Dead and Horny Ch. 14

"Can't you just give it a little jolt?" Tasia was already out of the car, examining the errant reptile. It looked to be almost twelve feet long. "Move it along?"

The man chuckled. "We call this guy Old Moses. He's been around these parts a while, he's kind of a pet research project. Most spells bounce off his hide, and nobody is quite sure why. It's rare that he's up here, but now that he's seen us, he'll wait until we bribe him with snacks."

"So we can't kill him?"

"It definitely won't make you any friends." The man frowned as Tasia approached Old Moses. "Oh, you shouldn't do that. He's definitely not friendly."

Old Moses tilted his head toward Tasia, regarding her with beady eyes. He let out a hiss of warning, but Tasia had already vaulted over him, landing in a crouch with her feet just behind the gator's front legs. Before Old Moses could react, she had wrapped her arms around his belly and lifted him off the ground.

The gator thrashed and twisted, but she wasn't bothered by it. Her muscles bulged as she tossed the gator into a ditch with water that looked deep enough to soften his landing. There was a loud splash and a bunch of birds took to the sky in protest.

"There." Tasia wiped her hands off on her pants. "I'm hungry. Do you have anything good to eat at the barracks?"

The man stared at her, mouth agape. As she walked past, she gave him a wink.

"The key is to stretch first." She got back into the car. After a brief pause, her driver got in and they continued onward to their destination.

A couple of minutes later, she felt a tingle run across her body as they crossed through the wards around the edge of the facility. The wards served to alert the guard station to anyone crossing through them, but also kept most forms of wildlife away from where they were centered. Amida had once described the wards as a background hum that animals mostly ignored until they got close. He had described it as an inverse-square law, and she couldn't help but smile at his memory.

Gods, how she missed him.

They pulled into a small compound. It was little more than a few buildings that could have easily been abandoned from the looks of them. The Order typically built their structures underground like ants. Ever since the advent of satellite imagery, it was far easier to use practical effects to hide their properties from prying eyes. There was an entire department whose single job was to delete any potential trace of activity in areas like this one from numerous government servers on the odd chance something got picked up. And if they couldn't hide it themselves, they would bribe people to look the other way.

The more important locations were also shielded by magic. Technological advancements sometimes created new problems for the people in the spellcraft department to overcome, but some of the greatest magical minds on the planet were devoted to making sure that the human world never learned that magic still existed.

Tasia got out of the car and took a deep breath through her nose. She picked up the heavy, earthen smell of the foliage surrounding them, along with at least six species of bird and some small mammals. Other than her driver, the scent of humans had been wiped clean from the place, meaning that this branch at least had their shit together.

"Lead the way." She put on her sunglasses and followed behind the driver as he led them into a building that looked like it was a strong breeze away from falling over. Inside, there was an older woman with gray hair pulled up into a bun waiting for them, bare arms crossed over a black tank top.

"I've got her from here." The woman took a step forward and bowed to Tasia. She looked like she might be in her early sixties but had the musculature of an olympic athlete. "Tasia, a pleasure to meet you. I am Master Lynn."

Tasia bowed back, waiting for the driver to leave. Once he was gone, she held out a hand, which Lynn shook.

"I've heard about you," Tasia said, trying to hold back her glee. Lynn was a legend in the Order, more so than Master Cyrus had been. Not only was she one of the best knights who had ever lived, but the woman had been her father's trainer back when he was young. "Are you in command here?"

"Yes and no. I came out a bit ago because of our recent problem, but you're the main reason I'm here. I'm supposed to be your handler." She opened a hidden door, revealing a staircase that disappeared into the earth below.

"Handler?" Tasia frowned. "I thought that...well, you know."

"I do." Lynn took a step back and gestured Tasia forward. "This is less about you and more about the others. They know that you're different, but not necessarily how. While my role is technically to take you down should it be required, my real purpose is to ensure that nobody here gets the bright idea to antagonize you into a bad situation."

"And you think that they would?" She entered the dark stairwell. Her sensitive ears picked up the sound of water being pumped from below.

"We're a secret society made up of humans who love to gossip and start fights." Lynn shut the door, casting them into darkness. "You tell me."

Tasia nodded, knowing the woman could still see her.

"So I'm here to watch your back under the guise of keeping you under control. I'm more worried that the others may not accept you than...well, you know." Lynn snapped her fingers and a light appeared in front of her. It moved forward, illuminating the stairwell. "I'll also admit that I'm curious about you. It's not often I get a chance to work with someone who has survived the process. The last time they tried it, the fatality rate was over ninety percent."

"I thought nobody survived the first time." Tasia put her hand on the railing, surprised at how warm it felt.

"No, a couple did. They just never made it into the field. Too much fight in them." Lynn moved by Tasia, leading the way down the stairs and through a long corridor. A blank wall at the end melted into a doorway when they approached. She taught Tasia a particular knock that would open the door, then led her inside.

The space was empty and looked a bit like an office. Open air cubicles had been set up, but nobody was at them.

"So what did you mean?" Tasia asked. She had held the question as long as she could. "About the original survivors."

Lynn frowned. "They killed each other. I'm not entirely familiar with the process, but understood that you were forced to kill some of the other participants."

Tasia nodded.

"Well, in the first trial, similar issues came up early on, but the Order intervened. Subjects that should have been weeded out for aggression in the beginning were able to keep a low profile until the end. Our surveillance of them was lacking, and we didn't realize that two of the survivors had some serious issues with one another. They got into a fight and killed each other over some petty squabble from before the program was formed. It took a long time before anyone was willing to try this experiment again, and a ton of work was done on making sure we had the right candidates. You've probably been made aware that every single thing you did was recorded. At least twenty different researchers were analyzing footage and watching for any of you to display the warning signs of going feral."

"That happened to a few of us," Tasia admitted. "They made us deal with the problem."

"As they should. If you couldn't handle orders against your fellow subjects, then how would you ever handle orders in the field?" Lynn led her across the room to another door. "Give me a second, would you?"

Lynn stepped through the door and vanished. Tasia could hear the steady cadence of her footsteps, followed by a cry of surprise. She took a few steps back to make room as Lynn shoved a younger man through the door.

"This is your post," she hissed, grabbing the man by the back of his neck and slamming him into a nearby desk. "Your absence here could be the death of us all."

"I'm sorry, Master..." he didn't get another word out, because she grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face into the metal so hard that it knocked him out.

Lynn shook her head, a sneer on her face. It disappeared when she looked at Tasia "When you got your briefing, did they mention the situation over here in the States?"

"Not really, though I did pick up on the fact that Deacon Osgrove is swinging through Florida." Osgrove was an infamous Lousiana pastor who had started small and worked his way up to being the head of his own televangelical super church. The man was worth tens of millions of dollars, had his own private jet, and was making huge waves in Florida as part of an East Coast tour.

"Ah, yes. The preacher man." Lynn rolled her eyes. "Will help you get into heaven for a fee. The only reason he's in your report is because he has buses full of people who follow him from stop to stop. The timing is a little off, but whatever we're hunting may be traveling with his entourage or groupies. They arrived in town just before the Cafe O'Dairy incident which you're here to assist with.

"The situation I'm referring to that has everyone on edge is something else. Someone has been hitting Order bases. Tearing through the men and women like tissue paper. As of yet, we have no leads and no survivors. Beefing up security seems to help, because the attacks have gone down greatly in frequency since doing so. When they do occur, it tends to surround lapses in either security or judgment." She gave the unconscious man's leg a kick. "This asshole was here fifteen minutes ago when I went upstairs to wait for you. No idea what he was thinking, but he'll be sorry when he wakes up."

"Any ideas what they want?" Tasia asked.

Lynn narrowed her eyes. "The old guard. Men and women who have been with the Order for decades. Sometimes they vanish, other times we find what's left of them, usually somewhere away from the attacks. Originally we thought it was demonic in origin, but we never came across any of the typical signs. Heard you went up against a succubus in your last mission."

Tasia nodded, but said nothing.

"They get into your head. Eat your knowledge. Some people think that maybe we're dealing with a very powerful one, or some variation." Lynn tapped her temples. "I saw the report. If you're worried I think you made a deal with her, you shouldn't."

Tasia relaxed. A tremendous amount of suspicion had been placed on her for surviving the encounter with Lily. She and Cyrus had been under a microscope for weeks. Some of the best psychics and exorcists in the Order had torn her psyche apart, looking for anything the demon may have left behind as a parting gift. They found nothing hidden other than childhood insecurities.

However, she couldn't let it go completely. The last thing she wanted was to find out Lynn had lied to her. "How can you be so sure, though? Don't you want to scry me, or whatever it is you do?"

Lynn laughed. "A succubus can be relied on for two things. Killing people and causing chaos. For whatever reason, leaving you alive had far more value to her than killing you off. If you want my opinion, I think it was just to fuck with us. A disgraced knight would be an easy enough target for a snack later on, and I often wondered if I would eventually hear that you had died in your sleep. Seeing that you haven't, I suspect that fucking with us was her purpose.

"Now you wouldn't know this, but for a while, we actually thought the entity killing off our people might be her. After all, she did infiltrate the Pit, and caused all sorts of hell while she was there. But whatever is killing our people..." Lynn shivered. "It's like they went through a meat grinder. Succubi are many things, but they aren't known for making messes like that."

Tasia had a flashback to the after-report of the Black Palace incident. The mercenaries that had been in the basement had been torn to shreds. Officially, there had been no answer, and Master Cyrus had been unable to give one. Was it possible that the witch traveling with the succubus had done it?

At the memory of the witch, Tasia's ribs ached. A knight of the Order could manifest a shield capable of stopping a bullet in its tracks, or at the very least a bladed weapon. The witch had punched Tasia in the breast so hard that she had ruptured pectoral muscles and broken all of her ribs on that side. It wasn't until after Tasia had undergone the experimental procedure that she was able to take a proper deep breath again.

The knight on the ground groaned and stiffly rose to his feet. He looked miserable, but said nothing as he shuffled over to his post. There was no HR, or chain of command that would find fault with Lynn's methods. In the Order, when people fucked up, others died.

"Fuck," he mumbled, then reclined in his chair. "It feels like something is trying to eat its way out of my skull."

"Good." Lynn stepped past the man and looked over his shoulders. "If you aren't watching these cameras, it's because someone else is. Are we clear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why did you even leave in the first place?"

"Just had to pee real quick. I was only gone a few seconds."

"Next time, piss yourself if you have to. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am." Despite his light beating, his tone remained respectful. He only gave Tasia a cursory glance as she was led past him and deeper into the building.

Most Order buildings were laid out the same. It helped newcomers acclimate, and made them easier to defend. This location didn't have the research rooms other facilities did. A few holding cells had been built with the barracks occupying most of the structure. There were also a couple of rooms with private servers and computers inside. Tasia didn't see many people wandering around, but the few she spotted stared right at her as she passed.

"I take it they know?" Tasia asked.

"It's supposed to be a secret. Naturally, everybody knows." Lynn led her to a meeting room in the back of the complex and stopped at the door. "Actually, that's not entirely true. You are essentially a walking bomb, as far as some on the Council are concerned. A decision was made to pass the information to the people at this location for their safety. The men and women in this room are competent, capable, and have experience taking down people like you."

Tasia nodded in agreement. "I shouldn't become a problem, but that's exactly what I would say if I was a problem."

"We're on the same page, then." Lynn entered the room where three men and a woman sat waiting. "This is our team on the ground. Team, this is our VIP, Tasia."

Tasia nodded at them, standing with her hands behind her back as if at parade rest. Though they acted as if nothing was going on, she could smell the recent release of magic in the room. Both knights were being actively shielded by their mages. "It is very nice to meet you all."

Lynn went around the room and introduced each of them individually. Luis was a knight who stood only five foot four but his muscles threatened to burst out of his black t-shirt. His mage was Sister Courtney, a woman with short dark hair and a bunch of piercings in both ears.

The other pair consisted of Brother Julian, a lanky figure who hid within his coat, and his knight, Esteban. The two looked like they might be related, which was always a possibility. It wasn't unheard of for the Order to pick up siblings from the orphanage if they all showed some talent.

They were all older than Tasia by several years. This wasn't a surprise, as she had still been in training up until the Black Palace incident.

Inhaling through her nose, she could taste the emotions in the room on the back of her tongue. They were afraid. They had good poker faces, but hadn't thought to conceal their odor using magic. She also caught the faint trace of gunpowder on Esteban. It was likely he had assembled some special rounds just for her and distributed them among the team, just in case.

"So let's get this party started." Tasia moved to the middle of the room, and pulled out a chair so that she could sit among everyone. "And before anyone asks, I'm just the muscle. You won't get any of that alpha shit from me. You point the gun," she looked pointedly at Esteban, "and I'll be your bullet."

Esteban actually smiled at her comment, then looked at Lynn. "Shall we begin?" he asked

"Please do. Once you have her caught up on current findings, we'll go on a field trip. See if our new guest might pick up something we haven't." Lynn pulled out a chair of her own and sat next to Tasia. She produced an apple as if by magic, then handed it to Tasia. "Snack?"

"Thanks." Tasia took the fruit and bit into it as the projector in the room kicked on.

😈😈😈

The air took on a coppery taste as the fog swirled around Dana's body and thickened. Despite being next to Lily, the succubus all but disappeared in the maelstrom of mist.

"I think I should warn you that I'm allergic to weird." Lily coughed dramatically.

"It is but a precaution, I assure you. Technically, there is nothing to inhale." The Oracle turned his attention to Dana. "Though that may be hard to convince you of. You can feel it, can't you? It clings to your skin, and even passes into your lungs, pressing inward, ever seeking. But the spark that used to be has been snuffed out."

Dana frowned. "Are you speaking about my condition?"

"It's not as simple as everyone thinks, now is it? You used to be on the path to greatness, knocked clear by chance. Even now, there are things you seek that cannot be accomplished until the spark has been regained, that you may see beyond the veil."

Up close, Dana realized she couldn't see any sort of mouth on the Oracle. When she turned her attention to the speaker, she could have sworn it was curled up into a pair of lips.

"Sorry about my friend. She's a little distracted." Lily knocked on the glass, and the Oracle turned to face her. "So anyway, we're looking for someone."

"I'm aware." The Oracle blinked one eye at a time, and Dana was no longer certain he had only two. For just a second, she had seen dozens, but when she tried to remember, the image consolidated slowly inside her head. "To avenge your friend."

"Ah, great. Now we're getting to the juicy parts. Okay, so do we have to answer a riddle, or maybe you just want some snacks?" Lily reached into a pocket and pulled out a moonpie.

"What the hell, you brought this guy snacks?" Dana watched as Lily pulled a small variety of other treats out of her pockets.

"Well, yeah. I figured money was no good, which meant threats of violence or contraband. It's clear he's in prison, so..." Lily pulled out a pack of cigarettes, twinkies, and a small bag of dum-dums. "Any of these float your boat, bugman? I've got some beef jerky in my prison wallet."

The Oracle's eyes blazed with light, and suddenly Dana was looking into a mouth full of tiny orbs that looked like distant stars. Lily's eyes rolled back in her head and she went silent, her mouth hanging open in wonder.

"What did you do to her?" Dana nudged her friend, but Lily didn't respond.

"She is a distraction. You are the star of the show, didn't you know? Don't worry, she'll be fine." The Oracle extended long hairy fingers and splayed them against the glass. "Tell me more about how you came to be, Sparks."

The use of her old nickname startled her. "How do you know that name?" she whispered.

"I'm the Oracle. I have seen much of what was, what is, and what is to come. I'm an observer, much like the scientists of your world, eager to see how things develop in this realm. Will you all rise above and escape the coming flood, or will you succumb to the hunger and perish?" He made a clicking sound that gave Dana the shivers. "It's all so fascinating, really."

"If you can see all this shit, then why don't you tell me how I came to be?" She moved closer to the glass, her nose almost touching it. "The mysterious moth act may work for the Order, but I'm--"