by Alex Gates
“Wait,” Xander said, rolling his shoulders and straightening his posture, “you went in search of an Empousa? How did you plan on finding one without magic?”
“Really? After lecturing me to get off my ass and do something, you’re now—” I shook my head, raising my good hand to my face, grumbling with annoyance. “Just… listen. In my search to find an Empousa, I was super angry with you, and I was near a wall, so I punched the shit out of it, breaking my hand in the process.” I paused to chuckle.
Xander wore a blank expression and dry-washed his hands.
“Good times,” I said, raising my attention to the ceiling, as if reminiscing. “You should have seen how it looked, though—the wall, that is. Not even a slight crack in its exterior. Took that punch like a damn champion. But I digress.” I slapped my good hand on my thigh. “So, my hand was hurting. My head was throbbing. My back was aching—due to my so-called best friend stabbing me there, and twisting the blade around for good measure. It hurt like a bitch.”
Xander smiled upside down. That silly goose.
“I decided I would take a little snooze in the park,” I continued. “Found myself leaning against an unoccupied tree trunk, and I dozed off into a nightmare, per the usual. Woke up with a massive NRB, if you’re sniffing the same rose as me. That’s when an Automaton appeared and attacked me.”
“Like from yesterday morning?”
“Yes, but a female this time,” I said. “It punted me like a football, sent me flying into the street. Not the best first date I’ve ever been on—but also not the worst. Anyway, thing was about ready to kill me when I decided to consciously use…” I paused to build the dramatic tension in the room.
Xander sat on the edge of his seat and shoved popcorn in his face-hole with anticipation for the climax. How did the hero defeat the bad guy this time?
“…shadow magic. I don’t know how I accessed or used it, but every shadow around me turned malleable. I formed a spike and drove it through that damn Automaton’s stupid head. Then, before I knew better, I stepped through a shadow that dropped me right here.” When I finished my recap, I bounced my right foot on the ground, using my left hand to fidget with the Glock parts while I waited for Xander’s response. My power high had ebbed a little, allowing the incessant tormenting from my injuries to creep back.
His lips murmured unheard words, and his eyes scanned the computer screen. Had he returned to his work after all that? Maybe he was actively trying to die.
“Dude,” I said. “I’m mad at you, remember? It’s not the other way around. You just lectured me about how you can only hear if you know how to listen and blah, blah, blah. And you follow that up by ignoring me?”
“I heard your story,” he grumbled. “Did you control the power?”
I began piecing Henrietta back together—though it proved pretty difficult with one hand. “I don’t know. Adrenaline always makes magic more accessible. When the body hits survival mode, it grasps for anything that will keep it alive. Every time I’ve used the shadow magic, it’s been life-or-death.”
“Try to access it now,” Xander said, eyes still glued to the computer screen.
“What the hell are you reading that’s so important you can’t focus on me?” I set Henrietta and her parts in the duffle bag and stood—grimacing as my ribs tightened where the Automaton had kicked me—and carefully skirted around his desk, hovering over his chair to glean whatever he found so important.
“MIS has a team of world-class hackers,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “We use them to breach different case files from different agencies around the world—Interpol, FBI, CIA, local departments. The hackers sift through their files and records for any information relevant to our investigations. Once we have it, we cross-reference dates, locations, suspects, motives, MOs to our database, which houses most of the world’s information on the supernatural. If anything matches, we investigate.”
“Uh… hackers? That’s highly illegal, Jesus Boy. Way to uphold the Ten Commandments. I’m no bible-thumper, but I’m pretty sure one of those rules says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ I’m also pretty sure, though not certain, that hacking into government databases is stealing.” I gripped his shoulder with my left hand and shook it. “That is pretty badass, if I’m being honest. You just gained a couple of points in my book.”
“Before accessing the supernatural database, I scanned the local reports for any information that matched and possibly confirmed what Gladas had provided us.”
“I thought you abandoned Gladas? Now you’re back on him? Is it because he’s so good-looking? Is that why you’re so obsessed with him and can’t stop thinking about him, and why you’re ignoring my stories? Listen, he might have a better jawline and bigger, more defined muscles and a more in-style haircut and wardrobe—”
“Your wardrobe is my wardrobe.”
“That’s not even true. Dakota—never mind. Point is, don’t interrupt me. Gladas might be better than me in every way, but can he love you like only I can love you? What did Tay Tay say? ‘I promise that nobody’s gonna love you like me.’”
After I released the long high note at the end of the lyric, Xander—while cleaning out his ear, I might add—said, “Are you even capable of love?”
“I loved your mom pretty hard and pretty long last night.”
Xander nodded, as if expecting my response. “Here’s what I figured out last night. The American River splits into a few tributaries. As a whole, it encompasses over 250. Over the past decade, exactly 341 individuals have disappeared near the river. Of those missing, only seventy-seven bodies have been rediscovered. Two hundred and sixty-four of those people are still mysteriously gone. Do you know what that means?”
I probably should’ve cared more about his statistics, but numbers and Joseph Labrador went together like fairy dust and rabbit turds—that is to say, not at all. “I wonder…” I said, lingering for a second with the quiet that followed. I had to bait him in, make him think I’d listened to his rambling mathematics. “If there’s another Automaton around to kill me. I think I would much rather die than hear you do any more math.”
Xander crossed his arms. “Two hundred and sixty-four divided by ten years is twenty-six per year—which is a fraction over two people per month. Double-checking the dates, it almost matches exactly. Two disappearances every single month for ten years. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern.”
“Dakota said that a Scylla feeds every two weeks.”
“Bingo! I crossed-referenced that exact thought into the local channels.”
I wiped my mouth, feeling the adrenaline of working an investigation take over me. I missed the whirlwind of the chase. For a brief moment, and I’m ashamed to say this, I forgot about Melanie and Hecate. I found myself wrapped up in the hunt.
“I searched for any eyewitness accounts. Do you know how many people stepped forward with a story that matched Gladas’s? Two.”
“You have to give me a chance to answer your questions. I was going to say six, for the record.”
“Gladas was one, and eleven years ago, an eighteen-year-old girl. She went to Placerville Police Department and El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department. She told the same story to both departments. Right there.” He pointed at a bunch of small words on the screen that I refused to read. He knew it, not even allowing me time to pretend to scan the report. “She told them she saw a woman who, instead of legs, had twelve tentacles.”
“HA. You said testicles.”
“Tentacles.” His lips tightened and he glanced at me. “What do you make of that?”
“She’s loonier than a toon,” I said. “Cuckoo for the cocoa loco. Twelve tentacles? So, she saw a meroctopus?” Mermaid and octopus hybrid. I made it up on the spot and felt pretty proud about it.
“Octopi have eight legs, but that’s beside the point,” Xander pressed. “Both departments took her information and said they would look into it, and then they dismissed her. You think they ever looked
into it?”
“Why are you asking me rhetorical questions?”
“They never did.” Only jackasses answered their own rhetorical questions. “They laughed it off and buried the incident under their priority list. Well, I found it. Using the supernatural database, I cross-referenced her description with Gladas’s.”
He didn’t say anything for a second, so I asked, “And what did you find?”
Xander stood and stretched, grinning like a batty comic book villain. “A Scylla. Are you ready?”
I threw my arms in the air. “Ready for what? To eat? If so, than yes. I’m ready to eat. It has to be at least an hour past lunchtime, and you didn’t allow me enough time this morning to eat a proper breakfast.”
“We can grab food afterward,” Xander said, fighting his shit-eating grin. He knew something and wasn’t sharing the goodies.
“Grab food after what?”
“We’re paying a visit to Annabel Nevis.”
I looked out the window and sighed. “Who’s that?”
“You pay attention to anything? She was the eighteen-year-old witness from eleven years ago claiming that a monster killed her brother in the American River. Unlike the PPD and EDSO, I don’t intend to laugh away her claims.”
I bit my lip and took a second to consider what Xander had said. “I’m going to rip off your ball sack and force it down that paper shredder. You’ve been super weird since I teleported in here—like you barely even acknowledged that I teleported through my own willful action. You’re being super vague about information… and the last time you got like this was my surprise birthday party. So, what the fuck aren’t you telling me?”
“You’re ruining the surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises. Unless a stripper pops out of a cake. You didn’t get me a cake stripper, did you?”
“Dakota mentioned three leads,” Xander said, unable to suppress his grin any longer. He looked like a damn clown with a painted-on smile. “Gladas, who I won’t pursue. I used the information discovered when researching him to locate Annabel Nevis, a young girl who saw a Scylla. That’s a lead, Joey. We’re not dead in the water. At least not yet.”
I turned away from Xander and hobbled toward the office door, ripping it open. My palms were damp and my stomach clenched with anticipation. He had found another lead outside of Gladas. I couldn’t allow Xander to see my excitement, though, and take credit for it.
I glanced back at him and said, “I know you hate my lists, but I don’t give a shit. A) I’m starting to remember why we went five years without talking. B) You better buy me the biggest burrito I’ve ever seen and let me eat it in your car. Wait!” I held up a hand, cutting off his response. “C) I get to have hot sauce.”
9
I stuffed the business end of my burrito—the amazing thing about those little donkeys is that both ends are business ends—into my mouth, smacking loudly to annoy Xander. He turned the radio up to drown out my eating, but I pressed the knob, turning it off. The burrito, being from a taco truck parked in a gas station, wasn’t settling too well in my stomach. I don’t think the strange guilt building within me helped my raging bowels, and I didn’t like it one bit.
Before I realized what was happening, I said, “It’s—” I shut myself up before I could venture any further into the dark territory I wandered through, instead shoving a finger in my mouth and licking the sauce from it. The spice melted the apology right off my tongue. Thank Allah.
I wiped sauce from my chin and stared out the windshield, watching the car devour yellow lines. We headed east, toward El Dorado County, to pay a visit to Annabel Nevis’s last known address from ten years ago. Promising, right?
I finished my lunch a few minutes later. Xander hadn’t turned the radio back on, and I didn’t have any distractions from my thoughts. They’d rolled into a giant snowball of anger and frustration and guilt and grief, and the massive ball had flattened me into an emotional surrender. Before I could stop myself with a burrito or a spicy finger, I said, “I need to tell you something.”
“What’s that?” Xander asked, turning his attention toward me.
“Keep your eyes on the road!” I reached to grab the handle on the ceiling and tensed in dramatic fashion, sparking a wave of agony throughout my torso.
We’d stopped by a pharmacy before my burrito, and Xander had purchased a splint and bandaging. He wrapped up my right hand before checking my bruised torso and ribs, applying fresh bandages and stuffing a handful of pills down my throat. The pain in my hand had vanished with the artificial healing, but when I gripped the grab handle, it returned in flaming glory.
He removed his focus from me and returned it to his driving obligations, probably sensing that I preferred for him to look away while I spoke. “What do you need to tell me?”
Scratching my neck with my left hand, I said, “You’re an asshole for dragging me out here with you.” He remained stoic. My gut tightened and ached, and this strange feeling of remorse clouded my thoughts. I rubbed my eyes and sighed. “But… I’m sorry.”
”What?” he asked, his hands at ten and two, eyes shifting between the road, the side mirrors, and the rearview—unflinching in the fact that I’d just apologized for the first time in my life.
In a much louder voice than a breathy, rapid whisper, I said, “I’m—” I rolled my eyes back, trying desperately to think of a word that rhymed with sorry. Unfortunately, there was nothing that popped into my poetically-dead mind. Do any English words rhyme with sorry? I would have to ask Eminem. He once strung together some nonsense that rhymed with orange—like the lyrical genius that he is. “Sorry.” There, I said it. And I regretted it. It was the worst thing I had ever done… up that point in my life.
And, like the biggest and dirtiest asshole in existence, he had the nerve to ask, “Sorry for what?”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Don’t be a douche-basket.”
Xander smirked. “I’m serious. I don’t think you’ve ever been in the wrong—not for anything. What would you—Joey the Labradoodle—possibly have to apologize for?”
“It’s Labrador,” I mumbled. “Labradoodles aren’t even real dogs. They’re just fluffy teddy bears that are great at snuggling and looking cute and making all your worries disappear.”
“Wait,” Xander said, finding the gumption to take one hand from the steering wheel and raise a point-making finger. “You’re going to apologize for being too good-looking, aren’t you? Or is it for being too funny or witty? Or is it that you’re too good of a friend and make me look like such a bad guy?”
“Har, har. But it’s none of that. Though I should probably apologize for all of that, too.” I loosened the seat belt off of my roiling stomach. That burrito had shot straight through my plumbing, and I needed to use the a bathroom more than two girls on a double date. “It’s just… maybe over the past few days I haven’t been the most… you know.” I scratched my scalp, releasing a snowstorm of dandruff, probably from the high-end shampoo they used after my recent haircut. The finer things in life suck. “I failed at saving… and she is—was—mine and Callie’s… and, well, I don’t know—”
“Hey,” Xander said, peeling his eyes from the road and glancing at me. “I think I’d rather listen to your terrible jokes than hear you stutter your way through an apology. Just know that’s it’s heard, understood, and accepted.”
I sucked my lips into my mouth and nodded my appreciation. “I would kiss you right now, but I don’t want to distract you from your driving responsibilities and cause a crash. I feel like you’re more of an eyes-closed kind of kisser. Would you settle for some road head?”
“I’m sorry, too,” Xander said, though not as eloquently as I had.
“Damn right you are. And I won’t ignore the apology road head from you. In fact, I demand it.”
“You’ve always been a brother to me,” Xander continued, “since the university. And Callie… her and I were close long before you and her got together. I lov
e… loved her like a sister. So, when you two had Melanie, that baby girl was family to me, man.” A tear escaped his steely resolve and slipped down his cheek. “I know you think you failed Callie. But so did I. And I failed Mel, too. You know I would do anything to help you kill Hecate.” He stalled.
I didn’t really have a response, so I practiced my patience, and waited for him to speak. You could venture to say that I’m growing up.
“I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life,” Xander said. “We’re hunting a Scylla, which means we’re positioning ourselves to fight Circe. Even if she did demote herself from a Nephil to a Demi in order to be with Gladas, she still has a lot of Nephil power. And then there’s Hecate, a possible rogue Nephil—not adhering to the Nephilim Council. There’s something sinister happening. I feel it in my soul, and like I told you earlier, Gabriel only calls on me when the dark encumbers the light and I must help create balance in the world.”
“So, you’re like a Jedi?” I asked. I had to break the tension—Xander was starting to scare the shit out of me with his little speech.
“Whatever Hecate is a part of,” he said, “whatever she needed Mel for, there’s extreme darkness and evil behind it.” Again, I wondered if he intentionally avoided what Medea had mentioned a couple nights ago—that my potentially demonic blood had been used to open the gates of Sheol and release the demon lords into this world. “And it’s my job to stop that. No matter what.” Xander glanced at me. “You understand that, Joey?”