Don't Feed After Midnight
Chapter 27: Predator and Prey
It didn't look like one of the gremlins out of the Joe Dante film, and yet… it kind of did…
The creature wasn't green and it didn't have reptilian skin, but the size and shape of it were vaguely similar. The thing had a brown furred body, similar to that of a bipedal ape, bow legged with disproportionately long arms.
It sat with those long arms wrapped around it's knees, there on the library table next to the lamp. It's face was a cross between one of those large eyed, bat-eared lemur things, Kevin had seen at the Detroit zoo, and something more catlike. Its expression, highlighted and shadowed by the fall of the amber lamplight from beside it, was decidedly human.
"It is rude to stare, you know." It said finally in an acerbic tone, once they'd stared at each other for a while, through and around the Hag stone.
"Yeah— yeah, I know." Kevin answered in a weak voice, and backed up a step. "You're the Gremlin."
"I'm, 'A,' gremlin…" It corrected. "…At least, I hope I'm not the only surviving member of my species.
You meanwhile; are definitely, 'The,' prophet, being as only one of you can exist at any given time." It drummed it's long human looking fingers, tipped by small but sharp looking claws, against it's equally clawed toes, head tipped to one side. "That said, I suppose, if I am the only one of my kind currently situated on this plane of existence, then you could correctly refer to me as 'the gremlin'." It clambered to it's feet and sketched a bow, grinning at him in a flash of decidedly sharp-looking canine teeth.
It was waiting for him to say something, Kevin could tell. But he found himself at a loss for words.
"Don't say much, do you, Kevin Tran?"
"You know my name?"
"I know lots of things," it twitched it's huge bat ears calling attention to them. "Marvellous hearing, gremlins… and a host of various and sundry other assets."
"Why am I thinking modesty isn't on that list."
The gremlin snorted. "Oh, I like you!" It gave him another flash of it's fangs, stepping towards him on the wooden table. "I'm glad the demon didn't manage to kill you."
"Thanks, but he kind of did once, or I'm pretty sure he did. It's foggy."
"It didn't take?" The Gremlin inquired lightly, stopping at the edge of the far table; looked at the gap between the two tables, yellow eyes narrowed, like it was judging the distance for a jump.
Kevin backed up another step. His arm was starting to ache from holding the Hag stone in front of his eye, but he didn't want to let the gremlin, with it's sharp looking teeth, out of his sight.
"Apparently not." He muttered uneasily.
"He likes you, you know, the demon. King of Hell." It pronounced Crowley's title mockingly, in a pompous English accent.
Kevin couldn't help the small sound of derision that slipped out. "Now, I know you're lying!"
"Well," it twitched it's bat ears contemplatively, "as much as something like that can like someone.
It's relative, of course."
"Relative, yeah." Kevin couldn't help but roll his eyes, there was something about the gremlin's snark that reminded him of Channing.
"Mountain lions like bunny rabbits too, I guess. What about you?"
"What about me?"
"You've messed with us. My music, Sam's laptop, the car. Dean was real pissed about the car by the way… But you haven't done anything that's— lethal."
"Like lock you all in here, then shut off the air and water, you mean.
Or perhaps, open up some of the more exotic storage jars that are scattered around the place. A magnetron and faraday-cage kind of deal?"
Kevin gulped at the mention of the microwave. "Uh, yeah. Sorry about that. Like I said, Dean was pissed about the car."
The gremlin gathered itself, suddenly leaping onto the table Kevin had been sitting at to work on the Angel tablet, before Dean's phone call.
It landed almost soundlessly on all fours, before straightening and flashing him another grin. "You might want to tell your hunter friends that microwaves won't actually kill a fae.
The fae are creatures of energy, like the angels of this plane.
When the older Mr Winchester splattered 'Tinkerbell' using one, in Elwood, he simply forcefully dissipated the matter the fae had cloaked itself in." It tilted its head and swivelled its ears. "Matter which allowed the fae to exert force over other matter on this plane, and 'kick Dean's ass.'.
The faraday-cage part of the machine, did however, hold it temporally trapped… until the door was opened."
Kevin blinked at that, was he really getting a lecture on supernatural physics, from a gremlin?!
Suddenly, it struck him, that the Angel tablet was sitting there on the table, only a few feet away from the gremlin. Was the thing trying to distract him so it could steal it?
Shit, shit shit!
Lunging forward, Kevin snatched up the tablet in an awkward one handed grab, before he could second guess himself or chicken out.
Hag stone mashed to his eye, Angel tablet hugged to his chest, he backed up again just as quick, away from the gremlin.
The gremlin grinned at that, it's yellow eyes gleaming with unconcealed amusement. "That god rock really has it's claws in you deep, doesn't it, boy?" It said conversationally. "Do you hate Him, your illustrious creator? Most of the fae do.
He made us, then got bored with us, don't you know. Then, went off to make all of this." It waved one sharp clawed hand like a game show host showing off the prizes to be won. "And now, from what I read, it looks like He got bored of you lot too.
Left the big kids in charge. 'Course the big kids started to fight amongst themselves and beat up on the little kids, here too, didn't they?"
It started walking along the table towards him again. Kevin kept backing up, trying to maintain the distance between them; soon it was standing on the edge of the second table.
He really didn't like the way the gremlin was looking at the floor. The thought of it jumping down off the table, lunging towards him, maybe to climb up his leg with those pointy fangs and sharp claws. It really creeped him out.
"Take my advice, stop thinking like a victim, it doesn't help." The creature lectured.
"What?"
"You've got it in your head that you're the weakest thing in the pecking order. But you're not without your weapons. From what I've learned, you've survived Demons and Leviathan, that's no small feat.
The female on the telephone, who obviously scared your hunter compatriots, she cowered before you, and you weren't even in the same room."
"Yeah, that was only because she wasn't in the same room." He answered.
"Size isn't everything, boy." The gremlin chose that moment to jump down suddenly off the table.
Kevin scuttled backward away from it, trying to maintain a safe distance, but his foot went out from under him as it hit the steps down to the war-room.
Desperately he flailed out an arm, letting the Hag stone drop in favour of catching onto one of the concrete columns by the steps.
He stopped himself from tumbling. But when he lifted the Hag stone again to peer through it, his heart galloping with adrenaline. The gremlin was gone.
Frantically he circled on the spot, stone mashed against his eye; but there was no sign of the creature.
Laughter echoed around the room, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once.
"I'm a fraction of your size, boy. And while you're wearing that stone I can't touch you, but it doesn't mean I can't get to you. The real thing that makes you predator or prey, is between your ears. Use it, and put the fear aside."
….
It took Kevin a fair while to calm down after the gremlin vanished.
Eventually he realised, it'd been messing with him the entire time. The freaky little thing probably found it all funny. Playing his anxiety like an instrument and dressing it up as an object lesson. He fumed about it for a bit after that. Being angry was better than feeling scared all the time.
Several hours later, when he'd returned to his job of trying to translate the Angel tablet; a cellphone in a box of phones Sam and Dean had tasked him with keeping charged and relaying any messages from, started to ring.
Scrabbling around in the box he finally found the correct one, with it's screen lit blue. The number wasn't in the phone's contacts, it came up as private.
Probably a hunter.
"Hello?" He answered it, repressing an internal sigh. When exactly had he signed up to the job of being the Winchester's secretary on top of everything else?
"This is Dean's number, but you're not a Winchester. Who are you?" A female voice responded, sounding suspicious.
'Kev', if anyone calls, all you do is take a message and hand it on to us, capiche?
Lotta hunters are nuts, so don't engage, don't give your name, don't tell 'em anything. You take their name, number and issue, then hand 'em on to us, you got me? Not everyone we deal with is a good guy. You're a prophet, to a certain kind of person that's currency, so play it safe!' Dean's orders had been explicit.
"I'm... nobody." He responded, uneasy. There was something about the lady's voice that set the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
"Well, nobody, I need you to give those boys a message for me. I have something they might want."
There was a muffled sound of impacts, and some grunts on the other end of the phone. Then a girl's high pitched scream.
"Tell them, I've got Irv Franklin and Tracy Bell. They're hunters."
There was another screech from the girl, more sounds of a struggle and furious muffled cursing from a man.
The sounds got fainter, as if the scary lady was walking away from the people she'd been hurting.
"Have you got a pen, Nobody?" She inquired in a purr, jerking Kevin out of his frozen horror, and sending him scrabbling for a pad and pen.
"Yeah." He breathed weakly.
"Good boy.
Write it down, I wouldn't want anyone to miss anything.
Tracy Bell and Irv Franklin, as I said, they're hunters. Tell those boys, if they want to see Tracy and Irv alive, they'll meet me at, hmmm… 44.053051 by -123.127860." Kevin wrote furiously.
"Repeat it back for me Nobody, we don't want any mistakes."
He did, voice shaking.
"What a good boy you are!" The lady purred.
"The name's Abbadon by the way, I knew the Winchester boy's grandfather, he spilled his guts to me, once.
Tell those boy's, if they don't come. Tracy and Irv are going to spill their guts too… all 15 or so feet of them."
-/-/-/-/-/-
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