Helsing Chronicles: The Bastard of Rosmarus; Chapter 2

Guide
Intro
First Chapter

    “Come on,” shouted Vera over the laughter of Melody and Shiori. “You really expect us to believe she pulled an Archduke Ferdinand? No. There is no freaking way a baba yaga led you up and down the county for a week, jinxed you into delirium, and then lost her head because she hid in the same motel as you!”

    “Cross my heart and swear to die,” answered Hassan over the radio. “Some jaegers were in town, they happened to notice her, she heard gunfire, she assumed we had finally gotten the jump on her, and then she ran to the motel. It’s not that strange; I mean she probably chose it for all the same reasons we did.”

    “And how exactly do you know about her getting spooked?” asked Shiori smugly.

    “We ran into the jaegers afterward,” replied Desmond. “Hey, hunter boys, you don’t happen to know anyone by the name of Clint or Lawrence Eddington do you?”

    The group was split between an old church van used by the Weird Sisters and an even older jeep used by the Dragon and the Silvercross. Additionally, in the van there were two jaegers, a kind of supernatural mongrel with enough magical ancestors to provide some general abilities but which was otherwise human. These two had joined the girls for their mission in Monterey, and since their own car had been smashed in the process they were now hitching a ride to their uncle. Most jaegers were hunters, and where the Helsing had an order they had clans. There was also a vagabond, a footsoldier of the Catholic Church’s paranormal army, in the jeep. He had been with the two knights for most of their trip through Oregon and Northern California, and now he was on his way to Mexico to kill the things that lurked in the shadows of the cartels. The eight warriors were passing through Stockton, the sun low in the sky, when all their chatter was interrupted.

    Goosebumps formed on Melody’s arms, a morbid stench hit Desmond, and a rectangular device on the dashboard of the van started to cheep angrily. Both vehicles started swerving toward the right as the drivers looked for an exit from the freeway.

    “What’s going on?” asked Gregory Dunwich, one of the two jaegers. There was nervousness in his voice, not because the driving had been reckless (it hadn’t) but because the whole vehicle was now brimming with the lethal instincts of the knights.  

    “Leeches,” growled Desmond.

    “A dozen at least,” replied Melody.

    Shay Dunwich’s eyes widened, and he asked, “So we’re just going in? We’re going after them without knowing where they are, without any tactical knowledge, and with sundown in less than an hour? How is that in any way a good idea? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never even set foot in this city. This is suicide!”

    Lorenzo de Las Casas didn’t panic like the brothers, but he wasn’t overeager about the move either. “Are you sure about this?” he asked. “There’s got to be knights or hunters of some kind in the area, maybe even the Third Legion, whom we could alert instead.”

    What the brothers and the vagabond didn’t understand was that Helsing had a very simple policy when it came to vampires. They killed them on sight. Vampires were twice fallen, meaning that they were already in a state of spiritual damnation, and they also happened to be among the most vicious creatures the knights made a habit of facing. There was a pact in place which was supposed to offer protection to vampires that followed certain rules concerning feeding, but ever since the Senate had broken its contracts with the Helsing, the knights had stopped caring about the pact. The fact that many law abiding vampires had participated in the Scourge might have played a role in that particular policy.

    As soon as Lorenzo realized that the knights had no intention of backing down, he closed his eyes and began praying in Latin. As he uttered the words, lines of scripture began to appear on his skin. It might have been the mystical power that sometimes attends faith, or it might have been the arsenal of magical artifacts that the Vatican had built up, or might have been a combination of the two. Whatever the case, the knights soon began a prayer of their own, taken from the Grimoire Prima. The prayer was to be spoken once in Avalonian and then again in the vernacular, and most of it was actually made up of two parallel prayers following the Way of Trembling and the the Way of Exultation which had been combined. When the English recitation was spoken, there was supposed to be two separate speakers for the two styles.

    “Heavenly Lord,” intoned Vera. “Your word makes my heart to leap. While I was yet unborn, Your will brought warmth into me.”

    “King of all days,” said Desmond. “You have seen the secret places of my soul. You have walked with me through temptation and torment”

    “You have made the sun to shine upon me.”

    “I called from the depths, and you answered me. Now the cries of others come out of the darkness.”

    “Now my breath stirs and readies for a cry of battle.”

    “Let me be emptied of my pride, my bitterness, my regrets.”

    “Let the vessel of my soul be made full of your loving kindness and with your righteous anger.”

    “I have heard the fatherless, the widows, the oppressed, the poor. You have remembered them in their sorrows, and so may You lead me to remember them now.”

    “May my feet be swift to meet the tormentors. May my arms be strong to drive them from their wickedness. May there be courage in my heart to stand against them.”

    “May all temptation be burned away from me. Let my hands be cleansed in the blood of the twice fallen.”

    “Let my axe swing in the Way of Exultation.”

    “Let my scythe fall in the Way of Trembling.”

    Then all five of the Helsing knights joined their voices to say, “Amen.”

    As soon as the prayer was finished, Desmond grabbed a pack of supplies containing a bottle of anti-vamp elixir, some medical supplies, and a few spells sealed in magic beans; patted himself down to make sure he had all his weapons; put the silver crucifix under his shirt to wake the wolf up (he had used a combination of behavioral conditioning and enchantment to give the cross the power to summon his inner beast with its touch); climbed on top of the jeep; and leapt to one of the buildings beside the freeway. It was fortunate that the Peacekeepers had managed to weave a mild yet wide glamour enchantment into the arcane essence of the world and instilled smaller scale, genetically inherited versions of the same enchantment into a large portion of paranormal beings (as intended, it had been bred into the rest of the population quickly enough) just over a thousand years ago. Otherwise someone might have noticed a hairy, fanged, axe-wielding youth running around the roofs of Stockton. He let out a howl that alerted any other werewolves in the area to his presence. If they were feeling sentimental about their species, and very brave, a second howl could draw their aid.

    In the van, Melody grabbed a similar pack while Shiori pressed buttons on an altered graphing calculator signalling the Peacekeepers that there was going to be action. The changeling decided to leave her finger dagger behind in favor of a silver straight razor, leapt out the window, and rode the wind. It’s hard to describe the action that the fair folk refer to as “riding the wind”; it’s partially a sort of quality or style of movement and it’s also rather like how it sounds. It was like she had leapt onto a silk curtain which enfolded her and billowed through the air. She looked like an owl in flight, a pebble skipping across a lake, and like an Olympic ice skater all at once as she went in search of her enemies.

* * * * *

    Dante Jensen had agreed to the extra potions on the condition that no supplies be depleted and that certain ingredients not be touched at all. Which meant that Ephraim and Daniel were going shopping. At the moment they were in Winco, and the wizard was sniffing bananas as he deliberated over which would be most suitable to their needs. In truth, he hardly needed to do anything but look at the fruits to comprehend their mystical qualities, but he liked making a show of things. It tended to impress people more.

    “Believe it or not, indulging in blatant vanity in front of someone who can literally smell sins is actually kind of counterproductive,” said Ephraim lazily. Then a look of amused curiosity came over his expression as the empath asked, “Now what’re you doing?”

    As it happened, what Daniel was doing right then was whimpering in pain and nursing his burned hand. He had hypnotized himself a few minutes before to become convinced upon sniffing seven bananas that there was a horrible parasite dwelling inside his handler and that he needed to remove it. The moment he’d raised the knife, however, it had turned red hot and dashed away the entrancement. This was Daniel’s third attempt since they had left the keep to find some way around his magical contract. It wasn’t going well.      

    Ephraim grinned as the wizard sucked at his palm and brooded over the failure. “Getting tired of this yet?” the sin-eater asked. “Because I’m not. This is the most fun I’ve had all week!”

    Daniel stopped sucking at the hand and began to shake it. The burn had been minor and he was already starting to heal, but it still hurt. A few moments later and he felt well enough to grab a bunch of the fruits and put it in the cart. Ephraim handed him the knife back, and Daniel took it with a rough grab and shoved it back into the sheath. He took hold of the cart and grumbled, “Come on, we’ve got everything we need from here.”

    Daniel had been taken the previous afternoon, the interrogation had begun midmorning, and over the course of his captivity he had been knocked on his rear more often and thoroughly than at any other time in his life. He enjoyed magic, and the first task had been genuinely fun, which had been enough for him to momentarily forget his actual condition. Now he was still exercising his talents, but it was to a lesser degree and in consequence he felt his wounded ego once again. There was an inward struggle between his eagerness at the task and his resentment over his captivity. The odd thing was that Daniel actually found his hatred for his captors slipping away, a phenomenon that disagreed entirely with his sense of how things should be. Truth be told, much of his bitterness was either supplied through force of will or through his annoyance at his own lack of bitterness.

    “Any idea where we can find some bums?” asked Daniel as they got into the car, a green camry that had seen better days.

    “Sure,” said Ephraim. “Just as long as you’re not going to chop them up or anything, I know a place.”

    He turned on the radio to one of the hidden stations, and a female voice announced, “...has been purchased by Rosmarus, one of the leading mage guilds in the nation. The Wand’ring Cub has long been well known as a social and economic foothold of the Third Legion, a group which has traditionally been hostile to Rosmarus. Many are speculating as to what could have motivated the exchange, but so far no representatives of either the guild or the legion have made any statements on the subject. The inn is located in Tahoe, and it serves as a major venue in the supernatural community there.

    “In other news,” continued the announcer. “The Groezenfarkh is scheduled to take place in San Francisco under the full moon next month. The last time the event took place in the area of such a large city was in 1953, and it is widely believed that this year’s market will produce drastic changes in the political and economic landscape of the American Netherworld. Representatives of the Senate have expressed concern over the Groezenfarkh, and have stated that they will be dispatching sentinels to prevent open aggression between the various factions in attendance and to stifle any mischief that might be aimed at local Topsiders. The representative had no further comments when asked for more specific concerns, but those who think the sale of the Wand’ring Cub was a result of aggressive, economic maneuvering have suggested that the Legion and other factions might take action against Rosmarus at the gathering.”

    “Awkwaaaard...” said Ephraim in a singsong voice as he changed the station. He glanced back at the guy who had been trying to kill him shortly before and asked, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

    Daniel grunted and said, “Go ahead. You do own me after all.”

    For a moment, Ephraim didn’t say anything, instead considering his thoughts while Weird Al filled the silence. Then he asked, “Why do you get so excited about potions? I mean, I get being excited over something you’re good at, but there was also plenty of technomancy and enchantment scattered around the keep and you didn’t get like so excited about any of that. Plus, there were also some openings into other subjects during your mini lectures earlier, but you never took advantage of them.”

    Daniel shrugged. “Probably just because I know potions better than any of the other crafts,” he said. “When Rossum took me in, my mentor pretty much ignored everything else except history for the first three months. He said that spellwork was too easy for me, and he didn’t think I’d get any really deep understanding until I was forced to struggle. So it may not be my best craft, but it is the one I know the most about.”

    Then the wizard said, “My turn. Why does everything have to be done by tomorrow?”

    “I didn’t tell you?” asked the sin-eater. “There’s a mission we’re taking off for tomorrow. We always have to make sure there’s enough knights and zealots to patrol the city and defend the keep, and the Sisters, the Dragon, and the Silvercross are all supposed to get back tonight so we’ll finally be able to send out a large party.” He glanced sideways at Daniel before he added, “Oh, and you’ll be in it. That’s one of the tasks.”

    Daniel tried to understand what that meant. He hadn’t been trained for combat, but he was still dangerous enough himself and experienced in the taking of life that the mission was unlikely to threaten him. There was also the contract, which seemed to prevent him from taking advantage of the mission to get away. In other words, the mission didn’t really change things in any really meaningful way. It also didn’t feel very important. But something told Daniel that it should feel important.

    Ephraim parked the car a few minutes walk from where he said they could find some homeless folk. As they got out, Daniel looked out around the darkening street and tried to understand what was happening. Why was he being so compliant? The question had nagged at him several times, and he had yet to come up with a good answer. It had to be more than a celebrity crush and the freedom to pursue a hobby. Why was he going along so easily with people who had kidnapped and tortured him? Ephraim did seem genuinely likable on some level, but it couldn’t be as simple as that. He couldn’t be charmed that easily, could he? Was he really just a reed swaying in the wind, bending with whatever social environment he happened to be in at that moment?

    In that moment of self-examination, the wizard felt something. As he prodded at his own motivations, he felt something hot and bright pushing back at him. He tried again, harder this time, and a wave of nauseous anxiety swept over him, throwing his thoughts out of order. Someone had meddled with his head, and it was pissing him off.

    He looked at the street and saw a car coming. Almost without thinking, he took a few steps away from the street and charged at his handler. For a moment he thought the attempt might work, that he might be able to shove Ephraim into mortal danger, but then his legs rebelled and forced him to swerve around his target. An instant later he felt the impact of the vehicle snap his neck and break several bones. As he struggled to reassemble himself over the next few minutes, it occurred to Daniel that he was getting really tired of losing

* * * * *

    The vampires were hiding in a foreclosed, two-story house near the freeway. It looked like it had been owned by Netherworlders before. It had a fence, ornate windows, small statues, and the remains of a garden that might have included any number of magical herbs, all features that lent themselves to wards and enchantments. In fact, there were still just such wards hiding the shelter from just such people as Melody. It could be that they had purchased some ready-made spells, or that they had a taskmage working with them, or that at least one of the bloodsuckers had been a mage (if the knights were really lucky, a witch) in its former life. Whatever the case, there had been a leak, some weak spot in the magical defenses which had allowed Desmond and Melody to sense the vampires.

    The changeling alighted on the roof of the house as the sun sank into the horizon, raised her wand, and shot a streak of violent light into the sky that zigzagged into the shape of a rose. The others would be there soon, but they needed her to bring down the enchantment quickly and they were quickly running out of daylight. Without a second thought, the girl slipped between the cracks of the spellwork into the frontyard of a household of paranormal predators and began disarming the defenses. She had most of them down by the time she went inside and came face-to-face with a big, trollish changeling.

    The daytime guardian swung a huge, wooden bat with a cluster of sinister nails sprouting from the business end directly at her face. Melody dodged the blow, but before she could gather herself up for a counterstrike the hulking changeling was already on his second swing. She leapt out of the way again and this time one of the nails dragged across her ankle, leaving a shallow but agonizing gash in its wake. Melody tried to suppress the pain as her opponent readied another swing. She tapped into all her instincts and training, took in the situation, and plotted a swift course that would take her across the room and behind a sofa. If she put enough distance between herself and that club, she’d have time to pull off a spell. The girl might have been known as an assassin, but she was the least combat oriented of the trio. Magic and stealth were her forte, not the pure strength and fighting instinct she needed to overcome this thug.

    The bat descended. Her tightened muscles uncoiled with vigor. She darted across the planned path, her wounded ankle leaving a trail of scarlet droplets. The bat smashed into the floor, spraying bits of debris halfway across the room. The pixish changeling landed on the other side of the couch, resisted the urge to relax, produced a hex from her mental assortment, and rose to aim her wand at her trollish counterpart. It was then that she saw motes of red energy, the precise same shade as that of her trail, gathering at the end of the thug’s club. No. His wand. The leeches’ guard clutched the wand in his meaty fingers as power rolled visibly across his thick, wrinkled skin and pointed it at the invader. His stance, his inhuman grin, even his grimy hair all exuded that same power. He looked rather like a rhinoceros, if rhinoceroses shot lasers from their horns. Even as Melody went through the first motions, mental and physical, of her hex she heard the guttural incantation mastering that crimson strength, and she knew that she had been too slow.

    The bolt shot out and took hold of the girl. The force of it hurled her against the wall, and it wrapped around her like some furious, burning vine. It constricted, and as it did so Melody could feel heat and electricity and psychic energy all struggling to invade and tear into her. Then there was a terrible roar and the pixish knight could just barely focus enough to see Desmond come crashing through a boarded up window, split the trollish wand in half with a stroke of his axe, and reverse the swing to slam the dull back of the axehead into the opponent’s gaping face.

    The spell began to dissipate the moment the wand was split, and as soon as the tension relieved enough for Melody to think straight she uttered a single word of some fey dialect to gather up the remnants of the spell under her will. Meanwhile, Desmond knelt over the unconscious thug, pressed the ring finger--the finger of binding--of his left hand over his heart, and uttered an incantation of his own. The spell required three lines of utterances, but the werewolf had performed it many times before, had become familiar with it. The words did not wait in line to leave his tongue, but instead all leapt off together in a handful of seconds. The trollish changeling, whoever he was, would now have all his power and his old life sealed away for a set amount of years. The enchantment would keep him safe, but it would also keep him utterly impotent, unable to participate in the struggles of the Netherworld, or even most of the Topside struggles. It was one of the spells that lay within the mystical foundations of the Helsing, and anyone expecting to become a full fledged knight was required to learn it. After all, it was basically a portable prison.

    “You alright?” asked Desmond as Melody got back to her feet, the conquered curse gathered around her like red hot barbed wire.

    “I’m fine,” she said as she closed the wound on her ankle. She smiled at the werewolf and added, “Nice warm up they gave us!”

    Desmond merely nodded and said, “The others should be here soon. Shiori has been jumping around rooftops, and Vera took to the skies as soon as she could hand off the wheel to the brothers. Last I saw they were both being held up by a tengu, probably another daytime guard.”

    “That won’t hold them for long,” remarked Melody.

    Desmond nodded again and said, “The ones still in the cars will be right behind them.” Then he added, “Hassan won’t like this. He’s too tired to really control his powers, and we can’t risk a fire in the middle of a neighborhood. He’ll have to keep his skills at a minimum.”

    They stared out the shattered window for a moment and wondered just how long it would be before the rest of the party arrived. They could hear the labored breathing of prisoners, the creaks and groans of the house, and the faint whispers of sinister beings. There was less than a minute of daylight left. Melody flicked her wand and the cork came off one of her two bottles of anti-vamp elixir. Droplets of the substance slid out across her frame until they settled into a glittering armor. She whispered a few more spells to guard them against the undead enemies, and then she prepared some jinxes, leaving them just barely unfinished on the tip of her wand. Desmond simply shifted his weight, gazed around, and assumed a ready stance.

    The sounds of unseen things continued, drawing the attention of the knights at first toward the kitchen and then to some corner of the ceiling and then to some other corner. The creaks, moans, and whispered carried on even after the sun finished its descent, the bloosuckers waiting to strike.

    “Melody,” said Desmond. “I smell draugr.”

    The pixish changeling didn’t have time to reply before three of the earth-bound vampires burst up as if the floor and the dirt beneath it has been liquid. She did, however, have time to turn her attention downwards. She hurled one against the wall with a jinx and then lashed out at another one with her silver razor. She didn’t kill either of the undead, but she did keep them off balance, unable to come at her together in their full strength. At the same time, the third one closed in on Desmond, reaching out with its dreadful claws. Having seen his axe, the draugr had assumed that he’d be handicapped if he was too close to deal out the broad swings of the weapon. If one was fast enough, it was usually a fairly good tactic against axemen. Usually.

    With a jerk of his wrist and a loosening of his grip, the werewolf changed his handling on the axe so that held it with his right hand just below the actual blade. He treated it as an extension of his fist, punching straight at the creature with the top of the axehead. He felt a rib crack under the blow, and he landed several more before the draugr had the slightest chance to recover. The vampire stumbled back several paces, and found itself once more at a distance suitable for the more lethal edge of the werewolf’s weapon. With a mighty heave, the Knight of the Silver Cross decapitated his foe. And then he turned to face the ten nosferatu that were slipping into the room.

    As the twelve remaining vampires filled the living space of the house, the back door blasted open and two sets of tires screeched to a halt outside. Vera Maheras strode into the house holding before her a nineteenth century shotgun with several Atlantean runes along the barrel, a variety of gears and other minor mechanisms grafted on to the original design, and the line “Hell is empty and all the devils are here” carved into the handle. The weapon roared out once and then again and again, belching arcane fire out across the battleground. The rounds were loaded with large pellets of a particular amalgam developed for Netherworld battles which were coated in crystallized zauberstaub that combusted upon the firing of the gun, and they could be relied upon to deal out a lot of hurt to pretty much any paranormal horror they might be aimed at. The vampires became a veritable hurricane tearing through the house as they howled, cursed, ran, and leapt in response the harpy’s offensive. Some tried to charge at Vera, but Shiori was right behind her comrade and she easily cut down the first attacker and frightened away the second. After all eight shells had been expended, leaving nearly every one of the undead enemies grievously maimed, Vera tossed the gun to the side and drew a saber. With the air clear of bullets, all eight of the warriors advanced into the fray.

    Shiori immediately darted into the middle of it all and struck down a few of the wounded vampires on her way. Hassan, being unable to safely use his guns, wreathed his gauntleted fists in flame and approached one of the two remaining draugr. The jaegers moved as a single unit with knives and iron knuckles, each one covering the openings of the other and creating openings among the enemies for the other to exploit. The vagabond circled the main field of battle to charge at the ranks of the undead from the side with a rapier, upon the blade of which were scrawled several lines of Latin. They all fell into independent duels with the fiends, and the battle might have gone on like that for over an hour except that one of the nosferatu was a warlock, that is to say an undead being that had been a witch in its previous life.

    The nosferatu warlock began hurling curses around the house with reckless malevolence. The building shook with the wild power of the battle and the knights struggled with every hex to escape the dread will of the vampire. Then one of the spells hit Desmond, sending him to his knees as he felt a bit of the creatures own hunger go into his wolf. The beast carried with it all Desmond’s raw desires, untempered by ethical law, and it had always been unruly, but this creeping spite and perversity was something else entirely. It was toxic on a spiritual and physical level as the knight lost the control necessary to tap into and guide the strength of his wolf. Right down to his bones, he could feel his soul warring against itself, and he screamed in agony. The move forced the other knights and hunters to move together to shield their comrade, and also to focus whatever attention they could spare on the warlock.

    Before any of the vampires had a chance to take advantage of Desmond’s fall, Shiori swept past them all to the warlock like water trickling through stones in its irresistible descent. She stood right in front of the sorcerer, her blade held out before her and the sinister wand pointed right at her chest, and met his eyes. In them she saw nearly three decades of bloodlust, power, and spite. She saw him draw upon the spiritual imprint of his own first death, the event by which he was turned, and feed it into the instrument of his dreadful talents. The curse struck at Shiori, full of cold morbidity, and washed harmlessly off of her. Translated literally, the word “shinigami” means “god of death”, which is perhaps why it was so unwise to aim a curse based directly off the power of death at Shiori Kirihara.

    The knight smiled and said, “My turn,” as she raised her blade. Then, with a stroke so eloquent that it almost seemed lazy, she beheaded the warlock. The other vampires did not last very long after that.

    * * * * *

    Dante’s device for producing zauberstaub--or at least the one that Daniel was using at the moment--had originally been a coffee machine before the magician’s technomancy had been worked on it. Daniel hadn’t studied technomancy very much so he didn’t know whether it was a matter of function or fashion, but pretty much every technomantic device he’d ever seen had been in the steampunk style. He could never make up his mind over whether he found the tendency obnoxious or charming, but, given that the wizard was back to brewing, he was leaning much more towards charming at the moment. And since he felt obligated to be grumpy and vengeful, that made him a bit annoyed, although not as much as he should have been. In fact, he felt something horribly like cheer as he worked the handle of the machine.

    After an unusually active cloud of zauberstaub with mixed shades of grey and brown and a few bright specks of green settled into the container, he gestured for Troy, a young zealot who had volunteered to help out as one of his weekly chores, to clear out the waste. Then Daniel poured the substance into a small vial and went to the large table on which all the other ingredients had been gathered. Ephraim was assisting in the work again to a degree that Daniel would have found insulting except that his skills were a bit limited at the moment. He wasn’t exactly sure of the injuries, but he suspected that his powers were still being diverted by cracks in his spine and bruising to his internal organs. He tried to be angry at Ephraim for that, but he knew perfectly well that the damage was his own fault.

    “Shouldn’t they be back by now?” he asked.

    The sin-eater looked up for a moment and said, “Yeah, Dante said that they ran into some vampires up in Stockton and got delayed by a few hours. Desmond got hit by a nasty curse, but the rest of them are fine and they’ll all be home very soon.”

    “Oh,” said Daniel. He examined the lupine vigor potion and the wolfen subjugation draught carefully, eyeing the color and sniffing for the odor. Since the potion he had devised to empower the Silvercross used those two as tonics, he had to be particularly careful with those two. Any mistake in the initial brewing would be made exponentially worse in the second stage, even if he did get the proportions exactly right. “So does that mean we’ll be delayed? I mean, our party can’t really head off first thing if the last one is still in bed from the bumpy ride home. You said they need someone ready to deal with local trouble, right?”

    For a moment Ephraim and Troy both turned their gazes on the wizard, befuddlement plainly evident. Then the sin-eater slapped his forehead and said, “Oh...I’m dumb.” Then offered an apologetic grin and went on, “Sorry, I forgot to mention something earlier. Our groups always take off at or after the end of the day, not the beginning--the idea being that we want to get wherever we’re going when the sun rises instead of when it sets.”

    Daniel thought through that new information and came out rather puzzled. “If that’s so,” he bagan. “Then why is it so important that we get all this done by tomorrow? It seemed like it was a ‘by break of dawn’ kind of deal.”

    “That’s the part I was so dumb about,” replied Ephraim. “Tomorrow’s a busy day. We’ve got chores and studies and stuff for most of the day, and then the free time between the end of all that and our heading out is pretty much considered sacred. Also, one of your tasks is that as long as you’re with us you’re under the same rules as us--house rules that is, it would be too unfair to give you a task of obeying any order and then making everything else an order instead of a task; hilarious, but unfair--so you’ll have work and lessons too.”

    Daniel froze upon hearing that. Torture was expected. Magically binding contracts came standard in the Netherworld. Even his recent injuries were mostly self-inflicted. None of it was pleasant, but it was all understandable. But now they wanted him to scrub the floors?

    “I really, really hate you,” he said feebly.

    Daniel’s handler merely offered a broad smile and a thumbs up.