Hours later – back in the Library

Getting the women they had found in the Countess's castle to their destinations had been problematic at best. Their last memories had been of being in Eastern Europe – only to wake up (unexpectedly) from a long nap to find themselves in the United States. Jenkins had finally relented and found something in the Library to send them back to sleep and, using the Back Door portal, had sent them back to the cities from which they had disappeared.

"That should take care of that" Baird said with a grim smile. "A quick call the local authorities and these victims of the Countess will find themselves in safe hands."

"Yeah – and trying to explain how they have been trussed up like Christmas geese in a stone castle, then waking up in the U.S." Jones snarked, hacking into police communications system in the last woman's destination to ensure that the message about their whereabouts had been received and believed.

"No one is going to believe the last part of their story – and given enough time Rowan, when she and her brothers return from the castle, will make sure that no one believes the first part either." Baird stared fixedly at the Library's back door, taking note of how long it had been since they had arrived. "What is taking them so long?"

"Maybe Death wasn't as up for Arthur's plans as he was?" Flynn said quietly.

Jones snorted in derision. "Ro wouldn't let that happen. If she wanted some variation of Death to dance a jib on someone's gravestone I'm betting she's got the pull to do it, whether they understood why she wanted it or not."

Flynn shrugged. "Still, it seems rather a haphazard plan for dealing with the Countess and whatever power is in that book."

"Arthur knows what he is doing" Jenkins replied solemnly. "He has his siblings with him so he won't take too many actions that might…"

"Bite him in the ass?" Baird said with a sigh. "I wouldn't be so sure. You saw how out of control he was when he thought the Countess had hurt his father. All it would take would be one of those lost souls – or the Countess herself – injuring Rowan or Khan and all bets will be off. And his father won't be there to stop him."

"Which, I suspect, was part of his reasoning for sending the old man away" Jenkins muttered. "The eldest of the Fae has, from what they told me, fought any number of battles and suffered any number of injuries more substantial than this one. Yet his son insisted on his returning to their homeland."

"So he couldn't object when the King and his consorts took out everyone who tried to get between them and the door. And in the meantime, we've still got two more kidnapped women to account for. "Stone scanned quickly thru the various news sites the library had access to, looking for stories about young women found dead in hidden away areas. "So – nothing that I'm seeing matches the two we're missing. Nothing in the local news of that area about their bodies turning up. And nothing in the international sites about even looking for them"

"Already knew that" Jones sniffed. "Not that I thought the coppers would be looking into all these disappearances. I mean, we had to CALL them to find the ones we returned for them."

"If Rowan got to her "friends network" first" Baird commented dryly. "I can see her getting the authorities to put a lid on anything they found so as to not scare off the killer."

Cassandra looked up suddenly, her eyes bright. "Here's something!" she exclaimed. "Two young women found wandering in…" she looked down at the story and frowned. "Oh – this is in London."

Flynn rose and leaned over her shoulder. "What does the story say?" he asked with a frown.

"Just that two young women were found hiding in St. James Park just a few days ago. The story is really sparse – only that neither woman seemed to speak English and both panicked when the authorities tried to take them out of the underbrush there were dug into."

Stone's face turned somber. "Cassy – does that story have a photo of the women they found?"

"No – but it's just a few lines. Probably not had time to do a much more thorough story." Cassandra stared quizzically at the story for a moment. "I wonder why there aren't any pictures. You would think they would want to get these people's faces out to the public to see if anyone knows their names."

"Pity we don't have the kind of connections Rowan has. I'm betting Scotland Yard isn't going to want to talk to some Yankees about strange homeless types living in one of their beautiful parks." Baird tapped her fingers on the table and stared at Jones. "But we don't – so Mr. Jones it's time for you to do your thing."

Jones smiled cheerfully. "Already done – looks like the story is making the rounds in all the Dark Web sites and one of them actually got photos of the women as they were being put in the ambulance." He turned his laptop around to the group with a flourish. "These birds look familiar?"

"Our two missing tourists" Baird replied grimly. "Someone brought them to London and dumped them in a public park hoping to… I don't know what they thought it would do?"

"Question?" Flynn called out. "Why didn't they just tell the police their names? From what I was able to gather looking at the mission persons reports both women spoke English – there wouldn't be any reason for them not to share they names and story with British police. The ones we sent back to their point of capture had no problems speaking English. Why didn't these two?"

Jones pulled his laptop back and poked at it at bit more. "Looks like the bloke who got the pictures also got some sound files from the scene. Listen to this." He clicked on the link and suddenly a woman's terrified voice called out in a language familiar only to Stone.

"Jake?" Baird asked, looking at their resident language expert, who was staring at the laptop with a frown.

"She's speaking a variety of Romanian - I think it maybe an older version." He squinted at the laptop as he listened, trying to translate the words in his head. "Some of this is familiar but some of it maybe regional – words only used in a specific place."

"What's she saying?" Cassandra asked breathlessly.

Stone looked at Baird grimly. "She's begging them not to take her back to the Countess."

Jenkins sighed. "So – they did practice with two of their victims. They were able to transfer one of the souls from the book into the body of one of the women they kidnapped."

"That way they knew the spell would work when they tried it with the Countess." Flynn said.

"But wait!" Jones protested. "Didn't The Fae say that the only reason it worked was because Candice was a descendant of the Countess, that her DNA linked her to the Bathory family? So why would it work with this bird? What – did they do family trees for all of the Countess's victims just to make sure?"

"No" Cassandra replied sadly. "There's an update on the story being posted now. Both women died shortly after they were taken to the psych ward of London Bridge hospital. No one seems to know why – their hearts just stopped beating."

"Jones – quick – find out if anyone has claimed their bodies" Baird looked up at Flynn. "I'm betting those two lasted longer than whoever set this up had expected. Maybe they were the last of the Countess's victims to be stuffed into her book and hadn't had a chance to lose as much of their life force as the others. Police were only supposed to find bodies – not living women that could be traced back to disappearances on the Continent. I'm betting that whoever helped Cindy and her group set this nightmare up will have to make the bodies disappear before anyone can link them back to the women who disappeared in Europe."

"And they have" Jones called out. "Big scandal, much talk of investigation – and probably nothing will be done. Bodies were taken to the morgue and according to the staff someone came from a mortuary with paperwork for their remains. Mind you – no one can find that paperwork now and the mortuary that they supposedly represented doesn't seem to exist…"

Jenkins clenched his fists in anger. "They have been one step ahead of us at every turn."

"Maybe not" Stone mused. "I have a crazy thought. Just hear me out on this. Vlad's wolves are massive hunters. He and Khan have told me stories about his pack tracking demon spawn across realities using only a sniff at the demon's victim's to give them the scent. Bet if we could get him to bring them out to play they could track the bodies back to whoever took them away."

"In a modern city?" Jenkins scoffed. "The wolves of which you speak are forest dwellers – the scents that accumulated in modern day London will stymie them. And then, of course, there is the issue of a scent to give them. The bodies have disappeared."

"But did all the items they were found with disappear?" Jake pressed. "All it would take would be a small scent to send them on their way. As for the city scents - these are Fae wolves" "I'm betting their tracking senses can tune out even with the sights and smells of the city crowding them."

"Either way – we need Arthur back because unless one of you knows how to contact the old Warlord all of this is pure speculation." Flynn pulled a book off the table and wondered off, his fellow Librarians staring at him in silence.

At the Castle

"Well that was interesting – not" Rowan drawled, wiping her blade on Cindy's remains. The foolish American girl, thinking that she could help her mistress by distracting the young Queen had, in fact, only succeeded in attracting the attention of Sekhmet, the Egyptian warrior goddess who had decided to throw into the battle at the last minute. The sight of a lion-headed figure launching herself from a corner had so unnerved Cindy that she had tripped over her own feet and impaled herself on Rowan's sword. Her soul hadn't even made it out of her body before Thantos had grabbed it up and started it on its one-way trip to the bowels of Hell. Dorothy hadn't fared any better, with Thantos and Anubis using her as a ping pong ball until her neck snapped, then snatching her warped soul from her corpse before it could hit the ground.

The Countess, in Candice's body, had stood defiantly until the trapped souls had been released from her book. Khan had smashed the glass container holding her book and sliced through the book's bindings with the iron-headed ax that Samedi had provided for him. Once the book's pages were freed - so were the souls and the demonic who had been the book's guardian.

"Jinn" Arthur had snarled. "Abomination! Kill it before it escapes!" His King's sword blazed with his anger as he took on the books demonic guard dog – and sliced it into ribbons before it could turn.

Azrael, the angel of death in her goth-girl guise, watched the King and his siblings for a moment then looked over the soul lights escaping from the tattered book. She waved the trembling points of light in front her with a cold smile. "Before we take you home – seems a pity not to let you get a bit of your own back. First bite is all yours."

The Countess realized quickly that the Angel was serious and in her meat suit's weakened state there would be no escape. She screamed as the little power her bloodline had given her couldn't keep the remnants of her victims from turning on her like ravenous little piranhas. The body was dead a moment later and Baron Samadhi had scooped her life force up in his hat and set it on fire – sending the last of Countess Bathory to its well-deserved punishment in Hell.

The Royal House stopped their attack, leaning back to watch the Death Angels cleaned up the area. "Hey sissy – that last one you took down doesn't count" Khan rumbled, a smile on his gore-stained face. "You didn't actually target her."

"Of course it counts" Rowan protested. "My blade killed her – so she belongs in my tally."

Arthur rolled his eyes at his siblings. "You're both in time out – I told you to wait until Azrael had a chance to set up her own battle station."

Rowan shrugged. "Azrael was fine with it – one less body to deal with. And besides – I didn't see you waiting when you saw that Jinn pop out of the book." She watched impassively as the other representations of Death scooped up the souls that had poured from the book. "We probably should…" her words tailed off as the remnants of the Countess's Book suddenly burst into flames. "Well – never mind then. Flynn will be so disappointed he won't get a chance to examine a real Grimoire. Just so I'm clear - which one of you did that?"

Khan shrugged. "Probably Hades - he was in the mood to light things up."

"I didn't know he joined in" Rowan replied, scanning the slowly thinning group of Death Angels for that particular deity. "Pity - Flynn would have loved to meet him."

"Screw Flynn" Arthur replied. "We still have a problem – there were three modern souls that poured out of that book – not just one." He grimaced at the memory of Candice's soul floating out of the book with the others, her eyes blank with horror.

"Yeah – and I think the other two might have been the two missing women that were NOT here when this got started." Khan patted Anubis on the shoulder as the jackal-headed deity bounced off to join the others back into the realm of Heaven. "They were dressed like the first two that disappeared - in modern day shorts and tops. Kind of stood out a mile from all those older, raggedy souls."

Rowan noticed that the Celtic Goddess Morrigan stayed behind while the others made their way off the field of combat, picking absently at the dead bodies of Candice, Cindy and Dorothy. "Something concerns you, Auntie Morrigan?" Rowan asked.

"Yes – even with this fool of a girl taking up space in her descendant's body, there isn't enough magic between the lot of them to make this spell work properly. And yet it did." The Celtic Goddess rose, her eyes gleaming. "I think your Librarian friends have a new task to do for you, little Battle Crow. They must find the starting point of this – the ones that made this possible."

Arthur look over at the burning book in the remnants of its cage. "I agree – but right now we need to do clean up. Those ashes and glass need to go back to the library. I think we've pretty destroyed the book's usefulness but I'd rather not take chances."

"And we need to see how Father is doing" Rowan sighed.

Khan snorted. "Probably playing bridge with his angelic handler and cheating to boot."

Morrigan laughed. "The old dog – still at his games. It was and is one of his more endearing qualities." She leaned over and kissed Rowan's cheek, the goddess's red hair brushing the Queen's face. "Fare thee well, Little Battle Crow. If you need anyone at your back for a battle, remember me." She disappeared into the mists as quietly as she had come.

Azrael strolled over, waving her own siblings away. "Okay – so our part of the clean-up is done. Everyone is where they should be – including the Countess. But…"

"We know" Arthur sighed. "We were missing two souls."

Azrael nodded. "I wouldn't worry about that – one of my bunch just told me those two were already collected. But there is still the issue with who pulled this switch and why. If you find out – let me know. I think The Lord of Heaven might just look the other way if you were tempted to go a little loco on someone's ass." She smiled and stepped back, disappearing into the mist along with the others.

"And with that I think we've just been given a hint as to what the Boss wants us to do" Khan remarked.

"Let's clean this mess up first before we get into another one." Arthur yanked a piece of cloth from the walls and started his clean-up of the site with help from his siblings. Another adventure could wait.