FAKE Fic: Unnatural Causes - Part 2
Title: Unnatural Causes - Part 2
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo, Ted, Marty, OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3152
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: An eerie encounter has Dee and Ryo’s investigation going in an unexpected direction. The only thing they’re sure about now is that their tactics will have to change.
Written For: spook_me 2022, using Evil Cats.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Set after Like Like Love. Many thanks to cornerofmadness for helping me with ideas on how the boys might combat the threat they're up against.
Back to Part 1
Hours of patrolling the area proved a waste of effort that first night; neither detective saw or heard anything out of the ordinary. Still, nobody went missing, or not that they heard of, and no dead bodies turned up, so despite the mind-numbing tedium, they weren’t complaining. Well, not too much. The next two nights passed the same way; a lot of walking, which at least kept them from getting too cold as temperatures dropped even lower, but the mysterious killer was still proving elusive. The fourth night, however…
They’d moved to another part of the target area, a few blocks over, still in the twenty-seventh precinct’s jurisdiction, but close to where it bordered the two-four. Dee, still alert but growing increasingly bored, was checking in with Ryo via their cell phones when he saw the cat; at least he thought it was a cat. He only caught a glimpse as it crossed the street ahead of him, far enough away from the nearest streetlamp that he couldn’t see it clearly even though there was only a few yards between them, but there was something off about the way it was moving.
“Hold on, babe, I just saw something.” Thinking the cat might be injured, Dee crossed the street too, heading towards the alley it had vanished into.
“What? What did you see?” Ryo’s voice came urgently through Dee’s phone, which he was still holding to his ear.
“A cat. I think it might be hurt. It went into an alley across the street.”
“Dee…”
“It’s okay, babe, I’m not gonna take any chances.”
“You’d better not! Keep your phone on, and don’t do anything until I get there. I’m on my way.”
“Gotcha.” Leaving the line open, Dee cautiously approached the alley and crouched down just outside it, pulling a flashlight from his pocket and turning it on. “Hey, kitty, you okay?”
A faint mew came from the darkness, a pathetic, helpless sound, and Dee gradually inched forward. “It’s okay, kitty. I won’t hurt ya.” He panned his flashlight around and caught a flicker of movement as something pale disappeared behind a crumbling packing crate. Straightening up, he took a step forward, raising the flashlight to shoulder height and aiming its beam over the top of the crate, catching… something.
It was catlike, certainly, and maybe at a glance it might have passed for one of the hairless breeds, but Dee had met a couple of hairless cats and while they looked kinda weird, they were cute, in an ugly way. This one just looked wrong, and not in the same way that a cat gone bald because of a skin disease looked wrong.
The basic shape said ‘cat’, with four legs jointed like a cat’s, a head at one end, with triangular, mobile ears, and a tail at the other, but… The spine was a prominent ridge along its back, the paws were tipped with sharp claws, the tail was much too long, dragging on the ground, and appeared to be split in two for most of its length, and the teeth looked like they belonged in a piranha. Add to that eyes that glowed an eerie yellow with no sign of pupils, and Dee let go of his phone, dropping it in his pocket and reaching instinctively for his gun as he took a couple of hurried steps backwards.
“Shit! What the frickin’ hell are you?”
The creature arched its back, hissing and chittering angrily at him, gums drawn back and away from those lethal looking teeth. One thing was for sure, whatever it might be, it was far from helpless, and yet it made no move towards him. Just looking at it made Dee’s skin crawl, and he was dimly aware of a growing heat against his upper chest, where his St. Christopher medallion hung, the one Mother Maria Lane had given him when he’d left the orphanage for the police academy. She’d told him back then that she’d had it blessed by an archbishop.
“Wear it and it will protect you from harm,” she’d said, but he somehow doubted she’d ever expected him to need protection from something like this creature.
Just then, pounding footsteps dragged Dee’s attention from the entity before him. He only glanced away for a couple of seconds, just long enough to see his partner running towards him, but when he turned back to the alley the creature was gone as though it had never existed.
Ryo skidded to a halt beside him. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a…” He bit back what he’d been about to say; his partner didn’t look like he was in the mood for being teased.
“Ghost?” Dee suggested, sounding a bit shaky. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he felt cold and clammy all over, although whether from shock or fear he wasn’t sure. The heat from his St. Christopher was fading, and he took that to mean the danger was past, at least for now. “No, not a ghost, not this time, but I’m damned sure whatever I just saw, it wasn’t anythin’ natural.”
“What d’you mean? I thought you said you were following an injured cat.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but then I got a good look at it, and… I know ya won’t believe me, hell, I don’t wanna believe it myself, but I think I just met our killer, and it’s not human.”
Ryo frowned, concerned. “You’re not making any sense, Dee. You think the cat you saw is killing people?”
“I told ya, it wasn’t a cat; when I first saw it I thought it might be, but I was wrong. Look, come here.” Dee stepped into the alley again, shining his flashlight at the filthy, trash-strewn ground. He found the pawprints almost immediately, a trail of them, partly obliterated by drag marks, leading deeper into the alley and behind the crate. They were fresh, easy to see, each print showing a pad, four toes, and the indents made by four sharp claws.
“What’re these drag marks?” Ryo asked, crouching to point them out.
“Made by its tail, or tails. I mean, it was sort of one tail, but it split into two. Long, thin, hairless, almost like tentacles.” Dee shook his head. “It’s hard to describe.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a rat’s tail? Maybe your cat had caught a rat and was dragging it,” Ryo suggested.
“No. You didn’t see it; I did.”
“Maybe you should’ve taken a photo of it. You had your phone right there.”
“Didn’t think to. Anyway, I had my hands full; once I got a good look at it, I figured I needed my flashlight and my gun more than the phone.” Dee was frowning. “Not sure bullets would’a had any effect on it though. Shit!” He swore softly under his breath as something belatedly occurred to him. “I should’a noticed it before, we both should’a, the coroner too; some cops we are! Idiots, the both of us!”
“What’re you talking about?” Ryo stared at his partner, baffled.
“Six dead bodies, some of ‘em dead for days before they were found, and not a mark on any of ‘em.”
“Yes, I know that.”
Dee grabbed his lover’s arm. “No, you’re not gettin’ it. This is New York, there should be rats everywhere, and you know they’ll eat anythin’ they find. A body’s like an all-ya-can-eat buffet to the local rat population, but there were zero signs of predation on any of the victims, and have ya even seen any rats? Not just at the crime scenes, but anywhere around here. We’ve been walkin’ these streets for hours at a time over the last few nights, but I haven’t seen or heard a single rat, and no cats either. Have you?”
It was Ryo’s turn to frown. “Now that you mention it, no, I haven’t. That’s a bit odd.”
“A bit? Understatement of the century, and I’d lay odds there’s not a single rat or stray cat in this whole area. Something’s scared ‘em off, and I’m pretty sure I just met it.”
“So what, you think there’s a territorial wild animal somewhere around here? Isn’t that a job for animal control?” Ryo gnawed on his bottom lip; he was trying his best to cling to rationality, but he could feel his grip starting to slip.
Dee was shaking his head. “Not an animal, leastways not one that belongs in our world.”
“You’d better not be talking about aliens, Dee.” Ryo sounded vaguely annoyed.
“Oh, I wish. Aliens would probably be way easier to deal with.”
“Then what ARE you talking about?”
“Not sure; a demon maybe? Whatever it is, looked to me like somethin’ straight outta Hell.”
Ryo wanted to scoff at the notion, but then he remembered the skeleton, the apparitions that had poured out of it, and the teddy bear that had walked by itself, dragging children from their beds into what Dee had described as another dimension, so he swallowed the impulse and just said, “That’s not something we can tell the Chief, or put in our reports.”
“Yeah, I know, so we don’t. We keep this to ourselves, at least for now. Probably safer that way.” Dee glanced around at the heavy, cloying shadows beyond the reach of his flashlight beam and shivered, but not from the cold. “We should probably get outta here; whatever it was, I doubt it’ll be back tonight. We need to regroup, come up with some kinda plan of action.”
“A plan? How are we supposed to deal with something… um… something unnatural? We’re just cops. If this… thing is what you think it might be, isn’t the job of dealing with it more suited to a priest, or, I don’t know, an exorcist?”
“Exorcists deal with cases of demonic possession, drivin’ the demon from the body of the person it’s taken over, and that’s not what’s happenin’ with this thing. It’s killin’ people, plain and simple, maybe feedin’ off their fear, or drainin’ the life outta them somehow.”
“It still has to be stopped,” Ryo pointed out.
“Not denyin’ that, I just can’t see there bein’ a specific ritual to deal with it. I mean, there could be, I sure as hell don’t know everything, but findin’ that out, bearin’ in mind any ritual that might potentially exist wouldn’t necessarily be a Catholic one… There’re a lot of religions out there, and we don’t have time to research all of ‘em lookin’ for somethin’ that might work against somethin’ I don’t even have a name for.” Dee gave a helpless shrug. “If we wanna stop the killin’ anytime soon, might be it’s down to us to do it.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring. It’s not like we’re trained for… whatever.”
“Hey, don’t count us out, babe. We dealt with Mister Bear, didn’t we? And Halloween last year…”
“That was all you. Both times, really,” Ryo insisted. “I just happened to be there; I hardly did anything.”
“You had my back, kept me from gettin’ dragged into another dimension with the kids, helped me pull ‘em out,” Dee told his lover. “If you weren’t there, I probably would’a run for the hills, screamin’. When I’m scared half to death, you give me the courage to do whatever needs doin’, so don’t go tellin’ me you didn’t do anything ‘cause that’s just not true.”
Ryo blushed faintly. “The only thing I remember doing with that skeleton is telling you not to destroy evidence.”
“Yeah, and I loved you for that, groundin’ me in the real world while everything around me was makin’ me wonder if I was losin’ my mind. Not sure I ever thanked you for that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“Maybe so, but I still should’a.” Dee shivered again. “Whelp, don’t know ‘bout you, but I’m frickin’ freezin’. Let’s head back to the car.”
“Finally, something I can completely agree with.” Leaving the alley, Ryo set off along the sidewalk, Dee falling into step beside him. “We’re not telling Ted and Marty what you saw.”
“Agreed. Like I said before, right now it’s best we don’t tell anyone, even our friends. If we did, we’d risk gettin’ taken off the case, and as much as I might prefer this whole crazy mess to be somebody else’s problem, I got a feelin’ that stopped bein’ an option the moment I crossed paths with that thing. It knows me now, and it knows I’m out to stop it.”
“You don’t think it’ll come after you, do you?”
“Leave its huntin’ grounds? Not sure, but I’ve got some protection if it tries.” Dee pulled the St. Christopher from inside his clothes, the glow of the streetlamps glinting off it. “Might not look like much, but I’m pretty sure it saved my life back there. It got hot, and I mean seriously hot; felt like it should be burnin’ me, but it didn’t hurt, and the demon, or whatever it was, didn’t come near me. I don’t think it could. Man, it was pissed.” Tucking the medallion out of sight again, Dee patted his chest. “Long as I’m wearin’ this, I think I’ll be safe.”
Ryo managed a crooked smile; the talk of demons was beginning to seriously creep him out. “Don’t have a spare, do you?”
“No, sorry. I could get ya one, but I don’t know any archbishops to get it properly blessed the way mine is.” Dee glanced sidelong at his partner, suddenly worried; if Ryo had been the one to confront the creature, he might have become its next victim, all because he didn’t carry any kind of protection. It wasn’t that Ryo didn’t believe in a higher being, but his parents hadn’t been particularly religious whereas Dee had been raised by a Catholic nun. “You could wear my crucifix, I could ask Father Malone to bless it for ya,” he offered. “Might not be as good as an Archbishop’s blessin’, but still better than nothin’.”
“Not sure my beliefs are strong enough to turn a piece of jewellery into a protective amulet,” Ryo admitted. “I wasn’t raised to believe in things like that.”
“We should go visit Father Malone anyway, see if he’ll let us have some holy water.”
“You think that would work against what you saw?”
“No idea. Might not be enough to kill it, or to send it back where it came from, but it should at least cause some damage.” Dee went silent for a few moments, deep in thought, as they turned a corner to see the car parked a couple of blocks away. Then… “Holy water, and I think salt is supposed to be effective against demons.”
“And if it’s not a demon?” Ryo shook his head. “Can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”
“Don’t think about it too hard. We’re just bouncin’ ideas around, like that time at McGinty’s when we were talkin’ about how we’d deal with a zombie apocalypse.” They and their friends had been pretty drunk at the time.
“Okay, I can do that.” Ryo thought it would be easier after a few shots of tequila, but since that wasn’t currently an option, he’d just have to roll with it stone cold sober. “If it’s not a demon, then what?”
“Uh… faeries, goblins, things like that, are allergic to iron, if I’m rememberin’ right. Swords and stuff.”
“Great, any idea where to get an iron sword? Everything these days is carbon steel, which probably isn’t as effective.”
Dee chuckled. “I can just see ya wieldin’ a sword, maybe the Samurai kind.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “Actually, now I think about it, that would be seriously hot.”
The comment came as a brief but reassuring breath of normality in the midst of a totally insane conversation, and Ryo cherished it, but he knew he couldn’t allow either of them to become distracted. “Focus, Dee.”
“Yeah, sorry, better file that thought away for future consideration.”
Ryo chose to ignore that comment in favour of keeping their bizarre conversation on track. “What about silver bullets?”
“That’s for werewolves, and garlic’s for vampires; don’t think either one would work in this case. Gotta be iron.”
“Well, I guess we could stop by a pharmacy, pick up some iron supplements, but I don’t suppose the percentage of iron in them is all that high.”
Dee snapped his fingers. “Magnets! They’re often made from iron!”
That drew a snort of disbelief from Ryo. “You’re suggesting we attack this thing with magnets?”
“Get some, go to work with a file, make ourselves some iron filings to go with our holy water…”
“Which you don’t have yet.”
“Shut up! We’ll get the holy water; that’s the easiest part. All we gotta do is ask. Salt shouldn’t be a problem either, just swing by the supermarket.”
“No need, we’ve already got plenty at home. We picked up that big tub last week,” Ryo reminded his lover.
“Right, for keepin’ the stoop free of ice! Guess that means we just need iron, so either magnets, or maybe an old horseshoe…”
“Can’t help you with that; I’m not even sure if horseshoes are made from pure iron anymore. People probably use steel for those as well these days, otherwise they’d rust too easily.” By now the two men were almost to the car where their friends were waiting.
“Better stop talkin’ about this for now,” Dee murmured. “We can brainstorm some more when we get home.”
Ryo nodded, hurrying towards the car, pulling the rear door open, and scrambling in, scooting across the back seat to make room for his partner.
“Any luck?” Ted asked, twisting around in his seat.
“Nah,” Dee said, slamming the door behind him, pulling his gloves off, and rubbing his hands together. “Quiet as the grave out there. Nothin’ more excitin’ than a stray cat. You guys see anything?”
“If we had we would’a radioed you,” said Marty. “Looks like people are stayin’ home, which is what we want, right?”
“Right.”
Ted nodded. “Leavin’ you two as the only potential victims out there.”
“Easier to be bait that way,” Dee agreed. “You plannin’ on sittin’ here the rest of the night? ‘Cause I was kinda hopin’
to go home where it’s warm. I’d like to see my bed sometime this month.”
“Okay, I can take a hint.” Ted faced front again and fired up the engine.
“Just takes him a while,” Marty quipped. “Hints don’t register until he’s been beaten over the head with ‘em for a few hours.”
“Up yours, wise guy,” Ted replied, grinning at his partner. “How many more nights we gotta do this?”
Leaning back in his seat, Dee sighed. “As many as it takes. We don’t stop until the killings stop.”
Beside him, Ryo stared silently out the side window, a pensive expression on his face.
Part 3
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo, Ted, Marty, OCs.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3152
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: An eerie encounter has Dee and Ryo’s investigation going in an unexpected direction. The only thing they’re sure about now is that their tactics will have to change.
Written For: spook_me 2022, using Evil Cats.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.
A/N: Set after Like Like Love. Many thanks to cornerofmadness for helping me with ideas on how the boys might combat the threat they're up against.
Back to Part 1
Hours of patrolling the area proved a waste of effort that first night; neither detective saw or heard anything out of the ordinary. Still, nobody went missing, or not that they heard of, and no dead bodies turned up, so despite the mind-numbing tedium, they weren’t complaining. Well, not too much. The next two nights passed the same way; a lot of walking, which at least kept them from getting too cold as temperatures dropped even lower, but the mysterious killer was still proving elusive. The fourth night, however…
They’d moved to another part of the target area, a few blocks over, still in the twenty-seventh precinct’s jurisdiction, but close to where it bordered the two-four. Dee, still alert but growing increasingly bored, was checking in with Ryo via their cell phones when he saw the cat; at least he thought it was a cat. He only caught a glimpse as it crossed the street ahead of him, far enough away from the nearest streetlamp that he couldn’t see it clearly even though there was only a few yards between them, but there was something off about the way it was moving.
“Hold on, babe, I just saw something.” Thinking the cat might be injured, Dee crossed the street too, heading towards the alley it had vanished into.
“What? What did you see?” Ryo’s voice came urgently through Dee’s phone, which he was still holding to his ear.
“A cat. I think it might be hurt. It went into an alley across the street.”
“Dee…”
“It’s okay, babe, I’m not gonna take any chances.”
“You’d better not! Keep your phone on, and don’t do anything until I get there. I’m on my way.”
“Gotcha.” Leaving the line open, Dee cautiously approached the alley and crouched down just outside it, pulling a flashlight from his pocket and turning it on. “Hey, kitty, you okay?”
A faint mew came from the darkness, a pathetic, helpless sound, and Dee gradually inched forward. “It’s okay, kitty. I won’t hurt ya.” He panned his flashlight around and caught a flicker of movement as something pale disappeared behind a crumbling packing crate. Straightening up, he took a step forward, raising the flashlight to shoulder height and aiming its beam over the top of the crate, catching… something.
It was catlike, certainly, and maybe at a glance it might have passed for one of the hairless breeds, but Dee had met a couple of hairless cats and while they looked kinda weird, they were cute, in an ugly way. This one just looked wrong, and not in the same way that a cat gone bald because of a skin disease looked wrong.
The basic shape said ‘cat’, with four legs jointed like a cat’s, a head at one end, with triangular, mobile ears, and a tail at the other, but… The spine was a prominent ridge along its back, the paws were tipped with sharp claws, the tail was much too long, dragging on the ground, and appeared to be split in two for most of its length, and the teeth looked like they belonged in a piranha. Add to that eyes that glowed an eerie yellow with no sign of pupils, and Dee let go of his phone, dropping it in his pocket and reaching instinctively for his gun as he took a couple of hurried steps backwards.
“Shit! What the frickin’ hell are you?”
The creature arched its back, hissing and chittering angrily at him, gums drawn back and away from those lethal looking teeth. One thing was for sure, whatever it might be, it was far from helpless, and yet it made no move towards him. Just looking at it made Dee’s skin crawl, and he was dimly aware of a growing heat against his upper chest, where his St. Christopher medallion hung, the one Mother Maria Lane had given him when he’d left the orphanage for the police academy. She’d told him back then that she’d had it blessed by an archbishop.
“Wear it and it will protect you from harm,” she’d said, but he somehow doubted she’d ever expected him to need protection from something like this creature.
Just then, pounding footsteps dragged Dee’s attention from the entity before him. He only glanced away for a couple of seconds, just long enough to see his partner running towards him, but when he turned back to the alley the creature was gone as though it had never existed.
Ryo skidded to a halt beside him. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a…” He bit back what he’d been about to say; his partner didn’t look like he was in the mood for being teased.
“Ghost?” Dee suggested, sounding a bit shaky. His heart was pounding in his chest, and he felt cold and clammy all over, although whether from shock or fear he wasn’t sure. The heat from his St. Christopher was fading, and he took that to mean the danger was past, at least for now. “No, not a ghost, not this time, but I’m damned sure whatever I just saw, it wasn’t anythin’ natural.”
“What d’you mean? I thought you said you were following an injured cat.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but then I got a good look at it, and… I know ya won’t believe me, hell, I don’t wanna believe it myself, but I think I just met our killer, and it’s not human.”
Ryo frowned, concerned. “You’re not making any sense, Dee. You think the cat you saw is killing people?”
“I told ya, it wasn’t a cat; when I first saw it I thought it might be, but I was wrong. Look, come here.” Dee stepped into the alley again, shining his flashlight at the filthy, trash-strewn ground. He found the pawprints almost immediately, a trail of them, partly obliterated by drag marks, leading deeper into the alley and behind the crate. They were fresh, easy to see, each print showing a pad, four toes, and the indents made by four sharp claws.
“What’re these drag marks?” Ryo asked, crouching to point them out.
“Made by its tail, or tails. I mean, it was sort of one tail, but it split into two. Long, thin, hairless, almost like tentacles.” Dee shook his head. “It’s hard to describe.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a rat’s tail? Maybe your cat had caught a rat and was dragging it,” Ryo suggested.
“No. You didn’t see it; I did.”
“Maybe you should’ve taken a photo of it. You had your phone right there.”
“Didn’t think to. Anyway, I had my hands full; once I got a good look at it, I figured I needed my flashlight and my gun more than the phone.” Dee was frowning. “Not sure bullets would’a had any effect on it though. Shit!” He swore softly under his breath as something belatedly occurred to him. “I should’a noticed it before, we both should’a, the coroner too; some cops we are! Idiots, the both of us!”
“What’re you talking about?” Ryo stared at his partner, baffled.
“Six dead bodies, some of ‘em dead for days before they were found, and not a mark on any of ‘em.”
“Yes, I know that.”
Dee grabbed his lover’s arm. “No, you’re not gettin’ it. This is New York, there should be rats everywhere, and you know they’ll eat anythin’ they find. A body’s like an all-ya-can-eat buffet to the local rat population, but there were zero signs of predation on any of the victims, and have ya even seen any rats? Not just at the crime scenes, but anywhere around here. We’ve been walkin’ these streets for hours at a time over the last few nights, but I haven’t seen or heard a single rat, and no cats either. Have you?”
It was Ryo’s turn to frown. “Now that you mention it, no, I haven’t. That’s a bit odd.”
“A bit? Understatement of the century, and I’d lay odds there’s not a single rat or stray cat in this whole area. Something’s scared ‘em off, and I’m pretty sure I just met it.”
“So what, you think there’s a territorial wild animal somewhere around here? Isn’t that a job for animal control?” Ryo gnawed on his bottom lip; he was trying his best to cling to rationality, but he could feel his grip starting to slip.
Dee was shaking his head. “Not an animal, leastways not one that belongs in our world.”
“You’d better not be talking about aliens, Dee.” Ryo sounded vaguely annoyed.
“Oh, I wish. Aliens would probably be way easier to deal with.”
“Then what ARE you talking about?”
“Not sure; a demon maybe? Whatever it is, looked to me like somethin’ straight outta Hell.”
Ryo wanted to scoff at the notion, but then he remembered the skeleton, the apparitions that had poured out of it, and the teddy bear that had walked by itself, dragging children from their beds into what Dee had described as another dimension, so he swallowed the impulse and just said, “That’s not something we can tell the Chief, or put in our reports.”
“Yeah, I know, so we don’t. We keep this to ourselves, at least for now. Probably safer that way.” Dee glanced around at the heavy, cloying shadows beyond the reach of his flashlight beam and shivered, but not from the cold. “We should probably get outta here; whatever it was, I doubt it’ll be back tonight. We need to regroup, come up with some kinda plan of action.”
“A plan? How are we supposed to deal with something… um… something unnatural? We’re just cops. If this… thing is what you think it might be, isn’t the job of dealing with it more suited to a priest, or, I don’t know, an exorcist?”
“Exorcists deal with cases of demonic possession, drivin’ the demon from the body of the person it’s taken over, and that’s not what’s happenin’ with this thing. It’s killin’ people, plain and simple, maybe feedin’ off their fear, or drainin’ the life outta them somehow.”
“It still has to be stopped,” Ryo pointed out.
“Not denyin’ that, I just can’t see there bein’ a specific ritual to deal with it. I mean, there could be, I sure as hell don’t know everything, but findin’ that out, bearin’ in mind any ritual that might potentially exist wouldn’t necessarily be a Catholic one… There’re a lot of religions out there, and we don’t have time to research all of ‘em lookin’ for somethin’ that might work against somethin’ I don’t even have a name for.” Dee gave a helpless shrug. “If we wanna stop the killin’ anytime soon, might be it’s down to us to do it.”
“That’s not exactly reassuring. It’s not like we’re trained for… whatever.”
“Hey, don’t count us out, babe. We dealt with Mister Bear, didn’t we? And Halloween last year…”
“That was all you. Both times, really,” Ryo insisted. “I just happened to be there; I hardly did anything.”
“You had my back, kept me from gettin’ dragged into another dimension with the kids, helped me pull ‘em out,” Dee told his lover. “If you weren’t there, I probably would’a run for the hills, screamin’. When I’m scared half to death, you give me the courage to do whatever needs doin’, so don’t go tellin’ me you didn’t do anything ‘cause that’s just not true.”
Ryo blushed faintly. “The only thing I remember doing with that skeleton is telling you not to destroy evidence.”
“Yeah, and I loved you for that, groundin’ me in the real world while everything around me was makin’ me wonder if I was losin’ my mind. Not sure I ever thanked you for that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“Maybe so, but I still should’a.” Dee shivered again. “Whelp, don’t know ‘bout you, but I’m frickin’ freezin’. Let’s head back to the car.”
“Finally, something I can completely agree with.” Leaving the alley, Ryo set off along the sidewalk, Dee falling into step beside him. “We’re not telling Ted and Marty what you saw.”
“Agreed. Like I said before, right now it’s best we don’t tell anyone, even our friends. If we did, we’d risk gettin’ taken off the case, and as much as I might prefer this whole crazy mess to be somebody else’s problem, I got a feelin’ that stopped bein’ an option the moment I crossed paths with that thing. It knows me now, and it knows I’m out to stop it.”
“You don’t think it’ll come after you, do you?”
“Leave its huntin’ grounds? Not sure, but I’ve got some protection if it tries.” Dee pulled the St. Christopher from inside his clothes, the glow of the streetlamps glinting off it. “Might not look like much, but I’m pretty sure it saved my life back there. It got hot, and I mean seriously hot; felt like it should be burnin’ me, but it didn’t hurt, and the demon, or whatever it was, didn’t come near me. I don’t think it could. Man, it was pissed.” Tucking the medallion out of sight again, Dee patted his chest. “Long as I’m wearin’ this, I think I’ll be safe.”
Ryo managed a crooked smile; the talk of demons was beginning to seriously creep him out. “Don’t have a spare, do you?”
“No, sorry. I could get ya one, but I don’t know any archbishops to get it properly blessed the way mine is.” Dee glanced sidelong at his partner, suddenly worried; if Ryo had been the one to confront the creature, he might have become its next victim, all because he didn’t carry any kind of protection. It wasn’t that Ryo didn’t believe in a higher being, but his parents hadn’t been particularly religious whereas Dee had been raised by a Catholic nun. “You could wear my crucifix, I could ask Father Malone to bless it for ya,” he offered. “Might not be as good as an Archbishop’s blessin’, but still better than nothin’.”
“Not sure my beliefs are strong enough to turn a piece of jewellery into a protective amulet,” Ryo admitted. “I wasn’t raised to believe in things like that.”
“We should go visit Father Malone anyway, see if he’ll let us have some holy water.”
“You think that would work against what you saw?”
“No idea. Might not be enough to kill it, or to send it back where it came from, but it should at least cause some damage.” Dee went silent for a few moments, deep in thought, as they turned a corner to see the car parked a couple of blocks away. Then… “Holy water, and I think salt is supposed to be effective against demons.”
“And if it’s not a demon?” Ryo shook his head. “Can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”
“Don’t think about it too hard. We’re just bouncin’ ideas around, like that time at McGinty’s when we were talkin’ about how we’d deal with a zombie apocalypse.” They and their friends had been pretty drunk at the time.
“Okay, I can do that.” Ryo thought it would be easier after a few shots of tequila, but since that wasn’t currently an option, he’d just have to roll with it stone cold sober. “If it’s not a demon, then what?”
“Uh… faeries, goblins, things like that, are allergic to iron, if I’m rememberin’ right. Swords and stuff.”
“Great, any idea where to get an iron sword? Everything these days is carbon steel, which probably isn’t as effective.”
Dee chuckled. “I can just see ya wieldin’ a sword, maybe the Samurai kind.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “Actually, now I think about it, that would be seriously hot.”
The comment came as a brief but reassuring breath of normality in the midst of a totally insane conversation, and Ryo cherished it, but he knew he couldn’t allow either of them to become distracted. “Focus, Dee.”
“Yeah, sorry, better file that thought away for future consideration.”
Ryo chose to ignore that comment in favour of keeping their bizarre conversation on track. “What about silver bullets?”
“That’s for werewolves, and garlic’s for vampires; don’t think either one would work in this case. Gotta be iron.”
“Well, I guess we could stop by a pharmacy, pick up some iron supplements, but I don’t suppose the percentage of iron in them is all that high.”
Dee snapped his fingers. “Magnets! They’re often made from iron!”
That drew a snort of disbelief from Ryo. “You’re suggesting we attack this thing with magnets?”
“Get some, go to work with a file, make ourselves some iron filings to go with our holy water…”
“Which you don’t have yet.”
“Shut up! We’ll get the holy water; that’s the easiest part. All we gotta do is ask. Salt shouldn’t be a problem either, just swing by the supermarket.”
“No need, we’ve already got plenty at home. We picked up that big tub last week,” Ryo reminded his lover.
“Right, for keepin’ the stoop free of ice! Guess that means we just need iron, so either magnets, or maybe an old horseshoe…”
“Can’t help you with that; I’m not even sure if horseshoes are made from pure iron anymore. People probably use steel for those as well these days, otherwise they’d rust too easily.” By now the two men were almost to the car where their friends were waiting.
“Better stop talkin’ about this for now,” Dee murmured. “We can brainstorm some more when we get home.”
Ryo nodded, hurrying towards the car, pulling the rear door open, and scrambling in, scooting across the back seat to make room for his partner.
“Any luck?” Ted asked, twisting around in his seat.
“Nah,” Dee said, slamming the door behind him, pulling his gloves off, and rubbing his hands together. “Quiet as the grave out there. Nothin’ more excitin’ than a stray cat. You guys see anything?”
“If we had we would’a radioed you,” said Marty. “Looks like people are stayin’ home, which is what we want, right?”
“Right.”
Ted nodded. “Leavin’ you two as the only potential victims out there.”
“Easier to be bait that way,” Dee agreed. “You plannin’ on sittin’ here the rest of the night? ‘Cause I was kinda hopin’
to go home where it’s warm. I’d like to see my bed sometime this month.”
“Okay, I can take a hint.” Ted faced front again and fired up the engine.
“Just takes him a while,” Marty quipped. “Hints don’t register until he’s been beaten over the head with ‘em for a few hours.”
“Up yours, wise guy,” Ted replied, grinning at his partner. “How many more nights we gotta do this?”
Leaning back in his seat, Dee sighed. “As many as it takes. We don’t stop until the killings stop.”
Beside him, Ryo stared silently out the side window, a pensive expression on his face.
Part 3