but only once. If you need me - really need me, you have the power to invoke me by saying ‘Ingrid, I need you.’ Don’t use it frivolously. I’m counting on you to free my sister. If you don’t, I’ll be very cross with you.” The Valkyrie turned and walked out the door, letting it slam shut behind her.
Dean just stood where he had been rooted to the floor the whole time she had been in the squad room. Ashley had once called her sister a force of nature. It was a good description of her. He looked at his partner. Barry had been eating a plate of food and watching the whole exchange as if he were watching a movie. He had a slight grin on his face when he caught Dean looking his way.
“Dean, you Station U paramedics certainly have interesting lives,” Barry said with a laugh. “Where do I sign up for the supernatural girlfriend? I’m between ladies at the moment.”
“I’m beginning to think they’re more trouble than they’re worth sometimes, Barry,” Dean replied absently. His mind was distracted by the cryptic instructions from Ashley’s sister. He had to find two others, two individuals who seemed to be polar opposites at first glance. He didn’t even know where to begin. He told Barry as much.
“I have read a lot of the stories in our library since I got started with things here at Station U. Heck, I’ve read of stories like this my whole life. Maybe you’re making it too hard,” Barry suggested. “In all the stories, the party of heroes just sort of find each other. That is what makes it all so much fun.”
“Well, Barry, this isn’t a story. This is my real life and the life of my girlfriend.” Dean sat down and started eating some food while he thought about Ashley.
4
Dean had the next two days off after his string of twelve-hour night shifts. He used that time for some in-depth research into what the instructions Ingrid forwarded to him could mean. He was supposed to assemble a team for a quest to get Ashley back, and that team was supposed to have three specific parts. Despite that information, as well as doing some targeted Google searches and reading, Dean felt no closer to getting Ashley’s rescue underway.
He spent much of the two days in the Elk City Library’s main branch, looking at every mythological and legendary reference on quests and searches for missing characters in the stories. He re-read and skimmed stories like the section from the Lord of the Rings trilogy where Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas hunted for the lost hobbits. Dean spent time searching online resources for tales of classic trios of heroes, all to try to narrow down what type of people he was looking for.
At the end of the two-day intensive search, Dean was only sure of one thing. In most quests, the heroes ended up together almost by chance. They ended up in a location to do one thing and soon found themselves tied together by a common bond that none of them really understood. He supposed it made for a good story, but from the viewpoint of living inside
the unfolding tale, it just sucked. It was midnight on the last of his two days off when he finally threw up his hands and gave up. He hated to say it, but he had nothing to go on to lead him to Ashley. He was stumped.
The realization brought him to near tears when it hit him. Part of that was the exhaustion and the lack of sleep that hounded him. The other side of it was his intense connection to Ashley, and from his experiences alongside her during the previous months since he started at Station U. Ashley and Brynne, his former paramedic mentor and partner, had been important parts of his life over those stressful months. Now Brynne was a vampire and could no longer work as a paramedic. Ashley was kidnapped and held for some reason he didn’t understand, and he was left alone to pick up the pieces. It was almost too much for him to bear. In light of that, he decided he might have to give up on all of them because he wasn’t sure he was up to the task laid before him by Ingrid and the divine forces she and Ashley served.
Sleep eventually rescued him from his thoughts. It was the kind of sleep that took you when you had pushed yourself too long and too hard beyond your physical and mental limits. It was the kind of sleep Dean knew he needed and he surrendered to it, not caring about anything else anymore.
He was awakened by the usual alarm for day shift on his smart phone. It was four-thirty in the morning. Time to get up, get some breakfast and get ready for his first day shift back in the rotation. He swiped to open his phone and saw that he had an urgent text message from work. Checking the message, and then looking at his emails for more detail, he saw that fire headquarters was pulling in all the paramedics by shift to undergo some sort of self-defense training.
An additional text message from Chief Ari, the fire department’s deputy chief for emergency medical services, gave more detail on why the sudden need for this training. It was more informative than the department-wide email. Ari informed him that it was a response to the recent demon attack that he and Barry had responded to. There had been similar, but unconfirmed, demon attacks around the city. It was thought that a special set of scene awareness and defense trainings might help the EMS and Fire crews avoid dangerous situations until the culprit or culprits were found and stopped. The Station U crews would benefit from it especially.
He and Barry were to meet with all the city’s C-shift paramedic crews for training at the academy that morning from eight-thirty until twelve noon. Then they would all head to work at their stations.
Dean looked at the email again and found some information on the outside contracting organization involved with the training. They were a security firm Dean had heard of, but only barely. Errington Security Outfitters were supposedly a high-end security and bodyguard service used by visiting celebrities and other important visitors to the region. They had offices in all the major cities up and down the east coast, but were based here in Elk City, according to their write up in the email. The training for the paramedics would be led by some guy called Jaswinder Errington. He possessed several black belts as well as certifications in martial arts and self-defense techniques.
Dean tried to approach all of their ongoing education classes with an open mind. He had to get over forty-eight hours of training every two years to maintain his Maryland paramedic license. Dean always looked forward to those unusual or different classes over the typical medical ones for which they all had to take refreshers. This self-defense and scene safety class might be one that would come in handy in his specific paramedic practice with the Unusual community. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
He jumped in the shower and planned the rest of his morning. Since he didn’t have to be at the station at six as usual and the class did not start until eight-thirty, Dean figured he had time to stop in and visit someone he had not had a lot of time to hang with in the last month or so. Plus this friend might have some ideas about where to find his quest partners. After he dried off and changed into his uniform, Dean pulled out his phone and dialed a number, waiting while it rang through to the other side.
“Well, hello Dean,” the smooth southern drawl on the other end of the line said. “Long time, no talk. What can I do for you?”
“Hi, Celeste,” Dean answered. “I wondered how Brynne was doing and if she was up to having visitors this morning?” Celeste was a vampire, and personal assistant to James Lee, the vampire lord of Elk City. James was the boyfriend of his ex-partner Brynne Garvey, the ex-partner he had decided would live on as a vampire after a fatal gunshot wound. She was still acclimating to the turning and was not always up to meeting with humans in the flesh. Their human heartbeats and freshly pulsing blood could be distracting to her, and that could be problematic for the object of her distraction.
“She has been doing much better, and I think with James and I present to watch over her, she would love to see you,” Celeste replied. “When were you thinking of dropping by?”
“I have a training class downtown this morning at eight-thirty, and I thought I might come by there around seven to visit before class.”
“That will be perfect,” Celeste said. “I’ll tell Brynne and James you are stopping by. They will be so excited you are coming over. See you later.”
For a while, Dean and Ashley had lived in James’ building downtown in an effort to protect him from attacks from The Cause. It had been fun living there like a stay at a posh hotel, but there was no place like home. Dean had moved back to his apartment in the suburbs, where he lived above a detached garage owned by a nice elderly couple. His landlords, Mr. And Mrs. Baxter, were very nice and he caught a break on his rent by doing odd chores around the house and yard for them. It was a good arrangement and he was glad to be back home.
Dean left his place, made sure he locked up, and headed down the exterior stairs to the driveway and the residential street where he had parked his white Ford pickup truck. It was still dark out, although the light of the coming dawn was starting to brighten the eastern sky. Dean unlocked the door and climbed in, starting the truck and heading towards the expressway that would take him downtown. He didn’t see the red glowing eyes perched above the roof of his apartment, watching him leave. The eyes blinked twice, then the creature that owned them folded in on itself and disappeared in a red mist.
5
Dean still had a keycard pass for the Nightwing building downtown, from when he lived in the building. He pulled up to the underground garage and slid the card in the reader, driving forward as the gate to the ramp rose. Driving down under the building, he parked in one of the open slots near the elevators and rode upstairs, again using the keycard to access the penthouse level. He walked up to the double doors in the entry hall and rang the doorbell there.
Celeste opened the door. Her smile was framed by shoulder length red hair. The vampire and self-described southern belle had been working for James Lee since sometime around the civil war. She wouldn’t say how the two of them met but Dean was sure it was an interesting story. While she was his employee, she was also something of a comic foil, confidant, and companion to the vampire lord of Elk City.
“Dean,” she said extending her hand in greeting. “It is so good to see you. We miss you since you moved back to the boring ‘burbs.”
“I like boring, Celeste,” Dean replied taking her hand and shaking it. “I am starting to realize that excitement is overrated. And I miss you guys, too. Is Brynne doing alright?”
“She’s still in transition,” the vampire responded, her voice quieter. Dean knew that Brynne could overhear if they talked in normal tones and was nearby in the penthouse. “It took me almost a year to reach the point where James could trust me around potential meals unattended. Just be patient. She’ll be her normal self again soon.”
“I know, I’m just second-guessing myself and the choice I made on her behalf, that’s all,” Dean said.
“She is her normal self when it is just us vampires around. I think she misses all her human friends, but understands the reasons why she can’t see everyone whenever she wants.” Celeste turned an
d led him into the spacious penthouse. It had an open floor plan off the entry foyer. There were large plate glass windows around the perimeter that were carefully tinted to block most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays during the daytime. As he looked around, the blackout shutters were closed as the sun was already coming up. Brynne was too sensitive to sunlight to tolerate even a little bit of filtered UV light. It was another change her new existence had forced upon her.
Dean followed the red-haired assistant into the large open living room. All the furniture and carpets were white. Seated across the room were Brynne and James, together on the leather love seat. Celeste gestured for Dean to sit in a spot on the end of the sofa opposite them and she seated herself next to him. Dean was used to the precautions from his other visits to his old partner. With James and Celeste to intervene, Brynne could not get to Dean and feed without them stopping her.
Brynne was paler than she used to be, but otherwise looked the same. She was dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans and a vintage black Led Zeppelin concert t-shirt. Dean knew it was probably not a reproduction but one from a time when James had attended the concerts back in the 1970’s. Her red-tinged eyes met his when he sat down.
“Hello, Dean,” Brynne said. “I’m glad you came up to see me again so soon. I’m sorry for the need for the constant chaperones.”
“Not me, Boss,” Dean said with a chuckle. “You’d eat me without them. Right?”
She sighed and smiled a bit. “Yes, that is true. Sorry, but you do look delicious.” She licked her lips, exposing the elongated canines in her mouth. James laid his hand on hers from where he sat next to her. He was in his characteristic all black outfit, this time black jeans and a black long-sleeve button-down shirt to match his dark eyes and hair.