Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.

Title: Elementary, My Dear Hiei (C4: Darkness Falls)

Author: JaganshiKenshin

Genre: General, Mystery

Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)

Summary: Though Pudge has already fainted, there's worse to come.

A/N: My story arcs: Idiot Beloved takes place shortly after the Dark Tournament; Firebird Sweet directly follows that timeline. This story occurs some months after Sidekick (of the Cowboy Trilogy) and Are You Loathsome Tonight.

I appreciate your reviews and thank you for reading this tale!

Demons and blackouts...what next?

Elementary, My Dear Hiei (C4: Darkness Falls)

by

Kenshin

Coming to her senses, Pudge was surprised to be still seated in the easy chair and not flat out on the cold flagstone floor. To her left and right, Dumpy dear and Smarmy fanned her with napkins. Someone had re-lit the candles.

"Just exactly what do you mean by 'possessed?'" Dumpy demanded.

"All in due time, Sir," said Delamont. "But now-"

"You know," said Twitchy, "I thought at first these blokes might be from the power company-"

"Yes," interrupted Smarmy, "but what would a botanist have to do with-"

"Please," groaned Pudge. The chattering stopped. "Is everyone all right?" Sitting up, she made sure of it as best she could in the dim flickering candle-light.

Dumpling and Smarmy seemed as usual. Merope paced back and forth, wringing her hands. Twitchy was... twitching.

Dumpy handed Pudge a glass of brandy. She sipped, felt it burn its way down her throat, and its warmth revived her somewhat. The set the glass down. "I knew there were ghosts," she said unhappily.

"All that clanking and moaning," agreed Dumpy.

"Not ghosts," corrected M. Delamont. "Demons."

Pudge almost fainted again.

"Demons?" squeaked Twitchy.

Smarmy pointed at Monsieur Hero, who had not moved a finger nor blinked an eyelid during the announcement. "That bloke wearing the Crucifix-maybe he can perform an exorcism."

"It's not that kind of demon," Delamont said. "It has genuine physical form-a body of its own."

Smarmy's brow puckered. "But then how can it possess-"

"Nor am I authorized to perform true exorcisms," Hero said.

"Just what are you authorized to do?" asked Dumpy.

Smarmy gave Hero a severe look. "Yes, why are you here?"

"Me?" Hero laughed. "I'm the muscle."

"He's the muscle?" An incredulous Twitchy balled his slender fists. "Why I could take him on with one hand."

Monsieur Delamont smiled dryly. "Which, should you be fool enough to try, is all that would be left of you."

"Oh, come on," said Hero. "I'd leave both hands."

Delamont gave a discreet cough that claimed their attention. "If we could concentrate on the matter?"

Pudge didn't know what to think. First ghosts, now demons? "You mean the tiara...?"

"Bet you anything Smarmy took the tiara," muttered Dumpy. "Always up to something, so long as it's not honest work."

"I'd take that bet," said Twitchy. "Double or nothing?"

Smarmy's moustache twitched in agitation. "I'll thank you to keep the insults to yourself!"

"Now, now," said Pudge nervously, trying to keep an eye on Dumpy and Smarmy, one on her increasingly-agitated daughter, and another on the strangers, which left her with one eye too few. "I'm sure Monsieur Delamont is just having us on."

"This is no joke," said Delamont severely. "We are dealing with a demonic possession."

Now Dumpy reached for the brandy snifter. "Surely not!"

"Surely." M. Delamont was as cool as a cucumber. "And I know which of you has been possessed."

Dumpy took a gulp of brandy. "Smarmy, most like."

"Me?" retorted Smarmy. "What about you?"

"No," said Delamont. "Neither one."

Pudge put a hand to her heart and looked at each family member in turn: Dear stolid Dumpy, evasive Smarmy, agitated Merope, unhappy Twitchy. No, it couldn't be. It was just too fantastical! "Who then?"

"The girl," said M. Hero. "Merope."

With a low moan, Pudge squeezed her eyes shut.

"Demon?" Dumpy scowled. "My Mopey a demon? Preposterous!"

"Enough talk." Hero flung away his jacket and reached behind his back. Quick as lightning, he drew a sword, an actual sword, ringing and flashing.

"Where's he been keeping that?" wondered Smarmy.

Hero did not deign to reply. Sword in hand, he advanced on defenseless little Mope.

"No!" Pudge leapt to her feet.

Mopey screamed as well. Wild-eyed, she whirled on Pudge. "Mother! Make him go away!"

Pudge stopped in her tracks. Mother? When did Mopey dear start calling me 'Mother' and not 'Mum?'

M. Delamont put in a word. "Hie-er, Hero-we must never forget that there's a young lady wrapped around that demon."

"Who's forgetting?" Hero swung the sword in a whistling arc.

"See here-!" Frightened but brave nonetheless, Dumpy flung himself in front of his daughter, arms outstretched. "Stop this at once! Demon? My little Mope? You're quite mad!"

Merope wailed piteously, "Mother, make them stop! Send them away! If you love me, send them away!"

"If you want your daughter back-" M. Hero advanced, his sword glittering in the candle-light. "-don't."

M. Delamont warned, "Hero-"

"Oh, all right." Hero smacked his sword back in its sheath, and from his pocket drew instead a small plastic bottle, holding it up for inspection. "Here. Holy Water. See?"

But oddly enough, the sight of the bottle frightened Mopey even more than the sword. Her eyes bulged with terror. "No!" Whirling, she sprinted for the door, but M. Delamont was cat-quick. He caught her, and pinned her arms to her sides. Merope bellowed in a deep voice, "Let go, you bastard!"

"Is this your daughter, Madam?" Still holding Merope, Delamont turned to Pudge. "Is it?"

Pudge wrung her hands. "Dumpy, dear, if it's just water..."

Dumpy wore his resolute look again. "Let me try it first."

Mopey shrieked a number of most unladylike words.

Hero commanded, "Put out your hand." When Dumpy did so, Hero sprayed his hand with droplets of the water.

Dumpy sniffed at it. Tasted it. "Water all right."

Still holding the struggling girl, M. Delamont muscled her over to a chair. "No harm will be done to her," he promised.

"Very well," growled Dumpling, "if it's only water you may proceed. But if you hurt her by God I'll-!"

Hero brandished the little plastic bottle, a fiendish grin twisting his face. "Here comes the Holy Water," he said to Merope, and Mope, dear shy quiet little Mope, snarled and struggled, wrenching her body this way and that.

Pudge clasped her hands in silent prayer.

While Delamont restrained the girl, Hero sprayed her face with the Holy Water.

Mopey shrieked. "Ahh, it burns, it burns!"

"But it didn't hurt me a bit," said Dumpy.

"Of course not," said Hero. "And it's not hurting her."

Then why is Mopey acting like it is? wondered Pudge. "I don't understand," she said. "You can see she's in pain!"

"Not Merope," insisted Hero.

"Stop them, STOP THEM!" The voice that emerged from Pudge's daughter was not Mopey's. Most decidedly not. It was dark and smoky and slimy, as opposed to Merope's meek little whisper.

Hero treated her to a second spray. Merope's eyes rolled up, until only the whites showed. Her mouth hung open, and she gave a low, shuddering bellow like an ox.

"I'm going to be sick," vowed Twitchy, and then was true to his word right on the flagstones.

Her stomach roiling, Pudge thought she might join him. For something was emerging from dear Merope's ear.

That is not my baby girl! Oh Heaven help us!

A bubble of nasty brown substance bulged from the girl's ear, almost a blob of earwax. But to Pudge's horror, the blob kept emerging, inch by loathsome inch with a vile squelching sound. Pencil-thin, stretching like molasses taffy, it oozed out until it was quite three feet long.

Dangling obscenely from Mopey's ear, it manifested a head at its farther end, resembling in part some nightmarish garden slug, its wicked little eyes on stalks turning, peering.

"This can't be happening," said Dumpy.

"It's a monster!" cried Smarmy.

"Kill it!" Dumpy begged. "Save my girl!"

"That we will." M. Delamont released Mopey.

Rather than trying to run, Merope rose, stiffly, awkwardly, like a marionette. The sluglike thing now hung almost to the floor, when suddenly it parted company with the girl's ear and fell with a sticky thump.

Merope's eyes drifted shut. She went limp as a rag doll, but Smarmy rushed up and caught her. He maneuvered her onto the sofa, and Pudge gathered her up, patting her icy hands.

Tense, silent, Delamont and Hero watched the creature.

The slug-creature coiled snake-like on the floor, and lifted its head to survey them. "Curse your rotten souls!" It flicked its un-nerving glance around the room at the hanging draperies and tapestries, the desk and grand piano, the heavy sideboard. "Think you have me? Think again. You are all dead, dead, DEAD!"

Then, in an eyeblink, it squirmed for the wall.

"Stop it," pleaded Dumpy, "Don't let it escape!"

The monster paid no heed. It gained its objective. The wall hangings twitched once, and it was lost to sight.

"I was afraid of this," said Hero.

-30-

(To be continued: Where will the monster strike next?)