Katalepsis 2.8

I had trouble not just trampling straight ahead into the next chapter, after the way the previous one ended. Heather can actually TALK to the pneuma-somatic life forms. At least, to some of them. "Fauna" might not even be right, depending on exactly how smart they are. It remains to be seen if any human could do this, if only they could get the creatures to see and hear them, or if this is another special Heather ability granted (intentionally or otherwise) by the Eye.

Anyway, a tentacle gorilla creature helpfully pointed them after Maisie's nightgaunt, so they're going to track it down and see if there's any more to the message and/or if they can now command the 'gaunt themselves.

My stamina gave out long before we caught the demon.

I'd never been fit. Scrawny legs, no real strength. Hadn't gotten any serious exercise since childhood.

Raine had insisted we not run. Hurrying along Sharrowford's canted, hilly streets for over an hour was more than enough to drain what little reserves I had. I gave in on the corner of Harries Road, slowed and stumbled to a stop, and doubled over with my hands on my thighs, sucking air through a raw throat. The ache in my diaphragm burned and throbbed like a punched bruise.

The promise of Maisie's message had kept me going far beyond empty. My knees shook, I was ravenously hungry, and I knew I'd pay for this tomorrow.

Raine hooked an arm under my shoulders and helped me stand up straight.

"You have to take a moment," she said. "Stop and rest."

"I— I— can't—" I panted.

"You're not gonna corral a big scary monster if I have to princess-carry you the rest of the way, right?" She snuck me a sidelong grin. It almost worked, almost got me to sit down and take care of myself.

On one hand, Raine and Twil are only being slowed down by Heather.

On the other hand, the nightgaunt might well not respond to anyone besides Heather. Not to mention that they might need to ask more creatures for directions if the gaunt suddenly changes course again. I don't think Twil can see PSF. She might be able to smell them or something, but I don't know if that's enough to enable communication.

Also, if my musings on some previous chapters were correct, and the PNF are at least somewhat responsive to vibes, they just might not cooperate with Twil the way they do with Heather. Opposite ends of the empathy and patience spectrums, after all.

You know what would probably really help the party in this situation? A car. That's what. I'm guessing none of them drive though, or the subject would have already been raised. Raine definitely seems like a motorcycle type, but if she actually does have one I guess it's not anywhere close enough to matter right now.

But I couldn't. I levered myself off Raine's support and pointed ahead, to where the houses ran out before the bridge over Samter Street, Sharrowford's abortive excuse for a ring road. A flopping amalgamation of white rubber flesh and wings made of broken light lay in distress across the bridge, downed by the messenger's passing. The spirit shredded its own feathers with talons made of glass and lightning, screeching at the sky. Cars passed through its pneuma-somatic body, drivers oblivious to the spirit world all around them.

Did the gaunt actually attack this bird-creature? That seems unlike it, going by its behavior so far.

Collision, then? Or maybe its presence had an effect sort of like whales being killed by ship sonar? Manatee hit by a boat, or whale beached itself due to sonar. Either way, sadness.

I'm continually baffled by how the PSF do and don't interact with what we percieve a physical objects. This bird thing fell ONTO the pavement, rather than phasing through it and vanishing into the planet's crust, and yet cars are able to pass through it as if it wasn't there. It definitely brings to mind what Evelyn said about magic defying attempts to systematize or discover the rules behind.

Maybe Heather will be able to finally solve some of these mysteries now, if she really can talk to them. That would be cool. Especially if she writes her discoveries down and makes them freely available to all at zero moral cost just to make Evelyn's brain melt.

I took a step forward and one knee gave out.

Raine caught me and held me up. "Heather, you're tapped out. Sit."

"Yup, she looks about ready to drop," said Twil. "That's it, then? You gonna take her home and put her to bed? We done?"

"No," I panted. "No, I have to— to carry on— have to—"

I put up a token struggle, but Raine was right; I was done. She helped me wobble over to one of the low garden walls in front of the dilapidated semi-detached houses along Harries Road.

We'd just turned off one of the tiny high streets in this end of Sharrowford, studded with Indian takeaways and shuttered storefronts. A few evening pedestrians glanced at us from across the road, and one of them shouted something ugly.

"Gaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

Perceptive fellow, if a bit impolite.

Twil stuck both middle fingers up at him. Nobody cared enough to pay much attention to three strung-out college girls. The silver lining of England in the twenty-first century, I suppose.

"BREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDER!"

Raine sat me down on the wall.

"Please, I have to keep going. I have to catch it. I—"

"I know. And we can. We will. But you need to rest or you're gonna do yourself an injury."

Damn it all, I knew she was right. I was running on fumes, helpless and frustrated. Raine smiled and spoke soothing words, but I clenched my jaw, wringing my fingers together, nowhere to lash out but at her. I almost did.

"I can catch it," said Twil.

We both looked at her. She was one hundred percent human now, had been since the moment we left Willow House, right down to the tips of her fingers and the ends of her curly dark hair. She shrugged. "I can follow the scent a lot faster without you two in tow. You're both slow as shit."

Heh, point. I shouldn't have even put Raine and Twil in the same category, when I was talking about speed and stamina. Raine might be tough, but unless she really is a homunculus or something she's still just a baseline human. Twil is not.

Of course, without Heather to attempt communication, Twil might not be able to do very much when she catches it.

Is she going to be able to go full speed without going into wolf mode in public, though? Eh, it's dark already. If people aren't able to spot the nightgaunt flying overhead, they're not going to be able to spot a semi-transparent werewolf slipping through the shadows. Fair enough.

"You're serious?" I asked. "You can?"

"Sure can," Twil drawled through a lazy, smug smile. "I could cross the whole city in half an hour and be back before you got time to worry. Nobody'll see me, either."

"Yes." I nodded. "Yes, do it, please, please. You'll be straight back?"

Raine held up a hand and fixed Twil with that intense, uncompromising stare. "If this is a setup—"

"Raine!" I said, horrified.

"Oh, fuck off," Twil grunted. "What, you think I rigged that big-ass fuckboy to lead us out here? This lovebird drama is sad, that's what it is. I'm not gonna steal your girl, okay? I'm not even interested." Twil put her hands on her hips.

"You...you think I even care about her, b...b...baka!"

"We're chasing major bad mojo, right? I don't get half of what's going on, but screw it, we're on a hunt, yeah? It's got my blood itching. You can't set me to find prey and expect me to drop it."

Raine and Twil stared each other down for a heartbeat.

"Raine," I hissed.

"Alright, go."

Eeeeeeesh. With that mentality, I just hope Twil isn't going to try to attack the thing.

Twil sketched a mock salute—to me, not Raine—and then she was gone, off at a dead run. When she got far enough ahead of the streetlights, beyond view of casual observers, she slipped into a long, loping, rolling gait. I caught a flash of clawed, wolfish foot kicking off the paving slabs.

My goodness, she could move.

Raine watched her go. She puffed out a long sigh and rolled her shoulders.

"Anyone approaches us, or says anything, pretend you're drunk. Student hijinks, yeah?"

I nodded and rubbed at the burning ache in my chest, wishing I could massage my own diaphragm. Raine stood as if on guard over me, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket, glancing up and down the street.

A feeling of embattled, bitter defiance fought up from my heart, because I assumed I knew what she was thinking.

Getting my breath back broke my single-minded focus, gave me the mental space to feel truly awful, and really ramp up the self-loathing. I'd never felt so pathetic and useless. Maisie was right there, on the other side of reality, alive and alone and cold, and I was too weak and broken to drag my sorry carcass halfway across a provincial English city. Pampered, atrophied, useless. I called myself far worse things in the privacy of my own mind. The ache in my chest was not entirely physical.

I know she's in no emotional place to be objective right now, but seriously. In her first meeting with Raine, Heather alerted her and Evelyn to the spydrone that was tailing them and enabled them to destroy it. Not long afterward, she saved Evelyn from the flea-infested doggo planet. She's made herself useful to them, and done things for them that they couldn't have done. Why not let them (and Twil lol) do the same thing in return?

It's funny. I've seen this character beat with protagonists who are insecure about their projected hypercompetence, or who genuinely are hypercompetent and need to learn to rely on others despite that. With Heather it's almost the opposite. She's so used to feeling like she has nothing to contribute to anyone else that it doesn't occur to her that she could be part of a larger system that works toward each member's goals. She doesn't think she can make helping her worth it to anyone else, even when she's already done so.

At least, I think that's what's going on. Some of this hits close to home for me, so I may be projecting a little.

Was this what Raine wanted? A damsel in distress? Because I felt like living filth.

I was endlessly thankful to her, yes, for believing me, for following me, even for the little things like the borrowed scarf and the one remaining mitten. The first shades of night had fallen over the city streets, the chill wind in the air leeching residual heat from the concrete and asphalt. If it weren't for the extra layers, I'd have been shivering after a few moments sat still.

Maybe this was what Evelyn had warned me about.

Heather stop.

Raine looked down at me with a thoughtful expression and a gentle smile. I was doing a fantastic job of hiding my turmoil behind the veil of exhaustion, but I just couldn't bear that smile.

"Don't say it," I hissed. "Not right now."

Raine raised her eyebrows. "Say what?"

"I … I don't know, exactly. Whatever you were thinking." I had to look down at the pavement. "Maybe we can talk about it later. Right now I don't care, I can't deal with it. I have to … have to … "

"Heather?"

"Just don't. Don't say it. Don't treat me like this."

Heather stahp.

A pause, one of those dreadful heartbeats where history could have gone either way; if Raine had been anybody else, we'd have derailed.

She crouched down so we were eye to eye. I tried to avert my gaze.

"Not even gonna ask what you meant by that. Totally doesn't matter," she said, and I felt myself shrink, ashamed and trapped. "But I am gonna take an executive decision."

I looked up at her and saw the smile. Not the usual rakish flash, but a more subtle quirk to her lips, the confidence of certain knowledge.

"W-what? Raine, what?"

"When I was looking at you, I was thinking how I can't possibly imagine what's going through your head right now."

" … I … okay?"

Raine hesitated so slightly, gave her words a little emotional push. "I'm an only child, no brothers, no sisters. You probably could have guessed that. My parents, well, I've not told you this, but my parents hate me. Haven't spoken to either of them in years. So this—" Raine touched the t-shirt still clutched in my hands, Maisie's pajama top. She folded her fingers over mine. "I can't imagine."

"Raine, there's no need—"

"But I do get it, how much this matters to you, what it must be doing to you. If I'm not showing it, that's only because we're on the hunt. We can figure all the details out later, over a nice curry in a warm kitchen, with all of Evee's expert headspace to help. But right now, right here, we're after our big spiky boy. You can do this. I've got your back."

"Thank you," I whispered, and had to look down and wipe my eyes on my sleeve.

More shame, but such relief. I was such a fool. I carefully folded up Maisie's t-shirt and put it away in my coat pocket, just to move my hands for a moment, just to think. I put my arms out toward Raine, stiff and awkward.

"Give me a hug," I demanded.

She did, and it was good.

On one hand, putting up with Evelyn for years will naturally have immunized Raine to this sort of behavior.

On the other hand, why DOES she do this?

Maybe it really is just an attraction to the emotionally damaged. But I mean...if that motivates Raine to basically play caretaker to them, and do a really good job of it, without any apparent skeeve or pressure being applied, then that's honestly a merit rather than a flaw of hers.

Raine is such a bamf that even her weaknesses make her bamfier. Card-carrying gigastacy. I was starting to wonder if Raine was slightly less amazing than it initially seemed, but I was wrong, she isn't.

Raine laughed softly. "Hey, hey, it's okay. Come on, can you stand yet?"

"Yes, yes, I think so."

Twil—all human once more—came jogging back down the street as Raine helped me to my feet. She pulled a face and frowned at us. "Get a room, you two."

I didn't care about the implications right then. Raine was correct, we were on the hunt.

How exciting. How cliché. How very Raine to frame it that way.

Didn't do us any good in the end.

"Did you find it or not?" I asked.

"You best believe I did." Twil broke into a huge, shit-eating grin. "Guess what? It's gone to ground."

Ooh. Wonder where and how it chose a place?

For that matter, I wonder how long it can fly for? Does it get tired eventually? Does it need some kind of fuel or food?

So, Twil leads them off, and we skip ahead a bit.

Sharrowford dribbles out north of the Samter bridge. Not into fields or moorland, but into one of the worst unfinished developments in the whole country, two dozen rows of glass-fronted luxury flats, wreathed for years with industrial tarpaulin and temporary cladding, protected by twelve feet of chicken-wire fence and decayed plyboard. Toward the west, these apartments had been finished, a few filled with renters and lit up against the night sky, but down this end they towered in darkness, shabby monuments to the absurdity of the English housing market.

Such a poetically vivid picture, painted with such few words.~

Twil led the way between the unfinished buildings. Streetlights thinned out and we walked through increasingly wider patches of shadow. Nobody else braved these half-made streets in the dark. Nothing to be here for.

I would never come to this sort of place at night. If I'd been on my own, I suspect I'd have been scared witless, though the most dangerous inhabitants were probably just rats. Raine held my hand and this time I didn't let go.

Twil nodded toward one of the apartment blocks, one that had never sprouted more than a couple of floors. She kicked to a halt next to a locked and chained gate in the security fence, then pointed at the yawning dark mouth of an entrance ramp, leading down into an underground basement car park.

"It's down there, no doubt."

"Are you certain?" I asked.

"Yeah. Circled the block twice, scent doesn't lead anywhere else. Either it's in there somewhere or it flew straight up and didn't come back down." She pointed at the sky and shrugged.

I tried sniffing the air like Twil, but all I could smell was damp concrete and mouldy wood.

"What do we do when we catch it, then?" Twil asked. "Hog-tie it and ask it questions?"

"Heather touches it first," said Raine.

" … uh, you sure about that, skipper?" Twil said.

"Heather touches it first."

"It'll be fine," I said.

Haha. The phrasing at the end there makes it sound like Heather is assuring them that the nightgaunt will be fine if she touches it. The actual intent is clear, but still, it made me chuckle.

I didn't believe my own words. Now we were close, I realised how ad hoc this was. I wished Evelyn were here, or that we had time to call her, to ask advice, but she was still back in the Medieval Metaphysics room. God alone knew what our mad dash across Sharrowford would have done to her legs. I tried to trust my instincts, and Maisie.

"It's locked, how are we going to get in?"

"Fancy a little breaking and entering?" Raine asked, in the same tone one might enquire as to whether it was time for a cup of tea.

I wonder if the nightgaunt had to do a little breaking of its own to enter? Eh, probably not. If these buildings are unfinished there's probably an opening in the upper floors that it could just land in.

Twil grinned wide and toothy, grabbed the chain around the gate in both hands, and tore the links apart with the sound of wrenching metal. I flinched, then blinked as she rattled the chain free and swung the gate open. "After you, ladies and … uh, ladies."

"Show off," Raine said.

Twil winked. "Flaunt it if you got it. Not like I get many chances to do that."

"Werewolf nonsense," I muttered.

A shallow asphalt ramp led down into the only finished, accessible part of the structure, an underground parking garage. As we approached, I realised it wasn't as dark as it had seemed from the street; orange work lights glowed down there, reflected off the pitted concrete and rainwater puddles.

Twil stepped ahead to go first.

"Hold up," Raine said.

I thought for a moment she was going to quibble about who got to lead us, some stupid chest-thumping conflict with Twil. I turned and opened my mouth to tell her off, to say Raine, we need to hurry, it's right there, it might get away.

The complaint died on my lips. Raine was frowning hard. She looked left and right down the length of the structure, then stared at the mouth of the parking garage.

"I smell a rat," she said. "Why are the lights on?"

" … I'm sorry?"

"Twil, you smell anything else round here except our big demon lad?"

Twil squinted in confusion, sniffed the air, and shrugged.

Hmm. Yeah. I doubt the gaunt would bother to turn the parking level's lights on. Assuming they even had electricity in the first place.

Could be that nightgaunts just cause electrical phenomena in their vicinities. Something about them seems to freak out the PSF for a considerable distance, and this could be related to that. But then, if that was the case, it probably would have caused some power surges back in the university building.

It's possible that someone was squatting down here. In which case they're probably cowering in abject terror in one of the corners right now.

Or there could be something weirder and more sinister afoot.

"Raine, come on!" I said, lost for a moment, the reason for our delay escaping me. "I have to—"

"It was heading for the city centre." Raine spoke quickly and quietly. "Maybe for one of the old canals, maybe to hide, I don't know. Then it turned, hell of a right angle, and made a beeline for here, for this. Why change direction? No. Somebody called it. We need to leave."

Ohhhhh. Shit. I should have thought of that. Yeah, that would explain why it suddenly changed directions, if somebody who knows how to control nightgaunts happened to spot it.

Might this be an agent of that nasty cult that supposedly lurks in Sharrowford? Or are these actually Twil's people who she surreptitiously texted as they were leaving the university?

"Raine!" I couldn't believe those last four words.

Comprehension crept over Twil's face. She jerked a thumb down the dark ramp. "You think … yeah?"

"Maybe," Raine murmured.

"I don't believe this," I said. "What? You think somebody else is down there, talking to it? You think somebody's beaten us to the punch? You can't be serious."

Raine met my eyes, serious as a head wound. No joy in an upcoming confrontation. No knight errant play-acting.

"Yeah," she said.

"I-I still want to go down. This is so important, Raine."

"It could be dangerous."

"I know."

" … stay behind Twil and I. Don't make a sound. Do exactly what I say."

I nodded.

Twil walked back over to the gate and lifted the length of broken steel chain. She offered it to Raine, but Raine shook her head. Twil shrugged, held one end of the chain in her hand, and wrapped it around her forearm.

Oh, great, I thought, we're doing improvised weapons already.

Hardly the worst cause for alarm I'd seen today.

If Twil is in on this, then she's a pretty good actress. She really seems like she's just too caught up in the hunt to really care about complications, or even the reason why they're doing it in the first place. I wonder if this psychological quirk was a feature or a bug, from her grandfather's perspective? Assuming she wasn't already like this before the experiment, of course.

Raine really does need to put her foot down more though, seriously.

We crept down the ramp in silence, enclosed by concrete. Twil led us over a pair of never-used speed bumps. An arm-barrier loomed out of the shadows and we slipped around the side of an empty toll booth. The ramp seemed to go down and down and down, deeper underground than necessary.

I didn't think anything of that at the time.

Oh jeeze. Spatial fuckery?

"Stop," Raine hissed, just before we reached the end of the wall which separated the entrance ramp from the car park itself. I could see a little of the floor beyond: bare concrete, support pillars, breeze-block walls. The builders had never gotten around to painting the parking spaces on the ground
Raine was right. The lights shouldn't have been here, nor been switched on. Pools of stagnant rainwater, lichen colonies, rat droppings in the gutters. This place was all but abandoned except on some hedge-fund balance sheet. The orange work-site lighting shone from an unseen source far across the floor, casting strange shadows up the walls and dancing over the sodden concrete.

Twil raised an eyebrow. Raine held up a hand for quiet.

Water dripped. I tried to control the thudding of my heart, one hand pressed to my chest. Rats scurried in the shadows.

Whispered voices echoed in the dark.

Not us.

Twil bared her teeth in a horrible predator's grin. Her wolf muzzle formed out of thin air and snapped shut. I was suddenly very glad she was on our side.

"Wait here," Raine mouthed.

I nodded. "Okay."

"Screw that," Twil hissed. "I can take them."

Erm...you might want to make sure they're actually hostile first.

Raine rounded on her, angry—genuine anger, the likes of which I'd never seen from her before. Tightly controlled by the need for silence, spoken more in the language of muscle and posture, there was no question who was top dog. She grabbed Twil by the front of her hoodie and spoke through clenched teeth.

"Wait."

"Okay, okay, shit." Twil pulled herself free and straightened her clothes. "Bloody hell."

"And stay quiet."

Thank you Raine.

I'm guessing if someone who Twil didn't have a preexisting dynamic with wouldn't have survived doing that, but Raine does.

Raine crept out of cover, keeping low through the deep shadows as she searched for an angle to see what was happening out there. She stopped about twenty feet away and peered around a pillar. A distant, methodical part of my mind filed that mental image away in a folder marked "Raine being sexy," and I told it to shut up. Now was not the time to admire her.

Every time is the time to admire Raine.

Twil leaned over my shoulder for a better look. A shiver went up my spine at that werewolf muzzle so close to my neck. Raine stared across the car park for a moment, then quickly crept back. She straightened up, stony-faced and tense, every part of her wired to spring.

"Is it there?" I whispered.

"Yes, but no. I'm so sorry, Heather. We need to leave. This is a lost cause."

"What?" My voice cracked. "No … no, the message, my—"

"Shhh." Raine put a finger to her lips, then took my hand. "We can't. We need to go."

Twil straightened up, flexing her hands into claws. "It's them, isn't it?"

"Twil, be quiet," Raine hissed.

"Them? Who?" I asked. "Who?"

"I can't be certain, but I think they might be from the Sharrowford Cult. We have to leave."

"I … no, I have to see."

I needed to know who was stealing Maisie's message from me.

Well, it didn't seem like it was Twil's sect after all, so process of elimination.

On one hand, these people may not be the types you can reason with, and depending on their numbers and placement they might not be fightable either.

On the other hand, if they're that unreasonable and that hostile, then letting them get their hands on a nightgaunt might be a really, really bad idea, even leaving Maisie's message completely aside.

Raine started to say something sensible, something with my safety in mind, something realistic and sane and smart.

I jerked my hand out of hers and slipped forward into the shadows before Raine could stop me. I'd done this a thousand times before in far worse places, on the other side of a Slip, made myself silent and small and hidden, Outside. I had avoided the attention of far worse creatures than anything Sharrowford could hold. This was one thing I was good at—hiding.

I'm not sure at all that this is the same, Heather...

Raine hissed my name and followed. I crept to the pillar she'd peered around, braced myself, and looked.

We weren't the only ones interested in a wayward specimen of Noctis Latro.

No time to process what I saw.

Twil bounded past me, all teeth and claws, in full wolf-woman form. She slammed a foot into the concrete so hard it cracked, and roared, "Hey, bitches!" through a mouth full of fangs.

Rogue: "I roll stealth."

Barbarian: "HAHAHAHA I ALSO ROLL STEALTH!"

Rogue: >:(

Torchlight swirled in our direction. Raine bundled into me and shoved me behind herself, then turned and reached one hand into her leather jacket.

"Nobody move!" she yelled.

Pretty sure she was bluffing. Could have convinced me.

I'd never been in a Mexican standoff before.

That makes it sound an awful lot more glamorous than it was. Mostly it was just frightening, that moment of explosive meeting and tension, sudden eye contact and hands reaching for concealed weapons. The dim work-site lights, the filthy concrete, the multiplying echoes. Four people were caught in a tableau around the towering form of the messenger demon stretched to its full height, twelve feet of dark night-flesh and unfurled wings, like a woodcut gleaming in the torchlight glow.

It stood in the centre of a magic circle easily twenty feet across, drawn in red paint on the concrete floor.

An appropriate introduction to Sharrowford's most dangerous people.

They didn't look anything like my mental image of cultists, not the way Evelyn and Raine had used the word, and for a split second my brain struggled to catch up. I'd expected robes, ceremonial knives, stone altars in the woods.

Four of them. Two men, two women.

The men could have passed for normal.

An older gentleman with stringy grey hair and wire-frame glasses held some kind of jury-rigged electronic device in one hand, all exposed circuit board and twisted wire and a tiny LCD screen. He blinked rapidly in naked surprise, an owlish face blinded by searchlights, his hands patting at the pockets of his waxed coat.

The other man looked like a misplaced librarian. Younger, maybe mid-twenties. He wore a waistcoat and tie with his shirtsleeves rolled up, wellington boots over immaculate trousers, and carried a torch in one hand.

No shock from him. Only cold regard.

The third figure—a woman—could not have walked down a Sharrowford street without comment. Tall, six and a half feet or more, she towered over the others. She was wrapped from head to toe in a trench coat, hands in her pockets and a heavy hood pulled down to shadow her face. A scarf concealed her nose and mouth, leaving only her eyes exposed. Not an extra inch of skin showed. She turned to look at us with robotic slowness.

Then there was Lozzie.

Of course, I didn't know her name then, but I'd learn it soon enough.

Stood in the centre of the group, inside the magic circle, we'd interrupted her in the act of reaching up to touch the messenger demon's faceless head, to cradle it as one might with a favourite pet.

Small and slight, she was dressed in a dirty, faded hoodie, striped in pastel pink and white and blue, with the ends of the ragged sleeves pulled over her hands. Messy blonde hair reached all the way to the backs of her knees.

She wore a goat skull over her head, like a helmet, complete with horns. Except goat skulls didn't grow that large.

For a moment I couldn't figure out what I was looking at—she was covered in motion, tentacles waving, obscene shapes attached to her body.

She writhed with spirit life.

It was all over her, actually touching her flesh and her clothes. A tentacled squid-blob clung to one shoulder, a twisted lizard lay flush against an arm. A mass of slender plant-like roots had wrapped around her midsection, and jellyfish feelers floated out behind her. A pair of hounds sat at her heels, fever-dream dire wolves crossed with deep-sea fish, with huge plate eyes and skin like old leather.

She turned and looked right at me, tilting her goat-skull mask.

Oooh, I like Lozzie. I hope she's not actually as bad as Evelyn and Raine made her organization sound.

That oversized goat-skull helmet...is it fake? Did she magically enlarge it? Or is the "skull" actually a pneuma-somatic life form clinging to her head? Would Heather be able to tell if something was pneuma-somatic or not, if it didn't look like an obviously alien creature?

Anyway, four cultists, at least one of them a skilled magician, plus two pet fishdogs. I can see why Raine decided this wasn't a fight they should risk, even if everyone else ignored her. Someone should really try listening to her one of these days, y'know?

I was so shocked I almost forgot to be outraged. How dare she take Maisie's message?

The standoff collapsed all at once.

"You will leave now," the younger man called in crisp, clear tones. "You saw nothing."

Twil laughed, bounced on the balls of her feet, and rushed at them, unwrapping the chain from her arm.

The older man with the straggly hair and the wire-frame glasses clicked his fingers at the tall woman in the trench coat. She shrugged, but the younger man glanced at her and spoke a few words. Loud, blunt, cut-off words in no human language. The tall woman rolled her shoulders and strode toward Twil.

Big masked lady is a zombie or something, it seems like.

The girl in the goat skull withdrew her hands from the messenger and waved at me with the end of one sleeve.

"Bye-bye!" she called.

The messenger folded itself out of reality, as if sliding through an invisible doorway. It burned the eye to see.

"No!" I shouted.

Huh. Seems like Skullgirl Lozzie somehow knew which of them the gaunt belonged to.

Not good.

Twil leapt at them.

I didn't see what happened next, because Raine grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and almost picked me up off my feet. She pushed me toward the ramp and made me run. We scrambled back toward the entrance as the most awful noises came from below, animal screeches and cracking concrete and the sound of meat hitting meat. I stumbled and flinched, terrified and hiccuping. Raine pulled me on and up, and didn't stop moving when we burst out into the clean night air above.

"What— what—"

"Time for that later." Raine hustled me through the gate and into the street. "Just walk, just breathe. We're in the open. They won't do anything. They won't follow."

"What just happened? What—"

"Don't think about it. We need to leave here, quick as we can. One foot in front of the other, keep moving."

I was too frazzled to resist. Raine took me back up the street in the shadows of the unfinished luxury flats. The noises from the parking garage had long since faded, muffled by concrete and asphalt. I turned to look, half expecting to see Twil stumbling along behind us. The road was empty.

On one hand, leaving Twil to fight alone is kind of a dick move.

On the other hand, neither of the others might really have much to contribute to that fight (though I suspect Raine at least could do *something,* I won't second-guess her own tactical self assessment). And also, Twil kind of fucking Leeroy Jenkins'd this and ruined their chances of either pulling off a surprise attack OR settling this peacefully, so...yeah, I take it back. Not a dick move. Twil completely deserved this.

Wonder how they're gonna get the message now, though.

We crossed back over the Samter Bridge. The normal streetlights and passing pedestrians of a Sharrowford evening didn't feel real, not after what I'd witnessed back there, not after those sounds and that bizarre girl.

"Is she— Twil, she's—"

"She'll be fine, she's practically invincible. And they'll be clearing out ASAP." Raine turned and shot me a grin, a dose of that boundless confidence. "Don't worry, we'll be fine. Here, gotta mess with them."

Raine halted next to a battered old pay phone by a bus stop, covered in graffiti and spotted with dried chewing gum. I found I was shaking, partly from the cold and partly from a burst of adrenaline, too confused to process the experience right then. Raine lifted the receiver and dialled 999, then held her nose and spoke in an old lady voice.

"Yes, police please. Yes, yes, I saw these three young lads trying to set a fire. These young fellows, yes, yes, yes, of course." She gave the address of the building site. "They had boards for a bonfire and I swear I saw wires sticking out all over the place. Oh no, dear, I can't stay on the line."

Raine hung up without another word, then cleared her throat, grabbed my hand, and walked on.

"Did you just spoof-call the police?" I asked.

"Bailing Twil out. Probably doesn't need it, though. Sirens'll light a fire under the crazies."

"What if she's hurt? Raine, you left her behind! We left her there!"

Raine caught the look on my face, the distress, the connections I was making, if only subconsciously. "Twil is literally unstoppable. Believe me, I've seen her shrug off a lot worse than anything those wannabes can throw at her. They could cut her head off and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. She'll be bruised and sore and angry, but she'll crack some heads and get out. I promise."

"Did you know those … people, back there?"

"Never seen them before, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognise it when you see it. Kinda like porn, I guess. Know it when you see it."

"W-what—"

I can only echo Heather's sentiment here.

If Raine had never seen these people before, how can she tell they were just "posers?"

If those guys really were part of the Sharrowford cult, haven't she and Evelyn been warning Heather about how dangerous those guys are for this entire arc?

In terms of how unstoppable Twil is...well, we saw that she's not hard to injure temporarily at least, and we also saw that even a poorly-trained noob wizard like Evelyn was able to one-shot her with a few minutes' prep, so I think Raine is just trying to calm Heather down here.

Also, with the amount of supernatural shit that apparently exists in this town, isn't it likely that someone already owns the police?

Heh, well, it might be that the person who owns the Sharrowford police is Evelyn. In which case it's a moot point.~

She flashed me a grin. I realised she was trying to keep me from freezing up. I nodded and forced a tiny laugh, the best I could manage. As we walked, she fished out her mobile phone and called Evelyn. Under the circumstances, I didn't feel guilty for listening in.

"We need to go to the mattresses," Raine said down the phone. "Yeah, right now, luck of the draw. No, just bumped into them. Twil went off on one. Yeah, it was dark, I doubt they got a good look at us, but does that matter? I think they've got one of those bastard zombies up again. You wanna take the risk?"

Yup. Zombie.

She paused, then answered with a laugh in her voice. "Of course I'm bringing her, Evee, what do you take me for?" Raine killed the call and glanced at me. "Do you have classes tomorrow?"

"I … uh … no, I don't think so."

"Good." Raine squeezed my hand and grinned that brilliant, rakish flash with which she could have convinced me to do anything. "Fancy a friendly little sleepover at Evee's place? Lazy day in tomorrow, call it two nights maybe. All three of us."

Any other time, any other place, I'd have thrown myself onto that baited hook.

"I-I mean I wouldn't say no, but, Raine, what, all this—"

"Just to be on the safe side."

My mind caught up.

Evelyn's house, of course, was the most supernaturally defensible position in Sharrowford.

Raine called it a sleepover. I knew a better word.

Siege.

Well, potential siege. Lozzie's people may or may not decide to come after them. And if they do, they may or may not be able to convince them that the attack was completely their murderhobo werewolf friend's idea and that they'd tried to stop her.

Also, did the Sharrowford Cult know about Evelyn and Raine before now? Did they know about Twil's group? Unclear. We still don't know who sent the spydrone in the first chapter. I'd assumed it was Twil's bunch, since we've been told that they're the Plankton trying to steal Evelyn's krabby patty formula, but it could have also been Lozzie's group.


Granted, I say they "may not" do a siege, but there are still four chapters left in this arc, which is just about the right amount of space for a short-lived siege arc that ends with a new status quo and gives the protagonists a new set of plot threads to pull on. So yeah, I'm pretty sure it's happening. Katalepsis has defied my expectations before, but I'm fairly confident this time.

Guess we'll find out for sure next time.