Spellbound and Hellbound - SCP Foundation

Outskirts of Raywood, Arkansas, 2008

The humidity was at 100%, and the mere act of walking felt like a swim through molasses. The tones of the cicadas seemed to match the rhythm of the shimmering heat waves coming off of the gravestones, both of which near overpowering to the senses. The afternoon summer heat seeped out of the rocks as the evening sun bleached the sky pastel hues.

I walked past the small plots, dusting off the dirt to read the faded carvings, making a rubbing when the inscriptions became too weathered to fully make out under the glare of the flashlight. Loveday Killow, Cotton Brown. The graveyard had grown over the generations as more of the small town had been put to rest. Charity Thatcher, Eustace Church. Some of the crumbling edifices had protruded from the earth snaggle-toothed-like since before the Civil War, and some of the markings had been worn down to nubs, their owner’s greatly extended family not caring to replace them. Susannah and Edgar Holland. Shame. Made my job more difficult.

I mopped the sweat from my temple with a dirty napkin as I stood, popping my back in several places to prevent it from congealing into the inverted L I had been molding it into for the past several hours. The groundskeeper had long since lost the records for the graveyard and its plots in the fire of ‘99, too afraid of Y2K to digitize. Luddite.

Standing straight, I could see the serpentine path I had traveled throughout the graveyard. The scuffling of my feet had disturbed the dust-covered grass, and had left a verdant green trail in my wake. Comparing the length of my path to the rest of the graveyard, I still had a lot of ground to cover before sundown. The other teams were already in place.

I took a swig from my swiftly-draining water bottle, and goaded myself into continuing. Don’t want to be the person that left the net open. I sighed, and mentally apologized to my back before bending over to inspect more gravestones.

It was nearly a half hour later before I found her plot. I almost thought it would be unmarked. Who would carve a tombstone for a spree killer?

Eva McDoyle

Twisted Twirly

Outlaw

Dead Spring 1934

I breathed a sigh of relief and let out a whistle, stirring a massive creature in the parking lot to life, the grinding of its joints audible even across the property. It rose from its crouch, growing ever larger as it clambered to its clay feet, baked and cracked underneath the Southern sun. Its large gait swiftly covered the grounds between us as it strode over the gravemarkers, the path that took me hours took it but a few moments. The shovel it held looked like a toothpick in its hands, which it gripped as gingerly as it would a delicate vase or housepet.

I lifted a tired hand and pointed at the inscribed stone. “Dig.” As I walked to the car to get more water and my tools, I heard Golem No. 531’s shovel hit the gravedirt with a loud shunk.

If there is one thing constant, it’s death and taxes. Except taxes require governance, and governance requires politics. Thus, the true heart of the matter is revealed. Everything is death and politics. Especially true in Hell, which is partially below Vegas, already a bit of a hellish place even before Hell erupted beneath it like an ingrown wisdom tooth.

The FBI-UIU works to keep the peace in Undervegas, a de facto demilitarized zone between America and Hell, a legal question mark. They keep the succubi under wraps and the gamblers away from Faustian bargains as best they can, but sometimes the politics spills out, and there is little Unusual Incidents can do but containment.

Count Glasya-Labolas, commander of thirty-six legions of demons, knower of all things past and yet to come, was unable to forsee his own deposition after his shoddy handling of the financial crisis. Another victim of politics. So he sought to reclaim his position through the collection of guilty souls for his Marquis. Some cynical observers might’ve called it a bribe. Others, politics. He had very little time to do this, as Tartarean entities are not allowed on American soil, and reaping souls without permission from the federal government is technically a felony. Politics.

Glasya’s exile sent him plummeting towards Little Rock, which was why there were five teams of necromancers resurrecting serial killers in the heartland of Arkansas. The purpose was twofold: to both draw him away from populated areas with tempting offerings, and arrest him for whatever sticks. Politics.

The golem ceased digging as the shovel struck wood, emitting a contented, grinding grunt. Even six feet underground, the living statue’s head rose two feet above the surface. So the golem spoke to my knees, then, a sound like two ancient boulders rubbing together. “Found it, Miss Quinn.”

I gave the golem a slap on the back as it gracefully pulled itself out of the pit, hardly disturbing the glossy, machine-perfect edge to the hole as it hoisted the coffin along with it. The coffin was shoddily made from rotten, warped planks and crooked, rusty nails, hazarding tetanus just by being near the damn thing. I gave the golem my flashlight to hold and gently splintered the lid open with my crowbar, disturbing the worms and insects that had made the interior their home.

I’d thought I’d find a body to raise. I thought I did, at first. But looking at the body of Eva McDoyle, something was wrong. Her skin was too perfect, her face had not been ravaged by decades of rot and decay. Her clothes were a pristine white, save for four scarlet blossoms spattered on her abdomen. I would have thought she had been perfectly preserved had it not been for the slight shifting, rippling of her body, as if I was observing her from underneath a foot of water.

McDoyle’s outfit flickered from a form-fitting la garcone to a loose, flowing sundress to a farmer’s overalls. Her hair shifted from golden locks to brunette bob and back again. The only thing that stayed basically constant were the four blossoms on her chest, but even they seemed to slightly morph as I watched, from four asymmetric bullet wounds to the stab of a pitchfork. But no matter what form she took, she was always beautiful. I bit my lip, and reached out to gently brush the hair from her eyes, and my finger passed right through her forehead, as if she wasn’t there. A hologram. A specter.

I grabbed the radio from my belt and keyed the other teams. “Hey Pat, got a live one.”

Silence reigned for a moment until the radio squawked back in Patty’s croaking voice. “Repeat that back, Law?” Patty was in the middle of her own dig twenty miles away, raising a Confederate general that hadn’t suffered enough.

“McDoyle’s body isn’t here, I think. It’s more of a spirit, or something. Insubstantial.”

Her reply was sharp. “Is she mobile? Hostile?”

“No, she’s just… changing, I guess. Hair color, manner of death, clothes.”

The buzzing of the cicadas had given way to the chirping of crickets. Where the beam of the flashlight failed, the dim flicker from the fireflies illuminated. “Does she feel like the dead, Law?” Patty’s tone was inquisitive.

The restless dead, whether they be ghosts or wights, all had the same energy, the same tone. Mud on the tongue, a dull buzzing in the ears. I closed my eyes, and tried to really see, to truly look at McDoyle. I opened my mind to the ether, the rose tattoo on the back of my neck crackled and sparked before activating with a flare, and I could see life. The innumerable scuttling bugs and mice, carpeting the earth. A few faint apparitions of the murdered skulking the shadows, too afraid to approach. The graveyard was lit like under the noonday sun with the sheer density of souls, even as dim as they were. I looked down at McDoyle, as was stunned by the luminosity and hue of the magic cascading off of her body. She was there alright, but the EVE was a different weave and hue than I was used to, too loose to be any good. None of the rituals that I knew of would take.

“No, different. More energetic. Wilder.”

Silence again. Then, quietly. “The stories all said that she was buried in that graveyard. That might not be the truth, but it doesn’t matter. Everyone’s sure she’s there, so there she is. All the different retellings, alterations, exaggerations…“ Patty’s voice dropped an octave. “No one remembers the truth about her, they just remember her, whatever that may be. A myth, not a ghost.”

I frowned. “What do I do then? Try to bind Simmons?”

“No, it’s too late to try and raise Simmons. Glasya’s too close, wouldn’t make a difference.”

Another pause, I knew she was talking with the others on her team. “Try to bind McDoyle. Glasya’s not picky, and a living story might make better bait than a soul, anyhow.”

I bit my lip again, this time in thought. I blinked away the second sight, the graveyard returning to evening gloom. “Roger. Law out.”

A story is an intangible thing, even moreso than ghosts or demons. They are made from conjecture and hearsay rather than corpses and ectoplasm, with bones of memes and syntax that don’t play well with being bound. Information yearns to be free, after all. How could you harness a story?

Twisted Twirly was essentially an idea-infant, I theorized. Still gestating in a coffin-womb. Not enough people knew of the tragic outlaw to give her full life. Some quirk in the cultural zeitgeist had given her the juice to form, but not become cognizant. I would need to anchor McDoyle somehow, maybe with a fetish or totem, something with a spark to make her pull herself together, to wake up.

I looked down at my watch, cursed custom for this job. The second hand swung to the west, and the hour hand inched close to midnight, despite the fact that it was only 9:30. The minute hand did nothing, typical of government contractors. I had time, but not much.

How to wake a story? I glanced at the golem, standing over the coffin, looking impassively down at McDoyle. A thought occurred to me. “How does your clayware function, exactly?”

The golem’s neck grated as it slowly rotated to lock its eyes on me. “That is proprietary information, Miss Quinn.”

Right. “It all boils down to a shem, though? Just an inscription? Everything else is just extra bells and whistles.”

“Yes, His Name. Extraneous details are proprietary.” The Hebrew letters inscribed across its forehead seemed to wriggle in the dim light.

“Ignoring the patented clayware, would you be able to draw an example of a basic shem? One that is public domain?”

The repurposed salesgolem vibrated for a moment. Its naturally programmed instincts to court customers conflicted with some obscure legalese in the Golemancy United contract, but its salesmanship won out.

For such a cumbersome figure, the golem had a deft hand. It had accepted a proffered notepad and pen, and quickly went to work. The page was delicately inscribed with beautiful, flowing lettering that seemed out of place on the pragmatic, yellow notepad. The shem felt like it had ontological weight as I held it, heavier than a mere piece of paper. Or maybe that was just the after-effects of hours in the summer sun. “Thank you, 531.”

The golem returned to its stiff posture, though its golden eye-flames burned brighter than before with the success of helping a customer. “Your thanks is welcome, Miss Quinn.”

I knelt over the coffin, gazing into the eyes of Eva McDoyle. I gently lowered the paper down, until it touched her mouth. To my surprise, the page didn’t pass through her skull, but remained perched over her full red lips, as if the Name of God had forced her to solidify. Using the paper, I levered her mouth open and delicately inserted the page inside, sticking it to the roof of her mouth. If a shem could bring a pile of rocks to life, it could surely awaken a legend.

I extracted my hand and leaned forward more, until my lips were level with her ear. I whispered the only Hebrew I knew. <Chayi.> Live.

Her eyes were a beautiful, glimmering green. I noticed the pleasing length of her lashes as they fluttered open, taking in her surroundings for the first time. Her body stopped changing, and seemed to settle on a modest appearance, with dirty blonde hair cut short and a seemingly home-made embroidered dress. As she rose to a sitting position, rubbing her forehead, my mouth suddenly dried, and I barely remembered my rehearsed lines.

“Ah, hello. My name is um-right-Quinn Law, and I am a ah-law-heh enforcement agent. I am trying to catch a —you know—criminal, and we—I—thought you might be able to help. Ah, would you be willing to help with this —you know—assignment of your own free will?”

Those bottomless green eyes stared at me, and that nose wrinkled in confusion, and I wished lightning would just come down and smite me on the spot.

The radio on my belt flickered to life, emanating a quiet, crackling voice, the voice of Patty. “…Sure?”

McDoyle seemed to take being dead fairly well, even after explaining the reasons behind her resurrection. We moved over to the car, as sitting on a hood was psychologically more comfortable than sitting in your own coffin. Plus, it gave me time to compose myself.

Eva didn’t seem to be able to talk. At least, not on her own, a quirk of her malformation, perhaps. The car radio spun through the channels, landing on one station for a moment, than dashing to another, the pitch and volume warbling to give the sound some form of consistency. “You are-FBI?”

I looked down at my hands, as those piercing, searching green eyes were almost painful to answer to. “Yeah, I am. But I’m not after you. You’re dead, whatever crimes you did you’ve more than paid for with your life. You’ll have no issue from me.”

White noise for a moment. “O-K.”

The crickets continued to chirp, and the fireflies still shone. The clouds parted overhead, revealing a full, bulbous moon above. It was a gorgeous night. I leaned back fully on the hood to take in the stars, but left my hip holster unbuttoned for quick access, just in case. My watch chirped. The minute hand moved to 11:57, the second hand pointing south-west. Closer, now.

Radio switched to a bluegrass station for a tick before quickly changing. “What will—happ-en—to me—after?”

This time I was able to meet her eyes. “Don’t know, really.”

The channel changed to a laughing shock jock before spiraling into white noise, the oscillating whine of the static almost seeming like a prodding question.

“Well, before I thought I would just put you back in the dirt after the case was over. But now…”

“What changed?”

“You did. You’re not a ghost, psychopomp, lich, or any other half-dead thing I’ve dealt with before. You’re a living legend, emphasis on living. Wouldn’t know the first step in killing you,” an unwanted smile spread across my face. “Not that I would.”

Eva mirrored my smirk with a ghost of her own. It was soft, homely. “What—then?”

“Well, can’t really arrest you for vagrancy, so we’d have to just… let you go. Do whatever, travel, work, pleasure. Just don’t commit any crimes, or I might have to see you again.” We shared a grin. She had dimples. “Not many people get a second chance at life, you know.”

The radio was quiet in seeming agreement. Eva slowly slid off of the hood, and began padding across the drought-stricken grass with bare feet. She turned her face up to the sky, and closed her eyes. Under the pale moonlight, she looked like a baroque statue, carved in expensive white marble and gilded in gold, the masterwork of a master carver. The blood stains on her dress were hardly visible, and she looked positively bursting with life. Her chest expanded as she took in deep breaths of Arkansan air, an old country song murmuring from the car’s speakers.

I knew the story of “Twisted Twirly.” Part of the dossier I was handed when I was assigned to this honeypot. Jilted lover stabbed her fiancé in the back with a pitchfork, committing a string of crimes before being put down in the street by the local sheriff. Bloodiest case the region had seen before or since. I struggled to reconcile the dissonance, between the slasher story and the beautiful woman standing before me, so at odds to what she should be. It didn’t seem matter much. I felt like I was thrust back in time, talking to an old high school crush for how it made my heart skip to be near her, psycho-slasher or no.

I hopped off the hood, sidling up to Eva as she looked at the stars. “Ah, Miss McDoyle?”

She tilted her head, peering at me from the corner of her eye while still gazing skyward. “Yes?”

I shuffled my feet, eyes laser focused on Orion’s Belt. “Well, seeming as all of your accommodations are seventy years past, would you want me to help you get back on your feet? Just until you get situated, of course.”

Eva turned to face me, her body close. She had the scent of blood and gunpowder mingled with fresh tulips, a somehow intoxicating sensation. “Oh—Miss—L-aw…”

She was very close to me now. Some reckless part of me forced my hands to drift downwards until they brushed against her hips, where they stayed. She looked at me from her few inches of surplus height, her lips quirked. She crouched until our faces were level with each other, and leaned in…

The watch on my wrist chirped loudly. The second hand spun wildly around its face, with the hour hand at 12 on the dot. A lone skin-crawling howl echoed throughout the cloudless sky, silencing the crickets and extinguishing the fire-flies. Glasya-Labolas had arrived, the moment shattered.

I forced myself to tear away from Eva and keyed my radio. “Bear took the bait. Raywood-Law, immediate response.” I received four clicks in affirmation. The cavalry was coming, hopefully in time.

I stood from the tailgate of the car, slowly panning the flashlight over the rows of gravestones and the rusted wrought-iron fencing, my pistol in hand. 531 reared to its full height, flames piercing the night, looking for a target. It was altogether too quiet in that damn graveyard for my own nerves, my trigger finger itching to shoot wildly into the dark.

There, beyond the fences and in the tree-line, were two brightly glowing green dots, reflecting the beam of the flashlight. The dots and I stared at each other for a moment, before they lowered themselves to the ground, bobbing and slinking closer to the car. Then, the dots disappeared, before I heard the galloping footsteps of something huge approaching the fence.

A large silhouette burst from the treeline, leaping over the eight-foot iron bars in a single bound, large raptorial wings snapping out that blocked the starlight above us. White canines glistened, the green dots glared above a snarled muzzle as the creature circled overhead, slowly coming to ground among the gravestones, facing the three of us.

For a former Count of Hell, Glasya-Labolas was smaller than I imagined, though was still massive and intimidating. The body of a mastiff, or maybe a wolf-hound, and the mouldering wings of a vulture or eagle. He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the golem, and as such towered over Eva and I.

I steeled myself. “Glasya-Labolas,” I shouted at the creature. “You are under arrest by the government for crimes committed against perpetual and eternal citizens of the United States of America, including grave robbery, desecration of corpses, and tax evasion. If you do not come quietly, I have been ordered to use lethal force against you.” The only way it could be in any sense lethal would be if I destroyed his Heart, upon which is inscribed his true Name, as well as a list of his sins. It was a small font. But a good bluff.

Those feral eyes continue to glimmer a toxic green. I noticed that his body was rather mangy, with clumps of fur missing and the feathers of his wings ruffled and patchy, like a chicken after being mauled by a fox. His tail was that of the upper body of a snake, starving and molting. His weeks after the Undervegas coup had evidently been quite rough.

A long, serpentine tongue wormed around sharp canines, dark lips wrinkling before he spoke, a crackling, hoarse sound like that of a centagenarian chain-smoker. “You have something for me, Quinn Law,” he savored my name like a kid with his favorite candy, which I didn’t like at all.

Glasya noticed Eva peeping from behind the safety of 531’s boulder-like torso. “Hello, Eva McDoyle. Twisted Twirly herself… or rather, a Twisted Twirly.” He made a coughing, hacking sound tangentially related to a chuckle, embers spewing from his nostrils and smoldering in the grass. “I have something rather precious of yours that might be of interest to you.”

I raised my pistol, leveling it between the mastiff’s hell-spawned eyes. “No tricks, Glasya. You know you’re going to Paramax just as well as I, so cool it. You’ll be able to sweet-talk your jailor soon enough.”

Glasya sputtered again, the sparks catching in the dry grass, raising smoke. He reared on his back legs, then, flapping his musty wings to keep balance. Glasya stood at least fifteen feet tall now, his rotting face nearly lost in the nighttime gloom if it were not for those eyes. I kept my gun trained on him as he raised a hand of talons, palm-side up. A flickering, sickly green flame sputtered to life in his claws, dancing in the humid wind. “You might have Eva McDoyle’s story, Quinn Law, but I have her soul, rotting in Hell.”

The emerald blaze twisted and warped in the breeze, growing into a swaying, screaming simulacrum of Eva. I glanced back to my Eva, and she was staring, paralyzed at Glasya. But there was something in her eyes, a spark of something. Pinpricks of pure, unmasked anger laser-pointed at her soul’s captor. I affixed a similar glare to the lupine demon. “And?”

“I am a civilized creature, Quinn Law, a creature of etiquette and society. A story, or a soul. I would gladly trade one for the other.”

I nearly laughed. “Are you trying to bargain with me? Bribery? Why would I deal with you, when we can just confiscate your assets and let you rot?”

Glasya’s snout contorted even more, skin ripping from flesh to convey the strength of his disdain. “If you will not barter, I will merely kill you, take the myth, and destroy the hell-bound soul. I was simply extending a courtesy.” I could see green worms wriggling behind his radioactive eyes. “You are bound to protect and serve, Quinn Law. So which is it? Protect a barely sentient slush of ideas, or the soul of an American citizen?”

I tightened my grip on my pistol, so tempted to drill a sanctified hole in his tartarean skull. I called out to the golem behind me. “Extortion as well as bribery. 531, arrest this demon—“ I summoned all the venom I could muster into my next words—“with force.”

The golem patted Eva on the shoulder. “Please stay here, Miss McDoyle.”

No. 531 rumbled forwards, cracking baked clay knuckles as it rolled its sloped, rocky shoulders, like a grizzly bear itching for a brawl. Glasya clenched his claws, suffocating the flame. “Fine then,” he spat fire. “Pride is a cardinal sin, Quinn Law. I’ll have your soul for it.”

531 reached out and grabbed Glasya-Labolas by the neck, squeezing the corpusculent flesh to pulp. It turned around and heaved the demon over its back, over its head and down towards the ground at terminal velocity, burying his head into grave-dirt in a perfect piledriver.

Upside down and in a vise, Glasya howled and scratched at 531’s stone hide with furious, blind swipes of its claws. Enough to to decapitate a man, the blows dug foot-long furrows across 531’s craggy torso. The salesgolem, modified for messy fieldwork, roared a challenge as it grabbed the demon dog’s hind legs and twisted, pinning the rest of Glasya’s body between its legs while it mangled and reversed his spine. Forcing it clockwise by degrees, each twist was rewarded with the snapping of ligament and vertabrae.

Glasya’s voice dripped rancid bile underneath half a ton of rock. “I will rend your body to gravel, you worthless Levantine tool.” Emphasizing his retort, his snake-tail hissed, and dove into 531’s grimacing mouth.

I don’t know exactly what happened, the exchange went by too fast to properly react in time. 531 released Glasya’s legs to grab at the snake in his throat, pulling desperately to yank it out, but suddenly froze. I repeatedly squeezed the trigger of the M1911, pumping silver banishment rounds into Glasya’s twitching, wretched body. But by then, the damage was done. I think the snake had rewritten the shem in 531’s mouth with its infernal venom, changing the golem’s operating parameters. Those operating parameters fell outside of Golemancy’s tolerances and safety guidelines, so it did what any dangerous product is supposed to do: meltdown.

531’s eye-fires guttered and spat as its mind underwent cognitive disassembly. Its grip on Labolas loosened as stone turned to clay turned to liquid slurry. Seizing his chance, the demon ripped itself from the sublimating golem and spun his spine back into its proper configuration, bones rattling. As one final insult to injury, Glasya licked the dripping Hebrew off of 531’s forehead with his forked tongue, extinguishing its golden flames.

Glasya paused to shake the clay off of his ragged fur coat, before turning to lock eyes with me, his radiating green hate. I gritted my teeth while I reloaded. “Resisting arrest as well, Glasya? You’re going away for a long time.”

I glanced back at Eva to try and prod her with my eyes to hightail it, but it didn’t take. She was staring at the chunks of former golem mixed with shattered grave markers, her face contorted and darkened, harboring a nasty, vile expression. The scarlet blossoms on her chest darkened in hue and slowly spread, changing white linens into blood-soaked rags. A grasping, clenching hand found the handle of a pitchfork from nothing, rusty but sharp. Her ruby lips contorted into a sneer as she fixed her gaze on Glasya, and spoke for the first time. “He did me a kindness, and you killed him for it.”

The wolf’s voice was as sharp as flint as he slowly paced across the graveyard grounds, hackles raised and wings spread. “Wrath is a bitter fruit, Eva McDoyle, I’d hate for it to sour you.”

Eva didn’t acknowledge the retort, merely issuing a grunt of exertion as she chucked the pitchfork like a career javelineer, embedding it in Glasya’s side. The wound bled hellfire as Glasya let out a blackboard-scraping screech, punctuated by rapid-fire gunshots as I emptied another mag into Glasya’s skull.

Eva ran forward and wrenched the pitchfork out of the demon’s side, ignoring the gouting hell-flame as she stabbed him once, twice, opening up his belly and spilling rancid guts. I approached steadily, swapping mags and letting loose, not giving him reprieve for a second. He found it anyways, lashing out his snake tail and biting deep into Eva’s shoulder. As soon as she let go of the pitchfork in pain, Glasya leapt to his feet and sprinted towards me, teeth gleaming and tail hissing, leaving a trail of flame and intenstines in his wake.

I barely raised my wards in time as he tackled me, crushing me with the weight of his body alone. His teeth came down on my neck like a guillotine, iron canines sparking against flickering wards. My chest felt like it was bound in steel, an elephant on my stomach, as the hellhound savaged me, wards failing under the onslaught one by one, burning my skin from the blowback. I had maybe a few seconds before my disembowelment and lethal embarrassment in front of Eva.

His Heart, I need his Heart. I raised a hand and pressed it to his chest. Glasya’s body was a corpse in waiting, actively falling apart as he frantically searched for gifts for his Marquis. All I had to do was get it to obey me.

Again, I pushed out, but not broadly searching for life, instead forming my psyche into a thought-sharp harpoon, firing it into his own. A demon’s mind is one of chaos and violence, barely shackled forces of death and destruction that hardly make sense to our orderly, Euclidean monkey brains. But even I was able to detect a hint of surprise from his aura as he paused briefly in his assault. “Oh.”

In his moment of shock at my recklessness, I was able to wrest control. The body was only held together with Glasya’s spite and duct tape, but now I bent it to my will. I opened the rib cage, cut the arteries and veins, loosened the skin, and his Heart fell neatly into my waiting hand.

Glasya stared at me in shock and wailed. “No, you can’t do that, that’s against the rules!”

Ignoring his cries, I skimmed the Heart until I found it, his true name. It was a bitch to pronounce, but I was able to utter it quick enough. “Sleep.”

The green glow of his eyes faded and his body froze above me, as his mind went on a vacation. I scrambled out from underneath as it came crashing to the ground, leaking oil and maggots. Eva had been on top the entire time, frantically skewering Glasya repeatedly while he was mauling me.

The body of the Count steamed and twitched, the holes left by the stab of the pitchfork and .45 ACP glowed with infernal heat as if he was stuffed with hot coals. Eva’s chest heaved from exertion as she gripped her weapon tight, eyes darting around for any more threats, until they landed on me.

I slowly holstered my pistol and pocketed the Heart, eyes locked unwavering to hers. Her pitchfork dissolved into vapors as she stepped off of the body of the hell-hound. I slowly clambered to my feet, body aching but ready. The gap between us closed until it was hair’s breadth, our faces so close together that her eyes merged into one giant green pool, so large that it could have swallowed me up without resistance. The radio switched to a crooning ballad as the rage in Eva’s eyes faded, replaced by something else entirely. I don’t know how, but the gap fully closed as my lips found their way to hers, and her body wrapped itself around mine.

I was bloody, sweaty, and covered with insect bites, but that was the least of my worries as Eva easily tossed me in the back of the car. She quickly followed afterwards, her ruined clothes going the same way as her pitchfork. Thankfully I uncovered reserves of energy I didn’t know I had, though they were as quickly drained as found. A concealment charm prevented discovery from the cavalry’s arrival, but only just.