Necromanson

One day I had a cool dream about Charles Manson becoming Nosferatu. This is what came out. This is a turbo rough draft with a hurried ending because I wanted to just be done with it and move on to other things, but there's enough here to enjoy an evening. 65k words. Comments and criticism welcome.



Henry Stein paced back and forth in front of the floor to ceiling windows of his fourth story hotel room, anxiety chewing at his intestines as he nursed a bottle of Nyquil. Screeching tires and a particularly loud door slam had propelled him from the safety of the sheets to being sandwiched between the floor and the hard wood siding of his bed, panting in terror.

Henry had been a smart kid, but not quite smart enough to avoid getting shot at. When he was eighteen, being a combat engineer sounded like great fun. Those montages in movies where the heroes whip up some last ditch fortifications, or a batch of explosives from scrap that would save the day or kill the monster? That was going to be Henry.

Of course, the reality was nine parts sweaty boredom, and one part bowel-loosening terror. Henry had gone two years without ever seeing any of his work put to use. Set up defenses here, rig this or that bridge to blow, just to pack up and head back to base at the end of the day. By the time he was twenty, he felt like he had a serious case of battle blue balls.

One day he got what he thought he wanted, and he learned a little bit about himself and his job. First, he was not Rambo. He cowered and gave shrieks of terror as his teenage underlings looked on in amusement, blessedly ignorant of the amount of damage a single centimeter of shrapnel from the mortar fire could do to the human body, and blithely assured of their immortality.

Second, he learned that a combat engineer's work was easily overcome by concentrated effort and ingenuity. The enemy had rigged a fucking plow to drive right through Henry's barbed wire, and his minefield, while mortar and small arms fire had stopped them from doing anything about it.

Sure, Henry had lived through it, but he had a small scar along his scalp where a bullet had nearly blown his mind when he tried to assess the situation. The sudden brush with his own mortality and the sight of dozens of armed men rushing through the hole in His fence, His minefield, trying to kill HIM, brought him new insight into himself, and Henry didn't raise his head above the concrete lip of his fortifications until the all clear had been sounded.

For their part, his teenage charges didn't say anything to him, he was still their superior, but he saw something change in their eyes as they stepped away from wrapping the gauze around his head. Or maybe it was Henry that had changed, seeing the boys and the corpses they could become side by side.

Either way, Henry realized he wasn't cut out for combat and had himself transferred. The officer in charge of his case tried everything he could to get Henry to stay before finally giving Henry the worst job he could think of as punishment for what he saw as abandoning his duty; Plumbing.

It wasn't a bad job. Not particularly demanding, and only a handful of events required Henry to stand knee deep in human shit over the course of his early career. Eventually, as he gained seniority, he did more watching other people standing in shit as he sagely consulted blueprints.

By the time he was thirty, Henry was working with architects planning gas and water for large government buildings, hundreds if not thousands of miles away from the front lines, and earning a quarter more than the average grunt. Henry found himself bumping elbows with some damn good architects. Prima donna's, all of em.

Henry had long since learned that job advancement was more about average performance and good networking than it was about being stellar at any given task. over the course of his mega plumbing career, Henry had networked, and as the demanding architects filed out of the military, he found himself getting calls from them, bouncing their ideas off him late nights, sometimes with job offers.

One particular Sunday night, Henry had been throwing darts at a picture of his commanding officer, balling his hand into a fist every time it unconsciously passed by his jury-rigged drink-mixer. He had just considered dialing the black knob a bit to the right, allowing vodka to spill into his sprite and orange juice mix.

Henry's eyes passed over the three upturned bottles locked into place, ready to whip him up a screwdriver at a moment's notice. It was a conversation piece, and amused the younger guys every time they came over, but Henry's superiors had cast a mildly disapproving eye on the repurposed plumbing decorating the center of his house, perhaps seeing a darker side of his machine.

The phone rang, and Henry snapped away from contemplating a screwdriver to answer it. Zachary Landon, The most demanding, crazy old architect Henry had ever had the opportunity to work with was on the other line.

Henry liked Zack, or Mr. Landon as he was referred to by people who didn't know him. The last job Henry had done with the old man had strained every fiber of his being, the stress nearly made him blow the place up.

He had never slept better. The constant, involved, demanding action required by the industrious old man had kept Henry's doubts and nightmares at bay, and he found himself falling into bed aching, and waking up still aching, but rested.

Zack's voice came over the line, brusque and to the point. "Henry, how would you like a job?" Zack said, his voice intruding into Henry's ear like a crowbar.

"I have a job," Henry responded, taking aim with his darts.

"How would you like five million dollars?" Henry's dart went wide and produced a dent in the steel housing of his computer.

Henry took a long look at the hole riddled portrait of his boss, then the cluster of piping dominating the center of his table, a single tube extending to a nearby solo cup, waiting for a simple squeeze to begin pouring his screwdriver.

"Where?" henry asked, his eyes losing focus as he said goodbye to the military he had been growing ever distant from.

The deal had been solid, and Henry had found himself engaged for the first time in years, meeting the whims of the irritable architect. Henry had worked together with the man to get the water, gas and shit flowing in a way that met his demands... and they were demanding.

The pipes in the floors and walls, rather than being optimized for best performance, all had to conform to bizarre, cryptic rules set forward by the enigmatic old man. Henry was kept in the dark as to why, and it nearly drove him insane. He had to bust his ass to make an impossible water system merely an underperforming one.

One night he had confronted Zack about the nonsensical bullshit they were doing, forming artsy circles and loops out of piping that would never see the light of day. Henry stormed into Zack's office, slammed down the blueprints in front of him and demanded to know why they had to devote fifteen times the energy to move the same amount of water.

Zack, a man who had never slowed down, showed the sheer exhaustion of his age for just a moment. With a sigh, Zack rubbed his temples before regarding Zack with a fiery gaze. "Because it's what the people paying for the building want. It's your job to make that happen, not come crying to me every evening. In case you couldn't tell by now, price is not a concern." Zack's voice contained the steel that had supported him through his career. It was always below the man's surface, waiting for a hard strike to expose it through his flesh, not unlike the terminator.

Henry regarded Zack's fearsome gaze for a moment before cocking his head. "I've got a blank check?" Henry asked. Zack nodded his head slowly, his eyes still narrowed. Henry leaned away from the old man and let out a deep breath. "Alright. Whatever makes this Feng shui nutjob happy."

In retrospect, it had been the best year of Henry's life. Unconstrained by money, Henry had been able to experiment and learn, picking up a few tricks that weren't in the books as he went. It wouldn't have only been fun in retrospect if he had any time to stop and enjoy himself. As it was, Henry and the rest of Zack's crew dragged themselves to their beds at the end of the night.

Bed was a trailer crammed with six bunk beds and lockers. There were dozens of identical trailers, packed to the gills with other guys getting paid to live on-site. Henry wasn't bothered by the bunk beds, no one had the energy to do anything but sleep at the end of the night, but Henry still found himself troubled in the short seconds before he surrendered to exhaustion.

Why was every man working on the project being offered ownership of a room in the building? Ostensibly, it was to ensure that the men working on the building took it very seriously, having a vested interest in its quality. Henry himself had signed a contract giving him a generous family size portion of the fourth floor. He had looked over the contract and only signed when he was sure they couldn't saddle him with the debt if the building went belly-up.

Still, as the days went by, Henry couldn't help but feel a little uneasy about the project. Nothing jumped out at him in particular, but the men working on the building seemed a little gloomier than they should have been, the concrete and steel a little heavier.

Henry made a bug out-bag. It was an ancient, half-forgotten part of his training as a combat engineer. Henry didn't want to call it embezzlement, but that's what it was. As the lead water and gas engineer on a project as haphazard and chaotic as this with no price limits, it was easy to disappear a half-million dollars inside an airtight twelve inch PVC pipe seamlessly attached to the end of another. The money-packed appendix of the building rested just behind a fragile half inch of drywall in the men's bathroom of the lobby, a handful of steps away from the front door.

Tension and guilt had eaten away at Henry the first week, adding to the general malaise surrounding them, but after a week, the guilt turned to worry, the worry faded to nervousness, and eventually, the dirty deed was all but forgotten as the fifteen story hotel was erected around his ill-gotten loot. He wouldn't touch it, he rationalized. It was solely for the event that some rich scumbag decided to find a way not to pay Henry what he had been promised.

He needn't have worried. The building was completed on time, and Henry found himself a millionaire overnight. Henry immediately sat down with a tax consultant and painfully carved away more than a third of his fortune to get the IRS off his back, and then put the rest in safe, dividend bearing stocks and bonds, realizing, at thirty two, that he never needed to work again.

And that's where his life had lead, standing in his well-furnished living room, the T.V. quietly playing late-night cartoons behind him as he stared out the window, watching cars glide between the pools of light gathered around street lamps.

Henry flicked the cap off the Nyquil with his thumb, numbly listening to the cap clatter on the hardwood floor beneath him. Without taking his eyes off of the road, he took a gentle sip, long past shuddering at the taste. Nights like these, when he was startled awake, only drugs seemed to get Henry back in bed. Henry scratched the thin scar three inches above his left ear idly, listening to the whoosh of cars passing over the wet asphalt.

A white van caught his attention, in and of itself, not out of the ordinary. What caught his attention was the three identical vans behind it in what appeared to be lockstep. The four vans came to park in a perfectly synchronized motion in front of the hospital across the street.

"The fuck?" Henry muttered to himself, taking another sip of Nyquil straight from the bottle. The doors of the vans slid open, and six armed men from each van filed out, storming the hospital with predatory silence, causing Henry to cough his mouthful of Nyquil onto the floor to ceiling window of his condo.

A stretch of silence antagonized his racing heart as he stared at the scene in front of him. The squealing of tires as the four vans burst into movement spurred Henry into action. He dropped the Nyquil, sprinting to his phone as the blue liquid sluggishly pooled across the floor.

Henry snatched his cell phone from the kitchen counter and dialed 9-1-1, rushing back to the window as he held the phone to his ear. The phone rang, and rang, and continued to ring. Henry pulled the phone away from his ear, reading the tiny two words at the top of the screen: No Service.

"Goddamnit," Henry cursed, tossing the phone aside, bouncing it off of his reclining love seat, onto the pristine tight hand side of the piece of furniture. A moment later, he lay in front of the window, peering over the edge of the floor out at the hospital as he held the land line to his face. After a breathless moment, he realized his landline was dead too.

As he stared at his phone, Henry had an icy realization that whatever crazy scheme was going down, it wasn't limited to the hospital across the street. Henry shivered, sliding away from the window, his mind turning to finding a weapon and a way out.

A burst of gunfire made his calm slide backward turn into a mad scramble, only interrupted when his shoulder slammed into the kitchen counter. In a near blind panic, Henry dove toward his closet, dragging a misused bicycle aside, throwing it to the floor as he began to dig durther into the cluttered walk-in space.

After seconds of frantic tossing, Henry unearthed a black plastic box and two worn duffle bags. With Henry's last name printed across them. Carrying them to the center of the room, henry opened the black box, revealing a black handgun and three loaded clips.

Long forgotten training slowly rekindled as Henry hefted the weapon in his hand, checking the metal for rust, working the slide and slamming the first clip home, the slide pulling forward with a satisfying clack. Retrieving the holster from behind the foam, Henry shrugged into the shoulder straps, sliding the Beretta into its familiar home.

The gun rested oppressively against his chest, it's weight magnified by the dark situation he found himself in. Henry was a realist. All those movies where the good guys run away with bullets scattering around them were bullshit. It had taken one game of paintball for teen Henry to realize that.

These people were using real guns, which were a hell of a lot more accurate. Henry didn't see himself as die-hard, the only way he'd pull the gun is if he caught one of them with his back turned. Henry had no intention of dying in a fair fight.

Inside the first duffle bag were rusting paraphinalia from before he had washed out. A short, rusted shovel was tossed to the side, followed by his old army duds. Henry snagged a rough canvas coat from the bag, throwing it on to conceal his gun. Henry grabbed a pair of thick leather gloves and shoved them in the coat pocket, working furiously.

Henry jumped over to the second bag, and cursed when a bit of steel poked the knee he rested against the bag. Opening the duffel revealed more clothes, a pair of wire cutters, and about a hundred feet of razor wire on a wooden handle.

Another burst of gunfire drew henry's attention, and he peered back out his window, down to the parking lot. The two dozen armed men emerged from the hospital, pushing at least fifty people in front of them, doctors and patients. Henry could make out some daffy duck scrubs near the front of the pack.

Henry's heart sank as he watched them herd the people toward the the lobby of Henry's building. "Shit shit shit," Henry chanted as he jumped back into the closet, pulling free a wireless nail gun. Henry checked that the tool was charged and loaded before he ran back to his living room and snagged the wire cutters and the razor wire.

With the thick gloves on, Henry spooled out eight feet of wire and tacked it up between two doorways just beyond the elevators. Henry lunged up and smashed the overhead light with his wire cutter, casting the blade-studded wire in shadow.

Henry turned and ran toward the fire escape, stopping as a voice whispered his name. "Henry," came a voice from the door to his left. Henry paused for a moment and saw the face of Leanne, the cougar next door peering out into the hallway.

"What's going on?" The older woman whispered, her eyes wide with fear.

"people with guns are coming into the building, and the phones aren't working. Get something heavy and brace your door, find a weapon, and don't let anyone into your room until you can get ahold of the cops." Henry spoke the words faster than he could register them, turning back to the fire exit.

"Good luck," she said, the words barely reaching Henry as he loped down the hall. Shortly after, Henry faintly heard the sound of Leanne bolting her door again.

Why am I doing this instead of following my own advice? Henry thought to himself as he glided down the stairs, his legs moving furiously. It was the best course of action. When he had been young and invincible, the army had expected him to tromp around day in and day out with fifty pounds of gear strapped to his body. Now older, and much more out of shape, Henry tasted blood as he arrived at the middle of the fire exit.

Could be spider-man syndrome, Henry thought to himself as he knelt to work, I wouldn't expect a cougar to do anything about this, but I'm a (ex)combat engineer, maybe I feel some responsibility? Henry wondered to himself, watching his hands work as though he were watching someone else.

Henry dropped the wire to the ground, tacked one end to the wall, and unspooled the wire, cutting it off and tying the other side to the bannister, making sure it was low and taut. Coming to stand, Henry looked at his fifteen seconds of work, designed to cripple one of the baddies. Henry shook his head. He had a terrible feeling that sitting on his ass would get him killed.

Henry picked up his gear and hustled further down the stairs, feeling almost like a spider, expanding his territory one strand at a time. Henry made it to the bottom of the stairs, his heart pounding. He was only a few dozen feet away from the nearest bad guy at his closest guess. There was a door leading further into the building, and an exit that led straight to the street.

Henry took three quick, bracing breaths, and pushed the door to the street open, craning his neck to peek around the street. Henry saw the other guy first.

Walking down the street was a man wearing black combat gear, a helmet, balaclava, bullet proof vest, and a submachine gun slung over his shoulder. The man's blue eyes, the only exposed part of his body, met Henry's gaze.

"Fuck!" Henry screamed, flinging himself away from the door, taking the stairs three at a time. behind him, Henry heard the telltale tromp of boots approaching the door. Henry kept himself low and close to the outside wall, paranoid that the asshole would start taking potshots at him even with the bannister that would play havoc with ricochettes.

Henry's breath hitched and he let out a grunt as he deliberately leapt over the razor wire, stopping a flight above the trap. Henry dropped to his stomach on the dirty stairs, freeing his pistol from the holster, sure that he looked like an idiot. Like an idiot serious about living, he thought to himself.

The tread of footfalls rose up to him, and Henry held his breath, listening. Cry of pain, jump out and shoot him, he finds the trap and says something stupid like "barbed wire?" jump out and shoot him, no sound at all, wait until visual, two voices, one in pain, jump out and shoot them, more than two voices, run like a bitch. Henry ran through his options in his head, flickering through all the situations that would get him killed.

Henry's back itched madly as a sudden insane urge to look behind him for another gunman washed over him. Narrowing his eyes, Henry deliberately relaxed his hold on the pistol.

A man's voice cried in startled pain, no words, just a short series of vowels. Henry, praying the other guy wasn't smarter than him and waiting just behind the tripwire with his gun aimed at the stairs, jumped out, the berretta trained on the tripwire.

The guy was smarter than him. All Henry saw was a thin slice of the man's head, his submachine gun nestled against his cheek, a smug grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Henry threw himself to the ground, which in this case was a flight of concrete stairs, madly squeezing off rounds as he fell. The staircase erupted with sound, deafening Henry's scream as the other guy squeezed his trigger and filled the air with a wave of death.

Henry couldn't see, hear, or breathe. His body was awash with pain. Am I dead? After a second, he realized he was simply squeezing his eyes shut. Henry opened them and took in a pained gasp, swiveling his neck in a panic to find the killer. Henry came to stand on battered legs, holding the pistol in front of him with nerveless, shaking hands.

Henry carefully stepped over the wire, never taking his eyes off the lower stairs. Small droplets of blood on the bannister greeted his gaze, and a moment later the guy who had tried to kill Henry came into view. He rested against the bannister, gracelessly slumped against the steel tubes.

Henry squatted down close and spotted a trail of gore beneath the man's right ear, where a bullet from one of them had ricocheted up and into his brain. Henry shuddered, regarding the man for a solemn moment, before he holstered his pistol and grabbed the guy's gun, slinging the strap over his shoulder.

"so much for not being like die-hard." Henry said, wiggling his toes. Henry grabbed a caffeinated energy bar from the man's pocket, and snagged an extra clip from his belt. There were no explosives on the man's person, not even a flashbang.

"maybe I played too much call of duty, but I was hoping for at least a grenade." Henry muttered to himself, knowing that he should be grateful just to be alive, the man had had him dead to rights. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, this would be where Henry bit the dust.

A wave of cold travelled over his scalp as he considered that. Am I sure I didn't get shot? Plenty of people didn't know they'd been shot until a while later, buoyed by adreniline. Henry was running his hands over himself, checking for bleeding, when a voice sounded from above him.

"...Came from the fire escape!" came a voice from above him, spurring Henry to start running down the stairs again.

"Shit, shit, shit..." Henry chanted his mantra as he leapt back down the stairs, the sound of pursuit close behind him. This time, he didn't stop to ambush the pursuers, rushing toward the exit leading to the street. The open, exposed street.

Henry came to a jerking halt in front of the door, nearly slamming into it in his desperate bid to come to a halt. The hairs all over his body raise in goosebumps as his hand came close to the door. If there was one thing he understood better than anything else, it was that being predictable would get you killed.

Henry pushed away from the door leading outside, instead loping down the short hallway leading to the lobby. Henry quietly unlatched the door and went to one knee, his entire body crying out in pain. a startled cry sounded behind him, wailing on and on as the man tried separate steel from flesh. Apparently the guys behind him weren't as smart as their buddy.

Henry swung the door open, the well oiled hinged of the new condominium doors giving way without a sound. Ahead of him was the lobby the feng-shui obsessed billionaire had commissioned, a simple fountain with jets of water erupting from a still pool dominating the center of the large room. To Henry's left was the restrooms, beside the sliding doors leading to freedom.

To his right was the workout room and sauna, and across the way was the pool and shower area. Henry wasn't a particular fan of the pool, as most of the people who could afford to live here weren't the kind you wanted to see in a swimsuit. Henry didn't spend much time in the gym either, something he was currently regretting as he pushed his tired limbs into action.

The marble tiled lobby was empty, not a single person from gunmen or the hospital were in sight. Henry crept forward along the edge of the wall, angling for the bathroom, darting from fanciful stone pillar to decorative stone planter. Still, no sound followed him but the faint moans of the jerk tangled in razor wire on the stairs.

With one more scan of the empty lobby, Henry loped to the bathroom, intending to use the entrance as cover before breaking out toward the front door. As Henry approached the bathroom, asickening stench wafted to his nose, drawing his eyes toward the innocuous beige entrance illuminated by the soft fluorescent lighting lining the edges of the ceiling.

Henry glanced out toward the street, wanting to run for the entrance, but his left leg took an involuntary step forward, toward the smell of a fresh meat, blood and shit. some unseen force pushed him forward like a strong tailwind, Henry felt as though he could lean backward, and it would hold him up, and drive him forward.

Sweating, Henry crept forward toward the men's room, where the smell was coming from. As henry turned the corner into the tiled room, his gaze was met by a corpse, staring straight at him from atop a pile of its kin. Henry's heart jumped, and his weak legs nearly gave out in fright. A moment later, Henry took a shuddering breath and glanced around the rest of the room.

Everyone was dead, not so much intimately murdered as they had been dispassionately bled like animals. A deep gash was struck across the twenty-odd men and women's necks before they had been tossed into the center of the room, their blood pooling toward a small grate in the floor. Near the bottom of the pile was a womans hand, the edge of a bloodstained daffy duck scrub visible.

Henry's vision swam, his stomach did a backflip, and he found himself leaning against the wall. A moment later, he retched, heaving up a mouthful of bile-tainted Nyquil. Henry fell to his knees, spitting the vile mixture on the ground, despite being mere feet away from a toilet stall. Henry's hands shook as he glanced over at the pile of corpses, a dim memory whispering of similar scenes.

"...where he went, but we're gonna find him." Came a distant voice from the lobby that jerked Henry out of his stupor.

"It doesn't matter, we can't go running off on wild tangents at this stage. Write him off as a lucky SOB and expect the cops in another five." Another voice, commanding and stern addressed the first. A soft squeal of static sounded and the voice returned. "attention, return to the lobby to receive your blessing. You have ninety seconds."

Henry crept closer to the entrance, listening to the sound of books striking the marble lobby floor as twenty two men assembled in the lobby. "Where's Achilles and David?" The stern voiced man demanded.

Henry took a quiet breath, barely able to hear the men over the pounding in his ears, got low, and poked his head around the edge of the restroom entrance. The leader had removed his mask, standing rigidly in front of the assembled men. He had piercing blue eyes behind weather-worn brows, and close cropped hair. He held a sickly old man with drooping eyeslids by the scruff of his neck. The old man's hospital was light blue, with a white nametag, unreadable from this distance.

"David died on the stairwell, shot in the head, and Achilles tripped on some razor wire in the same place, he can't walk." The grunt standing in front of the older commander spoke.

The commander's brow raised slowly, the rest of his face set in stone. "What are the odds?" he said quietly.

"Sir?" his subordinate asked.

"It's nothing, Achilles always did have the strangest luck," the weatherworn commander said, shaking his head. "As you know, the final ingredient, the last thing we need to complete the ritual, is the blood of a truly evil man." He said, brandishing the old man who hung limply from his grasp.

"We're going to bleed this pig, and write our names in history as the first men to open The Door!" the commander shouted. "We will be powerful!" the men cheered. "We will live forever!"

The men cheered again, their hands raising in the air. their commander swung his submachine gun up and fired into the tight knot of armed men, dropping the old man to the ground as he switched to his sidearm and finished off a few writhing men. finally, the noise from gunfire settled, and the commander stood alone, staring down at the still forms of the men he had led to the slaughter.

"I'd be damned if I shared eternity with a bunch of jackasses like that." he said, bending down to grab the old man by his blue collar, wrenching him to his feet and dragging him toward the fountain, a still pool of water when it was turned off. From his vantage point, Henry could see something wrong with the water.

Henry realized that there was only one bad guy left, without a helmet, facing away from him. The situation could hardly get any better. Henry emerged from the bathroom, creeping forward, the submachine gun trained on the commander, waiting for him to separate from the old man.

As the commander dragged the old man forward, Henry saw a spark of recognition on his face. Henry put his finger up to his lips, hoping the old man wouldn't give him away until he had a good angle to mow down the bastard. Henry saw a glimmer of something flit across the wrinkled face of the gramps... amusement?

Taken aback, Henry stopped and stared at the old man, the hairs on his neck once again standing up. A moment later the commander dragged the old man into the pool, and Henry's eyes widened with sudden realization. The pool of the fountain was filled with blood. Henry craned his neck to look back at the bathroom, where only a quarter of the people he had seen herded into the building had died.

Henry had helped design the fountain. He was aware that there was a stupidly complicated design made out of pipe underneath the fountain, and under the right circumstances, run off from the bathroom could flow into those pipes. In fact there were three other places in the building where that was the case.

Another shiver ran down Henry's neck as he realized that the horrible massacre that had happened today was something that was supposed to happen. It had been arranged. There was some connection between the people who had paid for this building, and those currently filling its pipes with blood, believing it would make some kind of magic happen.

Henry turned back to the scene in front of him, just in time to see the old man standing tall in front of the commander. Henry was much closer to the two of them, and he could barely make out the white name-tag adorning the front of the old man's open-assed hospital gown.

C.Manson. Henry's eyes widened in alarm, and the unassuming man whose name had become synonymous with evil met his gaze and winked. The commander, without preamble, drew his gun and blew a hole through the swastika inked on Manson's forehead.

The light's dimmed for a moment, then brightened, until the bulbs exploded as invisible power pushed inward, toward the center of the room. The commander laughed, looking at the ceiling, closing his eyes as he reveled in the sickly feeling of energy moving across his skin. The pressure in the room built, as though they were rapidly sinking into the ocean.

Henry felt his ears pop painfully as the commander danced with joy. The man started, and his piercing blue gaze settled upon Henry. "the lucky SOB. I suppose I could do worse."

"What the hell is this!" Henry demanded, leveling the gun on him as the room began to hum audibly.

"It's a spell of immortality. You could shoot me now and it wouldn't matter, I've spilled blood here, and the change has already begun. From what I hear, you've spilled blood tonight too, you qualify." The man said, a grim smile on his lips.

"Ok, psycho, how about you put the gun down before I..." Henry swallowed, it felt as though his blood had turned to syrup and his heart had to shove it forcibly through his veins. "test your theory?" Henry said, his head bobbing as the strange feeling washed over him. The other man felt it too, spreading his arms and throwing back his head, apparently reveling in the uncomfortable sensation.

"Go ahead, we'll have a long time to get to know one another afterwards." The man chuckled, meeting Henry's gaze. The energy in the room swirled around the two of them, and Henry suddenly felt like more, more than he had ever been. His perspective changed, he felt like everything around him was made of soft cheese, and all he had to do to crumble the faux stone pillars was reach out and Squeeze.

The blue eyed man laughed with sheer delight, like a teen unwrapping a car shaped Christmas present, eager to test it out on the road. The sensation washed over Henry, once, twice, then it changed.

A pop rang in Henry's ears, the sickly sensation of something integral to his being detaching, being pulled away. It felt something like the time he had dislocated his arm, but located in his chest, radiating a dull ache to every part of his body. At the same moment, the pool of blood behind the blue-eyed man shifted.

It was a small shift, splashing against the inside of the pool, barely audible, but it caught their attention. The blue eyed man stopped smiling as the ache inside them grew, doubling and redoubling, staring at the center of the fountain.

"That's... not right," he said through gritted teeth. "That's not how the spell works!" he shouted at the shallow circle of blood that had begun to spin, revealing a supine form beneath the red surface of the liquid. As he spoke, Henry felt the invisible force that had surrounded the two of them funneled away, creating a vortex around the fountain, reflected by the blood that had begun to spray from the lip of the fountain.

The aching grew, and Henry decided he'd had about enough when he saw the gown-covered body twitch. The blue eyed man turned pale. With shaking hands, he raised his gun, snapping Henry out of his reverie.

"Don't even-" Henry started, but the other man smoothly placed the barrel of his pistol at the base of his chin. He met Henry's gaze.

"I'm not going to let him get it from me," He said softly, tears rolling from the corner of his eye. "If you're smart, you'll do the same." A blast of light seared Henry's eyes and ears for a moment, and when he blinked, the blue eyed man who had orchestrated the massacre was lying on the ground, his glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling from a pool of his own blood.

"Fuck!" Henry shouted, reeling away from the corpse. He crept forward, kneeling down in front of the dead man. Looking more closely, Henry spotted a lump in the chest pocket of his vest. Henry carefully opened it, revealing a leather wallet. Guess he wasn't planning on getting caught, Henry thought to himself as he flipped it open, his gaze scanning its contents.

Mark Yates, Texas driver's license, Old military I.D., Costco card. Obviously not rich if he's got a Costco card. Henry mused. A foot entered Henry's peripheral vision and henry's head snapped up, half-raising his gun. A young, full bearded man with modestly handsome features dressed in a pristine blue hospital gown squatted down beside him.

"Hello brother, are you alright? I saw how you stood up to those guys, you've got balls of steel." Manson said, extending his hand to Henry, ostensibly to shake. Henry's gaze flickered from the man's hand, to the nametag bearing his name, then to the now-still pool of blood. Henry's eyes narrowed, and he tightened his grip on the gun.

Charles Manson saw the change in Henry, and he lunged forward, his flesh sinking inward, peeling his lips away from gnashing teeth as he closed the short gap between them. Startled, Henry squeezed the trigger of the submachine gun, and a solid stream of deafening gunfire blew the two of them apart, sending the killer sprawling to the ground in tatters.

Henry stood from where he had fallen on his ass, his finger cramped down on the quiescent submachine gun. with a shake, he relaxed his finger, breathing out. As he looked down on the now still man, he was immediately assaulted by doubt, did I really need to do that? was I right about him?

Henry took a step closer, doubt turning into guilt as his gaze ran over the bullet-riddled body. The fuck am I gonna do? Tell the cops I finished off the last patient because he had a scary name? what the hell is going on?

Henry ground his teeth with worry, his hand unconsciously moving to the scar on his scalp. I hear people who wear glasses are less likely to get convicted, Henry thought to himself, his thoughts bordering on panic.

A groan sounded in the silent lobby, and the bullet riddled corpse on the floor began to stir, sending icy chills all the way to Henry's feet. "Fuck this, I'm out," Henry said, pulling the strap to the gun off his shoulder and tossing it aside. Henry pulled out his pistol and stepped above Manson's body, and put two rounds in the back of his head.

"One Mississippi," Henry started counting, sprinting to the corpse littered men's room. At five seconds he was in the room, ten seconds later he had pistol whipped through the drywall and snagged his stash, after fourty seconds, he emerged from the bathroom as the thing in the lobby was once again regaining its feet, holding a duffle-bag sized PVC pipe by a glued-on handle.

Manson met Henry's eyes and smirked, "I have risen again to bring-" his words were cut off as Henry emptied the rest of his magazine into the monster. Only three shots rang out, and the thing didn't even leave his feet. "you cannot-" he began, and Henry reached into his holster, releasing the clip and slamming another one home.

Manson stopped speaking, regarded Henry for a moment, then spread his arms wide. "you cannot kill the son of god, this can only end one way, my son." Henry raised a brow, took careful aim, and shot him in the head.

Manson's head snapped back and he fell to the ground, blood oozing from a hole in his cheekbone. Henry stepped closer and put another two rounds in his head, before turning and sprinting out the front door, counting the seconds, trying to make it to his car before whatever the fuck was in the lobby got back to its feet again.

When Henry had counted fifteen Mississippi, two police cars, sirens blaring, cut in front and behind him, their tires squealing as they came to a sudden halt, trapping him like a startled buck. The four men inside levelled their guns on him, screaming at him to simultaneously drop the gun, lay down, and put his hands behind his head.

"What?" Henry murmured to himself before he realized what it looked like. A large man running along the street away from the scene of the worst mass murder in American history, carrying a gun, a suspicious package, speckled with blood. The officers kept screaming, and Henry only saw one way of getting out of there un-shot.

Henry slowly put the gun on the sidewalk, depositing the money against the red brick restaurant behind him. The four officers bulled closer, two of them tackling him, wrenching his arms painfully behind him while the other two practically shoved the barrels of their guns up his nose.

The two manhandlers dragged Henry to the car, slamming the side of his head against the door as they shoved him inside, making Henry hiss in pain. One of the gun-pointers took out a little card and began reading Henry his rights.

"...if you cannot afford a lawyer, on will be provided...." The pounding in Henry's ears washed out the words, and his eyelids grew heavy just as he caught a snippet of words beyond the droning voice. "get a fucking promotion for catching this fucker..." I'm in some deep shit, Henry thought to himself, But at least I'm not trapped with that thing.

"Hey, could we get a move on?" Henry said, Interrupting the man reading him his rights. "I'd like to be moving in the next fifteen seconds."

An elbow to the face was the officer's response. "Get comfortable, you son of a bitch," the officer said, before restarting his Miranda rights. His left eye close from the pain in his brow, Henry looked past the man with the card and saw the officers bagging his gun and money, thoroughly searching the sidewalk for anything else he might have ditched when they surrounded him.

You never think about how slow the system is until you're trapped in it, like a dinosaur in a tar pit, Henry thought, his eyes on the glass doors of the monolithic building he had called home. From the outside, it looked like a typical fancy condo, twelve stories high, floor to ceiling windows, a couple woefully small bushes outside to calm the nerves of the residents. A beam of light emerged from the double doors of the building, splashing off the concrete entryway and dissipating into the night.

When Henry's internal Mississippis had reached two minutes, he saw a shadow fall over the doorway, as a figure emerged from the building. Henry lowered himself in the seat, until only the top of his head emerged from the window sill of the car. Manson glanced straight at the policed cars, straight at Henry, who crouched in the darkened cab of the police car, hidden behind the flashing lights.

Henry's heart hammered, and he stayed perfectly still, keeping his face away from the backsplash of red and blue light. Manson faced the four police-officers, still calling in the arrest, looked right at the car Henry was hiding in, and smiled. Henry's blood froze for an instant as Manson waved at him before casually walking back through the doors, returning to the lobby.

Less than a minute later, the building was completely surrounded by flashing lights as the police began to swarm around the building in force, filing into the lobby in numbers that nearly clogged the entrance. Finally, the two cops slid into their seats, letting the clamor of the busy crime scene in for just a second before slamming the doors closed behind them.

As they pulled away, Henry saw a crowd of people and flashes of light through the entrance as CSI snapped pictures of everything, cataloging the messy afterbirth of what Henry could only assume was some kind of undead. If there was one thing Henry wanted to do more than anything else, it was get the hell out of town. Glancing at the two men sneaking suspicious glances at him through the rear-view mirror, Henry figured it might take a long time before he could do that.

What the hell, Henry thought to himself. It looks like he lost interest in me for the time being, so I might as well get some sleep. Henry took a deep breath and leaned his head back against the seat, slowly breathing out. In seconds, the world faded away.

Michael Smith reclined against the stairwell, his right leg propped up on the stair, to help slow the flow of blood oozing out of the slipshod bandage around his ankle. He'd taken his black mask off, the damn thing always made it feel like it was hard to breath. His gun rested across his chest in case the cops came for him, which was looking more and more likely.

The mission had been a clusterfuck. There wasn't supposed to be resistance of any kind, and yet some jackass had been running around setting up Razor wire on the goddamn stairwells. Achilles was his codename in the mercenary company that had been put under the command of Mr. Yates, and the irony of being crippled like this wasn't lost on him.

"Fuckers 'll probably have a good laugh," Michael said, straining as he shifted his weight, mindful of the painful throbbing of his leg. He knew something important had happened, when the pulsing invisible energy had washed over, around, and through him. The mission had succeeded, right? Then why had no one come to get him?

It didn't make sense for them to leave him here, slowly bleeding beside the corpse of David. One way or the other someone should have come, either to bring him home, or kill him to keep his mouth shut. Michael pondered that for a moment. If the mission was a success, someone would come get him, if it was a failure, there would have been no surge of strange energy filling his body.

Michael's brows furrowed. So that meant it was... both? Michael shook his head to clear his thoughts. In any case, he needed to get the hell out of here. He'd left plenty of DNA evidence on the stairwell, but none on the bodies in the four rooms. Micheal reminisced about the pleading women he'd cut, a smile coming to his face. Sometimes he loved his job, and it had been an especially good night up until this stairwell.

Michael took off his vest, shirt, pants, and his left shoe, now completely barefoot. Michael grabbed a stack of hundred dollar bills from his vest pocket, along with a lighter and a plastic bottle of kerosene. Michael neatly stacked all his gear around the damned wire, soaking it all in kerosene, the tangy scent of the fluid washing over him.

Michael tied a sock tight around his ankle, gritting his teeth against the pain, determined not to bleed on anything until he had gotten significant distance between himself and this building. Michael struggled to his feet, hopping and resting his weight against the steel railing. Lighter in hand, Michael turned to face the majority of incriminating evidence against him, when he heard the telltale click of the fire escape door opening from the lobby side.

Probably the fuzz, Michael thought to himself, tossing the lighter on the pile of gear. "Better late than never." he muttered, turning to hop as far away from the gear as he could before the bullets in his gun started going off.

Michael stopped short. At the bottom of the staircase was a member of his team, looking up at him silently. "It's about fucking time," Michael said as the bastard's shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. "were you bastards just waiting for me to try to burn and run so I could be the dumbass going back to base in his underwear?"

The man's shaking intensified, and michael's eyes spotted bloody holes scattered across his uniform. The eyes focused on him were milky white. "What the," Michael said, trying to take a step back. Forgetting his wound for a moment, Michael put weight on his right leg, sending him toppling onto his back.

The black mask covering the things face ripped open, revealing a gaping, tooth-filled maw between the clinging strands of the black cotton. Michael screamed, and tried to crawl backward, running into the searing heat of the fire behind him.

The thing lunged down at him, and Michael instinctively threw his hands in front of him. With a crunch and snip Michael found himself disarmed. Michael watched in horror as the thing shuddered in pleasure, his hands making a visible lump as they travelled down its gullet. The disguise sloughed away, aft if it were rotted leather, revealing the pale thing atop him in its entirety.

A high pitched shriek filled the air, and the monster atop Michael lunged back down, tearing out Michaels throat. The shriek immediately changed to a wet burbling as air bubbled from the bloody hole that was his neck. That was me, Michael thought to himself as the pain faded away, and the world around him went bright.

"I could swear you were cheating." The corpse across from Henry said, taking a puff of its cigar. Henry found himself playing cards with three dead bodies, all teenage boys, all from one battle. Two were foreigners, speaking heavily accented English, while the third was a former member of Henry's squad, Jessie.

The three of them were frozen in time, their wounds preserved just as they had been when Henry had seen them. Henry had aged, though, and the older, wiser man that he had become was taking them for all they were worth. "you boys just don't know what you're doing. Not to mention how ridiculously easy it is to bait you," Henry said, sliding the pot he'd won toward himself.

"Boys, huh," The squad mate sitting beside him with the gaping hole in his neck said. "True, not a lot of growing up in Neverland." Jessie looked Henry up and down. "You've gotten fatter, I think."

"Don't you have to go to the light or reincarnate or some shit to do?" Henry shot back, pouring himself a drink from a conveniently placed bottle of Nyquil.

The corpse to his right blew smoke in his face. "Then who would haunt your dreams, friend?" the dead boy looked normal above the table. A bit pale, but normal. Beneath the table, his legs had been blown away by one of Henry's mines, leaving nothing but ragged scraps of flesh.

Henry squinted through the smoke at him, his fingers tight on the cap of his Nyquil bottle. The boy without legs had never spoken to him before, simply sat across from him in sullen silence. Henry closed the bottle, setting it aside as he waited for his squad mate to deal the next hand.

"You guys are pretty talkative tonight," Henry said, waiting for his five cards. "What's up?"

"Special occasion," Jessie said, dealing them in. "this is the last night the four of us can get together." Henry raised an eyebrow as he peered at his first card, the king of spades.

"so, no more nightmares?" Henry asked tentatively.

The legless boy scoffed, and Jessie shook his head. "Afraid not, me and Abir here, are gonna go get internships. I'm going to be the north wind, and he's planning on reincarnating as a mountain."

"That sounds... like it would take a long time." Henry said, glancing at the bullet riddled man across from him.

"hopefully by the end of my time as a mountain, mankind will be better, or gone."Abir the bullet riddled corpse said.

Henry got his second card, the four of clubs. "What about Leg-o-less?" he said, jerking a thumb at the corpse to his right.

The corpse slammed his fist on the table and leaned forward with a snarl. "I will haunt you until you die!" he said, his grip crushing his cigar as small embers scattered around his hand. "And my name is Halil!"

"Don't forget, you stepped on that mine trying to kill me and my friends." Henry said, flicking one of the embers back at him.

Halil narrowed his eyes, but remained silent.

"Halil wouldn't be able to haunt you if you didn't feel guilty, Henry, that's how this works," Jessie said, dealing John's third card, a queen of clubs "Anyway, we're all here today because something happened to you, buddy."

"Tell me about it." Henry said, checking his fourth card, a three of diamonds.

"You've been marked." Abir said, exhaling a plume of smoke as he checked his cards. "A demon was born this night, and he's going to come for you."

"I thought he might be a Dracula," Henry said, taking a swig of Nyquil.

"Dracula was a demon, but not every demon is Dracula," Jessie said, dealing John's fifth card, the jack of diamonds.

"So what's the deal, why's he after me?" Henry asked, throwing away the three and the four.

"that evil ritual strips away... I don't think there's a name for it in English," Jessie said, scooping up the throwaways. "in buddism it's that good juice that you get each time you come back."

"Karma?" Henry said, taking his next cards, a king of spades, and another king of spades. "Now I'm not sure I'm not cheating."

Jessie watched Henry's brows furrow as he looked at his three kings of spades. "I don't think we've got much longer," he said, putting his cards down. "Henry, what's your deepest, most childish wish?"

Henry's eyes flickered up, and he met Jessie's gaze. "I always wanted magic to be real," He said, without hesitation. The three ghosts around the table smiled, two gently, and one with casual scorn.

"Here," Jessie said, pushing his pile of chips towards Henry. "I'm not going to need this as the north wind." Then Jessie stood, and with a nod to each player at the table, he walked into the nothingness that surrounded them.

Henry watched Jessie leave, his pile of chips creating a mound on Henry's side of the table. Then, Abir stood and took a last draw on his cigar, before pushing his chips toward Henry. "The last fifteen years has dulled any hatred I had toward you. I wish you luck." Abir turned and walked away, fading into the darkness as he did.

Henry turned to Halil, "What about you?" he asked, putting the bottle to his lips. Halil smiled darkly, his pale face illuminated by the light of his cigar.

"If we are not eaten," Halil said with a shrug. "Then I will see you tomorrow night."

"I take it they didn't hate me enough to get eaten?" Henry said.

Halil shook his head.



Henry opened his eyes, squinting as the fluorescent light of his cell stabbed his retinas. Henry lay upon a hard bunk, his mind pouring over his most recent nightmare. As nightmares went, it was more tame than others. Usually it was some variation of watching them die again, or being them: getting shot, blown up, or stabbed in the neck.

In Henry's dream they had reached some form of rapport with each other. "Well, except for Halil," Henry muttered to himself, sliding his feet off the side of his narrow bunk. Henry pushed himself up, holding his head as a momentary wave of dizziness plagued him. It felt as though he had been watching the world through a monitor, the sudden tilt in vision not reflected in his other senses.

The feeling passed after a moment, and Henry took a deep breath, glancing around the interior of his little room at the police station. A little camera completed the room, crouched out of his reach like a spider, pointing its beady eye straight at his bed. Henry waved at the camera idly, his mind chewing on the problem of incarceration.

It was true that being a prisoner meant it would be hard for someone to break in and kill him, but from what he had seen the night before, Henry was acutely uncomfortable with his location being a matter of public record.

Henry didn't have to wait long. After about fifteen minutes had gone by, someone was buzzed in at the end of the hall. A loud clacking came down the hall, filling Henry with apprehension. The resounding footsteps came closer and closer, until they stopped outside his door.

"Place your hands through the door," a voice intoned as a panel of the door was slid away, revealing the vests of two cops. Henry sighed and stepped forward, putting his arms through the door. He felt the cold steel of handcuffs clicking around his wrists, stealing just a bit of heat, and surprisingly more dignity.

They didn't stop there, though. It wasn't until Henry was wearing a chain connecting his hands to his legs that they let him step out of the cell. Outside, and just to the left of the cell stood stunning woman in a black suit barely capable of containing her. her eyelashes were long and dark, her eybrows naturally arched, her body... Henry flickered his gaze back to her face, not wanting to get caught drooling. Her eyes were large and brown, with soft, downturned eyelids. Her lips were full, slightly parted as they moved... Wait, she's talking to me.

Henry shook his head and stuck his pinky in his ear, swabbing it out like an old farmer. "Sorry, you'll have to speak up, My hearing hasn't been that great since I was in the military," Henry said, desperately trying to keep his eyes on her face.

Her eyes narrowed, but she repeated herself, louder. "My name is Athena Williams, I've been appointed by the court to represent you, Mr. stein," she said, turning with a motion for him to follow. "Follow me." And with that she was walking down the hall, the distinctive clacking that Henry had attributed to a man in the two hundred pound range spreading in her wake.

Dodged that bullet, Henry thought to himself. He caught the guards attention, raised his eyebrows, and mouthed 'WOW', his eyes drawn back to her rapidly shrinking figure as though she were magnetic. The big dudes on either side of him were either too jaded or two professional to engage with Henry, simply nudging him in the ribs to get him moving.

Henry hustled to keep up with his retreating lawyer. "So why was one appointed for me?" Henry asked, peering down at the dynamo commanding the center of the hall. "I can afford a lawyer."

"You were unconsicous for two weeks," She said, waiting impatiently to get buzzed out by the door guy. "During that time, your bank accounts were frozen. Trust me when I say that you can no longer afford a lawyer. You regained consciousness last night, and were relocated to your cell."

Athena turned to glare at him while she pushed open the door. "And I suggest not talking about anything related to yourself until we are alone," she said, pushing the door open hard enough to slam it against the wall.

"Oh," Henry said, looking up at the cops holding his elbows. The guy on his right shrugged, and they followed after Henry's lawyer. "So who picked Athena, your mom or your dad?"

"I suggest not talking at all until we are alone," Athena said, without looking back.

"Bummer." Henry said, trotting as fast as he could to keep up with her, the chains rattling noisily as he moved. Finally she sat him down in a little room with a steel table, like one of those interrogation scenes in Hollywood, albeit there was no one-way mirror. The grim-faced officers clipped his chains to the table, and that was it: He wasn't going anywhere.

"So why don't you tell me how you see things, and I'll tell you how I see them," Athena said, settling down across from Henry.

"The country is desperate to crucify someone for what happened, the court froze my bank accounts so I can't afford a lawyer and made sure that they assigned an inexperienced junior to my defence?" Henry said, cocking his head to the side.

Athena froze for an instant before setting down a briefcase and opening it, withdrawing a pen and paper. "Something like that," she said. "How long have you been living in the Yellow River condo, Mr. Stein?" her pen hovered over the notepad, just out of Henry's sight.

"Since it was built," Henry said leaning forward. "I helped build it. I don't know if you've heard but I'm a hell of a plumber." Athena's eyebrow rose, but she scratched some notes on her paper.

"And what were you doing with half a million dollars stuffed into a bit of plumbing that evidence suggests resided behind the wall in the men's rest room?"

Henry waved her off. "It's a long story, let's just say I embezzeled it as insurance that the shady people commissioning the building would pay up. I found out they didn't act in good faith last night, and so I grabbed it and ran before I could get murdelated." Henry glanced at her face, then at the rapidly scratching pen in her hand. "Could you do me a favor?"

Athena grunted, still writing. "What is it?" she said, her lips pursed in concentration.

"Could you figure out if Charles Manson escaped from prison and is at large?" Henry asked, watching Athena's reaction.

Athena glanced up at Henry, frowning, before shrugging and writing down more notes. "And why do you mention him?" she asked, setting down her pen.

"Pretty sure he was there." Henry said, crossing his arms. "Old guy with a swastika on his forehead?" Henry tapped his forehead. "Not a hell of a lot of those."

Athena pulled out her phone, opening a browser. "Look, Mr Stein, I'm sure you saw what you saw, but we have to focus on your defense, I only have..." Athena's words trailed off. "Manson, who was moved to a local hospital to treat severe gastrointestinal bleeding, disappeared the night of the Mercy hospital massacre, and is presumed to have used the confusion to escape. He is currently at large."

Her gaze met Henry's "Security cameras spotted Manson being herded into the building along with the rest of the victims," Athena said, tapping her pen against the pad in front of her. "But they never recovered his body, and no one matching his description has been caught on camera since. Did you see what happened to him? It could be a bargaining chip during your case."

Henry raised his hand to scratch the scar on his scalp, and the chain attached to his wrist jerked his hand short, nearly forcing him to poke himself in the eye. Henry cocked and leaned his head, scratching himself like a dog, his eyes rolled back in his head. Athena watched him with an expectant look.

"Nah," Henry said, sitting up straight again. "You wouldn't believe me. I know that sounds a bit clich but my testimony would get us laughed out of the courtroom."

"Fair enough." Athena said dismissively, returning her gaze to her paper. "The largest piece of evidence the prosecution has against you is the submachine gun with your prints on it. Would you care to explain how that happened?"

Henry's brows furrowed. "Wait, you're just going to move on when I say you wouldn't believe me?" he asked, the muscles in his neck tightening. "Aren't you supposed to say that you'll believe me, because it's your job? That I can confide in you, and that you'll do your damnedest to clear my name?"

Athena shrugged. "You're an adult, Mr. Stein. If you think something would harm your defense, it's your prerogative to keep it under your hat."

Henry sat and tapped his fingers, nearly overcome with the urge to tell her all about the supernatural side of the mass murder-suicide. He felt like a kid who could hardly stay in his seat during show and tell. Was it Athena? Henry had kept his mouth shut in front of pretty ladies before, but Athena was making it hard. I mean difficult, Henry corrected himself with an inner smirk.

"Something funny?" Athena asked, eyeing Henry askance.

"No, Ma'am." Henry snapped to attention.

Athena opened her mouth to speak, and a knock interrupted her. With a furious scowl, she tromped up to the door and cracked it open, speaking in hushed, angry tones. "I don't care if the room was double booked, we were here first," She said, he voice rising. The voice on the other side of the door didn't change, speaking placidly just beneath Henry's hearing. "Then tell him to come tell me himself!" Athena slammed the door shut, returning to her desk and packing her suitcase.

"Didn't get a goddamn thing done." Athena said, neatly filling her briefcase despite her anger filled movements. "They're throwing so many wrenches at us, I'll be surprised if they don't find a way to stop me from attending your trial."

"That bad, huh?" Henry asked while Athena fumed.

"Tonight you can have a visitor for an hour between five and seven, I'll be there." Athena said as she slammed her suitcase closed. "Here's my card." She passed him a card with her name and office number on the front, and her cell handwritten on the back.

Henry nodded, tucking the card in the sleeve of his shirt. "See you tonight I guess," he said as Athena slammed the door open, bowling the two security guards out of the way. Athena nodded to him on the way out, then she turned the corner and Henry heard her distinctive footsteps fade into the distance.

"That doesn't bode well," Henry said, considering the abruptness of her departure.

A cloying smell assaulted his nose as the two guards came in. Henry's eyes widened as two corpses stepped into the room, wearing guard uniforms. Their skin was flush and healthy, they moved as though they had complete autonomy, and yet, Henry Knew they were dead men who simply didn't know they were dead.

Henry leapt to his feet, the chair skittering away behind him. The chains around his limbs rattled and pulled tight as he backed away from the two dead men. "Take it easy, we're just taking you back to your cell," the older corpse said, producing a key to the lock that held Henry's chains fixed to the table.

"Fat chance," Henry said, scowling.

The dead men shared a glance, and the second one pulled a taser from his belt. "Don't make this hard on yourself. You're already in plenty of trouble," he said, brandishing the taser.

"Fuck you, I know who you're working for," Henry said, staying as far on the other side of the table as he could. The dead men shared another glance, and the younger one bent his legs and leapt forward, pure desperation written on his face as he swung the taser forward.

Henry leaned back, raising his arms to catch the incoming taser, his eyes widening as the chains on his wrist drew taut, catching his hands inches away from stopping the crackling electricity flowing between the two steel prongs.

The prongs slammed home in Henry's left shoulder, and the momentum of the heavy guard bowled Henry over as he convulsed, pulses of uncontrollable contractions spreading outward from his shoulder. His back was against the ground, and Henry's arms were held up, still connected to the table above him, painfully cutting into his wrists as he curled in on himself.

Through tearing eyes, Henry saw the older guard move from beneath the table. The older guard reached behind him, his fingers pulling a syringe tucked behind his shirt. The old man pulled the cap off with a click, kneeling beside Henry's shaking body.

"sorry it had to go this way, kid," the guard said, putting his weight on Henry's head, exposing his neck. "But I have to choose between me and you." Henry watched the needle descend out of sight from the corner of his eye, straining to throw their weight off of him as he shouted at a painful volume.

Henry felt a prick on his neck, and something cold spread under his skin, and his thrashing redoubled. "Is the car ready?" Henry heard the elder guard say as the world turned sideways.

Henry heard a click, and the racheting sound of the chain pulling free of the table, and suddenly the world sank, then it started gliding along around him. It took him a moment to realize that his skewed perspective was a result of his head flopping around as the two dead men carried him by his shoulders. Henry became aware that he couldn't feel anything, and that he was about to die.

"you don.." Henry slurred as they dragged his limp, numb feet across the parking lot. "understand..." Henry desperately tried to enunciate the words. "You guys are all...ready dead." One of the guards stepped into his field of vision, opening the rear door to a large white van with no windows. Rape vans, he had jokingly called them when he was younger.

Henry summoned herculean resolve as his head descended toward the black maw, telling every fiber of his being to move, struggle and thrash like he'd never done before. His shoulder twitched imperceptibly as they shoved him deeper in the van.

A feminine grunt of effort preceded a clunk, and the flutter of paper strewn through the air, then there was a scream, and the sound of a taser echoed through the parking lot, the blue electric arcs casting struggling shadows against the inside of the van, affording Henry a front row seat to the shadow theatre that would determine if he lived or died.

A woman screamed in pain and rage, followed shortly by a man. Scuffling sounds moved around the van, and Henry lost his show, until finally, and man's voice cut through the silence. "No, you can't. he'll kill-" the sentence was broken by a wet popping sound, followed by a shrill scream.

Seconds later, Athena leaned into the back of the van, looking down at Henry, who could only follow her movement with the eye that wasn't pressed against the dusty vinyl upholstery. "Come on, Mr. Stein, we have to get you out of here," she said, grabbing his arm and tugging, which amounted to shrugging his shoulder. How did she beat those guys? Henry thought to himself as she continued to tug and strain, trying to move him.

"Fuck it," Athena said, ducking down and folding his legs behind him before slamming the rape van's doors closed, encapsulating Henry in total darkness. Numb, blind and deaf, Henry felt as though he drifted through space for hours before he made out a jingling outside the van. Shortly the driver side opened, and Athena hopped into the van, pausing to raise the seat and check the mirrors before kicking their escape vehicle into gear.

Athena pulled out onto the street, and Henry glanced as far toward the driver's seat as he could, barely making out her straightened black hair. "Ank ooo," Henry said, his body floating on air.

Athena glaced over her shoulder at Henry, and he could just barely make out what seemed to be a bloody nose. "It's my job," she said with a shrug. "Although driving off into the night with a suspected killer is not." Athena grunted. "Probably don't even have a job, as of tonight."

"'orry," Henry slurred into the floor.

"Don't be sorry," Athena said, keeping her eyes on the road. "I hated that job. Whenever I saw some smug ass bend the truth, I wanted to beat their face in so badly that I froze up, nearly forgot to breathe. This whole fighting for my life thing feels great, and I'm finally involved in something important, not debating some asshole over a DUI."

"I 'eed" Henry said miserably.

"Oh, umm..." Athena said, her ears turning red. "That's ok, it's not my car."

They drove on in silence as Henry thanked god that he was numb as well as paralyzed, because he was without a doubt basting in his own juices. As the ride went on for minutes that stretched to hours, Henry noticed the traffic dying down, amazed that he hadn't seen telltale bue and red flashes of light against the rear windows.

"Where are we going?" Henry asked, feeling as though his numb body and the humiliation of his predicament had taken him to some state of zen. I am one with the scratchy vinyl carpeting wet with pee, it is me and I am it.

"We're going somewhere they're not gonna find us right away," Athena said, turning her high-beams down so oncoming traffic wasn't blinded. "So you can tell me that story you were so sure I wasn't going to believe."

An hour later the pavement turned to rough, bumpy dirt, and to Henry's horror, he found himself tossed and rolled around in the back of the van until all of its contents had been evenly mixed. The van rolled to a stop at last, leaving Henry blessedly face-up, cautiously breathing through his mouth. Athena slid out of the drivers seat, the van making a little rocking motion as she hopped to the ground.

Henry heard gravel crunch as she walked around the back and threw the doors open. "Here," she said, leaning forward, her hand extended. "Lemme help you..." Her voice cut off when she touched his shirt. Athena frowned and repositioned her hand trying to avoid getting her hands wet. After a few attempts, she stepped back, her nose wrinkling at the smell.

"On second thought, I'll be right back," she said, breaking into a run, leaving Henry alone in the van with nothing but his thoughts and the moonbeam illuminating the van trough the opened rear doors. Henry ruminated to himself. How had he been so sure that those men were dead? As he searched his memories, he couldn't pinpoint anything but a twisting sensation in his gut and a certainty in his mind.

Am I just going crazy? Henry thought to himself. But if he was going crazy, how did he explain the behavior of the guards trying to kidnap him? And the guy who offed himself, what was up with that? Henry stared up at the ceiling of the van, pondering.

A raven cawed outside, drawing Henry's attention out of his thoughts. The gravel outside announced Athena's return. She appeared once again in the beam of light outside the van, looking positively terrifying with a brown-stained industrial apron wrapped around her waist and thick leather gloves on her hands.

"I can tell you're serious about not getting piss on you," Henry said, trying to raise an eyebrow.

"That's good," Athena said, bending over Henry. "If you're starting to feel your sarcasm again, you should be able to help me move you." Athena grabbed Henry's arm, and between the two of them, managed to slide him to his feet and get him moving at a tottering walk toward a wooden two story home in the middle of the forest. At the top of three excrutiating steps, Athena deposited him on a rocking bench adorning the porch, then knelt down in front of him.

"Umm, It's okay if," Henry started, when Athena began to unzip his pants. With a swift yank that nearly tore him out of his seat, Athena pulled his pants and underwear down around his ankles, pulling each pant leg off individually afterward.

Henry sat there, bottomless, willing his hand to cover his junk. His hand raised into the air, shaking, for a moment before dropping back to the bench, exhausted. Athena stood and tugged Henry's shirt over his head roughly, before taking off her apron, wrapping his clothes in it, and setting off, leaving him sprawled on the front porch of a stranger's house, naked, in the middle of the night, unable to move.

Henry assessed the situation, turning his head as far as his weakened neck would allow. I suppose I've been in worse situations, He thought to himself. In fact, the whole thing reminded him of the time he came home covered in mud from head to toe, and his parents had sprayed him down with a hose before allowing him to come inside.

The time passed slowly, and Henry was left to ponder life choices as a cool breeze played across his naked flesh. Next time heavily armed guys break into the lobby of my condo, I'm gonna take my own advice, and just barricade the door, Henry thought to himself.

A hissing, sliding sound came from around the side of the house, and Henry tensed, his body priming for a hopeless fight or flight. Athena emerged from around the peeling paint of the corner of the house, dragging a hose behind her, drawing a chuckle out of Henry.

""There's only one way this ends, come out with your hands up." Athena said, adopting a shooting pasture as she aimed the hose at Henry, the pistol-grip head held confidently in her delicate hands.

"You'll never take me alive!" Henry howled. A flood of freezing water jetted across his skin, scouring his body clean. The sensation in his skin was just starting to come back, and Henry could only wonder how much of the stinging spray he could actually feel. Temperature was starting to flood back, just as Henry's body went numb again.

"God that's cold!" Henry shouted, weakly trying to block the stream of water with his shaking hand.

Athena, biting on her tongue in concentration, didn't listen to him, instead making sure to go over a few of Henry's less traveled places with a harsh stream of what felt like glacial water, making sure he was as clean as she could get him with a hose.

After an interminable amount of humiliating hosing, she stood back with a nod before throwing his arm over her shoulder again, helping him to his feet. The two of them walked into the house, where just inside lay a couch, covered in a blanket and facing a newly built fire.

"I've heard of interrogation techniques like this," Henry said, weakly bundling the covers around him as he shivered. "I'll tell you anything you want, just let me stay here."

Athena smiled, sitting down on a second recliner across from him. With a breath, she began shrugging out of her blouse, and in the light of the fire, Henry noticed the massive brown stain covering the silk shirt. "What happened there?" Henry asked, his gaze reluctantly turning back to the fire as she slid the shirt off.

"The men who were shoving you into the van fought like their lives were on the line," Athena said, pulling the blanket on her couch over herself, resting her arms across her stomach. "I knocked one out to start with, but the other guy..." Athena motioned to her badly bruised nose crusted with blood, and showed Henry the scrapes on her knuckles. "I took him down with the taser, but when it was obvious he couldn't fight back..." Athena leaned back, as if considering her next words.

"His heart burst out of his chest," she said, shuddering.

Ick, Henry thought. "Don't blame yourself, they were already dead." Henry said, staring into the fire. "And not in the poetic sense, like they were incurably ill or marked for death. Those men were actually dead, and convinced that they were not."

"How do you know that?" Athena said, her focus sharpening on Henry.

"I don't... know," Henry said, his lips pursed in thought. "I've had a crazy couple nights." Henry straightened in the couch a bit to face Athena directly. "I think you should hear what happened that night."

Athena nodded, her beautiful eyes focused on him, ready to believe anything he said. god, I could claim to have taken them all on single handedly. Henry thought fleetingly, before shaking his head, and telling the story, completely, and honestly.

Nicole Smith, or Nick, to her friends, had a crappy life. Her parents hated her, it seemed like the moment she stepped through the door, the shouting started. She knew her parents were breaking up, and it was because of her. Nick had seen her dad's lover in his car, across the road from her as she rode with Tom and his friends.

Nick had tried to keep it under her hat, but one particularly bad shouting match with her mom had seen her bring it out and use the information like a weapon, clubbing her mother over the head with news of her father's infidelity. Her mother had run away.

For the first time, Nick felt like she had won the fight, but then she just felt like the worst piece of shit, slinking away from her house, back to Tom's. She sat there, hugging her knees and staring at her phone as it vibrated across the sink, each buzz rattling it one step closer to landing it in the garbage.

A knock came from outside the bathroom. "Nick? Are you still in there?" Tom's voice came through the worn bathroom door. Nicks gaze fell on the door, covered in small scratches from when the dogs accidentally locked themselves inside the bathroom. The walls were covered in dust, and cobwebs floated in the corners of the ceiling. Underneath the grime, there were poorly covered crayon scribbles on the first two feet of the wall, from when Tom's sister had been two.

A single clean pathway from the door to the toilet had been carved by the inadvertent cleaning of people's socks. Nick cast her gaze on the mildew covered ceiling. Her home was immaculate, and yet Tom's family was so much happier. Obviously the secret wasn't diligent cleaning.

"Nick, can you come out and talk to me?" Tom said, his voice leaking into the room. Nicole sighed, unwrapping her arms around her knees and sliding her feet to the ground. Nicole stood and after taking a galvanizing breathe, opened the door separating her from the outside world.

Tom, a couple inches shorter than her, was a freckled boy in an oversized white T-shirt, a short mane of brown hair hung limply around his face. Tom wrung his hands with anxiety.

"Nick, You're my friend..." Tom began hesitantly.

"I'm sensing a but approaching." Nick said, crossing her arms.

"My mom and dad say you can't stay anymore," Tom said, his eyes downcast.

An icy stab of pain, anger and betrayal stabbed Nick down to her core. She shrugged. "Not surprising, I can't stay here forever." She said, turning to rescue her cell-phone from falling into the trash while hooking her arm under her backpack laden with extra clothes and a water bottle.

"Well," Nick said, brushing past Tom on her way to the front door, desperately trying to leave before all her pain spilled out and flooded his happy, filthy home. "It was fun while it lasted." Nick picked her way through the living room, careful not to step on anything breakable.

As Nick reached the door, Tom called out to her. "Nick, ummm..." Ask me to stay. Nicole's heart pleaded, wanting to know that he wanted her to stay. "If you really can't go home..." Tom said, fidgeting, seeming to be at war with himself. Finally he stepped forward, pulling a wad of twenties from his pocket.

"I've been working part time to save for a new computer." Tom said, his eyes avoiding her gaze, missing her expression as she looked down at the money he offered. "But if you're really going to do what you said, You're going to need money. My dad says if you eat at Costco, this will last you a month."

In Nick's mind, the money took on a different meaning: Severence pay. 'Thanks for the sex, now get the fuck out of my life.' Her heart chipped a little more, as if some overzealous stonecarver was hammering the rough shape out with each harsh strike the world took at her.

Nick nodded coolly, wordlessly taking the money, turning and letting the screen door rattle to a close behind her, unwilling to let Tom see her face. Nick put her head down and trotted around Tom's worn hand-me-down truck. "Wait!" Tom's voice called out, and Nick sped up, squeezing the tears away from her eyes.

A tug on her backpack nearly sent her reeling, and Tom spun her around, enveloping Nick in a back-breaking hug. "Call me," Tom said, with none of his usual timidity. "Call me if you're safe, call me if you're in trouble. Anytime, anywhere you are, I'll come get you." He said, staring into her eyes.

Nick nodded, and broke away from him, turning left along the road, heading to the outside of their little suburban bubble. Nick came to a T in the road. Right would lead her back to her parent's house, back to the screaming and pain. Left would put her on a bus to anywhere she wanted to go. Objectively, anywhere where people aren't constantly fighting would be better, she thought to herself as her feet turned to the left.

Nick pulled out the wad of twenties and started counting. "Guess I'm only worth four hundred bucks," she said, stuffing all but one of them away in her sock. Nick pulled out her phone and began plotting a route to California by bus.

A few minutes later, as the afternoon began to stretch her shadow along the pavement, The bus arrived, driven by a humorless, skinny older woman. She silently made change for Nick's first twenty, and then closed the door as Nick found a seat away from anyone else. Nick's heart drummed in her chest as she watched the familiar landscapes of the last fifteen years begin to fade away, giving in to eerily unfamiliar scenery, lit by the dying sun as she escaped from her broken home.

By the time Nick made it to California, she was starving. Four hundred dollars had seemed like a lot of money, and she had been horrified to watch it slip away as fast as it had. Self-preservation instinct had kicked in, and she hoarded every cent, visiting a soup kitchen as often as she spent money at Costco.

Nick had a knack for finding safe places to sleep, curling up and disappearing for a doze in semi-public places, never out of earshot. Even with her scrimping, the money eventually ran out, and one day, Nick found herself staring into a restaurant, pangs of hunger worrying away at her insides.

A waiter walked by the window, pointedly ignoring her, and the shift in focus showed Nick her own reflection in the mirror. Nick's cheeks had sunken in, and dark skin under her eyes nearly made her look like she had been beaten. Her hair hung down, greasy and clumped together, a sign that she hadn't showered in weeks.

She didn't like the way she looked, now. It was hard to name the feeling, but whenever she saw herself, it seemed to be a shining example of her inadequacy, staring her in the face, blaming her for everything. Nick turned away from the window, intent on moving on to the soup kitchen down the road. She'd long since pawned her phone for a few hot meals, but she knew by the height of the burning sun and the ache in her stomach that it was that time of day again.

Nick didn't want to go there for a handful of reasons, chief among them, a social services leech who would attach to her elbow, and wouldn't stop asking her questions about her name, her parents, where she was from. Nick could see it in his eyes, the over-friendly attitude, the pointed questions, and especially the way he treated her like a child.

The first time he had approached her, she had ignored him, shrugging him off and walking away as soon as she had eaten the modest meal. The second time, irritated by his oh-so-gentle voice and his 'I was just like you' bullshit, she looked him in the eye and told him that if she wanted to go home, there were a million ways she could have done so already.

His eyes lit up, and Nick realized she had made the mistake of engaging with him, just making his clinginess worse. He never got her name, Nick called herself Fort Wayne, or Wayne for short. After that, he didn't give her a moment's peace whenever she went to the kitchen, which was happening more and more often, Nick realized, looking down at her grimy pants and worn out shoes.

Nick glanced down the street, her stomach sinking at the thought of having to deal with the invasive questions. Reaching a decision, Nick turned and walked the other way, fishing a thin plastic water bottle out of her backpack. Swigging from the bottle, Nick was deciding whether to go dumpster diving or steal a can of soup at the supermarket when the man walking in front of her dropped his wallet.

Nick caught a blur of motion at the bottom of her vision, and spotted the brown leather wallet resting where it had landed, its owner sauntering on, unaware. Nick felt a sudden surge of heart-rending confliction. The contents of the wallet were surely more than Tom had given her, enough to keep her fed for months with one well-placed credit purchase.

Her mind spun, already calculating what to buy and where before the man noticed his missing card and shut it off. Nicole shook her head, and called out. "Excuse me," she shouted, stooping down to pick up the leather wallet and jogging to catch up with him, waving her arms. "You dropped your wallet." The man, of no particular height, turned and smiled.

Nick's heart skipped a beat, not sure if it was fear or attraction. The man's face was angular, with a well-defined jaw leading to a cleft chin, softened somewhat by a goatee. His eyes danced in amusement, seeming to pierce through her. he had an unruly mane of brown hair atop his head, an odd, faded scar on his forehead, and a disarming grin, putting her initial apprehension to rest.

"My, you're a friend if ever there was one," He said, his hand making contact with hers as he received the brown leather from Nick's hand. A jolt of something seemed to bridge the gap between his hand and hers, and Nick found the world around the two of them fading away. He cocked his head to the side, his gaze taking in Nick's sorry state. "Who's got your back, sister?"

"I've got my back." Nick said, swaying on her feet, sure she was about to faint from hunger.

"That aint right," The man said, a tone of harsh reprimand coming from his mouth, washing across Nicks senses. "Only job people have is to watch out for each other." The man glanced down at the wallet in his hand, and back up to her. "Something I think you know better than most your age." Nick nodded, the wooziness making it hard to hear him.

"You look like a couple miles of bad road," He said, sliding the wallet into his jeans. "Why don't I get you something to eat, as thanks." He extended his hand. "Charles Summers."

Nick grasped his rough hand with her own, noting the thick bones that made her hand seem delicate by comparison. He gave her a firm grip that bordered on painful, then lead the way into the restaurant she had been loitering in front of earlier. Nick hesitantly followed him through the glass door as a wave of smells washed over her, twisting her stomach in knots as she started drooling.

The waiter met them at the entrance, and pointed them to a booth against the window. Charles ignored the politely extended hand and sat at a table in the middle of the restaurant, with his back to the door in a display of arrogant confidence. The waiter frowned for a moment before shrugging and bringing them menus.

"What'll it be?" Charles said, his eyes scanning the menu. Nick likewise ran her gaze up and down the menu, searching for the cheapest meal she could find, but stopped herself short of ordering the kids meal.

"I'll take the tomato soup." She said, sliding the menu toward the edge of the table.

Charles stared at her for a moment. "No you're not," he said dismissively, and Nick felt her heart sink. "you're having mashed potatoes and steak, salad, and ice cream." He cocked his eyebrow, his piercing gaze shaking, as if he was dreaming. A hair-thin thread of worry began to worm it's way through Nick's stomach.

"Unless you like apple pie better than ice cream?" he asked.

"I.." Nick began, overwhelmed by the man across from her.

Charles slapped his forehead. "Oh yeah, ice cream on pie," he said, shaking his head. "It's been a while."

"Don't treat me like a kid!" Nick hissed, standing. "I get enough of that shit everywhere else!"

Every eye in the diner turned toward them, and Nick felt like shrinking in on herself. Charles didn't seem to mind them at all, much less acknowledge their existence. His gaze stayed fixed on her eyes, probing.

Charles shrugged. "Makes no difference to me what age you look like. You did me a favor, now I'm doing you one. I got the money, so what the hell else am I gonna do with it but practice what I preach?" Nick stayed standing, trembling as her stomach boiled with hunger.

"I'm gonna treat you like you, age notwithstanding, and I'm gonna give you a choice." Charles said, waving the waiter over to him. "There's going to be steak and mashed potatoes on that side of the table, and whether you're sitting here when it shows up is up to you. sound fair?"

Nick sat down, her shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry," she said after the food arrived, her voice quaking in shame.

Charles' brows furrowed as he cocked his head. "For what?" he asked, his tone confused.

"Making a scene," She said, her face turning red.

"Ah," Charles said, with a wink. "pick up your drink and plate, I'm gonna show you how it's done." Nick, confused, lifted her plate and pepsi off the table. Charles jumped up on the table, scattering food and condiments aside as he began singing.

"Love, love me do!" he shouted, a bit off key, "You know I love you!" Charles waited until every eye was on him. "So ple-e-ea-aase, love me do!"

Nick ducked her head, mortified to be seen next to him, but as she looked around, something miraculous happened. People were smiling, laughing, some even joined in, from the safety of their seats. In less than a minute, two waiters had wrestled Charles from the table, and seconds later, the two of them found themselves on the street again, although less hungry.

"And that's how you make a scene." Charles said, waving at a matronly woman wearing a turtleneck inside the window. "and get a free lunch."

"But they'll never let you in there again." Nick said, in disbelief at his audacity.

"So?" Charles said with a shrug. "It's a big world, lots of restaurants. Why do I have to give them the power by begging to be let in from the cold? Life's too short to bow and scrape to every authority that comes along." Nick followed along with him, her brows furrowed, deep in thought. Nick found herself thinking that she liked his way of looking at the world, that maybe she'd like to learn more about it.

Nick followed Charles unconsciously. It didn't occur to her that she'd been fed, and she had no more business with him, he just led the way, stringing her along with conversation and laughter, until she found herself in front of a massive condominium.

"Well, this is where we part ways, Nick," Charles said, turning to face her with an outstretched hand. Nick took it, expecting a shake, and was astonished when he knelt in front of her and kissed the back of her hand, sending a little thrill up her spine.

"You live here?" Nick asked, looking up at the looming building, and over at the hospital beside it. "Isn't this where... all those people died?" Nick gawked at the size of the towering monument.

"Sure is," he said, grunting as he rose to his feet, slapping a hand on one knee and pushing off of the ground. "About half slaughtered in the bathrooms and gym, and the tenants died when carbon dioxide leaked through the entire building and suffocated all of 'em."

Nick took a step back, goosebumps raising on her skin. "Then why are you alive? Actually, why do you still live here? That's crazy!" she said, seeing Charles in a new light, as a man with a death wish.

"I've got all my affairs in order. Besides, I just moved in," Charles said, before looking around and then leaning close, whispering conspiratorially. "They're also paying people to live there." Charles winked, grinning. "Free rent and five hundred bucks a month for the next two years, That's how desperate they are.

Something snapped inside Nichole. A warm place to sleep, food to eat, money and time to find a job? It was amazing, it was too good to be true. A little voice in her mind quoted her cynical father 'if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.' Nichole felt the aching satisfaction in her stomach, looked down at her grimy clothes, and decided to throw away that niggling doubt.

"Is there... any way I can get paid to live there?" Charles pointedly looked Nick up and down as she fidgeted under his gaze. When the silence was becoming awkward with expectation, he spoke.

"No," he said, causing her heart to sink. "At least, not looking like that." Charles motioned for Nick to follow him. "they're looking for outspoken poster boys and girls people can point to and say, 'nothing wrong there.'" He said, bringing her into a beautiful marble lobby, with a fountain shooting glittering beads of water into the sky, scattering faint rainbows across the room.

Try as she might, Nick couldn't find evidence of the brutal massacre that happened just over two weeks ago. Even now, whenever Nick walked by a sports bar, or TV display, she still saw the event mentioned in the news, along with the face of the man suspected to be the mastermind. He had a nose that was straight with a bit extra at the end rounding it out, short cut hair, and a large forehead. He was caught with a gun and half a million dollars in stolen cash fleeing from the scene.

Charles walked Nick past the front desk, where the doorman was watching T.V. on the big screen behind him, he looked back at Charles and Nick, waving them in without a word before turning his back to them, refocusing on the latest news.

The news story was about Henry Stein's escape from custody, and his background in the military, showing a picture of the blue-eyed man stooped over with a shovel, ominously glaring at the camera, and another with him looking feverish and sweaty, with dark circles under his eyes, saluting the camera. A looping video was played again, showing two men carrying Henry to a van and begin shoving him inside before the video cut out and began again.

"I hope they catch that bastard." Nick said with venom as they approached the elevator.

"Hmm?" Charles said, glancing back at the T.V. "Oh, that guy. Don't worry about him. He'll get what's coming for him, just you wait." Charles glanced back at her. "First you need a shower and a change of clothes." Noting her uncomfortable glance at Charles, he chuckled.

"I have a neighbor next door, single lady, she owes me some favors, and she'd be thrilled to help you out with the shower and clothes. I'm going to crash in my place, come get me when you're cleaned up." Charles said as they waited for the elevator.

"Thank you," Nick said, a smile breaking out onto her face.

"Don't worry about it, I know you would have done something great, no matter where you are," Charles said, as they stepped into the elevator. "In fact I consider myself lucky to have found you when I did, you're a diamond in the rough."

The elevator dinged on the fourth floor, and they stepped out, Charles sauntering in front of her with his hands in his pockets. A few doors later, he stopped in front of an open door, brazenly walking in. a bit apprehensive, Nick followed him in. Inside, a woman lay on the couch, breathing long, deep breaths, as if all her focus was on keeping her lungs moving. She wore a shirt many sizes too large for her, and the neck was nearly sliding down over her shoulders, exposing her breasts.

"Alice." He said, his voice like stone. The woman's eyes focused, first on the ceiling, then on the two of them.

"Oh, Charles, you've got a friend." She said, a smile coming to her face as she rose from the couch sleepily.

"She wants a room, get her ready," Charles said. The commanding tone he took with the woman who 'owed him some favors' unsettled Nick momentarily, before he turned to her with an endearing grin. "Listen to what she says, and you'll be sure to get a place here." Charles stepped in and gave Nick a hug, surprising her.

"I'm glad I could help you out," he said, stepping away. "Now I gotta crash for an hour or two. Welcome to the family, Nichole." He walked past her out the door, nodded to Alice, and opened the door across the hall. Nick's eyes caught a glimpse of naked flesh beyond the door before Charles closed it behind him.

Nick blinked and shook her head, dismissing what she had thought she had seen as an optical illusion, a trick played on her by a leather couch in the light of a flickering T.V.

Alice rose to her feet with a yawn. "Okay, Nichole, Let's take a look at what He has brought to us." She stood in front of Nick and gently placed her hands on her cheeks, looking into her eyes, making Nick turn her eyes away from the too-personal contact.

"It's okay," Alice murmured. "Just look into my eyes, Nichole." Nicks brows furrowed, but she complied, staring into the eyes of the woman pressing closer to her.

"How do you know my..." Nick's words fled as she suddenly experienced the sensation of falling. Once again, the world shrank, a tighter focus than it had ever been, until all that remained was the woman's brown eyes. Sensation faded away, and for a desperate moment, something inside her fluttered in panic, trying to escape the inexorable pull of her eyes.

The moment passed, and Nick felt her body relax as she drifted backwards down a long tunnel, the scene before her growing further and further away, until at last, the world went dark. Sensations washed over Nick like dreams, passing in and out of her consciousness. Hot, then cold. Rough cloth against her skin. Pleasure, then pain, each flowing away from her like waves on the shore, returning with new sensations, only to leave her adrift in darkness again.

Henry broke through the fence, following the plow that rumbled forward, churning up the earth as it went. His commander led the way, cutting a path through the chaotic, ear splitting din of noise. His friends howled around him, shooting controlled bursts toward the concrete fortifications as they trotted along.

Concussive sounds, more felt than heard, travelled through Henry's organs as the plow began pushing mines out of the ground, detonating them toward the defenders. Henry wore a fierce grin, trotting with his friends, entirely unchecked. They were going to make them pay, have justice for every indignity visited upon them.

Henry spotted a pasty face raise above the lip of reinforced concrete, and he dropped to his knee, sighted his AK-47, and fired in a breath, just as he had trained. Henry's keen eyes made out a splash of blood against the wall behind the enemy soldier, and he jumped up with a cry of joy, jostling against his teammates in his exhuberance.

Thrown off balance, Henry stumbled one, two steps away from the path made by the plow. A blast flung his legs out from under him, and Henry found himself laying on his back, coughing. Henry spotted his gun, resting beside him and seized it, climbing to his feet.

Or, that's what should have happened. Henry grabbed the gun, tried to put his legs under him, and flopped onto his side. Henry tried once more, and a wave of pain swept through him, radiating from his legs. Henry put his arms beneath him, and looked downward. His legs ended six inches above the knee, ragged and bloody.

A thin wail erupted from Henry's lips, as he dragged himself away with his hands, leaving a crimson trail backward through the overturned dirt as his friends parted around him like a river around a stone.

I wanna go home, I wanna go home. Henry chanted in his mind, as he dragged himself away from the noise and chaos, tears flowing down his face. His arms grew weak, and Henry found himself unable to pull himself any further as he reached the broken fence. Dizziness overtook him, and the world went white.

"So let me get this straight, you were celebrating, because you thought you'd killed me, then you fucked up and got your legs blown off, and decided to haunt me?" Henry said, returning to the same featureless void he always did after a nightmare. "Ever consider that had things been different, I'd be the one haunting you?" Henry faced Halil, who puffed on his cigar.

"I would relish it," he said, blowing smoke from his nose.

"Huh," Henry grunted, leaning on the table slovenly. "So why'd you stay when your buddies took off? Seemed to me like getting eaten would be a bad thing."

"The annihilation of the soul," Halil said, staring at Henry. "They were cowards, unwilling to risk the True Death for a chance at greatness. Halil picked up a chip from in front of him, and held it out. The chip in his hand seemed to dissolve, revealing a mote of brilliant light.

"What do you think this is?" Halil asked, balancing the mote on his finger, his face illuminated by the light.

"I thought it was a poker chip," Henry said guardedly, his eyes on the brilliant light.

"This is a person," Halil said, as the mote returned to a chip. The spell we went through stripped everything away from every man, woman, and child in that building," Halil set the chip down on his side of the table. "And converted them to power."

"And you want to keep yours?" Henry asked, his tone dry.

Halil leaned back, fixing Henry with a solemn stare. "I do," he said, simply. "I've spent almost as long dead as I had been alive, and it has done little to quell the dissatisfaction I had with the time I spent on earth."

Henry tapped his fingers on the table. "So what makes you think it's okay to use those people to pad your reincarnation pension fund?"

Halil shrugged. "The deed has already been done, I had no part in it, why let some demon amass more power? Simply denying it from him is a good in itself. Henry squinted his eyes at Halil's emphasis of 'I'.

"Are you saying I had something to do with it?" Henry asked, his voice a low growl.

"You know you had something to do with it," Halil said, running his fingers along the stacks of chips in front of him. "You laid the circle that lies underneath the fountain, fixed all the complications with such a haphazard system. Knowingly or not, you helped kill everyone in that building."

Henry seethed, his anger making his vision red. "What do you mean by everyone." he demanded, clenching his fists.

In response, Halil held up another chip in the palm of his hand. "This was a woman named Leanne," Halil said as the chip resolved into the woman herself, in miniature. She was nude, limp, stretched across Halil's palm in apparent death. "You told her to stay indoors, and then strung wires across the emergency exit and elevators to prevent anyone from escaping."

"That's not why I did it!" Henry shouted, slamming his palm against the table.

"It's the result that we're concerned with, though, isn't it?" Halil said, taking another puff of his cigar. "You trapped those people inside their homes with fear, and profited greatly from it.

"If I profited, then where are my chips?" Henry asked,

Halil smiled. "You already made your wish," he said, blowing stinging smoke into Henry's eyes.

Henry blinked, wiping the gritty glue of sleep out of his eyes. Henry sat in an old couch, a beam of light across his eyes, making him squint. He was in a modest cabin with a worn fur rug and unpainted wood panels built around a sturdy stone hearth. A scratchy wool blanket was wrapped around him, and Henry found his fingertips throbbing with pain where he had held it tight over himself through the night.

Craning his neck to take in the living room, Henry spotted a change of clothes laid out for him just beyond his reach. Weary and aching from the abuse his body had endured the night before, Henry reached out for the faded jeans folded atop the end table. Straining, Henry couldn't quite make his arm stretch the full distance to the clothes. It was becoming increasingly likely that he'd have to leave the comfort of his blanket.

"Get over here," Henry snarled at the jeans, feeling his whole body stretch. The pants rose to meet his hand. Henry stared at the pants in his hand. Only when the frigid air painfully tightened his nipples did Henry close his mouth and break out of the trance. Henry focused on the shirt and reached out for it. "you too."

The shirt flew to his hand. Henry started giggling, flinging the clothes on, mindless of the early morning chill. Henry chortled, unable to contain his joy. Henry ran out the door, his gaze scanning the surrounding forest. Henry focused on a nearby rock and tried throwing it at a tree. It wobbled to the tree, tapping it with a disappointing clack.

"not super impressive, but..." Henry said, musing. "I can move things with my mind!" Henry tilted his head back and howled in pure joy. Henry danced and hopped in place, unable to control himself, until he collapsed to a seat, panting.

Henry looked at the rock again, his eyes narrowed in concentration. He had tried to pick up and throw the rock the first time, but he found himself mostly fighting to keep it aloft, so this time, Henry pictured the rock in the sling of a large slingshot, pulling until he felt a tangible strain in his mind. It felt as though his brain was being doused in the lactic acid usually reserved for one's muscles.

With a mental snap, he released the sling, and the rock shot off of the ground, embedding itself in the tree with a much more satisfying crack! Henry whooped, nearly delirious with joy. Just imagine if it had been a claymore, Henry thought to himself.

The tree exploded. Henry threw his hands over his face, a little voice in the back of his mind telling him that it was pointless. Explosions happen faster than you can blink, whatever shrapnel was going to burrow into him had already done it long before he raised his arms. It was pure reflex action.

"What the hell was that?" Athena leaned out of the second story window, her brown eyes first landing on the shredded tree, then locking onto Henry, who was leaning against the wall of the house, his face covered in soot. "What happened?"

Henry brushed his hands over his body, like he'd been trained, looking for painful or itchy spots. Once Henry was confident he'd taken no damage to a major organ, he looked up at Athena, who leaned out over the windowsill.

"I can do magic," Henry said with a grin.

"What the hell?" Athena said, pulling her head out of the window. Henry heard clomping resonate through the house as she barreled down the stairs. Moments later, the door flew open as Henry was coming to a stand. Athena burst out, still shrugging on a jacket.

"What the hell did you do to the tree?" Athena demanded, stalking toward Henry with a thunderous expression.

"Sorry," Henry said, glancing at the shredded tree trunk with chagrin. "I just had a stray thought when I was shooting rocks at the tree with my mind, and it exploded."

Athena crossed her arms. "Really," She said, a brow raised, sarcasm oozing from her.

In response, Henry made a pebble float in front of the two of them, holding it perfectly, unnaturally still. He snapped the slingshot in his mind, and the pebble flew away, embedding itself in a tree a great distance away. Henry pictured that the stone was a directional charge of C-4.

The tree in the distance burst into shards of wood, showering down into the woods surrounding them. Athena stood stock still, her mouth agape, until Henry said her name twice and waved his hand in front of her face. Athena brushed his hand away and glared at him.

"Okay, let's say you can do magic," she said, her eyes narrowed. "Stop blowing up my trees." Athena emphasized her point by poking Henry in the chest.

Henry leaned away from her fiery glare, and glanced at the tattered wood stumps on the treeline. "No more destruction of property, got it," he said, scratching his head. "Do you know a field or sandlot or something I could play-" Henry coughed. "Experiment in?"

Athena pointed to the other side of the house. "there's a trail behind the house that leads to a lake. No one's been there in twenty years, go nuts."

Henry nodded and broke into a trot, grinning from ear to ear, jumping and waving his arms, whooping as he ran down the trail. Athena watched Henry disappear behind the house and sighed. "What have you gotten yourself into?" she asked, climbing up the rough wood stairs, walking through the open door and sitting down in front of the T.V.

Athena turned on the tube, the old T.V. flaring to life. The last time she had used it had been a late night four years ago, bored out of her mind, surfing the high three digit channels. A televangelist was on channel eight hundred and fourty three, where she had left it before finally surrendering to sleep.

Athena watched the man with the angular face declare himself the son of god, and chortled before switching the channel to the news. The news was running a story on the rash of missing people since Henry Stein's mass murder and subsequent escape, suggesting that human trafficking might be how he had funded the two dozen armed men.

Athena grunted. In the distance, she heard another explosion, followed by a whoop of delight. Athena could not picture that man as the mastermind, not someone who acted the way he did. Athena stood, tossing the remote onto the table, ready to go for her morning exercise. I should probably avoid the lake until he gets making things explode out of his system. She thought, as the remote hit the wood surface.

Athena set out jogging, taking a path closer to the road, further away from the echoing explosions. The cabin didn't have any neighbors, so she wasn't worried about being reported. The last few days re-ran in her mind as she switched to a rough, root-infested trail, scampering over the uneven ground. Athena thought back to the feverish look Henry had given her, chock full of desire, before he artificially pinned his gaze to her face.

Athena found herself smiling. Henry had the body of a man who had begun the downward slide into apathy, developing just a bit of a stomach, but his blue eyes, honest smile, and awkward avoidance of raking his gaze up and down her body was endearing. She might have gone on a date with him, had he not been America's Most wanted, and currently exploding things with his mind.

Athena's brows furrowed, her thoughts turning to the night before. As soon as she saw the knowledge that he wouldn't be able to take Henry pass through the guard's eyes, his chest burst outward, like a cheesy alien movie, except with warm blood covering your blouse. Athena shuddered. None of this was the way it should have been. She still didn't know for sure if Henry was completely innocent.

Her job, she felt, was to believe in her client's innocence, but there had been many a guy who she wouldn't trust alone with her. So why had she taken him to Toby's cabin? There had to have been some truth to his story, evidenced by the rumbling explosions coming from the lake.

Athena leaped over a fallen tree before the woods cleared, revealing the two story home that had been left to her care. She had gradually picked up her pace while she was running, finally noticing her momentum when she slid to a halt in the gravel driveway. Athena trotted to a stop, panting. She looked down the trail leading to the lake, her ears registering no explosions.

Judging it potentially safe to investigate, Athena grabbed a water bottle, filled it up with the squeaky steel pump, and went to see what Henry was up to. Athena strolled down the trail, admiring the verdant green glowing from the noon day sun filtering through the trees. The only issue was the mosquitos.

Athena hadn't been bothered by them on her run, as she didn't spend enough time in one place for them to catch up. On the trail to the lake, sweating from her morning run, the mosquitos came out in force, and Athena found herself jogging again, just to keep them out of her face.

Athena got to the lake panting, not wanting to slow down long enough to develop her own cloud of insects. She swept the lake with her gaze, looking for Henry. "Henry!" she called out, beginning to run around the edge of the lake. "Where-" Athena's words died in her throat when she spotted Henry face-down in the water, floating like a corpse.

Athena sprinted out into the lake, the water spraying around her as she plowed through the knee-high water. She grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled his head out of the water, but no breath escaped his slack face, water rolling down over open eyes.

With a surge of panic, Athena dragged Henry to shore, her muscles burning from the strain. She dropped him on the muddy bank, his legs still in the water from the knee down. Athena, not knowing CPR, made her best guess. "Henry," She shouted, slapping him roughly across the side of his cold cheek. Athena climbed on top of the bigger man, and channeled her weight down on his diaphragm, trying to force the water out of his lungs.

Henry's eyes shot open, and a blast of water sprayed out of his mouth. "uagh..." he said, in between wracking coughs, forcing the last of the water out of his lungs. He finally noticed Athena mounted on his waist, her knees in the muck beside him. "Mouth to mouth?" Henry groaned as he asked, squinting his eyes against the noon sun.

Athena shook her head. "No, you woke up without it."

"Damn." Henry muttered to himself. Athena blushed.

"What the hell were you doing floating face down in the water, anyway?" Athena asked, trying to change the subject. "If I hadn't come to check on you, you'd be dead. If I looked right instead of left, you'd be dead."

Henry glanced around, taking in the shredded trees, and the little wood fort he'd been putting together with his mind, and shrugged. "Guess I got carried away?" he said, with a little smile and a shrug.

Henry sat up, and found himself face-to-face with Athena, who was still perched on his waist. The moment stretched on, and Henry found himself wanting to kiss her full lips. Heartbeats went by as they stared at each other silently, and Henry opened his dumb mouth.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"What?" Athena said breathlessly.

"You're still sitting on me, did you hurt yourself?" Henry asked, glancing down at Athena's legs wrapping around his waist.

Athena considered Henry for a moment, then planted a kiss on his lips, pressing herself against him. It lasted for a heart-pounding moment that must have only been a second, but Henry's mind was still reeling when Athena stood, smiling down at him, the sun creating an aura of bright light around her.

"Since you missed out on the mouth-to-mouth," She said with a mischievous grin.

Henry got to his feet, his heart hammering. "Thanks," He said, taking a moment to process his feelings. If Athena found him an umpteenth as attractive as he found her, maybe he had a shot. A sudden thought wormed its way into the back of his mind.

One of the things he had childishly wished for when he was young and stupid, was the ability to control people's minds. He'd never put a lot of thought into what it would be like from the other side, but he had seen a T.V. show that explored the concept to horrific results, thoroughly turning Henry off of the idea permanently. Even so, Henry knew that a small part of himself would be tempted by it.

The question was, was he capable of it, and had he done it already? The only way to find out was to try it...

Henry smacked himself in the face.

"What the hell?" Athena said, frowning. "Was it that bad?"

Henry shook his head, "No, I almost did something stupid just now," he said, using his mind to pick up a rock and tumble it in front of him, focusing his attention away from Athena before he could find himself thinking along those lines again.

Athena slapped the top of his head, derailing his spiraling train of thought. "Cut that out," She said as the rock fell to the ground. "It's probably why you passed out in the first place."

Henry chuckled. "You're probably right," he said, his destructive train of thought broken. Henry looked down at his mud covered clothes, noting the burning hunger in his stomach. Henry looked back at Athena. " I think I'm going to need another hosing, and then lunch."

"you can take a shower tonight when I run the generator, but we're on our own for lunch," Athena said, gazing around the lake. "I haven't stocked this place in five years, and you probably scared away anything with meat within a few miles of here." Athena waved a mosquito away from her face.

Henry pantomimed rolling up his sleeves and squared his shoulders. "Okay, I'll gather stuff for lunch" he said, marching toward the house, his eyes searching the underbrush for edibles.

Athena walked Henry back to the house, keeping a close eye on him for signs that he may pass out again. He waited outside while she got the hose and a basket. After a quick hosedown to remove the mud, Athena handed him the basket.

"Take this, and try not to pass out again," Athena said, as Henry took the basket away from her, shivering. "And If you do pass out, try not to do it face down in the water."

"I'm not sure I can guarantee that," Henry said, hefting the basket. "It seems to manifest anything I think about hard enough, but sometimes I can't control what that it. It's like a four year old wetting the bed, or a teenager getting a boner at awkward times. I have no idea what I'm doing."

"That's an interesting comparison," Athena said, crossing her arms "And not very comforting, what happens if you think the wrong thing?" she asked.

"I slap myself in the face," Henry responded, straight-faced.

"Ah," Athena said, a smile coming to her lips. "Well, good luck with that. There should be some rhubarb around the house, and there's a wild strawberry bed about a hundred feet into the woods that way." Athena pointed into the woods just off the trail to the lake.

"Got it," Henry said, snapping a salute before turning toward the woods.

Athena watched Henry walk into the woods a moment longer before breathing out her anxiety in a sigh. "I really hope he's okay," she said to herself before getting to work.

The forest parted around Henry, and sure enough, after about eighty feet of climbing through the underbrush, he spotted the little red berries nestled beneath the wide leaves. Henry sat down and began levitating one berry after another into the basket.

Henry's pace was faster than an average person's on account of not having to move, but Henry grew tired of missing berries solely because his sight was limited. Henry stopped picking berries and chewed on that thought for a moment. Focusing his will, Henry tried to know where every berry was in the patch.

The knowledge flowed into him, filling his mind to overflowing. It felt as though he were painfully stretching his brain, making little rips and tears as it swelled. With a gasp, Henry seized on each berry simultaneously, and a chorus of tiny snaps rose as hundreds of strawberries floated toward the basket, detaching from the plants that had spawned them.

Henry's heart began hammering, and he couldn't hold it anymore, letting the strawberries go. They fell in and around the basket in a rain of red berries. Henry knelt beside the basket, panting.

"That was new," he said, steadying himself, taking deep, slow breaths to ward off the dizziness that would precede another blackout. After a few moments, Henry stood, scooping fallen berries into the basket until it was nearly full.

Henry picked a single strawberry out of the basket and stared at it, pondering. Telekinesis was supremely useful, but what Henry could do wasn't any better than a guy with a grenade launcher. And Manson was objectively unkillable. Henry raised the berry above his finger, and slowly spun it, memorizing its form.

Dracula had weaknesses, at least in the books. It would follow that Manson would have them. Even if he didn't, there were plenty of ways to neutralize someone who couldn't die. Henry focused on the berry, willing it to become steel.

The strawberry exploded, blasting soft chunks of flesh across Henry's face. Henry blinked a bit out of his eye. "Seems like transmutation is a no-go for now," he said, grabbing the basket and coming to his feet, wiping his face off with his shirt.

On the way back to the cabin, Henry ate a few of the strawberries, thinking. What was the basic element that made magic awesome, and what was he missing? He could make things move, and explode, and that was it so far. Magic, in henry's mind should be able to take on a life of its own and act without constant supervision, accomplishing something or safeguarding something long after the caster was gone.

"could be I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth, though." Henry muttered, eating another strawberry. The trail gave way to the cleared land around the cabin, and Henry spotted rhubarb nestled by the house. Henry popped four stalks off and threw them in the basket, heading to the front door.

Athena greeted him, coming from the other side of the house with an armful of potatoes. Henry looked at her dirt-covered form and blinked. "Where'd those come from?" he asked.

"I started some about seven years ago, and now you can find a handful wild if you look hard enough," Athena said, marching into the cabin. Henry followed, and the two of them set out to make lunch.

Athena found an old pie-pan, and at henry's suggestion the two of them lined it with thin potato slices, filled it with strawberries and baked it on top of the wood stove with a cover over it.

"Is this going to be any good?" Athena asked, her brow cocked as she backed away from the makeshift pie.

"Probably not," Henry said, "But I don't really see anything else we could have made. We still have baked potato as a backup."

The two of them arranged lunch, working together in the cramped kitchen of the cabin for hours, until the food was finally done, Athena pulled out some dust-covered salt and pepper shakers, and they ate lunch. The pie was intensely sour, but palatable, scooped out of the pan with oversized, freshly cleaned spoons. The baked potatoes finished the meal, and Henry found himself relaxing in the same couch as the sun went down, Athena sipping hot strawberry-water as she sat next to him.

Shortly, Athena went to start the generator, while Henry was tasked with building a fire to heat the water for showers.

Henry squatted in front of the dry wood packed into the furnace. Any purveyor of the arcane worth his salt could summon fire from nothing, Henry reasoned. Henry dismissed cautionary thoughts of exploding furnaces, and sat in front of the fire, clearing his mind. Fire was a chemical reaction, triggered by heat. Heat could be produced three ways that Henry could think of off the top of his head: A chemical reaction, excitation of molecules, and pressure.

Henry lit a match from the box in front of him, and tried to channel oxygen into it. The fire fluttered as a gentle wind rolled across it. Henry frowned. I have no idea what oxygen feels like. He thought to himself. Henry closed his eyes, and imagined himself swimming through the air, there were only two major parts to air, Nitrogen and oxygen, at roughly a four to one ratio. Henry felt different kinds of air floating around him, and focused on separating and purifying them, taking the smaller ratio of air and wrapping it around the match in his hand.

With a hissing, the match in front of Henry flared into a pyre, burning through the little matchstick in a second. Henry dropped it hastily, shaking his hand where it had been burned while he chuckled. "Very cool." Henry said with a grin.

Henry rubbed the stinging burn with his thumb as he mulled over what he had just done. It wasn't transmutation, per se, he had filtered the air, but it couldn't start its own fire. Henry sat and considered the wood in the furnace. It made water and carbon dioxide when it burned, which meant wood was largely carbon and hydrogen bound together, meaning if he were to pop them apart in the presence of oxygen, it should light.

Henry focused on a small flake of the wood, willing it to unravel, at the tiniest level. The shred peeled and splintered into dozens of tiny spirals of wood grain. Henry leaned back and sighed. Try as he might, Henry couldn't conceptualize splitting the bonds that held together the molecules of the wood, and therefore nothing happened but a fine shredding of whatever he focused on.

Henry sighed, deciding to try pressure instead. He focused on a golf-ball sized ball of air, and pictured it as surrounded by a reinforced steel chamber. Henry systematically pumped more and more air into the tiny space, until eventually, the air in front of the logs began to waver and glow. With a force of will, Henry moved the ball closer to the logs, smiling as they darkened, and smoke began to lick up the sides of the wood.

Just a little bit more. Henry thought, compressing the air further until it began to take on a definable shape, glowing and hovering in the air. Henry felt the heat washing over his face, and flames began to erupt from the wood that faced his little ball of gas. Henry gave a cry of excitement even as he strained to keep the air contained.

"What's taking so long?" Athena said, shoving the door open. Henry glanced back at her, and the furnace made a muffled thump, with charcoal dust shooting out every opening as he lost control of the ball.

Henry opened his mouth to respond and got a mouthful of soot. As he coughed, Athena grabbed a bottle of lighter fluid, sprayed the wood, and lit it with a match. "stop screwing around," she said, trotting back out.

Henry coughed out the last of the soot, his eyes watering. In Henry's enthusiasm, it hadn't occurred to him until this very close proximity explosion, that he might want some sort of safety gear. Henry closed the furnace and headed back to the cabin, taking his turn in the shower after Athena.

Henry sat in the couch, his mind burning with questions no one but he could answer for himself, oblivious to Athena, who prowled by for another helping of strawberry pie in nothing but a towel before disappearing upstairs. Henry scratched down idea after idea on an old shopping list magnet that had been attached to the refrigerator.

The next morning, Henry started awake when Athena came down the stairs, her footsteps preceding her. The notepad on his chest tumbled to the floor, creasing the paper.

"Morning Henry, do you want to jog?" Athena asked, stretching

Henry swallowed, the grey sweats she wore were pleasantly filled, the top riding a bit high, revealing a dark stretch of smooth skin. His gaze turned to the notepad on the floor in front of him, and he weighed his options.

"Yes," he said, standing with the notepad in hand. Henry dropped the paper into the air, and it floated to the end table, coming down gently onto the aging wood.

Athena shook her head. "I still have a hard time believing what I'm seeing," she said, heading for the door.

"You better, 'cuz I've got a lot of ideas to bounce off of you," Henry said, following her out the door. The cold morning air filled Henry's lungs, wiping away the last grogginess of sleep away. Athena took a deep breath, and closed her eyes, exhaling contentedly.

Athena bounced twice, before giving Henry a smile and setting off into the crisp morning. Henry followed along, keeping pace. "So I've got some big questions," Henry said, keeping his eyes on the narrow trail ahead of them as they trotted along.

"Shoot." Athena said, loping easily along beside Henry.

"there shouldn't be any effect from painting a pretty picture in human blood," Henry said boldly. "As far as we can see, blood can't do that. something supernatural happened."

"Right," Athena said, nodding.

"So there were some kind of rules," Henry said, motioning with his hands. "Some kind of plan behind the ritual. Someone knew that killing a bunch of people in that specific way would unleash hell."

"And?" Athena said, looking at Henry. "You want to find them and figure out what the hell is going on?"

Henry stopped in his tracks for a moment, before sprinting a few steps to catch up. "That's such a better idea than what I was about to say," he said, shaking his head ruefully. Henry's breath was beginning to come short as they winded around another massive tree.

"I was about to suggest that there has to be some kind of underlying pattern to the magic," Henry said. "If I knew more about the rules, how it works, I could do a hell of a lot more." Henry threw his hands up. "I mean, I know nothing, that could be the only spell in existence, I could be already as good at blowing things up as I'm ever going to be."

"Why are you treating telekinesis like second prize?" Anthena asked. She had gradually increased the pace as she warmed up, and now Henry was panting desperately. "Seems pretty cool to me."

Henry "Its just..." he panted, his words coming few and far between. "I though... there'd be... more."

"Maybe there is," Athena said, slowing down and coming to a stop as Henry rested his palm against the trunk of a spruce, gasping for breath. "From everything you've told me, you've been trying too hard to fit whatever is happening to you into a neat little box."

"So?" Henry panted.

"Don't. have fun with it. Stop trying to figure out how it works, and just enjoy it."

Henry shrugged. "I can do both, hell, this is the most fun I've had in years," he said, taking deep, steadying breaths. "That said, I've gotten a little carried away recently without thinking about protection, do you have any safety gear for that chainsaw in the shed?"

Athena cocked her head and pursed her lips, and henry found his eyes wandering over her as she considered his question. "Yes," she said, her gaze coming to rest on Henry. "Erik's parents were very safety conscious, after all. I'm sure they had some somewhere".

Henry frowned. "Who's Erik? Does he own the place?" Henry asked, a thin thread of jealousy wormed it's way into his heart before he crushed it down, leaving a hollow sensation where it had begun to take root.

"Not exactly," Athena said, a shadow passing across her face. "Erik was my middle school boyfriend, he died in a car crash and his parents went back to germany."

"And you take care of the house for them," Henry said, filling in the blanks in his mind. "And that's why nobody's found us yet, because you don't have any paperwork connecting you to this place.

"All off the books," she said, with a nod. "I still visit the place every once in awhile, but it's been years since I've heard from them. I think they want to avoid anything that reminds them of him."

Henry sighed as the rotten feeling flushed out of his system. "Don't worry, none of my friends and coworkers know about this place," Athena said, stretching. "Are you ready to get back to running?" she broke into a jog, slower than before, and Henry found himself strung along the trail around the cabin, tasting blood by the time they made it back to the cabin.

"If you didn't see anything in the shed, "Athena said as they entered the cabin. "It's probably in the basement. I haven't been down there in years, though." Athena knelt in front of the rug in front of the fireplace, and peeled it away, revealing a sturdy wooden trap door, cleanly outlined by the weathered wood around it.

Athena grabbed a flashlight off a nearby hook and handed it to Henry. "Here you go," She said, opening the trapdoor and stepping away. the hole in the floor led into a pitch black void. Without turning on the light, Henry couldn't see a damn thing.

Henry clicked the flashlight on, and a beam of light lanced through the surroundings, drawing a pool of pale light on the concrete floor of the basement, a good five feet below them. Henry knelt down and gave Athena a nod of thanks, taking a breath before hopping into the hole.

Henry felt his feet touch the ground, and he dropped to a hunch checking the height of the floor above him. Thick beams cut across the floor dropping his head space to about four feet. The concrete beneath his feet was cool and dry, and the air was musty, but not stale. Henry looked out into the darkness, scanning his flashlight across the neatly stacked boxes and rusty tools. A bicycle straight out of the eighties rested against one of the walls, it's chain covered with minor rust. The tires were deflated, the rubber cracking and weak.

On the other side of the room lay a pile of old lumber and construction materials that must have been left over after the house had been built. Bringing his flashlight to bear on the boxes again, Henry crab walked over to the pile, determined to find some safety gear, at the very least to protect his eyes.

"I like my eyes," Henry muttered to himself as he opened the first box. The top box was light and filled with fluffy winter clothes. Henry set it aside, inspecting the box beneath it. After a little digging, Henry found what he wanted, bringing a smile to his face.

Henry emerged from the trap door bedecked in safety goggles, chainsaw-proof pants, and a Thick leather apron that came with elbow length gloves. Henry grunted as he pulled himself up, swinging his legs up and over the lip, finally crawling to his feet outside the basement.

Athena closed the door behind him. "Looks like you found what you're looking for," She said, taking in Henry's awkward ensemble with a smile.

"Yep," Henry said, hands on his hips. "Now only the real dangerous shrapnel will get through."

Athena chuckled before her face turned sober. "We can't stay here forever, you know," She said, meeting Henry's eyes. "Sooner or later someone's coming for us."

Henry took a deep breath. "We need to find the man who commissioned the building. Tomorrow, let's set out to visit a friend of mine, he's the contractor who built it, we should be able to get the name from him.

Athena nodded, then shot Henry a questioning gaze. "Are you doing the same thing as yesterday then?" she asked, the corners of her lips drawn up in a faint smile.

Henry shook his head. "No," he said, stepping towards the door. "If anything, there should be a hell of a lot more explosions."

"Try not to drown in the lake," Athena said, waving. "I'm gonna turn on the generator to watch the news, so I probably won't be able to hear whether or not you stop blowing things up."

Henry nodded. "I'll be careful," he said, sliding the clear plastic goggles over his eyes. The two of them split up at the door, Henry heading around the back to the lake, Athena to the generator. Athena knelt down in front of the blocky machine, checking it's fuel.

"Definitely can't stay here much longer," She sighed, eying the needle indicating that the generator was mostly empty. Athena yanked on the pullcord, starting the generator running, filling the air with the noisy hum of its operation.

Athena walked back to the house and settled down on the couch, her skin cooling don after the run. Turning on the T.V., she scanned through the major channels for any news about henry or their situation. It occurred to her that if anything happened concerning them happened, such as an arrest, they would be the first to know.

Athena left the channel on, heading to the kitchen to boil a potato for breakfast.

"I am the end and the beginning. I am eternal," The words broke through the usual diction of the reporters responsible for the midday news. "I was born of man, but make no mistake, I have risen above the confines of mortality, and like any pioneer I will be followed to this new horizon. Believe, devote yourselves to the Family, and you will be one of these few."

"The hell am I listening to?" Athena shook her head while she waited for the potato to boil. From the living room the tyrade of crazy continued. "Must have switched back to the late-night televangelist channels." Athena sliced the potato in half, sprinkled salt and pepper on it, completing her meager meal before she headed back out to the living room, already daintily nibbling on the steaming edge of the simple food.

The TV caught Athena's eye as she entered the room, it showed a short man with an angular face standing in front of a massive stadium. The camera panned across them, showing faces filled with a zealot's extacy. People were crying, kneeling, praying, surrendering to a higher power in droves. All the while, the man stood in a harsh spotlight in the center of the stadium, his face like worked stone.

"Is this still on the news?" Athena wondered aloud, watching the banner of headlines wrap around the bottom of the screen, while the banner itself was still there, and the new channel's logo adorned the upper corner of the image, the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen made no sense. 'repent and join him, surrender you pride to the son of god.'

He looked at Athena. The potato fell from her hand, and plopped down onto the plate. "You," The man said, his eyes boring into her. "you at home, share in this moment. Offer your faith and share in this blessing. Come to me." Athena found her feet moving toward the screen as she dimly heard the plate clatter behind her.

The man spread his arms wide as the camera slowly zoomed in on him. "Look into my eyes, share the vision that I have," He said as his face slowly came to dominate the screen, becoming larger than life. "Come forward. Touch me. Place your hands against the screen and let me share with you my blessing."

Athena stood a pace away from the screen, her hands slowly extending toward the face that dominated the screen, the eyes that seemed to erode her will. "Touch the screen," he repeated, his tone gentle and smooth. Athena's fingers extended, her hand shaking. Just before she touched the screen, and moment of hesitation pulled her hand away again.

"Touch it you bitch!" Manson snarled, his voice sending a buzzing hum through her mind even as her heart skipped a beat in fear. His face began more angular, as his flesh seemed to wither around him, drawing his lips away from his teeth. Athena gave a cry as she felt something pull her toward the TV.

For a heart stopping moment, Athena's fingers touched the screen, and she could feel the malicious glee radiate from the face dominating the image in front of her. suddenly her fingers were torn away from the TV, and she could think again, as though her thoughts had been simply been an image that had been there all along, simply out of focus.

Henry stood above her, gripping her wrist painfully in his right hand as he glared at the television. The face on the screen smiled. "So there you were, Henry," Manson said, glancing at Athena. "I didn't know you liked the dark meat. Maybe I'll try it, myself. Hell, if It'll make her feel better, I could even look like you while I fuck every hole she has."

Henry narrowed his eyes, and the old TV shattered, going dark.

Manson lowered his arms, facing the camera whose lens had shattered, in quiet contemplation. "What was all that about, sir?" Nick said, glancing at manson from behind the now-useless camera rig. Manson chuckled and glanced up at Nick with twinkling eyes. "I just saw a friend I owe a favor to on the other side." he said, smiling warmly.

"I got you switched out to camera three," Nick said, beginning the process of dismantling the camera. "I'll have the primary set up again in a couple minutes. Charles places his hand atop her head and a wave of pleasure rolled through her. "I was right about you," he said, stroking her hair as she arched her back. "you're the finest daughter a man could have."

Nick nodded, a shy smile coming to her face as she stood, rushing to get another camera.

The image of Manson's face was replaced by a reflection of the two of them, staring at the black void in front of them. "You can let go," Athena said, her voice pained. Henry glanced down at the thin wrist clamped in his hand, and his fingers sprung open even as he took a step back.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" Athena held a hand up, interrupting him.

"I know you didn't," Athena said, rolling her wrist. "And I'm very sure I much prefer a sore wrist to whatever would have happened if you hadn't pulled me away." Athena glanced at Henry quizzically. "What are you doing back so soon anyway?"

Henry coughed, glancing at the kitchen. "Is there any pie left?" he asked, meeting her eyes.

Athena laughed, pushing Henry's chest. "No, and even if there were, we gotta get out of here."

Henry nodded. "I know, I pretty much gave up on another slice when I saw Manson hypnotizing you through the TV," he said, hustling out to the van. Athena followed a pace behind, tossing Henry the keys.

Gravel crunched under the tires of three vans barreling into the driveway. Henry tensed, his eyes trying to watch everything at once as men flooded from the vans, six at a time. Henry's eyes widened. The men wore the same gear as the ones that committed the massacre beneath his home. Even the vans the men drove were the same, white and plain, with no windows. Henry glanced to the one Athena had driven them in, a perfect match to the ones that now poured men ono the gravel driveway.

While none of them aimed their submachine guns at him, it was an undeniable fact that they were armed to the teeth. Henry broke into a cold sweat as he and Athena were loosely surrounded.

A single man not wearing a mask, older and weary looking, stepped forward. "Henry Stein, you'll be coming with us," he said, his palm resting casually on the grip of his gun. Henry took a deep breath, his mind racing.

"I don't think I want to," Henry said, simply, letting the words roll off his tongue slowly.

"Does it look like you have a choice?" the leader asked, his brow raised. A grunt behind him popped some bubblegum as the wind whistled through the trees.

Henry looked around, doing his best to look frightened and vulnerable. It wasn't hard. "I'm just saying, I might be a lot more willing to go with you if I knew where you were taking me," he said, with a shrug.

The leader broke into a smile, his uneven teeth lending an air of raw reality to the situation. "Either you're stupid, or this must be your time getting kidnapped, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt," he said, stepping closer to Henry. "I have the guns, I have the men, I have the power.I don't have to tell you a goddamn thing." Henry felt an impact hit his stomach, and he fell to the ground, choking on nausea.

"Load him up, kill the girl," he said, walking back to the van. Arms wrapped around Henry's, hauling him to him feet.

A surge of panic filled Henry as a man walked up to Athena, and without preamble, drew his pistol, taking aim as her face turned ashen. Henry focused, pushing the gun up and away, and as the man was staring at his gun in wonder, Henry pulled the rubber band in his mind back. Henry built up force until he released a breath later, slapping the side of the man's head with about two well placed punches worth of force.

The killer toppled to the side, senseless after a heavyweight punch had scrambled his brain through his helmet, Athena leapt for his gun as the others looked on. A strangled shout came from the man closest to the unconscious one, and his hands went to the submachine gun resting against his waist.

Henry glanced at the gun on the waist of the leader who stood beside him, scowling furiously at the clusterfuck that was unveiling itself in front of him. The safety was off, the little metal tab turned down, parallel with the barrel of the gun. with a modest effort of will, Henry twisted the safety of every gun in the parking lot into the safe position, then bent them, inducing a mild headache, and ensuring they would stay safe for the time being.

The flurry of soft clicks was lost in the shouts and clacks as Athena dropped to the ground, rolling behind the van, leveling the stolen pistol on the kidnappers. For their part, they shouldered their weapons, drawing a bead on her and pulling the triggers.

A few seconds went by as Athena and the men facing her squeezed their triggers to no avail. Henry might have found the dry firefight amusing but for the deadly implication behind their actions. Henry slapped the two men holding him on the back of the head with a wave of force, and bent down to retrieve a pistol from the slumped body beside him.

As Athena and the men surrounding her desperately scratched their nails across the safeties of their guns, Henry cleared his throat. "Ahem," he said, not gaining their attention. Athena took the initiative, and charged one of the guys closer to the cabin, pistol whipping him in the face as she brushed past, heading for the trees.

With a snarl, a man drew his knife and began stalking after her. Henry turned and gave their leader a curious gaze, meeting his ashen-faced stare. Henry shot him in the stomach. The explosion resounded through the trees, echoing off the distant mountains, drawing the attention of the knife wielding asshole and his associates. Henry saw Athena disappear further into the woods, unaware that they weren't shooting at her.

"Excuse me," Henry said through the silence that followed, adopting his nearly forgotten military-trained attitude. "Your boss told you to stop."

"I didn't say shi-" Henry interrupted their leader with another shot to the stomach. The man's eyes bulged and her bent over, throwing up onto the gravel.

"I'm your boss," Henry said cheerfully. "And I say stop."

"What the fuck do you-" Some idiot started talking, and Henry shot him in the leg. He fell to the ground screaming. Their leader retched into the dirt, holding his stomach where Henry had shot him the second time.

"Is that Kevlar?" Henry asked, peering at the man, who despite being shot twice, was not bleeding. The one who had spoken, on the other hand, panted and whined as blood oozed from his leg. Henry glanced over to him and waved the gun at his stock-still cohorts. "Could you patch him up and stuff something in his mouth? The sounds he's making makes it hard not to shoot you guys."

"What did you do?" Their leader demanded, trying to catch his breath. Henry found his mood darkening at the audacity they had to feel offended when the people they were trying to kill or kidnap turned out to be able to defend themselves.

"This is probably your first time being killed in a gravel driveway in the middle of nowhere," Henry said, kicking the retching man onto his back before leveling the gun on his legs. "But I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. I've got the gun, I've got-" a flicker in the corner of Henry's eye drew his attention. Knife Guy was charging him silently, trying to close as much distance as he could before Henry noticed.

Henry seized the knife and plunged it into the man's chest, his hand still attached to the handle. He fell to the ground, sliding to a stop over the gravel, face down, ten feet away. Henry watched, chuckling before he returned his gaze to the man beneath his gun.

"I killed a fair number of innocent kids in my day," Henry said, showing a smile he didn't feel. "So I want you to believe me when I tell you that offing a dozen or so assholes capable of killing a woman in cold blood doesn't particularly phase me."

"So," Henry said, lightly resting the barrel of the gun against the man's kneecap. "Where were you going to take me?" Henry asked, keeping his tone even and grim. The leader of the kidnappers looked at him with new eyes.

"You're one of them," he said, his face pale.

"One of who?" Henry asked. the snaggletoothed man shook his head, shivering.

"I can't tell you," he said, his hands trembling against his stomach.

Henry moved the barrel of the gun until it was pointed at the man's forehead. "Can't or won't?" he asked. "Are you sure there's no wiggle room there? Because there's a big difference between the two."

He took a shuddering breath, locking his eyes on Henry's "I can't," he said. Henry pulled the trigger, spattering himself with a fine spray of blood as the kidnapper's head rocked back, his helmet having caught the bullet on the inside.

Henry stood, praying to god the guy didn't have HIV or some other terrible blood-borne pathogen. He turned his gaze to the sixteen-odd men watching in horror, before fishing another clip out of their leader's belt.

"Could you guys do me a favor and line up?" Henry asked, scanning the men in front of him. "It would save me a lot of time." The mask-wearing, Kevlar-clad commandos met each other's eyes, and with wordless acknowledgement, they all scattered and ran.

Henry watched them run, ducking and weaving in all directions, capitalizing on the safety of numbers. Henry didn't particularly relish the thought of killing them, in fact, it turned his stomach, but the path with the least bloodshed involved whoever sent them being absolutely terrified of him. Henry supposed that the best course of action would be to kill them all, deny any information from reaching their puppetmaster, but Henry felt as though the bile in his throat was about to forcibly eject.

Henry's gaze was drawn to where Athena had disappeared into the woods, and he broke into a jog, calling her name. Henry didn't have to run far. Athena emerged from a bush as though she had sprouted from the ground, just a few feet into the treeline.

"We gotta get out of here," she said, jerking her thumb towards the woods. "The vans probably have GPS."

Henry thought about it for a moment, and shook his head. "We're not going to get far on foot, and unless the guys coming after us have cruise missiles, it should take them at least a few minutes to catch up. Let's take two of the vans and leave them running in a bad neighborhood."

Athena thought for a moment, pursing her lips. "Not a great plan, but something like one," she said, heading back to the driveway. When the two dead men came into view, she stopped, her breath catching in her lungs. "Did you do this?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"Yeah," Henry said, avoiding looking at her face.

"Good," she said, kicking the corpse with a knife in his heart on the way past. Athena bent down and stripped the submachine gun and extra clip of ammo off each of the bodies.

"Excuse me?" Henry asked, his head cocked. "I was under the impression that you'd get upset and lecture me about the sanctity of life."

Athena knelt beside one of the unconscious men, the slimmest one, and began stripping his vest off of him. "People like this have no respect for the sanctity of life," Athena said, slipping the unused bulletproof jacket off the unconscious man. "The only thing they respect is force, and I think you gave them a taste. The first thing they're gonna do is push back hard, try to get rid of you, and if you weather that storm, then they'll respect you. from a getting-out-of-here-alive standpoint, you should have killed them all."

Henry knelt beside the boss as Athena slipped the jacket on, it was a little big on her, but she wore it naturally. "I'm not exactly comfortable with that," henry said, the bile rising in his throat as he searched the man's pockets for keys.

Athena looked at him, and Henry spotted the tears dampening her cheeks, "Me neither, but I'd choose myself over people like this any day," she said, turning back to her work. When she was done, she had the ridiculously clumsy look of someone about to take on an army singlehandedly.

"Get yourself a vest," Athena said, pointing at one of the slumped over thugs that had held his arms. "As far as I know, you can't stop bullets with your mind." Henry nodded, and after he retrieved the keys from the corpse, he tore a vest off of one of the big men holding him just a minute before.

Henry slid the vest on. The familiar stiff, clumsy, scratchy, and claustrophobic feel of the vest cinching down around his chest made the hairs on his arms stand up. Henry grabbed one of the helmets, throwing it in the van, before he jumped into the driver's seat, exchanging a glance with Athena before setting out, the two of them driving separately.

The day wore on, and Henry found himself on the wrong side of town. The smell of grease assaulted him, and he felt eyes piercing the tinted windows of the fan intently, eager to divine his purpose, and his vulnerability. Henry was aware of his status as a fugitive, and uneager to get locked in a cell a second time.

Henry parked the van by the curb, wiped the blood from his face, buried the vest beneath his jacket, and hopped out, tossing the keys to the nearest kid with a warning that the car was hot. The kid's eyes widened, and he whipped out a hand-me-down cellphone, presumably calling his uncle who knew what to do with stolen property.

"Seems like it's always the uncle," Henry mused as he disappeared into an alley, eager to get as much space between himself and the car as he could in the few minutes he had before whoever owned it showed up. Behind him, he heard the van rumble to life, and tacked a few extra minutes onto his estimate, praying that he didn't just condemn the kid to getting executed facedown in a ditch.

Marcus Niles waited in his shop for his nephew to show up, a dirty rag slung over one shoulder. The lights of the van cut through the chain link fence, scattering patterns across Marcus' face as the van rolled into the driveway. Marcus's experienced eye was already dissecting the vehicle based on its make and model, estimating only a thousand dollars profit.

The car was only barely worth his time, and only because he had nothing more pressing going on. The damn thing wasn't the slightest bit sexy, but it would buy groceries, so Marcus shrugged and stood aside as his nephew drove the van into his shop. The kid, Gus, leaned out the window and grinned widely. "Whaddya think?" he asked.

Marcus stretched his neck. "I've always been straight with you kid. This isn't gonna make me a lot of money," Marcus said, fishing in his breast pocket for cash. "It's a van, one step away from a soccer mom special, Take a hundred bucks and consider this your lucky day."

"But Mark-" Gus said before he was interrupted.

"No buts, you said some stranger just tossed you the keys and walked off? That stinks to high heaven. You got thing at no risk to yourself, or at least you thought you didn't, but the only reason he'd just give it to you is if someone was following it. Take a hundred bucks, go home, and I'll stay here and deal with anyone that comes looking for it. You got that?"

The kids looked aside, his lip twitching. "You got that?" Marcus repeated, glaring fiercely at his nephew. Gus nodded, taking the two fifty dollar bills out of Marcus's hands before unloading his bicycle from the back of the van and heading home. Marcus watched his sister's oldest child disappear into the night, a faint smile passing across his lips before he parked the van where he wanted it.

Marcus crawled under the van and found the GPS, his skin crawling as he identified the kind as one that could be used to actively track the vehicle. Marcus tidied his shop, hiding anything incriminating, waiting for the eventual visit by people looking for the car.

He didn't have to wait long. About an hour later, a limousine rolled into the driveway, scattering blue-white light off of the damp black pavement. Glancing over from his work, Marcus caught the luxury car approaching from the corner of his eye and pursed his lips as the amount of money he expected to make from the van skyrocketed.

Marcus turned to face the bright lights of the limousine as an old man with a vigorous step got out, heading to the rear of the vehicle and opening the door. Marcus squinted, catching the bulge of a pistol under the driver's suit. Thick fingers grabbed the doorframe of the car as a seven foot tall monster climbed out of the back seat.

The passenger looked like he had been born with a silver spoon in one hand and human growth hormone in the other. He walked with the arrogant confidence of a man who didn't even know what losing felt like. He turned and locked his eyes on Marcus, pinning him to the spot with his gaze. Marcus swallowed, resolving to just give the man what he wanted. Life was precious, after all.

The Aryan wet dream turned his gaze back to the old man, and with a nod, took the keys and the chauffer cap back from the old man, sliding into the front seat. Marcus stood and stared as the old man turned back to him, the low hum of the giant adjusting his seat carrying through the air.

"I like to drive myself." The vigorous old man said, stepping forward with his hand extended and a charming aftermarket smile adorning his face, looking for all the world like a lively grandpa.

"Evening," Marcus said as he clasped the old man's hand, careful not to damage the knotted bones of the liver-spotted hand. The man's grasp, however, was much tighter than Marcus ever would have expected, and he swallowed a hiss of discomfort as the bones of his work-hardened hands creaked against each other.

"Good evening," the old man said, fishing in the pocket of his vest "I'm here for-"

"The guy driving the van," Marcus said, nodding.

The smile returned to the man's wrinkled face. He withdrew a crisp stack of twenty dollar bills from his jacket. "Indeed," he said, hefting the money, bearing a purple band with two thousand written in white across it.

"Where did he get out of the car?" the old man asked, his eyes piercing.

Marcus, answered all the old man's questions. Where he got out, what he looked like and what he wore, all questions he had asked Gus before his nephew had dropped off the car. In the end, the old man, nodded satisfied, and handed Marcus the stack of bills before turning to go.

"Do you want the van back, sir?" Marcus asked, and the thin man glanced over to the white van parked in the driveway. He turned his gaze back to Marcus, sending goosebumps up the back of his neck.

"I'll send someone to pick it up within the week, thank you," The old man narrowed his eyes, running his gaze up and down the mechanic. "You've been very helpful, why?"

Marcus shrugged. "Seemed like the smartest thing to do, I don't want any trouble."

The old man glanced around Marcus's shop, taking in the spread of tools and car parts. "You got a business card?" he asked. Marcus scoffed. "I can tell you've got potential, I bet you're the biggest fish around here. Tell you what, you ever want a higher paying job, call me." The old man withdrew a card from his breast pocket and flicked his wrist, sending the piece of rigid paper slicing through the air. It passed through twenty feet in the blink of an eye, finally coming to a rest nestled in between two of the twenty dollar bills in the stack atop Marcus's workbench.

Marcus watched, his brows raised. The old man raised his head and took in a deep breath, smelling the air with his eyes closed, his lips trembling as though he was tasting the air as much as smelling it. "The offer extends to your... nephew as well."

The Adonis chauffer ducked out of the front seat and allowed the old man back into the driver's seat, and the old man shot him a grin as he adjusted his seat and checked his mirrors, moments later the limousine rolled backwards, its lights retreating back into the darkness of the evening.

Marcus released a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, and sank to his knees, gasping for air. "The fuck was that?" he muttered to himself. Putting his hand on his knee, Marcus hoisted himself back to his feet, and found himself looking at the stack of bills atop his toolbox, the gold embossed business card jutting from the center.

He reached for the money, and caught himself, a terrible feeling swirling in his stomach. The cash would make a lot of ends meet, sure, but was it worth taking money from what could have very well been the devil? Marcus went back to work, finding his gaze returning over and over to the money on the toolbox.

A wrench slid, and Marcus cursed, wiping another bleeding knuckle against his rag, tossing the useless tool to the table. The purple of the strap caught Marcus's gaze, and he threw the rag aside, grabbing the windfall and business card, tucking the money into his pocket after pulling three twenties off the top, breaking the strap in the process. Marcus turned off the lights, closed the garage and jumped on his motorcycle, absentmindedly mulling over where to get dinner.

Marcus pursed his lips. Actually, his sister's cooking was above and beyond what he could expect and any restaurant, and he had half an hour before they ate dinner. Marcus nodded his head, resolved to pick up supplies for a surprise visit to his sister's. He pulled out of the driveway, pushing off of the ground as he gained his balance.

Marcus walked into the wal-mart, and began gathering a few things to bring to dinner. Two twelve packs to share between the adults, some sweet fruits for the kid, a machete for trimming the family tree, and a five gallon container of gas to burn their house down. Marcus had a hard time making all the dinner supplies fit on the back of his motorcycle, but with some creative use of bungee cords, he managed to pull out of the parking lot okay.

Henry met Athena at the place they had decided to meet, two blocks away from Zack's office. Athena emerged from the shadows as Henry waited beside the bus stop, his collar pulled up to partially conceal his face. Henry couldn't see her face at first, but her distinctive intimidating walk paired with a body that strained the clothes that contained it gave her away.

"Henry," Athena called out to him as she approached. Henry stood and nodded for her to follow him. The two of them matched their pace, and began walking through the cold night air, their chins tucked into their coats.

"So where are we going?" she asked as they trod down the sidewalk, her steps echoing around them as Henry silently paced along beside her.

"The contractor has an office here," Henry said, his eyes scanning the streets. The sky was dark, the last light of sunset clinging onto the horizon by its fingernails as they approached Zack's office. It was a little one room office occupying an out of the way corner of a larger building. With a moment of concentration, Henry slid the bolt back, and crept into the building, gliding in like a shadow.

"You're too big to be sneaky, it just makes you look more suspicious," Athena whispered, ducking ahead of him, her shoes in her hand as the glided down the hall silently. Henry sighed and straightened, following behind her as she crept along.

"Having fun?" Henry whispered as he caught up with her at a T in the hallway, she flashed him a quick smile, her teeth bright in the dark building. Silently, she pointed up at the sign pointing to Landon Architecture.

"Is that it?" she asked. Henry nodded, and the two of them took the left turn, climbing up the stairs to the second floor, where Zack's office waited. the door to his office was just another plain fake wood door in a sea of beige walls, the door had a keypad, but Henry opened it as easily as the front door, exerting force directly on the bolt mechanism.

"Does it have a security system?" Athena asked as Henry ducked his head into the office. Henry glanced around but couldn't see any indication of an alarm.

"Doesn't look like it, but that doesn't mean much," Henry said, slipping into the room, Athena behind him. "Let's not spend any more time in here than we have to." Henry glanced around the room. The office was a simple affair with a single pseudo-wood desk, a single filing cabinet and a plastic plant designed to calm down overstressed office workers. A glint of light caught Henry's eye, and his heart jumped in his chest for a moment when he made out a bronze statue of a griffon in the opposite corner of the room, bathed in the light of the streetlamps outside.

Athena flicked the light on, and the statue was thrown into sudden sharp clarity. The statue, unlike the rest of the room, held an aura of weight and substance, at odds with the flimsy desk, fake plant, and worn file cabinet. The griffon stood about four feet high at the shoulder, and Henry estimated it to weigh somewhere close to a ton, maybe half that if it was hollow. Henry found his eyes lingering on the statue as Athena stepped past him and began rattling the file cabinets.

"Henry," she whispered over at him, breaking him out of his thoughts. "It needs a key, do your thing." Henry nodded and stepped close to the file cabinet, putting his fingertips on the lock and reaching out with his mind, just like with the strawberries, searching for the single bar of steel between them and what they were looking for. The structure was simpler than a door, and Henry had the cabinet open in moments, revealing row after row of files.

"I think we should talk about code names," Henry said as he opened the first file. He glanced through it, looking for the Yellow River condominium. "We can't just have you calling me by my name when we're on stealth missions."

Athena chuckled, kneeling and fingering through the bottom drawer of files even as Henry looked through the top one. "Bonnie and Clyde?"

"Nah, they died," Henry said with a scowl. "Besides, do I look like a clyde to you?" Athena met Henry's eyes, the angle revealing her collarbone beneath her finely framed face.

"You don't want me to answer that," she said, a smirk on her lips as she went back to the files. Henry scoffed. Clyde was a farmer name. Henry isn't much better. A nagging voice whispered in his mind.

"Got it!" Athena exclaimed, drawing a file out of the cabinet and laying it down on the desk. "Yellow River condominium." Athena opened the file, revealing the contract and copies of the building permits. Henry's eyes swam as he tried to read the dense script.

"That's weird," Athena said, her brows furrowing as she scanned through the documents.

"What?" Henry asked.

"These permits were all received on the same day," Athena said, scanning over the file. "Normally you have to go around from place to place and bend over for the burocracy to take turns pounding you in the ass, normally it takes months. If Zack got all the permits in one day, it's because he's got some way of making it happen."

"Guy's got a lot of friends," Henry said, shrugging.

"Sure," Athena said, flipping through to another page. "But the person or company contracting the building is never mentioned in any of these. As far as I can tell, Zack owns that building."

"So, they own it using him as a proxy?" Henry asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

"Maybe. If they had something over him," Athena said, flipping through to another page. Athena glanced up at henry "Are you sure your friend is a good guy?"

Henry shrugged. "If I was sure, we probably wouldn't be breaking in," he said, glancing behind the desk. "Let's check his desk and see if we can find anything damning." Henry knelt down as Athena continued to read and reached out to the cheap drawer built into the desk, sliding it open.

The drawer pulled open, with the slightest tacky feeling, as though he had pulled it away from a magnet. Nestled at the bottom of the drawer was a book. Unthinking, Henry pulled it out into the light to see. Henry stared at the pale leather bound book, his brows furrowing in confusion. Suddenly, like an optical illusion, it came to him.

The book had a face. Scratch that, the book used to be a face. Henry flung the book away from himself reflexively with an unmanly yelp, stiff pages crackling as they fluttered in the wind. Henry gasped in shock as the book landed beside the paw of the griffon, adrenalin screaming through his veins. Henry's gaze went from the book to the griffin, now much closer than it should have been, even in this tiny office, and he found himself momentarily paralyzed by its proximity.

The statue had slowly crept closer like a stalking cat, gaining five feet on them before Henry had noticed it. Its butt wiggled as it prepared to pounce on them. Athena's eyes were coming up because of Henry's panicked yelp as he threw the book, and she screamed as Henry seized her arm and hauled her behind the desk just in time to avoid the grasping claws of the bronze griffon.

The enormously heavy metal bird-lion left furrows across the desk as it scrambled over it, slamming into the filing cabinet with a screech of tortured metal, missing the two of them by a fraction of a second. Henry scrambled around the desk, fingers firmly locked around Athena's arm, when she shook him off and dived for the book, out in the middle of the room.

The statue regained its bearings, locking onto Athena in the center of the office. As she was coming to her feet, the five foot bronze statue flew from the corner of the room, batting her across the chest with its dull, rending bronze claws. Athena's voice cut through the room with a grunt, and Henry watched her fly out from beyond the griffon and impact against the second story window, sending worrisome cracks spiderwebbing across its surface.

Athena's shirt had been torn open by ragged claw marks to reveal the stiff Kevlar vest beneath. Her hair hung down across her face, and a feral snarl adorned her lips, tinted with a smile as she drew a gun from her waist. Jesus, Henry thought, amazed at Athena's reaction to danger. Henry stood as the Griffon readied another pounce. It bounded off the floor and propelled itself straight toward Athena, the book still clutched in her arms.

Henry did the only thing he could think of, extending his left arm, and focusing, sending a tether of force to connect to her. Henry waved his hand, focusing on the sideways motion, and Athena slid to the left along the glass, her head jerking to the side as the force pulled her violently. The griffon erupted through the glass with no more resistance than the surface tension of a still lake.

The griffon tried to arrest its fall, peeling paint and steel away from the frame of the window, but it shot through all the same. It flapped its bronze wings in vain as it tumbled to the ground, the aerodynamic improbability of its shape matched by its terrible mass. Henry made it to the window in time to see the statue make contact with the pavement below. A crunch, and the griffon made a four foot pothole, sunk six inches into the pavement below.

A distant part of Henry's mind idly calculated out the weight compared to the damage it had done to the road as he watched for signs of movement. "About twelve hundred pounds," Henry muttered, as the thing remained still, whatever had given it the semblance of life apparently unable to survive the fall. "You okay?" Henry turned back to Athena to find her folding the file up and tucking it beneath her arm, paired with the book.

"Yeah," Athena said, trotting for the door. "We gotta get the hell outta here, though." Henry glanced one more time at the motionless bronze statue embedded in the pavement below them and nodded, hustling to catch up.

"Let's go to the library, we can find out where this guy lives and pay him a visit," Athena said, hoisting the documents under her arm with a shrug.

They ran out of the building, skirted around the motionless griffon, and trotted away until they had separated themselves from the situation, slowing to a casual walk as they heard sirens in the distance. "Why'd you go for the book?" Henry asked, glancing over at Athena.

"Seemed like a good idea at the time," Athena replied with a shrug.

Henry shook his head. "I'm too jaded to lecture you about valuing your life," Henry said, taking a deep breath. "But at least think about how I would feel if you got killed. I mean, where am I gonna find eye candy as fine as you that gets off on danger?"

Athena glanced at him askance, a brow raised. "Does that line ever work?" a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Henry pursed his lips in thought, his eye glancing up as he searched through his memories. After a moment, he replied with a short. "Not really." Henry looked at Athena, feeling the powerful force around her, pulling him in. "It's not a problem with the line, though. What I'm really looking for is someone it'd work on, not a line that works on anyone."

"I see," Athena said. "Library is five blocks that way." She said, tucking her chin in against the cold night air, hiding her blush.

The two of them made it to the library without incident, shaking off the cold that seemed to cling to their coats as they came in from outside. Athena tossed her coat over the chair and sat down in front of the computer with the Yellow River file in front of her. Athena got a few strange looks on account of her torn shirt, but the Kevlar beneath it and the gun at her waist dissuaded further investigation.

Henry took the book aside and opened it gingerly, watching the mummified face turn away from him as he opened the cover. The paper itself was college ruled on the front and graph paper on the back, with modern steel three ring binder construction.

"Huh, I was half expecting skin pages too," Henry said, flipping back to the cover and inspecting it. There was nothing to inform him one way or the other whether the mummified face on the cover was real or not. Judging by the statue that came to life and tried to kill them when he opened the drawer, Henry was willing to give the book the benefit of the doubt.

Henry turned back to the pages, and found painstaking notes written in Latin on one side, with finely detailed graphs on the other. While the Latin escaped Henry, after he flipped through a few pages, a particular graph caught his eye. It was the design he had been told to build into the floor at any cost, with notes and arrows describing the flow through the pattern. Flipping through more pages, Henry found more and more things he vaguely recalled being assigned to other members of the team. One engineer had been told he couldn't put steel through specific spots, to allow the flow of energy to pass through unhindered, seriously hindering the building's structural integrity, until he had found a workaround.

Henry looked at each of the patterns, assembling them in his mind, likening it to a roach motel, or fish trap, where spirits and energy could come in, but not back out, and at some critical point, it would bind to whoever filled a set of conditions. Henry found himself very desperately needing a Latin to English dictionary.

Henry tucked the book under his arm and walked over to the desk, getting the attention of the librarian, who greeted him with studied politeness. "how may I help you," she said with a nod.

"A friend of mine in college thought it would be funny to take all of the notes in class in Latin," Henry said, placing the book down in front of her before opening it to reveal the college ruled paper covered in finely scrawled notes. "Say's it'll help me with my anthropology studies. Anyway, I'm gonna need a latin to English dictionary."

The librarian's face lit up when she saw the cover. "He's got a Necronomicon replica binder? Where'd he get it?" she said, leaning closer to inspect the book.

"Pretty sure he made it himself, guy thinks he's funny." Henry said, picking the book up to prevent the woman from touching the binding. "So, where can I find the dictionary?" he asked.

She straightened, and shook herself. "Oh, just over there," she said, pointing. "All the dictionaries are at the beginning of that aisle, English translation dictionaries should be at the bottom row."

"Thanks," Henry said, turning and walking swiftly away. She waved disinterestedly, returning to her work as he left. Henry searched the shelves and finally found the book he was looking for, returning to his place across the room from Athena, facing the door.

The librarian caught his attention as he walked past. "We'll be closing in half an hour, will you be needing to take the book home?" Henry glanced down at the books in his arms and nodded. After a few minutes, Henry found himself signed up for a library card.

Henry sat down and began translating the notebook, writing the translation in tiny script above the words themselves. After a few minutes of flipping back and forth between the pages, hunting for words, he leaned back, his eyes swimming, feeling like he was taking a test he didn't study the vocabulary for. Henry sighed and closed both books, eyeing the clock, which said they only had ten minutes left until the library booted them.

Henry walked over and sat down beside Athena. "Whatcha got?" he asked, leaning over to look at her screen. Athena scrolled through Gmail, her eyes flickering as she skimmed the titles of her emails.

"Really?" Henry asked, a brow quirked.

"Shut up," she said, putting a finger to the screen. "Look at this one." Henry's eyes had glazed over the email in question, dismissing it as spam because of its attention grabbing all-caps title.

ATHENA YOU STEPPED IN IT THIS TIME. Athena and Henry shared a glance. "Who's that from?" Henry asked.

"An enemy of mine, actually," Athena said with a frown. "Real douchebag." Athena scrolled through the list of emails. "Look, these are the emails from my friends since I saved your ass," Henry grumbled silently, but kept listening. "Every single one is a little wrong."

"This one here," Athena said, pointing at a previously read one. "This one was from a friend of mine, the tone of the email is still hers, but the only problem is that she's kind of a coward. If something like me breaking a suspect out of jail happened, she would distance herself from me, not offer support."

"You think someone else is writing their emails?" Henry asked. Athena nodded. "Open the asshole's email." He said, his eyes tracing it as they scrolled down. Athena clicked her teeth and frowned, scrolling back up.

"Probably just making fun of me for eloping with a serial killer," Athena said, grimacing.

"Just open it," Henry sighed.

Athena clicked on the email from her mortal enemy with a distasteful expression, revealing a stunning amount of belittling comments and invectives mixed in with useful information.

Athena, You really know how to pick 'em don't you? For about one day after your fucking jailbreak stunt I was walking on clouds, knowing that I was never going to have to be in the same room as you again, I was even looking forward to seeing you on the other side of the stand, myself.

But then the wrath of god descended on the office. Fed looking guys came and interrogated everyone, Mr. O. crawled so far up everyone's ass we were all walking funny.

That didn't ruffle my feathers too bad, but then Lin came to work different the day after, then Jan and Greg. Someone messed with their heads. I was getting tired of them wheedling about you, 'when is Athena getting back, I miss her', etc. I didn't see what the big deal was, beyond the T&A you bring to work every day, so I threw a rubber ball out of sight and shouted "Look, it's Athena!" as it bounced around in the other room.

Greg ripped a leg off of a fucking chair! All three of them turned red, like they'd been turned down for a prom date, improvised weapons, and rushed into the other room. A minute later they walked back in, sat down and got back to work like that was fucking normal!

Somebody is out there trying to kill the shit out of you, and as badly as we got along, I don't think you deserve that. Maybe slapped around a little, but not killed by a friend under some kind of mind control.

"Wow, this guy is an asshole," Henry said, breaking away from the email to meet Athena's eyes. She nodded, rolling her eyes.

The only reason they didn't fuck with my head, I assume, is because we hate each other. Can't be sure though, I felt like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, and I actually feel like helping you out, which is new. If you get this email, delete it, and don't bother responding, I made a throwaway.

I'm going to act like nothing is wrong at the office. If I do something out of the ordinary like running away from this horrorshow, I'm afraid they'd get me too. Gregbot, Linbot, and Janbot all act like normal as long as you don't flip their kill switch, so I'll be fine, just don't ever show your face in front of any of us again, and I think life can get back to normal.

Oh, btw, I found something that can help identify your problem: Looks like I'll have to kill someone to get in those pants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybristophilia

Athena deleted the letter, holding a hand to her temple and sighing. "I called it. God, for every good thing that man does, he inflicts another three unbearable irritations on the world. I just want to beat the stupid out of him."

"You don't work there anymore, right?" Henry said with a shrug. "Nothing stopping you now."

Athena tapped a finger on her lips thoughtfully. "Maybe when this is over, If we're still breathing."

"You get what we needed on Zack?" Henry asked, changing the subject.

"yeah," she said, opening the file folder to reveal an address written in the blank space around the official document. On the back, a little hand drawn map showed the streets they would need to follow to get there.

"There were a bunch of shady properties associated with him, but this one is the most innocuous, and therefore the most likely to be where he rests his head," Athena said. she flipped to another page, showing a full list of Landon properties, and short descriptions scrawled in tight, neat handwriting. "How did you do?" She glanced at the face-book beside Henry.

"So-so," Henry said, waggling his hand in the air. "It's obviously the recipe for how to build a soul-sucking device, incorporated into a building on a massive scale, but any more than that, I have no idea. The fucking book makes reference to things like The Drenelli Effect, and Murphy's law."

Henry saw Athena's raised eyebrow, and shook his head. "No, not the one you're thinking of," he said. "the whole thing is presupposed on formulas, effects and laws that I had no idea existed. It's like taking a trigonometry test without knowing any vocab."

The two of them packed up, throwing their coats on again and heading out, throwing a wave to the librarian, who raised a hand as they left, busy with cleaning for the night. Henry and Athena threw their collars up, tucking their chins in against the cold, and hiding their faces as they stepped out onto the street.

After a minute consulting Athena's map and comparing it to the bus routes, they were on their way. The bus dropped them off a block from Zack's house, leaving them standing on the sidewalk gawking as it rumbled away.

Zack's house was visible from a distance. A mansion built of concrete and light. The sculptures surrounding the building melded into the concrete beneath them, looming over the perimeter of the building, setting Henry on edge. It stood to reason, if Zack's office sculpture could come to life, then these guys probably could too.

Towering giants holding the chains of snarling dogs flanked the entryway, all immortalized in concrete. The dog's shoulder's rose to Henry's breast, and its piercing eyes seemed to follow him as the humans walked in between them. Henry kept all his senses on high alert, waiting for the statues to come to life and pounce on them.

Henry considered destroying the statues before they could come to life, but shook his head a moment after considering it. Zack would respond to force with force. Guns blazing wasn't the best way to handle this. Although blowing them up still had merit.

"If I had some C-4, or grenades," Henry muttered to himself. With those, Henry could booby trap the statues, rigging them to detonate should they move. Not to mention, should they not need them, Henry wouldn't waste valuable explosives. A sudden thought struck him, and Henry grabbed Athena, putting his other finger over his lips, the universal 'be quiet, I'm going to do something clever' hand sign.

As Athena watched, Henry sat down in the middle of the paved walkway leading to Zack's mansion, narrowing his eyes and focusing on each of the statues that ringed the entire property. Henry focused on the ground beneath each of them, building up force like pulling back a rubber band in his mind. Henry pictured a landmine beneath the statue, and very carefully took the force he had accumulated, and invested it in the image, binding the stretched tight rubber band in his mind to the trigger of the mine.

Henry pulled his focus away from the statue, and something stayed with the concrete. The tense, stretched feeling seemed to fade from his senses, sliding away as he reoriented on the second. Henry repeated the process until each statue was rigged to blow. Probably, Henry thought to himself. Henry breathed out and stood, only a couple minutes having gone by. His legs were weaker than he expected, but their strength was slowly ebbing back into him.

"What was that?" Athena asked, watching her surroundings cautiously.

"I rigged the statues to explode if they move," Henry said, facing the looming stone mansion ahead of them, like a highly decorated bunker. "I think. Coulda been wasting my time, but I guess we'll find out."

The two of them strode down the path to the mansion, unhindered by a gate or fence, the path to the front door lay open. Henry stood on the porch, took a deep breath, and rang the doorbell. A tone rang through the house that set Henry's nerves on edge, it was like someone had created a silver bell so large that its tone carried into your teeth and bones. It flooded Henry's mouth with an acrid taste, and he spat.

"Never tasted a sound before," Henry said, stretching his aching jaw.

"You must have had a boring college career." Athena said, also showing signs of discomfort.

"More rock and roll, less sex and drugs," Henry said, keeping his eyes on the double doors in front of them.

As Henry was beginning to consider doing his lockpicking stunt, the door was opened. A tall blonde man with buzz cut hair answered the door, towering over Athena, and half a head taller than Henry.

"Yeah?" the man asked, his jaw moving as he chewed gum. He wore an extra large T-shirt that was almost insufficient to the task, stretched tight over his chest, paired with casual pajamas.

"We're looking for Zack," Henry said, looking up at the man, who watched him while placidly chewing his gum. "It's about the Yellow River condo." Athena ducked out from behind Henry, and her eyes widened with a gasp as she caught sight of the mountain blocking the door.

His eyes flickered to Athena and back to Henry. "Henry, right?" he asked. Henry nodded. The bruiser stepped away from the door, beckoning them inside. "Mr. Landon will be happy to see you."

As they entered the house, concrete took on a whole new meaning, as the entire mansion seemed to be made of it, even the interior. The floor and walls had been washed in acid baths and laminated, bringing out swirling colors in the stone. The entire building felt nearly warm to the touch as Henry set aside his coat, as though they had stepped into some living thing

The man must have seem Henry leave his palm against the wall for a moment, as he spoke. "It's the concrete, it keeps the temperature in here constant. It's letting out the heat it accumulated throughout the day." The blonde motioned to a table beside the door. "Gun here, if you don't mind."

"I do mind." Athena bristled, her eyes unabashedly travelling up and down the man's sculpted figure.

"The 'if you don't mind' is a formality," he said with a prize winning smile. "Put your gun on the table." His tone allowed nothing else. Athena grunted, and unstrapped the gun from her waist, putting the holster on the table.

"Probably yours anyway," she muttered. Without acknowledging Athena's words, he turned and led the way down the hall to the left, ducking beneath a staircase that lead to a higher level in the same direction.

As they walked, Henry began to have a sense of the enormous amount of power he was dealing with. The walls radiated with some unseen energy, travelling through the building like blood, pumping in time to an unseen heart. At the end of the hallway, their guide stopped in front of a dark wood door at odds with the minimalist nature of the mansion, with gilding and fanciful images dancing across the rich wood.

Their guide reached out and knocked twice, and a moment later, Henry heard Zack's voice, muffled by the door, say "Come in." the statuesque blonde opened the door, and stepped out of the way, allowing Henry to enter.

Zack was seated at a beautiful wood desk with a perfect gold circle set into the wood, ringed by arcane symbols. He twisted his body to look at the door, and his mouth hung open for a moment as Henry came into his view, his eyes flicked to Athena, stepping into the room and availing herself of the nearby couch.

Zack turned his gaze back to their guide, and with a nod, the massive man turned and walked away, closing the door behind him. "Nice digs," Henry said, looking around the room.

While the walls and ceiling were still concrete, the furniture was of superior make. Athena relaxed into the couch beside the end table with a sigh, a wooden shelf filled with books behind her. on the other side of the room was a desk that looked like a hobbyist's work station, with a fold out shelf, workspace, soldering equipment, a miniature lathe, and jeweler's tools.

Zack turned to face Henry more directly, eyeing him appraisingly. "Let's get on the same page here," he said, throwing his arm over the back of his chair and leaning on it. "how much do you know?"

Henry ran his gaze over the books on the shelf, picking out titles like Fuller's Theory on Arcane Physics, and... "Zachory Landon's Empirical deconstruction of Magic?" Henry said, meeting Zack's eye. "Seem's a little..."

"Grandiose," Athena supplied from the chair she relaxed in, before picking up the book beside the end table and beginning to read it.

"For a guy to have his own book on his shelves," Henry finished, while Zack glowered at him.

"Henry, I can think of no other reason you'd come here other than to settle accounts," Zack said, hoisting himself to a stand. Athena carefully watched him above the binding of the book, her whole body tensed. "But if that's going to happen, we have to exchange information."

Henry glanced away from the books, taking in the steely look in the old man's eye. "I think we can skip a lot of questions," Henry said, turning to face him. "We can skip why, because who wouldn't want that kind of power?" Henry took a step closer. "And we can skip how, because I was there."

"Obviously you wanted to snuff out everyone who worked on the project, quietly," Henry said, taking a step closer. "So I guess my only question, Zack, is what the hell Charles fucking Manson was doing there, and why he's some immortal demon preaching on the midday news to a stadium full of people, and how you plan on fixing this clusterfuck!" Henry didn't notice his voice rising until he was shouting in front of the man he had thought was a friend.

Zack grimaced, his lips downturned partly in disgust and partly in anger, stalked toward the bookshelf, and snatched out a tome on the upper shelves. "It was a setup," Zack said, slamming the book down on his desk and flipping through the pages.

"imagine that building as a battery attached to a flash bulb. Normally it would trickle charge for a few decades before being used, and when triggered it would grant a wealth of power to the man standing in the center. I kept the purpose of the building a secret from everyone, but someone from The Family divined its purpose, and lied to my more power-hungry men."

"So when Manson was sent to the hospital by his own design," Zack said as he flipped through the pages of the book. Henry noticed picture after picture of monstrous beings flip past. Those idiots thought they had an opportunity too good to be true on their hands, having the madman so close at hand, and so they carried it out, never once doubting the motivation of the one who gave them the information."

"So you're saying you didn't want to kill everyone involved in the project?" Henry asked, watching Zack with narrowed eyes. Zack shook his head.

"Most of the people I hired for the job had tortured pasts, night terrors, hauntings," Zack said, looking up at Henry. "Like you." housing these people would help charge the battery, and the building would gradually filter out the negative taint of their energy, and allow me to imbue myself with pure magic."

"so, killing a bunch of people overloaded your filter, and supercharged your battery, and I assume, spent your flash bulb?" Henry said, working inside the old man's metaphor.

Zack nodded "The negative energy coalesced into Manson, creating this," Zack said, pointing to a picture in the book. A gaunt figure stood over a woman, gripping her with massively oversized hands as it locked sharklike teeth embedded in an enormous mouth around her shoulder. Henry leaned closer to the hand drawn picture, his eyes widening.

The monster in the picture was forcing the naked woman down on an gigantic cock as it fed on her. Blood flowed down her legs and chest as the drawn woman's head lolled back with an expression somewhere between pleasure and pain. "Maculat Mulieres," Zack said solemnly, "Big hands, Big mouth, big cock, born to prey on the fairer sex, usually from rapists and pimps who die in places of power."

Zack cocked his head to the side as he studied the gruesome picture. "Although this particular one had a lot more power juiced into him than your typical one," Zack met Henry's eye. "I've tried to kill him already. Shots to the heart and beheadings all should have worked, usually these things aren't the target of a damn immortality ritual."

Zack sat down in his chair with a sigh, "I'm going to get to name a new species of creepy crawly if I live through this, probably something unoriginal, like Maculat Mulieres Immortalis."

"I want to ask," Henry said, closing the book. "What happened to me?"

Zack craned his neck up at Henry, his white eyebrows furrowed in inquiry. "What do you mean?" in response, Henry made the book in front of Zack float with his mind. Zack shot out of the chair, his eyes wide. He turned to Henry, his eyes focusing on him with an uncomfortable intensity. "Tell me everything that happened." Zack guided Henry deeper into the room, sitting down on a well padded chair that faced another, a short table between them, the weathering on the chairs matched by their elegance suggested that many an important conversation was had in them.

Henry sat across from Zack, and as Athena listened from across the room, he described the events the night of the ritual. Zack listened, his mouth in a frown of concentration, his eyes locked on Henry's face. As he covered the story Athena already knew, she stood up and began perusing the shelf lined with books, finally settling on three and setting them on the end table beside her couch before flopping down and opening the first.

"Those are sorted alphabetically," Zack called over his shoulder as she sat down. "I'd appreciate it if they were returned to the same place you found them. Athena nodded silently, flipping through the pages, concentration evident on her face.

"Lawyers," Zack said, shaking his head as he faced Henry again. "They make some of the best wizards, simply because they combine a tolerance for dry reading, using information as a weapon, and manipulating people. Usually not public defenders, though."

Henry raised an eyebrow, and Zack sobered for a moment. "What happened to you, shouldn't have. It's true that you spilled blood, and stood in the center of the building at the right time, but that's not all it takes. You would need some way to harness or direct the siphoned energy, a catalyst. You shouldn't be able to do that," Zack pointed at the book. "Just by thinking about it."

Henry leaned back, thinking. It struck a sour note with him that Zack had not once referred to the people killed as 'people' but more than anything, he needed to know. "I have a recurring nightmare," Henry said, carefully selecting each word before they left his mouth. "About three men whose deaths were my fault." Zack's eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward, his attention fully focused on Henry.

A resounding sneeze rang through the silence, and Zack turned to see Athena leaning away from one of the books with her face scrunched up, stifling a follow-up sneeze. Zack's brows lowered, and Henry felt the lights dim for a moment, an icy hand gripping his heart, and then it was gone.

"Do not," Zack said, his voice low. "sneeze on those books." Athena nodded, setting aside the book and blowing her nose on a napkin from her pocket. Zack watched her for a moment longer, a growl that Henry felt more than heard rumbled from the older man in front of him before he turned back to Henry. "Continue."

Henry watched Zack for a moment longer before nodding, and describing his meeting with the men haunting him, his eyes lighting up with wonder. Finally he spoke. "So here's what I think happened," he said, his eyes dancing in amusement. "The spirits that haunted you acted as like the starter for a growing crystal, absorbing the energy that washed over you as the ritual came to a climax. But they became weighed to the earth by that very power, and unable to escape from the demon, bound to you as they were, and so they left the collected energy with you by granting a wish." Zack sat back, his hand over his lips as he contemplated.

"This is the first time I've heard of such a thing happening," Zack said, shaking his head. "Wishing for magic to be real. What a vague wish, Henry, you know that had you wished for something stupid, those spirits could have ruined your world, especially if they didn't like you. but wishing for something like that, basically wrote them a blank check, I'm surprised you're standing here."

Henry shrugged. "I didn't know I was making a wish," he said, clasping his hands together. "They said they didn't hold anything against me anymore, and wished me luck when they left. Except for Halil."

"Makes sense," Zack said, nodding. "You were very lucky they decided to forgive you."

"Except for Halil," Henry said.

"Except for him," Zack agreed. Zack leaned back in his chair, looking Henry up and down. "What I think happened is your vague wish manifested inwardly. Magic already exists in the world, and so instead you became magical."

"Soo..." Henry said, glancing at Zack sideways.

"So you're no longer human, you're probably a magical creature now, like a faerie, or a unicorn," Zack said, standing up.

"Unicorns exist?" Henry asked, his eyes widening.

Zack's expression soured. "Yeah, but they're... a little strange. Follow me, I've got some tests we can run to prove my hypothesis." Zack glanced over to where Athena was reading, and called them both over to his workbench.

"Okay, let's get the evil ones out of the way first," Zack said with a sigh as he sat down in front of the station. He reached out and grabbed a black flask with a cross on it shaking its contents with a fluid sloshing noise.. "Holy water. Hold out your hand."

Henry held out his hand, raising his eyebrow as the old man sprinkled water from the flask on his hand, to no effect.

"Here's some silver," Zack said, pressing a bar onto Henry's dripping hand. after a moment of nothing happening, he grunted and removed the cold metal from Henry's skin, leaning to retrieve another flask. Henry's eyes widened when scarlet liquid spilled from the opaque glass onto his palm, dribbling down between his fingers onto the workstation.

"Virgin blood." Zack said, watching Henry closely.

"You poured virgin blood," Henry said, staring down at the red liquid spreading along the creases in his palm. "On my hand."

"Yeah, feel anything?" Zack asked with a raised brow. Athena choked back a laugh.

"What the hell am I supposed to feel?!" Henry demanded, his hand twitching with suppressed indignation.

"Well, since you're not licking it up or being burned by it, we can safely assume you aren't a vampire or demon," Zack said matter-of-factly, tossing Henry a rag. Henry snatched the rag out of the air and wiped his hand off.

Zack sat back in the chair, and put his fingers on his lips, his brows furrowed in concentration. "Let's narrow this down," he said, reaching out to retrieve a fine gilded compass. With the swiftness of decades of practice, he drew a perfect circle on the table and drew fine script around the outside, completing his task in a matter of minutes.

"Put your hand here." Zack said, tapping the circle. At Henry's wary gaze, he sighed. "It's not going to do anything, it's like a litmus test. It will change color depending on what you are, look." Zack put his hand on the circle. The thin lines began to glow with a dark brown color. "See, human." Zack motioned Athena to place her hand on the circle.

Without hesitation, Athena exchanged his hand for hers, and the brown shifted a little more orange, but otherwise stayed brown. "Got a temper, I see," Zack mused.

"Alright," Henry said, gently moving Athena aside. He put his hand down on the circle, setting his palm against the cool wood surface. The lines burst with white light, tinted the slightest bit blue at the corner of Henry's vision. Henry pulled his hand off the wood and blinked, the script around the edge of the spell slowly fading from his vision.

"Okay," Henry said, still blinking. "What does that mean?" Henry glanced at Zack, and thought he saw the old man pale against the dazzling spots in his eyes.

Zack glanced up at Henry, and back down to the circle, as if doubting his eyes, before he sighed. "It means an idea has taken residence inside you," Zack said. The old man stood and stared up at Henry. "Your body is playing host to the manifestation of an abstract concept, an Anima Cogitationis."

Henry stared down at the old man for a moment in confusion. "Is that bad?" Athena asked, catching Henry's attention.

Zack glanced at her and shook his head. "Not generally, no," he said. "Unless the Anima Cogitationis is in some way harmful to the person it is bound to, like the concept of self mutilation, for example." Henry reeled back at the thought, his skin crawling.

"Don't worry," Zack chuckled. "Whatever idea took root inside you is all to the good, allowing you to use magic without any training or focus, my god..." Zack's eyes gazed off into the distance, before his attention snapped back to Henry's face. "Would you like to become my apprentice, Henry?"

"Why do you ask?" Henry asked, gazing down at the man inexpressively.

"Entirely selfish reasons," Zack said. "You become my apprentice, become the most accomplished wizard in millenia, and I benefit by association. Making a book float in the air seems small, but it takes years of practice and a focus to manage. With some basic techniques and training, you'd be journeyman level in six months, a master in a handful of years, and in a few decades, you could have the rest of the magic community by the balls." Zack looked up at Henry expectantly.

"Community?" Henry asked. Zack nodded his head, a smile spreading across his face. "And I bet just wandering around doing whatever I want with magic would bring the wrath of god down on my head, secret societies and all that."

Zack nodded again, his smile becoming a grin. "I always liked you, Henry, I think I know why now, you pick things up quick."

"I've had a lot of time to think about it the last couple days, actually." Henry said. He met Athena's eyes momentarily before he turned his gaze down to meet Zack's. "Alright, Zack, I'll be your apprentice. On the condition that you show me the ropes, so I don't get killed or turned into a tree or something." Henry said, putting his hand out. Zack shook his hand, his gnarled fingers squeezing with surprising strength.

"We'll have to go over the plan in the morning, but for now..." Zack said, glancing at an elegant clock adorning the far wall. "You'll need a place to stay for the night." Zack led them to a wing on the opposite side of the mansion, waving his hand down the hall imperiously. "Pick any room you want, I'll meet you in the lobby tomorrow at nine. I'm an early riser."

Henry nodded at the closest door. "This one's fine for us," Henry said, opening the door and stepping inside, Athena close behind him.

"For both of you?" Zack asked curiously before he shrugged. "good night, I'll see you in the morning, and the three of us can discuss Ms. Athena's disposition then." Henry put on his best sheepishly embarrassed face as he closed the door, and Athena for her part blushed and looked down at the floor.

Henry saw Zack turn away with a knowing smile just before the door latched closed. Henry stood in front of the door for a minute, listening to the sound of the old man's footfalls fade into the distance. When he couldn't hear anything more, Henry whirled to face Athena.

"That guy scares the ever loving shit out of me," Henry whispered quietly, as though he expected Zack to still be listening at the door.

"Skeevy," Athena whispered in agreement, nodding.

"We need to get the fuck out of here," Henry whispered. "The moment he heard about the crystalizing ghosts or whatever, he looked at me like a starving man looks at a ham sandwich."

"With mustard and mayo," Athena whispered in agreement, nodding.

Henry gave her a quizzical look just before his stomach rumbled with hunger, returning his neglect with a retaliatory gut punch. "Raid the evil wizard's fridge before we go?" he asked in a low voice. Athena answered with narrowed eyes and a bewitching smile.

"Okay, we rig the place to blow on the pretext of getting something to eat, then we make a run for it," Henry whispered. "As far as he knows all I can do is lift books," Henry paused for a moment. "And maybe we can find some contact information to get a hold of some not-evil wizards."

"I'll bet you five bucks even evil wizards have phone numbers on the fridge," Athena whispered.

Henry stifled a giggle. "no deal, everyone has phone numbers on their fridge," he said as he opened the door boldly, maintaining the cover of looking for something to eat. The two of them left the room, strolling through the halls confidently, as if they didn't have a care in the world. They came to the lobby and glanced around, looking for an obvious route to the kitchen, but none presented itself.

Flickering lights caught Athena's attention, and she tugged on Henry's sleeve, pointing up to the top of the second story stairs, where the light illuminated the lofted ceiling. The two of them crept up the stairs, unsure of what horrible experiment that was making the muted sounds of pain and anger, and a creepy static that flowed over them as they approached, raising the hairs on Henry's neck.

They reached the top of the stairs, and found themselves standing behind the butler... or whatever he was, playing a pro wrestling game on a big screen TV in front of him. The grunts of exhertion and the cheer of the crowd that had raised his hackled resolved themselves in his mind, allowing him to let out a breath of relief.

Beside the massive bruiser was what appeared to be a stopwatch, counting down what Henry could only assume to be his break between lifting weights for sixteen hours a day. Henry winced, unsure of what his reaction would be to being interrupted in the middle of his leisure time, but he walked into the man's peripheral and waved him down.

The huge lug paused his game and glanced over. "What?" he asked, sounding displeased.

"Kitchen?" Henry said, jerking his thumb behind him while appealing with his best lost and quizzical look.

The man stared at them for a moment, then blinked. " First floor, through the center, third door on the left," he said, turning back to his game and unpausing it without a second glance.

Athena and Henry trotted back down the stairs, following the big man's instructions. Henry glanced over as they walked down the hallway and saw Athena shaking her head. "Damn," she said softly.

"You're thinking about how hot he is, aren't you?" Henry asked, his tone dry.

"He's so hot!" Athena exclaimed quietly. Henry chuckled as she took a deep breath, making a double handed chopping gesture. "Okay, focus." The two of them made it to the kitchen, and Henry snagged a bagel while Athena made a sandwich.

"Do we have time for a sandwich?" Henry asked, taking a bite out of the bagel.

"There's always time for a sandwich," Athena said, before lowering her voice. "how about the escape plan?"

"I've set three explosives," Henry whispered. "Keyed to hand signals. If anyone in the house gives a thumbs up, the door to our room will explode, give an okay sign and that knife block will explode, and finally, I packed a lot of punch into the center of the lobby. Throw up the horns and a two foot section of the center of the lobby will become shrapnel."

"Got it," Athena said, layering ham, cheese, and a bit of lettuce on the sandwich, making Henry stare at his hastily grabbed bagel reproachfully.

"I'm making a bagel sandwich," Henry said, eyeing the ingredients Athena had laid out.

"No time," Athena said, slapping the top on her sandwich and prancing out of the kitchen, forcing Henry to follow as she took her first bite. Henry glowered at her, resigned to his simple fare as they approached the lobby.

They came into the well lit lobby, and stopped short. Zack, wearing unfamiliar clothes, a belt riddled with pockets, and with a pale blue crystal wand in his hand, stood blocking the front door. Beside him was his bruiser, glowering as though he'd been pulled away from the title fight for busy work.

"There you are," Zack said, sighing in relief. "I'd thought something had befallen you, but Matt here told me you were just looking for something to eat."

"We were," Henry said, raising his half eaten bagel. "So we'll just go to bed now." The two of them turned to go down the hall toward their room.

"Wait, Henry," Zack said, taking a step forward, "I've done some more research on your condition, and I've found a spell that will help stabilize your power. Come with me, and we can prevent you from thoughtlessly hurting yourself or others."

Henry stood, staring at Zack from across the lobby. He took another bite of his bagel. "How long are we gonna keep this up, Zack?"

"Keep what up, my friend?" Zack asked, his smile slipping for a moment.

"I'll come with you," Henry said, pointing the half eaten bagel at the magician. "If you can explain to me why the gutters in the gym locker, men's bathroom, and boiler room were all meant to be filled with blood.

Zack stooped and put a hand to his temple as if nursing a migraine. "It slipped my mind," he said, his eyes flashing with murderous rage. "That you were the one responsible for that fanciful bit of plumbing."

Zack heaved a sigh and drew himself up, and the world seemed to bend around him, like the focus of a fish eye lens. "Fine," he said, his voice rumbling through the mansion. "I'm going to kill you, Henry. You're nothing more to me than an oyster with a priceless pearl, waiting to be shucked." The hairs on Henry's neck raised as invisible power swirled through the air, not as powerful as the night the demon was born, but Henry could feel the subtle force gathering towards the old man.

"Run!" Henry shouted, grabbing Athena's shoulder and hauling the small woman along like luggage. Behind him, Henry heard the crackling of electricity, and he glanced back to see lighting dancing along Zack's body, rising to gather on the hollow crystal wand he held above him. Henry would have thought it cool were he not running for his life.

Henry dove into the kitchen, lightning filling the hallway behind him. Henry pushed himself up, after the dazzling light had faded, spitting out the taste of ozone. Athena rolled off of him as he rose, scrambling to the knife block. She grabbed the block of wood filled with expensive knifes, and threw it down the hall with a grunt of effort.

Athena watched the knife block slide down the hall, and as Zack approached it, she ducked back into the kitchen and put her thumb to her forefinger, extending the last three in the American 'okay' sign. A loud crack echoed through the mansion, along the with the shrill clanging of tortured steel rebounding off concrete at high speeds.

They ducked their heads out, and saw the pitted concrete that lined the hall, paint torn away from the walls around the blast. "House is sturdy," Henry muttered to himself, admiring the building's structural integrity. At the end of the hall, Zack came to his feet, coughing amidst the wood dust and smoke swirling around him. He didn't take his eyes off the two of them, even as his body convulsed with another coughing spat, reminding Henry of a gunslinger unwilling to blink.

Zack's clothes were immaculate, the only sign he'd been standing in front of a knife filled grenade was a lock of white hair that had come untucked from behind his ear. "I knew the old man was tough, but this..." Henry said, shaking his head. The blast had knocked him off his feet, Henry had noticed, so maybe he could move the old man out of the way. Henry reached out with his mind, built up force, and unleashed it on the old man's midsection, intending to fling him out of the hall.

A brilliant field of force sprung up around the wizard, brightest around his waist where Henry had intended to fling him aside, sending cascading waves of light around the old man in an egg-shaped outline. Zack shouted and raised the crystal focus, squinting against the glare. Henry jerked his head back, rolling away from the door.

Bands of concrete emerged from every surface within ten feet of the doorway, curling inward like some bug-eating plant. Athena, a breath slower than Henry, found her legs locked to the cold floor by a quickly hardening band of stone. Athena beat on the band for a moment, bruising her hands against the unyielding restraints, before reaching into her pocket with a snarl.

"Hold on," Henry said, focusing on the band. "Don't chew your legs off just yet." with a small effort, he snapped the concrete, and it crumbled away from Athena' s legs. Henry hoisted her to her feet, standing clear of the inwardly curling concrete.Finding nothing to grasp, the spell merged back into the floor and the path to the door was clear, with only an angry old spellcaster o contend with.

"I've got an idea," Henry said. "I'm going to blind him for a moment, do you want to break right or left?"

"I'll take the left," Athena said, following Henry to the door.

Henry nodded and began filling his mind with power, stretching the mental rubberband as far as he could handle, before ducking out into the hall again, low. Henry's brows furrowed when he spotted no sign of the old man in the hall. His heart skipped a beat, realizing he'd been outmaneuvered.

The pain in the muscles of his back confirmed his suspicions. Henry's entire back became a massive cramp, twisting his spine backwards painfully even as a pained scream erupted from his lungs. Zack stepped out from the wall of the kitchen, as if he had simply walked through the solid concrete to flank the two of them.

Henry had fallen into complacency, hitting the same place more than once, expecting a wizard to walk through whatever he flung at them like Jason Voorhees, instead of thinking, which was their hallmark. Henry glanced over his shoulder, and saw Zack bearing down on Athena with his focus. He unleashed the remains of the built up power directly over Zack's face. It wasn't as blinding as he originally intended, as most of the built up energy had faded when he'd had the shit shocked out of him.

The air in front of Zack's face turned opaque as his shield absorbed the energy, momentarily blinding him. Athena seized the opportunity and scrambled out the door. she came face to face with the bruiser, standing a good two feet taller than her. Athena pumped her legs for even more speed and when she was almost within reach, dropped into a low slide.

The blonde, for his part, reacted quickly, dropping his knee down, intending to stop her like a hockey goalie, but she slid under the knee dropping with three hundred pounds of force, busting her nose and losing a few strands as his kneecap came down on her hair. Without stopping, Athena came to her feet and sprinted for the entrance. She tugged on the front door and found it locked, and her gun was nowhere on the table beside it.

With a frustrated growl, Athena glared at the blonde coming to a stand at the opposite side of the lobby, blood streaming from her nose. He watched her as he rubbed a sore spot out of his knee where it had impacted the ground. Beyond him, Athena saw Henry struggle to stand as glowing script began to circle around him.

"I didn't want to do this, since you're cute," Athena said under her breath, before she ducked her head down and darted to the hall leading to their room. Athena sprinted to the end of the hall of room, and the big man trotted after her, moving with a slight limp. He followed casually, as if he already knew she was cornered. Athena turned and watched with dread as the big man made it to the entrance of the hallway, calmly stalking towards her as she backed away, her eyes wide.

The big man's face was solemn as he approached. "Sorry about this, ma'am," he said as she backed away from him, shivering, trying the handles on the doors and finding them locked.

Henry groaned as the white, glowing script circled around him, lifting him from his feet. Henry found himself floating alongside Zack, his limbs numb. He tried to hit Zack's head again, but he only succeeded in making tiny opaque ripples appear six inches in front of the old man's face. The ripples caught Zack's attention, and he looked down at the captive floating beside him as they walked deeper into the mansion, descending a flight of stairs.

"You don't even need to move, do you?" Zack said, "you have no idea how remarkable that is." Zack hold the focus out toward Henry's temple, and with a surge of panic, Henry focused all his energy on the crystal rod. A crack spread down the delicate crystalline structure, branching out and clouding the light that seemed to travel down its length.

Zack pulled the focus away, staring at it with a frown. He shrugged and tossed the focus aside, before pointing down at Henry's temple again. He snarled a phrase and Henry felt as though his head had been dunked in water. A strange pressure closed in around him, dulling sounds and vision. Henry tried to bring power to bear, to move something, but the energy roiled around inside him, as thought it had been trapped in a snow-globe.

Zack wordlessly led Henry's motionless body down the hall, coming to a hidden stairwell that slid aside at a wave of Zack's hand. Henry floated behind Zack, hyperventilating as he tried to move any part of his body. Zack disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell ahead of him, and Henry struggled to move as the shadows of the underground staircase began to slide over his body.

Zack took him to a plain room, with smooth concrete walls and floor. On the floor a gold circle had been laid into the floor, with guidelines cut into the concrete, making spontaneous ritual working less laborious. At Zack's motion, Henry floated to an apparatus in the center of the room, designed to hold a human aloft and restrain them at the same time. Its design immediately reminded Henry of a lift that a mechanic used to work on a car's guts.

Henry's eyes went wide as he realized Zack's intentions most likely involved cutting him open. Whistling to himself, Zack began to strap Henry's arms and legs in as his body came to rest on the thin bar of steel, allowing a complete view of his sides and back from underneath. Henry began to pound on the fishbowl that his head seemed to be dunked inside.

"Zack," Henry slurred, his voice barely audible over the rustling of Zack's clothes as he happily hummed to himself.

"Mhmm?" Zack said, his eyes on the next strap as he leaned over henry to tie him down.

"Those guys that tried to grab me in the woods," Henry said, putting all his focus into speaking. "Did you send them?"

"Yep," Zack said, tightening the strap around Henry's waist. A small rumble echoed through the mansion, And Zack raised his head, his gaze distant. Henry saw the light reflecting from his eyes shift, as though he were flipping through viewpoints on a computer screen. After a moment, he looked back down at Henry. "What did you do?"

Henry shifted the pounding against the glass barrier in his mind to a focused accumulation of pressure behind a diamond drillbit. Henry pushed with everything he had, feeling the barrier begin to give as he went, sending cracks through the rigid container.

Henry smiled. "I killed a few, sent the rest running," he said, putting on a face he didn't feel.

Zack frowned at him. "Not them, I don't care about them," he said, moving to a nearby table and picking up an industrial pair of shears. "What did you do that caused that explosion?"

"Look," Henry said, meeting Zack's gaze. "I'll be damned if I tell you anything about what I can do or how I did it. Let's just say I left a few surprises around the house."

Zack absorbed the information for a moment, then nodded, and stooped to begin cutting off Henry's shirt. "I can deal with that," he said quietly. "This spirit that inhabits your body, did you know there's a way to get them out?" Zack cut along Henry's sides and roughly tugged the front of his shirt out from behind the leather belt, tossing it aside.

Instead of responding, Henry turned his attention inward, drilling at the walls keeping his power contained. The hard barrier cracked and gave way, only for his drill to meet a soft, stretchy layer of tough plastic holding the glass of his metaphorical snow globe together. Forward progress stopped, and Henry found a small fraction of his energy leaking out.

With a desperate push, Henry summoned the trickle of power and began working on his escape plan. Zack pulled a rolling table beside him, darkly reminiscent of a doctor. " The Anima Cogitationis stays with its host indefinitely. In fact, it wasn't until recently that wizards discovered that the two are separate, what with their extreme rarity combined with their often useless nature."

Zack reached onto the table beside him and took a leather headband with a hole in the center, strapping it around Henry's forehead. Zack produced a black material about the size of henry's thumb, covered in tiny runes. The stone shone as though it had been polished by a master jeweler, every facet of the stone smooth and straight. Zack leaned forward and screwed the black stone into the gap in the leather headband, directly above Zack's forehead. The stone slid forward, pressing harder and harder against Henry's skin, and when he finally gave a hiss of discomfort, Zack nodded, leaving the black stone digging into Henry's skull.

"There was an Anima Cogitationis of nose picking once, did you know? And dog petting," Zack said with an amused chuckle. "Mostly they spawn from gifted children, and so they are childish in nature, but yours..." Zack shook his head. He refocused on Henry, suspended below him with his shirt cut away.

"Organ failure is the most effective way to make the spirit jump ship. If it thinks you're dying. It'll bolt from where it's burrowed in the back of your mind," Zack said, before giving the black stone digging into his forehead a flick. "It doesn't work if I just kill you, the spirit will die too, without the opportunity to run, so we gotta rock the boat first."

Zack turned back to the table and came back with a scalpel, making Henry's heart jump out of his chest, causing him to struggle so hard that it actually manifested as small twitches beneath the leather straps. "So we start with less vital organs and work our way up to the important ones. Did you know you can survive for three weeks without kidneys?"

Zack knelt down beside Henry, his knife disappearing from the bound man's gaze as he desperately tried to turn his head. As Henry hyperventilated, a searing pain bloomed along his side. A scream was torn from Henry's weak lung's. Lacking force, it dwindled down to a choking bleat, reminiscent of a goat.

The pain grew, and spread, throbbing, across Henry's abdomen, and still, he couldn't see what Zack was doing. Henry, between gasping screams, swore to kill the old man, any way he could.

"The dog petting one sold higher than the nose picking one," Zack casually said, his face just beyond Henry's field of view. "Yours, though, I'm definitely keeping." A soft padding echoed in Henry's ears, he realized dimly through the haze of pain. Zack glanced up from his work, a speck of blood near his hairline.

A brown leg swept past Henry's narrowing field of view, impacting with the old man's face. The field of power sprung up between the two of them, but Zack was still flung against the far wall, landing against the concrete wall, losing his breath. Athena stood above Henry, reached into her pocket, and slapped a piece of weathered paper down on Henry's chest.

Athena felt her back hit the end of the hallway, as the blonde Adonis slowly entered the row of doors. "Give up here, and I'll take you to the boss," The towering man said apologetically, "Otherwise I gotta snap your neck." As far as Athena was aware, Zack wasn't the sort who'd let someone walk away. Athena felt a scowl cloud her expression, and she tilted her head forward as she stared down the hall at the blonde.

Athena squinted her eyes, counting the number of doors he'd passed. "you seem like a nice guy," Athena said. and cute, Athena added internally. "It'd be a shame to kill you here, so quit working for the old geezer, and help me save my friend."

"I can't do that," he said, shaking his head. "I'm his-" Athena couldn't wait any longer as he passed in front of their door, and she reached down and lifted her shirt, flashing him. The giant stopped in his tracks, and registered an instant of confusion as his eyes took in the sight of her breasts. Athena gave him a thumbs-up and a grin.

The door to his right exploded, slamming him and hundreds of oak shards against the far wall.

Athena squinted her eyes against the explosion, and charged forward as soon as the blast erupted. The hulk lay slumped against the door on the opposite side of the hallway, bleeding from the ears. Dozens of oak splinters had embedded themselves along his entire right side, and Athena winced in sympathy. Athena knelt down beside the big man's corpse, and began rifling through his pockets, looking for a key to whatever safe her gun was in.

All she got was a cellphone that revealed a horrifying workout schedule, a pair of rubber bands, and a paper fast food straw wrapper. Athena lunged to her feet, tossing aside the cell phone, and ran up the staircase to the second floor, finding her gun on the arm of the couch beside the controller for the console. Athena breathed a sigh of relief, checked the bullets and then began searching for Henry.

Athena jogged along the first floor, her bare feet padding silently down the halls as she listened for any sound telling where they might have gone, she ran down the hall where Zack's study had been originally, but didn't hear anything. Athena turned and ran back to the hall with the kitchen, her breathing beginning to come fast as she glided along the hall.

Athena stopped short in front of a gaping void in the end of the hall that had not been there previously, leading deeper beneath the cold stone mansion. The arched portal loomed in front of her, the ambient light of the hallway barely penetrating the darkeness inside, revealing the first smooth step of a stone staircase.

Athena screwed up her courage, and with a deep breathe, stepped down into the darkness, creeping down the spiral staircase. Halfway down the stairs, a scream of pain lanced through her heart, and as the sound devolved into sobbing, Athena took the sheet of paper out of her pocket. When she had been perusing the books about magic, she had found one symbol, hailed as one of the simplest, and therefore most widely effective forms of magical defence and disruption, scrambling attack spells, charms and imprisonments alike. Its effect was to destabilize magic, throwing the energy involved haywire, disrupting the effect.

The picture printed in the book was a broken circle, with jagged lines intersecting at odd angles. Athena broke into a sprint, heading toward the sound of screams, and she found herself approaching light spilling from a doorless arch.

As she entered the room, Athena saw Henry bound to poles emerging from the floor, and Zack squatting beside him, appearing to be about to reach a hand into a deep gash along Henry's side, which oozed with blood.

Athena's vision went red, and she lunged forward, kicking the crazy old man across the face. Zacl was flung away, and without waiting a moment, Athena slapped the purloined spell onto Henry's chest, hoping to destabilize whatever held him powerless before she swung back around to glare at the old man, leveling her gun on him.

"What did you do to him?" Henry heard the voice dimly through the pain, and the fishbowl around his head. Henry realized that the sphere containing his power felt... brittle. With a push, the barrier flaked away like an eggshell, peeling away larger and larger sections as he pushed.

Sounds and sights no longer felt distant, and Henry took as gasping breath as the pain in his side intensified. Henry hadn't thought that was possible, and he let out a soft groan.

Zack had no response for Athena, and he simply snarled and waved his hand. Athena fired one round, that caused a portion of Zack's shield to turn opaque, before she was flung against the far wall by an invisible force that swept through the room, knocking the table over, and jostling Henry in his restraints, flinging the paper on his chest against the wall as well.

Athena hit the wall with devastating force, and the air in her lungs was forced out, and she found that she couldn't get it back. Her diaphragm had been paralyzed by the impact. With widening eyes, Athena tried to force air into her unwilling body.

"Goddamn interruptions," Zack said, motioning toward Athena, an arcane word rolling from his lips. Once again a concrete flower bloomed from the far wall, and its petals turned inward, binding Athena to the wall. "Where the hell is Sam when you need him?" Zack eyed Athena for a moment, before he frowned. "Guess I know what that explosion was."

Athena cut Zack's musing short with a ragged breath, and Henry frowned, a brutal idea surfacing in his mind. Zack turned back to him as Henry began working on killing the old man.

Henry closed his eyes and expanded his senses to the air in the room. "Zack," he said, as the old man righted the table, ignoring Athena's glare from across the room.

"Yup?" Zack asked as he picked up the torture implements, replacing them on the table.

"We're cool," Henry said as he siphoned the oxygen out of the area around Zack's shield, replacing it with nitrogen.

Zack turned to face Henry with a frown. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I just want you to know that you won't haunt me," Henry said, wincing at the pain of speaking. "I heard from a credible source that you have to feel guilty about killing someone for them to be able to haunt you."

Zack chuckled, but his breathing was getting slightly faster. "Haunting is a pretty plebian thing for a soul to do, but aren't you confused?" Zack asked, not noticing own his labored breathing. "You're about to die."

Henry ruthlessly depleted the air around Zack's shield, his eyes still closed. "Just a heads up." Henry murmured as he sealed the oxygen-less bubble around Zack, tying a mental bow on it.

Zack chuckled, and turned back to his table. "Now where were we..." Zack's words trailed off as he dipped, catching himself with the meat of his palm against the table. He began outright panting, staring down at the floor for a moment, before he raised his head, staring at Henry, his expression wild.

"What did you do?" he demanded, shoving himself off the table, panting.

Henry shrugged, nothing particularly eloquent coming to mind.

Zack leaned over Henry, and pressed down on his opened side. The gash twisted, wrenching a scream from Henry. "Fix! It!" Zack screamed between gasps for air.

Henry moaned as the screaming agony plateaued, caught his breath, and stared the old man down. "No," he said, his voice shaking.

Panting at an incredible pace, Zack lunged to the table, grabbing a scalpel before he sank down beside Henry, aiming to use his weight to plunge the knife into Henry's neck. With a swift thought, Henry pulled the scalpel from the old man's weak fingers. The blade tumbled past his face, missing his eye by an inch or two. The wizard's fists came down on Henry's chin and neck, before Zack slumped over beside him.

Henry choked and coughed for a moment from the impact to the neck, but managed to stabilize his breathing. He looked over at Athena, still glued to the wall with a concrete band over her mouth. Henry's sight began to flutter, growing dizzy as he focused on releasing Athena. Henry knew if he didn't get some help, the gaping hole in his side would have him bleeding out in a matter of hours, so he persisted, resisting the impulse to close his eyes and sleep as the adrenalin left his body, replaced by waves of tired agony.

Henry didn't remember anything that happened after that.

Athena snapped off the last of the stone holding her, and rushed over to Henry, who watched her with half-lidded eyes. "Henry," she said, running her gaze over the red curtain running along his side, then down to the white haired old man, whose eyes bulged in death beside him. "Are you okay?"

Athena almost smacked herself. Henry was obviously not okay. "Help," Henry muttered, his voice barely audible. Athena's gaze travelled around the room, and she found a needle and thread, gauze and medical tape lying beside the implements of torture littering arranged on the table.

It was one of the seldom considered aspects of torture, Athena thought to herself as she snatched up the supplies and knelt beside Henry. Her fingers shaking, Athena took up the curved needle, and began pushing it through the neat edges of the cut.

Henry let out a groan, and his head stirred as he looked over at Athena. "...You doing?" he mumbled.

"I'm stitching you up so you don't bleed out." Athena didn't mention that she had no experience doing so, but her stitches became neater as she got used to the sensation of passing the needle through flesh. As she worked, her fingers became swift and sure, and she thanked whoever was listening that henry didn't have the strength to scream and thrash anymore.

"You're really cute," Henry mumbled, his head lolling to face her. Athena glanced up, and looked at his face. His eyes stared into the distance, dialated. Athena's eyes widened, and she got back to work stemming the slow ooze of blood down Henry's side.

"But not like in a bunny way," Henry gasped, his eyes drooping closed. "like in a gets-my-dick-hard-as-steel way." Despite the circumstances, and the slick blood covering her hands, Henry managed to get a laugh out of Athena.

Henry's monologue devolved, alternating between praising Athena, hitting on her, apologizing to dead people, and occasionally calling for his mom. Athena wiped a wet towel over Henry's bloody torso, revealing the finished product of cinched together flesh, not yet puckering with inflammation. Athena bent over Henry and unbuckled the straps holding him in place before she paused for a moment, considering her next move.

Henry was heavy. It was no fault of his, hell, had he been in shape, he would have likely weighed more. The man was just too much taller than she was, and so she realized she was going to need to make a plan before she started clumsily flopping him around, probably doing more harm than good. Athena eyed the rolling table and added to her list as she left the room, looking for a place to lay Henry down on a real bed.

Luckily enough, the room closest to the stairwell had a bed. It seemed as though Zack slept in it when he was torturing someone 24/7, as Athena noticed a sink with dried blood around the edge, and small brown stains here and there on the sheets. Athena shuddered as she learned more about the man, the hairs on her neck standing up as she realized how much danger they had truly been in.

Athena took the top off the rolling table, leaving the base. She hauled Henry onto it awkwardly, then dragged him to the bed, hoisting him onto the queen sized mattress one side at a time. When Athena finally had Henry in bed, she unbuckled the strap around his head that made him look like a unicorn. Athena retrieved the gun from the torture room, defiled Zack's corpse a bit, and then went back, laying down beside Henry, listening to his quiet breathing. Faster than she would have thought possible, Athena fell asleep.

Sam awoke with a start, the right side of his body itched. He reached up to scratch his leg before withdrawing his hand with a hiss of pain. His eyes rolled down to examine himself. Splinters as big as his thumb had embedded themselves all along his right side. Sam gasped in pain, and levered himself up with his left hand.

"Fuck," he said, grunting. Sam's brows furrowed, and he touched a finger to his ears, and saw that he came back with blood. "Goddamnit," Sam muttered, unable to hear himself beyond the dim vibration that travelled through his jaw every time he spoke.

Sam took a deep breath, and tried to remember the last thing that happened. The last thing Sam remembered was... boobs. With a chuckle, the big man shook his head and struggled to a stand. Sam's thoughts turned to Zack, and getting a sitrep. "Probably gonna get fired," he said into the silent void.

Sam retrieved his phone before he limped down the hall, removing the smaller splinters as he went. Sam knew it was unsafe to pull the bigger ones out until he made it to a hospital. As he limped down the hall toward the basement, his phone began to vibrate his pocket.

Sam pulled the phone out, and blearily checked it. It was the alarm for his eight o'clock workout to end, it was midnight. Sam was about to shove the phone back in his pocket when a text popped onto the screen. It was from his bosses phone.

Sam, go into the vault, the code is 1559368, retrieve the message from box 16, and read it.

Sam's brows furrowed, and he put the phone back in his pocket. Instead of heading straight for the vault, Sam limped the rest of the way to the basement, all the way to the torture room. There really wasn't any better name for it. There, on the ground, just on the other side of the thin steel poles meant to suspend a body, was Zack, stiff and curled in on himself. A dangerous man, pathetic in death. The faint stench of urine entered Sam's nostrils.

Sam's eyes scanned the room, from the blood beneath the table to the broken restraining spell against the wall. A bloody curved needle rested on the floor beside the dead man, and while no visible wounds were on his body, his eyes bulged his face a rictus of pain. Sam stepped on the old man's right hand, tearing the prosthetic ring and pinky fingers off, leaving a jagged silicone faux skin behind.

Sam stood, looking down at the corpse of his former employer, and heaved a sigh, turning away with a shrug. Apparently he wasn't getting fired today.

The heavy steel door of the vault swung open, the arcane enchantments protecting it against magical intrusion disabled with a pulse from the mundane circuitry in the keypad. Sam stood stock still, his eye widening in awe at the sheer amount of wealth the old man had amassed before his about-fucking-timely death.

Gold, artifacts of incredible power, ancient creatures and forbidden books, all stared back at sam, piled around the spacious room, making it nearly claustrophobic. After taking it all in, Sam limped to box sixteen, climbing over a weathered stone box carelessly placed in front of it.

Sam tested the metal box, finding it swung open easily. Inside was a canister formed from dark brown glass. Reaching into the box, Sam gingerly closed his hand around the canister, pulling it away from the wall. There was a soft click and hiss as it detached from something. Sam peered into the box, but saw nothing to indicate the canister's function.

Looking back down at the brown glass container, Sam thumbed his chin and frowned, turning it this way and that. did this message have any meaning, now that Zack was gone? Sam would be inclined to think no, had the message not been sent after the old man was obviously dead.

Sam raised the glass to eye level, trying to discern what lay beyond the nearly opaque glass. Sam shook the container, hearing the light rattling of a paper note inside. Sam shrugged and put his massive hand over the relatively small cap, twisting it off.

Wary of the suspicious noises when he took the canister out, Sam held it away from his face when he removed the lid. Nothing happened. After a moment, Sam turned the tube back toward him, peering into it. A small, withered humanoid shape flung itself from the canister toward Sam's face, trailing the wavelike ripples of arcane power behind it.

It sped through the air between them, fast as a snake, moving so fast it drew blurred line between the canister and Sam's startled face.

Sam caught it. He held the offending creature with his right hand, seizing it from the air before the lid had time to start dropping. The spirit, uncertain of form, and supposedly able to pass through solid matter, struggled in Sam's grip like a fruit bat, all its wriggling having no effect on its fate.

Sam looked closely at the spirit in his hand, and he saw a pale, withered mockery of Zacharias Landon, snarling up at him with important fury. Sam knew its purpose, to move into his body and displace Sam's soul. He'd seen its like before.

With casual disregard, Sam held the ethereal spirit up to his mouth and bit its head off. Crunching on the spirit's skull, and grimacing at the bitter taste, Sam tucked the canister under his arm, pulled out his cellphone, and made a call.

"Yeah, I know it's not the right time to check in, this is important," Sam said, limping back out of the vault. Between crunching off more of the limp spirit in his hand, he spoke. "Aneira, Zack's dead." Sam paused for a moment.

"No, I didn't kill him," he said, offended. "Believe me, I only do what I'm told, I don't care to do any more than that." Sam stayed silent for a moment. "The problem is with the people who killed him, and the circumastances surrounding it. Looks like Zack really did make a soul collecter, tried to make himself a god, but the thing got fried before he could set it off." He paused. "Yeah. Yeah, that guy on the T.V. and this one here. What do you want me to do?"

Sam's tensed shoulders relaxed. "Yeah," he said. "Got it, I'll take a little longer because I've got a splinter." Humor colored his voice as he strode toward the exit. At the threshold of the Vault, he caught a piece of paper fluttering from the canister out of the corner of his eye.

Sam bent down and retrieved the weathered paper, spreading it open to reveal the old man's flowing script.

To the person who probably killed me.

Go fuck yourself.

-Zacharias Landon

A spell burst into a white light on the page, startling Sam, causing him to drop the paper. The words inscribed themselves on the back of his retina in the moment the spell flashed, and Sam's right eye began to throb.

Instead of fading away, the spell inscribed on his vision only darkened, become pitch black, with crisp flowing writing on any surface he looked at. Sam's right eye began to burn, and tears streamed down Sam's cheeks a he clutched at his face.

"No fucking way," Sam gasped as the burning began to spread, feeling as though it were anchoring roots through his skull. Sam's survival instincts kicked in, and he stumbled back into the vault, snatching up a priceless ceremonial knife.

With the blade pointed toward the offending eye, Sam took a deep breath, and gritted his teeth, getting down to the business of saving his life.

Henry found himself sitting at the campfire outside his grandparent's old house, roasting marshmallows. To his right sat Halil, his leg stubs oozing phantom blood that didn't quite reach the fire. In front of him, and to the side, were the two men Henry had killed the day before. one, with black hair and a short beard, his own knife protruding from his chest, and the other, an older blonde with a bullet hole where an eye should have been.

The newcomers sat and stared at Henry, their malevolence palpable, yet the pale men neither did or said anything. Henry turned his marshmallow carefully, making sure to brown all the sides evenly. "They can't do anything, yet." Halil said, reaching into his bag and placing another marshmallow on his two pronged fork before holding it over the fire. "They're too new to this. it's like learning to walk all over again."

"Huh," Henry grunted, eyeing the staring ghosts. When his marshmallow had reached a golden brown, he slid the skin off, ate it, and waited for another skin to form.

"This is an enjoyable memory from your childhood," Halil said, blowing out a marshmallow that had caught fire. "Even if it is a testament to western gluttony." Halil accidently burned it again, blowing it out quickly.

Henry sighed, resting his chin on his hand. "At least Zack isn't here to give me shit," he said, slowly rotating his stick. The two ghosts simply stared at him.

"I'm not sure I could have handled him," Halil said, turning his stick, slowly getting the hang of it. "Besides, I'm sure the old man would have tasted terrible." Henry cocked a brow at Halil, who casually managed his marshmallows.

"Tasted terrible?" Henry asked, before his eyes caught the two partially burned marshmallows on Halil's stick, then back to the two silent ghosts. Henry realized that something more than malice colored their faces, it was fear, and pain.

"There we go." Halil said, sliding the two marshmallows off the stick and popping them in his mouth. The faces of the ghosts in front of Henry crumpled in agony before they flickered out of existence. Halil's eyes rolled back in his head as he chewed, a small bit of melted marchmallow dripping from his stake.

Henry's emotions shifted like a tempest between anger, fear, disgust and relief. Henry took a steadying breath, and spoke. "Do you plan on doing the same to me?" he asked, watching as Halil became just a little more solid than he had before, his presence more heavy.

Halil gazed at him, and Henry caught a hint of amusement at the corners of the legless ghost's eyes. "They don't suffer any more," he said, setting the stick down. "Why would I do you the same kindness?"

"Good to know," Henry said, gazing at the marshmallow on his own stick. With a shrug, he snagged it off the sharpened wood with his teeth. "At least those bastards aren't gonna stick around fifteen years like some people."Halil tilted his head in acknowledgement before reaching into his bag, replacing another two marshmallows on his spit.

"Go easy on those," Henry said idly. "You'll get a stomach ache." Halil snorted in a way that matched the teenager's appearance as he started to roast the next batch of souls over the fire.

"What do you plan on doing with all those?" Henry asked, eyeing the bag.

"After our little run in with the sorcerer, I realized I can't simply wait to see how your life unfolds," Halil said, his face lit by the glow of the fire. Halil turned, looking straight at Henry as the light danced across the side of his fine featured face. "I think we've shared this space long enough, I'm going to have to strike out on my own."

Henry raised his eyebrows. For the life of him, he couldn't see that as a good thing, but inside the dream world they inhabited, he couldn't do anything but follow the script of the dream. Henry shook his head and set down the sharpened stick. Uncrossing his legs, he warmed his feet by the fire, staring up at the glittering stars in the sky.

"Do you really hate me?" henry mused as he watched the milky way spread out above him.

Halil considered for a moment. "I hate what you mean to me, and I hate losing," he said, his eyes gazing into the fire. "In all the years I've watched you, I've learned enough to know you aren't evil." Halil cocked his head to the side. "I'd never seen evil until the past few days, truly. But it doesn't seem so bad. You handle it well."

"Not like I want to," Henry said, his face grim. "You of all people should know my reasons for giving up, fifteen years ago."

"Scared of how many people you'll have to kill to put this mess behind you?" Halil asked, a smirk on his lips. "It's a shame you have talent but no taste for it."

"Yep, that's what I'm afraid of," Henry said, his breath faintly visible in the chill night air. "I'm afraid I do have a taste for it, and sooner or later, I won't be able to tell who I should kill from who I want to."

Halil grunted. "My experience with the world beyond death has given morality a broader perspective for me," he said. Halil turned and pointed at Henry's brow. "As long as you've got that thing in your head, killing will be fairly commonplace. If people come after you and you have to kill them, just keep one thing in mind."

"What's that?" Henry asked, turning his gaze to meet Halil's.

"They were asking for it," Halil said with a mischievous grin.

Henry nodded with an exaggerated motion. "Ah, victim blaming," he said. "Works every time."

Halil shrugged. "Only men and women like that sorcerer will try to kill you," he said, returning his gaze to the fire. He raised his head as though listening to a distant sound. "You're about to wake up. See you tomorrow."

Henry opened his eyes. He lay on his back beneath the sheets of an unfamiliar bed, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling. His memory of the day before turned hazy after he suffocated Zack. Henry realized his bladder was full, and so he tried to sit up, muffling a shout of pain when his side began to throb.

Henry moved his arm to run a hand over the cut in his side, and found it covered in gauze taped to his skin. Henry shifted to gingerly climb out of bed, and found himself kicking bare flesh under the covers. Henry painfully twisted, and barely made out a bit of brown hair poking out from under the covers beside him.

Carefully, Henry climbed out of the bed, turned and assessed the situation. Athena snored quietly on the left side of the bed, snoring quietly in her underwear. The was buried beneath the covers, but he made out a long stretch of smooth brown skin revealed by the shifting fabric. Her pants and shirt lay on the ground beside the bed.

Henry was interrupted by his bladder, and he limped to the toilet, finding himself unexpectedly dizzy. Henry took care of business and found himself overwhelmed by thirst, putting his head beneath the faucet in the sink and desperately drinking, despite the pain the contortion caused him.

Finally sated, Henry rode a wave of exhaustion back to the bed, and painfully crawled back under the covers, his skin brushing against Athena's. Her quiet breathing lulled him back to sleep, and this time, Halil didn't butt in.

Henry awoke again to the sound of metal ringing. Athena stood in the corner of the room, her feet braced in a wide stance, swinging a weathered sword, so notched that the edge looked like a piece of worn out chewing gum. The ragged edges and thin blade made the sword look like it could snap off at any time. The scene of Athena swinging the sword around looked like the opening for a tetanus shot commercial.

"What are you doing with that?" Henry said, raising his body with a groan. Henry's hand pressed protectively against the wound in his side for a moment as he carefully sat up. Athena glance over at Henry and stopped swinging the sword. Henry nearly sighed in relief, a self-inflicted stab wound from his childhood resurfacing in his mind.

"Practicing," Athena said, turning to show him the ragged blade, with pocked and pitted steel. A single word adorned the blade, nearly illegible. 'VLFBERHT' read the weathered inscription. The handle was leather wrapped around the steel tang, and the Pommel was more simple iron, completely lacking in decoration. The hilt seemed to have some grooves where precious metals could have been inlaid, but they were long sense stolen.

"Gonna need weapons if we're gonna fight monsters," Athena said with a grin.

"Ok," henry said, raising a finger. "first, what makes you think we're fighting monsters?" you heard Zack, he couldn't kill the damn thing."

Athena shrugged, swinging the sword a few times in the air. The wind caught in the jagged edges of the blade and made the blade ring as it sliced through the air. "He couldn't kill you either," she said. Her gaze fell on Henry. "And what makes you believe a word he said? Do you think he even tried?"

"And second," Henry said, his brows lowering. "what makes you think you could ever use an antique like that-" Henry's words cut off when the sword sang through the air and bisected a nearby hardwood chair, the two uneven halves of the furniture falling to the floor.

"And third," Henry said, his mind trying to catch up. "... Where the hell did you get that?" Athena reached out and grabbed a gnarled staff leaning against the wall and passed it to Henry. Henry took it, and levered himself to his feet.

"It's better if you see for yourself," Athena said as she turned away and walked out the door, leaving Henry no choice but to limp after her, muttering to himself. As Henry limped down the hall, he gradually figured out a shuffling gait that caused the least pain to the wound in his side, relying on the staff in his hands.

Henry couldn't help but become anxious as he followed Athena, his eyes gradually wandering away from her lithe form in front of him. How long would it take before Zack was missed? Was the old wizard accountable to anyone or could they afford to rest and recouperate here for a while?

What if they simply took whatever cash they could find and ran? Henry shook his head. Sooner or later they would find themselves surrounded by police outside a dingy motel. Maybe Athena was right. If he used whatever Zack had at his disposal to kill the Mansonator, the majority of supernatural influences on his murder case would be gone.

Athena stopped in front of a massive steel door that had been swung open. Henry took in the arcane symbols carved into the door and glance over at her. "Did you open this?" he asked.

Athena shook her head. "I think it was the blonde," she said. "He was gone when I looked for him." Athena pointed to an open box among the dizzying array of treasure. "It looked like he took whatever was in there," Athena's hand moved to point to a red puddle beside a bloody knife on the floor. "Got hurt there, and then walked away." The puddle showed faint traces of being walked through, disappearing back the way they came.

Henry's hair stood up on the back of his neck. "So that giant is still alive in here somewhere?" Henry asked, turning to keep watch behind them.

"I don't think he stayed," Athena said. "The front door was unlocked, and I found a smear of blood on the handle." Athena turned thoughtful. "Besides, he seemed nice enough."

Henry looked back at her, disbelieving. "Didn't he try to kill you?"'

"He was very polite about it," Athena said with a shrug.

Henry took a deep breath and his eyes wandered over the assembled artifacts that littered the room. "Do you think he would have known which of these would turn us inside out?"

"Maybe not," Athena said, running her finger through a square patch of ash beside the puddle of blood. "Something must have gotten him, but he lived."

"We're totally in the dark here," Henry said. "Let's leave the vault alone for now, don't close it, because we don't know the password, but sometime I think we're going to need some of the things in here." Henry thought back to the library in Zack's study upstairs, and the simple glyph Athena had used to save his life.

"What do you wanna do now, then?" Athena asked as Henry crooked his finger, and the ominous looking tomes scattered about the vault floated from their resting places to follow after him.

"We're going to hit the books," Henry said, leading a train of floating books slowly up the stairs to the main mansion. Henry was pleased with his clever wordplay, but Athena scoffed.

"Then what?" she asked, outpacing him on the stairs. Henry didn't mind, as it gave him something to look forward to.

"I'm going to become a wizard," Henry said, pulling himself up the stairs one at a time. "I don't think Zack was lying when he said the Anima Cogitationis would let me learn it easier than most, but I'm pretty sure he was thinking about himself when he was going on that power fantasy."

"sounds good," Athena said, "There was enough macaroni and cheese in the kitchen to keep us holed up here for months." Henry shuddered as he reached the top of the stairs. Macaroni and cheese was all right, but months? After a few days, Henry began to dread the mush. Athena, sensing his discomfort spoke up.

"I grew up with mac' n' cheese," She said brightly. "I know a million different ways to cook it." Henry, for his part, resolved to learn to change his appearance as soon as possible. If he could go to a supermarket without being spotted, he could escape that cruel fate.

Henry placed all the books beside a deep recliner, then fetched the introductory and theory books from Zack's workshop. When he finished moving, he collapsed shaking into the chair. After a steadying breath, he reached down and grabbed the first book, basic tenets of Magic. After a few minutes of reading the dry introduction, Henry heard a screeching sound, and looked up.

Athena dragged another recliner diagonally across from him, sharing his pile of books. She picked up one labeled Laws And Theory Of The Arcane. Athena glanced up at Henry over the heavy book. "trade you when we're done?" Henry grunted assent and went back to reading.

After a few minutes of reading, Henry's brain began to overheat, and after an hour, he and Athena had set a fifty pound Webster's dictionary between the two of them, in a struggle to unpack some of the denser, more obscure words.

The evening wore on, the silence only broken by the two of them asking each other vocabulary and the quiet shuffling of pages. Hours went by, and although it was comparable to eating flour, Henry finished the first book, handing it over to Athena, who had finished hers a half hour earlier. Henry took a moment to rest his eyes, made some coffee and a sandwich, then settled back into the cozy couch to begin the second book.

Henry started awake when the top of the second book struck him in the forehead. Athena was across the pile from him, leaned back in her seat, her head lolling to one side, the book folded over her thumb. Henry watched her, wondering what motivated her to stick with him for as long as she had. Normal women don't run off with a suspected serial killer. Her dickhead coworker might have had a point, but unlike him, Henry found it hard to find fault with her. Henry set the book down and let his eyes fall shut.

The next day was still a struggle, but the two of them began making progress in their preferred directions. Athena, mortified at how Manson had nearly controlled her through the TV, focused on defending and disrupting magic, looking for ways to apply the symbol she had stolen.

Henry was more focused on how to make things happen, and though they had begun at opposite ends, they wound up meeting in the middle. Magic, in its most simple form, was building a reservoir of energy, and then piping it through mental maps of spells. That, combined with the will behind it, would achieve the desired effect. In essence, there was no way to make a spell happen without knowing what it was supposed to do, even if you had the formula, the last ingredient, will, would be missing.

Athena learned about the mental piping via the defensive side of magic, with techniques ranging from optical illusions, to fluctuating inverse pressure, causing the mental model of the spell to burst at the seams.

Nursing a suspicion, Henry opened one of the actual spell books, and he found the maps of each spell clearly drawn on each page, with a meaningless codename, and no description of what they did. "Fuck," Henry said, setting the book down and returning to the theory books, looking for clues as to what the complex web of lines on each page might do.

"What's up?" Athena asked, raising her head from the book she was studying.

"The spells all have codenames and no descriptions," Henry said, flipping back and forth between two pages of the book, studying the minute changes in the spell circles inscribed in the theory book.

"Could be a personal spellbook," Athena said, nodding to the History Of Magic book she had read. "Oftentimes, when a wizard makes his own spell, he'll give it a codename, and hoard the knowledge of what it does, passing it on only to a select apprentice. Once, somewhere along the line, the apprentice spills the beans, and it winds up common knowledge, it'll be added to your everyday spellbooks."

"So what if the apprentice gets suffocated before he tells anyone?" Henry asked aloud. Athena raised her brow. Both of them knew the answer, so with a wrenching gut, Henry tossed aside the book of spells, searching through the stack for another. Henry crossed his fingers internally as he flipped through tome after tome. Finally, Henry found a two inch thick book of spells, in visibly worse condition than the rest, made of more common materials.

Henry let out a whoop when he turned to the first page, and saw a simple spell, labeled 'fire'. Henry flipped through the pages, stooping over the book and laughing as spell after spell revealed itself.

"That's creepy," Athena said, looking over at Henry with her brow raised. Henry straightened and swallowed the evil laugh that had been welling up inside him, but it felt like instead of letting it out his mouth, it was now singing through his veins.

"Found a spellbook," Henry said, waggling the book. "labelled and everything."

"Sweet," Athena said, taking it from him and looking it over. "cleaning clothes, changing your appearance, calming animals, digging holes, forming steel, growing plants..." Athena flipped through a few more pages. "It's a hell of a mixed bag, but there's some good stuff in there."

"Goddamn right," Henry said, accepting the book back from her, and cradling it like an infant. Henry wanted to start with the first one, but he couldn't justify experimenting with fire without any means to stop it. Henry picked up the book and began running through the checklist of things he needed to get started, his heart pounding with excitement. Open space, safety equipment, and a focus.

All the introductory books mentioned two things that any wizard needed to make magic work, A reservoir, and a focus. The two could be separate, but for practicality's sake, most wizards made their reservoir into a focus.

Henry thumbed his chin. Did he need a focus? Zack's focus had been broken, and he still managed to... Henry's eyes went wide and he sat up straight, groaning in pain as he tugged on his stitches. Athena glanced up at him, her eyebrows raised in a query.

"We didn't bury Zack!" Henry said, climbing to his feet, summoning the staff to his hands before he began limping out the door.

Athena cocked her head to the side. "Oh, yeah," she said, rising to her feet.

The smell grew stronger as they went down the steps to the basement, something worse than decay. "Are dead people supposed to smell this bad?" Athena asked, her face crumpled in disgust. Henry had smelled plenty of dead people. This was worse. The odor had a caustic sting to it that reminded him of chemical waste mixed with burned rubber and human waste.

"No, they aren't," Henry said, locking his jaw against the eye watering stench. As they came closer to the room itself, Henry had to stop and dry heave for a moment before he got his stomach back under control, a thin trail of saliva hanging from the corner of his mouth. They turned the corner and spotted the old wizard's body.



The flesh was in the process of melting, drooping to the floor as a bright red liquid escaped from beneath the cracking skin. Henry took one look at it, and shuddered. if he hadn't seen Zack alive and moving a few days ago, he would have sworn this was a badly made horror movie prop, plastic and corn starch. No human body should decompose like that, leading Henry to believe that the old wizard may have done a fair amount of work on himself before the end in his pursuit of immortality.

The stench nearly mad Henry heave again, but there was nothing in his stomach. Henry saw an opportunity. "Tell you what," he said, eyeing the melting corpse through watering eyes. "I clean this up, you make dinner."

Athena looked at Henry, aghast. "You're thinking about food now?" she said, astonished.

"Well, no," Henry said, shrugging, "Nearly throwing up made me realize that my stomach was empty, and I thought I'd give you an out. You'd probably be more comfortable in the kitchen."

Athena cocked her head to the side for a moment, staring at him with her mouth open. "You know what, sure," She said, glaring at him. "Despite your blatantly mysogenistic remark, the kitchen would be better than burying that. But know this, if you show up to eat covered in Zack, you'll be having your clothes for dessert, because I'm going to feed them to you." Athena turned and walked away, her heavy footfalls echoing in the underground chamber.

Henry watched her leave, then turned back to the melting corpse on the floor before heaving a sigh. It was a mistake. The sudden intake of breath filled Henry's nasal passages with the horrific stench, and he fell to his knees and retched, dropping his manly fade as soon as Athena was out of eyesight.

"Ugh" Henry said, pushing himself to his feet when the retching had passed. He looked down at the corpse. "What am I gonna do with you..." an odd disparity made Henry look a little closer at the dead man's right hand. Henry squatted down beside him and looked at the wizard's right hand. the last two fingers of his right hand were missing, and the skin around it looked normal, and healthy, contrasting the sallow skin currently sloughing off the corpse.

Henry did what any sensible adult would do. He poked it with a stick. Taking one of the torture tools off the floor that looked like a dentist would own, Henry poked and peeled back the skin, discovering it was made of rubber. A prosthetic? Henry thought to himself, fighting down the urge to gag at his close proximity to the source of the stench.

Henry thought for a moment. According to the book, a focus was expensive, and if you disarmed a wizard, you essentially rendered them powerless. It wouldn't be a stretch for a wizard to hide it, or have a backup. Which would explain why the old man casually tossed aside his focus as soon as it cracked, but was still able to work magic, his focus had been buried in one of his prosthetic fingers.

But why would the giant have taken it? Henry couldn't see him as a wizard, drinking protein shakes and pumping iron while reading a book on a stand in front of his treadmill. Surely the old man wouldn't have told a goon where his focus was hidden, it just wasn't something the muscle needed to know, which meant that the big guy knew more than he let on.

Henry rose to his feet, musing. He'd have to think on it later, but for now, Henry had to get rid of a stinky melting wizard. After a searching the mansion grounds, Henry found a large plastic barrel with wheels for collecting trash. Henry parked it beside the old man, and leaned on the staff, willing his corpse into the air. It was the most Henry had ever tried to lift into the air at once, and the sustained effort drained him quickly, letting the old man's legs or shoulders drop to the ground as his support fluctuated between the two areas.

Henry felt a strange creeping sensation from the staff as he channeled energy into moving the dead wizard, like all the goosebumps it raised along his arm were all pointing in the same direction. Henry dropped the old man's head back to the ground with a splat, narrowing his eyes in frustration as gobs of the red substance splattered on his shoes.

Henry turned his gaze away from the corpse and regarded the staff for a moment. Henry pictured power flowing into the staff through his hand, directing it to take residence there. The staff greedily drank in all the power he directed towards it. Henry could vaguely feel it climb the wooden staff, whirling inside the gem that topped the wood.

The staff seemed to be some kind of Ye Olde Reservoir, Henry guessed. The style was straight out of Tolkien, and Henry imagined no modern wizard would ever have something so glaringly obvious, Zack being the case-in-point, but a smile broke out onto Henry's face. Henry liked it, a lot.

After a while, Henry returned his attention to the body in front of him, and drew the stored power back out as he lifted the old man. After a few false starts, Henry got the feel of handling a larger load of sustained power, and successfully shoved the dripping corpse into the wheelbarrow.

Without Athena around, Henry's evil laughter went unchecked. Henry pushed the wheelbarrow ahead of him with magic as he limped along, siphoning a small amount of it back into the staff as he progressed. Henry managed to get the old man out to the garden, and then he retrieved the spellbook, flipping to the hole digging spell.

Henry kicked off his shoes, wiggling his toes in the grass before sitting down beside the wheelbarrow, studying the spell. Despite being simple compared to others, it was a complex network of interwoven symbols contained within a circle. Henry stared at the book, committing the deatails to memory, and then glared at the grass ten feet away from him, pictureing a hole big enough to dump the body as he injected power through the spell, reconstructed in his mind.

Nothing happened. As he pushed the power through, the entire began to warp and fade from his memory, the details falling away, as magic began to leak out into the air around him. Henry studied the spell book and then tried again, with the same result.

The power coursing through the spell would unfailingly find a weak point in the spell as he pictured it, and the entire thing would unravel. Undaunted, Henry tried for another half hour, before the idea to place the book in front of him while he did it. With his eyes on the spell on the paper, Henry was able to maintain focus long enough to make the spell go off without a hitch, and a small chunk of dirt in front of him lifted out of the ground and placed itself neatly along the edge of the hole. About three shovel's worth of dirt.

Henry didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He had succeeded, but he had done less with half an hour of concentration than thirty seconds with a shovel could accomplish. On the other hand, he had done it with his mind, which made the whole thing incredibly exciting.

Henry decided to go with determined, rather than swing between extremes of emotion. Henry tried again, his eyes of the book, channeling stored power from the staff. This time four shovels of dirt deposited themselves on the ground.

"No one said this was gonna be easy," henry said, gritting his teeth and gripping the staff tighter. Well, Henry admitted, Zack had said it would be easy, but that was compared to the average person. Henry channeled all the magic he could stand, flowing it through his mental construct from one end to the other. The power seemed to dissipate, losing force even as four shovels worth of dirt displaced themselves.

Henry lost patience and shouted, sending power at his mental construct, intending to destroy it in his frustration. For a second, Henry felt the power her sent form swirls and eddies as it flowed over the spell constructed in his mind. The spell dissolved in his mind just as the ground fell out from under him.

Henry flailed for a second, lurching because of the sudden fall, before he landed on his back, the wind driven out of him, coinciding with an ominous popping sensation coming from his side as he hit the ground. Henry's mouth opened in a silent scream as his wound began to send sharp stabbing pain above the background ache. When Henry finally caught his bearth, it was ragged, pain matched with exhilaration.

Almost as an afterthought, Henry checked his side for bleeding. "I did it," Henry said, looking up at the walls of dirt surrounding him. Henry chuckled to himself, admiring his view at the bottom of a six foot deep bowl. Henry put his hand in front of his eyes, almost as if part of his brain were saying 'hey, look at this!" while the other was too busy to care.

Henry's eyes focused on the bright red on his fingers. "Shit," Henry said, pressing his hand to his side with a hiss of pain. One of his stitches had busted, and the hole in his side had slipped, just a little. The scab covering it had broken open and begun to leak. Henry grunted as he climbed the bowl that resembled a meteor strike.

When he made it to the top of the ridge, Henry looked down at the sight, and grinned from ear to ear before he retrieved the book and staff, dumping Zack's limp body into the hole. Henry used the staff's built up power to bulldoze a fair amount of dirt over the corpse and began his trek back to the mansion, looking for some first aide for his side.

Henry made it back to the torture room, and snagged some bandages, reinforcing the stitches with medical tape and gauze. The smell still pervaded the area, but it wasn't as bad as when the corpse had still been in the room. Henry finished the bandaging, breathing lightly as he wiggled his dirt-covered toes. His shoes were buried somewhere in the massive earthen bank surrounding the crater, and he didn't feel like digging through the whole thing.

Zack's feet were smaller than Henry's unfortunately, but Henry found a spare pair in the giant's room that fit well, a pair of combat boots. As Henry was lacing them up, the smell of leather and polish wafted up to him. Henry was reminded of crawling under barbed wire, the leather boots of the grunt in front of him nearly kicking him in the face, and sleeping on the bottom bunk with two pairs of boots carrying noxious odor up to his nostrils.

He remembered his eyes flinging open, still sticky from sleep, when the attack began. It was still dark, the sun not quite brightening the horizon, when armed men began to assault the groggy, sleep deprived troops. An echoing rumble told him that the explosion in his dream had really happened.

Henry and the others flew out of their beds with trained haste, grabbing their guns and heading out, barefoot, wearing nothing but government issue undies. Screams resounded across the base, and Henry's squad kept their heads low, creeping through the compromised building. After a few minutes of sneaking, blowing holes in any bad guy who turned the corner and found them, the gunfire died down, and when Henry looked outside, he saw something he'd never expected to see in the modern world.

His CO's head rested on a stick, lit by a flaming car. In the pre-dawn light, Henry could make out the pale, struggling shapes of some of the women stationed at the base pinned beneath doezens of hands. Henry could make out the naked asses of the men above them, flexing as they tried to push deeper inside their captives. It was a moment of clarity for Henry, it felt as though he were watching the discovery channel, the mindless expressions, the snarls. Humans were animals, and the universe could do without a few dozen of them . A cold rage passed through Henry, hardening into a smooth sphere inside him.

"Are we gonna help them?" One of Henry's teenage subordinates asked, peeking over the edge of the windowsill.

"Yep," Henry said, his eyes dead. "We're going to the armory." Henry and his team got all the way to the armory, rigged the entire building to blow, and then stole one of the enemies trucks, driving their translator up to the hill where the leader of the enemy forces stood, watching the americans die with some satisfaction. Henry and his team jumped out, secured the leader, and had the translator send orders to load up the survivors and bring them to the top of the hill before securing the building.

It worked like a charm. As soon as Henry confirmed the enemy trucks loaded up struggling soldiers, He had his men castrate the enemy commander with a cherry red knife. The man's teeth had bitten through the sole of a steel toed boot jammed into his mouth.

When the American prisoners made it to the hill, they ambushed the drivers, dressed like their brethren, dragging each of them from their cars and putting bullets through their brains. After it was all, done, Henry looked back at the building, where antlike troops could be seen carrying supplies to the rest of their trucks, looting the base.

Henry took the bulky detonator out of the truck and turned back to the survivors. "Who wants the highest kill count?" He asked, waggling the detonator in front of him. A woman stepped forward with blood on her collar from where the previous owner had been blown away. She took up the detonator, and with a grim face unceremoniously uncovered the switches, flipped them up, and pressed the button.

The building they had been living in the day before, the gym, the pool table, the xbox they liked to play at the end of the day, all were destroyed. Henry watched the building explode, not accompanied by a gout of flame, but dust and shrapnel. Gouts of flame were a convention by Hollywood to make explosions look cool.

As the dust settled, Henry saw a few bodies moving around beneath them, and he turned back to the couple dozen people still alive, standing close to him. "Alright, who wants to come with us and mop up?" he asked, taking volunteers. In the end, all of them cruised back down the road in the enemies trucks, putting bullets into the fleeing men. All the while, the cold sphere of rage inside him kept spinning.

Henry finished the last lace of the boots and stood, leaning on his staff. The act brought to mind a man in his camo, boots and cap, with a Gandalf staff. Henry laughed. If only his past self could see him now. Henry headed back down to the kitchen for breakfast, the solid feel of the boots bringing him confidence despite the extra drag against his wounded side when he walked.

Henry made it to the kitchen and found a bowl of macaroni and cheese waiting for him on the counter. With a sigh, Henry took it up and leaned against the counter while he ate. Henry's distaste for mac and cheese sprang from a six month stint in college fueled by nothing but the squishy pasta, but Henry's eyebrows raised when he started spooning the yellow mush into his mouth.

Athena had apparently added some sesame oil and pepper, and probably a handful of other things, it tasted nothing like straight out of the box stuff. Henry happily devoured his bowl, wondering where the person who had made it went. After eating, Henry washed out his bowl and went to the study room, but it was empty.

His nerves beginning to get rattled, Henry moved on to the vault, calling for Athena as he went. Athena called back from the inside of the vault, and Henry relaxed, entering the Vault.

Athena wore a crimson silk sash tied around her waist, above a leather belt with the sheathed ancient sword attached to it, as she turned to face him, Henry spotted a necklace chain glinting against her dark skin, disappearing beneath. Her ear had a silver cuff attached to it, and it looked as though she had just pierced it. All told, Athena looked like she was showing up to work on Dress Like A Pirate day at the company get together.

"Hey, Henry," she called out to him, closing her book, but saving the place with her index finger. "You bury the old man?"

"Mostly," Henry said, nodding. "I tried using a spell to dig a hold, and the pit is a little bigger than it needs to be, it looks more like a crater." Henry eyed Athena's new ensemble, and his eyes caught the glint of silver threads forming patterns on the silk sask, and there were obvious symbols adorning the cuff on her ear. "So what's with the new duds?" Henry motioned at Athena's attire.

"Oh," Athena said, lifting the book. "I've been identifying stuff that can help, it's slow going, but I've found some amazing stuff." Athena brushed her hair away from the ear cuff. "Protection from mind control." She tugged on the sash. "Lightness of body." Athena motioned to the sword. "You know this one."

Henry nodded, his eyes returning to the chain disappearing under her clothes. "What about the necklace?" he asked.

Athena glanced away. "I," She said, avoiding eye contact. "it's pretty." Henry thought about it for a moment, then shrugged.

"That's fine," Henry said. Henry was fairly confident she knew what the necklace did, but didn't want to tell him. After all, would anyone just put something on that they found in a vault full of magic because it was pretty? Henry cocked his head to the side, thinking of some of the people he had known in the military. Come to think of it, there were people that would do that. Henry thought to himself.

"Find anything else?" Henry asked, looking around the treasure trove, there were so many unique objects competing for attention that the plainer things seemed to disappear between the cracks, resurfacing again as his eyes ran over them. "I'd be interested in reservoirs and focuses."

Athena glanced around. "Zack was conscientious enough to put up warning labels on anything that was dangerous," she said, pointing out a jagged symbol that looked a bit like a backwards three with extra bits poking out, drawn or chiseled onto nearly a quarter of the items and even a few of the boxes against the wall. "If you're looking for a reservoir, look for something made of crystal or copper, bound into a complex knot. Focuses are..." Athena flipped the book open, and went to the index, before flipping to the first third of the book.

"Focuses are made of a material that efficiently refracts light, orbs and lenses were not uncommon," Athena said as she read from the selected passage. "Over time, Focuses took on the shape of miniature spyglasses, with the widest end held in the hand, efficiently focusing magic over long distances. These gave rise to the common idea of a magicians wand."

"Huh," Henry said, "Learn something new every day." Henry began shifting through the piles of treasure, looking for a focus. He eventually found pointed bone with two lenses embedded inside it, forming a narrow cone that tapered off into a handle.

"Why bone?" Henry asked, showing Athena the focus. Athena pointed to the book on the floor before getting back to digging through the treasures. Henry picked up the book and flipped through, but he couldn't find a specific reference to bone focuses. Setting the book down, Henry tucked the focus into his pocket and turned to face Athena. "I'm going to work on that spellbook," He said, glancing down the empty hallway, when a sudden ominous feeling struck him. "Be careful in here, there's no guarantee thatunlabeled things aren't dangerous, and put something in front of the door so you can't lock yourself in, that'd be a shitty way to go." Athena sighed and rolled her eyes.

"Yes, dad", she said, picking up a heavy stone slab and sliding it into the doorway with a grunt.

Henry nodded, the feeling in the pit of his stomach alleviated somewhat. Henry grabbed the spellbook and had a fire extinguisher float behind him as he limped back outside.

Henry set the book down in front of him, and opened to the first page, fire. without the impatience of earlier, he looked down at the spell, memorized it, then looked up, and flowed a gentle stream of power around the symbol, as if it were fixed in the center of a tube, cutting the flow of water into a complex symbol as it ran past it.

The fire spell was simpler than the other he had done earlier in the day, and yet, as soon as he looked away from the page, the complex structure of the symbol began to simplify in his mind, losing detail even as he mustered power to send through them. Henry figured out that he could make it work as long as he was staring at the page while he attempted the spell, proven by a small fire lit when he let the tiniest amount of energy out while staring at the page.

Henry wasn't particularly frustrated, in fact he was elated. He had figured out the right way to channel the energy without a teacher in one day. Memorizing the spells and using them effectively would take a long time, but little could dampen Henry's enthusiasm for it.

Deciding to take another break after more failures, Henry took the spellbook back to the study room, and sat in the recliner, searching through the pile. Henry took a few beginner books, and rifled through them to see if he could identify the problem.

Henry was presented with a few solutions. Working through the books, he found the ones he found the most acceptable. One method suggested by each book was years of training the imagination, allowing the spells to form in the mind with full clarity and without losing detail. Techniques for that included picturing a single dot, then doubling it, then doubling it again, and so on, until you could no longer picture them, then starting again.

Other methods included cheat sheets, and tattoos placed where the caster of the spell could easily use them as a reference. There was only so much space, and while reliable, that method limited what one person could do, and was considered a crutch. The last way was to inscribe the spell and the intent on a specific focus, allowing anyone to use it with little effort, which had its own drawbacks.

Henry flipped through the other books, but most things were variations on those three methods. Henry set the books down, closed his eyes and began doubling dots. Two, four, eight... when Henry made it to sixteen, his concentration began to waver, and he couldn't perfectly picture all of them.

"Wow," Henry said, shaking his head. "I suck at this. No wonder." Henry kept his eyes closed, and began doubling dots again. Hours later, Henry had made it to sixty four clear, differentiated dots in his mind, far below the book's recommended five hundred and twelve. Other excercises included growing a tree from a sapling in his mind, holding every detail as it grew and branched out. In a sense it was similar to the first, simply keeping track of expanding complexity, but more for right brained types who enjoyed the asthetic of their very own mind-tree.

Henry was deeply reclined in the chair, his eyes closed, When he heard Athena's distinct footfalls stop at the entrance, causing him to lose track of the details of his tree. Henry cut it down and replanted his apple tree, watching it sprout.

"You killed my apple tree." Henry said, without opening his eyes. Henry took the growth slower this time, dividing his attention between it and Athena.

"Working hard?" Athena's voice came from the doorway, before her footsteps approached the recliner opposite him. Henry heard the springs inside twang as she levered it back.

"Yes," Henry said, taking a deep breath, raising the hands folded over his chest before he exhaled slowly, watching the sprout grow its first two leaves. "Thought exercises."

"Just looks like napping to me," Athena's voce came from the recliner.

"I did fall asleep for a little while," Henry said, picturing the two leaves spreading out as another sprouted between them even as the sapling's height grew, and its bark darkened from brown to green.

Henry dropped the exercise and opened an eye to peer at Athena. She rested on the dark brown recliner, her hand shading her eyes. "How about you?" Henry asked. "How'd you do." Henry spotted a number of new things on her person, and a small pile of gear beside her.

"I looked at the book entry on the Maculat Mulieres, and picked out anything that would help us kill it," Athena said, her eyes still shielded. "It's got weaknesses, but it'll be a bit difficult for us, I think.

"How so?" Henry asked, idly doubling dots as he asked. distracted as he was, his limit was sixteen.

"So from what I read, your average, everyday Maculat would be killed by beheading and being shot in the heart," Athena said. "But apparently if a female relative of their original body stabs them with a silver dagger, they collapse into dust. It just isn't done very often, because getting a woman close to one without getting her killed or turned is rather difficult.

"He took a lot of Bullets from me and shrugged it off like it was nothing. Are you thinking the turning to dust thing would still work?" Henry asked.

Athena shrugged. "It's all I've got," she said.

Henry grunted, leaned back and closed his eyes, starting his apple tree from seed again. "Sounds like a pain in the ass," he said, closely following each branch, but never quite making it beyond a sapling before he began losing details.

"How about sucking the immortality juice out, and then ganking him?" Henry said, waving his hand in the air above his head.

"Maybe, but you'd have to be sure it would work," Athena said, glancing over at Henry. "And how would you even do that?"

Henry shrugged, "scientists figured out how to unboil an egg years ago. From those books, it seems to me that the magic world's come a long way too, maybe they know something."

Athena chewed on her lip in thought, "So you're saying we should go crying for help to people who may or may not be just as bad as the guy who tried to perform a live harvest on your organs?"

"Fair point," Henry said. "But the rest of the wizarding community won't know the circumstances of Zack's death, and maybe we did them a favor."

"That's optimistic," Athena said, frowning. "In my experience, people don't like it when you upset the status quo, regardless of how bad things were before you did it."

"I'd still rather seek assistance with the Manson problem, but let's load for bear before we do it, so no one can fuck with us," Henry said, laying his head back in the recliner and returning to his exercises.

"I've got that part under control," Athena said.

Henry nodded, his eyes closed. "alright then, let's set some traps, shore up our defences, make an escape route, and call some of the numbers on the fridge," Henry said.

"There weren't any numbers on the fridge," Athena said. "He did have a rolodex in his computer room, though."

Henry raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. It wasn't that strange for someone as old as Zack to have a rolodex. Then again, how old was Zack? Henry got the feeling the old man might have been more than a little older than he put on. If he was old as Henry thought he might be, that meant he had plenty of time to make enemies, but also friends. And who keeps the numbers of their enemies? They would have to be careful who they chose to contact first.

Henry closed his eyes, and began growing his apple tree again, watching it branch out.

They fortified the mansion, cautiously explored it, discovering hidden rooms and secret passages as they went. Henry made progress with his mental control, and each day, it seemed he could visualize more detail than the day before. by the end of these exercises, Henry became inexplicably exhausted, as though his brain had consumed all the sugar flowing through his blood, causing a crash after each session.

Beneath the mansion was a tunnel leading to the bathroom of a shopping mall four miles distant. The tunnel was something out of the running man, with a small pod that could shoot the two of them there in a matter of seconds.

Athena, for her part, took the rolodex to the local library in disguise, going through the public records of each of the men and women listed in it. The majority of them had benefitted greatly from associating with Zack in the past. From what Athena told Henry, they were either working for Zack, or friends of his, but one of the names, Shinichi Nakayama, was connected to businesses that often clashed with Zack's interests with something bordering on vindictive aggression.

Henry took a deep breath and dialed the number. After a single ring, there was a click, and a woman with a soft Japanese accent picked up, "You've reached the desk of Mr. Nakayama, how may I help you?" she asked.

"Hello ma'am, my name is Henry Stein," Henry said in his most polite voice. Japanese people valued politeness, until they didn't need you anymore, apparently. Japanese people are weird. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Nakayama, please. It's about Zachary Landon"

The line on the other side went dead for a few moments, and then the woman's voice came back. "Mr. Nakayama would be happy to speak with you, Mr. Stein, however he is unable to break away from previous engagements at this moment. May I record number, so that he can return your call at the earliest convenience?"

With these people, maybe meant no, so Henry asked her to pass a simple message. "Let him know that I'm calling from Zack's home, would you? He should know what that means."

Henry waited on the phone, and the receptionist came back again, "Thank you for calling, Mr. Stein, Mr. Nakayama will return your call as soon as he can. Is there anything else I can help you with?" her voice was strictly neutral.

Henry shook his head, despite being on the phone. "No, that should be plenty," he said. "Thank you, ma'am." Henry hung up the phone and pursed his lips.

"no go?" Athena asked, sitting beside the phone.

"Yeah," Henry said, his brows furrowed. "But now at least two people know Zack is dead. Let's just hope we picked the right guy."

There was no call returned to the phone, And henry spent the afternoon meditating beside it, now able to take the image of a sapling all the way to a young tree, with dozens of branches and hundreds of leaves. As the tree grew older, Henry let it's bark gnarl, watched as some branches thickened, while others fell off... partway through, his head began to pound, and certain details began to be uncertain, from leaves to the wrinkles in the tree's bark, they started to shift and waver as Henry lost concentration.

Finally Henry breathed out and restarted. In boot camp, he had adapted to mindless exercise, every soldier got their fair share of PT, but strengthening the mind, not so much. Henry's brain felt similar to a worn out muscle, bathed in lactic acid, as a wave of fatigue washed through him. Having come to terms with mindless exercise, Henry subjected himself to the same harsh discipline he had received fifteen years ago.

When he woke up, He divided dots, when he brushed his teeth, he grew a tree. Before he allowed himself to eat, he would count a thousand leaves. The fatigue after each practice was growing deeper, but at the same time, he was able to picture more detail at once than ever before.

Perhaps it was the new discipline in his life, or perhaps spurred on by the combat boots he wore, Henry began working out his body too, doing pushups beside the phone as he waited for the unlikely return call. Henry's stomach was the first thing to touch the floor as he lowered his body, unused muscles crying out in pain as his midsection collapsed.

Unwilling to take it easy, Henry retreated inside himself, focusing on growing his tree to escape from the pain. As he lowered himself to the ground, Athena walked into the room. "There are cars pulling into the driveway," She said, urging Henry to move.

Henry struggled to his feet, a twinge of pain passing through the healing wound on his wide as he moved. "What do they look like?" he asked

"Dunno," Athena said, shaking her head. "They haven't come out yet.

Henry picked up the staff leaning by the phone and walked out to the lobby, panting. His limp had become less pronounced, and Henry could walk without the staff, but he'd become fond of it. They were on the second floor, and so Henry Descended the stairs, using the handrail to reduce the strain. At the bottom, they opened the door, and looked at the line of limousines outside Zack's mansion.

"This could be bad," Henry whispered to Athena beside him. Athena nodded silently. The Driveway was a huge paved circle around a decorative fountain, sitting unused since the night they had come.

Three black limousines parked in a semicircle in front of Zack's mansion opened their doors as Henry and Athena stepped outside. From the car to the front and back emerged four men each, grim faces adorned each of the thugs dressed in slick black suits. From the center car, a middle aged Japanese man stepped out onto the concrete driveway, taking in the mansion before him before he finally settled his eyes on Henry.

"Mr. Stein, I presume?" Shinichi Nakayama said, his face grim.

Henry nodded, "That's me," he said, looking over the men assembling in front of the limos. "You must be Mr. Nakayama."

Nakayama tilted his head in acknowledgement. "Yes," he said, taking a step forward as his men formed a wing behind him. "I felt that whatever you wanted to talk about was too sensitive for a phone call. May we come in?"

Athena nodded to Henry and opened the door. "Be my guest," Henry said, showing them inside. Henry led them to a sitting room while Athena tailed behind them, her gun tucked into a holster beneath her arm and above the ancient sword that rested against her hip. Nakayama's guards displayed no anxiety at being followed by an armed woman, whether it was confidence, or training, only they knew.

Henry motioned for Nakayama to sit, and then took a seat across from him. Nakayama, for his part idly took in the manor around them. "I never thought I would be invited into this place," he said, glancing at the ceiling. "storm it like a castle, I suppose, or buy it out from under Mr. Landon in a hostile takeover, but this... far more peaceful." Nakayama's eye returned to Henry.

"And where is your master?" Nakayama said, studying Henry's face.

"Who?" Henry asked, his brows furrowing.

"Your master," Nakayama said, bristling. "Zacharius Landon. The one you are trying to impress with this childish ambush. Did you think I would not notice the weapons you and that woman have on your person? You are much too young to think that-"

"Zack's dead," Henry interrupted before the man in front of him could tear Henry apart.

Nakayama narrowed his eyes. "How?"

"I suffocated him," Henry said with a shrug. "The reason I called you here was to ask for your help. I have no intention of starting a fight I can't win.

"You suffocated him," Nakayama said with a sneer. "My enemy was not a man you could smother with a pillow, Mr. Stein. I have heard enough." Nakayama began to reach into his vest, and Henry began sealing each of his guards in a bubble, carefully removing the oxygen. Perhaps it was due to his practice, but the air was smoothly and silently rendered unbreathable.

"I can prove it." Henry said, raising a hand. Nakayama stopped his hand, the fingertips disappearing into his vest. Henry slowly raised his shirt, waiting for the lack of oxygen to take effect. "Zack said my organs were valuable to his work, and so he tried to take them." Henry turned to show the swollen flesh around his stitches.

"He started with my kidney," Henry said, lowering the shirt, and settling back down in the chair. "and so, to defend myself, I suffocated him."

Nakayama narrowed his eyes. "I ask again," he said, his hand sliding deeper into his coat. "how did you do it?" the guards behind him were beginning to pant.

"I can't tell you how I did it," Henry said, before pointing at the men standing behind Nakayama. "But the symptoms looked like that." The smallest of the guards sank to his knees, while the biggest reached for a weapon with a trembling hand, swaying on his feet. Henry caught his hand with his mind, feeling it struggle against his will like a frightened bird.

Nakayama glanced behind him, and turned to Henry, his face a mask of fury. He withdrew what looked like a marble from his pocket, and with a snarl, a web of snakes shot forward, cinching Henry to the chair. Bursts of pain erupted from his ankles, wrists, shoulders, as their fangs gained purchase in his flesh.

"Stop, or I will fill your blood with enough venom to kill a city." Nakayama said, coming to a stand.

"How long would it take me to die?" Henry asked, suppressing a moan of pain as the fangs embedded in his skin shifted.

"Seconds," Nakayama said, his voice low.

"plenty of time for me to do the same to you," Henry said, as the biggest man collapsed to the floor, unconscious. Henry, not wanting to murder them, undid the bubble, allowing oxygen to enter their lungs again. Henry knew he'd freed them, but the old man didn't. "All I wanted to do was prove that I'm not a lier." Henry met Nakayama's eye. "Do you believe me?"

"Release them," Nakayama said, causing the snakes to twist around Henry, eliciting a groan.

"I would be happy to," Henry said, panting. "After all, I said I need your help. If you could just... get rid of these snakes, we can talk about making a deal."

With a grunt bordering on a growl, Nakayama waved a hand, and the snakes vanished, leaving twin beads of blood welling from bites as the only evidence they had ever been. Henry nodded towards the unconscious men. "Check them," he said, rubbing his wrists. "They're breathing easy, just unconscious."

Nakayama bent down and slapped one of his subordinates awake, then sat back down in front of Henry. "Maybe you did kill the old man," he said, peering at Henry cautiously. The man behind him began to awaken his comrade, and those two woke up the last two.

Athena walked in with a cart with seven bowls of macaroni and cheese, which Nakayama and his guards accepted with bemused stares. The old man shoveled a mouthful of pasta, his guards watching him chew the peasant food. "It's good, thank you ma'am," he said.

His men began eating, as Athena pulled a seat up next to Henry. "So where are we at?" she asked, taking a bottle of cider from the bottom of the tray and cracking it open.

"Nakayama thought we lured him here to attack him on Zack's behalf," Henry said, taking a bite of the mac and cheese, which tasted vaguely barbeque. "We cleared that up, and were about to talk about why we called him in the first place."

"Yes," Nakayama agreed, eating without taking his eyes off of them.

Henry chose his words carefully. "This might be difficult to believe, but I've only just been introduced to the world beyond the mundane," he said, meeting Nakayama's eyes. "I would like you to announce me onto the stage, show me who I need to know, and introduce me to people willing to teach me what I need to do in order to not be killed for some faux pas, or taboo punishable by death."

Nakayama listened carefully. "A mentor? Do you not know the rules of apprenticeship?" Henry shook his head. Nakayama sighed and set down his bowl after scraping the last of the cheese out of it. "I see, you are truly in a delicate situation. You need a patron, a guarantor, until you have come into your own."

"Yes," Henry said. "And help with one other thing." Henry's mind drifted to sea of people kneeling before Manson.

"And that would be?" Nakayama asked.

"A monster," Henry said. "Maybe you've seen it on the news, preaching to entire stadiums, calling himself the second coming of Jesus?" Nakayama's face darkened as recognition swept across it.

"I know of him," Nakayama said, his voice low. "He gathers power at an alarming rate."

"Zack is responsible, and I need help killing it," Henry said.

Nakayama leaned back in the seat. "What would be in it for me?" he asked. "I could simply allow the might of the Council to descend on that monster and wash my hands of it. You could too, it's only a matter of time."

"I need to make sure he's dead," Henry said, shaking his head. "That thing is coming after me, and I won't know I'm safe until I see him die for myself." Henry took a breath, gripping the recliner tightly.

"As for what's in it for you," Henry said. "Did Zack have a plan on where to divest his wealth, were he to pass away?" Nakayama shook his head. "And who would make that decision on his behalf?"

"The Council," Nakayama said, his eyes beginning to light up.

"And what if you were to prove that you were capable of taking on the responsibility of cleaning up Zack's mess?" Henry asked.

"They would be impressed," Nakayama said, his hand on his chin. It might not guarantee him the right to loot Zack's mansion, but it would be a major contributing factor when it was revealed the old man was dead, and people started jockeying for the estate. By informing Nakayama, he'd given him time to make his play before other people started scrambling.

"And the miss here?" Nakayama said, nodding to Athena, "what is her role in this?"

"I'm his lawyer." Athena said, her fingertips stabilizing the sword balanced beside her chair. "I'm probably not employed anymore, but my last duty was defending him," Athena said, nodding toward Henry. "And I take my job seriously."

Nakayama leaned back as he took that in. "I see," he said. Nakayama sat still, his toe quietly tapping against the floor as he weighed his options. "Very well, Mr. Stein, I'm happy to work with you." Nakayama stood and offered his hand.

Henry stood and shook the proffered hand. "I'm happy to hear that," he said, trading a firm grip with the businessman. Nakayama led his men out the door after trading parting words with Henry. As he and Athena watched the limousines drive away, Henry let loose the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. Athena glanced over, an eyebrow cocked.

"Think he'll betray us?" Athena asked.

"I hope not," Henry said, turning to go back inside.

"That was intense," Athena said as they walked back inside, shutting the door after them. "I thought I was gonna have to cut off his head when he wrapped you up in snakes."

"You were watching?" Henry asked, glancing at the woman walking beside him.

Athena shrugged, "Doesn't take me that long to cook mac and cheese," she said. Athena cocked her head to the side, and glanced at Henry "Have you considered a plan B with the Manson problem?"

Henry looked at her. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Manson's immortal, right?" she asked. Henry nodded. "but that doesn't mean you can't take him out of the game either forever or for a very long time.

"Shoot him into the sun, you mean?" Henry asked.

Athena nodded. "Typically I would go for burying him in a massive concrete slab," she said, walking through the door to the sitting room beside the phone. "Simple, effective. And even if it doesn't hold him forever, you'll have plenty of time to figure something out."

Henry sat in the couch across from her, and mused. "That sounds like the prologue to a fantasy novel," he said, leaning against his palm. "He returns a thousand years later to wreak havoc on the mortal world."

"Besides," Henry said, shrugging. "Worst case scenario, this Council that Nakayama talked up will kill him before he destroys the world."

Shinichi Nakayama knelt in front of a panel of nine. "I give my respect to the Council," he said before standing. Nakayama raised his head, and his eye twitched. The council had changed. The weakest member of the council, a blustering, power hungry man with hundreds of years of experience getting what he wanted, was gone.

In his place was a small, lanky man with an angular face and a strong chin, wearing a simple pinstriped long sleeve shirt, with the cuffs loosely hanging around his forearms. He had an amiable grin as he fidgeted in his seat like an overeager child, a stark contrast to the solemn faces of the more prominent members who directed their gaze at Nakayama.

"Who's the chink?" the man asked, his face showing more puzzlement than malice.

"Mr. Nakayama has worked with the council for many years," A man on the opposite side of the board said. "And he is Japanese."

Manson adopted a wide grin and slouched forward. "So is he an accountant, or what?"

The woman in the center of the panel showed no reaction. "What have you learned?" she asked. She was an ancient sorceress, from a time when humanity was at its most isolated, indicated by her exotic face, more strange than lovely. Her name was Nadia, and she was possibly the oldest vertebrate on the planet.

Nakayama focused on his breathing, abiding his training to conceal his tells. He swept his gaze across the council, studying the man he had seen preforming miracles on the morning news. "Zacharius Landon is dead," he said, gauging their reactions. He saw nodding from a few of them, while the leader showed no reaction.

The man on the far left in the inappropriate attire furrowed his brows and addressed the woman to his left. "Who's that?" Nakayama saw the man's hand disappear under the desk, and the ancient sorceress beside him actually blushed. Nakayama could hardly believe his eyes, but he caught the leader of the Council glancing over at the far wing from her position at the center and narrow her eyes in jealousy.

This is very bad. Nakayama thought to himself as Nadia turned back to him. "For the benefit of our junior member, please enlighten us about Mr. Landon," She said, folding her hands atop each other. The three remaining men in the Council deliberately avoided looking at the man on the far wing of the council as Nakayama watched them while he explained.

"Mr. Landon was a rogue wizard who skirted the edge of our law for sixty years," Nakayama said, scanning their faces as he spoke. "The man maintained a fade of compliance, while engaging in illicit experiments without the knowledge of the Council. However, there was never enough evidence to bring to bear against him. Eyewitnesses became drooling idiots, or different people entirely, andphysical evidence has never been successfully retrieved. The man has apparently survived a few assassination attempts that had been reported successful, and we have no idea why."

Nadia held up a long-fingered hand, and Nakayama stopped speaking. "I know someone who might have an idea on how that occurred," She said, making a subtle motion with her hand. A shimmering mirage about the size of a door opened beside Nakayama, and a hulking beast of a man stepped through. "This is Sam Franks, my apprentice, whose task it was to infiltrate Mr. Landon's home, and bring evidence to bear against him."

The big man stood straight after entering the portal, his right side covered with light, puckering scars, and his right eye was covered with a spell inscribed eyepatch. He nodded at Nadia. "Ma'am." He said.

"How's the eye?" Nadia asked in a motherly tone.

"Still trying to break out of the jar," Sam said solemnly. Nakayama and Manson's eyebrows went up as they both stared at the giant with the eyepatch.

"I see," Nadia said, before making a gesture towards Sam with a flat palm. "Two days ago, Sam reported back that Mr. Landon was dead. Sam, tell us what you know about Zack's death, and his heretofore resilience to it."

Nakayama spotted Manson lean toward the council member beside him, and whisper "What does heretofore mean?" Nakayama clenched his jaw, attempting to pay attention to what the giant was saying.

"Zack had an antenna tuned to his soul in his vault," Sam said, looking at council, his eyes narrowing as they passed over the intruder among them. "He had a text sent to his bodyguard or any gullible friend to retrieve a message from the vault. Zack's soul was drawn to the antenna and prevented from passing on, preserved, and then sent into the body of whoever opened the message. I dealt with that part easily, But," Sam tapped his eyepatch. "There was a backup booby trap that made clever use of flash blindness, inscribing a spell circle on my cornea, and drawing my own concentration to fuel it."

"Wow," The man in the long-sleeve pinstripe shirt chuckled as he spoke. "This is some crazy shit.



Sam's gaze flickered up to the man sitting on the far left, and then to Nadia. "I was unaware that Velonte had ceded his seat, May I ask who the newest Council member is, and what qualifies him to sit there," Sam said, a frown on his face.

"Charles is-" Nadia began before Manson spoke over her.

"I'll field this one," Manson said, waving his hand dismissively. He fished a cell phone out of his front pocket, immaculate and at odds with his worn clothes. Nakayama watched the glow of the cell phone illuminate the sharp angles of his face as he browsed through the phone. A moment later he turned the phone toward Sam and Shinichi. A video sprang to life, difficult to make out from the distance, but it showed a fat man, sobbing.

Not just any fat man, it was Velonte, Shinichi realized. His anguished cries, tinny from the speakers in Manson's phone, reverberated through the silent room. "I secede from the council," the fat man's voice came from the phone, between labored breathing. "I select Charles Milles Manson as my successor."

A young woman's giggling came from the phone. "And I'm a fat pig, say that next," the voice said, her voice honeyed. The video zoomed out, and Nakayama saw that Velonte was naked, strapped down, and strips of skin along his body were missing. A glimmer of anger rose in the eyes of Velonte as he stared at the camera, and a hand reached out from the other side of the lens and threw a sprinkle of salt over his body.

Manson turned the phone back towards himself as Velonte began to thrash and scream, watching the video with watering eyes, biting his lower lip. The distant screams rang through the room for a while longer before Manson seemed to break out of a trance, reluctantly turning off the video, and raising his gaze to meet Sam's.

"And there you have it," Manson said with a grin. "Velonte nominated me, and no one had any objections, so here I am." Manson leaned forward, digging in some container behind the Council member's bar, and lifted up Velonte's disembodied head, make into a mockery of a ventriloquist dummy. "Isn't that right, Velonte?"

"Sure is, Mr. M," Manson said in a squeaky voice as he made the teeth rattle and snap. "I was gettin tired of living anyhow! That's why I came to get your help!" Manson smiled, and casually threw the head over his shoulder, where it landed with a dull thud, rolling to a stop somewhere behind him.

Manson's eyes returned to Sam. "Any other questions, kid?"

Sam opened his mouth when Nadia spoke, her voice drowning out any retort he may have had. "Sammuel Frank," she said, her voice grim. "Disrespect to any member of the council is disrespect to all of us." She raised her empty hand again, and another shimmering door opened behind Sam. Manson whistled in appreciation. A frigid gust of wind blew in from the door, carrying snowflakes that melted on contact with the room's air.

"Leave, and consider your words more carefully next time," Nadia said. Sam glanced into the snowy forest beyond the portal, hesitated a moment, and then ducked through, the portal closing behind him.

Manson chuckled, while Nadia returned her gaze to Nakayama. "do you have anything else to report?" she asked. Nakayama took a deep breath.

"Zacharius left two rather large problems in his wake," he said, organizing the events in his mind. "The first is an unregistered apprentice, kept to be harvested for dark ends. While currently an outlaw, he seems perfectly willing to come under the wing of the council. He even approached me personally.

"And the other problem?" Nadia asked.

"The second problem is far more serious," Shinichi said. "A man-made Maculat Mulieres of enormous power." Several of the council member's eyes flickered toward Manson, who was whispering into the ear of the woman beside him. Nadia's gaze remained steady.

"I was under the impression that all Maculat were man-made," she said, a hint of humor on her lips as she emphasized the word. Nadias smile faded quickly and she steepled her fingers. "Nakayama, under normal circumastances, we would send one of our own to deal with the issue, however the council is currently engaged with more pressing matters. I'm giving you the authority to pursue the solutions to these two problems on your own. And should you exceed my expectations, I will reward you greatly."

Nakayama bowed and turned to leave when he heard a clicking from Manson's phone again. "Wow, Maculat Mulieres means 'It corrupts women' in latin," Manson said with a grin. "Sounds like my kinda guy. Can I meet him?"

Nadia glanced over at Manson, and back forward. "No." she said with an air of finality. "you need to focus on learning your duties." She turned to Nakayama, who was glancing back at them. "You may leave, Mr. Nakayama." Shinichi nodded and walked away

As he left, he heard Manson's voice again. "So about that Henry guy I've been looking for, do you wizard types have anything..." Manson's voice faded to nothing as Nakayama gained distance from the room, his heart pounding wildly, but years practice kept his face neutral. It was tradition to honor a council member's nominee, even if it was made under duress, so the other members couldn't directly confront Manson, and from what Shinichi could see, the monster was digging his claws deeper and deeper into those around him. Not a single member on the council would have failed to identify what Manson had become, and Nadia allowing him to pursue the destruction of the Maculat reflected the will of the Council to remove Manson from their ranks.

Nakayama stepped out into the light of day, glancing up at the clouds for a moment, as he liked to do when life became complicated. A shimmering from the corner of his eye turned his head, and Sam stepped out of thin air to stand beside Nakayama. Small icicles had formed around his nose and mouth, but he appeared as comfortable as he had been in the meeting room.

"Nadia says to give you a hand," Sam said, turning his head to look down at the man beside him.

"You are lucky your master tolerates your careless speech," Nakayama said, still searching the clouds for any idea to move forward.

Sam rolled his massive shoulders. "I do exactly what she says, and I never lie to her, what more respect does she need?"

Nakayama glanced up at the giant beside him, then back to his limousine. "Follow me, then," he said, climbing into the vehicle. Sam scrunched down and slipped into the car, causing it to tilt to one side before he scooted towards the center.

"Where to?" Sam asked, his head ducked down as he rode the limousine facing Nakayama.

"The Library." Nakayama said, reaching for the minibar and pouring himself a glass of sake with trembling fingers. His eyes narrowed, and with an effort of will, his hands stilled as he brought the cup up to his mouth. Sam didn't seem to have noticed as he watched the world outside speed by like a kid on a field trip.

"Why?" Sam asked, frowning.

"Because that thing that infiltrated the council is like no Maculat I've ever heard of. It's not a mindless killer, it's smart, and it's immortal. We need to find out how to get rid of it."

Sam leaned back in his seat and exhaled. "Fuck, why can't anything ever be simple?"

"Fuck, why can't anything ever be simple?" Manson said as he sawed at his steak in agitation. Nick sat across from him, her face sympathetic.

"What is it, boss?" she said, her head cocked to the side as she watched him eat.

"It's this council business, and that Henry guy," Manson said, bringing a strip of meat to his mouth. "He's got the rest of me. I need him, but when I get to that house in the sticks, what do I get instead? A dozen guys with guns!" Manson's hand pressed a little too hard and a squirt of blood fell in his lap.

"And this!" Manson said, throwing down the napkin and waving angrily at the woman strapped to the table, a chunk of her thigh missing. Her mouth was stuffed with a fancy embroidered napkin that matched Manson's. Her face was red, and her eyes swam near the back of her head as her labored breathing came in and out through her nose. "This is because of the council, fucking bastards think I can't be one of them. too good for me. I see it in their eyes."

"Fucking class warfare is a joke," Charles said, meeting Nick's eye. "warfare means either side could win, but this..." Manson hunched over and bowed his head, holding it in his hands.

Nick stepped closer, and put her hand on his shoulder, comforting him. "I thought..." Charles whispered, his voice breaking. "Maybe this time around..." he looked up at Nick, tears in his eyes. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?"

Nick rubbed his shoulder, the only sound was Candy-The-Orphan-Stripper's breathing, and low moans. "Look, boss," Nick said, fishing for advice from her short life. "My mom always said be yourself, and my dad always said the people who succeed don't give a fuck what other people think. They just keep trying until they're standing at the top. Maybe instead of trying to be like them, you should make the people at the top a little more like you?"

Manson's shoulder's stopped shaking, and he looked up at Nick, "That's..." he said, musing, his eyes wet with tears. "A hell of a thought."

"Now I'm gonna say something I've been thinking for awhile," Nick said, leaning close to manson's ear. "Table manners are for chumps." Nick sported a wide grin as she whispered. Charle's back went stiff for a moment, then he began to expand.

Manson burst out of the itchy vest he'd been forcing himself to wear, pale bony shoulders emerging from the torn cloth while his mouth widened, grew deeper, and filled with teeth reminiscent of a shark. The monster leaned forward and began to devour the woman strapped to the table, convulsing sensually as raw chunks of homeless stripper slid down his throat.

Nick stood beside Charles and rubbed his back while he ate, relishing the powerful heart beating against her palm, and the feverish heat emanating from him.

The pale thing beneath her palm arched its back in pleasure as it swallowed the girl's head, spasming as though he were experiencing a near-painful orgasm. After a moment of stillness, it lunged to its feet, and Nick backed away, her knuckles white as she clenched her fists. Charles turned toward Nick, and a thrill went through her heart, the sunken pits of his eyes locked onto her, making her know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was prey standing before him. A glob of blood-reddened saliva dropped from the thing's mouth, and it lifted a clawed hand that could easily wrap around her waist.

Nick's heart sang in her chest, beating wildly as Charles took a step forward, and Nick knew she could no longer separate fear from desire. Charles let out a grunt. Then a crick. Slowly, the monster became smaller, less skeletal. A mane of brown hair regrow over the scalp, and a few moments later, Charles stood before her, no longer a god, once again taking the form of a man.

Nick breathed a sigh of relief tinged with disappointment. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of you, girl," Charles said, his tattered clothes hanging from him as he stroked her cheek. The blood that had covered his skin was absorbed like a drop of water on desert sand, simply vanishing.

"but if I ever do," Charles said, shrugging out of his ruined clothes. "I think I'll let you be free range. Get married, have kids." He walked to the corner of the room where a fresh pair of jeans and button up shirt had been waiting in a plastic bag. "Gotta leave the best ones in circulation. Hell that's livestock management rule number one."

"I don't want to leave you," Nick said, her eyes burning at the thought.

"I Know," Charles said gently. "But no one stays young and pretty forever, doll."

Charles demeanor changed suddenly as he fastened his belt. "Now," he said, walking toward the door. "You gave me an idea. Let's go see if we can make the upper crust a little more like me."

"I think he might have a nesting instinct." Sam said, rubbing his sore eye. He sat in front of a computer, looking at a sea of information about the monster who until very recently had been a very infamous man.

"What makes you say that?" Nakayama asked, flipping through another page. "Maculat don't nest, they wander around and prey upon lone women in back alleys." Nakayama raised his head. "Except he is not."

"Nope, he's started a cult built around himself, works miracles, and takes in strays, all in the same place. The Yellow River Condominiums.



Nakayama listened without a change in expression. "The yellow river," he said, musing.

"Something up?" Sam asked from his computer screen, the pale light glinting from the decorative rivets in his eyepatch.

"The Yellow river is a place in china that causes a great number of deaths when it floods, and yet its shores are places of plenty." Nakayama said, folding the book in front of him.

"Like the Nile?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Something like that," Nakayama said, when his face darkened suddenly. "Who arranged the deception of Zack's guards on behalf of Manson? I feel as though we could get some answers if we talked to Zack, but now we're at a dead end."

Nakayama looked up at Sam with Narrowed eyes. "How many people besides you knew what he was trying to do with the Yellow River building?"

Sam held his hands up. "I didn't know," he said, his shoulders rising in a shrug. "He kept his cards pretty close to the vest. I could tell something was up when I caught glances of a few plans, but he kept the blueprints separated so that no one could have known exactly how to use the damn thing."

Nakayama watched him for a moment longer before glancing away, his expression sour. "So we know he has a nesting instinct, and he seems to be following the pattern of his previous life."

"How so?" Sam asked. Nakayama raised a book with Manson's mugshot on the front.

"He's surrounding himself with women, in an isolated place he has full control over," Nakayama said. "He's shutting them away from the rest of the world in that building, and turning them into extensions of his will. His nesting instinct is not unlike a vampire."

"But he's not, right?" Sam asked.

Nakayama sighed. "No," he said, tapping a finger on his book. "He's been seen in daylight, and his image can be captured by cameras. Vampire is out, Besides, the Council observed him with Eyes of Truth before they sent Velonte to his death. There is no mistake."

"So what do we do?" Sam asked.

"We find a weakness," Nakayama said. "Hopefully before he eats the Council."

Sam snorted. "I don't know about the rest of them, but I'd like to see someone try to get the upper hand against Nadia," he said, chuckling.

"You might get the chance," Nakayama said quietly, fixing the one-eyed man with his gaze. After a moment drumming the book with his fingers, Nakayama stood.

"Nesting," Nakayama said. "We can use that." Nakayama closed the distance between the two of them until he was standing beside Sam. "Use Nadia's authority to gain control over the water and electricity, but don't do anything with it yet. We need to undermine this monster's base of operations and find a weakness before we begin starving out his human followers."

"That's going to take some phone calls," Sam said. "But it shouldn't be too hard."

Nakayama nodded, gathering his coat. "Then come with me, we've got to talk with Zack's apprentice."

"Who?" Sam asked, his brow raised.

"The man who killed him," Nakayama said, walking to the door.

"Oh," Sam said, closing his windows as he turned off the computer of The Library, the local branch of a global knowledge repository specifically for high ranking members of the community. "You know, they did agree to that before Zack tried to kill him, so I guess you're right, but the only thing Zack taught him was that you can't trust Zack." Sam strolled after Nakayama, his long strides catching up with the Japanese man easily.

"That might have been the best lesson," Nakayama said, as they approached the limousine. Sam shrugged and followed.

Henry was standing in the lawn, his bare toes wiggling in the grass as a spellbook hovered in front of him. "Let's see," he said to himself, a fire extinguisher held loosely in his right hand. Henry's eyes ran over the symbol for fire over and over, committing the details to memory, using mnemonic devices to name each intersection of the complex lines.

Henry closed his eyes and conjured the image of the symbol in his mind beside his tree, whose leaves were fluttering in the non-existent breeze of his imagination. In his mind's eye, Henry let the invisible power that stirred the branches of his tree flow down and through the circle containing the symbol of fire.

A wave of heat across Henry's face made his eyes shoot open. Unnatural flames leapt from the grass in front of him, burning higher and hotter than they ever could have on a meager diet of grass. Henry pulled the fire extinguisher in front of him and began sweeping the blackened lawn as the book that had been floating in front of him fell to the ground.

Henry reached out with his foot and kicked the spell book away from the heat of the flames even as he swept the fire extinguisher back and forth in front of the fire. The fire seemed to fight back against the drowning chemicals with a surly red color, and Henry took a step back as the heat against his face doubled.

"Heads up!" Athena called from Henry's left, and she stepped forward with a garden hose, unleashing a jet of water at the unruly fire. The water rolled across the surface of the blackened grass like a hot stovetop, hissing as it balled up and skittered around.

After a few minutes, the fire lost its unnatural heat, and between the two of them, Athena and Henry managed to put the fire out. Looking at the circle of cooked earth and ash, Henry turned to Athena, who held her hand out for a high five.

"That," Athena said, with barely contained enthusiasm. "Was awesome! What else is in there? Is there a spell to change your body? Or mess with peoples minds, or make food?" Henry shook his head.

"Theres a few crazy spells in there," Henry said. "But all I can do right now is cast a spell a few minutes after reading the spell, sooner or later, my memory of the spell gets fuzzy, and then the symbol loses complexity, and then nothing happens. I'm going to have to memorize one spell over and over until I can see it in my sleep."

"You said 'cast a spell,'" Athena said, her eyes squinting as she beamed.

"Yeah, you win," Henry said, shrugging. "Feels weird saying it. I feel like one of those guys running around the woods with bean bags with 'magic missile' stitched onto them." Athena chuckled in response, her gaze turning back to the perfect circle of ash on the lawn.

"I think we're well beyond that point," Athena said, turning the hose off and wrapping it up. "Just promise not to shout the name of the spell as you cast it, and we'll be good." As Athena straightened, a lone limousine rolled into the mansion's paved lot, rolling silently to a halt near the grass a few dozen feet away. Athena, for her part, got closer to the edge of the building, ready to duck behind cover if necessary. Henry bent to retrieve his Gandalf staff, ready to flip the car on top of whoever came out of it if they were aggressive.

The side door opened, and Nakayama stepped out, taking a few strides forward before he addressed Henry. "Mr Stein, I need to speak with you."

Behind Nakayama, the driver's door opened, and Zack's gigantic bodyguard stepped out, his right side covered with fading pockmarks, and a fanciful eyepatch with embroidery and studs covering the eye on the same side. The giant slouched over the car and rested his weight against the hood, glancing between Athena, Henry, and Nakayama.

His gaze lingered a little on Athena before he glanced back at Henry. In the dead space after Nakayama had spoken, he lifted one of his arms off the hood, pointing at Henry's staff. "That thing's an antique," he said, propping his chin up against the hood. "There's a wizard at Cornell University who can fix you up with something way better."

"Yeah, I kinda figured," Henry said, glancing up at the staff, then back to Nakayama, who seemed mildly annoyed at Sam. "So, what did you need to talk about?"

"It may be a rather long conversation," Nakayama said. "May we speak about it inside?" Henry nodded and the three of them headed for the sitting room. Behind him, Athena and Sam walked beside each other, Athena deliberately staying just out of the giant's reach as they talked.

"So, about your eye..." Henry heard Athena say as they walked down the halls.

"Don't worry about it," Sam said, waving his hand dismissively. "The explosion didn't bust my eye, and even if it had, for a last sight, that wasn't bad."

"I had to find a way to stop you," Athena said, her voice firm.

"And it worked," Sam said with a smile on his face, scrunching up his face as he did a one-eyed wink.

"I want to ask," Athena said, glancing up at Sam. "Were you really going to kill me?"

Sam shrugged, glancing up at the ceiling with a sigh. "The way things were going, Zack probably would have told me to kill you, and I would have. That was my job."

"What's your job now?" Athena asked.

"Killing whoever Nakayama tells me to, until my master decides otherwise." Sam said, looking down at the little woman who, from her demeanor, bore a slight resemblance to Nadia.

"Master?" Athena asked.

"Person who teaches me?" Sam said, raising an eyebrow. "I'm technically still an apprentice."

Nakayama scoffed. "Don't let his false modesty fool you, young woman," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "Any man who can impress Nadia enough to convince her take him as a disciple has more than good looks."

Athena glanced from Nakayama to Sam, who shrugged with an innocent look on his face. Athena narrowed her eyes and kept walking, following the group into the sitting room.

Henry dragged chairs close together, not minding the expensive furniture grinding against the concrete mansion's floor. Flopping down in the seat, he addressed the aging Japanese man who came to sit across from him. "So, tell me what's up, are these council people going to step in and kill this thing for me?" he asked.

Nakayama shook his head. "No, Mr. Stein," he said. "The Council has been compromised. One of the elders was sent to dispatch the creature recently, But he was killed, and the monster he was sent to purge has taken his place on the council."

"How the hell did he do that?" Henry asked, his voice raising. "You all know he's a monster, so what the fuck? I mean, he's not even one of you."

Nakayama raised a hand, and Henry gave him a moment to speak. "We are well aware," he said grimly. "There is no requirement that a Council member be human. In fact, many of them have long since shed their humanity in the pursuit of knowledge and power. There is an ancient law that allows a council member to nominate a successor in case of their untimely death. Manson has capitalized on that."

"He tortured a very powerful wizard to death," Nakayama said, meeting Henry's eyes. "And forced a nomination from his lips."

"How did he know?" Athena asked after considering a moment. "How on earth would he know the secret handshake that would let him in your exclusive club?"

"I don't know," Nakayama said, shaking his head. "But, signs point to one of the remaining eight members of the council being responsible. I would suggest finding a member with reason to kill both Zacharius and Velonte, but that doesn't actually narrow our choices."

"What about one with ties to Manson?" Henry asked.

"Manson is just one cult leader out of dozens across the world," Sam said, shaking his head. "The people on the council are old, from the far corners of the world, they've seen it all. A lowlife like Manson wouldn't have caught the attention of a single one. We can only believe the information about Zack's bid for immortality came from a council member with the intent to use Manson to kill him."

"Does it matter who helped him?" Henry asked. "All we need to do is find a way to kill him."

"There may be a way," Nakayama said, resting his hands atop his knees. "We can use the device that created him."

Henry furrowed his brows. "But Zack told me it was burned out, like a flash bulb," he said, frowning.

"And it is," Nakayama said, leaning forward. "Zack had no reason to lie to you, but such a place has its own uses. The land is devoid of magic. The Leyline that ran beneath it is shriveled and dead, but that presents an excellent opportunity."

"And what's that?" Henry asked.

Nakayama grinned. "Have you ever heard of reverse osmosis?"

Sam clapped his hands together with a shout. "Awesome!" he said, grinning as Nakayama shot him a look.

Athena and Henry exchanged glances. "Mind explaining for us plebes?" she said, raising an eyebrow.

Nakayama nodded. "Manson is in essence, a bloody slab of meat, and the building he has chosen to nest in is a salt bed," Nakayama said, motioning with his hands. "Manson has a tough, resilient skin keeping all that water inside, but if we were to break down the barrier between him and the salt bed..."

"He would dry out," Henry finished. "Metaphorically, of course. So how do we make that happen?"

"Suffuse the building with a high concentration of neutral magic, then when the barrier keeping his power contained has dissolved, allow the dead land to reclaim a fraction of the power it has lost," Nakayama said.

Henry glanced to Athena, who shrugged. "And... How would we do that?" he asked.

Sam leaned forward. "It's easy, all you gotta do is smash some priceless treasures," he said with a grin. "Right, Nakayama?"

Nakayama sighed nodded. "It's true," he said. "Destroying a reservoir nurtured by a leyline for a century would be sufficient."

Henry's eyes lost focus, he pictured himself battered and bloody, at the end of some epic quest to retrieve these artifacts of power.

"Zack's got a few in the vault," Sam said, looking over at Nakayama.

"Excellent, that will save us time," Nakayama said, nodding.

"Wait," Henry said, his brows furrowed. "I thought you said it was a priceless treasure, nurtured for a hundred years and all that jazz.

"They are expensive, but not rare," Nakayama said, "thousands are sold every year by growers who have been in business for thousands of years. Sam was misleading you."

"Wizard humor," Sam said, smiling. "That's what I like to call it."

Henry grunted. "What's our time frame?"

"As soon as possible," Nakayama said. "The longer we wait, the more lives are ruined, and the more likely it is he will discover the nature of the dead zone he inhabits, and the threat it poses to him. Within a week, I can gather enough men to-"

A ringing interrupted Nakayama, and Sam reached into his pocket, his expression grim when he looked at the caller I.D. "Yes?" he answered. Sam's face blanched. "Of course. I'll tell him. "You can expect us there within the hour."

Nakayama watched Sam's conversation with a raised brow. Sam hung up and slid the phone back into the pocket of his jeans. "Well, plans got moved up." He said jovially. "Manson's moving the Council to the Yellow River Condominiums, Either Nadia got brainwashed, or she's acting because she was saying stuff about becoming part of him, or something, and not to bring any weapons. It sounded like whatever is going down is happening tonight."

Nakayama's calm demeanor changed. His skin paled and his shoulders drew upward defensively. "That's... Very bad," Nakayama said, his hands beginning to tremor.

"Yeah," Sam said, coming to a stand. "I'll grab the reservoirs, let me know when you guys are ready to go." A moment later Sam had disappeared from the room.

Nakayama watched Sam go and sighed quietly. A moment later he looked back at Athena, measuring her with his gaze. "There are four women on the Council, each one very strong willed, and yet, Manson had them acting like school girls. Would you be offended if I asked you to stay behind?" he asked, his gaze steady.

Athena thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. "I felt him through the television once," She said, shuddering at the memory. "I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm special somehow, so if you can give me something to do somewhere else, I won't complain."

Nakayama nodded, and pulled a pen and a hundred dollar bill out of his jacket and wrote down a number. "This is the number to someone who can authorize an Armageddon, think of it as The Nuclear Option for wizards. If that monster is still alive after tonight, give them... this number" Nakayama pointed to the series of numbers and letters on the back of the bill. "and tell them the target." Nakayama met Athena's eyes before handing it to her. "And It goes without saying that you should absolutely never let this fall into anyone else's hands."

Athena nodded. "Alright," she said, taking the bill form him and folding it away. "I'll see you guys later, If you're alive."

"I'll expect that bill back if I see you again," Nakayama said, nodding. He turned to Henry. "Shall we go?"

Henry stood. "This all feels kind of slap-dash, shouldn't we have a more concrete plan?"

"The theory is sound," Nakayama said, "And if the Council is allowed to fall to ruin, more dangerous beings than Manson will lose stewardship, and the world will plunge into crisis.

"All right," Henry said, glancing back at Athena. "Let's get this taken care of. Then, you and I are going on a date."

Athena chuckled. "I guess you've earned that much, but talk to me again when your face isn't on America's Most Wanted." Athena stood and wrapped her arms around Henry for a moment before she backed away. "You take care of yourself." Athena walked out the door, brushing past the two of them.

Henry sighed, and faced Nakayama. "Alright, let's go." The two walked out to the driveway, where Sam was waiting for them.

The drive was silent, each of them apparently lost in their thoughts. Henry glanced outside the window, and saw the clouds forming an indistinct spiral, centered on their destination. His heart started to hammer a steady rhythm as he experienced a cold sweat.

"You never truly get used to fighting for your life, you simply get better at hiding your unease," Nakayama said quietly, following Henry's gaze.

Sam reached back from the driver's seat with two small crystals in the palm of his hand. "Take one each," he said, waiting for them to retrieve the stones form his hand. "If either of you get within ten feet of Manson, smash the crystal with whatever you have on hand. Side effects may include bursting into flame, sudden enlightenment, transmogrification, or a slight warping of reality. The closer you get to the bastard, the better. Ten feet is the minimum. If you smash it against his ugly mug, bonus points."

"It will be harder than you might think, Sam," Nakayama said, rolling the crystal between his fingertips. "there will be enthralled woman, and men who are slaves to their desires who will be protecting him."

"I saw thousands literally worshipping him," Henry said. "How do we get past all that?"

"Not a problem," Sam said. "We have the perfect bait."

"You mean me," Henry said, tucking the crystal into the sleeve of his shirt.

"For some reason, he really wants to get at you," Sam said, his eyes returning to the road as he drove. "So we'll wave a big juicy Henry steak in front of him."

Henry nodded, swallowing down the animal inside him scratching away at his stomach, trying to escape the situation. He took a deep breath, and opened the spellbook he had taken from the mansion, dedicating himself to committing his Backup Plan to memory. In Henry's mind, his young tree swayed in the breeze, and the pastoral land around it came into focus, sharpened by his desperate need.

Henry started out of his mind's eye when the limousine jerked lightly as they came to a gentle halt in front of the Yellow River Condominium, the deathtrap that he had helped make a reality. Henry opened the door, and stepped out into the street. He could feel the difference in the air, now. A looming absence permeated the air, prickling his skin and making his breath catch in his lungs. Henry put his hand over his mouth and coughed as the air pricked his insides, making them feel like they were rattling around inside him.

Sam and Nakayama watched Henry's reaction with bewilderment on their faces. "Something wrong, Henry?" Sam asked.

Henry glanced at Sam through teary eyes. "You can't feel that?" he asked. Sam shrugged, and Nakayama shook his head, his brows drawn together severely.

"Mr Stein, it is possible that you are more sensitive to this place due to your previous exposure. You may be experiencing the reverse osmosis I described," Nakayama said. "You'll be suffering as long as you stay here, we have to act with haste, or withdraw before you become incapacitated."

Henry shook his head, stifling a cough. "We're going in." Henry saw a girl in tight jean shorts and a colorful tank top stride up to them, a valet hat pinned into her hair.

"I'll park your car gentlemen," She said, receiving the key from Sam. "Are you here for the Council's summons?" Sam nodded. "The reception is in the dining hall, in the east wing, third floor.

"Thank you, ma'am," Henry said, taking the lead, and walking through the sliding doors. The lobby, once slick with the blood of twenty armed men, was clean, and men and women went about their day, laughing and chatting. Henry's eyes narrowed as he did a quick head count. It seemed as though the women outnumbered the men at a roughly five to one ratio. The men were lean, weathered, and scarred, many showing the hollowed cheeks of drug abuse. The women were young, runaways and high schoolers predominately, laughing and dancing happily, unreasoning contentment showing in their persistent smiles. Their eyes passed over Henry as though he didn't exist in their minds, greatly at odds with the men, who watched the three of them with animalistic intensity.

Henry wordlessly guided the two with him to the elevator, shrugging off the stares of the men in the lobby. The elevator door opened, and the three of them entered.

"That's some creepy shit," Sam said as the elevator carried them away from the lobby. "Reminds me of the blood sacrifices back home." Nakayama grunted, his eloquence waning. An awkward silence dominated the elevator, until the doors opened again with a ding! Henry stepped out into the hall, the tickle in his lungs growing stronger.

Henry resisted the urge to cough, and walked to the chintzy fake wood double doors that lead to the reception hall for businesses on the third floor. It was no surprise that the building was mediocre by every stretch of the word, It was never truly meant to house the living.

Henry took a deep breath and swung the doors open, and noise washed over him. Hundreds of men and women had gathered at the summons of the Council, food and wine had been distributed around the room, and the party sounded jovial, but Henry caught glances from the corners of his eyes that lasted just a little too long, sweat beading the brows of otherwise relaxed wizards. Henry glanced around the room, but couldn't make out a single focus, telling him that everyone had received the 'No Weapons' mandate.

That didn't mean much. Wizards were the kind of people who would rather hide a spare focus beneath their skin than be without one.

Henry took a deep breath and strode forward. Bait needed to be visible. Henry reached out his hand and shook a nearby wizard's hand. "Hi, I'm Henry, I killed Zack Landon." As the man's face blanched. He shook another hand, repeating himself, until he found himself at the center of an empty space, the party going on around him magically kept at a distance by fear and uncertainty.

Standing as he was in unoccupied space, Manson spotted him quickly. "Henry!" he shouted jovially as he slid through the crowd, coming to stand in front of him. "I never thought I'd see you here tonight!" He stepped close and clapped Henry on the shoulder. "I've been meaning to talk to you, actually." As manson spoke, he flashed a grin that revealed inhuman teeth for just a moment. If Henry hadn't known what he was dealing with, he would have sworn his mind was playing tricks.

Henry opened his mouth to speak, and flipped the crystal out of his sleeve. "Same here," henry said as he slammed the crystal against the monster's forehead with everything he had, channeling force through his hands to shatter the crystal into dust.

Manson reeled back, his eyes wide, as the light green dust of the crystal spread, filling the air. A palpable weight filled the room. The air became thick, and Henry finally was able to breathe deep in the tainted atmosphere. Manson jerked his head forward, fixing Henry with a vicious glare as his bones rippled beneath his skin.

"You little shit," Manson said, his voice growing deeper. Manson's shoulders burst through his shirt, and all hell broke loose. He took a swing at Henry with a rapidly elongating arm, newly formed claws slicing through the air. Henry threw himself backward, slamming against the ring of spectators.

"Just a bitch like everyone else who lived here, you think you're up? I'll let you see what I'm like from the inside." Manson's rambling words slithered through the room as wizards scattered in every direction, Henry regained his feet, glaring at the monster bursting from its camoflauge.

The creature loomed over the crowd, its head nearly brushing the ten foot ceiling. Its eyes were fixed on Henry as it bared teeth wet with thick saliva. "If you had any idea who you are, you'd know why I own you," It said as it leaned forward, its clawed hand big enough to wrap around Henry's torso. Henry threw himself to the ground to get out of the way, and a light breeze ruffled the hair on the back of his neck as the man-sized hand sailed above him.

On instinct, Henry threw himself sideways, and five spear-like claws sunk into the wood floor behind him. Henry scrambled to his feet, his shaking peripheral vision assembling a picture of the pale creature tugging its claws from the floor as Henry broke into a sprint. A nearby wizard slipped a focus from their sleeve and pointed it at Manson, their features serene as they focused.

Ravens with unnaturally sharp beaks manifest around Manson, pecking at his eyes. Manson wildly flailed, and managed to bash a few of the birds against the wall, but they got back on their feet and rejoined the fray, slashing and pecking at the monster relentlessly. The young wizard who cast the spell watched with apparent satisfaction as the monster stumbled about the room, wildly swinging its arms.

Henry shouted out a warning, and the man's eyes met Henry's for an instant before a wildly swung backhand propelled the corpse of the former wizard through the thin walls of the meeting hall, leaving only a smear of blood around the edges of the hole. The monster peeked out from beneath its hand and grinned when it saw that the birds were gone. "Distractions, leeches, sucking away at things that aren't yours," it said, turning its smile toward Henry.

The dead man's colleagues mustered their courage, and three of them stopped and leveled their smuggled weapons at the monster. Bursts of fire and shadow leapt from the lenses in their hand, and a beam of light carved the monster from his neck to the bottom of his ribs, while leaving the building behind him unharmed.

Manson idly picked up the woman who had nearly carved him in half, and his tongue flickered out, following the same line she had cut through him in reverse, slowly following the line back to her neck. She screamed as he used his pinky to break her focus holding arm, leaving it to clatter on the ground.

The assault of her compatriots did nothing to stop him, and when his tongue languidly made it to her neck, his mouth descended on her, biting off her upper body and swallowing without chewing. Manson shuddered as the sorceress disappeared down his throat. "Enjoy the view," he said as he casually tossed her legs aside.

Manson's eyes picked out Henry again, and he lumbered forward. "I hate to sound like a hopeless romantic," he said as he took another swing at Henry. "But I want you inside me." Henry slid beneath a plastic table and rolled out the other side as it crumpled behind him. "You complete me."

The monster chuckled as it threw the table aside, chasing Henry further into the room. The wizards had rallied to a single purpose, and Manson was mired down by their assault as everything from bolts of lightning to screaming ghosts assaulted the pale creature. "AAAAAUUAAGH!" The roar of frustration shook the floor, and the monster curled in on itself, shielding its body with its massive hands, which began to peel away under the unified attack faster than they could regenerate.

Henry stopped and turned, watching the stalemate between the wizards and the monster. "How long is this gonna take?" Henry asked himself. He spotted Nakayama creating small beads of light that tore softball sized holes in the creature, and ran up to him.

"How long is this gonna take?" Henry shouted into Nakayama's ear over the din.

"Fifteen seconds!" Nakayama shouted at he continued to shoot the creature, curled pathetically in the corner of the room. The air of the room was sweltering hot, and the corner Manson had curled in had begun to spout gouts of flame as the air shimmered with heat. "Give or take! We have to weaken him as much as possible before the magic runs out, exhausting him will help shred the separation between him and the atmosphere!"

A woman's scream of rage caught Henry by surprise, and a weight suddenly toppled him forward as fists beat against the back of his head, jarring him. Henry flung himself forward, and he heard a dull thud from the woman riding his shoulders coming into contact with the floor. Henry looked down at her and recognized on of the girls from the lobby.

They streamed into the room, the young girls wildly throwing themselves on wizards and beating them with their fights while screaming in incoherent rage. The men who followed used the distraction to stab or bludgeon distracted wizards, before moving on to the next.

A thin, leather clad man, smelling of rotten teeth, stood only a few feet away, aiming to gut Henry while he was distracted with the girl. Henry stepped forward, pushing the knife out of the way and headbutting him as he stumbled forward. Henry's forehead broke his nose, and he reeled back.

Henry slipped the knife out of the man's hand and shoved it into the enemy's neck. The man's eyes widened as he ran away, his hand clutching the knife that had mortally wounded him. A flash of color flickered over his eyes, and Henry felt a sudden pressure against his neck. The girl stood behind him, grunting savagely as she tried to strangle him with whatever she had wrapped around his throat.

Henry caught sight of the girl when he turned his head, dyed hair, hovering around a hundred pounds. Zealotry gave her manic strength, but it wasn't enough to overcome the difference in size. Henry leaned forward, bending his knees. The girl stumbled as he did, but didn't lose her grip.

Henry's vision was getting red around the edges when he enacted the second part of his plan. Henry flexed his bent knees and leapt, falling backwards on top of the little teenage girl with all his considerable weight. The thing around his neck slackened, and Henry stood to find the girl staring at the ceiling, desperately trying to breathe. A moment later she drew a shuddering breath as Henry slipped the rope from the his neck.

Henry looked at the rope and blinked. It was pink and colorful. Looking back at the girl, he realized she was wearing a single Hello Kitty stocking, and the other leg was bare. Henry tossed the stocking to the trembling, motionless girl, before he looked for Sam. Across the sea of struggling forms, Henry saw Sam break a man's neck by bringing his fist down on the guy's skull.

Sam stood head and shoulders above the melee, targeted by wizards and Manson's zealots alike as both a rallying point and a target. With his other hand he gripped a struggling girl by the waist and threw her back outside the room, where she slid to a halt. Henry turned his attention to Nakayama, where the old man was being pressed by three rabid looking men.

Henry ran behind them and took the first one down with a sucker punch to the back of the head. The man collapsed to the floor like his strings had been cut. Nakayama saw Henry move, and blasted another with his signature snakes, causing him to collapse, shaking violently as his mouth began to froth. The third man, glancing nervously between the two of them, lunged toward the smaller man with a snarl. Nakayama moved, and Henry heard three distinct snaps as Nakayama broke the man's arm in three places before he touched the ground.

"We gotta close the doors!" Henry said, pointing to the double doors where Manson's worshippers continued to stream into the room, adding to the burden of the wizards who had to contend with them.

"Of course," Nakayama said, nodding. He settled the orb of glass on his palm and exhaled as he focused and Henry watched the size of the entryway collapse as if it had always been so, replaced by a single iron security door, which slammed shut on the face of a girl trying to push into the room, launching her back out into the hallway. "Now they are trapped in here with us."

A flash of pale flesh crossed Henry's eyes, and a flickering light interposed itself between Nakayama and the monsters hand before he was propelled away, hitting the wall and collapsing to his knees. "You piggies are trapped in here with me," Manson said in his monstrous voice that shook the floor and buzzed at the edges of Henry's senses. His clothes had been completely destroyed by the sustained attack and he now stood before them without even the shredded pretense of humanity.

"Would you ever fuck a pig?" Manson said as he leaned over Henry, his arms spread to the left and right, cutting off all retreat. "Most people would be disgusted, say it was beneath them, but I've seen some real pretty ones that walk and talk." Manson chuckled as he loomed over Henry, his thick drool pattering on the ground in front of him.

Henry smiled back at the monster above him, closed his eyes, and collapsed to the ground. "What?" Manson asked in confusion, looking down at his quarry that had simply passed out in front of him. Henry had fallen into a heap, and his smile had yet to leave his lips.

"What do you say,' Halil?" Manson heard Henry softly murmur the words as though sleep talking in front of him.

"What do you say, Halil?" Henry said, smirking at the ghost in front of him. "Better make a choice fast. You said you hate me enough to disappear, but I'm not entirely convinced." Halil's face turned red with rage. The spirit's face distorted beyond the limits of a human, eyes burning like embers. "I think you're just greedy. You saw all that power, and you decided to take a chance on me saving my own skin, but now it's a choice between nothing and oblivion. So what'll it be?"

Halil's features became catlike, and many jointed legs sprouted from an elongated waist. His bloody stump legs grew bone tails with stingers on them. Halil hissed and lunged menacingly, but Henry didn't flinch. If Halil could have done anything to hurt him, he would have already. Henry took a step forward, mere feet from Halil's fanged face. "What'll it be?" Henry asked, taking another step forward, placing his face inches from Halils, staring into his burning eyes, feeling their heat on his cheeks.

The creature shook, and let out a rage filled yowl that sheared through the quiet of the void. Halil turned and attempted to lunge away, but Henry caught one of its insect legs, and the monster stumbled, allowing Henry to jump on top of it, pinning the vengeful spirit to the ground.

"What'll it be" Henry shouted as the creature struggled. Henry felt a prick in his abdomen, and the world in his dreams became tinged with read as the pain began to roll over him. Halil screamed, and his thrashing died down, until he finally looked over his shoulder, the cat-face reverting to Halil's for a moment, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"What is your wish?" Halil asked.

"Huh," The pale monster muttered to himself as he withdrew a claw from Henry's abdomen, blood flowed sluggishly from the puncture wound, and yet the man below him was unresponsive. "Way to kill the mood. Fucker is reading me like a book."

Sam watched as Manson tried to wake Henry up, as he slowly pushed a claw through his stomach, and yet Henry did nothing. "The fuck is he doing?" Sam asked himself. A moment later, the quality of the air changed. The bolts of energy and summoned animals disappeared, and the battle between the wizards and Manson's zealots became more of a brawl between a bunch of bookworms and teenage girls.



Sam almost caught himself laughing at it, were it not the pale form stooped over Henry, that had begun shaking. It's pale skin began to lighten even further, the flesh becoming translucent, with thick blue veins travelling the creature's body.

"It's working!" Sam shouted, beating a woman aside with his forearm. She slammed against the wall and gasped in pain as Sam walked past, toward the creature that shrunk before his eyes. It was still big, Still a Maculat Mulieres, but it was obviously no longer as strong as it had been. Sam leveled his focus on the creature and tried to cast a spell that would sever its head with an invisible blade, but in his mind's eye, the blade was drawn to the ground as if by irresistible magnetism, or the force of an unstoppable river, flowing down.

Sam's eyes widened, and the creature swung its claws at him, snarling. Sam threw his forearm, bigger than most people's legs, in front of the blow, and he was tossed back against the buffet table, scattering wine glasses and food. Sam came to a stand, dropping his focus from trembling fingers as he attempted to stop the bleeding from four deep gouges in his forearm.

"I'll get back to you," Manson muttered, turning back to Henry, itching his transluscent skin, Manson looked up, and the ceiling was not nearly as close as it should have been. Manson looked back down at Henry, whose eyes were open. Manson lunged forward, a joyful snarl erupting from his throat.

Henry held up a hand, and the Maculat was bound in place. Henry climbed to his feet, holding his hand tightly over his stomach, where the puncture wound leaked blood between his fingers. Henry limped forward, and motioned downward with his hand, and the monster was pressed down to the ground.

"Eat you!" the thing howled. "You're part of me! I'll take you and be one whole!" Sam watched as Henry limped around the pinned monster, dragging his foot behind him, creating a circle out of the blood that flowed from his stomach.

The skin of the monster began to darken in patches as it wailed, turning black as they erupted into flame. Henry stopped in front of Manson, and crouched down in front of Manson, whose skin was beginning to boil and pop. "I've got something for you," Henry said, and placed his hand on the thing's forehead. Sam saw a faint glimmer of light pass between the two of them, and Manson's eyes glittered with hatred.

"I don't need your handout, you fucking-" Manson coughed, and screamed. "I'll find you again, I'll come back, and I'll tear all of you down, you fuckers! You'll know it's me! Every single one of you!" Manson screamed and railed at the wizards who surrounded them, watching silently as the monster's struggles slowed.

"That won't happen." Henry muttered to himself, as he watched the creature dissolve into a burning black puddle, contained within the circle of blood. Henry stood, wincing at the ache in his stomach, and he turned to look at the surroundings.

Sam was wrapping his shirt around his massive forearm in a makeshift bandage, Nakayama was coming to his feet, wiping blood from broken lips. Around Henry, dozens of women who had until recently fought with feral intensity were in shambles. Some shouted for joy, some stared mindlessly at the walls, as if they had just woken up, and their brain had yet to click on, and a single girl wept in the corner.

Henry approached her, wincing as fire shot through his body, on the same side as the wound from Zack. "It's over now," Henry said. "You're gonna be okay."

"I know," she said, sobbing between each word. "But I can't go home either, I'm not..."

"Don't be a bitch," Henry said, and she looked up at him, startled. "You've got a good sixty years left to live, at least. Don't sit there and tell me it's all over when you haven't even gotten started." Henry glared down at the girl with short black hair, before his vision went white, and he sank down to his knees, finding a comfortable spot against the wall, his eyes drifting closed.

Nick watched the tall man who'd killed Charles die in front of her, and she found herself aimless. She'd had thoughts of revenge, even after her mind had cleared. She had been warped while she had been with Charles, but it had still been her, and a small part of her clung to that twisted, disgusting memory. But watching the man who had saved her cuss her out, and die left her feeling empty.

The giant with the eyepatch pushed her aside and began doing CPR on the ragged man, and Nick wandered away from the scene, no longer invested at all. She walked past the screaming, dancing and crying girls, walked down the concrete stairs of the fire escape, and emerged blinking into the afternoon sun.

Sixty years, Nick thought, rolling down her sock and revealing the number he had written in permanent marker on the inside. Enough time to make up for a lot of things. Nick smiled wistfully, and took out her last twenty, heading for the bus stop.