Part 3 - Complications

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***

Monroe. Monroe. It was a nightmare, I knew it was, yet I couldn’t wake up.

In the dream I saw Monroe planting evidence. Spreading blood in a suspect’s room. In the dream, the blood almost glowed with emotion, like it had been enchanted. Not enchanted, but preserved with a spell. And probably it had, there were ways to preserve evidence and not all the uses were legitimate.

I knew I was twisting in my flip down bed, the sheets gripped in my hands like I was wringing a towel, I could almost feel it, could feel it, but still I couldn’t break free of the dream, it was like the dream was having me, not me having the dream.

I saw him planting the bloody knife.

He turned around, eyes glowing and terrible – and he can see me with those glowing eyes, like the eyes bounced off my spirit and as his vision passed through me it set my body afire, aglow. Made my astral form visible. He reaches out after me, and as he does, the mana flares and gathers around his hand, forms into a killing touch (what a spell is becomes painfully obvious from the astral) and he reaches out for me.

This time his hand reaches me, my body sears in agony as I discorporate.

I wake up screaming, my head slamming into the softness of Rachel’s breasts.

Marsh, wake up! Stop, calm down, it’s me. You’re safe.

I flailed for perhaps ten seconds, thrashing and trying to get away until the words soaked into the thinking part of my mind.

It was just a dream.

My hands shook as I got up and walked to the sink, poured myself a glass of water (murky, with a hint of salt, time to change the filter again). My sweat cooled me as it evaporated. In the distance I heard a police helicopter chupp-chupp past. The flashing lights passed in the distance, slowly left to right.

Two floors down a police car rushed past, silent, lights flashing, right to left.

In the dark I couldn’t see my reflection, but I didn’t need to, I knew I looked scared.

Monroe was the one person in the world who scared me. I’d gone up against him before and it hadn’t ended well. Neither one of us had died, but I still had the scars from the claws he’d sunk into me. I imagine he had scars from when Rachel tried to gut him.

To be honest, I wasn’t completely sure he was human. When I was fighting him, it felt like I was standing on the side of a funnel, like I was being sucked in.

There was darkness inside Monroe, the kind of darkness that was a death camp, the killing shed of a serial killer. The swirling madness of the eat-your-own-feces cannibal insanity. That was the draw and pull I felt around Monroe. If he was human, he was the vilest, most sadistic person I’d ever met.

He was poison incarnate.

He was a cop.

          

Rachel put her hand on my shoulder, the warmth of her touch drawing me back out of my memories. She ran her fingers through my hair and massaged my shoulders. I dropped my head to give her access to the neck muscles.

How do you know, Rachel?

Know what?

How to give a massage, I never learned that skill for you.

Simple, I just read your mind where to touch next. When I press too hard, your body tells me, there’s a little flare in your aura, just a puff of pain.

It felt so good.

Let it go, Marsh. It’s over.

I just wonder if it’s over for Monroe.

If it wasn’t, wouldn’t he have come after you tonight?

I don’t know.

Come back to bed, worrying about it isn’t going to make it any better. All you’re doing is scaring yourself.

She was right, of course, she usually was.

***

I woke up a few hours before dawn from another dream, in this one Monroe was choking the life out of me. I got up, fixed myself a drink and downed it. Vodka and orange juice, breakfast of champions.

I could feel … ritual magic boring down on me. It probably felt something like an ant when the magnifying glass is above them. Where was Rachel?

Probably tracking it down. I could try to track it down myself, but given my weakened state, it would probably take more time that I could safely spend in the etheric. While for me I’ d drown, so to speak, in three or four hours, Rachel was more like a fish. She could stay there indefinitely tracking a spell. Swim through it like she was born into it, and this was truer than it might seem. It was her medium, but it was also her substance. I wasn’t sure she moved through it so much as …. Almost merged with it, became a part of it, blended half into it, she moved so fast.

Having a powerful (and, honestly) vengeful sprit protecting you had its advantages.

I sat down in front of the video display and it started up, delivering a brief weather forecast (who needs a weather forecast in Seattle, it was either sunny and rainy or cloudy and rainy.) then moving to the news, mysterious killer slays four at squatter camp by crushing them to death. A marauding earth spirit is suspected. Fire at the same squatter camp (unrelated).

And a man who was shot yesterday in an apparently random shooting has died. Bystanders give conflicting versions of the man’s description and police seem to think magic is involved. Chief forensic thaumaturgist Mosche Feineman had[BJ3]  been brought to the scene to examine it and take readings. Police suspected a malicious trickster spirit currently.

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