Opening of Plane Evil

This is the opening of Plane Evil, the other story I've been dabbling with. It is not set in the same storyverse as Georgia's story, but is the same genre. I'd be interested to know which strikes the reader as more interesting -- as in, if you picked both of these up and read the first few pages in the Barnes & Noble, which would you be more likely to buy? (or wouldn't either of them be appealing?)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter One

The demon's brown, leathery ass disappeared into the building's ventilation system just as I rounded the corner. I sucked wind, out of breath from chasing it up the five flights of stairs, and cursed myself for not learning Simon's netting spell, especially since he hadn't answered his pager. Stubborn? Who, me?

Slinging the strap of my tool bag over my head, I looked around for something to stand on. I couldn't just jump up there like the demon. Empty corridor stretched to either side of me. I ran down the hall, trying door after door until I found one left unlocked in the rush to evacuate the dormitory.

The room was a disaster area. College student-type disaster, not the demon variety. I dumped a stack of textbooks and a bag of pot off the desk chair, hauling my makeshift stepladder toward the door. A ghost of my own post-secondary guilt made me stop to kick a sweatshirt over the stash before rushing out the door.

A torn metal grid lay discarded under the duct's yawning maw. I rifled through my bag for a flashlight, clamping the butt of it between my teeth as I climbed onto the chair. I had to struggle even from there to pull myself up into the opening. Xiaodan is always after me to start an upper body regimen. Maybe one of these days I'll start listening to her. Yeah, that's it.

There was enough room in the shaft for me to crawl on hands and knees, but not much more. I stopped to listen and heard a scrabbling noise up ahead. The demon hadn't popped out onto another floor somewhere. It figured. The first Red Sox home game in three weeks and here I was, about to have a close encounter of the ventilation kind. I fought down the claustrophobia and pushed forward, sweat beading on my face and trickling between my breasts. I managed to work up a good speed for someone on all fours, until my hands slipped out from under me and sent me sprawling in a puddle of goop. I bit my lip against the flashlight as I came down, and dropped the light into the ick. Lovely. Demon slime. That was going to leave a nice rash. I reached back and wiped the worst of it on my jeans, inching forward to retrieve my light. It was completely slimed. So much for carrying it in my mouth.

The noise grew louder as I edged deeper into the shaft. From the brief glimpse I'd gotten of it earlier, I didn't think the demon was more than three to three and a half feet tall, but they're all wiry and incredibly strong, whatever other powers they might possess. It was reassuring to hear it. I didn't want to be ambushed.

Scooting along on one hand and two knees, focused on the racket up ahead, I missed the down-shaft until my hand fell on empty air. I pitched forward and dropped the flashlight again, my hands flailing in front of me as my heart and stomach lurched into my throat, not necessarily in that order. I grasped for something – anything – that would keep me from tumbling over the edge.

I got lucky. The opening was only a couple of feet across, and I caught myself on the other side of it. The flashlight wasn't so lucky. It tumbled down the hole and winked out with a thud as it hit the bottom, leaving me in total darkness. Shit.

I pulled my legs across the gap, then fumbled in my bag for my Bic candle lighter. Holding the tiny flame out in front of me, I forged ahead until I came to a T in the maze. The demon had gone to the left. Once I started down that tube after it, instinct kicked in and the light became almost secondary. I wouldn't have to worry about a sneak attack. I could smell the demon. I could feel the throbbing in the planar fabric surrounding it, like the vibration from a really good subwoofer. It wasn't of this dimension – none of them are – and the closer I got to the demon, the more my nerves hummed and danced with that strange electricity that said Other.

I had it cornered. The duct came to an abrupt end, capped off at some point during one of Northeastern University's endless bouts of renovation. The glow from my lighter picked it out when I was about eight feet away, and the demon growled. I stopped. I was close enough, and I didn't want to rile it. Uh, him. As he shifted his weight, I could see that he was rather spectacularly male.

He was rather short, as demons go, and on the skinny side. His skin was slimy, oozing goop from various spots. He had an oversized bottom jaw with teeth that jutted past his upper lip, sharp and wicked looking. The nose was almost flat under dark, bulging eyes. He looked like a demonic bulldog. Both his hands and feet had nasty claws and semi-opposable digits. I didn't want to think about what those claws would do to me if shit got out of hand.

I reached into my bag slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. The growl came again, rising in pitch until the demon was almost keening, showing more fear than aggression. His eyes darted from side to side, looking for a way out. Since the only way out was through me, I wasn't wild about the idea. Give me a mean demon over a terrified one any day. The mean ones are less dangerous.

I pulled a small crystalline bauble out of the bag and rolled it to him gently, hoping to forestall a rush, and spoke a word to release the distraction spell I had stored in it. Pretty, colored lights danced out of it and swirled around him, pulling his attention away from me for the moment. The simple trick wouldn't have worked on more sophisticated demons from the higher planes, but this one wasn't very advanced. I was betting that the spell would hold his interest long enough for me to set up. Betting my life.

First I grabbed my tiny cauldron, about four inches in diameter. It wobbled a little on its three remaining legs as I filled it with Sterno crystals. The last demon I had banished had stomped on it trying to get to me, and I hadn't gotten around to replacing it yet. I lit the Sterno and set the lighter aside. I needed both hands free too much to call the fire last, as I usually do. The order isn't really important, as long as all four elements are represented.

The demon's head snapped up as the fire flared. "Just a couple more minutes," I crooned, hoping that the soothing tone worked better on him than it did on Mrs. Fitzpatrick's Yorkie. I mean, that was a howling, raging, diabolical minion of evil. This was just a demon.

A wave of noxious odor wafted over me as the slime oozage intensified, dripping big wet glops into a puddle underneath him. Maybe it was some kind of lubricant to keep an opponent from getting a hold on him in battle. Maybe it was sweat. Maybe it was poison. Hell if I knew!

I placed some fresh earth around the base of the cauldron, sprinkled a few drops of water that sputtered and danced on the burning crystals, and blew the rising steam away with a soft breath over the fire. As the air left my body, I felt an elastic-like snap inside of my head, and the first step in the banishing was initiated.

I took a deep break to center myself and pulled the last three items from the bag, keeping one eye on the demon in case he bolted at me. The first was a small gold medallion with an intricate Celtic knot carved into it. The second was a black-handled dagger, its fine edge catching the firelight. This is generally the item that raises the most consternation among the normals. It immediately dredges up every twisted fairy tale about wicked witches and evil wizards. Never mind that I only ever cut myself with it.

I had to psych myself up for the last item. Swallowing hard, I pulled a small, velvet-draped wire cage from the bag and set it in front of me. The demon shifted again and flexed its claws against the metal, sparking a little as he raked the walls pressing against him. "Take it easy, big guy. In a few minutes, you're going home," I told him. He was too primitive to understand the words, no matter how long the first and second levels of manifestation had linked him to his Gate. They didn't matter anyway. It was the sound that would soothe him. Or not.

Hurrying, I slashed the knife across my left palm, remembering the demon slime all over my hands when my entire arm felt like it had burst into flame. I swore and pressed the gold medallion to the cut. The demon's nostrils flared at the scent of my blood. I focused on the image of it filling the medallion's design, my life force activating the power I'd stored there.

The demon inched forward, less scared and more curious, its tongue flicking the air as though tasting it. I eased back a little, wanting to keep some distance between us. I gulped and slid the velvet off the cage, closing my eyes as I opened the top and stuck my good hand inside. A pattern of light emerged. It stayed, superimposed over the shabby little scene inside the duct, even as I opened my eyes. The pattern started to swirl and I reached out an imaginary hand – a projection of my will – to trace the same pattern in light as that etched in the gold.

The knot started to pulse and resonate, and I felt another little elastic snap inside my head. Tuning in to dimensional energies is like listening to a thousand different radio stations at the same time, and trying to match the two that are playing the same song in the chaos of talk and static and dissonance. I pushed my awareness toward the demon and filled my head with the throbbing, low-level hum that he was throwing off. Like spinning a tuner, I rotated the knot until it vibrated to the same magical frequency as the demon's. The clash of other notes and rhythms fell away, fading into a white noise that was easily ignored. I was about to release the final surge of energy that would lock the pattern into place when the demon crept too close to the fire.

He bellowed as he snatched his hand away from the cauldron, scattering burning crystals across the duct. One of them landed on my left arm. I snapped my hand out of the cage to slap at it, as the demon started keening and looked around, wild-eyed. The pattern of light shimmered and lost focus, and I had to grab at it with my mind before I lost it altogether. The demon scrabbled over the crystals and came at me.

Three things happened at once: I released the energy I'd been building with more of a bang than I'd intended; the capped end of the tunnel exploded backward, replaced by a brilliant, pulsing portal into the demon's own dimension; and the demon tried to scramble over me and away.

A claw sank into my shoulder, the puncture wound sending molten lave down the nerves of my arm, where it re-ignited the blaze of pain in my left hand. His momentum bore me onto my back. I managed to pull my knees up before all of his weight came down on me, trapping him between me and the portal. He roared and thrashed his head from side to side, nearly catching my eye with a tooth. Something hard pressed against the back of my thigh, and I thought he was trying to pick me up out of his way until I realized that I could see both of his hands. Oh, eww!

The light from the portal was starting to falter, and distinct tones were drifting toward me out of the white noise I had consigned them to. I had to get the demon off me and through the portal before it closed. I didn't think I had it in me to hold him off and reopen it. I bunched my leg muscles, and kicked at his stomach for all I was worth. He hit his head against the top of the duct, then slid backward and mostly off of me. I took advantage of his momentary confusion to grab one leathery shoulder and turn him toward the portal. "Go home!" I told him, and nudged his ass in the right direction with my foot for emphasis.

The demon looked at the light, then back at me, and toward the portal again. I kicked his rump one more time, and that got him moving. He padded over the now mostly extinguished crystals and shimmied through the portal. I dropped what was left of my concentration and let it collapse while I did the same.

I lay back against the metal, now warmed by my body and the magic I had leaked, and closed my eyes. My shoulder throbbed and burned, the sentiment echoed in the wound on my palm and the pins and needles jabbing my thighs. The last of the Sterno winked out, leaving me in the dark and the warmth. Maybe I'd stay there and rest for a while. Like maybe a year.

The insidious rasp of something light and hairy against my face changed my mind.

#####

When I shimmied out to the edge of air duct, the chair was nowhere to be seen. Unable to turn around and go feet first, I wriggled out as best I could. In my head, I executed an elegant little flip as I came out, and landed gracefully on my feet. In reality, I tumbled out and landed in an inelegant heap on the floor. Of the three uniformed cops and the handful of civilians milling around the hallway, no one offered to help me up. It was official: Chivalry was DOA in Boston.

I climbed to my feet and fished around in my bag for a roll of gauze to wrap my hand and shoulder, which were both throbbing and burning like a son of a bitch.

"You got it?" one of the uniforms asked.

Sure, I'm fine. Thanks for asking. "Yeah, it's banished," I told him. It came out a little muffled, as I was holding the gauze in my teeth. It's ridiculously difficult to bandage one's own shoulder. Trust me on this.

The officer who'd spoken hesitated, then came over and took the roll from me. He wouldn't meet my gaze as he wrapped the wound. The Consortium had made some progress in raising awareness and public opinion of wizards and magic, but fear and distrust were still the public's usual reaction. Cops were no different. They just usually hid it better than they were tonight.

Someone came through the fire door at the end of the hallway, and I looked up from bandaging my hand just in time for a small sun to go supernova in my face.

"Smile, Helford!"

"Goddamn it, Berlucci!" I recognized the Globe reporter's voice, even if I couldn't quite see him through the green blotch-o-vision left by the camera flash. Then again, the green blotch was preferable to Vinnie's little rat-face. "The next time you point that fucking camera at me, I am going to personally shove it up your – "

"Tssk, Melora, you don't want that on the record, do you? Kinda runs counter to the 'friendly neighborhood wizard' meme, doesn't it?" Vinnie waggled a digital voice recorder at me, its red light a clear indication that it was indeed recording.

I taped the end of the bandage down and glared at him. Vinnie incorporates all of the worst, stereotypical traits of short men, Italians, Bostonians and tabloid reporters. He'd been covering the Globe's supernatural beat for the last two years, though I'd had the misfortune of knowing him since high school. His beat was obviously underfunded and unimportant, since Berlucci was essentially the entire department. He didn't even have a photographer.

"This is a police matter, Berlucci. That would be why you see all of these, you know, police around. Talk to them." I stared down into his little rodent face. I'm only 5-foot-5, but I still topped him by a good couple of inches.

"Come on, Mel. One quote from Boston's notorious exorcist," he taunted. Notorious. Christ. Raze one construction site and derail one T-car, and suddenly a girl's got a reputation.

"Stuff it," I told him, digging into my pocket for the keys to my aging Grand Am. Let me make one thing about magic abundantly clear: wizards cannot magically transmogrify one item into another. If we could, I'd be driving a Viper. And Vinnie would be down in the park, cooling his scrawny ass on a lily pad alongside the other pond scum.

The officer rescued me. "Detective O'Leary needs you down in the basement," he told me nervously, pulling me out of Vinnie's earshot.

I had a sinking feeling that I wouldn't be going home, or back to Fenway, anytime soon. "Body?" I asked.

The cop couldn't have been more than twenty-two or so, fresh out of the academy if the starch in his collar and the shine on his shoes were any indication. He looked a little green around the gills as he nodded and whispered, "What's left of one." He swallowed hard. "He was really... torn up. The demon must have killed him."

If it was what I thought it was, the demon had killed him all right. Just not the way the kid meant it. I followed him down a second stairwell while the other officers kept Vinnie from following. The stench hit me somewhere around the second floor. There was the distinct miasma of a demon summoning, a smell unlike anything on our own plane. It was like sulfur, but not quite; like smoke, but not quite; like skunk and garbage and rotting flesh, but not quite. And underlying the demon scent, not as strong but no less repulsive, was the tang of human blood and the reek of urine and feces. What was in the basement was going to be a very special kind of hell.

Officers, detectives and crime-scene techs milled around outside the room, quiet and stony-faced as we entered the basement level. They glanced at me quickly and away again, their gazes sliding off as though sustained human contact with anyone right now would send them hurtling over the edge, screaming into the void. They could each pretend they hadn't seen what they had, until they had to meet its dim reflection in someone else's eyes. I knew how they felt. I didn't want to see it either. But I didn't have the luxury of looking away.

The laundry room door banged open and some guy in a lab coat stumbled out, lurching three or four steps before dropping to his knees in front of a trash can and vomiting. Judging by the sympathetic looks, several others had preceded him there. Detective Patrick O'Leary followed him out, grim-faced but determined to hold it together. His hair was sticking up in weird blond spikes as though he'd been running his hands through it over and over, something he did when he was stressed or upset. He leaned against the wall and eased his head back, closing his eyes and digging thumb and forefinger into them.

"That bad, huh?" I asked. Rather unnecessarily.

He opened his eyes and saw me there. "You don't want to go in there, Mel," he said, without preamble. It wasn't a good sign. I'd known Patrick since we had moved in next door to him when I was eight years old. He was the original class clown, joker, trouble maker, life of the party. That he didn't greet me with some gallows humor, even under these circumstances, was telling. I upgraded by expectations from bad to very, very bad.

"No, not particularly," I admitted. I held his gaze for a few beats until he sighed and pushed away from the wall.

"Mark, do you fellas have what you need?" he asked one of the guys carrying a field kit.

"Yeah. The coroner's almost ready to pick him up." The tech stripped off the gloves he been wearing and tossed them in the abused trash can. "Hope he brought a pair of tweezers," he mumbled under his breath.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "I'll have to contaminate the scene."

He nodded, heading toward the stairwell. He looked very anxious to leave. I couldn't blame him.

I pulled a vial out of my own bag and stuck it in my front pocket. Patrick handed me some of those spiffy little plastic covers for my shoes and lent me his arm for balance as I slipped them on. "I'm surprised you didn't call your brother, given the nature of the problem," I told him quietly.

Patrick jerked his shoulders up in what might have been a shrug. "City policy. We're to call a Consortium affiliate for all incursions." His tone clearly indicated that he wasn't happy about it.
"Which you don't approve of."

"I don't make the rules." He passed me a pair of latex gloves from an industrial-sized box and donned a clean pair himself, snapping them in annoyance. "Look, you know it's nothing personal, Mel."

"Nah, why would I take a thinly-veiled contempt for what I am and what I do personally?" I snapped my own gloves into place a little harder than necessary. Ouch.

Patrick shook his head and cracked the door open. "It's not like that. But what do you want me to say? My momma raised me to be a good, Catholic boy." He ignored my snort, cupping my elbow in his palm as he led me inside. I wasn't sure if he meant to steady more or himself. Maybe both of us.

Knowing what to expect didn't make it any less horrific. At first, the logical part of my mind simply refused to take in what I was seeing; once the picture started coming together, it tried to skitter off to a corner and make little bblbblbbl sounds. I clamped a hold of it before it could go anywhere, and began surveying the wreckage.

He'd been standing near the bank of dryers when the demon came through him. The lower half of him had crumpled where it had stood as the top half of his body exploded off of it. Faded blue jeans were soaked in blood from waistband to knees. The bottom part of the spine jutted out, bare and glistening under the fluorescent lights, its severed cord lolling out of shattered bone. Intestines oozed out as though intent on escape. The rib cage had sprayed outward; white shards littered the room from one end to the other, meat and gore clinging to them.

One arm had been flung ten feet or so away from the body, fingers pointing skyward. Its twin had gone in the opposite direction and lodged between the vending and change machines. The hand reached into the change cup, blood running down the limb to pool in it and drip on the floor underneath.

Vertebrae were scattered across the floor from the ferocity of the outward force. The blood that hadn't already started to congeal inched inexorably toward a drain in the center of the cement, tracing a strange and hideous mosaic on the matte gray floor. I spotted the head where it had rolled under one of those institutional yellow plastic chairs. The face was blood-spattered but otherwise whole, staring unseeing at the bottom of the seat above it. Nerves like gossamer webs slithered out of the neck, tangling with the larger blood vessels. The victim was young and male. There were no other distinguishable characteristics visible through the blood and the horror of what had been done to him.

There was a puddle of demon vomit in front of the door. Black and more than a little acidic, it was even now bubbling as it ate into the cement. Most demons are sick shortly after coming through to manifest physically, some kind of summoning sickness from the strain and disorientation of crossing dimensions. Humans will probably never know it firsthand; none of us have crossed over and come back to tell about it.

Patrick stayed behind me as I walked the scene, a handkerchief pressed to his face to block out some of the smell. His eyes kept darting around the room, drawn to the gruesome sight by the same horrific fascination that makes people stare at auto accidents or wiggle a sore tooth. As much as he'd seen during his fourteen years on the force, as many violent deaths as he had stood over, this was probably near the top of his Ten Most Hideous list. I had a feeling that his wife was going to spend many nights waking him from nightmares. He'd lie awake countless hours in the dark, the crimson of the dead kid's blood painting the inside of his eyelids a hellish red. I knew I would.

"Where's your partner tonight?" I asked, trying to distract both him and myself with something normal, mundane.

"Xiao had already left when the call came in. I'll fill her in tomorrow."

I pushed the blood-drenched denim away from the flesh and moved a tendril of intestine aside, forcing myself to look inside the cavity where the other half of his body should have been. "She'll be sorry she missed it. You know how much she loves matching testosterone with you boys."

He gave me the shadow of a grin, humor not really reaching his eyes. "Yeah. She usually wins, too." Patrick circled the perimeter of the room, careful not to disturb anything. "The demon did this to the kid? Tore him apart like that?"

My stomach lurched as a renewed wave of stench rose from the disturbed flesh to meet me, freed by my prodding. I closed by eyes for a moment and fought my stomach for control. I was not going to commit the final indignity to this poor kid by hurling on his remains. Steadying myself, I opened my eyes again and continued my examination. There, along the edge of the abdominal wall and in the half-melted debris of internal organs, was the tell-tale acidic burning that confirmed manifestation. I rose and shook my head. "It didn't attack him, if that's what you mean."

"He's ripped to pieces, Mel. Not cut up, torn." He pointed at the mess at my feet. "That wasn't done by another human being."

"No. It was the demon, but it didn't attack him, it Gated through him."

"It what?"

"A demon can't just come into our world on its own, Patrick. It needs life energy, a sacrifice, from someone on this side. The demon used this guy's body and life force to come across into our plane." I stood and stretched the threatening kink out of my back. "Same result, different intent. In fact, I don't think there was any intent at all on the demon's part."

Patrick stopped pacing and put his hands on his hips. "He just tore through the kid by accident?"

I raised my hands a little, then let them drop to my sides, a gesture of frustration. "Yeah, in a manner of speaking. If the victim was suffering from a mental illness, or doing some of the heavier street drugs, he could have accidentally established a link with the demon through some latent ability."

"So it's his fault?" he asked sharply, and pointed again at the kid on the floor.

"Not fault, not necessarily." I blew out a breath and tried for patience. "Once there was a connection between the two of them, they would have become too intertwined to separate without an exorcism. Prolonged exposure will almost always result in the demon coming across, whether the person linked with it wants it to or not."

He crossed his arms stubbornly and resumed pacing. "A kid gets high and ends up splattered all over a goddamn laundry room?"

"'This is your brain on drugs. Any questions?'"

Patrick was not amused. He crossed to the far side of the room and looked out through the basement's small, wire-reinforced window, the room's lurid scene reflected back to him against the dark backdrop of night. I could almost see the waves of frustration rolling off of him. He was a good cop. He wanted someone to arrest, to book, to indict. Instead, he was faced with an element of the supernatural, and his impotence in the face of it chafed, badly.

"The other explanation is that our boy here was dabbling in magic that he shouldn't have been messing with. If that's the case, then he may have pulled it through on purpose.

He turned from the window to scowl at me. "Mel, no one does that to himself on purpose."

"There's always someone out there who thinks he can summon up a demon and bind it to his will without making the necessary sacrifice." I gestured vaguely around the room. "This is how it usually turns out." I checked the pattern of blood on the floor again, and looked for the other tell-tale signs. There were none. "Since there's no sign of ritual magic here, my money's on the latent magic. I'd have the ME screen for drug use, see if he's got a history of psychiatric problems."

"No intent... manner of speaking... not necessarily... alternative explanations..." Patrick sank into a chair under the window. "You can throw all the semantics you want to at it, it still boils down to one, simple thing. Evil, Mel. Plain evil."

"It's not that simple." He wouldn't look at me, just sat with his head bowed and his hands digging more runnels through his blond hair. I sighed. I was too tired for a theological debate tonight. "Look, Patrick. I know you want to blame someone. You look at this poor kid and want someone to pay for that, to be punished for that. But the kid is dead, the demon is banished, and the rest of us have to figure out how to live with it. But the demon didn't do this on purpose. It was just some unlucky creature that got sucked through."

Patrick stared at the grisly remains. "Not as unlucky as he was."

"Word."

He shook himself and climbed to his feet, scrubbed his hands over his face. "Have you seen enough here?"

Had I ever. "Almost." I slid the vial out of my pocket and crouched back down at the edge of the blood. Unstopping it, I sprinkled a soft blue powder into the gore.

"What is that?"

"Tracing powder, sort of like what you use to pick up fingerprints, only this is looking for a spell residue. The way it reacts will tell me whether this was an accident, or whether he initiated it on purpose." I didn't want to go into the technical aspects with him. It really wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to him, and it sure as hell wouldn't change anything.

Peering over my shoulder, he frowned. "It doesn't look like it's doing anything."

I frowned at the powder as it slowly dissolved into the blood. He was right. It wasn't doing anything. That powder should have been glowing like tiny blue or yellow stars, depending on whether the magic was latent or intentional. "This isn't right," I told him. "The powder should be reacting."

"Does that mean that the demon could have brought himself over after all?"

"That demon didn't have the wherewithal to bring himself over." Why the hell wasn't it reacting? Jesus, I'd been mixing that powder since I was fourteen. I could do it in my sleep. I craned my neck around and glanced up at him. "Would you bring me my bag from the hallway?"

While he went to get it, I tried again with the powder, sprinkling it over part of the torso this time in addition to the blood. Still nothing.

"Christ, Mel. What do you have in this thing?" Patrick asked, careful to avoid the blood as he set the bag down with a thud next to me.

"You don't want to know."

"Good point."

I rummaged around, pushing things aside until I came up with another vial, one that I had never used. The stopper was wedged in tight, and I damn near upended the whole thing as it popped free.

As I had with the other powder, I sprinkled the tiny red crystals over the body and blood. They immediately flared to life, and a cold red flame sprang up from the carnage, blazing a foot high before dying out as suddenly as it had ignited.

"Jesus Christ!!" Patrick jumped back and crossed himself quickly. "What the hell was that?"

Shit. Shit shit shit.

I straightened up and re-stopped the vial. "I guess apologies are in order. You were right; this didn't happen by accident. This kid wasn't messing with something he wasn't supposed to, and the demon didn't work some mojo to bring himself through." I slid both vials into my pocket and turned to face him.

"What are you getting at?"

"Someone else did this to him. Patrick, this kid was murdered."

Plotting and... plotting, and plotting...

Okay, it took me most of the shift Friday night to get a workable outline down on paper because there were some plot points that were kicking my ass, but I did it, and now I feel like I'm more ready to dive into the fun stuff, which is writing the actual scenes. I'm hoping to get the second half of the scene below revised before I head to Springfield Wednesday afternoon, but no promises, what with the packing and dog-bathing and so on. If I can't get that one presentable, I'll post the first scene of Plane Evil. It might be interesting to see which one is preferred by anyone reading (and by "anyone" I think that means basically Jules). I'll take the laptop with me to Springfield, in case being cooped up in a hotel room with four dogs somehow inspires me to write. o_O

Oh, the tangled webs we (try to) weave

Trying to iron out the major plot points before finishing the scene started below, since it's going to basically set up the plot. Must. Finish. Outline.

I may also post the first part of Plane Evil, which is actually much better plotted at this point. I should probably pick that one up, but for some reason Georgia is speaking more to me right now.

And then I've got a *gulp* romance lurking around the edges of my brain, just waiting to be written. I know, it alarms me too.

The dragon crossed his legs and smiled at me across his fake cherrywood desk. A brass nameplate perched toward the front read, "Cecil Hupper, Sales Associate," as did the nametag pinned, slightly askew, to his jacket lapel. Cecil looked like any other used car salesman: cheap, polyester-blend suit, bolo necktie, working the comb-over. A little short, a lot round, he’d blend in with most crowds unremarked. As far as the eye could tell, he was nothing out of the ordinary.

But I knew what he was. I’d been in Corpus Christi, Texas for the better part of the week, staking out this dealership. I had met at least half a dozen patrons who'd reeked of the burnt umber of dragon magic, driving off the lot, ensorcelled, in lemons that they'd bought at fully twice the Kelley Blue Book value. Good luck making lemonade out of those.

All signs pointed toward Cecil, here. He’d been hired by the struggling dealership eight months before and, in that short amount of time, their profits had shot up by 346%. A placard in the lobby had listed him as Salesman of the Month for the last seven months running, and the boom in sales showed no sign of slowing. I was here to change all that.

My name is Georgia Llewellyn, and I’m a dragon-hunter. Yes, really. What, there’s no such thing as dragons? That’s what they want you to think. Hell, that’s what I want you to think, or so I’m told by the mucky-mucks who recruited me into The Order of St. George. The first rule of Fight Club is blah blah blah. No point screwing up John Q. Public’s worldview with magic and dragons and other fairy tale staples, right?

Fact is, there are probably more dragons in the world than even the Order knows about. If only they would lie low in their human forms and resist the temptation to manipulate the world through magic, we'd have no reason to hunt them down. But more often than not, they eventually cave to their natures and start using. When that happens, free will and the laws of physics are violated, and the natural patterns of nature are corrupted. The Order exists to protect mankind from the chaos that would inevitably result. Even if mankind doesn't realize it needs protecting. Especially because mankind doesn’t realize it needs protecting.

I studied the scribbles on the notepad that Cecil had pushed in front of me. "I don't know," I said, frowning and chewing at my bottom lip. "I was hoping for a little lower payment, you know?" I gave him what I hoped passed for a damsel-in-distress expression and re-crossed my legs, inching the already short skirt further up my thighs and peeling off what felt like half my thigh on the hard, orange plastic.

"Well," he patronized, "I might be able to do a little something more for you, darlin'. Y'all just sit tight now while I go talk to the boss-man, see what kinda deal I can work for a pretty little thing like you."

"Oh, could you?" I asked, batting the baby-blues at him. "I just don't know what I'll do if I get stranded out there one more time." His smiled widened, turned a little predatory around the edges. He was already scenting the kill of another checkbook, felled by a ridiculously overpriced sale. Cecil stood and tugged his jacket closed around the paunch of his belly before sliding around the desk and out of the cluttered office, no doubt to go laugh with "the boss-man" about the poor, stupid twit they were about to soak.

As soon as he disappeared around the corner, I sized up the office, looking for the best way to proceed. The room was decently sized and had come standard issue, with two windows facing the parking lot, a couple of file cabinets, Cecil’s desk, and the two plastic guest chairs in front of it. Even with such short tenure, though, Cecil had managed to fill it up. The file cabinets were stacked high and deep with bobble-heads of sports figures; a few bobble-heads sat second-string on the window-sill. Next to the file cabinets there was a wastebasket shaped like a gorilla, holding six umbrellas with various animal-heads for handles. The wall to the side of the desk had a shelf that held model cars, a plastic green tractor, a stuffed giraffe, an assortment of Rubik’s cubes, and a small army of those cheap, ceramic figurines that come out of the boxes of Red Rose teabags. The desk, minus the small space left clear for signing paperwork, was stacked high with baseball cards, magazines, newspapers, and the occasional brightly-colored feather, like the ones on those carnival roach-clips.

You know that whole thing about dragons hoarding treasure? Yeah, that part’s pretty much true, in spirit if not in absolute fact. Remove gold coins and oversized gemstones from the picture and substitute all manners of pop culture crap, and you’ve got the general idea. They can’t help it; they’re compulsive collectors. Cecil was a dragon, all right. A dragon with absolutely no taste whatsoever.

There were no personal photos amongst all of the effluvia. Either Cecil preferred to keep to himself around his colleagues, or he wasn't one of those dragons who went in for draconic-human relations. Good. I hated leaving unsuspecting family members behind, never knowing what had become of their loved ones. I sure as hell couldn't tell them.

Eeling out of the chair (and losing a few more skin cells in the process), I slid four button-sized stones and a tube of stretchy glue out of my purse and stuck a little of the gummy substance on each rock. Picking my way around the clutter, I stuck one between the windows behind the desk and circled clockwise around the office, placing one on each of the side walls and one on the office door. "Misces", I whispered.

There was a muffled phfffft as each of the stones wisped into white smoke and sank into its respective surface. A glyph glowed faintly over each of the four spots for a couple of seconds before fading out of sight altogether. The spell armed and ready, I sat back down to wait for the dragon.

As I waited, the familiar tones of the Darth Vader music from Star Wars rang out of my purse. Mom. Fuckin’ A. I could ignore it, but she'd only call again in five minutes. And every five minutes after that, until I finally answered it or called her back. And she'd leave a message Every. Damn. Time.

Closing my eyes and stifling a sigh, I flipped open the phone. "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, Sweetheart. I was just checking, do you need us to pick you up at the airport tomorrow? We could swing over." Mom-to-English translation: You better remember that tomorrow is your father’s birthday, and put in an appearance.

"No, I’m all set," I told her. "I left my car in the parking garage at the airport. I’ll drive over." Just like the last five times you asked. "Besides, I have to take a meeting when I get into Hartford."

"A meeting? But you’re on vacation." How the woman could take a simple declarative sentence like that and imbue it with such accusation and disappointment was beyond me. Did the skill come standard with the mom package, or had she upgraded? Maternal Guilt-Trip 2.0?

"I'll be on vacation as soon as my meeting is over."

"Everyone will be here tomorrow evening, you know, for your father's birthday. He’s really excited to have the whole family together." More like Mom was really excited to have the whole family over, and Dad would just as soon watch the History Channel and smoke his pipe, but whatever.

"I know, Mom." I could feel my left eye starting to twitch. "I'll be there by five."

"Well, I just hope you won't be late..." Her tone clearly said that my punctuality was suspect. "That security firm works you too hard. How can you have any time for family or a social life, working those hours and traveling all the time?"

Here we go. "My social life is just fine, Mother." I consciously relaxed my fingers before I crushed the cell phone into little plastic splinters. "Hey, did you find that book that Dad wanted?" Sometimes a little misdirection worked…

"Your father and I worry about you, traipsing all over God-knows-where."

And… sometimes not.

"We never know where you’re going or when you’re supposed to be back," she continued. "And there’s no one at home to make sure you get home safely…" she trailed off suggestively.

"Twenty-first century, meet Mom. Mom, twenty-first century. Why don't you two take a few moments and get acquainted?"

"Is there something wrong with having a family, as well as a career? Your sisters manage just fine..."

I tuned out of the all-too-familiar lecture as I heard footsteps start down the corridor. "I have to go. Work. I'll see you tomorrow." Dragon-hunting and arguing with Mom. Welcome to my life.

I snapped the phone shut on her and tucked it back into my bag, making sure I shut it off this time. The hilt of my sword was cool to the touch where my fingers brushed it in passing. I left my hand inside the bag as Cecil plodded back into the office.

"Well now, I think you're going to like what I have for you, little lady," he said, shoe-horning himself into his desk chair. "I talked it over with the boss, and he was a little squeamish, but I told him you were a sweet little thing and in a terrible need for reliable transportation, and I was able to talk Marv into extending you a loan for six years, which should get your payments down to three hundred and eighty-five dollars a month." He beamed at me like he was Ed McMahon, holding a big, fake, cardboard check.

"Three hundred and eighty-five?" For a freaking seven year-old Ford Explorer? Riiight. I somehow managed not to squeak. "That's still a little bit high..." I let my voice trail off uncertainly, inviting him to try and persuade me.

"Aw now, that's a good price for a nice vehicle like that," he argued, pronouncing the 'h' in vehicle. He leaned forward, his arms on the desk. "And I think you'd look right pretty in that color."

God. He needed slaying for the rampant, mutant, ninja sexism, if not for being a dragon. "I'm just not sure..."

Cecil caught and held my gaze. "Think about how nice it'll be not to have to worry about maintaining that old rattle-trap you've been driving around in."

And there it was. That acrid taste of burning metal at the back of my throat, with an accompanying tug at my mind. A silent movie reel started up in my head, little images of me driving down a beach-lined highway, wind whipping my hair and a big grin on my face. Handsome men waving at me as I drove by, sexy and confident in my new vehicle. It was every bad car commercial I'd ever flipped the channel past, all rolled into one. Originality and subtlety weren’t real high up on Cecil's list of priorities, apparently.

"Now don't you think you might be able to swing a little payment like that?" he cajoled.

My fingers closed tight around the sword hilt. "Secernis!" I called, and the glyphs around the room flared to life, locking the room away from the sight and sound of anyone outside it. I stood up as I pulled the hilt out of my bag, sending a concentration of will down through my arm and into the sword. A blade of cold blue energy sprang from the silver in my hand, stretching three feet from base to tip.

"I’m thinking not."