Border, KS

“A what now?” Walter sputtered as they started to walk out of the room. “Dammit, I feel like all I’m doing is repeating the last thing you said but as a question; can someone please—once and for all—tell us what the hell we’re doing, and why we should be terrified?”

Morgan sighed. “As long as we’re moving.” She emphasized the word ‘moving’ with a little motion of her hands, fingers scissoring like someone walking. “We’ve spent too much time already making sure everyone is up to speed.”

“Finally.” Tania offered with an unhelpful snort as they filed out of the small medical wing and started towards the stairwell.

“There were protections on this building because there were things that needed protecting within it.” Morgan explained as they filed in to the stairwell and started down the old concrete stairs to the basement, cold storage, Morgan’s office and the old morgue. Bodies were only stored in the PD for a brief time before being transferred to the hospital, and as a result Morgan had an office in both buildings.

“Like us.” Walter said, rotating his shoulder.

Tania snorted again. “Only incidentally at best.” Walter glared at her, but she ignored it with a practiced ease that now made him wonder if it was a rich person thing, a Faerie thing, or maybe both.

“There were two levels. The outer level was the hardest to get through, because the inner level had to be weaker.” Morgan continued to explain as her heels clicked along the time floors of the basement hallway to the morgue. “The inner wards couldn’t be as powerful because of what they were containing, only powerful enough to keep out the casual and the moderately strong. So the outer wards were like castle walls.”

“Then how did they get through?” Antigone asked curiously as they walked along.

“Why are you both still coming with us?” Walter asked his daughters, having—somehow—not noticed they were with the group that was walking convoy like toward the station’s most literal cold storage.

“Because even the strongest wall has flaws, Antigone.” Morgan answered. “Exploit enough of them and the wall will come down, no matter how strong it was. And sometimes you can just go around it, although that’s not the point. Since the bad guys are unfortunately allowed to get lucky, I think that’s what happened here.”

“Because we just did freaky twin magic, and thus get to see whatever is in Morgan’s kinky morgue dungeon?” Siobhan supplied helpfully in response to the second conversation going on around the walking party.

“My what?” Morgan actually stumbled a bit as she walked in to the morgue, turning back to look at the teenager with wide eyes. “I would never have a kinky sex dungeon.” She answered with a sniff, although she caught Walter’s eye after a moment and smirked. “In the morgue.”

Now it was Walter’s turn to open his eyes a bit wider, and say nothing for a long moment as they followed Morgan along to the back of the room. “In front of my fifteen year old daughters, can we maybe cut out the sex dungeon jokes?” He also looked to Siobhan. “And in front of your father? Christ, some goddamn propriety.” He offered, although the laugh he himself had in his eyes probably dulled it.

“How did they get lucky?” Antigone asked, blushing deeply herself and trying to steer the conversation with her alleged adult father away from anything horrifying.

“All of our magic is pretty much destroyed by iron.” Morgan explained as she took them to the back of the morgue, to a maintenance closet. “And the specific wards that were put on the building had to allow in people who were brought in under the authority of the Marshal and his deputies, or else no one could come in.” She took a key out of her purse, and reached out to put it in to the lock. “And because the wards were partially put up by the Unseelie Court they were susceptible to the waning of the moon, who shines her light upon the court of night as the sun does upon the Seelie.” She turned the key and opened the door, which opened in to a long tunnel lined with torches leading to a spiraling set of stairs. “Also, we didn’t know until it was too late you brought in Tennyson.”

“Jackass.” Tania spit, miming actually spitting on to the ground as she stepped out on to the dirt floor.

“This…” Andre started, while Leah just made sputtering noises. “This hallway isn’t on the blueprints, I’ve seen them. And it doesn’t…fit in the building.” He protested.

“I told you magic was BS.” Walter offered with a shrug. “But when I call it out for being nonsense I get called a Narnian atheist, which doesn’t seem very fair.” He said with a wry glance at Siobhan.

“Why did the inner wards have to be weaker, why couldn’t they both be strong?” Antigone asked, plowing ahead with the conversation as they all plowed ahead in to the impossible hall way, and toward the serious unlikely stairs.

“The more powerful something is, the harder it is to contain.” Morgan explained as she took one of the torches.

“Why?” Siobhan asked in return, working hard to keep it from sounding like a four year old just being a brat.

“A ward itself is a thing of power. It’s like putting two power sources too close together. So the wards over powerful things need to be more tricky than strong. You also don’t want to feed the thing behind them, which can act like a plugged in television and steal power even when it’s off.” She paused as they walked down the stairs and came to a large, iron banded door. It wasn’t attached to a wall or opening anything, and it had a dent in it the size of a large dog—complete with claw marks.

“Balls.” Morgan swore.

At this point Walter was quickly going beyond shell shocked and just moving into numb—not comfortably and not expectedly, although he supposed Morgan could have given him a shot when he was out that was helping.Or done magic bullshit, I guess, he thought.

“A prophet?” He managed to get out. It took him a second for him to notice, but both of his daughters had gone still and unnaturally pale after they heard the words, and his eyebrows raised even further. “What? Did you know?” He asked, unable to keep a pole-axed tone out of his voice once again in this conversation.

“Yes.” Morgan confirmed the first question. “Although that word has some…interestingly loaded biblical imagery we normally try to avoid. It also implies specificity that we rarely have. Since it seems I’m going to continue the exposition…” She glared at Tania, who just smirked. “From a very young age your mother would occasionally get dreams of the future. Shrouded in metaphor, clouded in imagery, they nonetheless always came true—even if sometimes she didn’t know that was the case until after they had happened.”

Tania spoke up again. “Her parents came to us after she knew before hand the family dog would die, and it did. It was one of her clearer ones, which was not a particular kindness to a 10 year old.” She shook her head, the curls spilling over her shoulders. “After some training in focus she could fend them off for the most part, or try to bring them on, but it was never one hundred percent in her control—it never is.”

“But…how?” Walter asked. “And why do the girls look like they are about to pass out?” He asked. “Maybe don’t answer them in that order, just for my state of mind?” He gestured to the two teenagers who were still processing. “Because if you gave my daughter’s brains the blue screen of death, then I’m going to be a little upset.”

Morgan and Tania considered the girls very seriously, looking at them with eyes that saw more than Walter’s did. They stared at his daughters with a faraway look that had the weight of centuries behind them.

“There is a wood, blanketed with white and sleep.” Morgan said softly, her eyes like a frozen pond where liquid lay deep beneath.

“What lies within may cause the world to weep.” Siobhan responded, without thought or pause or break.

“The racing flame may burn the land.” Tania murmured, her eyes flickering like the embers of a roaring flame against the night.

“Unless kept ever close at hand.” Antigone’s voice was hushed and startled, as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying—or maybe that she was saying it in public.

Morgan and Tania breathed in sharply through their noses, both of them at once, as they processed these responses. They looked at one another, and only then did they both breathe out again. Their eyes, light and dark, liquid and fire, turned to look at Walter.

“Walter, what was true for their mother is true for them as well.” Morgan said, her voice turn between hopefulness and sadness. “They have the sight, and they have had dreams that will come true. One dreams of the winter and one of the summer, but that much of their fey blood bore true.” And here she held up a hand, as everyone began to speak at once. “No…now we have other things we need to attend to. We do not have more time; we have to go in the basement and see if we might be facing a mild case of apocalypse.”

Gabriel Shepherd didn’t like not knowing things. He wasn’t, despite some of his more show-offy moments, actual a prophet. He just sometimes knew how things were going to happen really, really well. But even when he couldn’t see how things were going to go, he still prided himself on foreknowledge. And so when he didn’t know a damn thing about what he was doing, it didn’t make him happy in the slightest.

Far from being not happy in the slightest, he was now pissed as hell.

His contact had told him that there would be some information in Denver, and so to Denver he had gone. He had even had a good couple of days of it so far. The city in autumn was lovely, and there was an ironic upscale dive bar on the 16th Street Mall that he loved despite the hipsters that served local beer and had $1 oysters during happy hour. It had been nice.

He hadn’t been drunk, honestly—he didn’t get drunk really easy, and he hadn’t been feeling apocalytpic. But he had been complacent because the information here was in the form of an artifact, and artifacts didn’t tend to jump you on the way back to your rented Honda Civic.

Which was how he found himself crouched behind said Honda Civic, which was now a former car because it lacked an engine, wondering whether or not a rampaging faerie would count as an act of God for his security deposit. He figured not.

Reality seemed to warp, and a lance of vermilion streaked out and bored a hall through the front and rear windshields, sending a spray of dischordantly tinkling safety glass to the ground around the car. Gabriel sighed a little bit, a long-suffering sigh. “Why is it always the car.” He murmured to himself before he reached in to the trunk of the car and pulled out a six inch long knife in a sheath. He was going to close the trunk, because he was polite, when instead the whole of the car ripped away from him and went skittering away.

He was left staring at a hulking figure. Almost seven feet tall and, mind-bogglingly almost as wide as he was tall, it was also apocalyptically ugly. The car finally skittered to a sideways stop and tipped over, landing with a creak followed by a crash followed by the car alarm finally going off in the most unelpful manner possible.

“Ogres.” Gabriel muttered. The ugly bastard opened his mouth in a wide grin, and started to bellow in triumph—which was when Gabriel, suddenly standing, lunged forward.

The knife slid in to the Ogre’s groin with the hiss of hot metal and burning flesh, and the creature howled in pain. “If you move I’ll take it off. Swing and maybe you’ll kill me, but you’ll be a very dickless ogre indeed.”

At that the Ogre went very still, and Gabriel was glad that most mammalian things had an equivalent spot, although Ogres had some interesting other genetics as well. It hissed, but Gabriel ignored that.

“I’m sorry, this is so cliche, but tell me who you work for or I’ll turn you in to an Ogress.” Gabriel offered somewhat apologetically. The Ogre winced, and started to move forward again until Gabriel put a little bit more pressure on the iron knife. “Ah ah, what will your wife say when the only useful part of you is gone?”

That drew him a heavy lidded glare, but the Ogre apparently decided that he was going to take the safe route today. “I can’t tell you who.” His basso voice rumbled out. It got a little bit higher with a slight twist of the knife to bring the edge more in to flesh, and he continued quickly. “But if you promise thrice my safety and…interest to my wife, I can tell you where something is in the town.”

Gabriel eyed the larger figure. “If you swear thrice you will not come after me for three days time?”

The ogre huffed a bit, almost frustratedly that Gabriel had thought of it, before he nodded. “I so swear, on my name, my clan, and the honor of my father.”

Gabriel nodded in return. “I so swear on my name, my blade, and my charge that this will not be your time.” The Ogre considered this for a moment, is if he was weighing the words and what Gabriel held most sacred, before he nodded.

“There is a location in the town…”

“What?” Walter asked flatly. At this point he was surprised that he could still be surprised, which he supposed was a little bit recursive. He had figured that by this point in the twists and turns of the conversation that he couldn’t be shocked, but this one struck very personally home. He felt like the floor had gone out suddenly from underneath him Wile E. Coyote style, and all he needed now was a wooden sign that said ‘Yelp!’

“Oh, didn’t she tell you?” Tania asked, with a little bit of a sniff in her voice. “That we knew Rhiannon, that we taught her?” She asked, almost challengingly.

“She told me that you were close before she left, that one of our favorite sayings had come from her,” Walter explained, gesturing to Morgan, “but not anything more than that. I hadn’t thought anything about it, with the fact that you’re really super old.” Walter said by way of coping with shock, which drew a narrow eyed look from both Morgan and Tania.

“You always did lash out when you lost an argument, sister.” Morgan said with a sigh and a shake of her head. She looked between Walter’s axe-struck expression and the wide eyed shock on the faces of the younger girls. “What purpose did this serve? What end did you achieve?” She asked with a weariness that felt very old and very normally human, like you would find with—for example—sisters.

“Sometimes people don’t react with a purpose, icicle.” Tania responded with a hint of acid, the last word carrying the fondness and exasperation of a longstanding nickname. “But…” She looked at the faces of the girls staring at her with a naked need, and sighed. She reached up to fluff her hair for a moment, before she looked apologetic. “I’m sorry.”

Morgan started to wave her hand, to give a ‘We can talk about this later’ to the crowd and change the subject, when one of the girls reached out to grab her wrist. Surprisingly the dark eyes that stared at Morgan imploringly weren’t Siobhan’s, but Antigone’s. “Please, you have to tell us what she’s talking about.” She said with a desperate conviction. When Morgan started to demurr, Antigone kept on. Her voice was almoost heartbreaking in its need. “Morgan…our mother left us one night with nothing more than a freaky ass note. You have to tell us if you know something about her. Please.”

The doctor sighed for a moment, but looking between the two girls her face softened much like Tania’s had a moment before. “Alright.” She looked down, and after a moment Antigone let go of her wrist. “Your mother was a friend of ours, like I had told your father. But she was more than that. We are distantly related, and while she lived in the city she spent almost as much time with us as she did her parents.”

Tania nodded. “She knew from an early age that there was something different about her. Sometimes it works like that. And she could tell that we were as well. When someone comes that strongly in to their faerie blood, it’s helpful to them to learn what it means. We took her under our wing.” But then Tania looked sad by the reminiscence. “But by the time she was done with High School she wanted to leave.”

At the raised eyebrows from the three Richards family members, Morgan shook her head. “We didn’t beat her or anything. But…the more you know about this city, the more you see every day…it effects you. When you see behind the curtain in to the shadows, sometimes you want to go see a normal life. That’s what she wanted: To see a world without hidden darkness, with normal people in it.”

“And she didn’t like it?” Siobhan asked, her voice quavering a little bit with the unasked question about whether or not their mother had loved them.

“Oh your mother loved you very deeply.” Morgan said with a smile to the girls. “We wrote letters back and forth for many years. She was so happy when the two of you were born. But the last little while, she stopped answering our letters. I…I don’t know for sure why.”

Now Walter joined in the meaningful looks at the two faerie women. “She didn’t act any differently for us, right up until the end. If you know something…”

Morgan closed her eyes, and shook her head. “We weren’t going to talk about it.” She began, and then forestalled protest by continuing. “And I don’t know anything specific about anything she saw in the last year she stopped answering letters.” Morgan continued in the tone of voice of a woman lowering expectations. “And after we briefly discuss this we need to go see what they took from the lower levels.” At that, Marshal Alexander raised his eyebrows incredulously, as if he didn’t know what in the world she was talking about. “But…your mother had, from the time she was very young, prophetic dreams.”

“What?” Antigone asked, in an exact mirror to her father’s earlier question and tone.

“It means that in our world she would be called a dreamseer.” Tania answered. “A prophet or, more accurately, an oracle.”

“So you’re seven hundred years old, next year?” Antigone said with the same tone of stunned disbelief that almost everyone in the room seemed to be feeling. Her eyes were wide with consideration as she thought about what that would mean.

“Damn, girl.” Siobhan said, covering her own shock with whatever the hell it was Siobhan thought was a good idea from minute to minute. “Is it cliché to say you don’t look a day over five hundred?”

“Yes.” Morgan responded simply, to both of the girl’s questions.

“Did you know Shakespeare?” Antigone asked.

“Was Queen Elizabeth secretly a man?” Siobhan continued her unbroken streak of interjections that drew blank stares. “What…it’s a legitimate question, it’s a theory. Lay off.” She says uncomfortably at the sudden attention.

“No.” Morgan once more responded monosyllabically, able to answer both questions with the same answer again. “There was a great line from a television show that if everyone who claimed to have been at the crucifixion had actually been there, it would have been like Woodstock. The same can be said of knowing Shakespeare. And actually, I was at Woodstock—we both were.” She shared a fond look over at her sister, who did give a grin at that.

“Ok, this is all fascinating.” Walter said, genuinely as opposed to the sarcasm the statement normally conveys. “But what does this have to do with what’s going on with me being stabbed?”

“Because the people attacking us are also faeries.” Tania interjected, apparently deciding to be helpful for a moment.

“There has been something of a disagreement within our people over the last several centuries.” Morgan continued. “For a long time it was non-violent, a kind of political cold war as people decided which camp they belonged to and waited to see who would do something first. When it did happen, the camp that didn’t end up on top went in to hiding. From the beginning of these killings we thought it might be them, which is why Tania set Arthur to looking in to it.”

“And Arthur was…” Walter said, in the tone of a man tired of having to prompt the next piece of information.

“A Knight of the Seelie court.” Tania answered simply, looking at her nails. “Which is why, with the leadership unable to find answers, Morgan and I privately asked him to look in to it.” For a moment a flicker of sadness crossed her features, at the memory of what had befallen her investigator. “We tried to get him to take someone with him, to protect him, but he wouldn’t hear of it, the proud old fool.”

At that, Andre piped up. “Uh…wasn’t he like a million years old? He didn’t look like he was particularly spry when we found him.”

“We can be rather deceiving. He was no spring chicken even among the effectively immortal, but you’d be wise to not discount his abilities.” Morgan responded somewhat defensively, before she waved her hand. “But regardless, he would have been very difficult to take down with his knowledge, and the fact that he knew that he was a target should have put him even more on guard.”

“Then how did he get killed?” Walter asked. “I’m sorry if it’s callous, but if he was a badass and knew he was going to be targeted, then how did they grab him?”

“Magic.” Tania piped up once more.

“Oh fuck you, magic. That isn’t an answer.” Walter groused, pacing a bit around the small room.

“That’s where you draw the line, dad?” Siobhan asked. “We just watched her hair do magic, she claims to remember what it was like when ‘prithee’ was slang, but you draw the line at magic? Isn’t that kind of like living in Narnia but being agnostic?”

“I’m undecided on Aslan.” Walter answered, mouth quirked halfway between his scowl and the twinkle in his eyes that Siobhan brought out. “Fine. Magic. I suppose I’m accepting things I think are crazy, and there’s no sense in going crazy by halves, right?”

The Marshal had been mostly quiet this whole time, looking at Morgan very seriously. “You never told us you were seven hundred years old.” He accused.

“Would it have made a difference on your end, Bill? As Marshal?” Morgan asked softly, suddenly looking very much a woman in her late twenties or early thirties, her eyes showing a low glow of amusement matched by sadness. “Because I can tell you it would have changed a lot in how you treated me. It will, going forward—it always does.”

The Marshal didn’t have an answer for that, and took his turn at an awkward silence. Tania looked dismissive, shaking her head a bit as if the concern didn’t bother her at all, although it seemed a little bit hollow. And at that moment both Siobhan and Antigone leaned forward to embrace the doctor in a hug. The sudden contact drew a laugh from her, but she put her arms around the girls.

“Oh, typical. Your mother always favored her too.” Tania said, her voice sharp and sudden in the touching moment, as the younger set of twins looked up in shock at the older set with shocked eyes that Walter couldn’t help but match.

“Fairies.” Walter responded simply. It was hardly even a question—it was more of a statement. A statement that didn’t drip with incredulity, only because Walter had sufficient restraint to not want to seem like he was mocking the doctor. But it was certainly sufficiently damp with incredulity that a good shake would have caused it to drip rather aggressively.

The room was silent for a moment as the Doctor looked at him evenly, a quiet of uncomfortable disbelief on some parts and annoyance at being questioned on the others.

“Yes.” Morgan responded after she took a moment to decide exactly how soaked with incredulity Walter’s statement had been, and apparently finding it acceptable to respond to.

“For real real?” Siobhan piped up, her voice no less shocked than Walter’s but less skilled at keeping it from leaking that shock and disbelief all over her listeners.

“Yes. For real real.” Morgan confirmed.

“Not for play play?” Siobhan asked in response, and now Walter couldn’t tell if she was being serious or if this was one more instance she thought she could shoehorn charming teenage sarcasm in to.

“Not for play play.” Morgan avowed seriously. “Whatever the purple hell that means.” She sighed a little bit, and looked back to Walter. “The Marshal knows, as does Leah. He knows because he is the Marshal, and the Marshal must know. She…” Morgan looked over to the deputy with a look of wry fondness. “Well, sometimes people see things they aren’t supposed to, but that is neither here nor there.”

“So what do you mean by fairies?” Walter asked. He moved over a little bit closer to the doctor, looking her in the eyes and then down her body. His eyes weren’t lascivious but curious, as if searching for a set of wings or a stinger, or whatever fairies had.

Morgan sighed a little bit, and leaned her head back. As Walter watched her hair began to shimmer, growing out to waist-length and taking on a gentle movement as if touched by a breeze. Little snowflakes shimmered as if they were falling out of the hair. It was only there for a moment before it stopped, and her hair was back to its normal length and not shimmering with the promise of a color change. Every eye in the room was wide open, even those who had known what she was, and it was not Walter that first managed to speak.

“Wow.” Antigone added helpfully, expressing what everyone felt fairly succinctly.

“The world of Faerie—properly spelled with an eri not an iri—is a world that lies next to and across the world of men.” Morgan began in the practiced voice of a storyteller. “It changes the world of men and is changed by it, but is separate from it. And within it are many races, including those that you would think of as Faeries if you’ve read Shakespeare or mythology: The Sidhe, the rulers and nobles of that realm.”

“So you and your sister are, and stop me if this is too far, but you and your sister are…faerie princesses?” Walter asked, still a little bit stunned—but with his eyes trained on Morgan’s hair in case it did anything else shady while he happened to be watching.

“No.” Morgan answered, shaking her head with a smirk that said she only did it to send her hair waving a bit so Walter would get worried. “There is a whole court structure, and not all sidhe have positions at court. But we are all rather snobby about it.”

Siobhan and Antigone were, meanwhile, sharing a look that meant they were either both thinking the same thing independently or that they had actually developed the twin telepathy they had always threatened.

“So you’re sisters.” Antigone finally said.

“But you’re not from the same court, are you?” Siobhan finished the thought and made it a question, both of them peering between Tania and Morgan with wide, owlishly curious eyes.

“No.” Morgan answered evenly, without a hint of surprise in her voice.

“How—“ Walter began, but the twins cut him off.

“Mom used to tell fairy stories, remember?” Antigone told her father, as she looked back. “And it was pretty easy to figure out, given their names and what she told us. There are two courts of the sidhe—the summer court called the Seelie, and the winter court called the Unseelie.”

Siobhan interjected again. “So the last names are a dead giveaway, the moment bedtime stories are for real.”

“Not for play play.” Morgan confirmed with a nod and a smirk as she turned Siobhan’s words back on her. “And it does not surprise me your mother told you these stories. They are not uncommon ones here in Border, where many men and women carry some amount of Faerie blood in them.”

But Siobhan wasn’t done with her curiosity, following it cat-like in to her next question. “So how old are you, anyway?” She asked. Tania drew in an offended breath, while Morgan just laughed.

“Time moves differently in Faerie, it’s important to note; we are twins because we were born on the same day in Faerie.” Morgan explained. “But by normal reckoning,” she offered with a slight smile, “I was born on the first day of winter in the beginning of the little ice age, in the year of our lord one thousand three hundred and fifteen.”

CHAPTER 7: An Expansion of Knowledge

The stars sparkle so much more brightly in the cold, like pinpricks of ice scattered across heaven by the hand of God. The only thing that could be more beautiful was the view of them from space, or so he had been told.

The man that Walter called Professor Gloom moved through the eternal frost without discomfort or displeasure. He moved through the swirling frost and the frigid, stark beauty like a man who expected that he would be the master of all he surveyed for the primary reason that he was. When the cold winds rise and huff and puff many men will shuffle out of its way; but there was no shuffle or submissiveness in his steps, and it was the wind that moved aside.

He came to the place of the meeting, a shadowed place with swirling dark that he knew like the child of an ancient people. He moved into those shadows and bid them change, and they did. They revealed the actual meeting place, secret and secreted away from prying eyes, and already filled with those who were waiting.

“Well.” He said in a voice as dry as the bitter air, the freezing air that sears the lungs. “That went well enough, I suppose.”

“My Lord…” The white haired boy spoke, the wounds from the foul knife the Marshal’s men had used still visible on his noble features.

“Silence.” He commanded, as he turned to the others.

“We expected the final pieces to be there.” His researcher said, with much less worry than the boy’s voice had held. There was still the undercurrent of tension to his voice, because he still feared what disappointing his master meant, but there was a confidence of professionalism.

“And they were not.” Professor Gloom stated with a startling finality.

“No, my lord, they were not.” His researcher responded with an equal simplicity, and a little bit of a sigh. “But it was still worth the effort, and the lost warriors. We did retrieve some things that will be quite lovely in our efforts.”

“And our presents for our friends?” Professor Gloom asked curiously, one eyebrow raising.

“Have been left behind, should they be foolish enough to pursue those options again in anything resembling the same configuration. We will know.” The researcher responded.

“Why did we leave any of them alive?” The Earl asked angrily, moving forwarded and whipping his cloak out of the way. His hair flickered and curled about him like a guttering flame before it settled about him normally. It always did that when he was angry, as if it would lash out and consume the one who dared affront him.

The thought almost made Gloom chuckle, but he kept that to himself. It wouldn’t do to go insulting the foreign nobility, after all.

“Because we intend to rule over a people, not piles of organs.” Gloom responded simply. “As we have discussed previously, and will no doubt have the pleasure of doing so in the future.” He shook his head. “And besides, there were some…interesting faces in that crowd that it would be a shame to deprive us of before we could convert them to our cause.”

“You worry too much about what comes after…” The Earl began, before Gloom waved his hand dismissively.

“Enough. When we will be ready to move on our next targets?” He looked back to the Boy.

“Give us a couple of weeks to sort through what we have, my lord, and we can start moving on the next targets.” The boy responded simply.

“A few weeks?” Gloom asked, disappointment rising again in his voice at that number.

“My lord, we haven’t seen most of these artifacts since the last time the map changed.” The boy said with a sullen defensiveness.

“Mmm.” The Professor mmm’d unhappily, although he didn’t make much more comment then that. “And identifying the girls?”

The researcher nodded. “We believe we may have a way to find them, my lord, as soon as we’re ready.”

At that, among the shrouded darkness and his co-conspirators, in the cold that whispered and lurked and crawled up the spine of the unready and unprepared, the man who controlled it all could only smile.

There are soft lights and harsh lights, and then there are hospital lights. Very few things burn the way a hospital light sears the retinas on first awakening, and while the Border PD wasn’t a full hospital apparently they shopped at the same store. Walter wondered briefly why someone had moved the overhead florescent light right in front of his face, before he blinked a few times. His vision cleared and he realized that the light was actually its normal, sedate distance away from him. The quicksilver spots began to chase themselves away, and were replaced with the concerned looking faces of his daughters. Both of them threw their arms around him in a tight hug. It definitely hurt, but he felt like he kept his grunt mostly under control.

“Daddy, we were so worried!” Antigone exclaimed, meeting his eyes. Her cheeks were tracked with hastily wiped away tears, and he reached out one aching arm to gently stroke her hair.

“Hey, baby.” He murmured softly. “I was just taking a nap on the job. You know how I love my naps.” He offered. He realized his voice was a little bit thick, and he licked his lips a little to try to get some saliva going until Siobhan handed him a bottle of water. He opened the cap and drank greedily. “Playing it cool, Bug?” He asked, his voice hoarse for more reasons than his recent unconsciousness.

“Have to.” Siobhan responded, her own voice heavy with repressed emotion. Without asking for permission he reached out and re-enfolded her in the hug. They all stood, or laid, there for a moment to enjoy the gentle reassurance of family returned alive before they parted.

He finally looked around at the others in the room. Morgan, Tania, Marshal Alexander, Andre, Leah…all of them looked worse for wear. Alexander had a cut over his eye that looked like it had been sutured, and Andre had an arm in a sling. But they were all there, and that was worth bruises and cuts and whatever the hell had happened to him.

“What the hell happened to me?” He asked, figuring that it was a good place to start.

“You got beat up pretty bad, Walter, you need to rest…” Morgan began, but he shook his head and let out a pained grunt as he tried to pull himself up.

“No.” Walter groaned. He forced himself to sit up in the little bed, ignoring the screaming protest from his ribs and the disapproving looks from the doctor. “No, I want to know what the hell is going on now.”

“You can tell he’s serious, he said hell twice in three sentences in front of his children.” Siobhan, who had never seen a situation that she didn’t think could be improved by sarcasm, added sarcastically.

“The station was attacked. You went toe to toe with the one you call Ninja Grandfather.” Alexander explained as he moved over to the bedside where Walter was seated. The Marshal looked over his wounded deputy with concern. “After that…nobody saw anything else. It got real dark, real fast, and there were some voices arguing. Then there was some sort of explosion underneath the station, and when the lights came back on you were unconscious on the floor.”

Walter nodded—slowly—at that. It tracked with his memories, of the argument between Professor Gloom (his new nickname for who or whatever that had been) and Ninja Grandpa. And of his clubbing like a baby seal. His eyes moved to Morgan, and Tania. “You know.” He accused emphatically.

“Walter, I was dragging people away…” Morgan began, while Tania protested “I wasn’t even here when it happened!”

“I was unconscious, not dead.” Walter told them softly. His eyes were for the two women alone, intense and probing and dire. “I heard what you said.” He told them, his voice as cold a j’accuse as he had ever used.

“Walter, sometimes during unconsciousness the brain can—” Morgan began, before Walter cut her off.

“Don’t give me that.” He said, anger rising in his voice like a slow heat. He waved his hand in a chopping motion, like he was cutting through the woven gossamer of that excuse. “Do you want me to quote verbatim? ‘We are actually trying to save our world, sister, not put on a morality play’. Sound familiar?” He quoted. “I didn’t make that up, Tania, did I.” He stated flatly, looking her right in the eyes.

“How dare you…” She began, her tone rising to match his anger. But he could tell it was false, a familiar way of throwing off inquiry behind the walls of importance, money, and a legion of attorneys on ridiculously expensive retainer. He blustered right through it.

“Of my own accord.” Walter answered with a version of the 75th Ranger regimental motto, baring his teeth a little bit. He reached to his shirt and pulled it down, revealing the mottled bruises he felt there for all to see. “And because the secrets you’re keeping keep kicking my ass, and I’d like it to stop.”

The whole room had, in the middle of this argument, turned to look at the two adult sisters. Their faces told a whole collection of stories, and in that moment Walter knew that Marshal Alexander had known whatever it was from the beginning. “You knew, sir?” Walter asked him, his voice soft and serious and razor sharp.

Andre turned to his uncle with a look of shock, and Leah…tried to have a look of shock on, but didn’t quite succeed. Walter’s eyes flicked over to her, and they met for a moment before she looked away with a hint of shame.

“Yes.” Alexander answered after a moment’s dark consideration as he looked at Walter, before his eyes softened a little bit at the sight of Antigone and Siobhan. “Yes, I did.”

“Marshal…” Tania’s voice was hot and bright now with real anger, her eyes flaring and her whole posture changing. She took a step towards Alexander, and the man—a United States Marine, for god’s sake—stepped back in fear.

“Sister.” Morgan’s voice was a whip-crack, frost and knives and cold command, and it brought her sister up short. “We are asking them to die for us.”

“We’ve had this argument before, Morgan.” Tania reminded imperiously, her eyes focused on her sibling as they rounded on one another. “We came to a decision.”

Morgan looked out in to the hallway, where people were passing by injured or grieving; and then looked to the window, where Walter could see flashing police lights and cars with satellites on them through the slanted blinds. “The situation changed.” Morgan offered, sadly.

“You…” Tania hissed with a shake of her head. “You were always too sentimental. Sometimes people die, and they signed up for the police the same as any warrior. They want to find the killers, we want the killers found, there is no reason…”

Walter stepped forward and put himself bodily in to the middle of the argument. “We didn’t sign up for whatever the hell your fight is. Most of us.” Walter offered, looking to Alexander and Leah. “But we’re getting killed for it.”

Tania stared at him, her face a mixture of pride and just the slightest hint of shame. He could almost hear the thoughts flitting through her brain, although he didn’t know how those thoughts would end. Until Morgan stepped up and put her hand on Tania’s arm.

“Fine!” Tania snapped, glaring at Morgan. “It be on your head, all of this.” She waved, and walked over to the corner to sit in one of the sparse medical waiting chairs.

Morgan breathed in deeply, and looked to Walter, Andre, Siobhan, and Antigone. “I…” She began, seeming oddly hesitant, before she shook her head.

“Vampires!” Siobhan shouted suddenly from one side, holding her finger in the air. Morgan laughed, and Titania snorted dismissively. Finally, Morgan eschewed the dramatic.

“Faeries.” She responded.

END OF CHAPTER 6: DEVELOPMENTS

There is only one darkness that never ends, when the eyes close forever and the soul goes to whatever awaits it. All other darknesses must break, even the one that Walter found himself swimming through. He didn’t know how long he had been swimming in it, only that it was dark and the only thing that hurt more than all of the rest of him was his head. It wasn’t quiet, either; a tinnitus like ringing lurked in the background, worrisome.

After some time he heard voices, and he started to swim toward it. Or move toward it. He would have to think philosophically about what he was doing, but that seemed like something that he could worry about later. Now he worried about trying to wake up, get out, just keep swimming…whatever.

We need answers. The thought floated through his brain, or whatever was doing his thinking now—he was pretty sure it wasn’t his spleen, but that was only a hunch.

“He doesn’t have a concussion, I don’t think—although I don’t know how he doesn’t have a concussion.” An outside voice said. Feminine, alto, warm. He knew the name but he couldn’t think of it. He thought it was a season.

Someone knows more then they’re saying, his own voice said as it continued its internal monologue. Walter considered that thought for a moment, before he agreed with it. The little voice, that constant watchman inside of him that worked behind his eyes and beyond his brain and filled his gut with instinct, continued. Because there is some freaky shit going on here.

Word, the currently unconscious but nevertheless conscious part of his brain agreed.

“We can’t know for sure until he wakes up and we can see about dizziness, memory loss, and sensitivity.” The outside voice continued

“Did he see him?” A second voice, also female and similar, but slightly higher asked. “Did he see the face so we can know for sure?” It said, more quietly, as if she didn’t want others to hear or someone had walked by.

“I don’t know.” The first voice said in reply. “I’m a little more concerned about the little bit of blood in his ear, but…”

“We need to find what he stole, not tend to this one mortal. I told you the defenses should be better!” The second voice hissed a little bit.

“If you save one life you save the world entire…” The first voice offered back, which only drew a snort.

I need to wake up. I know who these people are, and I need to talk to them… Walter thought consciously.

“We are actually trying to save our world, sister, not put on a morality play.” The second voice snorted. “If he saw something then he might be able to help us end this idiotic war. If that’s even what this is.”

“Be quiet, sister, I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t have brain damage.” The first voice said, her voice cold as an unexpected frost.

He didn’t know what they were talking about, but he desperately wanted to. If for no other reason than to avoid being beaten up or knocked out anymore. He felt something warm flooding his body, quite unexpectedly, and the darkness grew a little less intense. He still couldn’t pull himself out of it, but…

“DAD!” Two voices cried out at once, panicked and fearful. Those voices he recognized, and those tones cut through the darkness like the rising sun burns away the fog. His heart raced, his mind burned with the sudden firing of waking neurons all at once, and he gasped and sputtered as his eyes opened to the fiery light of the medical station of the Border Police HQ.

“Fuck!” Just about everyone cried out at the same time.

The rolling midnight spread across the old main room of the Border Police Department until it hit the walls, and then it began to crawl up them in slowly creeping tendrils. Like shadowy ivy they crept up until they began to pool at the corners and spread across the ceiling. It was horrifying, and by far the scariest thing that Walter had ever seen in his life.

He turned toward the newcomer who strode in. At first Walter couldn’t tell much about the man except that he was wearing a dark full cloak, but even that turned out to be wrong as the man came closer. He wasn’t wearing a cloak, he was wearing the darkness itself. It curled about him almost fabric-like, but moving in undulating ways that no earthly material could. That cloak was a little bit of self-contained madness, and Walter forced his eyes to move away from it before it could fester in the folds of his brain and leave him never quite the same.

“S-sorry, chief…my dance card’s full.” Walter managed, forcing himself to speak despite the literal waves of terror rolling through him. He hadn’t been that scared when he had been shot at, when there had been a grenade ‘problem’ during training, or when he had realized that his wife wasn’t coming back. And yet now he couldn’t stop it from sending a knock to his knees, and a desire to run like hell to his feet. And calves. And everything else.

The…it could only be called being…stopped in front of him. While the cowl of his not-cloak was up so Walter couldn’t see anything but a low golden gleam that he assumed were eyes, those tamped ember eyes looked mildly surprised. “You should be voiding your bowels now, mortal. Not quipping.” He said, his rumbling basso voice almost mild, almost paternal.

“Didn’t bring a change of pants.” Walter answered through gritted teeth as he forced himself to stare at the creature with the patient, almost professorial voice. His hands shook almost uncontrollably, but he started cursing loudly in his head at them and made them reach down and grab on to his M4 and bring it up. Whatever it was in front of him just waited patiently as if watching a newly interesting experiment that had been previously so boring.

“And what do you expect to do with that toy, mortal?” It asked, almost curiously.

“Shoot you.” Walter explained. He brought it up to about crotch level and fired the attached shotgun, offering a brief prayer to the universality of gonads. The shadows seemed to swirl and lick at the blast for a moment, and when they receded there was no appreciable difference in the quality of the shadow. “Fuck.” Walter cursed.

“Mmm.” The shadow monster mmm’d, before he turned to Ninja Grandpa. “Lacking in subtlety, as always. Where is it?” His voice was rougher, angrier and somehow…disappointed. Walter stared, because it was not dissimilar to a voice he had used with his daughters many times in the past. He expected the shadow monster to say ‘I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.’

Just for shits and giggles, Walter shot him again, this time in the face-region. The shadows twitched, and one licked away with a little effect that Walter could only describe as being the exact opposite of an ember flickering off a fire and dying. The monster turned, and its eyes were not so dull now as a shadowy tendril lashed out. “Enough.” He spoke, with the finality of a deity and the gravity of a collapsing star. The tendril took Walter right in the side of the head, and a different kind of darkness overtook his vision completely.