Fish and Chips

Fish and Chips
Lakan Inocencio
Genre: Horror
Archetypes: Evil Albino, Tomboy
Keys: Betrothal or Contract, Cries in the Night, Split Personality, Grandfather Clock, Arabian Perfume, Transformation

“You want to know why there are so many cars out on the road when it’s raining, Stace?”
The other man doesn’t even bother to look at me but instead continues staring out into the rain. The way his hands curl around the steering wheel though, suggests that he might believe that said hands would be far more at home around my neck than anywhere else. What the hell, I’m mostly immortal, I can chance a strangling ever now and then.
“You see, Stace, it’s basic science. When it’s hot, and there’s a traffic jam, some of these poor buggers dehydrate along with their cars into a fine powder. That’s why roads are always so dusty, stands to reason. And then, when it rains, the water rehydrates them, and poof! You’ve got a road jam-packed as it is now.”
“Jeremiah, if you don’t shut up, I swear, I’m going to put a bullet through your skull. And I don’t care if you’ll survive it, at least it’ll give me a few hours of peace. That, and I know it’ll hurt. A lot.”
“Hey, not my fault you wanted to come along. Besides, if you did that, you’d wake Rena.” I say, indicating the pre-teen asleep in the back seat. “And you know how she is about messiness.”
“She’ll let it slide, she hates your jokes as much as I do. And I didn’t come here for you. My granddaughter’s getting married, I came here for her.”
“Yeah, and something tells me I should probably come along with you after the job I’m here for is done with.”
He turns to me, spittle flying from his mouth, “Hell and damnation, Jeremiah, I’m not going to kill the punk, you don’t have to babysit me.”
“Well, that’s the thing, Stace, back in Cape Town, you pretty much said those exact words, that you’d kill the punk for getting your granddaughter pregnant..”
He grunts and turns back to glare out the window into the rain. “Yeah, well she’s only sixteen.”
And that’s the problem really. It’s bad luck I got the job when I did. If I hadn’t been headed to Wales for this, he might have been content to brood about it back at the bar and take it out on the young idiots who hadn’t learned that Black’s Bar is off-limits for any gang-related behavior. As it stands, he found out that a client had contacted me for a hit-up here in Wales, and he decided to come along. To, as he put it at the airport, “give the young lad a small, rather gentle, and not at all violent, piece of his mind”. Although he does the entire gruff bartender thing, he dotes on his grandchildren. I’ve never met the kids, but Stacey vacations up in Wales every few years or so. Or at least he’d been doing so over the past decade I’ve lived in Cape Town.
“Bridge’s coming up.”
I look up, and the stone bridge is indeed approaching. Blast this rain, I can barely see a thing. I really hate coming back to Wales, the best move of my life leaving. We drive on, passing a bunch of paramedics wheeling some poor schmuck into an ambulance. We head up the stone bridge and leave the river behind. Thankfully, once we’ve passed them, the traffic jam lets up and we get moving at a speedier pace.
“Great. We’re almost there, keep to this road, and then take the next turn, then a few minutes and we’ll hit a small town where my contact is.”
He grunts in acknowledgment. “What’s this job of yours anyway?”
“Nothing serious really. Seems that a few locals have been disappearing lately, and a local bigwig wants me to deal with it.”
“And by ‘deal with it’ you mean put a bullet in whoever’s making people disappear. What makes this guy so sure it falls under your ‘jurisdiction’? And why doesn’t Gwyn ap Nudd’s court deal with it?”
“Well, this isn’t really a big deal. People disappear all the time, and a low-life nasty snatching people up here and there isn’t going to merit the attention of a pantheon. Most of the normals will attribute it to runaways or something and let the cops deal with and forget about it. And as for the bigwig, mainly because I owe this guy a favor. He saved my ass back sometime in the seventies. It was in a mess with a rogue gdon when we were in Tibet.”
“What, is he immortal like you? Or some kind of spooky?”
“Nah, he’s a plain old mortal as far as I know. Father was a minister or something, pretty vanilla upbringing, none of his family were even aware of the spooky side of things. Likewise, he didn’t even know much about the supernatural until he took an interest in the occult. When we met, he was just a snotty teenager who was surprisingly talented in the mystic arts, much better than some people twice or thrice his age. He managed to distract the gdon long enough for me to psychopompicize it. From what I hear though, he’s currently settled in for the life of a rural gentleman, and is part of the town council or whatever you call it in the place we’re headed to.”
Stacey laughs and says, “‘Mystic arts’? You usually insult people, people who talk like that. And how are we supposed to track down the creature anyway?”
“Yeah, well that’s what he liked to call it at the time. I almost thought he’d forgotten about the little debt until he called me up a few days ago. Hell, I thought the poor sod had died years ago. He’d have to be over eighty by now. As for the creature, from what I gather, it’s supposed to be some water creature or something. Reports say that the folks who’ve been disappearing were all last spotted near… lakes… and… rivers…”
Both Stacey and I go quiet, both of us realizing the same thing at the same time.
“Bloody hell! Turn the car around, that ambulance by the bridge!”
“Damn it, Jeremiah,” he says as he turns the car around and hits the gas. “I’ve got an excuse, you only just told me about it now, but how could you not have made the connection?”
“Sod that, just keep driving!”
“What’s going on?” a voice from the back seat says.
“Just a little miscalculation on my part, kid. Go back to sleep, I’ll wake you when we get to the inn.”
The girl gives me a disapproving look and turns to look out the window, ignoring my advice to get some shut-eye. Bah, kids these days.
We tear down the road, spraying water and mud everywhere. In a few minutes, we’re back at the bridge, but the ambulance has gone into the night leaving nothing but the rain. Traffic’s gone as well, so huzzah for small favors. Bloody hell though, Stacey was right, I should have picked up on it sooner. Hell, might as well look for any sign of what happened. Do some old-fashioned detective-ing and all that crap.
I get out of the car and look around. The first thing I notice is that I’m immediately soaked to the bone and that I should have probably used an umbrella. Stacey appears beside me with said umbrella but decides to keep it to himself, the bastard.
“So, what are we looking for?”
And he says it with a smirk, knowing that I want the umbrella, but that I’ll never ask for it. To hell with it. “Anything really. If the people were disappearing from near water, then I’m guessing we’re dealing with some sort of naiad or kelpie.”
“What, like a mermaid?”
I look around the muddy bank. The rains have swollen the river, and the ground here is muddier than a PR representative’s sales talk. Not really sure what I’m looking for but I’m positive I’ll know it when I see it. With luck, there’ll be something of the victim left behind, a scrap of cloth, some blood, a set of dentures. I’ve found strange things before, so who knows. I reach into a pouch fish out some pink sand and scatter it around the area.
“Yeah, but with fewer Hawaiian crabs and fat yellow fish. That, and if these sing to you, it won’t be cute. They’ll drag you under and kill you.”
“Jamaican.”
“What?”
“Sebastian was Jamaican.”
“Who’s Sebastian?”
Stacey rolls his eyes and instead asks: “So what’s that sand do? Never seen you use the pink one before.”
He’s pretty nonchalant at the moment, but I notice that he’s undone the safety strap on his holster.
“Kinda like a dowsing rod of sorts.”
I keep looking through the mud and water. The darkness and the rain tag-team my vision and prevent me from getting anywhere, but the sand is doing its work and I can feel something in the mud resonating with me. “A lot of the time, it’s not too useful, so I don’t use it a lot.”
I continue to muck about in the muck, sifting my hands through the mud trying to find anything. “What it does is cause anything that’s been in contact with something from the spooky side of things, like yours truly or our maybe mermaid, to kind of vibrate. Not really vibrate, but in a way that I can feel it, use it to home in on it.”
Just when I’m about ready to write off the previous feeling as a fluke, my hand stabs itself into something sharp. Very sharp, as by the looks of it, my hand’s bleeding. Just what I need. Well, not like I can die from an infection, but it’s still nasty stuff.
“Hey, get a light down here!”
By now, Rena’s stepped out of the car with her own umbrella. She reaches back into the car to pull out a torch. She shines a beam down at me while I dig through the mud, more carefully now, of course, to find whatever it was. Aha, there we go. The mucking about paid off, and I fished the offending object out of the mud and presented it triumphantly to Stacey.
“It’s a comb.”
“Well, yes, but it’s more than that; it’s a clue!”
“Jeremiah, it’s just a comb. Anyone could have dropped it there. Are you sure that sand of yours worked?”
I take another pinch and sprinkle it over the comb. I can feel it more distinctly now, it’s definitely it. “Yeah, I’m almost certain. This is definitely a Clue with a capital C!”
He gives me a skeptical look, but asks anyway, “So what do you think happened, Hercule?”
“It’s elementary, my dear… wait, what’s a muscle man got to do with anything? And you were supposed to call me ‘Sherlock’.”
“Hercule Poirot, not Hercules. Really, Jeremiah read a book now and then. Anyway, what are you thinking? The kelpie dropped the comb, and then the rain washed it down into the bank where it was covered in mud?”
“Well, yes, something like that. But there’s more, I know what we’re dealing with now.” I toss the comb over to him, satisfied at the surprised look on his face as he catches it. “Feel that? It’s heavy. Far heavier than a typical lady’s comb.”
“That, and it’s solid gold.”
At that, Rena raises an eyebrow and takes the comb from Stacey. No idea why it should interest her though, she’s got enough money to buy Stacey’s bar a few times over.
“Precisely, my dear Watson!” I say as I scramble back up the bank. “That, coupled with the fact that it’s a comb, leads me to conclude that we’re dealing with a morgen.”
“What’s that?”
Rena answers before I can, “They’re beautiful women, water spirits of sorts. They’re known to comb their hair at rivers, and then lure men to their deaths with promises of love and untold wealth.”
“Absolutely, and now that I know what we’re dealing with, I can figure out how to find it.” I detach a small pouch from my belt and fish out another small bag of sand. I double-check that it’s the right one, grab a pinch, mutter a few words over it charging it with power, and then throw the green sand up into the air while focusing on an image of a morgen. It won’t be quite as effective as if I knew the exact image of that specific morgen, but provided we haven’t just stumbled onto a nest of the things this will give me a general idea of where to start looking.
The grains of sand shimmer in the air, hovering there for a few seconds while the magic sends out feelers in all directions. Sure, I could have done the same thing on the fly, but it would have taken me hours to get the correct ritual lined up and powered. This way, I get an answer in a few seconds, even if each use hits me for a few hundred in hitman fees. The grains finally coalesce, and the area to the east, down the river, lights up with a green glow for a few seconds before vanishing. Right, so we follow the river, nab the bad guy, and cash in the reward money. Couldn’t be simpler.
Still…
No, I’m definitely overthinking things. This is a simple hit-and-collect, nothing fishy about it at all, pun intended. But then why am I getting that creeping feeling that something’s not quite right?
“Hey, Jeremiah, you should take a look at this.”
I take a look at what Stacey’s pointing out and the uneasiness doubles. There in the mud, just barely sticking out, is the rather distinctive shape of a gun. I pick it up and examine it. Fancy-looking thing, definitely not something you’d expect an average Joe-victim to be carrying around. I hand it over the Stacey to look over.
“9mm USP. Not entirely uncommon, but this one looks like it’s seen a lot of use.”
He does a few more pistol-y things with it, checking odds and ends. All that nonsense you’re supposed to do with a gun to make sure it’s safe and all, stuff I never really bothered with. Hell, when you know bullets can’t really kill you, you tend to get a bit careless, something which has caused me to shoot myself by accident more than once.
“So. We’ve got a solid gold comb from possibly a morgen, a gun stuck in the mud not far from the comb, and some poor bloke being carted away by an ambulance. So… Morgen attacks the guy, guy fires off a few rounds, hits the morgen, morgen drops comb, then the guy has to be ambulanced?”
“I don’t know, Jeremiah. Something about this seems a bit odd.”
Rena looks up at us and says, “She was pregnant.”
The two of us turn back to her in surprise. I ask her, “What? You can tell that? How?”
She gives me that derisive look again, that one she does oh so well, and says, “Jeremiah, you know very well what I am. I won’t get all my abilities until I die and rise again, but what I have is more than enough to get an imprint off this comb.” She holds it up, offering it back to me.
“You’ve got the woman, a morgen. This was her comb, and it’s been hers for a long time. There’s another connected to it though, the feeling is much weaker, not fully formed yet, but it’s close to her, very close. Jeremiah. You’ve been hired to hunt down and kill a pregnant woman.”
She raises an eyebrow at me, “So, Jeremiah, what are you going to do?”
Blast it all, I knew this wasn’t going to turn out well.
“Well of course I’m not going to kill her. But I do need to find her, to at least figure out what’s going on here.”
Stacey looks doubtful and says, “What about your contact? Shouldn’t you check in with him first? You do have a contract.”
That’s true. And in this business, backing out on contracts is a very quick and sure way to get yourself killed, or the even worse fate of being unemployed. On the other hand, the contract was to deal with whatever was causing the deaths, not necessarily to kill. Still, if she’s been causing deaths, then that’s something that warrants my attention. Can’t have the spookies running around offing poor ignorant mortals whenever they feel like it. For one, it makes them fear us and all the things that go bump in the night, and that’s never a good thing.
“Yeah, but I can fulfill that without killing her. The only problem is, we’ll need to find her first. There’s got to be a reason I’ve been contacted for this hit, and if I was hired, others will have been hired as well.”
“Are there a lot more supernatural hitmen?” Stacey asks.
“Well, yeah, why wouldn’t there be? As long as people exist, whether mortal or not, there will be those who want others killed. On the other hand, I’m the only one I know of who’s also an official psych pomp, but I’m sure there are bound to be others out there. The thing is, if my contact didn’t tell me everything about this case, you can bet your potatoes something’s going on.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Rena turn to the east as if she’d just heard something. Stacey notices it too.
“What is it, kid?”
She doesn’t say anything for a few moments. Then she turns to me and says, “You’d better hurry, Jeremiah. I just felt two beings come into the vicinity. Too far away to tell what they are, but they’re powerful enough that I can sense them from here.”
As she says that, I notice she undoes the buckle on one of the pouches by her side. It’s similar to the ones I have, useful for keeping all sorts of trinkets and talismans at the ready for a fight. Mine, however, doesn’t have a little cartoon pony on it. She can put on a tough front and act all sophisticated, but she can still be a child at times. It’s quite endearing actually, not that I’d ever tell her though.
“Right, that’s not good.”
It’s true that there are more supernatural hitmen around, but I’m one of the very few I know of that are human, or at least semi-human in my case. Normally the kid can sense things from within a few meters. But if these guys are tough enough that she can sense them over a distance, then we’d better be careful. I reach down to my ankle and draw out the cudgel I keep there. I also check to make sure my bracelet of dead men’s hair is ready. Stacey notices me doing this and heads back to the car. A moment later, and he’s sporting his favorite M4 (which he bribed me into Jedi mind-tricking customs to allow through) complete with night-vision scope and all sorts of fancy-shmancy attachments.
I turn to the east and start walking. A word of power and a small amount of energy causes a shimmering ball of light to appear above me, illuminating the way forward.
“Right children, let’s go find us a morgen.”

It’s an hour later when the first arrow slams into my throat. I try to scream out a string of profanities that would make a sailor blush, but the shaft of wood and torn up larynx force me to summarize with a gurgling, “Grarargh!”.
Stacey takes one look at me, then grabs Rena and ducks away behind a tree. I kneel to the ground and slam the cudgel into the dirt, focusing all of my will into it. I learned a lesson the last time I was in India, and I’ve fixed a few problems with the cudgel. As before, the otherwise invisible runes in the cudgel flare to life with bright purple light, causing a similarly colored dome to form a foot or so around me. It’s smaller than the first version, but it doesn’t burn quite as much power giving me more time to strategize.
I brace myself, take the proverbial deep breath, and grab the arrow. I snap it in two, causing a jagged shard of splintery pain to shoot through me. I ignore it for now. With the arrow snapped, I pull the two ends out of my throat. I spare a moment to look at the arrow. Barbed, and looks to be iron or some such. There’s some enchantment on it, but I don’t waste any more time trying to figure out what it’s supposed to do.
I grab a pebble from another pouch on my belt and hold it up to my throat. The energy stored in it leaves the pebble and into the wound, getting it to knit together. I make a mental note to prepare more of these pebbles when we get back to Cape Town. They’re great for on-the-spot healing, but each one takes a week to make, and with all the jobs I’ve been taking. Still, they’re great for getting back into a fight quickly.
Another arrow impacting the dome brings me out of my thoughts, and I try to will the stone to heal faster. A few more seconds should be enough, but in a fight, every second counts. Beyond the dome, I hear gunfire barking to my left. At least Stacey is still up. Then there’s a flare of light, complete with the audible sharpness of hundreds of shards of magical glass spraying over the area. And so is Rena, it would seem. Kid’s a fighter, and she might not look it but she’s tough as nails coated in diamond and polished up to look pretty.
The light should be enough of a distraction for now, so I grab the cudgel and drop the shield. My throat’s not fully healed yet preventing me from using any words of power, so that’s over half of my repertoire gone. Still, you don’t exist for a little over a century as a hitman to the gods without learning how to cope. I whip out my Webley and take cover behind a tree before firing off a few rounds in the general direction of where I think the arrow came from.
Unfortunately, though, the lack of screaming tells me that there has been a rather significant lack of lead hitting flesh. The light is beginning to fade, and if Rena’s sticking to the drill, she should be getting ready with smoke soon. I count out a few beats, then leap out from cover, gun drawn and ready to shoot the first thing that moves, all Hollywood-like.
I don’t quite make it.
Just as I jump, another figure emerges from the tree line. The figure is dressed in a knee-length coat of mail over which is a green cloak of what looks to be wool. He has long shoulder-length blond hair which is kept in place by a metal circle about his forehead. What worries me more though, is the three feet of shining steel in the sword he’s bringing down to bear. One of Fionn Mac Cumhaill’s men, the Fianna. They’re all elite warriors, battle-hardened over the centuries, and this one has a massive sword coming down at my head.
No room to dodge, no smoke from the kid yet, and Webley’s aren’t made for blocking attacks from giant magical swords wielded by supernatural tough guys. Instead, I drop the gun and focus power on the cudgel bolstering my defenses. It allows me to take blows that should feel like being hit by a sixteen-wheeler and make them feel like getting punched by a professional boxer. Still bad, but could be worse. I then move my left hand towards the sword, palm-up, and pour as much power into the bracelet as I can, hoping it will be enough.
It is. The blade contacts my palm, cuts a couple of millimeters in, and then stops as if it had slammed into an oaken beam. Each strand in my bracelet is made from hair from a dead murderer, and each one contains a memory of rage, hatred, and bloodlust. When I focus on it, I can release that emotional power allowing me to hit supernatural nasties with a punch like the roid-raging lovechild of George Foreman and Charles Atlas after getting sand kicked into his eyes. Coupled with the cudgel, and I’ve basically turned my left arm into a solid iron punching machine that can trade blows with any weapon you throw at it.
That said, though, oh crap oh crap oh crap, this crapping hurts like crappity crap…
The man doesn’t miss a step and reverses the sword, bringing it horizontal to take me apart at the waist. He’s a professional and a veteran of dozens, if not hundreds, of fights. Me though, I play dirty. I flick my hand at the man, sending blood into his eyes, then I dodge backward, getting just out of range of his sword. Hah, let’s see you fight blind then, blondie.
As the blood hits him, he staggers for only a moment, then moves forward with his sword outstretched, going from a horizontal slash to a thrust in the span of a few milliseconds. Damn it, veteran, indeed. The steel enters my belly and exits out my back, then with a twist, he withdraws the sword. There’s no pain at first, just the sudden impact, then the feeling of coldness and blood loss. The wound seems to burn, but not with fire, but with frigid ice as the blood flows out of the wound.
I struggle to keep to my feet, but at this point, there’s little I can do. What’s more, the mud on the bank makes it hard to move properly, making me that much wobblier. Then I hear a couple of gunshots. The man in front of me spins around as one of the bullets takes him in the shoulder, but he doesn’t go down. Blast it all, if it were ordinary mail the rings should have fragmented with the bullet and turned his shoulder into a pulpy mess. The way it looks, though, the armor isn’t ordinary and probably has some similar magic woven into it as I have in my cudgel, only a whole crapton more sophisticated. Still, Stacey’s bought me just enough time, so I reach into another pouch and withdraw some sand. This one’s not pink or green, though, but red.
With a fistful of the stuff, I draw my hand back and focus on the bracelet of dead men’s hair. Then, knowing I’ll probably only get the one shot at this, I slam my fist into the man’s face. The sand explodes, but as it’s keyed to me none of the impact affects me and instead all the fire and fury of the blast is channeled directly into the man’s chin. He staggers back but doesn’t fall. Damn it all, the next time I meet Fionn I’m going to kil– well, give him a good talking to. I doubt I could take him in a fight, but he’d remember it the next day.
The man regains his footing, and then brings the sword up once again.
That’s when I smell the perfume.
It’s alluring, and tempting, the same way an excellently aged wine is intoxicating. There’s something about it that calls to mind port cities of old, bustling with the trade and commerce of spices from the far-flung reaches of the world. There too is the hint of the oceans, the seas, and the rivers, the flowing arteries that guided exotic ships to equally exotic ports of old.
There’s a flash of silver, and then she’s there.
She’s beautiful. It seems as if time slows down as she rises from the river, droplets of water flying off her pearly flesh. Her long hair is platinum white, and the moonlight only serves to highlight the white purity of her flesh. The foam of the water surrounds her, almost a picture frame caressing every curve and slope of her form. I see her face. It’s innocent and serene, like a still lake under starlight. Her eyes reflect that same light along with the shimmer of each individual droplet of water around her giving her the look of some nymph-like river deity.
Then her jaw unhinges like a snake’s as she opens her mouth, revealing row upon row of long needle-like teeth.
Before either the warrior or I can react, she’s grabbed him about his shoulder and abdomen, biting into his neck almost in two sending arterial spray up into the night. Then she pulls him into the water and as suddenly as she appeared she’s gone once more.
And then there’s silence.
I fall to my knees and fumble around for another pebble. It’s my last one, but if we’re going to get through this night, then I need to be at my best. Sure, the wound won’t kill me, being what I am, but no one wants to have to go through a fight with six feet of long intestine hanging out of a gaping stomach wound.
The energy flows out of the stone and into the wound. Without a need to focus on holding up a shield, I can force more energy into the stone, speeding up the process. A few seconds later, the area is still sore but it’s no longer bleeding.
I call out: “Stace, we’re in the clear for now, where are you?” I look around for the second hitman. Chances are, he was the one with the bow. With luck, though, after seeing what happened to his mate, he’ll have high-tailed it for now.
There’s a moment of silence, and then he calls out, “Jeremiah, get over here now, Rena’s hurt.”
A cold far more chilling than when I was stabbed hits me then. I grab my Webley from where I dropped it and reholster the weapon before dashing off toward the sound of Stacey’s voice. It barely takes me a minute, but by the time I arrive, I’m cursing myself for not getting there sooner.
There, Rena is on the ground, shirt torn open at the abdomen and Stacey kneeling by her side. He’s gotten some bandages around her midsection, but even in the darkness I can see and smell the blood. She’s not saying anything, but her quiet whimpers of pain pound more loudly into my ears than the gunfire from before. The look on her face, eyes scrunched tight and her biting her lip speaks to me and tells me just how hard she’s trying to fight the pain. I move in closer and see the shaft of the arrow protruding from her left side. More than that, I see her tears. Rena never cries. And it tears me apart to see her do so now.
I curse myself for being a fool and using the last pebble. I would have survived. Her… I don’t know.
I kneel by her side and place my hands around the wound, channeling what power I can into it.
“Gods below, Stace, what happened? I thought you got her to safety?”
He has his hand on her forehead, stroking her hair and doing his best to soothe the child.
“I did. She refused to stay down though, insisted that she had to help you. The arrow hit her right after she jumped out to chuck that rock and do that magical light show of hers. She wanted to fight, refused to be a damsel in distress. Damn it, Jeremiah, this is why I keep telling you not to bring her with you! Can’t you do something? You’ve healed me before, and you do it to yourself all the time.”
I focus on the wound, trying to do what I can. I try to ignore her blood-staining my fingers. That’s easy to ignore. What’s harder though, is blocking out her muffled crying. I don’t reply; I don’t tell him that healing is not my specialty, or that knife wounds are one thing while arrow wounds are another, or that I’m immortal and I can’t die so I can take my time with my own wounds. That last point, I try to push from my mind; I can beat myself up over it another day.
“I’m doing what I can, Stace.”
Then a soft, quiet voice: “Jeremiah?”
I don’t turn to face her, for fear she’ll see my guilt. “Hush, kiddo, I’m here; we’ll get you back on your feet in no time.”
“Jeremiah, it hurts…”
The night gets cloudy, and it gets harder to see. I keep telling myself that until I believe it, convincing myself that my eyes aren’t filling with tears.
“I know, squirt, I know. But I’ll make it all better, I promise. Quiet now, try to relax.”
She bites back a few more sobs, then I hear her voice once more: “If… If I go, don’t let me… don’t let me come back, Jeremiah, please… don’t let me come back…”
I shake my head, trying to pour more power into the wound. With the shaft in the way, though, there’s only so much I can do. “That’s not going to happen, you’ll be fine, I promise.”
I look to Stacey then, and whisper: “I have to get the arrow out, but if it’s the same as the arrow that hit me, it’ll tear her up even more if I just yank it out. I have to cut it out of her, and you’re going to need to hold her down.”
“What? Are you insane? You can’t perform surgery here.”
I continue to focus on the wound, I can feel the bleeding starting to slow as I get more energy flowing into the area. I try to ease the pain somewhat, but I’m crap at it. Mads could have done it with little problem, but she had a couple of centuries experience on me.
“Stace, I’ve lived through two world wars and dozens of other conflicts over the decades. I’m not a surgeon, but I can do this, I have to do it. I can’t let her bleed out, once the arrow is gone, I can heal the wound. I’m not great at it, and it’ll take time, but I can do it.”
I don’t look up from where I’m concentrating, but I can feel his stare boring into my skull. Then I hear him drawing his knife. He hands it to me and I take it without a word.
“Rena, honey, this is going to hurt. I’m going to do what I can to make it as quick as I can, but you have to be strong, okay?”
I can’t hear her, but then I feel her hand groping for mine. I take it and hold it tight, trying to squeeze my strength into her and to take away her pain. Then she lets go and I start to do what I can.
She doesn’t scream, and that makes it all the worse. I can hear her holding back what sound she can though, and I hurry through the process as quickly as I can. Vjesci… She’s not human, but until she goes through her final metamorphosis she’s just as vulnerable as any thirteen-year-old. The day she dies though, she’ll arise at midnight to the entirety of her powers. Strength, immortality, magic, the works, but also with a new-found predilection for blood and human flesh. And if she goes now, she’s forever in the body of an undead thirteen-year-old. I am not letting that happen to her, not when I can do something about it.
After what seems an excruciating eternity, I manage to pull the arrow free. I examine the arrowhead, making sure nothing was left behind. Satisfied, I go back to the wound, focusing even more power into it than I’ve done before. I’m no healer. I’m an occultist, a hitman, a psycho pomp; I borrow power from stronger beings and turn that into tools for me to use. More often than not, those tools involve violence and deporting nasties back to the world of the dead. Doesn’t matter though, I call on everything I have.
I can feel my muscles begin to burn, hot lead spiked with shattered glass courses through my veins as I try to contain and channel powers that I am unaccustomed to using. The minutes begin to crawl, and what I know could barely be even half an hour starts to feel like days as my entire being strains with the energy. Doesn’t matter though, this is for her.
But it’s working, I can feel the flesh knitting. Deeper, I feel damaged organs repairing themselves, torn muscle coming together. It doesn’t take much longer, and the wound is healed. I’ve taken away her pain and fixed her up, she’ll still need to rest to regain her strength and the lost blood, but she’s a trooper, she’ll get through this. I’m on the verge of collapse though, and every movement is unadulterated pain. My magical reserves are shot all to hell, and I feel like I could sleep for days if the pain would abate enough to let me. Doesn’t matter though, she’ll live.
I reach out and stroke her hair sending a bit of power into her to help her relax, “You’ll be fine now, Glenda, the pain should be going away.”
She mumbles a quiet word of thanks, then she closes her eyes and begins to nod off to sleep, utterly exhausted by the whole ordeal.
Stacey looks up to me then, and says: “I’m taking her back to the car so she can rest. You take care of the son of a bitch who did this to her.”
I nod, muscles too tired and nerves to shot to say anything.
He picks her up then, cradling her in his arms. She looks peaceful, and if it weren’t for the blood-stained bandages she would have looked just like another kid who’d fallen asleep after a picnic and had to be carried back home.
Stacey turns to leave, then looks back at me: “Who’s Glenda?”
Glenda… No, not Glenda, Rena. I shake my head of the memory, forcing myself to say: “Nobody. Slip of the tongue. Now go, take care of her. I’ll finish this.”
He looks at me for a moment longer, but doesn’t argue. Then he walks off down the bank to fade into the darkness.
With the two of them gone, I take a minute more to steel myself and get my body under control. Then I stand. Time to meet my contact and figure this whole damned thing out.

The wrought iron of the gate doesn’t stand much of a chance. A word of power and a good shove empowered by my bracelet causes it to bend apart and fly back. The screech of the metal mirrors the screaming of my body as my tendons and muscles try to withstand the force I’d just hit them with. Right now, though, I’m too angry to care.
A couple of guard dogs come charging at me, English mastiffs by the look of them. Enormous things, but they’re no gwyllgi, and I’ve dealt with those before. A fistful of yellow sand thrown to the ground creates a massive explosion of bright light. For a moment, everything around us looks to be lit up as if by the sun on a cloudless day, but with the disconcerting effect of there being no shadows whatsoever. This spooks the dogs, long enough for me to hit each with a spell to keep them asleep for the next few hours.
The light fades, and I stride up to the door. Before I can get to it, it opens, and an old, wizened man appears. He’s dressed in a green silk smoking jacket and walks with the aid of a cane.
“Alwyn Argall. It’s been a while.”
He nods his head at me and replies: “Jeremiah Greene. And you haven’t aged a day, as expected. Now, do step inside, it wouldn’t do to have the neighbors see any more of your little magical display. It will be difficult enough as it is to explain your show back there.”
“Save it. Now, what’s really going on here? I’ve got an injured girl back there, and I was nearly eviscerated myself. Now, contract or no, you’re going to come clean with me regarding this job, or so help me I will turn this little mansion of yours to ash with you in it.”
He raises an eyebrow at that, then says: “Don’t bluster, Greene, you and I both know you don’t have the magical power needed to do that.”
I lean in close to him, getting all up close and personal before snarling: “Who said anything about magic?”
He matches my stare for a few moments, then sighs. “Very well, you’ve made your point. Now come in, I’ll explain everything.”
He stands aside and opens the door for me. Wary for any traps, I enter the house. I doubt he would have any sort of power that could really hurt me, but it doesn’t help to be careful. If nothing else, the decades have taught me that you don’t need to be powerful to win, you just have to know how to use your power effectively. And Argall’s one of the most cunning people I’ve met.
Once inside, he closes the door and leads me down a hallway. He stops at an old grandfather clock and opens the front panel. I resist the urge to make a jibe about hidden passages behind clocks being cliched and instead let the man work. He always was one for theatrics, extremely predictable like that he is.
It takes him only a few more minutes, then the clock swings aside revealing a stairwell heading downwards. Argall gestures towards the stairs, but instead I give him a look. He shrugs and leads the way.
As we descend, there’s a cold, cloying feeling of darkness that grows with each step. There’s enough light to see by, but only just. I do have to wonder though, how he managed to get this place built without arousing suspicion. Still, for any halfway decent occultist it would have been an easy matter to brainwash people into forgetting about the place, not that it’s ever a good idea to do so though.
After what I presume to be at least three, maybe five floors worth of stairs, we come to a door. He spends some time on it, undoing locks and removing warding spells and the sort. Soon the door opens to reveal a large cavern, complete with all the paraphernalia you’d expect from the kind of idiot who uses the phrase “mystic arts” without any hint of irony.
Across from the entrance, I can just make out what I guess is an underground stream. Perhaps linked to the river we were at earlier, but I have no way of knowing. There are shelves and tables in the cavern, all which make up what I suppose is the man’s workshop.
“Right, Argall, you’re going to tell me what’s going on. And make it quick, if you try to shaft me on this you’ll regret it.”
He raises an eyebrow at me and replies: “We’re here, in the center of my power, I am surrounded by all of my tools and enchantments, and you think to threaten me? You think you have that kind of power?”
I match his glare and say: “Yes. Yes, I do.”
He waits for a few moments, then sighs and says: “Yes, I suppose you do. Very well then. All of what I told you in my letter was true, but it was perhaps no the complete truth. There is a creature, a morgen, killing people in the area and she needs to be stopped. What I didn’t tell you though, is that she is my fiancée.”
Well. That’s unexpected. “You? You’re getting hitched? At your age?”
He scowls and says: “You should know very well that for immortals, such as yourself, age is rather relative a term. And yes, I was to marry her, but something has happened. She has gone mad for some reason, and she left. I haven’t seen her for over a month. I don’t understand it, she was the sweetest, kindest person you could ever hope to meet, as well as one of the smartest. I know this is not her, and she needs to be stopped. But I cannot do that on my own, I need your help. You were the most powerful person I’ve ever met, and I am calling in my favor, I need that power.”
I don’t speak for a while, taking this all in. I don’t bother correcting him regarding how strong my magic is. Truth be told, I’m hardly even in the top half of the occultists I know of. Not something he needs to know though.
“You are aware, that she’s pregnant?”
His eyes widen with surprise, and he sputters: “Pregnant? But… but how?”
“Well, Argall… I don’t know what to tell you. When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much–“
“Blast it, Greene, I mean how is it possible, she’s not human! And how would that drive her to a killing spree?”
“Beats me, but offspring between mortals and the supernatural isn’t really something that new. I’m sure you’ve heard of a few now and then. That’s not the point though, what matters is that you need to find her and stop her.”
He runs his hand through his hair, obviously upset. Then again, who wouldn’t be by this point.
“Very well. I believe I have a means to summon her here. No, not the way we summon beings from Outside, but more like a call. We created a way between us, to reach the other should the need arise. It is limited in range though, but we never needed the spell to go too far. I do not have the strength needed to send the call out the distance it needs to go to find her, but you do.”
Right, that’s not suspicious at all… Still, at least if he’s up to something, I’ll know it’s coming. “Very well, what do you need me to do?”
He moves to the large table in the center of the cavern and retrieves a book. He opens it up and flips through a few pages before stopping on one and handing it to me.
“The outline is there, it is a simple working, but it should be enough. I do nott have the strength to do it, but if what you’ve told me about yourself is true, which I am inclined to believe it is, then you should have acquired enough strength over the past century to pull this off.”
I look at his formula, everything seems to be what he says it to be. I was never much for writing things down like this, so I’m rusty on my notations and symbols. Still, from what I see of the words of power and the inscriptions, I suppose it would indeed do what he needs. The problem is, the average mortal would indeed not have enough strength to boost the metaphorical signal much further than a mile or so. Drained as I am, I might be able to push it out to maybe three or four times that, but not much farther. I’ll have to hope that it’ll be enough.
“Right, let’s get started then.”
Over the next half hour, we set everything up for the ritual. Lines are drawn into the floor with various colored chalks, incense is burnt, and all the tools are lined up properly. I take my place in the center of the inscriptions and begin the chant.
There are a few words that I’m not accustomed to using, but none that I haven’t seen before. I focus on the words, calling power into my voice. It’s nothing I haven’t done before, rituals like these, but I much prefer simpler enchantments that don’t take hours to do. The chalk begins to glow, then it flares to life with each ounce of power that I pump into it. My voice begins to change, almost taking a different shape, and starts to fall out into the night. It’s strange, I can almost hear myself calling out, hearing my voice out in the darkness.
I regain my focus, snapping back to myself. I continue to focus on the words and the power. It’s a clever spell, I suppose, from what I gather it brings the two minds together so they can experience similar things over a distance. Argall always was intelligent, and this is one of his finer works.
Then I hear it, the sound of water rushing but from a great distance. I continue the spell, pouring greater power into it, willing her to come. The chalk is almost unbearably bright now, and I’m starting to smell smoke as the lines start to char. Blast it, at this rate the inscriptions will burn and short out before she arrives.
But then she does.
As before, she erupts from the river, pale and beautiful. But now, in the darkness of the cavern with only a few candles to see by, her flesh is no longer the soothing white of fine porcelain, but instead shimmers with the cold paleness of rough alabaster. Her hair retains the same pearlescent shine to it, but now it seems to be the white of a corpse rather than platinum.
She rises from the stream, walking towards me like a lioness stalking her prey. I drop the spell and ready myself for battle, moving the power I had been focusing away from my voice and into the bracelet.
… Except nothing happens.
She’s still approaching, and I try to move away, but my legs are firmly rooted in place. I whip out my Webley and squeeze off a couple rounds. The first shot misses, but the second grazes her shoulder. Before I can fire off a third though, she’s there, up in my face with her fingers around my neck like a clamp of iron. She grabs the Webley and wrenches it out of my hands, throwing it against the far wall.
“Do not kill him, my dear, we still have use for him.”
She glares at me for a moment, then releases me to walk back towards Argall. She leans in towards him and the two kiss, a long passionate kiss that, if I am to be honest, I am a little uncomfortable watching. No need to be polite then.
“Get a room, you two. Now, Argall, what the hells is going on here?”
The two break off their kiss and he walks over to me, being careful not to disrupt the lines on the ground, I notice.
“Simple, Jeremiah, I am calling in my favor.”
“Yeah, you’ve got your girlfriend back, what’s with this trap then? And the way things looked, she’s not quite as crazy as you said she’d become.”
“Ah, yes, you will have to forgive me for that, Greene. The truth is, I am old.”
“No crap.”
He ignores my remark and simply continues. “I am seventy-three now, and I have no delusions of grandeur. I am not long for this world, but I would see my child born.”
“So you knew about it.”
He scoffs, with that typical upper-class arrogance that I really, really hate. “Of course I knew, Greene. I am Alwyn Argall, and while not as powerful as you, I am much, much more intelligent.”
“Yeah, so what do you want from me? It’s not like there’s anything you can do that I haven’t experience before. Ransom’s not going to work, I barely have any money. Getting me to cast magic for you’s out too, as once I can do that I’m tearing you a new one.”
“Oh, that is quite simple, Greene. I am going to take your immortality from you.”
“What.”
He laughs, but there is no mirth in it. “Look at you. A Welsh nobody, living in South Africa, beholden to a loa spirit, allied to various creatures of darkness from all over the world. What’s more, you are drunk half the time, and the other half you are bumming around looking for liquor. You, Mr. Greene, are a joke, and you make poor use of your immortality and power.”
“And let me guess, you’d be better suited to it?”
“Of course. I am a proper gentleman, upstanding of morality and of noble breeding. I am certainly much more worthy than you. I will take your immortality, I will make better use of it, and I will see my child born.”
I roll my eyes. Typical. I’ve run into fools like him before, thinking that what I’ve got is something that can be taken or traded like some sort of commodity. It never works.
“That’s not how it goes, Argall. Besides, even if I can’t attack you, there’s not much you can do to me. I’m immortal, remember?”
He smirks, then says: “Ah, but that is the thing. I know the terms of your immortality. You cannot be killed, sickness has no effect on you, you do not age. Any would you receive will heal, albeit at normal human rates without magical assistance, but you will live on. But, only so long as you remain unburied and out of a grave.”
Oh. Oh crap…

He spreads his arms out, presenting the cavern.
“It took decades of preparation, but here it is. You are more than six feet under the ground, effectively buried in a tomb of my creation. You are mortal now, Jeremiah, and you are at my mercy.”
The bastard. He’s right though, and without any of my magic, he really can kill me should he decide to. Got to stall for time, try to figure something out so that I can make my escape.
“I know what you are thinking, Greene, that you had better stall for time so that you can try to make good your escape. It won’t work, I’ve been planning this for years, and you are the proverbial fly in my spider web.”
Gods below… bastard likes to gloat.
“You are right though, Greene, that immortality is not something that can be traded around so easily. What I have planned for you is different. You saw the spell you used to call my fiancée here, but it is more than a simple calling. With a bit of tweaking, it can link two people together. And that is what I will do, I will link myself to you and so long as you remain alive, so too will I. You can die of wounds now, as well as sickness. But you still cannot age, so you will live on for a long time. Don’t worry, Greene, you will not meet your end here. But this is the end of your story, there is no rescue, and there is no way out.”
Bloody hell… he even sounds like a B-movie villain… Might work to my advantage though. Best to keep him talking and gloating as long as I can.
“One question though, why the fianna?”
Argall pauses, then says, “The who?”
And then, almost as if the universe and the gods of drama were waiting for the perfect moment to strike, an arrow sails through the darkness and slams into Argall’s back, pitching him forward and onto the floor. He screams in pain, and I take grim satisfaction in the fact that he does while Rena did not.
He tries to crawl away, but another arrow flies down and slams into his leg, pinning him to the ground. His screams reverberate through the cavern, echoing louder with each cry.
I look to the morgen, expecting her to be rushing to his aid or perhaps leaping for my throat, but she’s just standing there, watching him. Argall calls out to her: “Please, help me! Greene’s brought someone else with him!”
She just continues to look at him, not saying a word, then she turns to face the stairs. There, is the second of the fianna. He’s dressed just like the other one, but looks to be much older, in his fifties if I were to guess. Not that age matters all that much for our kind. He carries a bow, and he has another arrow at the ready. If I weren’t immobilized, he’d be a smear on the wall by now. As it stands though, I will have to be careful.
Argall continues to scream, and the warrior moves towards him. Argall makes a warding gesture when he sees the man, but to no avail. The bowman simply kicks the old man’s hands away, and there’s a resounding crunch as old bones shatter. He doesn’t have time to scream more though, as the third arrow takes him in the forehead, silencing him.
Well. Not what I expected.
“So… I take it now you’re going to rescue me? mac Cumhaill and I aren’t exactly friends, but we have worked together before, you know. I’ll put in a good word with your boss.”
The man simply looks at me, not saying anything. What the crap is it with these silent types? Instead though, the morgen speaks: “He won’t answer you, Mr. Greene, he’s under my control. Lured by promises of love and wealth, but taken in by my power. He is a slave now, nothing more.”
Her voice is just like the way she looks, the sound is like clear water over pearl white stones. But it brings no comfort though, and instead only has the chill of a river fresh with winter melt.
“And what happens now?”
“Now, Mr. Greene, I completed Argall’s spell. He was a sweet one, but he’s not the first mortal to fall to my charms. The child is his though, but it’s not my first by a mortal. He thought he could have it all, me for a wife, the riches I hide, and the power of your immortality.”
Then it clicks. “You tricked him. You fed his delusion, getting him to figure out how to do this spell, to figure out how to get to me. But it was never for him, was it? He was never the one you wanted to turn immortal. It’s for your child.”
Her smile is cold, but not without emotion. “I have seen too many of my children die before me, Mr. Greene. You are only a century old, but I have existed since the days of Rome. I will not kill you, but you will give me what I want.”
She moves in closer, and I struggle to break free of the spell. It’s no use though, Argall knew what he was doing, and until the lines on the ground are broken or they run out of residual power, I am stuck. She’s face to face with me now, her white skin almost translucent by the light of the glow.
Then she leans in to kiss me.
I struggle, trying to fight back, but all my strength seems to flow from me, a cold darkness, almost as if I were drowning. It takes all my strength, but I fight back, stopping myself from blacking out as my power flows from me. She presses closer, and I can feel every curve of her body, the softness that presses up against me as she holds me closer. Any other circumstance, it might have been pleasurable, but I can feel her sharp teeth pressing up against mine, her fingers clawing into my back, and the cold of her body lacking in any of the warmth of life.
Then she breaks away, and the feel of life returning to me is almost enough to knock me down. She looks me in the eye. There is a change in her face, some measure of vibrancy has returned, but her flesh still retains the cold sheen it once had.
“Good bye, Mr. Greene. The spell is done and you have served your purpose. My child will live on through the centuries, and you will stay here, unable to move and unable to die.”
I try for some retort, something, anything to fight back, but Argall was right, I am caught, and there’s little I can do. I reach out for her, trying to stop her from leaving, but I am so weak that I can barely even move. My vision begins to fade as does the candlelight, but with the dying illumination I can see her moving away, back to the river. There’s a spray of foam, and she’s gone.
Then too goes the last of the light.
And then there’s only darkness.

END

About the Author
Mr. Inocencio is a full-time freelance writer, occasional D&D dungeon master, perpetually-aspiring novelist, and imaginary Emperor of his own little Imperial Realm. He enjoys urban fantasy, noir, hard-boiled pulp, Lovecraftian horror, candlelight dinners, long walks on the beach, non-sequitur humor, and puns. Further, for some reason, Mr. Inocencio enjoys talking in the third person, claiming that such is the logical extension of the royal “we,” calling it the imperial “him.”