Arc 5 | Dead Pacifica (16) |
DEAD PACIFICAPart 16
The moment I saw him, curiosity overwhelmed me and I instantly dove into his memories with [ Fractal Omniscience ] to figure out what the fuck he was doing here this late, and it looked like Leo Grady had another one of those bad dreams.
Okay, it was my fault. I had become quite active in the past month preparing for the biggest delve of the year, and it was starting to cause some side effects to my surroundings and the people that lived in it, particularly to the veteran delvers. Their dreams became more intense as the main delving night drew near, and odd things began to occur around them that they tried to ignore at first but couldn’t in the end. It would build and build until it was starting to negatively affect their lives.
With a scenario triggered tonight, they were more intense than usual.
They’d see their reflections didn’t quite match on the mirror, or maybe a different person entirely stared back at them. Dead friends and family stood at the periphery of their vision, and sometimes they’d hear them call out their name from afar. Forums for all of these ghosts and shit (which seventy percent of the time were probably fake as hell) started posting about their experiences in the past week or so even as far back as Seattle, dreaming about a cabin in the woods. My cabin. Sometimes, these people would lose track of time. They’d wake up for breakfast and realized they’d been standing in front of the kitchen counter for hours and it was already past noon and their food had gone cold. If they had pets, some days they’d avoid their masters, sensing an insidious presence they couldn’t fully understand.
Though Vivian and Tessa could feel it from afar, Leo Grady was experiencing it at full force.
Okay, yeah, so these were my fault and all the responsibilities were on me. Though I might have many-eyes active, I couldn’t always focus on the veteran and potential delvers to relieve them from my dungeon’s influence. It took a lot of energy to prevent them from going crazy. I reckoned The System knew how big this weekend’s delve would become, and it was drawing all of these strings across the world, multiplying the chances of horrors it could unleash and turn it into a perfect storm. The System—and the Administrators and their audience—was just as hungry as me and they wanted a high body count.
As Leo drove the car, I could glean his memories in the past hour in just under ten seconds. I stopped at the point when he woke up three hours ago around the same time the spiders took and webbed the Astarothian soldiers out of their cells and dragged them to Xavier’s congregation on the grove.
Lucky—or unlucky—for him, there was a “game” tonight.
He climbed down the stairs to find Paul and Casey were watching football on the TV. The Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants were already deep in the middle of the fourth quarter. Brandon Aubrey succeeded on a field goal, earning the Cowboys a five-point lead over the Giants, and a wave of cheers and curses erupted from the couch along with the ones from the screen.
“Good evening, sleepyhead,” Casey said. “Slept well?”
“Nope.”
“I’m sorry. Here I thought leaving you alone for almost twelve hours will do you good,” Casey said. “The nightmares are back, huh?”
Leo nodded. “Even if I slept that long, it doesn’t feel like it. Something’s wrong with me.”
“You might need to go to a sleep doctor or something. Maybe they can fix it.”
“I don’t have the health insurance for that,” Leo admitted even though there was still millions of dollars in his bank account (he gave the two million to his family and then left without a word). He’s been using it to party all over the world before Paul found him and dragged his ass into the brotherhood. Fuck Paul for doing that, by the way. I thought he would have spent it all by now.
“You were mumbling in your sleep, bud,” Paul said. “And you’re snoring very loud. I can hear it from my room.”
“Sorry. Did you guys already eat?” Leo asked.
“Domino’s,” Casey pointed at the empty pizza box on the coffee table. “Sorry, we didn’t leave you some.”
“That’s okay. Mind if I borrow your car, Casey? I’ll go and grab my own dinner.”
“I don’t mind. Want us to come with you?”
“No, that’s alright. I won’t take long.” Leo grabbed the keys from a bowl by the end table next to the front door and looked outside the window, noticing that the professor’s car was gone on the driveway. “Hey, where’d the professor go?”
“Salem,” Casey said. “He has a friend who works at the state courthouse. Said he’s gonna get those criminal records we can’t get from the town hall and other bunch of stuff. His friend finally got back to him right before lunch. I even caught him smiling from ear-to-ear.”
Paul snorted. “Casey thinks the professor’s seeing an ex.”
“Women have good intuition, dude. I know that look he gave when he’s listening to the voicemail.”
“When is he coming back?” Leo asked.
“He texted half an hour ago that he’s on the highway and on his way here,” Paul answered.
Casey frowned, disappointed. “Honestly, he should stay there for the night. We all know that he needs to get laid.”
Paul laughed. “What? You want him to break his hip?”
“He’s not that old. He’s fifty, I think.”
“Well, let me know when he’s back,” Leo said.
“Hey, wait,” Paul said. “Don’t go up there, yeah? Not alone, at least. Kincaid doesn’t want any of us to be out in those woods while he’s out of town. And if you really want to go there, well, don’t go alone, okay?”
“Heard you loud and clear,” Leo said. “Not going to the woods alone. Got it.”
Paul and Casey returned to watch the rest of the game as Leo stepped outside. He made sure to grab a jacket on his way out. The weather had already started cooling a couple of weeks before. Near the Cascades, it was forecasted to drop to the high forties tonight. He couldn’t feel it though. It still felt like summer to him, and wondered why he even brought the jacket in the first place.
He entered Casey’s car and had to adjust the seat since she was a small woman, and it felt like the seat was pressing on his back against the wheel. He adjusted the side mirrors and the rear-view mirror too, but as soon as he fiddled with the latter, a bright flash blinded him from a passing Subaru, and glimpsed Scottie’s decapitated corpse on the reflection, sitting on the backseat. A brief flash of a memory wormed its way inside, of him standing on the front porch of the cabin, watching as the killer cleaved Scottie’s neck clean as he begged for his life.
“Jesus Christ!” Leo hissed under his breath and shut his eyes.
It’s all in your head. It’s all IN YOUR HEAD, he thought like a mantra. The longer he stayed near the woods, more of those memories jumped at him out of nowhere.
When several seconds had passed, he looked at the rear-view mirror, but Scottie’s apparition was already gone. Leo let out a heavy sigh and slapped his face. Hard. “Get it together, man,” he said as his cheek reddened.
Not only was he hungry, he craved a strong drink.
His phone chimed and he looked at the screen. That narrowed down the list of where he should go for food tonight.
“You know there are better ways to ask me out to dinner, Leo,” Katie Reeves said as she sat across from him. She was still in her business casual attire, having left the office fifteen minutes ago. “We could’ve met at the park or at Plum’s. At least his drinks are cheap, but the students from Rothwell’s just arrived, so there’s lots of college kids partying. Not my crowd though.”
“How long have you been at the office?” Leo asked.
“Too long. Honestly, I should just bring a cot under my desk at this point. I practically live there anyway. Maybe I’ll ask my uncle to approve it. He’d probably say yes.”
“Well, it’s good to see you, Katie. Where’s your friend?”
“He’s running late. Don’t worry. He texted me and he’s on his way.”
Point Hope had two main hotels near downtown: the Alexandra Hotel, which was the oldest since it was established in the 1910s, and The Hyacinth, built thirty years ago with its own golf course, spas, pools, and three ballrooms at the edge of town where the McLaren Forest touched the town’s borders. The latter boasted a popular restaurant and bar, called Gardenia’s, that was featured at the Food Network multiple times and the chef was still aggressively chasing to get that elusive Michelin star. Most of the tourists stayed at The Hyacinth when visiting Point Hope.
Leo had chosen it partly because he was craving their ribeyes and garlic artichoke bread, and he felt like splurging today. Bust mostly, he chose it for Katie. He felt guilty using her to get the files he asked for, and it probably wasn’t easy. Over the past month, Leo and his team had been working to gather a network of information about me and my dungeon, hoping that they’d pour more resources at stopping me. So far, the leaders of the brotherhood rejected the professor’s request three times. Partly it was their mistake. They had alluded it was a possession, and four brotherhood members could handle an exorcism.
However, the only information they had gathered were the fake breadcrumbs I created with Oracle, using the [Rumors] of the archetypes, and the brotherhood were buying it as if they were true. They were theorizing that an evil curse had possessed the mountain in the guise of Mark Castle due to a satanic ritual (a first encounter for the brotherhood for an entity to possess a large region), so they had been gathering intelligence to present to the rest of the organization. Unfortunately, they hadn’t had a sighting of any of the monsters that Leo claimed, much to the latter’s frustrations.
They were real goddamn it! They tried to kill me, bled me, and killed my friends. They were real! Leo shouted at the professor when he believed he was losing his team’s confidence about this mission. That brief spike earlier in the month should have convinced them something was amiss, but they needed hard evidence.
Hard evidence that Dead Pacifica might be able to provide.
There was a tactical reason for the venue, too. Dylan Griffin and his crew were staying at The Hyacinth and Leo liked to keep an eye on them. The YouTubers were due to arrive today based on the phone he cloned (with the help of Casey) from one of the producers. All of the nightmares and strange occurrences that had been happening around him was building up to something. He wasn’t stupid. He could see the signs that the entity was stirring. If his hunch was correct, Dead Pacifica was the target of the next feeding frenzy.
“Hey, Leo, are you listening?” Katie asked.
“Huh. What?”
“I said the last time I was here was with the mayor. She didn’t like what I had to say very much,” Katie said. “Man, you’re so distracted tonight.”
“Uh, sorry. I’m hungry and I like it here, too. I have fond memories with my family here,” Leo smiled and slid the menu toward her. “I already ordered, but I let them leave the menu here for you.”
“Oh, you know me. I’m an easy girl when it comes to food. I’ve been here a bunch of times so they know who I am.”
The server eventually came to the table a minute later and recognized Katie. They chatted for a bit before asking for Katie’s usual order, which was some spicy sausage and broccolini pasta in pesto sauce, a side salad, and a glass of rosé.
Katie was an investigative reporter for the Point Hope Gazette, but she wasn’t some small-town amateur. A year ago, she had been working for KGWA in Portland, where she became the very first journalist to broadcast the string of bizarre murders, accidental deaths, and “oddities” bleeding out of my dungeon. She had transferred back to her hometown earlier this year, drawn by a spike in missing persons cases and that infamous satanic massacre involving Coach Hodge that became a sensation across the country. Suddenly, her quiet hometown was making national noise, and her articles were constantly being cited by the Dead Pacifica crew in their show. It was an easy transition. Her uncle already owned the Gazette and the community already trusted her. And I had to give credit where it was due: she was a goddamn good reporter. She even started working on a book about the massacre two months ago and Hollywood was already circling to grab the rights to turn it into a movie.
Which was why Leo Grady had sought her out.
He hadn't told her anything about the true nature of my dungeon, of course. Instead, he spun a lie about wanting to buy back the old summer camp to honor his late father’s memory. He claimed he was turning a new chapter of his life by moving back to Point Hope and he wanted to know what happened in those woods before he would invest his fortune to purchase the land from the Duncan Estate. It led to a rabbit hole with Katie unknowingly becoming a good source of information for the Helwing Brotherhood, giving them access to town records and case files that were still ongoing within the PHPD.
The Professor was more than happy to exploit the history Leo shared with her. They had been close friends since elementary school, growing up in the same neighborhood. I had initially assumed the two shared a romantic past, but Katie viewed Leo strictly as a protective older brother. She had dated Leo’s younger brother, Danny, on junior year of high school, but the split had been amicable. She simply stayed in touch with the Gradys after the family patriarch passed away and they relocated to Portland.
Leaning forward, Katie pulled a thick, weathered case file from her bag and slid it across the table. A stark red stamp occupied the bottom corner: Point Hope Juvenile Psychiatric Institute.
“Now this took a lot of favors to burn, but I finally managed to find this about Xavier Yates,” she said.
Leo took the folder, his fingers tightening against the cardboard. He believed Xavier was a survivor just like him, and the horrors he endured broke the poor boy’s mind. Any normal person would. Hell, it broke Tessa and the kid. The more he read about him, the surer he was that Xavier and several people, maybe even his sister, went into the woods and encountered me and my monsters. Leo had already tracked down and interviewed a few of the nurses who had cared for the boy at the institute. They recounted how Xavier endlessly muttered about the mountain and about a delve, about needing to prove he was worthy, and about slipping into a wolf’s skin. They had to sedate him a bunch of times because it usually ended with him getting violent. He was close to two other patients within the facility who escaped with him. He scanned the files and saw their names and their records were also there, too.
A dungeon, Leo thought. Wasn’t that what Mark Castle said?
That glowing Core was still etched in his memory, and he would never forget the intoxicating power emanating from it. Of all the books at the Helwing library, none had ever mentioned an entity like that. Unfortunately, Xavier had never been seen again since he escaped the mental facility and Leo could never get the address of Vivian Yates. He had a long list of questions for her too, if she was still alive.
Did she get a reward like me? Leo wondered. What did she wished for?
“Does it say the current address of Vivian Yates?” Leo asked.
Katie shook her head. “An old address. The grandmother’s. But they have not lived there for a long time. I heard their neighbor mentioned that they relocated to Seattle? That’s as specific as it got. As far as I know, they visited Xavier at the facility a week before the breakout.” Katie pulled out another object from her bag. A USB flash drive. “This is a copy of the recording of that visit. It’s very disturbing. After the conversation, Xavier gouged an orderly’s eye and tried to attack his sister. I watched it already. Poor guy’s lost his marbles.”
“Did you say Seattle?”
Katie handed the drive to him. “Yeah. I have friends there. Do you want me to contact them?”
Leo frowned. Seattle was a big city, and he was not looking forward to hunt down a needle in a haystack. He made a mental note to touch base with Paul or the Professor to see if the Helwing Brotherhood had a local chapter there that could handle the legwork.
“Thanks, Katie. I owe you one,” he said, and he placed the drive in his jacket’s front pocket.
“You owe me several,” she chuckled. But there was something there behind her eyes, multiple questions bubbling to the surface.
Leo caught the look. “Come on. Out with it.”
Katie sighed and leaned back. “Sorry, I just gotta ask and get this out of the way. It’s really been nagging at me since you dumped this on my lap. This doesn’t look like a normal background check about the Duke anymore or about the summer camp. I’m doing this for you as a friend because this is easy information I can just get, and honestly, I still owe you for half the things you bailed me out of in high school. But why are you looking into Xavier Yates?”
“I heard he turned crazy and stabbed his grandmother and attempted to kill his sister in his house. Is that right?”
Katie nodded. “And then he escaped with a bunch of patients.”
“That turned up dead in the woods? Most importantly, in the summer camp?”
“They never found his body. Oh, and two others. They’re probably dead. They probably killed the others, too. Is this what this is? You’re concerned some crazy people are living close to the summer camp?”
“Do you think they might still be out there?” Leo scanned through the first couple of pages. The boy had a lot of medications that required half a page to list, and their potential side effects.
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Then again, it’s the McLaren Forest. It’s one of the largest untamed lands in the Pacific Northwest. Do you know how many times a tourist or some city-rat gets so overconfident they ended up getting lost in those woods? A third of the county’s emergency budget was to fund the rescue of those dumbasses who have no respect or fear of nature.” Then Katie chuckled.
Leo looked up from the page. “What?”
She shook her head, tracing the rim of her wine glass. “Nothing, really. You just...you remind me of Rocco.”
“Who the hell is Rocco?”
“He’s the friend I was telling you about. He knows more about this stuff than I do.”
“Oh? Who is he?”
Katie laughed. “No! He’s not that kind of friend. He’s a private investigator out of Salem who’s been sniffing around town for the last few months, asking the same questions as you. Questions about McLaren Forest and all the people who have gone there and never came back. Mrs. Redding hired him to investigate her husband’s disappearance and he contacted me. Molly’s husband and his friends disappeared last year. Same story as the other missing hikers since the massacre. We’ve been working together to solve these strings of crime for months now. I want you to meet him. He also thinks there’s a big story here.”
“Has he found anything yet?”
“Well, he helped find that missing hiker’s backpack last April? The police thought there might be a serial killer, but they couldn’t prove otherwise. It doesn’t stop the town from spreading rumors though.”
“One you’re more than happy to report on?”
Katie shrugged. “I can’t help if the people demand all of that morbid shit. It’s all for the clicks and ads now. Plus, those Dead Pacifica kids are here in town making a circus out of everything. Mayor Warrick is just loving all the attention. Did you know that she allowed them to interview her? I think her social media manager believes it will boost her points so that she can get a second term.” Katie visibly shuddered and turned around. “Speaking of the devil…”
A big party suddenly arrived into the restaurant and was quickly ushered by the hostess to a private dining room. Leo immediately recognized Dylan Griffin and Retto Kearns and their large entourage. Across the dining room, conversations died mid-sentence as patrons turned to gawk. In a nearby booth, a pair of teenage girls giggled frantically, hoisting their phones to snap rapid-fire photos as these celebrities paraded past them. It was not often you’d find famous people in Point Hope, of all places. It wouldn’t surprise Leo if those teenage girls camped there just to get a glimpse of their idol. Only the soft jazz lounge music echoed from the speakers. Once they were out of sight, everyone resumed their conversations.
“I’m also being interviewed by them,” Katie said. “Since I’m the reporter who’s been, well, reporting all of those crimes they featured on the show, they’re going to have me in an upcoming episode before their stream. I get two grand out of the trouble. It’s easy money. They offered to have me as a guest during the stream, but I declined. As much as I love reporting about the woods, I wouldn’t be caught dead in it. Dylan is known for his pranks, and I have a feeling they’re trying to pull a stunt to go viral. Just my gut instinct, and it never failed me.”
“What are you going to talk about?”
“Obviously it’s about the massacre, and probably the weird stuff that’s going on in those woods. I used to hike there a lot, but it’s been months since I’ve gone. Probably never will.”
That’s when their food arrived and they ate quietly for a couple of minutes.
“Do you want Rocco’s number?” Katie asked.
“I’m not a private investigator by the way,” Leo said, making another mental note to talk to this Redding woman. Maybe she knows something. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to hear what Rocco had to say. “But sure. Send his number to me.”
Katie thinned her lips. “Look, I’ve been in my field for close to six years now and I’m getting really good at spotting it when people lie to me. I initially dismissed what you said that you’re buying the summer camp back, but let’s not kid ourselves, Leo, we both know that was some horseshit. That’s not what you are here for. Why are you back in town? Is this a mob thing? Does Mercer know you’re here?”
Leo looked surprised but Katie quickly shut it down. “Oh, I know you work for Mercer, or at least, you used to. He got into trouble after his cousin disappeared. After you disappeared. Eddie turns out to be an informant, and the DEA is all over his business, and last I heard, they have Mercer by the balls, but they can’t throw his ass in jail without concrete evidence. Eddie was a key witness, they said.”
Leo tried to hide the frown from forming on his face. “I don’t work for him anymore.”
“No one just leaves Mercer without losing a finger or two. Are you on the run from him? From the DEA?”
“Nope. I doubt they’re even aware of me.” That was a lie and Katie frowned.
“Last time I talked to Mrs. Grady was a lovely dinner by the Waterfront before summer. She’s doing fine by the way, not that you asked. But Danny’s been asking if I heard anything from you. And to my surprise, here you are, out of the blue, knocking at my office door. What am I supposed to think? I don’t know if your mom knows what you do for Mercer, but Danny does. Mercer’s men sought him out, but I have a few friends from the force to keep an eye on him. Since the DEA took over the case, they haven’t been harassing your brother since. Have you spoken to Danny lately? He’s worried about you. At some point we thought you were dead.”
“I found some business partners that can help me with buying back the camp.”
“Business partners, huh?” Katie never dropped her smile. “Danny told me an interesting story that you gave them a million dollars on some offshore bank account. Is that true?”
“He should have never told you that. Did he tell anyone else?”
“So it is true.” Katie’s face dropped. “Just me. Oh, don’t act so surprised. He’s my ex but we’re still close friends. And by the way, getting that kind of money without explanation is seriously weird as fuck, Leo. It scared him. Scared the shit out of me, too. We thought you got into some sort of trouble with Mercer, maybe stole millions of dollars from the cartel, and they were coming after your ass. But you kept sending him postcards, which doesn’t make us feel any better by the way. A phone call would have been nice. Weren’t you in Thailand? Why are you back, Leo?”
“Like I said, I’m here to buy the camp.”
“The Duke owns half of the mountain. The bastard is rich enough not to care.”
“I was meaning to ask you about that. How’s that even possible? Doesn’t McLaren Forest belong to the state?”
“There was an uproar about it a few years ago. I wrote some articles, but when his family got deeper pockets than the Grand Canyon—money that can buy the whole state’s debt as pocket change—well, yeah he can own anything, including a mountain. The four people running for the mayoral election grovels at his feet just to get his endorsement, and one of them is a literal goat. Honestly, the goat is probably the better pick than the other three. I wish he picks him. That will be funny, and also because I want to see Mayor Warrick’s face that she lost to a goddamn cashmere goat.”
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Leo quickly changed the subject away from the dungeon. He knew that the more Katie talked about the subject, the more she poked holes on it until, eventually, she could see through the real story. He didn’t want her getting a whiff of the dungeon’s existence, and he already hated the fact that she moved back to Point Hope to get close to it. He was tempted to ask her to move away, but that would be a weird thing to say without an explanation and it would only drive Katie more toward the dungeon. He feared that my monsters would get her if she got too close to the truth. He reassured himself that Katie was smart enough for that, but she was equally stubborn. She was already motivated in finding out more about the mountain, and he was starting to regret pulling her into his war against me.
I wouldn’t even be calling it a war, but Leo genuinely thought he was freeing me from a nefarious and very evil entity that had somewhat possessed my spirit. As much as he pose a threat, it was very sweet of him to think he was saving me. I shuddered to imagine him fighting The System. That wouldn’t end well.
Occasionally, Leo saw the door to the private dining room open and one or two of the Dead Pacifica crew would leave to go to the bathroom. Their loud conversations would drift across the hall. Those two teenage girls nearby requested to their server if they could come in there to get a quick picture with Dylan and Retto, but was rejected. That didn’t stop them as they tried to sneak in and had to be escorted out by security.
And Leo still hadn’t met the friend that Katie was talking about earlier, and they were almost done with their food.
As if on cue, Katie’s phone chimed and she turned it over to look at the text on the screen. She frowned and looked up at Leo. “So, um, don’t hate me, but I don’t want you to freak out.”
Leo froze. Anyone who said don’t freak out wouldn’t really stop them with the “freaking out” part. It would only make them more anxious as their imagination ran wild. And she was talking to Katie. Whatever she did, it was bound to freak him out. “What did you do?”
“Um, I may have called him. And…he, well, he’s here! Don’t be mad!”
“Who’s here?”
Leo felt a presence behind him.
“Well, look at what the fucking cat dragged in,” a man’s voice said.
Leo turned around as all the color on his face drained from him.
“Hey, Leo,” Danny Grady said. “Welcome back.”
Leo didn’t want to make a scene, but he couldn’t help himself. Danny couldn’t either. All the anger and disappointment over the year had bubbled over and the two started arguing. Quiet at first since they had the decency to think about the other guests in the restaurant as Katie tried to calm both of them down, but eventually, Danny walked off angry and Leo followed after him. Their shouting intensified once they were in front of the restaurant with poor Katie having to keep the situation from devolving into a fistfight.
Danny was angry for the same reasons that Katie had already calmly told Leo, only he wanted to scream at his brother, and maybe get a couple of punches in there just to drill into Leo’s head how hurt he felt for him to just leave without saying goodbye. On the other hand, Leo desperately wanted Danny to get the hell out of Point Hope before it was too late, before the entity—me—would sense him, but I already did.
I turned to Oracle. “It looks like we don’t have to do it. Danny’s already here.”
Leo and his brotherhood could be a threat during the delve and I needed a contingency if they became a nuisance while I harvested essences and crystals. Danny Grady was supposed to be that card. I planned an elaborate lure to bring his younger brother here to distract him, but Katie Reeves already did the job for me. Good job, Katie! I wanted to say. Maybe I should also bring her to the delve as a reward. A reporter who got closer to the truth than she could ever imagine should be an extra juicy plotline for the Administrators and the guild viewers. Who knew? She might survive as she was quite resourceful.
I watched as the hostess from the restaurant came out the door and demanded for their party to pay the bill. Leo told Danny to wait out here while he went back in to pay the tab. Once he got back out, his brother already drove off. Katie didn’t know where he was staying in town, but she promised she’d call him once he calmed down. Katie also gave him Danny’s number so that Leo could reach out to him personally.
Defeated, Leo drove back home, wallowing in outrage and fear. He was concerned for his brother’s safety, which made it all the more potent when he saw Danny Grady standing outside the same AirBnB the brotherhood rented.
Leo’s heart sank. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.” How? How did Danny know he was staying here? His mind raced. His heart felt like it was pounding a million beats per minute as he climbed out of the car and stared at his brother, who had calmed down after the fight at the restaurant.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Leo asked. He didn’t mean it to sound so forceful, but he could see the hurt on Danny’s face even if it was only for a second.
“What are you talking about? You texted me to be here.” Danny turned over his phone, revealing the text from a number Leo recognized—his own.
“I didn’t—” Leo fished out his phone and went to his messages. And there it was.
Leo: Hey, Danny. It’s me.
I’m sorry.
645 Parkview Lane. Come stay the night, then we can talk.
Danny: Okay.
Leo didn’t remember texting him. Maybe in his anger or during the heat of the moment, but he should remember doing that, right? He left the restaurant only fifteen minutes ago, but he had some lapses over the past couple of weeks when he lost track of time due to his insomnia. Unless…
He looked across the street. Just behind the blue house across from him was McLaren Forest, looming menacingly over the neighborhood cloaked in shadows. There were no stars in the sky. Within the breeze, he could almost hear the trees were laughing at him.
I laughed. Oracle was already two steps ahead of me and he already seized the opportunity that fell onto our laps and manipulated the situation to our advantage. We get to keep Danny around and sent Leo Grady reeling into an emotional distress. His desperation to get Danny out of Point Hope just became his top priority.
Like I was going to let that happen. Not a chance, Leo. Not a chance. He still had a purpose in the dungeon I wanted him to perform swimmingly. If he deviated from that, I’d dangle Danny like a carrot to keep him at bay. I may not be able to intervene during a delve, but there were no rules how dirty I could dig my claws in outside of a scenario.
The front door opened and Paul Barrera walked out with a pack of cigarettes in his hand, an unlit cigarette already on his lips. He paused, looking between Leo and Danny.
“Hey, Leo. You’re back,” Paul said.
“Paul, um, this is Danny,” Leo said. “Danny. This is Paul, a friend of mine.”
Paul’s eyebrow twitched. “Danny Danny? As in—”
“Yeah. My brother.”
“Oh. Ah…right.” Paul shoved the pack inside his pocket and extended his hand. He never took out the cigarette from his mouth. “Paul Barrera.”
“Hi. Nice to meet you,” Danny said and walked toward Paul, shaking his hand.
“We should get inside,” Leo said. “We already picked our rooms but you can bunk in with me if that’s fine. There’s a sofa in my room that can be converted into a bed.”
“Do you need help with your bags?” Paul asked Danny.
“Oh, I didn’t pack much.” He pointed at the backpack he carried. “This is all I brought with me. I’m not staying long. Just visiting my brother.”
Paul stepped to the side and let Leo and Danny into the house first. Casey was surprised to find Danny standing in the living room as she walked down the stairs, and quickly offered a beer, which Danny accepted. They went off to the kitchen.
Paul leaned close to Leo. “What the hell is your brother doing here? This complicates things.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
“Then why is he here?”
“I met up with the reporter. Katie handed me the files that Kincaid was asking for, but she invited my brother to the dinner.” Leo handed him his phone and Paul read the message.
“And you brought him here?”
“That’s the problem. I didn’t.”
“Are you sure?”
“I sure didn’t fucking text him while I was driving with my phone under my ass.”
Paul paled. He pointed out to the window. “You think its…”
“Pretty much. It can control tech. It makes sense it can do this, too,” Leo said. He didn’t have to say further. Paul got it immediately. The mountain was playing tricks on him, and Leo wasn’t too keen being string along with my games, and this made him furious.
“It’s been watching us,” Leo said.
“How? We’re in town, miles away from the cabin,” Paul said. “No entity has ever have that range of influence. Not even the vamps or the werewolves.”
“I think it’s way powerful than we thought. We’ve been here for a month now, running around trying to figure out what it is, but it’s been observing us all this time. Maybe since we got here. Hell, maybe further than that. Like mice in a cage.”
Leo grabbed back the keys he placed on the bowl next to the door and opened the front door.
“Hey. Where are you going? It’s late,” Paul asked, grabbing his shoulder to stop him from going outside.
“I’m going to the cabin,” Leo said. “I’m not a fucking mouse.”
Which brought me to the present.
I pulled out of Leo’s memories and minimized [ Fractal Omniscience ] on my screen. Leo was driving sixty miles per hour toward the cabin with Paul sitting on the passenger seat. They didn’t even listen to the radio. Leo gave his brother a flimsy excuse that he was running to the store to grab a few things like more beer and snacks, which Danny already found weird especially when they both came from the restaurant. Danny offered to join them, but both Paul and Leo refused. Danny could tell he was lying, but he was too tired to argue.
“Well, when you get back, can we talk?” Danny asked.
It took Leo a moment to answer. “Yeah, sure thing,” he said, but even Danny didn’t believe he’d ever get the full explanation of why Leo left. But he hoped like a fool, no matter how small. He clung to that hope like a liferaft.
They left Casey in the house to keep an eye on Leo’s brother. They had been driving in silence since; the tension in the air grew palpable the closer they got to the cabin. Paul was getting anxious, but he tried to hide it from his friend, although I also sensed his excitement at killing something other than boredom for the past month. He had been itching to kill some ghosts or some crazy monsters for this mission, and now that it might be happening was like a welcoming jolt to his stomach. They reached the next junction and Leo turned the car down the gravel road toward the cabin. Both men could feel the change in the air as the forest swallowed them.
“So…what’s the plan?” Paul asked, breaking the silence.
“I’m going to talk to it.”
That surprised Paul. “Talk…to it?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m gonna do.” And Leo left it at that.
Paul didn’t think it was the smartest thing to do when this entity killed like dozens, heck, maybe even hundreds of people by now without anyone knowing. He read the news articles and the police reports they had gathered, and those were the only ones they had known about. There were still missing people that may or may not be involved with the entity they were fighting. He was glad Casey kept a backup duffel bag for weapons in the trunk just in case of emergencies—and this was an emergency. He forgot to bring his pack on the rush out, but he distinctively remembered Casey packing a shotgun at the back of the car. He wasn’t looking forward to the scolding from Professor Kincaid. He’d be so fucking pissed at them once he find out they went to the cabin without telling him, but it was probably easier to ask for forgiveness later rather than permission. It didn’t seem like Leo wanted to wait for the professor’s orders, and both men already knew the answer would be a defeaning no.
“What if one of those games start while we’re in the woods?” Paul asked. He forgot about the death games that this entity liked to play. He didn’t know what it would be like, but he could tell from Leo’s accounts that it was quite traumatic; a source of his countless nightmares.
Leo didn’t give him an answer.
They ignored the warning signs. The Dead Pacifica crew had plastered the roadside with “Private Property” and "Filming in Progress” signs, explicitly threatening trespassers with legal action. They had even lined up four bright orange traffic cones across the gravel road as a makeshift blockade. Paul was just glad the property owners hadn't installed an actual security gate, an oversight they’d undoubtedly regret given how popular the online show had become. Then again, Paul wondered what kind of psychopath actively sought out the site of a notorious massacre, but then he thought of those stupid influencer kids and their millions of rabid fans, and he regretted even asking. Hell, he and Leo were stupid enough to be here, too.
“We should park over here,” said Paul, pointing to the side of the road. “Just in case the crew put up some trail cams. They might also still be around. Who knows? They may have hired security guards.”
Leo didn’t even look at him. He pressed his foot harder against the accelerator, the gravel crunching violently beneath the tires.
“Leo, man. Are you even listening? What if someone sees us?”
“Let them see,” Leo said, knuckles turning white against the steering wheel. “Maybe I’ll tell them to get the fuck out.”
“Okay, dude, you’re scaring me. You need to calm down.” It was the worst thing that Paul could have said at that moment because Leo was running on fumes from his anger and terror for his brother.
This was their third time visiting the cabin, and Paul immediately recognized the landmarks emerging from the darkness. They crossed the old wooden bridge rattling over a shallow creek, signaling they were barely a minute away from the clearing. Paul shut his mouth and left Leo to his thoughts. There was no use provoking the man any further. Once his friend calmed down (or if they were back at the house), he planned to pull him aside and give him a reality check. Maybe lecture him for being reckless. He promised he’d put on Kincaid’s bellowing voice just to drill it into Leo’s head. The closer they got to the cabin, the more his heart pounded, and he hoped to God Leo wouldn’t do something stupid. Emotional people get other people killed.
Leo parked the car right in front of the cabin and threw his door open. Leo walked toward the front porch, stopping only ten feet away from the bottom step.
“Enough,” Leo said. “If you can hear me, enough. Leave my brother out of this. I think I get it now—my dreams. You know I’m here. You’re sending me a message and I’m telling you, I get it. You want me back here? Well, here I am. I’m back. So, let’s talk this out. I know you can talk, motherfucker. So turn on that fucking radio and tell me what you want.”
Silence beckoned all around them.
It unnerved Paul—the silence. By all accounts, a seasoned hunter like him should be used to it by now. Ghosts and demons loved the sound of silence. They loved that shit. It allowed these incorporeal entities to be heard, to do their hauntings on the living, and sometimes, if they were powerful enough, could inflict their malevolent influence on the physical realm. But that usually meant Paul could destroy them, too.
But now that he was here, under the blanket of the dark starless sky, things were a bit different. The rules the brotherhood had taught him was thrown out of the window against an entity they couldn’t understand. Sure, he was confident on the way over to confront this entity that had plagued Leo ever since he met the man in Thailand, but a tiny, tiny part of him desperately wanted to hop behind the wheel and get the fuck out of here. This was one of the rare occasions he felt this way, not since he faced a nest of five vampires near Toronto all on his own. Back then, he was still as green as could be for a Helwing hunter. He had learned to trust his gut over the years and it was screaming at him that there was trouble here. He couldn’t see it, but it was there.
Big—fucking—trouble.
Paul stepped out of the vehicle and walked to the rear, popping the latch on the trunk. He unzipped a heavy, dark blue canvas duffel bag and pulled out a tactical shotgun. It was already loaded. Not the salt ones. They already determined that they were not working with the rules on dealing with normal spirits, so Paul had to rely on the next best thing that could work: a shotgun blast to the face.
Leo gave up on speaking to the entity directly and changed tactics. “Mark, can you hear me?” Leo begged. He thought that if talking to me worked before, he hoped it would work again. “If you’re still in there, please, leave my brother be. Just tell me something and I’ll help. I’ll help you. Whatever this thing that has a hold on you, we can now help. The brotherhood can help set you free.”
Leo wanted to know what I wanted, and he was desperate for an answer. But he was asking for something else as well.
Please make it stop, he said in his mind. Please make the dreams stop.
Please, please, please, please, please…
“Careful,” Paul muttered, hoisting a second shotgun from the bag and slamming the trunk shut. He stepped up to the porch line, shoulder to shoulder with Leo. “Don’t bait the thing. It isn’t going to appreciate you trying to reach Mark. Entities hate the exorcism spiel. Here. Take this.” He shoved the spare weapon into Leo’s grip. “Just in case things go sideways.”
“Thanks. It spoke to me before when I was here. I know Mark can talk. He can do it again. You said not all ghosts are bad right?”
“Okay…but what if he’s too weak? It’s been a year. A lot can happen in a year.”
“I hope not. He helped me a few times fighting against the cult.”
“What makes you think he wants to help?”
Leo frowned. “I’ve known him since he was a kid. He was a good kid, Paul. I have to believe there’s still a piece of him in there somewhere.”
“But…what if a monster shows up?”
Leo thought of it for a moment then shrugged. He pointed at the dash cam in Casey’s car. “Then we get our proof for the brotherhood. One way or another, we’re going to end this.”
Paul nodded, but he wasn’t so sure that a friendly ghost would be of much help.
“Aww, that’s almost sweet, don’t you think?” he purred, a cruel grin splitting his face. “My lord, Leo actually believes he’s saving you. I honestly thought he was just blowing smoke.”
“He was one of my favorite camp counselors. Taught me a few things in how to survive if I get lost in the woods,” I said.
A fleeting pang of guilt twinged within me for dragging his younger brother into this meat grinder, but it had to be done. I also thought it was kind of sweet that they were rescuing me from this “evil entity” that they were convinced possessed the mountain. They had absolutely no idea it was just me all along. ME! Or, more accurately, the ravenous, soul-devouring version of me, bound forever to a glowing gemstone. Now that he was here and a scenario was in full swing, my hunger drastically spiked like I had never felt in weeks. Not since I was a juvenile Core. The temptation to snatch him up and consume a veteran delver right then and there was intoxicating. I could practically taste the raw essence radiating off his flesh.
Eat.
Feed.
Feeeeeed.
FEEEEEEED ON HIM!
I calmed myself.
I forced the primal urges back down.
Took a slow, deep breath.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I needed to stick to my plan. With Danny’s presence in town, this should bring us to the next phase for the brotherhood. I turned to Mother Gertrude, Lord Zal, and Oracle.
“It’s time,” I said. I was planning on doing this the day before the main delve, but since Paul and Leo were already here, I couldn’t let this opportunity slide.
As a Dungeon Core, I was forbidden from directly intervening with a scenario, but that wouldn’t stop my archetypes from enacting the plans we had created before the delve. It was one of the few loopholes The System allowed Cores to have. It had been instilled in me the four unbreakable rules of a Dungeon Lord:
1. Do not harm a delver who prevails the dungeon. Reward them.
2. Every delver is equal in the dungeon. Each has a chance to make it until dawn.
3. Do not raise arms against the Elders. The System is paramount and above existence.
4. Feed the core and fulfill its desire. Deny it, and grave consequences will follow.
Yes, every delver is equal in the dungeon, but The System never elaborated on anything about what happened outside of it, which I was more than happy to exploit. Let’s face it: as an old quote from a book about farm animals from my sophomore year once said, everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others.
There was one person in particular that needed to be saved, who needed to reach dawn to face me. And I had been looking forward to it for a long time.
Please, I thought. Please work.
Mother Gertrude casted a telepathic line with Frosty, who was currently chasing after a terrified Harrison across the forest.
“We have unexpected guests near the cabin, Frosty,” she whispered into his consciousness. “Leo Grady. You know what to do, my child.”
Frosty acknowledged the message with a loud grunt. He couldn’t speak, but he could reply to Gertrude’s spell without using any words. Since they were on the way anyway, He herded Harrison toward the cabin.
Out by the porch, Leo and Paul instantly picked up the racket of Harrison's approach. Driven by blind panic, he wasn’t even attempting to be quiet. He exploded out of the thick foliage and tumbled hard onto the sharp gravel, tearing open his cheek and busting his lip. He lay there sobbing and screaming, his voice cutting off only when his eyes locked onto the barrels of Leo and Paul’s raised shotguns.
“Help! God, help me!” Harrison shrieked, frantically scrambling backward on his hands and knees. “It’s right behind me!”
Right on cue, The System bombarded my vision with a cascade of notifications.
[ Delver Julius Harrison has encountered two unregistered delvers: Leo Grady and Paul Barrera ]
[ Detected. Two potential delvers are carrying weapons and are designated as active combatants ]
[ Warning. There is a 99% chance that an intervention to the scenario is likely. Further escalation will forcefully register the delvers into the active scenario. Continue? ]
[ Critical Warning. A potential scenario breach has been detected. Respond within 30 seconds, or Leo Grady and Paul Barrera will be automatically added to the active delving pool. If added, their parameters will shift: They must survive until dawn or until the scenario is terminated ]
[ Do you accept Leo Grady and Paul Barrera as delvers? If rejected, they must vacate the dungeon immediately. Any further interference will trigger automatic enlistment ]
[ Alert. Leo Grady earns a first strike. A second—and last—strike of interference will automatically bind him to Scenario 91 ]
[ Alert. Paul Barrera earns a first strike. A second—and last—strike of interference will automatically bind him to Scenario 91 ]
I waved most of the notifications off except for one.
[ Do you accept Leo Grady and Paul Barrera as delvers? ]
“I accept.”
The Resolve emanating out of Leo was like a hurricane, and it surprised me how potent and thrilling it was. He was right there and I could just drink up his essence with a snap of my finger, and I’d get to enjoy all of it. But I held myself back a moment later. Paul had a glowing Resolve as well. Typical for Hunters. These humans had encountered the dark world of civilization, and it had taken a delicious toll on their essence, building and warping it into a delicacy. I had fed on a few in the past and they were always a treat like ice cream on a hot summer day. Hunters shed off at least three or four essences when they die. They were always welcome in my dungeon, and I wished they were more of them.
Stick to the plan, I reminded myself. Keep it together.
Paul hoisted Harrison to his feet while Leo leveled his shotgun at the treeline. But the moment Frosty’s immense silhouette materialized through the foliage, a creature he had never seen before—a large creature that almost towered the first floor of the cabin itself—well, Leo froze. There was no way a shotgun would bring that beast down before it could take his head off. I could hear his thoughts screaming at him for being stupid enough to run to the cabin, desperate for my help to spare his brother. Deep down, he knew coming here would eventually force him to delve. Deep down, that was what his dreams and nightmares were telling him, but he wrestled away from the truth. But there was a limit to how much you could ignore a problem, and it wasn’t forever.
Well, I was trying to save someone too, so I understood his desperation.
“Don’t worry, Leo,” I said. “It’s not your time yet.”
I paused, smiling.
“But I also want to scare you a little.”
“Run!” Leo said, finally able to move his feet.
Paul shoved Harrison into the backseat and scrambled into the passenger side while Leo threw himself behind the wheel. Fortunately, they had left the engine idle. But before Leo could slam the transmission into reverse, Frosty slowly shuffled into the glare of the headlights.
Paul gasped. “What the fuck is that noise? Is that…”
And it dawned on him. It dawned on Leo, too, but Harrison already knew what the sound was.
It was a person.
Specifically, Pascoe.
The poor bastard was currently being dissolved alive inside Frosty’s cavernous stomach, screaming as the juices ate through his flesh. His screams were muffled by the several pounds of muscles, fat, and fur that Frosty has, but in the night air, amplified by the snowman’s traits, his screams still sounded as if it was just behind a thin drywall. And the effect was potent. Harrison’s Resolve had jumped to a bright yellow when Leo and Paul rescued him, but it had gone down to a deep orange. Both Paul and Leo dropped to a yellow-green. It would take a while to whittle their Resolve down, but that was not the plan for tonight.
Leo couldn’t move from the dread effect. It would freeze him and the others for at least six seconds, enough for Frosty to do what I liked to call his model runway catwalk. He stalked around the car, making sure that the delvers hear Pascoe screaming inside his stomach as if he was showing off. Once he was back in front of the car, he stared at them and that broke the spell.
“Did it catch him?” I asked Oracle.
Oracle gave me a thumbs up and showed me the live feed of the dash cam on Casey’s car. “Clear as day. Frosty will be so happy that he looked quite handsome on camera. I hope he doesn’t have stage fright.”
Then Frosty vomited.
He violently regurgitated Pascoe directly onto the hood of the car. The half-liquid body slammed against the windshield with a sickening, wet thud, planting a partially dissolved face squarely against the glass. The facial tissue and orbital muscles had already been eaten away by gastric acid; Pascoe's right eye drooped like warm gelatin, while his left remained horrifically intact, staring blankly through the dashboard. He let out one final, agonizing cough. Not from his mouth, but through the melted, smoking gash of his exposed sternum, spurting a mixture of bile and blood.
Then, slicked in a thick coating of slime and mucus, Pascoe’s remains slid off the hood and crumpled onto the gravel. Dead.
[ You have gained 2 essences: Calvin Pascoe ]
[ You have gained 300 crystals ]
“What are you waiting for? Drive the FUCKING car!” Harrison screamed.
Leo slammed the transmission into reverse and stomped on the gas pedal. The tires tore into the gravel, sending the vehicle hurtling backward. Frosty gave chase, his strides shaking the ground, but he abandoned the pursuit after about a hundred feet as the car pulled out of his immediate reach. Swapping gears, Leo cut the wheel, spun the car around into a hard U-turn, and gunned the engine, speeding away into the dark.
I pulled up the System menu and clicked on the scenario interface, hovering my presence on the bottom right corner of the screen.
[ Do you wish to end the scenario? Warning. Ending a scenario will designate all remaining delvers as the scenario’s survivors. Proceed? ]
“Are you sure, sire?” Duke Henry asked. “The soldier is still with them.”
I shrugged. “I have a plan for him. Unlike Milford, he doesn’t know much. His presence will keep the Helwing brotherhood distracted once they figure out who the fuck he is. The professor will have a field day. I want Harrison to tell them the nature of the dungeon.”
“You wish for them to know where your Core is?”
“I want him to know where it is so he can face me.”
“The Sawyers can shadow them from a distance,” Duke Henry suggested. “Just to ensure Harrison doesn't attempt to contact the Astarothian cult or The Collector. I doubt he’ll have the wits or the opportunity, but we’ve been bombarded with enough surprises these past few days.”
“Tell them. Make sure they keep their distance. I don’t want for the brotherhood to get a whiff that they are werewolves. Paul has an exceptionally strong nose for sensing lycans.”
“Understood. I’ll text Alan,” Duke Henry said.
I returned to the screen again.
[ Do you wish to end the scenario? ]
“Yes,” I said.
[ Scenario 91 has concluded. The System is pleased. Congratulations to the surviving delvers! ]
[ Reward: 1,000 Crystals for completing a scenario! ]
[ Threat Level – Regional: Nearby denizens within a 60-mile radius of your dungeon are aware of your presence, consciously or subconsciously, because of your choices and the events of the previous scenarios. Your Dread effects increase in potency ]
[ Total Essences Collected: 3 ]
[Congratulations, Mark Castle! Your domain is expanding. Continue to feed and grow, and be the best Death Core you’ll ever be! ]
[ If you wish to stay anonymous, please avoid drawing attention to yourself by eliminating all the delvers! Or be ambitious and dominate your world! ]
[ Leo Grady, Paul Barrera, and Julius Harrison are to be rewarded for their survival of the dungeon. Proceed to the rewards tab? ]
“No.”
[ All surviving delvers must be rewarded. ]
Which brought me to the next phase of my plan.
“System, reclassify these parameters,” I said aloud. “This is under a multi-day delve. I will reward them with a boon instead.”
The System paused for several seconds as it calculated what I had just said. I was no stranger to the mechanics of a multi-day delves. Tessa Burton did it. Even Leo Grady did it. When a delver was not rewarded by the Death Core, they were instead given a boon and was forced to delve again until they survived the next scenario (or die trying). Mother Gertrude and Lord Zal explained it further to me. Like video games, Boons were for adventurers to level up inside a dungeon. Boons increased either their strength, agility, constitution, wisdom, intelligence, and charisma, per the Dungeon Lord’s choice. Sometimes, it was for a particular skill, but the delvers usually get to choose that, not the Core. I had given such boons to Tessa and Leo to help me fight Coach Hodge and his cult, which they used to escape and fight their way out.
However, most of my scenarios were one night only events. I had never used it again since the massacre a year ago. There was no need for me to be that cruel to humans I was already harvesting for food.
Until tonight.
I told myself that this was different. Leo—and as much as I hate to admit, but his Helwing brothers as well—needed to get these boons. I was hoping to grant Casey and Kincaid this as well, but unfortunately, they weren’t here.
The screen chimed.
[ Accepted. Boons will be rewarded to the surviving delvers. You may select their boons within the next twenty-four hours, or before the next scenario commences. ]
[ They must delve again within the next three days. Failure to enter the dungeon within the allotted time will incur a penalty to the delver’s Resolve. ]
[ Please schedule the next scenario on the dungeon tab interface ]
I opened the calendar and selected two days from now, when the Dead Pacifica crew was going to do their live show.
“Well, you asked for it. Here’s my help, Leo. For your brother,” I said. “But I also need you to use it to protect Charlie, too.”
I readied his nightmares on the screen, preparing the message to wedge deep within his subconscious. Hopefully, it was not too late for him to understand it. It was already too late to persuade him not to join Dead Pacifica. I tried, but my cousin was a stubborn man.
So, Charlie Castle must survive until the end of the delve with the help of Leo and the brotherhood. If Leo refused, Danny was there to keep him in line. I also had to keep them from killing me while I get a heart-to-heart with my cousin. And if he survive, wouldn’t it be wonderful if he get to meet me? Wouldn’t that be so nice? I daydreamed daily for the night he would stand before me. To see the real me.
I didn’t think it’d be so bad for him to understand what happened to me.
I needed my family to understand.
Maybe then…maybe then I can fill something in the void nestled deep within.
It was up to my cousin now and his Resolve, and the allies I had gathered to keep him safe. But I feared it may not be enough. A lot of things could go wrong inside the dungeon. A lot of people, some his allies, were going to die. There were plenty of factors I had to take into account. My archetypes already apologized to me in advance if they killed him if his Resolve dipped to red.
If the unthinkable happened, I know I must accept his fate. If his Resolve dropped to red, I couldn't stop my archetypes from killing him. This was the rules of the dungeon, and I’d feed on his essence.
And yet, I wondered if I could even do that.
Fuck, I hoped I’d never find out.
I turned my gaze back on the main road where Leo and the others just drove past the gas station. They were on their way to Point Hope. Inside the cabin, Harrison was a blubbering, hysterical mess, desperately screaming for the police. If I hadn’t terminated the scenario when I did, his Resolve were probably very low. But now that the immediate threat was behind them, I bet it was also ticking upward.
“I need to get out! I need to get as far away from here as possible!” Harrison exclaimed.
Paul shouted at him to calm down, but even he was freaked out. He’d never seen an abominable snowman before and I could tell it shook him. He expected to see scary creatures that Leo claimed to exist, but he wasn’t expecting that, and he definitely wasn’t expecting he’d react like this—like a coward. He didn’t like this feeling, and it was making him very angry.
But that was when Harrison made a mistake.
Leo drove past the “Welcome to Point Hope” sign, and when Harrison saw that, he lost his shit. Harrison wanted Leo to drive east. All he could think about was going east and getting a hold of an Astarothian sect, preferably drive by an airport so that he could actually fly back home to New York and report to The Collector.
Harrison got behind Leo, shaking his shoulder, trying to convince him to turn the car around and head to the highway instead. Just not Point Hope. Never Point Hope. If he had to wrestle the wheel away from him, Harrison was willing to do it. The sudden, frantic movement caused Harrison’s sleeve to ride up his left forearm. Paul recognized the symbol of Astaroth tattooed there.
Without a word, Paul twisted around in his seat, inverted his weapon, and slammed the heavy buttstock of the tactical shotgun squarely into Harrison’s face.
He was knocked out cold.
“What in the hell did you do that for?” Leo yelled, slamming his hands against the wheel as the car veered slightly onto the shoulder.
“Devil cult,” Paul grumbled, breathing heavily as he watched the unconscious soldier slump against the seat. “He’s one of them.”
“One of who?”
“Look at his arm. He’s part of the cult you fought a year ago.”
Leo glanced back, saw the symbol, and stared straight ahead on the road. He heaved a deep, dejected sigh.
I chuckled.
Even with the surprise escalation of events with Leo and Paul’s arrival, everything was going swimmingly for the main event.