“That’s a controlled enchantment, by the way,” warned Mogil.
“My gun is registered, along with what it can do,” sighed James. “I pay the license use for every restricted enchantment I have. Besides, it saved your butt, didn’t it?”
“Noted,” said Mogil.
“Somebody, call this in,” said James. “We’ve got to tell Castellan we aced a big bad…That still doesn’t explain the whole ‘Doppelgänger’ thing. We need a little more time to figure this out.”
“On it,” grunted Mogil.
The tall and lanky fed pulled a small silver flip phone from his right pants pocket. He flipped open the device, but stared in visible confusion at it for a few seconds.
“I have no signal,” he said in no small amount of audible surprise.
Jimmy and Megan pulled out their flip phones and opened them, but their responses were the same as Mogil’s had been.
“No signal on mine,” said Megan matter-of-factly.
“Mine either,” stated Jimmy.
“Great,” said James. “Well, we’d better figure out what’s going on here, because my V.I. isn’t working, and now you’re telling me we have no reception. This can’t be a coincidence.”
“What are you thinking?” asked Mogil. “Do you have a theory?”
“Not yet,” said James unhappily, “but I’m working on one.”
If there was any theory to be had, that was sidetracked by the sudden appearance of Malik Simms. The boy walked out of a southern alley and came trekking toward them, but he was fully clothed and fully armed.
“Yo, Malik’s alive!” said Jimmy with a wide grin. “And you were saying he was dead, James!”
James felt his skin crawl as Malik made a beeline toward them. Something was off here, and James could feel it right down to his bones. He had not imagined the naked specter of Malik he had seen before, nor was he imagining the absolute feeling of dread sinking into him right now.
“That’s not Malik,” said James in a hushed voice.
“What was that?” asked Jimmy.
The young merc named Malik Simms raised his Jacobs-Brill 650 light submachine gun, the gun he was currently strap-carrying across his right shoulder.
“That’s not Malik!” yelled James.
His feet were already moving as he ran for cover. It was automatic, that reflex, and it had saved his life many times before.
Malik’s Jacobs-Brill 650 rattled off several rounds of semi-automatic fire.
James hit the button to bring up his own helmet. He hit another southern alley and ducked behind a wall, Agent Mogil right behind him. He heard the gunfire, he heard Jimmy cry out in terrible pain, and then he heard Megan scream.
James turned, quick loaded his Rune Maker, and looked out into the street.
He could see the staggering form of Jimmy Daw as the big musclehead went up in a blazing pyre. Megan had been standing next to him as the big man had been riddled with Ifrit’s Rage rounds, and the young woman’s right arm had gone up in flames, right along with Jimmy’s entire body.
It was a good thing ammunition in this world was enchanted to keep from exploding when hit with extreme damage, or there wouldn’t have been anything left of the pair at all. As it stood, the live ammunition being fired at James and Mogil was bad enough.
They both ducked back behind cover as bullets ricocheted off of the apartment building brick wall they were using as that cover.
“Open up on that motherfu—!” cried James as his own gunfire cut him short.
Malik ducked behind the huge asphalt mound that had been the gelatinous creature James had turned to stone. The huge mound in the middle of the street acted as an effective bullet shield, and this “Malik” knew this. James’ bullets ricocheted off of the dark mound, but at least he had this faker pinned down.
Mogil fired his weird prototype pistol. The strange weapon glowed with a strip of blue runes along each side of it, and it made a rather distinct “FOOMP! FOOMP! FOOMP!” sound as it fired.
“It hurts!” screamed Megan. “Oh, it hurts!”
James took a quick glance toward the young woman. She was lying on the street next to Jimmy’s blackened skeleton, but she was lacking her entire right arm all the way up to the armpit. Her Ailer 1450 was now a twisted chunk of scrap that decorated the black-burned asphalt of the normally grey street, nothing more than debris laid out next to Jimmy’s charred bones.
“We’ve gotta get her!” yelled James. “One of us has got to pin that S.O.B. down while the other drags her here!”
“And how are we going to do that!” asked Mogil.
They both ducked back as bullets ricocheted off of the alleyway wall they were using as cover.
“He’s got us pinned down!” barked Mogil.
“He’s using that damned thing as cover!” replied James. “All we’re doing is chipping away at it…Wait…Wait a minute! Are you using slugs? Are you using shotgun slugs!”
“Figured that out, did you!” grunted Mogil as he leaned from out of cover and fired off two more rounds.
“Do you have Gungnir rounds!” asked James.
“Those are restricted!” replied Mogil as he ducked backwards to avoid incoming fire.
“Do you have Gungnir rounds, dammit!” yelled James.
“Yes!” hissed Mogil.
“Then load ’em up, and let’s smoke him out!” cried James. “Gungnir’s Fury!”
He yelled out the activation word, and a rune on the side of his pistol lit up in a cold dark-grey.
Mogil swapped out the large clip in his futuristic pistol for another one, and James could see the dark-grey strip on that clip indicating Gungnir rounds.
“On three!” yelled James. “One, two…”
He never called out three. No, he simply opened fire right along with the tall agent next to him. James fired off four rounds that activated at the very moment they left the barrel. Instead of activating on impact, the four Gungnir rounds glowed a dark-grey as they penetrated straight through the dead creature-mound, blowing holes right through it with extreme armor-piercing vengeance.
Mogil fired off four rounds as well, his slugs burrowing through the black asphalt-like remnants of the blobby creature.
Malik came running out from behind the remains of the creature, heading north while firing away.
“Eyes of Artemis!” cried James as he dove to the street to a prone position.
A bright-silver rune lit up on the barrel of his gun. He fired off a single shot, and that single shot activated upon leaving the barrel, a glowing silver bullet that zipped off through the air and curved in an arc with deadly homing aim.
The enchanted bullet hit Malik right between the eyes, blowing a hole out of the back of his head while splattering brains and blood out in an arc behind him. His body fell to the street after that, dead before he hit the ground.
“And that, Agent Mogil, is why you wear a helmet,” said James.
He reached up and hit the button to retract his helm.
“Not all of us have that luxury,” frowned Mogil.
James waved him off. There was something more important to attend to.
“Come on, we’ve got to help Megan!” he said quickly as he holstered his Rune Maker.
They jogged out to the young woman lying in the street. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing, but for the moment, she was still alive.
The wound she had suffered was terrible; her right arm was completely gone, a cauterized stump right at her shoulder and armpit.
James quickly took off his jacket and reached for his wide pocket. He’d had a pocket sewn into the interior back of his brown leather jacket not that long ago, right after he’d cleared the Blood March, and that pocket had been spelled with the Deep enchantment so it could store many more items than it could normally hold, all without using space or weight in the real world.
In this pocket, he stored his artifact medkit, a kit filled with normally mundane first aid items such as bandages, antiseptic, and packets of aspirin. This kit had been propelled through the breach at the Blood March, so it was rift-charged and enchanted to Hell and gone with magical healing goodness, and normally this was awesome, but James just had one problem with it now…He couldn’t get to it.
His wide pocket was gone.
His wide pocket was gone, vanished, just missing entirely. There was only the stark brown leather of the back of his jacket in visible view.
“What the hell!” cried James. “My pocket’s gone! I can’t get to my medkit! My damn pocket’s gone!”
Mogil reached inside his business suit and felt around, but he pulled his empty hand forth a second later.
“My interior pocket where I have my quickheals is missing as well,” said the federal agent. “It’s not just you.”
Quickheals were vitamin-sized pills that held a powerful healing enchantment. They were heavily regulated, expensive, and just plain hard to get ahold of, so it was no surprise that Mogil had bottle of them. The Feds had access to all of the best stuff, but that was of little help now, because apparently, whatever was going on in this freaky little suburb, whoever was behind this, was determined to sabotage both James and his current federal companion in their attempts to save Megan.
James swore under his breath as he slipped his jacket back on.
Megan stared up at him, her brown eyes uncomprehending of the reality she was in.
“There you are, James,” said the young woman in a quiet voice. “Tell Jimmy I…I want shrimp tonight…”
Her head turned to the right to rest upon the hard street as she stared off into nothing.
“Damn!” cried James. “Megan!…Megan!”
He knelt down next to her just as she closed her eyes. She then let out one long gasp and breathed no more.
“Megan!” cried James again.
He pulled off his left brown glove, reached down, and felt for a pulse on her neck, but…there was no pulse. There was nothing.
“She’s gone, James,” said Mogil matter-of-factly.
“Yeah,” frowned James. “Come on, we’d better check Malik’s body for any…clues…”
His voice trailed off as he turned to look toward where Malik had dropped. The boy’s body was gone, and only a splatter pattern of blood and brains remained upon the street to indicate Malik had ever been there at all.
“That’s not good,” frowned Mogil.
“Son of a—” began James.
He was cut short as he heard a loud gasp beneath him. He turned to see Megan’s eyes flutter open and then shut again, but she was breathing now, breathing and not dead, and that was all that mattered.
“Megan!” cried James a fourth time. “She’s alive!”
Mogil knelt down next to him, reached down, and checked her for a pulse. He nodded his head once, and then turned to stare off toward the north.
“She’s not going to make it unless she has proper medical attention,” said the federal agent. “Maybe Castellan’s mother has something in the way of first aid at her residence.”
“It’s worth a shot,” said James. “We need to think this thing through anyway. That Doppelgänger we put down clearly didn’t stay dead, so we’ve got to brainstorm a way to put it down for good.”
“Affirmative,” nodded Mogil. “Let’s get Shmidt up and out of here. We need to get her to Castellan’s house post haste.”
“Copy that,” frowned James.
The tall and lanky agent that was John Mogil picked up Megan and carried her in his arms without seemingly any effort. The young woman couldn’t have weighed more than a 130 lbs. at the most anyway.
They made their way back to Castellan’s childhood home, but they spoke along the way, “brainstorming” as it were.
“Never run into a Doppelgänger before,” said James with a shake of his head. “This one’s proving to be a lot of trouble. I didn’t know they could straight up alter reality, but it is a Class Five, so I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“I don’t know if that Doppelgänger was the Class Five, or if that gelatinous orange goop was the Class Five,” huffed Mogil as he carried Megan. “They might have even been one and the same, but the barring us from our medical supplies indicates intelligence, a high intelligence at that, and that giant glob of snot didn’t inspire me with confidence when it comes to the brains department.”
“Whatever’s going on, Malik’s body isn’t where I left it,” noted James. “My V.I.’s not working, our phones aren’t working, and my wide pocket is gone. That tells me something is actively trying to stop us, and it’s definitely trying to kill us, but…there’s also that bag of cement mix.”
“What about it?” asked Mogil.
“That bag wasn’t there before you mentioned it,” said James. “I know it wasn’t…I think so anyway. I don’t remember spotting it before you said something. Plus, it was just a big white bag with the words ‘CEMENT MIX’ on it. No company name, no other markings or letterings…It’s a little weird that you would mention it, and then it would just appear, huh?”
“What are you saying?” asked Mogil.
James had a theory, and it had just come to him, but it was an ugly one.
He let Mogil walk a few steps before he drew his own Rune Maker. He pulled back the hammer and aimed at Mogil’s back, not bothering to give an activation command for any kind of rune.
Mogil stopped walking at the sound of the click of James’ pistol. He slowly turned and held Megan tightly to him.
“So that’s it, is it?” asked Mogil.
“Yep,” said James flatly.
“I should have known,” scowled the federal agent.
“Yeah, you should have,” frowned James. “Put Megan down. Put her down right there next to you.”
“Why?” asked Mogil in visible confusion. “You can just kill us both right now. Don’t tell me you actually want a fair showdown?…Is that it?”
“I don’t know what’s going on in that alien brain of yours,” said James slowly, “but you’d better lay her down right now.”
“You went off on your own,” frowned Mogil. “You went off on your own, and that’s when you killed the real James, isn’t it? That’s when you took his place, isn’t it?”
The sound of a record scratching to a halt echoed throughout James’ brain.
“Wait, what?” he asked.
He shook his head no, but he aimed for right between the agent’s eyes, that aim never wavering.
“What are you talking about?” asked James. “You went off on your own. You’re the one that killed the real Agent Mogil. You’re the one who took John’s place.”
“I was following Gin,” said Mogil in audible confusion. “She was naked and walking strange. She looked like she was in pain. I told you that already.”
“And I told you I saw Malik, and he was in the exact same boat,” said James.
“Wait…You think I’m the Doppelgänger?” asked Mogil. “I was in the fight with Malik. How could I be in two places at once?”
“There’s probably more than one,” said James. “Something screwy is going on, so the only conclusion I can draw is that you’re a Doppelgänger too, aren’t you?”
“No, you idiot,” scowled Mogil. “How did you come to that conclusion? Was this because of that bag of cement mix?”
“I may be a lot of things, but I’m not an idiot,” said James firmly. “A bag of cement mix just suddenly appears after you mention it? That’s a little odd, don’t you think? It’s like something out of a cartoon.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” said Mogil. “I simply turned my head, and there it was. And, by the way, you mentioned it first. You’re the one who said we needed a bag of cement mix, and there it was. Like I said, I had nothing to do with that.”
James thought about this. He had, in fact, brought up the bag of cement mix in the first place, but it was Mogil who had spotted it. Even if Mogil had spotted it, though, there was not enough evidence to actually accuse the agent of anything.
There was a conclusion to be drawn, so the conclusion James came to was based upon Mogil’s reaction to James drawing his gun in the first place…The agent was probably not the Doppelgänger.
James holstered his gun.
“I’m not a Doppelgänger,” he said firmly. “If I was a Doppelgänger, I’d have killed you both right now…My problem is that…My problem is…I don’t know if you’re a Doppelgänger or not. You see my conundrum, John?”
“Yeah, I see it,” scowled Mogil. “I’m not a Doppelgänger, James. That should be obvious. This nonsense is holding us up, by the way.”
“It’s not that obvious,” shrugged James.
“Yeah, it is,” grunted Mogil. “And you’re lucky I don’t write you up on charges for threatening a federal agent…And that medkit you said you had is an unregistered artifact. I know. It wasn’t on your list of gear. That’s a code 545 felony. That’s immediate confiscation of the artifact and a five-thousand credit fine at the minimum. I’m not even going to talk about prison time.”
James grinned and shook his head. It was clear to him now that the man standing in front of him was, in fact, the real Agent Mogil. Only the real Agent Mogil would be that uptight about James’ own gear.
“Okay,” said James quickly. “It’s clear to me you’re the real deal. Let’s get Megan to Castellan’s house.”
“Yeah,” frowned Mogil. “I don’t know how you came to that conclusion, but let’s get going. Enough of this nonsense.”
“Lead the way,” said James. “Still don’t understand that bag of cement mix, though.”
“Maybe a bag of cement mix is just a bag of cement mix,” huffed Mogil.
“Okay, Freud,” replied James. “Maybe it is, but somehow, I’ve got the feeling it isn’t.”
“Let’s just get to Castellan’s place,” said Mogil. “As light as she is, this woman’s still getting heavy.”
“Just hand her to me,” said James. “I’ll carry her the rest of the way there.”
“Affirmative,” said Mogil.
He handed over Megan, and the pair walked back to Castellan’s childhood home. James held Megan to him the entire way there, and she was breathing, but she wasn’t in good shape.
“Maybe Mrs. Castellan has some meds or something,” huffed James. “I seriously doubt she has any quickheals, but it’d be nice if she did.”
“You never know,” replied Mogil. “She has a survival bunker. I’d say she has to have something. Castellan wouldn’t leave her without meds. The elderly always have a cabinet full of them.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” said James.
Mogil shook his head, and then the tall and lanky agent rang the doorbell.
“Can’t believe you thought I was a Doppelgänger,” he muttered.
“I lost friends of mine,” said James unhappily. “I lost friends of mine, and somehow, you make it through without a scratch.”
“It’s because I’m not stupid,” said Mogil.
“Neither were they,” frowned James.
The federal agent turned and was about to say something, but the opening of the door cut him short. James Castellan’s mother, Agatha, appeared in the doorway, but she was visibly aghast at the sight of the grievously injured Megan Shmidt.
“We need help,” said James quickly. “Have you got any medication, quickheals, or anything like that?”
“Come in, come in,” ushered the old woman. “I think I have something that might help. I’ll just have to look for it.”
James carried in Megan as Mogil followed behind him.
“Lay her down on the couch there,” urged Mrs. Castellan. “I’ll see if I can find something.
The old woman wandered toward her kitchen and began rummaging around through some cabinets.
James ignored her for more pressing matters. He gingerly laid down Megan, and then he turned toward Mogil.
“Can you get any reception here on that phone of yours?” he asked.
Mogil pulled forth his small silver flip phone and quickly opened it.
“None,” he said grimly.
“Dammit,” said James unhappily. “This place is screwy. Phones aren’t working, my V.I.’s not giving me any warnings, and my wide pocket has vanished…Wait…Our guns work, though. My Rune Maker works just fine. I mean, I’ve got other artifacts. I wonder if they’re all working?”
“Clearly not,” said Mogil. “Otherwise, our pockets wouldn’t be M.I.A., our phones would be working, and your helmet V.I. would be up and running.”
“Wait…Wait, wait,” said James. “Those aren’t artifacts. Those are regular enchanted items. My Rune Maker is a genuine artifact…So is my sword. I mean, my medkit is an artifact, but I can’t get to it, so that’s different. Now my ammo pouch on my belt?…That’s an artifact. I’ve got thousands of rounds in it. I haven’t had trouble with it. It still has its Deep enchantment. I’ve been reloading from it this entire time.”
“You mean items that come from breaches?” asked Mogil.
“Yeah,” said James. “Rift-charged items…What about your ammo? How are you storing it?”
“I get it from my ammo case on my belt,” said Mogil. “It’s also a rift-charged arti…fact…”
“That’s what I thought,” said James. “Whatever’s going on can’t affect rift-charged artifacts…or my Rune Maker, but that beast is a different story.”
“What about my gun?” asked Mogil. “It’s not an artifact, and it still works.”
“I don’t know,” replied James. “Maybe what’s going on can’t affect certain things, like your gun, but I know now that it definitely can’t affect artifacts…Anyway, my point was…my point is…I think I can call for help. I’ll try my smartphone. Got it from a breach, and I’m not storing it in an enchanted pocket. I had a regular phone pocket sewn into my inner jacket just for it after I got it.”
“Another unregistered artifact,” frowned Mogil.
“Yeah, and one that’s going to save us,” said James.
He pulled out his smartphone and turned it on. The signal indicator was not strong, but it was still there, and that was definitely better than nothing.
“Bingo,” said James. “I’ve got bars, not much, but enough to send out a call.”
“Contact Castellan,” said Mogil.
“I’m on it,” said James.
Mogil brought up Castellan’s number on his flip phone, and James punched in those numbers on his own smartphone. The smartphone rang a few times before it was picked up, and James put the call on speaker.
“Hello?” came Castellan’s voice over the crackle of interference.
“Mr. Castellan?” asked James. “This is James.”
“Mr. James,” replied Castellan. “You haven’t reported in.”
“I know,” said James. “Something here is interfering with our gear.”
“What’s the status?” asked Castellan.
“The team’s damn near wiped out,” said James. “It’s just me, Agent Mogil, and Megan Shmidt, but Megan is critically injured. We need to get her out of here.”
“That’s dire news, Mr. James,” replied Castellan in an unhappy tone. “You know what that means, don’t you?…So, what happened? I need to know.”
“We destroyed some kind of blob-like creature that killed half the team,” said James. “I don’t think it was the big bad of this place, though. I think we killed a…a Doppelgänger, believe it or not, but there may be more than one. I think there is, because something is still interfering with our gear.”
“A Doppelgänger?” asked Castellan. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah,” said James. “The damn thing was replacing us. It used Carley Rummy to lead Sig Hogan and Marty Redfern into a trap, and it just straight up used Malik to gun down Jimmy Daw. That firefight is what almost killed Megan.”
“This isn’t good, Mr. James,” said Castellan. “I don’t think I should have to reiterate that. If there is more than one, you’d better find it, or you know what will happen…I’d rather not have a mini-rune-nuke dropped on my childhood home.”
“Speaking of childhood homes, we’re in yours right now,” snorted James. “We’re here with your mother, but she’s pretty stubborn. She won’t leave. She’s been living off of the shelter supplies you left her. She’s looking for meds at the moment to keep Megan alive before we can extract them both.”
There was a distinct pause, a rather long one. In fact, it took about twenty seconds for Castellan to reply.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully, Mr. James,” said Castellan.
“Okay,” replied James. “Shoot.”
“My mother…” said Castellan.
“Yeah?” asked James.
“Has been dead for twenty years,” finished Castellan.
“I…see,” said James.
He hung up. There was no point in continuing this conversation.
Both he and Agent Mogil slowly turned their heads to look toward the kitchen.
Agatha Castellan was standing there in the kitchen, watching them, but she had a huge grin on her face, one that spread from ear to ear, one filled with sharp and unforgiving ivory-white fangs.
“Waste her!” yelled James as he drew his Rune Maker.
The old woman transformed into something completely monstrous. Her clothes vanished as her skin washed over in a stark grey. The female creature before them now was fully nude but completely hairless. She had dark-grey nipples on her bare breasts and bald genitals, and her smooth bald head had a shiny metal plate bolted across where her eyes should have been. She had twisted, elongated fingers ending in sharp white claws, but more importantly, her grin was huge, splitting her head in twain, that maw filled with terrible fangs.
This female thing turned and jumped through the kitchen window in an instant, shattering the thick glass without a mind to her own safety, her wide and bare grey bottom the last thing James caught sight of before she disappeared.
James cursed under his breath.
“I should have known!” he blurted out. “Dammit! It was right in front of our faces, but we didn’t see it at all! I should have known Castellan wouldn’t leave his own damn mother in a breach arena!”
Mogil took that moment to put his flip phone away. He drew his pistol, popped out the clip, and put in another one. He tossed the old clip aside and shook his head.
“What rounds are you using?” asked James.
“Seraph’s Light,” replied Mogil.
“That’s why you’re using shotgun slugs, isn’t it?” asked James. “Greater Runes can only be enchanted on larger ammo, and my guess is the pistol itself rune-propels the bullets, like a magic railgun.”
“Smart guy, aren’t you?” frowned Mogil. “This weapon is classified. How would you know anything about magic railguns?”
“Because I’ve seen one before,” said James. “Point is, it must be heavily enchanted.”
“It is,” said James. “The interior of the barrel is made from rift-charged metal.”
“And that’s why it’s still working,” said James. “Our bullets work once they’re activated, but I imagine your gun is only working because it has some protection from that thing’s influence.”
“I suppose it does,” said Mogil. “Why are you asking?”
“Because you’re using Seraph’s Light rounds,” said James. “I already killed a Doppelgänger with an Eyes of Artemis round, and that enchantment is only used for homing in on a target, not anything else, so we already know a normal round will kill it, so why the holy rounds? Why waste them? We might need them later.”
Mogil gave him a hard look.
“Because it’s not a Doppelgänger,” grimaced the federal agent. “And to be fair, I don’t know if we can affect it at all.”
“What is it, then?” asked James.
“That…was a demon,” said Mogil.
“A demon?” asked James.
This was new. He’d never run into a demon before.
“That wasn’t just any demon,” frowned Mogil. “That was Ingolomern, the Soul Collector.”
“How in the hell would you know that?” asked James.
This was definitely a valid question. That kind of arcane information wasn’t something people just knew off the tops of their heads.
“I was in Bureau Artifacts Storage before I was a field agent,” replied Mogil. “One of my duties was to secure, log, and contain certain books. There’s a cursed book called Ars Daemonum. We’ve only ever secured and contained two copies of it. It’s a book on how to summon and make pacts with demons. I’ve seen that demon before, in that book. She has a few pages dedicated just to her.”
“Uh, huh,” replied James. “Interesting use of our tax dollars…So…how do we kill this thing?”
“You don’t kill a demon,” frowned Mogil. “It’s an evil spirit. You have to exorcise it. It has to be sent back to Hell.”
“Well, last time I checked, we don’t have an exorcist,” said James. “Maybe Seraph’s Light will work on it; I don’t know.”
“If we don’t stop her, the Bureau is going to nuke this area,” said Mogil. “It’s a demon, so…”
“So it won’t die,” said James in swift realization. “It’s been waiting for something like this…If the barrier goes down…”
“She’s free,” said Mogil. “The Merlin-Crowley line can contain powerful spirits, as it works like a huge pentagram in some respects. Ingolomern has been collecting the souls of those she’s killed and has been using them against us. She’s been using that giant ball of orange snot to kill off any mercs that come in here and has been capturing their souls.
“We destroyed her ‘pet,’ so now she has to do her own dirty work, but that doesn’t matter, because we’re running out of time. I don’t know if even a single exorcist could do anything against her. It would take a team of them. Only an actual angel is going to be able to send a demon that powerful back to Hell without help…We don’t have either, no team of exorcists, and certainly no angel.”
James’ neurons lit up all at once.
“Wait…” he replied. “Wait! I do have an angel on beck and call, but I’ve only got one shot…literally. I can’t miss, or we’re screwed.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mogil.
“I did a job south of Hollowstone,” explained James. “I helped out Death, himself, take down an Undying, so as a reward, I got an extra rune on my Rune Maker. Unfortunately, it only has one use…but it will kill anything, and I do mean anything…It should work on that thing. Even if it can’t kill her, it can send her back to Hell where she belongs.”
“Then we’ve got to find Ingolomern and take her down,” said Mogil. “We’re going to be slowed down, though. We can’t leave Shmidt here, or that thing will take her…Can’t believe I fell for the old woman trick…I should have known better.”
“Yeah,” frowned James. “We all fell for it.”
“I should have known no old lady was going to have a whole shelf full of books on gun maintenance and repair,” said Mogil.
“Wait, what?” asked James. “What did you say?”
“That bookshelf is loaded with books on gun maintenance and repair,” said Mogil. “I thought it was amusing…Didn’t you?”
“Wait, no,” said James as he shook his head.
Something wasn’t right here. In fact, nothing was adding up…unless…
“What do you mean, ‘no’?” asked Mogil.
James’ dark eyes widened as he put it all together, and boy, had this one been under the radar. In fact, this epiphany was probably the single-most important thing he knew of at the moment.
“Of course!” he said in uncontained excitement. “That’s what’s going on!”
“What’s going on?” asked Mogil.
“Demons are spirits, right?” asked James. “And things have been crazy ever since we stepped into this little cordoned-off area of the Razor’s Edge, right?”
“That’s right…” said Mogil warily.
“Well…how can she manifest in the real world?” asked James. “The short answer is…she can’t…At least, not in the traditional way we’d expect. No, the reason we can see her in her true form is because…because we’re not in the real world…and she’s been hiding that.”
“Oh, yeah?” asked Mogil with some indignation in his tone. “And how, exactly, would you know if we’re in some…some other world?”
“I have plenty of experience with being trapped in fake worlds, John,” replied James in a snarky tone. “Trust me, I know…but that’s beside the point. The point is, she made a mistake. The mistake she made was putting in the bookshelf, or rather in the books, themselves.”
“How so?” asked Mogil.
“Some people can’t read at all in dreams,” explained James. “I remember Jimmy trying to read one of the books. He said that…He said, ‘It must be some kind of code. It looks like gibberish to me.’ The words were all gobbledygook to him. They were probably just some random letters strung together…
“Now…Now some people can read in their dreams, but the sentences don’t make any sense. That was my problem. I could read the words, and the words made sense, but the sentences sure as hell didn’t.”
“What are you saying?” asked Mogil.
“Now hold up,” continued James. “Some people can read in their dreams, but what they read is based on their experiences, their likes and dislikes…”
“Like gun maintenance and repair…” said Mogil as visible comprehension dawned upon his face.
“We were hit the moment we entered this hazard zone,” said James. “My guess is we’re still lying in the street, still right at the entrance of this neighborhood, just waiting to die from thirst…”
“Because we’re actually asleep!” said Mogil angrily.
And with that proclamation, the world around them shattered. The house shattered away, breaking to pieces, breaking apart like painted shards of glass, only to reveal a hellish landscape of red earth, red boulders, and random spouts of flame erupting from small holes in the hell-born ground.
James turned to inspect Megan, but she was no longer on any couch. No, her unconscious form was draped across a flat red stone, a great boulder that stretched out like a divan.
The sky was dark with ash, yet there was a persistent orange glow to it, a luminescence that defied both reason and common sense.
“Now, we’re in it!” barked James.
“You most certainly are…” came a loud female voice from out of the ether.
“Show yourself!” called out James.
He called out into the ether, the ash-filled glow of this place, because that voice was everywhere and nowhere all at once.
“Why?” asked the voice. “So you can shoot me? So you can…kill me? You’re a fool, James. You have no power over me…I am older than you can possibly imagine…You can’t do anything to me…”
“Is that so!” asked James. “Why don’t you come on down, and we’ll test that theory right now!”
There was sharp and unforgiving laughter that echoed from everywhere.
“You have nothing, no way to defeat me,” came the voice. “Many have tried, and all have failed…Mortals never learn.”
“Oh, I’ve learned quite a bit!” replied James.
“Really, James?” came the female voice. “Explain. Amuse me.”
James turned to Mogil and shook his head.
“She’s the Soul Collector, right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Mogil..
“Here’s the thing, though,” said James. “She might be able to capture us for a while, but she can’t actually keep souls.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mogil.
“When she kills someone in her little dream world,” explained James, “she has power over them. They’re not actually dead, no; they’re trapped here until their body dies out in the waking world. That means the body will eventually die of thirst. Only Death can truly collect souls, but Death can’t collect their souls until their body actually dies, so…”
“They’re all still alive!” said Mogil. “The rest of the team is still alive!”
“Congratulations, James,” came the voice. “Such a revelation won’t help you, though. I’m going to kill you in here, and once I kill you here, I will torture you in ways you can’t possibly imagine. Being trapped here until Death comes will feel like an eternity…I promise it.”
This was pointless. This demon could simply stall them indefinitely until they passed away in the real world, but James wasn’t stupid. He needed to lure her out so he could finish her once and for all, and the only way to do that was to get her mad, get her good and enraged, and that meant attacking the one thing a being like this always has plenty of, the very core of a demon’s nature…and that was pride.
“You’ve been using our own people to attack us!” said Mogil.
“No, she hasn’t, John,” said James. “She can’t make them attack us…No, she’s torturing them. That’s why when we saw Malik and Gin, they were both naked and in pain…She was only using their likeness to trick us. Once her pet was destroyed, she had to take us on directly, like you said. She’s not as powerful as she wants us to believe.”
“I AM power, little man!” came a deep growl.
The ground shook as an earthquake rumbled around them. James stumbled a bit, but he held his ground, as did Mogil. The earth shook for a few seconds, but then it subsided, so James simply turned his attention back upon Mogil…They needed to keep this up.
“My guess is the other mercs that came in here died a while ago,” said James. “That’s why we haven’t run into any of their ‘Doppelgängers.’ She’d have to explain why they hadn’t made it out if we had run into ‘them.’ Using an imaginary Agatha Castellan wasn’t exactly clever, but that was our fault, because we never suspected her.”
“We should have, though,” frowned Mogil.
“Yeah, it was pretty obvious,” said James. “I simply didn’t think about it. It wasn’t well hidden; I was just distracted. A fourth grader could have come up with a better plan. You’d think she would have come up with a better story.”
“You want a better story!” came the terrible voice. “I’ll show you what happens to insignificant mortals!”
That horrific yet feminine voice shot forth a wicked laugh.
“Two big tough men who think they can survive anything,” said the voice in a sweet and condescending tone. “I know your inner thoughts, mortals. You seek to tempt me out…but you’re nothing but fools.”
“Am I a big tough man or a little man!” asked James. “Which is it!”
“You are a bug to be CRUSHED!” answered the demon. “You hide behind a leather soul, rawhide wrapped in human skin, but you have a martyr complex, James, both of you. James and John like to be the heroes, thinking they can resist the inevitable…so why don’t I torture your little friends in a more visible way? One more to your…liking…little mortals. Let’s see them tortured in ways you can both relate to…”
The red earth cracked and split as three mounds rose up from the crimson soil off to their right. Three huge crucifixes split the earth and rose up to stand tall in the orange-ashen light, but they were reversed, three huge wooden crucifixes standing upside down.
“This is how you see yourself from your world, isn’t it, James?” asked the voice. “The savior ready to die on a cross…Oh, but John does not know you are a breacher, yourself, does he? He doesn’t know your original world has died…”
“Is that true?” asked Mogil.
“Irrelevant,” said James. “That was a long time ago, back in my twenties…She’s right, of course, my old world is dead, but I live here now, and she’s just trying to divide us.”
“We are definitely going to have a long discussion after this is over,” frowned the federal agent.
“Yep, we’ll do that,” said James. “Let’s smoke her first, though. She’s starting to rub me the wrong way.”
“Affirmative,” said Mogil.
“And you…” came the unearthly voice. “John Mogil, the stoic and by-the-book federal agent. You’ve prepared yourself for your own martyrdom, much like James. Here’s something you can understand…”
Two mounds of red earth formed and split the vermillion soil off to their left. Two torture tables of stark chrome appeared and shone with a sinister gleam in the hazy-ashen glow of the orange sky.
“Such misplaced nobility, both of you,” came the female voice. “You think you fear nothing because you harbor a foolish belief you can withstand the worst in place of others, but you have no idea what real suffering is…what real pain can be…”
The three huge crucifixes off to their right swiveled around so that their victims were fully displayed. Hanging upside down upon them were the nude figures of Carley “Gin” Rummy, Jimmy Daw, and Martin “Pins” Redfern.
All three of them weren’t tied to their individual crosses, no. Their hands and feet were bolted to the wood, and they wore bloody crowns of thorns upon their heads. They were screaming, crying out, but no sounds could be heard from their collective lips. Their pain had to be terrible beyond words…
But they weren’t the only ones to suffer.
The two torture tables off to their left flipped, the tables revolving between the legs to turn the bottoms of the tables into the tops. This swiveling transformation of the tables revealed the naked figures of Sig “Hacksaw” Hogan and Malik Simms. The two men had electric arcs rippling across them as they jerked and spasmed, their faces twisted in horrific pain.
“Let’s see you nailed to your cross, James,” came the terrible feminine voice. “Let us see you on the interrogation table, John.”
“She’s torturing them!” hissed James. “But she’s right about the suffering. It takes three days for someone to die of dehydration, but she can stretch that three days in here, in this nightmare, to feel like forever…Oh, I am done with this Nightmare on Elmstreet, Smile crap. It’s time to put a few bullets in her big grey ass.”
James reached up to hit the button on his collar to activate his helmet, but nothing happened. His helmet did not appear. It did not form in bands as it normally would have from his collar.
“Helmet’s completely down,” said James matter-of-factly. “I’ve still got my weapons and ammo, though.”
“Affirmative,” said Mogil, but his tone was that of anger.
James turned to view the enraged look upon the man’s face. Something had finally snapped within the federal agent, and normally this wasn’t a good thing, to lose your cool, but in this case, in this specific scenario, a little rage was exactly what the doctor ordered…They were going to need it.
“Your weapons won’t save you,” came the ethereal voice. “I am eternal, and soon…soon you will join your compatriots. I can’t wait to nail you to your own cross, James. I can’t wait to torture you until you scream for mercy, John…”
She was stalling. This demon, this…this vile entity, was simply stalling, wasting time, because she could not take them directly, and James knew this now. All this “Ingolomern” had to do was wait them out, taunt them until their bodies died in the real world…
Even so, something wasn’t adding up.
“But wait…that doesn’t make sense,” frowned James.
“What doesn’t make sense?” asked John.
“She should have sent something after us, attacked us,” explained James. “This is a dream, right? It’s a nightmare, true, but it’s still a dream. She could send that giant ball of orange snot again, or a Doppelgänger of one of our team, or even something new, like a…a dragon, for example…but she’s not. She’s just waiting us out.”
“What are you saying?” asked John. “Are you saying she’s afraid of us?”
“I fear NOTHING!” came the voice again, only this time in a deeper, more monstrous rumble.
James ignored the demon’s tantrum. No, he was getting it now.
“Oh, yeah,” nodded James. “I see it now.”
It was all coming together now, but this time, the epiphany sparking all of James’ neurons was completely to their advantage.
“I think I get it,” said James.
“How so?” asked the federal agent.
“That bag of cement mix,” said James.
“That stupid bag of cement mix?” asked Mogil in an incredulous tone. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Yes, James, explain,” came the disembodied, feminine voice.
James ignored her. He was talking to Mogil anyway.
“It appeared when we needed it most,” said James. “Here’s the thing, though…If we’re in a dream, and this sucker’s been messing with us, there’s no way she put that bag there…She wants us ‘dead’ within the dream so she can torture us…No, she didn’t put the bag there…No…No, we did that.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mogil.
“Individually, we’d have a hard time fighting her influence, but together…” said James. “Together we can overcome her, because we believe we can. We destroyed that giant ball of snot because we believed we could. You and I both needed a bag of cement mix, and one appeared because we were both subconsciously looking for one.”
“I think I see where you’re going with this,” said Mogil.
“There is nothing you can do against me, fools!” came the demon’s voice. “You will die here, but I will have my fun before that inevitable consequence of your stupidity…”
James ignored her yet again. She was simply trying to confuse them.
“You see?” asked James. “It’s our will against hers, and you would think an immortal being who’s been around since the dawn of time would have a stronger will, right?…Right?…But if that were true, then demons wouldn’t have been cast out of paradise and thrown down the garbage disposal.
“Nah, they’re built on lies. The least of angels could absolutely hand her her big grey butt for dinner…The others in our party ‘died’ because they believed they’d been killed…They gave up on their own will to fight because they believed they had been defeated.”
“So what are you saying?” asked Mogil. “Do you have a plan?”
“Yeah,” grunted James. “What we need is a way to lure her out…”
“THEN YOU SHALL HAVE ME!” shouted Ingolomern.
The ground quaked and rumbled as multiple shapes erupted from the red earth around them. The unfathomably ancient demoness arose from the crimson dirt, but from everywhere, surrounding them, rushing them with both a surprising fury and an unequivocal rage.
“Raijin’s Thunder!” called out James.
A rune on his pistol glowed with a bright-yellow light. James fired a single round at one of the grey and savage demons leaping at him. His bullet blew a hole in her chest, right between her bare grey breasts, and the demoness disintegrated as hot golden lightning rippled across her disgusting, warped, naked body.
James fired three more rounds and ashed three more of them as he heard the signature “FOOMP! FOOMP! FOOMP!” of Mogil’s experimental rail gun.
They were everywhere. They padded forth on all fours, their huge maws hissing as they searched for a weakness, an opening in which to strike.
“There are too many of them!” yelled Mogil.
“Then we thin ’em out!” yelled back James.
He holstered his pistol and unsheathed his cavalry saber. His saber had twelve runes engraved upon it, just like his Rune Maker normally had, but his saber held one particular rune his Rune Maker did not…
“Seraph’s Light!” called out James.
A rune on his saber shone forth a bright-white light.
He went back-to-back with Mogil as the tall and lanky federal agent holstered his gun and pulled forth the hilt of what looked like a Japanese katana from James’ own world. Mogil flicked the tsuka of the missing blade, and then that missing blade sprang forth from the hilt to lengthen out to a deadly two-and-half-feet of enchanted steel.
“Where did you get that!” asked James.
“Came out of a rift!” replied Mogil. “It even came with a book on how to use it! I practice those techniques every morning! It’s one of a kind! In fact, its main enchantment is its easy storage! The blade just fits in the hilt until I call it forth! Unfortunately, I could only get one rune enchanted on it because of that!”
“Yeah?” asked James. “Which one!”
“Which one do you think!” said Mogil. “Seraph’s Light!”
The single rune on the blade of Mogil’s katana lit up in a bright-white.
“Works for me!” said James.
The horde of hissing, naked, grey demonesses charged all at once.
“Back-to-back is good, but we’ve got to defend Megan!” yelled James.
“Affirmative!” yelled back Mogil.
James danced around the flat slab of stone that Megan’s unconscious form was draped across. He charged a leaping demon and slashed once, his saber slicing right through the horrendous demoness’s torso like scissors cutting through paper. She screamed as she was vaporized by the holy magic surging through her, but James had no time to let his guard down.
James avoided a vicious swipe of a clawed hand that rent several slash marks through his brown leather jacket. He cut off the head of that demoness as he spun and cut another one in half, the horizontal slice cutting through just above the waist, right underneath the ribs and into the soft guts.
“They’re coming from everywhere!” yelled Mogil.
James cut down another one of the demon women by stepping to the side and slicing through her left arm. The creature disintegrated, and James stepped back, the heels of his boots touching the bare rock of the slab Megan was laid out upon.
He turned to witness Mogil cut down two more. The tall and lanky federal agent was using the traditional cutting methods of kenjutsu, so it was clear he had indeed been practicing those techniques from his katana’s accompanying book every morning, but for how long, James had no idea.
Nevertheless, this fight couldn’t go on forever.
“She’s desperate!” cried James. “That’s why she’s attacking us, because we have the will to draw her out, but more importantly, we know we have the will to draw her out, so she can’t stall anymore!
“We’ve got to figure out which one is her! We need something to help us! We’ve got to believe in something! Together we can alter the dream like we did before! We’ve got to come up with something!”
“Like what!” yelled Mogil.
James stepped to the side as one of the demoness clones rushed him. He slashed up into the right armpit, and the creature’s arm and the side/top of her head came off before she disintegrated altogether.
“We need something that can identify her!” yelled back James.
“Like that door!” exclaimed Mogil.
“Yeah, like that…what!” exclaimed James.
He turned to see a white door with gold filigree standing tall and erect a mere twenty feet past Mogil.
The federal agent cut down yet another demoness, splitting the grey, nude, nasty woman in two from the top of her bald head all the way down through her bare bald crotch. Mogil’s katana even split the demoness’s steel plate that was bolted across her eyes, cutting the metal in twain as if it were not even a minor hindrance.
“I’m going for that door!” yelled James. “Protect Megan!”
“Affirmative!” called back Mogil.
James hoofed it around the stone slab and ran for the white door. He took a moment to duck beneath a vicious swipe of a clawed hand, dashed past a leaping demoness, and took a half-second to cut through the right arm and neck of another of these feral, ghoul-like women, and then he was at the door.
He gripped the golden knob of the door, turned that knob, and quickly opened the door. What he saw stunned him for a second, but he wasted no time after that, because serious action was required, and immediately.
James sheathed his saber and quickly pulled forth his Rune Maker. He had two shots left, but all he really needed was one, though he knew he could not miss, or this game was over.
“Here goes nothing!” he cried. “Death’s Touch!”
The rune on the bottom of his grip lit up in a dark-purple light.
“Well, at least that works,” he muttered.
He steadied himself for this, because, once again, he only had one shot.
“It’s over, Ingolomern!” he yelled out.
He leveled his gun directly at Mogil.
The grey and hideous female demons hissed and backed away as James aimed squarely at the federal agent’s head.
Mogil spun, his katana up and in the ready position, but he froze at the sight of James’ leveled Rune Maker.
“This again!” he said angrily. “I told you, I’m not the demon, you id—!”
“John, shut up and get down!” exclaimed James as he cut off Mogil’s rightful protest. “You’re in the way, and I’ve only got one shot!”
The federal agent dropped to the ground as James pulled the trigger. The bullet zipped through the air and blew a bloody hole through Megan Shmidt, right between her dark-brown eyes. The young woman had been standing above Mogil, right behind him, standing upon the huge slab of red rock she had been laid out upon, her right arm magically and mysteriously restored, her fingers gnarled and warped, tipped with long and savage white claws, ready to ambush the unsuspecting agent.
Megan staggered but did not fall, and her mouth opened up into a huge maw filled with fangs as she screeched in fury.
The many clones of Ingolomern, the naked, feral, and grey female figures with steel plates bolted across their eyes, faded away into red dust and black ash, those particles blown away by an imaginary wind.
James’ tortured friends, his compatriots in arms, faded away as the devices binding them crumbled to dust.
Mogil rolled once across the red earth and was then on his feet, backing away, backing away until he was at James’ side, but his line of sight never left Megan’s standing, furious figure.
“You cannot kill me, James!” screeched the false Megan. “I am eternal! I…AM…ETERNAL!”
“Yeah, we all are,” said James with a smirk. “Death is just a transition anyway. Not that it matters, because you’re going back where you belong…You see, I just figured out something I should have already known…Demons are nothing but lies, and once you see through those lies, they’ve got nothing.”
“I am fear itself!” shrieked the false Megan. “I will destroy you! I will torture you for a thousand years!”
“Now you’re just lying to yourself,” shrugged James. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. In fact, you don’t matter, because your ride is here, and you are going back where you belong…It’s time to go, sweetheart.”
The false Megan, this perversion of a good friend, spun as a familiar presence made himself known.
The looming form of the Angel of Death suddenly stood behind her, a towering skeleton in a night-black cloak, a terrible and dark twelve-foot-tall pillar of animated bones armed with a huge black scythe to match his equally giant form.
The fake Megan immediately dropped her disguise, turning back into the grey and disgusting nude woman with the steel plate bolted across her eyes, and then she tried to run, scrambling for an escape.
The Grim Reaper swung his huge scythe with deadly accuracy, and that huge blade pierced straight through the ancient demoness’s back to pop forth through her chest, right between her bare, grey, jiggling breasts.
Even now, James could barely watch. Somehow he knew it was safe to view Death here, here in this warped dreamworld/nightmare, but he had trained himself not to look directly upon the menacing cosmic force, nor would he in spite of this understanding of safety.
Death lifted Ingolomern into the air with his scythe as if she were a bug impaled upon a pin. She screamed and shrieked the entire time, her maw of fangs wide with both rage and pain, and then his bony right hand gripped her right ankle. He pulled her off his scythe after that, pulling her off in a manner that could only be described as extreme disgust, as if he were holding a diseased rat by the tail.
He slammed her into the stone slab resting beneath them, cracking and splitting the dream construct in twain, and then he proceeded to slam her three times back and forth upon the red earth, swinging her round by her right ankle, a WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! in time, much like something out of an old cartoon that James would have enjoyed back when he was a child.
Flames burst forth in a circle near the two ancient entities, and then a great pentagram of fire formed near the broken stone slab Death and his current plaything were next to.
Ingolomern screeched once, a loud and piercing wail, and then that scream was cut short as she was slammed into the pentagram of flame, only to vanish within a pit of roaring fire. The flames rose high and hellishly, and then the circle shrank, shrinking until it closed out altogether.
“Vermin,” said Death in a deep and echoing voice.
The Angel of Death rested his huge scythe upon his right shoulder as the leering skull that made up his head centered its empty orbital eye sockets upon both James and Mogil. Those orbital sockets were not quite empty, however, as the crimson glow of two bright-red lights shone forth from them.
“The debt is paid, James,” said Death. “You and your companions are free to go.”
A light built up in the very air itself as the world around James and Mogil began to crumble. The red earth and soil broke apart and lifted skywards as the dream they were both in fell apart.
“Our ride’s here!” yelled James over the roar of the sound of an entire disintegrating world.
“Good!” yelled back Mogil. “I’m sick of this job!”
The light built up around them, they were both lifted into the air, James had the distinct feeling of floating, and then he went blind as a bright-white light consumed all of this false reality.
*****
James’ eyes fluttered open as he stared through the amber visors of his helmet. He pushed himself up off the cracked pavement he was currently laying upon, reached up, and pushed the button on his jacket’s leather collar to recall his helm. The helmet retracted, he shook his head once, squeezed his eyes shut for a second, opened them, and then took in a deep breath.
He immediately wished he hadn’t. The fumes of corpses wafted up and around him like an invisible dank cloud, so he controlled his breathing and stood up in order view his surroundings.
The neighborhood was much like the dreamworld, but broken and grey like any typical residential area hit by a breach explosion. The abandoned buildings around him held blast damage along with mostly shattered windows. It was a real mess.
Unfortunately, the pervasive stench of death emanated from the many bodies of the local mercenaries who had gone missing, those bodies scattered everywhere along this small stretch of street…They’d clearly been dead for some time.
The rest of the team arose from their slumber. They were all still breathing, still alive and kicking, a little shellshocked, maybe, probably, but that was something a merc was supposed to be able to handle. If a merc couldn’t quell some PTSD, they didn’t need to be a merc.
The local reward for this job was going to be evenly split, but James had no problem with that. He was just glad everyone was safe.
He turned and nodded once toward the tall and lanky federal agent that was John Mogil.
“One of us needs to contact Castellan right away,” he said quickly. “We’ve got to make sure your people don’t drop a rune-nuke on us.”
“On it,” said Mogil. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” replied James.
He turned to view the rest of the team, but they looked all right.
“That was a bad trip,” said Jimmy Daw as he held his head with both hands.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Megan.
“Yeah,” said Carley. “I think I’m going to take a break from merc-work for a while…You okay, Malik?”
“No,” said young black man. “No, but I will be. I just need…I just need a break, maybe. I think I’ll take a break, just like you.”
The young man wasn’t talking so tough now. No, James knew Malik had been the first to be “killed,” so the young merc had been tortured the longest.
“I need a shot,” said Sig. “A good stiff shot of whiskey should clear my head.”
“I hear you,” said Marty.
“That grey witch did things to me…” said Gin in a shaky voice. “She did some terrible things…I was violated…She tortured some parts of me that I…I don’t want to talk about…I …I need…I just need some time to process everything…What about you, James? Doesn’t this bother you?”
James shrugged. This was par for the course for him.
“Don’t you need a break?” asked the one-eyed blonde.
“I’m good,” said James. “Besides, I’m old. I always need a break.”
“Aren’t you horrified by what happened?” asked Carley.
Her mouth was aghast, and James could see that aforementioned horror in her single blue eye.
“I wasn’t tortured,” said James matter-of-factly. “You just need to take a break, Gin. Go collect your bounty and grab some downtime…You just need to take that break.”
“Yeah…” said Carley quietly.
Mogil walked up after that. The man nodded once at James as he closed his own grey flip phone.
“Castellan will arrive soon for pickup,” he said.
James studied the federal agent’s stern look.
“What?” asked James. “Is there something else?”
“Yes,” frowned Mogil. “There’s something I want to know.”
“And what is that?” asked James.
“How did you know Megan was the demon?” asked Mogil.
“I opened the door we created,” explained James. “I saw Megan being tortured upon one of your torture tables.”
“Jimmy, I think James saw me naked!” said Megan in slight horror.
“James!” barked Jimmy.
“Whoa there, big guy,” said James as he lifted both hands, palms up. “I had nothing to do with that. Besides, if it makes you feel any better, I saw everyone naked, and it was not by choice. I even saw you naked.”
“Yeah, yeah,” grinned Jimmy. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
“Sure thing,” smirked James. “The next time an ancient demoness decides to torture everyone in front of me, I’ll be sure to look away.”
Jimmy laughed and shook his head, but his girlfriend and merc-partner clearly did not share the same sentiment.
“We were murdered and then tortured!” gasped Megan. “No, we didn’t get tortured to death…We got murdered into torture…That sounds really weird when I say it out loud…Anyway…Anyway, it felt like I’d been tortured for a hundred years! That creature tortured us in the most horrible ways! How can you be so flippant about it, Jimmy!”
“Eh,” shrugged Jimmy. “I’m still alive, and I’m grateful for it. I guess I’m just built different…Besides, it was just a dream, and all dreams fade over time. I ain’t worried about it…A few shots of Tequila, and I’m good. I just need to get a little drunk. I imagine half a beer ought to do it for you, Meg.”
The young woman shot forth a quick knife hand to Jimmy’s crotch, impacting him before he could muster a proper defense. The big muscle man winced as he covered his crotch, making a “Sfffffffft!” noise as he did.
“Oh, you tapped ’em!” he said in a hoarse voice.
James shook his head and grinned. This kind of behavior was normal for these two. He’d expect nothing less from the pair.
Mogil tapped him on the shoulder, and James turned his attention back upon him.
“You were saying?” asked the federal agent. “You saw the real Megan being tortured behind the white door?”
“Yeah,” replied James. “As soon as I saw that, I knew exactly what’d happened. The real Megan had died right in front of us and had been replaced immediately afterwards. This was right after I’d gunned down that fake Malik.
“Yeah, that demon-witch had actually done something clever. She’d stuck us with a burden while being right there to mess with us, but she couldn’t hide that lie forever. Not with our combined will. We punched through her lies, and that’s what saved us.”
“That makes sense,” said Mogil. “I can see that, and that information will definitely be useful for the Bureau…And by the way, they weren’t my torture tables.”
“They came from your imagination,” argued James.
“As opposed to what?” asked Mogil in a huff. “Those crucifixes you impaled them upon?”
“Is that what they were called?” asked Gin. “Crucifixes?”
“Yes, Gin…Carley,” said James. “I’m sorry you ended up on one, but try not to think about it. Jimmy’s right; it was just a dream, and all dreams fade over time.”
“Yeah…” said Carley in a haunted voice.
James turned his attention back on Mogil. He needed to get the man’s scrutiny off of him, or the federal agent was going to cause him some serious trouble.
“And I didn’t impale anyone,” said James. “That was Ingolomern.”
“Exactly,” frowned Mogil. “That’s what I was trying to explain…I had nothing to do with those torture tables.”
“Look, John,” sighed James. “Those devices came from our imagination, and Ingolomern used them against us. That’s all I was saying…Now…are we going to have that discussion or not? You wanted a long discussion with me, didn’t you? Are we going to have it?”
The tall and lanky federal agent pulled a pair of large brown shades from his right vest pocket and slipped them on.
“No,” replied Mogil. “There’s nothing to discuss…But I’ll be keeping my eye on you, James.”
“Yep,” snorted James. “See you around, John.”
“Affirmative,” said the federal agent.
James simply grinned and shook his head. He was going to go collect his bounty reward, maybe head south, and relax for a bit. That’s all he currently cared about.
Besides, those bounty credits could afford him a decent beer, one without any strings attached.
Remnants of the Razor’s Edge Part II Copyright © 2025 bloodytwine.com Matthew L. Marlott
Author’s Note: The picture for this story was generated via artificial intelligence courtesy of Canva.com.