Shadows Gather - to date

By popular demand (well, one request to be honest) here is Shadows Gather in order to date.


CHAPTER
So much promise. It really would be a shame if I have to kill him after all. Michael Slotnick is a sort of protégé of mine I suppose you could say. An accidental one to be sure, but a protégé nonetheless. I'm a fixer for the local preternatural community, and of late I've been showing Michael the ropes.
Yah, I know, I haven't figured out how to phrase it on my tax forms yet either. "Supernatural Fixer", "Cleaner to the Undead and Unholy" you begin to see my problem. But there it is, when the things that go bump in the night get scared or screw up, I'm the one as gets the call. The question is, when I'm scared or I screw up, who am I supposed to call? And I might of this time. Really screwed the pooch. Up shit creek without my paddle. Staring down the nickel-plated barrel of the revolver of destiny held in
the shaking hand of a strung out pretty boy who has just learned that the blood in his veins ain't quite as purely human as he thought. That shaking hand belongs to part-time model, part-time construction worker Michael Slotnick, and if I don't say just exactly the right thing right now, I think he's going to shoot me dead.
"You knew, didn't you?" Michael cried," You knew all along what a freak I am, didn't you? Didn't you!" A spray of spittle from the corner of his perfect lips adds marvelously to the whole crazy wild-eyed, hand shaking, psycho out of control thing. "Michael, Mica baby calm down." I'm scrambling for something to say. How did I lose control of this so fast? "Mica, tell me what's wrong, I can't help if I don't know what's wrong." There, ball is in his court - that's the way to handle a crazy person, right? Make him use his words?
"You set me up, from the moment you met me, you knew." His voice has dropped a bit and the hand is steadier on the gun. That's a good sign, right? "From the moment I met you I knew that you were special, if that's what you mean." Wow, I sound a hell of a lot calmer than I feel. "Mica please, you know I want to help, you know I'd do anything for you. Please put the gun down." I push backward slightly on the wheels of my chair and open up a few inches between me and that amazingly sparkly gun barrel. Serves me bloody right for installing crystal chandeliers in every room.  The play of a miniature rainbow off the barrel of a 45 is not the lighting effect I had in mind.
His eyes drop to the chair and the gun barrel droops
accordingly. Damn, I thought I taught him better than that. Oh well, time for remedial gun-handling 101 after I talk him out of shooting me. "Haven't I shown you that already?" My voice falls too, to almost to a whisper. He's the reason I'm in this chair and hell, I'm not proud of rubbing it in his face at a time like this but sometimes a girl has gotta do what a girl has gotta do.
Come on baby, just a little bit more. I nudge my chair back just a smidge. "Quit moving!" Michael says. The gun barrel and his attention snap back to my face. No worries, a beam of light now hits the large aquamarine ring on my right hand, and that's gonna be all I need. "Sorry," which I in fact am. "Being held at gunpoint makes me a bit nervous." which in fact, it does. Not that you could tell from the deep, dulcet tone of my voice. I fiddle with the ring and a bead of blue light flicks across his eyes. "I trusted you. Trusted you with everything." His voice fades away into a yawn and his eyes blink, suddenly sleepy. "I know you did baby. I know. And I've tried to do right by you, didn't I take you in, teach you things, make you safe?" I twitch the ring again and manage to get a slow nod. "You're safe now.  Safe with me. You can put the gun down now. You're safe." More sleepy nodding and the gun-hand does in fact drop to his side.
You know, I had a real sharp twinge in my conscience when I first implanted that hypnotic suggestion, keying it to a ring the color of my eyes. To be specific both ring and eyes are the color of the Adriatic Sea just off Venice. And no, they aren't colored contact lens, thanks for asking. But I digress. I thought the hypnotic implant was maybe a bit too manipulative, even for me.
But given the circumstances of our first meeting and my immediate suspicions about his true nature and of course the whole threatening my life thing just now, kinda glad I stomped that little angel voice into an unpleasant squishy spot on the pavement.
"Mica, baby" I pitch my voice into as warm a caress as I possibly can, "Seems like you've been partying hard with some very nasty people. Who've you been a bad boy with?" "Nobody. Not a bad boy." It's mostly a sleepy slur but still too much push back for me. "Well it sure ain't just booze honey. Someone give you some pills? Some kinda blow? You can tell me baby, you're safe now." Michael shakes his head heavily, "Nope. You'll be mad." Damn straight I will, but you won't have to deal with that till you're stone cold sober and nursing a headache the size of St. Louis. I try again, "Mica, sweetheart, somebody told you some nasty things about me, right? Who was it?" "Like it when you call me sweetheart Reinee. It's nice." Damn, he should not be able to dodge my question like that, I sure did a piss poor psychic hack job on him. Crap, serves me right for going soft on a pretty face.
"Michael. Tell me who has been talking to you about me. Answer me true!" There, I invoked the key obedience phrase, it'll scare him, but I really need to know who's been messing with his head. That's entirely my prerogative thanks very much. "St-tst-tst" he's choking trying to tell me the name but someone, it appears, has put a mind block on him. If I don't do something fast he'll choke to death trying to speak my enemy's name. "Ereshkigal!" I shout out the name of the ancient Sumerian goddess of the underworld and he collapses into a dead faint. "Fuck!" Now I am
mad. I had to burn a perfectly good safe word there. The good news is that he's stopped choking. The rest of the news is bad, bad and bad. Not least of which is the fact that he's slumped half on me, half off, and in trying to lower him to the floor without banging his head on my workbench the shattered bone,scar tissue and ground meat that currently makes up my left leg starts screaming agony like all the smoke alarms in hell.
Scrabbling through the cut herbs and metaphysical apparatus on the workbench I come up with a cell phone and bottle of Percoset. Tough-bitch multi-tasker that I am, I manage to dry swallow two pills and hit the speed dial during the time it takes for three hot tears of pain to splash onto the spill from a tiny vial of dried Dragon's Blood. I deeply inhale the puffs of resulting smoke. Now man, that is some good shit. I can see my reflection in the mirror over the bench and my eyes flash that gorgeous red that promises a world of pain to Stanislav, whenever I catch up to him that piece of Gorgon vomit. I'm pretty sure the St-tsts-stts that Mica was trying to choke out before I pulled the plug on his consciousness was Stanislav's name - he's the only one of my current enemies with that particular consonant configuration.
The interminable ringing in my ear finally ends with Tequila's rasp, "Shadows Gather, watering hole to the Unholy and the Undead. Whatchawant?" "Get up here. Now." Hmm, sounds like my rasp is finally a match for hers. I try and put the phone down but no. Her tirade pulls it back to my ear. "Irene? That you? You got a lotta damn nerve commanding me to your presence. I may run this
den of depravity for you but that don't mean I'm your damn slave!  Your Royal nothingness! Get up yourself!" she pauses for breath and I know from experience that she's working herself up to a full on hissy fit so its dive in now or forget it. Tequila is one long tall tranny that can out-howl any of the local were-pack leaders. Not kidding. Won 2 large on her during the regionals last Halloween. "Tequila! I need your help putting Mica to bed." There. That shut her up. All I can hear now are the sounds of the bar, techno music blaring.  I hate techno night. "I need help undressing him." I add, somewhat unnecessarily. "I'll be right there." She answers. Hah, I bet she will. I'm not sure it's the 22 year-old underwear model side of him or the sometime construction worker from the bad part of town that she likes best, but I guess I shouldn't talk. Hard to know if I'd a taken him in if he were ugly. I'm kinda shallow that way.
And now the phone does go down and a half full bottle of Jack Daniels takes its place. I take a long pull and watch as the rainbows from the chandeliers reflect in the bottle glass. Pretty.  Like baby boy here. Pretty. I can hear my heavy breath and the swish of the bourbon. Not much else, even though the bar that Tequila runs for me - "Shadows Gather" - takes up the first floor of this warehouse. Given the nature of my work and my proclivity for solitude you can bet your ass that a lot of profits have gone into soundproofing over the years. So, I wait in the silence, looking at my pretty things and wondering if there will still be any bourbon in the bottle when Tequila arrives. Cause things aren't so quiet inside my head now as that Techno Music starts up in my
shattered leg and the throb of pain also known as the beat tries to pull me down into its madness. Nope. Another swig of bourbon and a dab of that dried Dragon Blood on my gums and I'm good thanks, go ask someone else to dance. Besides at the very least, I got me a pretty boy to rescue and a bad guy to punish, gotta stay frosty, there's work to be done.
CHAPTER II
I don't really see why I have to say anything at all. Not like I'm the heroine of this piece or nothing.  Not like you people are the boss of me. Fine. I owe Irene something. She did save my ass once and by that I really do mean save my ass from some Trolls thinking to BBQ my magnificence and serve me up with a side of slaw. Still, some serious water under the bridge since then and I paid her back on that more'n twice over. The deal now is strictly business. We're partners in Shadows Gather. Okay fine not partners exactly, she owns it and pays me to run it but I'm buying from her one crappy chrome and leather barstool at a time. At my last tally I now own 12.5% of this den of iniquity and by that I mean den of iniquity.
Well excuse me if you have no interest in our business arrangements, I was just trying to explain how and why I came to be involved in this whole sorted business. She's my boss. She calls "Tequila!", and Tequila comes a runnin'. Besides, I don't as a rule believe in taking advantage of naïve and inexperienced boys but I know Rennie well enough to know that she has no such moral compass. So, I was up there as fast as my Jimmy Choos would take me. Yeah, they both tell me he's 22 but I can smell a lie
for a possum from 500 yards. Michael might be 18 just, but he's claiming 22 and Rennie is claiming to believe it.
Things were pretty rough when I walked in that's true enough. I can see the shine in her eyes and smell that weird coppery apple smell she gets when the pain is bad. Actually she smells kinda nice with the bourbon splashed over top but you tell her that and I'll call you a damn liar. And that pretty boy all draped at her feet like, I don't even know. A Greek statue, an angel fallen to earth? His t-shirt all pulled outta his waistband like that you could see every muscle of that six pack and that smooth white skin. Any way never mind, you get the point. He's a sweet boy and she is, well you know better'n me what she is, not like I have to be explaining.