Saints and Spirits

California

Seventeen Months after the Treaty:

The night kicked off to a wonderful start.

"Wow. You look like a mess, dude."

Doc Worth blinked and suddenly the first realization of the day exploded across his frontal cortex like a hydrogen bomb. He was awake. Ugh.

Morning. Evening? Sensory data.

"What, did Conman kick you off the mattress again?"

Worth glared at him through the one eye that wasn't swollen shut, and gradually started deciphering the sensory data that was flooding his brain—the lurid light smeared across the windows, reddish like the clouds he could just make out the bottoms of, and the nicotine yellow husk of the hulking, rumbling thing they'd called home for more than a year now. Hanna was sitting at the table, maps splayed out in front of him, a mug of something mud-colored and steaming in his hands.

Worth second realization of the evening was that it was fucking cold in here with nothing on but a pair of ragged boxers.

"Yer goddamn runes stopped workin' again," Worth growled, mouth tasting like winter desert and bacteria. "Can't fuckin' sleep fer all the dreamin'."

Hanna did a shitty job of looking like he wasn't holding down laughter. "Doc, I told you to lay off those things. It's just like any other brain-suppressor, eventually you build up a tolerance. The human body is like the coolest thing ever—give it enough time, and it'll set itself straight against anything."

"'M a fuckin' doctor," Worth grumbled. "Fuckin' lecture me 'bout… fuckin' human body…"

He sniffed.

"'s tha' stew?"

Hanna blinked at him a couple times, trying to figure out what he'd just been asked, and then he smiled. "Sure, yeah! I woke up early this afternoon and I did a little foraging. Found some mushrooms. I'm not dead yet, so it looks like I read the guide right!"

Worth evaluated the cup. Smelled good. Well, it smelled like food anyhow, and that was the important part.

"Dead man on cookin' duty?"

Hanna nodded, turning back to his maps.

"We far from th' city?" the doctor asked, reaching for his coat in the pile of detritus in the overhead bin. Good to have it back after the summer run.

"A couple hours, I think. The signs around here fell down or got eaten or something since we left, so I'm having a hard time figuring it out but don't worry I'll have us sorted in like half the time it takes to finish that stew. I have my mappin' hat on, see?" The younger man gestured upwards at the ugly beanie crawling off the back of his head, glow-in-the-dark green continents stitched into blue yarn.

"That hat," the doctor grunted, squinting, "…'s stupid."

Hanna spared him one of thoselooks that people get when they're indulging five-year-olds. Well fuck everyone, he was too tired for witty commentary.

He stumbled out the door and down the steps and onto the mulch of the disintegrating campground. Goddamn, forgot about shoes. Stiff corners dug into the scarred and calloused soles of his feet, and he clenched his jaw shut as he made his way across the ground to the fire pit where steam was pouring upwards and draining away into the forest. Smelled promising.

"Oi, Frankenstein, anything in the pot I oughter know abou'?"

The zombie looked up from his novel, long legs crossed over the rotting bench beside the fire. "I believe one of the meat elements is the heart of a deer, if that's relevant. I also believe this is the third time you've called me by that name. Have you ever actually read Frankenstein?"

Worth snagged a mug off the bench beside Nameless McGreenGuy and ladled out a pint of stew. "Sure," he replied, offhand. "High school or summat. Another limp-dick whiner in the fine old romantic tradition. Near ta strangled myself 'fore I finished, if memory serves, but that was back in the day when finishin' the assignment was worth it. Life-suck, tha's what school is. Great bloody waste of time. "

"Doctor, did you sleep well?"

Worth squinted at him over the white steam of the pot. "Not at fuckin' all. Why?"

"Because you're rambling, and because you just spooned that portion of soup back into the pot."

Doc Worth blinked down at his bone-dry cup. Well. Jesus.

"Maybe you should go back to bed. Unless Conrad kicked you off the mattress again?"

"Aw, fer fuck's sake, you two morons make it sound like it happens every day."

The zombie stood, that odd swinging motion that was always somewhere between ungainly and graceful, and plucked both the cup and the ladle from Worth's hands. He doled out the perfect amount, capped the pot, and returned the cup which Worth accepted back only grudgingly.

He did briefly consider heading back to the RV and shoving his way onto the bed and pulling the covers over his head, damn the time and damn his wheezing, steaming brain too. But looming memories of man-shaped ashes and blue lighters and the other trapping of what had passed for sleep the last few days turned him off that option cold. He'd woken up sweating in the darkness, with his fingers white and bloodless around a forearm that wasn't his own, and he had no desire to go back to that.

"It has all of us on edge," the dead man offered, softly, making no move to return to his bench. "You aren't the only one of us worried."

Worth snorted over the surface of his breakfast. "It's just a city, man. We seen a damn sight worse than one half-burned city."

"It's home," the zombie replied, inexorable.

"Feh. You still dunno where yer home is, an' y'ain't likely ta ever find out now."

"It's home," the dead man repeated, traffic-light eyes flashing. "It's the first place where we ever felt that we belonged, you or I."

Worth gulped down a mouthful of something that tasted like woodsand animal. "Think ya know me alluva sudden 'cause Hanna tol' ya some half-cracked story 'bout my life?"

"No, actually," Frankenstein answered, with a rare quirk of the dry lips. "I think I know you because I've shared a home with you for a year and a half, and unlike Conrad I know when I'm being misdirected."

"Well ain't you special," Worth grumbled.

He could see the yellow and blue streaks on the eastern horizon between twisting branches, when he looked, and he considered the road that wound along under it and towards their destination. The last time he'd driven that road, heading east, it had been slipping into morning and the banks of the highway were dotted every few miles with a light escaping a window at the end of each scattered driveway.

Now they were heading west, away from the fading sunlight, and back into the city that had spawned them all like some bizarre ant-queen popping out new and inexplicable children to patrol her lightless caverns. And when the burrows started collapsing, he'd hopped into his stolen car and hardly cast a backwards glance.

"Hanna hasn't told me any revealing stories about you, you know," the zombie remarked, idly, maybe attempting to make conversation. "I'm under the impression he doesn't know any."

Worth snorted. "Betcher ass Lamont told him a couple. Kid starts gigglin' every time I say 'butcher', I know he knows."

"Well," the undead man replied, "Maybe I should ask him to tell me one."

-A-

In a way, it was worse than New York.

At least in New York, he'd been personally unfamiliar with the scenery. The anarchy and the flame-bitten, trashed city had been unnerving, but at least they had been just as alien as the New York of postcards and movies.

This was his city. There were no fire pits carved into the asphalt, no distant humming motorcycle engines, but the silence was almost as bad. Year-old glass covered the streets, and mildewed curtains flapped in the windows of the inner-city houses.

"Jesus," Conrad hissed, eyes on the blackened building just ahead, "That was where I got my first commission."

The glass shards caught their headlights like a carpet of jagged stars.

"Don' look like yer likely ter get it back," Worth observed. "Unless the charred look is in vogue this year."

"Who the hell called us here?" Conrad murmured, appearing not to have noticed the comment at all. "This city is dead. There hasn't been anyone on this street for months and months, not even scavengers. Look. It's abandoned."

Worth shrugged, mostly for his own benefit. "It's pro'ly a trap."

Conrad made a face, stony and jaw clenched, that was best translated as "pretending to be confident." He swerved around a fallen lightpost. "Unseelie can't ambush, and humans can't tap into the summoning system."

"Don't gotta be Unseelie," Worth replied, kicking his boots up on the dashboard. "Might be magicians. Might be, whachacallem, puca. I dunno. Could be anythin', there's plenty'a spooks floatin' around with a grudge fer the guys who slapped a ball'n chain on 'em just when things were loosenin' up."

"You know what I hate?" Conrad muttered, mouth twisting downward. "Broken windows. There's just something about them that makes you feel exposed."

"Eh, whatcha got against exposure anyhow? Goddamn prude, tha's what ya are."

Rather than listen for a reply, Worth turned his attention back out the window and into the night, at the darkness that rose up around them in huge hollow columns. As they rumbled up the peak of a hill, something not too far in the distance caught the doctor's eye.

"Oi, Speed Racer. You seein' that huge glowin' clock tower over there, or am I hallucinatin' again?"

"Nooo," the vampire replied, slowly, "you aren't hallucinating. This time. Hey Hanna!" he shouted back over his shoulder, "Hanna, we found something!"

A red blur stumbled into the back of Worth's peripheral vision, and the vague heat of a hand centimeters away radiated into his shoulder.

"Whoa, the big glowing circle thing?"

"Yes. That. I think I can get there in a couple minutes if I take Maryland—you want me to?"

"Totally. Try to avoid… hey, what's that?"

The RV lurched, squealing, and threw Worth chest-first into the dashboard as Conrad loosed a low roar of obscenity in the driver's seat. Hanna's blurry ginger outline toppled down into the space just under the dashboard. They were still.

"Snap my goddamn ribs why doncha?" the doctor mumbled, half his face smeared across the top of a glove compartment.

Conrad jerked the RV into park and threw open his door. The yelling started up as soon as his feet hit asphalt, "Hey, you, yes you, idiot—"

The sound faded around the front of the vehicle. Worth peeled his face off fake leather and looked up, over the hood, to where Conrad was standing with his hands on his hips, chewing out a wide-eyed young man who looked to be about three seconds away from a fatal heart attack.

The doctor shoved his own door open and stuck his head out. "Ey, Princess, ya owe me a new face!"

Conrad glared at him, headlights bouncing green and red light off his eyes. "Whatever I broke, it can only be an improvement!"

"Yer a catty bitch today, aincha?"

Conrad rolled his eyes and turned back to the pale-faced stranger, who was backed up against a chunk of rubble with his pupils blown. The line of the vampire's shoulders softened, and he bit his lip.

"Um. Sorry," he said, tucking hands into pockets, awkward now. "Just… watch where you're going okay?"

The stranger said nothing.

"Mebbe he thinks yer gonna eat 'im," Worth called out, grinning. "Hear jaywalkers got a nice tang to 'em."

"Oh sod off," Conrad shot back. Hesitantly, he reached out a hand for the shaking man. "Hey, um, are you alright? I'm really not going to eat you, I swear. I don't kill people."

Worth was going to point out that he did kill people, fairly often even, and did a damn good job of it too, when Hanna pushed his way past and knocked the doctor back into his seat.

"You guys, you guys are so bad at this." The redhead pushed his way in front of Conrad and took hold of the stranger's hands, lightly, with small movements that belied the pushiness of his entrance. "Hi. I'm Hanna. What's your name?"

The man stared at him.

Hanna reached up and grabbed his own lip, tugging down to expose little white molars. "Look, totally human. Just like you. We're not gonna hurt you or anything, okay? So what's your name?"

The stranger swallowed, so you could see his throat contracting around his own dry spit. "Trevin."

"Okay, Trevin, nice to meet you. Now, are you alone?"

A pause, a wild glance, and then a nod.

Hanna smiled, reassuring. "So, this place is pretty creepy right? You don't wanna be alone out here. If you want, we can give you a ride back to… wherever you came from. I know hopping in vans with strangers is kinda not kosher, but I can promise you we have absolutely no candy whatsoever, and none of us have ever been to prison. Okay, well, Worth has, but that was for…"

"Acts'a vandalism an' public indecency."

"…Kay, well, that last one actually doesn't help me make my point so much."

"An' y'got yerself arrested that one time. When ya blew up that buildin'? Shoulda gone ter prison. Anybody else woulda."

"Okay, now you're being like the exact opposite of helpful."

There was the sound of a door opening, and Worth glanced back at the driver's seat just in time to catch the tail of a black coat disappearing out into the darkness.

"Hanna?" the dead man's voice rang out, cool and concerned. "Hanna, what is—oh. Well."

The stranger collapsed in a heap of pale skin and sputtering pulse. They all stared.

"Hey Frankenstein," Worth called, after a minute of contemplation. "Y'know, if you'd read the book we might not have this problem."

-A-

When Trevin came to, it was in the back of the RV on the bench that usually served as Hanna's bed with a face full of ice water.

"And now I'm stuck sleeping on ice. Great."

"Least ya don't have ter sleep next ta Priscilla Queen of the Icecicles every day."

"Hold on, he's waking up. I think it worked."

Hanna was perched on the one armrest, back to the rest of the cabin, peering down at their guest with all the bright eyed curiosity of a feral toddler. Conrad snorted, setting down the bucket. He gave it a displeased look, probably considering the hassle that would come from refilling it.

The Trevin kid blinked, and then froze.

"Ooh, that doesn't look promising," Hanna observed, under his breath. "Hey, so, you fainted? And I really didn't wanna leave you on the street so I hope you don't mind? You look super cold. Sorry about that. Uriel, would you grab him a towel?"

The stranger followed Hanna's glance across the room to where the zombie was standing—awkwardly, Worth was fairly sure—and you could almost see the poor kid's heart stop.

"Zombie," was all he said, muscles stiff, unblinking. "Zombie. Fedora."

The magician on the armrest jumped in. "Whoa, no, hold on, Prometheus is a friend okay? A good friend. Try to be sensitive about his condition."

"Condition," the young man parroted, managing to sound skeptical underneath the terror. "He's dead."

"Yeah, well," Hanna muttered, "so's Conrad. And I …once. But anyways, this RV is a prejudice free zone so you gotta make nice with the dead guys if you wanna stick around, okay?"

The terror melted away, replaced by indignity. "Hey, I didn't ask you to take me in here, did I?"

Conrad dropped into the seat at the table next to Worth. "I liked him better when he was mute."

The Trevin kid scowled. "What, so the dead guy can be a jerk to me but I can't be a jerk to him?"

"Um… yes? But I mean, do you want us to leave you here? You looked pretty freaked out, but, if you'd rather be back out there it's fine with us, you're free to go and all."

The kid turned so white that his skin matched his hair, and his fists mercilessly crumpled the gnome-printed sheets. "No," he said, "no, I'd… rather not."

Hanna clapped his hands together and clambered down from the armrest. "Great! So then, introductions! I'm Hanna Falk Cross, former paranormal investigator and current… what'd we call it? Troubleshooter. That's Prometheus—well, today he's Prometheus, I'm thinking tomorrow he can be Uriel; I'm trying to work through the archangels so I can get to the New Testament—he's my partner and a really great guy, everyone loves him and you'll love him too!"

Their guest said nothing but looked fairly unconvinced.

The redhead chose not to notice; instead, he pointed at the table where Worth was busy rolling himself a cigarette and Conrad was looking bored. "Um, the pale one is Conrad Achenleck, he's a vampire but he's not… he's not really good at it—"

"I resent that!"

"—but he's a great driver and he has a really boss tenor. And that's Doc Worth, and you should probably… just not talk to him."

Worth snorted. And how was a man supposed to have any fun if Mother Teresa there kept warning off all the potential game?

"So," Hanna went on, looking down, "that's us. Who are you? And what were you running from?"

The Trevin kid frowned, polar-bear eyebrows furrowing. "I… don't remember. There were people chasing me, and… and I lost my guitar. Shit. I don't know where I'm gonna get a replacement."

"Who was chasing you?" Hanna pressed. "Do you live nearby? Were they neighbors or something? Did you get run out of… town? Village?"

"No, I was just out in the woods. I was practicing. And I heard this noise like it was really close, and then it got softer, and. Yeah, I don't know. Then you nearly hit me with this thing."

"Try looking both ways before you cross the street, moron," Conrad muttered into his fist. The fruitcake took accusations against his driving skills personally.

Hanna loomed absently over their guest, tapping his fingers in uneven patterns on the worn denim of his jeans. "You don't remember anything at all?"

"Maybe… hooves. I guess. I've never heard horse hooves in real life, so I can't really swear to it."

"Hooves… oh, fuck. Conrad, is your phone charged?"

"Uh… yes?"

"Go grab it," Hanna ordered, dropping to his knees to dig through the accumulated detritus under his otherwise occupied bench-bed. Connie's Maid Service kept the RV clean enough, but after sticking a hand in a puddle of ectoplasm under the bench last year, he'd flat out refused to touch the thing ever again. God only knew what Hanna was searching for now.

Conrad grumbled and stalked off to the cockpit, snatching Worth's newly rolled cigarette up as he left the table. Worth glared at his empty hand.

"I only know one thing that gets quieter when it gets closer, and it's something I had really hoped I'd never have to deal with again." Hanna's arm retreated from the darkness with a book marginally larger than a pamphlet. The cover had a deer's skull emblazoned across it.

"Okay Hanna," Conrad called, stepping back into the main room. His battered iphone glowed faintly in the cage of his fingers. "Tell me this isn't for a game of emergency tetris."

"No, I just—what's the date?"

"The date? It's, uh, October thirtieth… Oh, that's going to be a problem, isn't it?"

Hanna hissed, flipping the book open. "Stupid. Can't believe I lost track. We're supposed to be in Nevada for Halloween, put in an appearance at the Seelie court shindig—I thought we had another couple days—but it looks like we're definitely not going to make it. No way we're leaving town now."

"What's going on?" the stranger demanded, pulling himself up from Hanna's nest of blankets and pillows.

But Hanna was gone, scrambling out the side door with book in hand, and Conrad shared a skeptical look with the doctor beside him. The zombie stepped forward, hands behind back, and knelt down to Trevin's level.

"When Hanna comes back, we'll return you to your home. Do you live near here?"

"This is where I live, actually."

"What," Worth snorted, "in a storm drain?"

Conrad leaned forward, glasses flashing in the dull yellow light. "This city looks like it could barely house a family of rats safely. Where are you sleeping?"

"Just north of here," Trevin replied, looking vaguely offended, "in the suburbs. The riots here went absolutely fucking nuts, see? We—all the smart people—we left for the suburbs a couple months after the bodies started piling up downtown. We had it bad here. Bad luck. Every time it looked like it was calming down, things just got worse. So last summer, everybody left alive at the college just grabbed their shit and made a run for the closest walled community."

The door creaked softly as a wind rushed over their dented metal hull.

Worth drummed fingertips against the table top. This place had been the western hub of the supernatural world, and while 'things getting worse when they ought to get better' was pretty much what Worth expected from the world on a daily basis, in this case he could pin the cause for it with very little difficulty.

"I didn't see any corpses," Conrad murmured, glancing out the window with one of those looks that said But I'm not really curious enough to stir up that can of worms right now.

Trevin had already changed focus. Now he was examining the gnome-printed sheets and the fuzzy pink blankets and the mass of pillows with a bemused frown. "How come I'm not in an actual bed? You do have one, right?"

"Yeeeah," Hanna's voice replied, followed quickly by the body as he bounced back through the door, "but that's where Conrad and Worth sleep and, uh, you're better off out here. I can just go back to sleeping in the overhead bunk, since we cleared out that cornmeal we were storing a week or two ago."

Trevin shot Worth and Conrad a weird look, which they both ignored. The doctor snatched back the cigarette Conrad had stolen and wedged it between his teeth, turning back to Hanna.

"So, find out whacha needed ter know?"

The magician made a disturbing face half way between a nervous frown and a reassuring smile. It looked vaguely like a gargoyle mask. "Unfortunately, yep."

Worth filched his lighter back from Conrad too, digging around in the startled vampire's pockets for the hunk of plastic. Little bitch had been trying to keep him off the stuff for a week now, since they left the last village, like it made any difference to him whether Worth got lung cancer or not.

"So?" the Trevin kid demanded, sitting forward. "Who was after me?"

Hanna grimaced outright now. "Not so much a who as a what."

"Well then, what?"

"Ever heard of the Wild Hunt?"

"Yeah, sure. Been on a few m'self." Finally locating his lighter, Worth allowed himself an extra moment to pinch Conrad's thigh, grinning at the immediate elbow to the cheek it earned him.

"Yee-aaaaaah, no," the red head's grimace flattened. "I'm pretty sure we're talking about, like, two totally different things here, bro."

"Jus' 'cause ya never managed ter bag nothin' on yer nights out don't mean I weren't successful." Flame snapped to life from the mouth of the lighter as Worth lifted it towards the cigarette still stubbornly jutting out between his teeth.

The fact that Hanna failed to dignify that with a response, face once again buried in the leather-bound book, did more to concern Worth than anything else that had happened so far that evening. His fingers tapped on the table top, waffling between the desire to clearly remain unaffected by the quiet, and the need to snatch that damn book from him and find out what the hell was so damn interesting. Maybe it was his way of avoiding talk about sex? Christ knew he had never been laid in his life, and neither had Conrad. Catching a side-ways look from Trevin, he spared the kid a grin, not sure if he was doing so in order to put him at ease or if he just felt more at ease himself by knowing he could still intimidate people who didn't know him.

Whatever. Too much thinking. Would someone ask Hanna what the fuck was going on, already?

"Look. Suspense. Wonderful. Fantastic." Ah, there we go. Thanks, sweetheart. "Could you possibly give up on the mystery and just give us information?"

"Huh-wha? Oh." Blinking, clearly pulling himself back from whatever hypnotic state his readings often dragged him into, Hanna rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, 'kay. Sooooo, the Wild Hunt is uh, kinda what it sounds like but with less of the dirty stuff Worth likes to get on about. Actually, none of the dirty stuff. Worth's just dirty."

He grinned at Trevin again and was disappointed that the kid wasn't paying any attention to him anymore.

"Nothing we're not painfully aware of," Conrad grumbled. Worth's grin soured slightly.

"Anyhoo, so like, it can vary? There are a couple of types? All of them are based on that area's own flavor of deities and spirits and all that jazzamarazz." The book was set aside carefully as Hanna turned his attention back to the living and not-quite-so-living in the vehicle. "Like, there was this one woman and she was all "If I can't hunt in heaven, leave me on Earth!" 'cause yeaaaaah apparently she hadn't heard of not fucking with the powers that be. So she's trapped hunting forever, dragging people in to the hunt with her if they can't escape, standard cursed soul entrapment stuff, but! I don't think we're dealing with her. I think we have more of a standard hunt here." He adjusted his glasses, curiosity and excitement beginning to overcome his earlier concern. "Which means that there's a corrupted soul somewhere around here, and they are after his ass. Or her ass. Or uh, I dunno, whatever gender they are, maybe they aren't a gender. Don't want to be offensive or anything so um, they are after that person? Yes."

"So yer sayin' some dumb bloke's got some angry spirits after his ass? Hey, yanno what that sounds like? Not our fuckin' problem."

"Dude, you always say that. How about this person's loved ones? Or. What if they're running across a bridge we're using and one of us accidentally gets in the way? Huh?"

Worth looked less skeptical and more annoyed, mostly because he was. "The hell they'd want with us?"

"Well," Hanna hesitated, tongue glancing across his lips, avoiding eye-contact with Worth to instead tug at the growing spread of frayed fabric at the knee of his jeans. "Maybe there's, like, a lot of weirdo magical hijinks up in here sometimes, man, and what with us being... yanno... us, well, like, one of us might fall on the wrong side of "corrupted", and their sights could shift and I'm just sayin' WOW LOOK AT THESE JEANS I SHOULD FIX THEM and are you on the same page with me yet or what?"

"Ya sayin' they might wind up after th' princess's ass?" Thin eyebrows raising, Worth slung an arm around Conrad's less than pleased shoulders. "'Fraid I done laid claim ter that bit'a her ladyship long time ago."

There was a brief scuffle of activity as Conrad decided to make it clear that Worth's proffered protection was not exactly to his ladyship's liking. It stopped about the time Worth's nose began to bleed. Quietly, the zombie fetched a towel from the kitchenette counter and placed it on the table. Worth ignored it, choosing instead to lean closer to Conrad, sniffing occasionally and watching the way the vampire twitched slightly every time a droplet plopped off his chin and onto Worth's lap.

"Kay so if you two are done, and I'm pretty sure they are, sorry, Trevinnator, they just do that sometimes."

Trevin tried to look as unaffected as someone can while sitting on the edge of a seat. He scooted back with a roll of his eyes when he noticed how close he was to the zombie.

"So like, yeah, we could do that, the whole helping or getting the fuck out of the way. But," a sigh, "I dunno. Sometimes it's not always that person's fault that they're corrupted, or like, I guess it is but sometimes there are reasons, you know? And uh, anyway, lots of people usually get hurt in the process of the hunt, like I totally mentioned, and sometimes the hunt can switch to another target, like I also totally mentioned, and if nothing else, I'd rather try to at least prevent as much collateral damage and loss of life as possible?"

The dripping of Worth's nose had lessened, and he took the towel to wipe at the drying remains from beneath his nostrils. "Yeah, sound 'bout like th' kinda think yeh'd do."

"Awesome! So you are totally on board! See, Trevin?" False brightness plastered itself across Hanna's face. "We're totally gonna fix this right up. Don't worry about a thing!"

He picked at the chipped edge of the table looking nonplussed. "Yeah, you guys seem like you really have it together."

-A-

Somewhere between the edge of town and their destination, Worth slipped into a restless sleep.

It was the kind of sleep that makes your eyes ache, the kind where you wake up infinitely more tired than you fell asleep. And Worth dreamed, in that aching, awful moment carved out between two distant blinks.

He dreamed that the world was a mansion built on a hill, and the spire above the attic was a needle leaving ugly crisscrossing trails of fat black thread across the moon. He dreamed that the graveyard pulled itself up from the earth and strong-armed its way into the mansion's parlor, and the high vaulted windows ran with rust-red water.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked out the passing seconds, each one gathering behind its great brass wings like an army.

And a hand was on his hand as the tiny, curled second hand drew closer to the final hour, and Lamont was standing at his back with a nervous frown that was so familiar it nearly hurt.

You shouldn't be here, Lamont said

Well fuck, Worth said

A headstone loomed far above the both of them

Ya don't say, Worth replied

-A-

The glare from the swollen, glowing face of the clock tower glinted off of Conrad's glasses, and even Worth was blinded enough by the glare to curve his hand before his brow, squinting in the slight bit of shade afforded to him by his long, knobby fingers. The camper hummed around them, a gentle and constant shake that always seemed to grow more noticeable when they were around an area with active energy at work. It set him on edge, the way it seemed to form its own steady sort of heart beat, quickening and slowing along with the magic around them. Currently the lub-dub was reminding Worth of a light jogging pace, and he had a feeling that meant this wasn't going to be remotely easy.

Of course not. When the hell had anything that got Hanna hopping around like a hare on heroin turned out to be easy?

Conrad turned off the camper, not bothering to pull the keys from the ignition, hands gripping the steering wheel. Normally he would be bitching or getting out and then bitching. Hmm.

"Oi," Worth elbowed the vampire, earning little more than a deepening of the other man's scowl as response. "Wot?"

"Do I have to go out there?"

"Eeeh," he rubbed his chin with his free hand, "reckon th' Baby bear get mighty put out if our family outin' don't have both his mamma an' his papa bear with him. Got issues 'n' all that."

"Fine then, mamma bear," Conrad looked at Worth, or at least he seemed too, eyes still hidden by the bright light whitening the lenses of his glasses, "let's head out. I'm sure this will be a fucking treat."

"Oh yeah, bet so." He would let the mamma bear comment slide for now, but he was already formulating belated responses in the back of his head as doorknobs squeaked and the inhabitants of the camper made their way out to the street.

"Oh maaaaaaaaaaaaan! It's like, so bright! Like, totally day glow level, but not like day glo? You know? Just super duper bright and shadowwwwws cannot even be seen 'cause damn that is some hot stuff comin' out of there!" True to form, Hanna was already babbling and charging ahead, stopping only once he had hit what Worth assumed to be some sort of invisible magic barrier a few yards ahead. "Thaaaaaaat could be a problem, but totally not for us! Prometheus, can you go nab me some of theeeee," fingers poked at the air before him, "dried sage, nettle, blue chalk and maybe a long sleeved shirt? Uhhhh yeah, definitely a long sleeved one."

The zombie paused, unsure, and when Hanna noticed his furious poking stopped in mid-go.

"Prometheus?" he asked, brow furrowed in a way that made him look his twenty-seven years. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine, Hanna," the dead man replied, blinking like he did sometimes when he was trying to be comforting. "It's just… it feels familiar."

Hanna looked deeply worried, for a passing moment, but Frankenstein had already turned around and so the magician reluctantly went back to communing with the invisible wall.

While the zombie headed back into the RV, Trevin leaned against the side of the vehicle, his eyes shifting sideways. Whatever, Worth thought, as he and Conrad moved closer to Hanna. Let the little hipster run off if he wanted. Anybody dumb enough to run off into the decaying corpse of a ghost town the night before Halloween had pretty much already punched their one way, non refundable to the afterlife.

Hanna looked up at them, distantly. "This one's gonna take some work," he told them, "so you might wanna shift off a few feet just in case something explodes. Er. Not that it will, just in case it does in some bizarre off chance that I picked the wrong color of chalk or something okay?"

Having born the brunt of one too many of Hanna's completely-unlikely-honestly explosions, every one left moved to the other side of the RV and waited out the storm in relative safety.

Beside him, Conrad was slowly beginning to rub one of his temples and Worth felt a little tension easing from his own shoulders. No wonder the vampire was acting off. The light from the clock face was artificial, but it was doing a hell of a job obliterating any sort of dark area, even preventing much in the way of shadows at their feet. Not the real thing, but it was close enough to sunlight to be giving him a hell of headache.

"Need ter sleep it off?"

A sigh that had an edge of a groan withered on Conrad's lips. "What?"

"Gotcherself an ouchie, yeah? Wanna go sleep it off?"

The motion of fingers on temple slowed, then stilled. "I...guess so? I'm waiting for the inevitable joke to follow my answer, though."

Worth shrugged, left hand finding its way into the front pocket of his jeans while the right remained on his face to shield his eyes. "Just thought ya looked a li'l worse fer wear, sweetheart. Can't a man show a li'l consideration fer his number one girl?"

"You're the mamma bear here, not me."

"Pretty insistent about that bear business, now. Something ya wanna tell me? We finally gonna have ourselves a chat about yer preferences darlin'?"

"I really have no idea why I ever converse with you. I really don't."

"Well we don't need no words ter-"

"No."

"Yer loss, love. I got wotcha call "healin' hands"."

"If you are going to try and turn this into a sexual healing joke, I fucking swear, you'll have another spot to check off on your places my nose was broken bingo sheet."

"Oh, nah. Always though I was more of a doctor feelgood sort."

Conrad snorted. "As much as I hate to agree with anything you say, that one seems rather apt, and, no, before you even ask, I am not interested in your services."

"Sooner 'r later, everybody takes a turn with Doctor Feelgood. Don't gotta be shy now."

Instead of replying, Conrad stiffened and curled his lip, and whirled on the blond kid lingering at the edges of their unwieldy polygon. Worth realized belatedly that Trevin actually hadn't looked away from them since the first ouchie comment.

"What are you even staring at?" Conrad snarled, about two seconds from breathing fire. You could just about see the smoke curling out of his nostrils. Conrad was factually a live action nineteen-forties cartoon.

The kid just raised his eyebrows, hands tucked into pockets. It was hard to blame him really—until you'd seen Conrad eviscerate a man with his teeth, it was hard to take anything he said seriously. Actually, it was still hard. Worth did have to occasionally remind himself of Conrad's capabilities, every so often, when Conrad decided that a joke had been taken just a smidge too far. But the kid had no way of knowing that, and Worth was pretty sure that even if the clock tower wasn't basically taking a jack hammer to the vampire's spooky hoodoo bit, he probably wouldn't eviscerate a civilian just for raising his eyebrows.

Probably.

"Are you two… like," Trevin started, eyeing them both, "together?"

"The fucking hell we are!" the vampire shrieked. The pitch was probably lethal to certain breeds of small animal.

Trevin slowly raised one hand to his ear and poked at the cavity. "I think that was a high C."

"Where'd you get that idea?" Conrad went on, working himself up to the beginning of a truly magnificent tirade. "Where the fuck did you get that idea?"

The kid glanced sideways at Worth, as if to say can you believe this guy? Worth smiled back with more teeth than was probably necessary.

"Well for one, you sleep in the same bed."

Conrad sucked in one huge angry breath, and then lost his grip on it. It came whistling out like someone had stuck him with a pin. "Oh," he said, smartly. "That. I guess that could give somebody the completely inaccurate and insulting impression. That we might be a thing. Which we aren't."

"There's only one bed," Worth offered, helpfully, "'n Connie's gotta get himself outta the sun don't he? Course, I'm too bloody tall ter fit on the booth or th' overhead, so it's ta the back with me too."

The dead man nodded gratefully. "Yes, that's—"

"An' it makes the sex a lot easier too, eh sweetheart?"

"Worth you fucking liar—"

"Lemme tell ya, kid, dontcha ever try ter have sex on a camper floor, specially not with a buddy sleepin' in the overhead—"

"If you don't stop I will literally rip your lips off and feed them too you—"

"Ya don' even wanna know where poor Conniekins got himself rugburned—"

"Shut up shut up shut up!"

About the time Conrad nearly shoved his whole hand down Worth's throat, Worth finally gave up on finishing the story and went down graciously in a heap of flying elbows.

They were still trying to strangle each other when finally Hanna popped in and exchanged a look with Trevin, who was watching the show with a detached sort of interest.

"It's like a dogfight," Hanna observed. "Can't really step in or somebody'll take your hand off."

"My mom was a vet, I've seen dog fights," Trevin replied. "These guys need a bucket of ice water."

Hanna snorted, and then Worth felt something that was probably a sneaker poke at his momentarily trapped leg. "Hey guys," the magician said. "Guys, not to be a buzz kill here, but the stuff's all set up for us and the hunt isn't exactly getting any further away so I'm gonna hafta ask if we can, you know, step on it? Serious business time."

While Worth did his best to make Conrad's face one with the concrete, the Trevin kid made busy with the cold feet.

"Wait, you're taking me in there with you? You want me to play Mystery Incorporated with you guys?"

"Well, uh, it depends on who has to be Daphne, I guess?"

"No, level with me here. I thought I was going home. Do you really expect me to go trotting off through some… mystical barrier or whatever shit of my own free will? Because from what I'm seeing here, you people are crazy but you have to have some experience and I am really starting to feel like the expendable one around here."

"Only startin'?" Worth wheezed out, having taken a knee to the gut seconds prior.

"Weeeell," Hanna hummed, drawing the syllable out into its own sentence, "not saying I don't understand where you're coming from, honestly, but let me put it like this. You wanna stay in the car?"

"He's definitely Scooby," Conrad muttered, and kicked Worth off of him bodily.

"Look," the kid was saying, "I like a good adventure as much as the next guy, but I am not nearly high enough for this. I actually haven't eaten in a couple days and I would really just like to go home, if it's all the same to you."

It was at that point that Conrad finally managed to get the doctor face down on the asphalt in a half-assed arm lock, and the two of them finally gave up. Worth attempted not to snort any pebbles while he was down, and the arms of Lamont's cross dug into his collarbone when Conrad pushed himself off.

"Let the kid wait in the car," Worth said into a mouthful of road dirt. "Little bastard'll just slow us down."

"Kid?" Trevin repeated, incredulous. "I'm twenty-one, asshole. Do I look like your little brother?"

"You are fairly young compared to the rest of us," Conrad noted, brushing off his vest with an oh-so-dignified hand. "And as you pointed out yourself, you don't have much experience. Not," he added darkly, "that some of us ever asked to be experienced."

The kid squinted at Conrad. "You know what?" he said, at last. "I'm going with you, just because you look like the kind of person who screams like a girl and I kinda want to hear it."

Hanna slapped Conrad on the back and the vampire's rage face ratcheted up to a ten on the Richter Scale of unadulterated fury. "He sure has you pegged!"

Before Conrad could say anything, Hanna was pushing an ugly gypsy-looking bag into his hand and starting up a patented Hanna-style exposition.

"So these are our solution to the forcefield problem," the magician said, "I got a weak point carved out just over there so we just hold onto these and step right through. These will cover you once you're inside too, I mean, they won't protect you from bullets but if I've calculated right they ought to ward off evil eye and stuff which you'd be surprised how often ends up helping. The barrier is the highest concentration of warding but the range of effects actually extends to… well, probably about where we picked up Trevin. What you've got here is a last-ditch effort to keep something out."

Worth considered the bags. They looked like scraggly taffeta or something, and the drawstrings were some kind of cord discolored from countless human hands.

"It's probably going to feel pretty weird," Hanna said, handing them their bundles, "sorry guys. The supply closet wasn't really prepared for this instance, so entry's gonna be kinda bumpy."

"Bumpy… how, exactly?" Conrad said, suspicion lacing the finely crafted words.

Hanna fiddled absently with the tassel on his own bag. "Well, Worth and the T-man will have it easiest, cause they're good old fashion non-augmented human meat stuff. I'll be a little rougher. You and Prometheus might hafta strong-arm your way through, and he'll have it easier than you. So. Uh. Sorry about that I guess."

Conrad contemplated his bag in the same way a toothless man might consider an apple. The contempt was nearly palpable.

The new kid raised his hand in what was probably meant to be an ironic sort of way, although it mostly just made him look like a tool. "How come?" he asked. "The bumpiness, I mean."

"Excellent question!" Hanna replied, breaking into a grin. He bounced over to the younger man and plucked the charm out of his hands. "What we're working with here is a variation of Santerian fetishes, which means I'm basically doing a chemistry equation where the spiritual value of a given herb is, like, plus or minus its given alignment. Physically, combining this one—" he reached in and pulled out a chunk of bark, "—with this one—" he drew out a finger coated with ash, "—just makes a pouch full of dirty wood. But on a spiritual level, it compounds a positive Protection by the positive Natural State, most often represented in theory by the symbol alpha…"

Hanna trailed off as Trevin fixed him with a devastatingly unimpressed expression.

"Hoookay," Hanna said, and handed the bag back sheepishly. "Lemme come at this a different way. There's a million different kinds of magic. That barrier is using a completely different kind of magic than me, and I'll be honest with you, I don't know what kind it is. It's like I'm trying to use digital magic on analogue magic. Or, um, I'm operating a computer and it's operating a brain. We're both doing the same thing in completely different ways. It wants to keep creepy-creeps out, I want to get creepy-creeps in, and we're coding in completely different languages."

"Oh. Okay," Trevin said, "but what was the shirt for? Do we all need one?"

Hanna grinned and flopped the arms of the oversized shirt like batwings. "Nah," he answered, "I was just cold."

Conrad snorted. "Maybe when everything settles down we can get you a job as the magic theory professor at the Unseen University."

"Do you think there's a branch in Salem? I dunno if I've got the qualifications."

Conrad pursed his lips. "I actually can't tell if you're being sincere or not."

The first of them through the barrier was Trevin. The zombie had suggested that the least-difficult parties go first, so that it would be easier to gauge whether more-difficult parties might need to opt out in a worst case scenario. Worth thought he was being a pussy.

In the doctor's brief moment of passage, there was a feeling almost like running a hand over a rusted propane tank, all the cold and the orange grit, except that it was in his organs and in his head instead of on his skin, and the whole thing made him feel raw and irritated around the edges. The grit grabbed the twisted memories of his dreams and dragged them across the length of his brain and something in his gut felt rotten.

"'S fine," he told them, when both his feet were firmly on this side of the barrier. "Don't be such babies."

The rest of them followed quickly after. Hanna didn't look particularly bothered, but Worth knew better than to believe Hanna's looks. Frankenstein passed through jerkily. Conrad stumbled and clutched at his head, and refused to let anyone take his arm while he dizzily struggled with his balance.

"Hangin' in there?" Worth asked, giving the undead man something akin to a gentle elbow in the ribs. "Need that lie-down, yer ladyship?"

"I don't need fucking anything," Conrad snarled. "I'm fine."

Worth grinned at him. "Knew ya would be."

Conrad ignored him. "Hanna," he called over, to where the redhead was currently inspecting the doorless entrance to the tower. "Will I even be able to go inside?"

Hanna gave the frame thoughtful look, running square hands over the pitted mortar. "I guess it depends on if whoever's inside sleeps here. Otherwise, you'll have to wait at the… wow. Deja vu. This will end well. I can literally feel the Hannas of the past trying to warn me."

"Funny, 'cos I can feel the Conrads of the past trying to smack me," the vampire muttered.

"Try it Conrad!" Hanna insisted, gesturing to the doorway like Vannah White in a muddy sweater.

Scowling, Conrad tried it.

One arm, then the rest of him, passed effortlessly through the empty air. The whole company expelled a sigh of relief they hadn't known they were holding, and fell in behind him. The ground floor was silent, save a faint whisper of indistinguishable, far away noise—like static, filling the skeletal hallways. No amount of kicking around could turn up any evidence of human life, and eventually they turned their attention to the upper levels. There were a fuck ton of stairs ahead of them and nobody was looking forward to it—Trevin asked snidely if any of them had some wings stowed away, Conrad told him to can it—but they did eventually start on a long trek to the top-most floor.

Bit by bit, a step at a time, the static resolved itself into something recognizable; somewhere between floors five and seven, it shattered into a distant ocean of ticks.

At the pivot of a stairwell, Hanna and the zombie paused and shared a glance.

"It couldn't…" Hanna started.

"It does seem…" the zombie replied, hesitant. "…Awfully familiar."

And Worth felt a low, sinking feeling begin in the pit of his stomach.

-TBC-