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High noon. The sun beat everything down into a dusty stillwell, battering plyboard shopfronts into a pastel wash. A small dust devil stirred down a hot dirt road, chasing the skirts of a throng of tourists.

"Weird weather for December," Hanna remarked, tugging his vest straight and kicking his heels more comfortably into his spurred boots.

Toni followed from the stage coach, nose wrinkling. "What is that smell?"

"Place used ter be a landfill," Xacharia BeVonte, stout and bearded, climbed down from the driver's bench. "Our Ma's family bought out the land ta have a place ter raise Jembo. He ate like a goat since day one." Xacharia arranged his belted six-shooters with obvious discomfort, peering up at the sky from under the shade of his worn wrangler hat. "You might be smelling the sepsis unnerground. From this heat."

"Urgh," Toni acknowledged, pulling a face.

"Built the town framework from a lot of the junk," Xacharia continued, leading the way down the nearly empty street. "Dug out the basements 'n lined 'em with fridge doors and bed frames and tin siding, that sorta thing. Once the garbage ran out, our Uncle wanted ta sell the foundation for another landfill, but by then it was too dangerous ta move him." He pauses, sweat beading on the broad tan on the back of his neck.

Hanna steps aside to let Ashleigh, in his Davy Crockett getup, and Doc Worth, in an all-black sheriff's costume, pass. "Too dangerous to move your uncle?"

Xacharia awaits a handful of Danish tourists to pass from one shopfront to the next, smiling tightly. To Hanna's question, in a low growl, "Ta move Jembo. Somethin' about what he could an' couldn't eat. It's why this place don't allow no phones or electric wires or plastics, even. Higher sort of calorie count in them, and Jembo'd sure as day get 'em down his gullet and lose a little more of his humanity each time. We run this place ta pay fer all the bloody animal carcasses alone, but it's like shelling out a thousand dollars ta feed someone nothing but carrots. Poor kid starves, don't he?"

Hanna is somber, holding his chin as he looks around. "And you say people have been dying? Staff?"

"Just Mike an' now Sean. Mike we don't know about still, and you came up and proved him fulla lizards. And Sean's disappeared but we don't know where, or why, and now this with the weather, just over our little make-believe town? Maybe someone's wearin' a different face in and out around here; maybe someone's after Jembo, or us, or another actor."

Toni appears at Xacharia's elbow, imploring. "You mentioned an Agent of mysterious origin kept harassing your father's hiring staff? Do we have any information on that?"

Xacharia shrugged, exhaling slow. "Said his name was Henri Bellard an' he was hiring for a circus act. But we built this business ta save Jem from a circus life." Consternation, now, "Guess our act got a little too good. Crazy assholes are running around with live ammo in actual guns, drunk yuppies and CEO team-builders and bored couples; sure, we've had a lot of injury in these streets. In the end they just get ta walk away from it, don't they? Come here, put on a different coat, start a gunfight with another over a game of cards. Come out of the doc's tent convinced it was the best most real. Un fuckin' scathed." A tip of the hat, " 'Scuse the language."

"Hm, no, I can see how that would attract some unwanted attention." Hanna leads the group through a set of swinging doors, into a shop that looks like a tailor's and boasts two attendees, one an old man and the other a young woman, sharing a game of chess.

"Weren't always like this," Xacharia continues, nodding a hello to the staff. "Didn't know Jem was so capable, until one desperate situation about twenty years back, we mighta lost our license to an insurance hiccough 'cos the camp weren't but five people." Xacharia shakes himself out of his reveries. "Jembo loses a bit more of hisself every time he does it, too, and we just took up filing down the horns and putting him in sunglasses. Tsk."

"Twenty years?" Worth rasped from the doorway, tobacco pipe smoking from the corner of his mouth. He eyes Xacharia doubtfully. "What are you, thirty? You'da been ten?"

"I was fourteen," Xacharia nods. "Jeremy was seven. Our ma was still alive." To Hanna, "She disappeared, too, shortly after, but we never thought ta question it. Deeply unhappy alcoholic, that woman."

"And what about Jeremiah's father?" Hanna hedges, suspicious. "How did he, um, f-find your mom in the first place? Where did he come from?"

"Georgia," Xacharia rolled his shoulder, mouth pulling back in a grimace. "I know it weren't Satan what knocked my own ma up, Cross, but I also know it weren't human. It's always just sort of a joke, calling him that, right? Devil's spawn? Ain't seen no devil put the healin' on people like Jem does, so. Maybe he's part of somethin' from some pagan pantheon, sure. Goat horns 'n all."

Hanna scratches the bottom of one ear, gazing around the shop. "Well, that would be a problem," he mumbles, uneasy.

Worth snaps a match to relight his pipe, thumb tamping down the fragrant tobacco as his cheeks hollow out with the task. "What're we here for, missing persons? Run interference? Judge jury 'n all that fer a Gluttony demon what more than likely ate his own mum?"

Xacharia paled. "What,"

Worth held up a hand, "Don't get excited, Rusty. Your brother would be turnin' twenty-eight, that's a divisible of seven. Yer ma went missing when he was seven, then I bet there was another disappearance when he was fourteen, then twenty-one. How long was this 'Mike' employed before the Basilisk within him matured enough ta start causing trouble?"

Weakly, searching the air, "Eight years he been with us."

"So after the first year, yer brother mighta hollowed him out and left the remains fer an egg ta hatch in. Fuck, whole damn town could be full 'a basilisks just keeping they peace until they might need or want ta break loose out the dead bodies 'a yer staff."

"But that means that Sean should reappear," Hanna argues. "If there's a basilisk in the desert and it knows where to go to infect the unburied."

Toni's brow wrinkles, "What, just like that? What does seven years have to do with it, if Jeremiah could be eating people and letting lizards wear their skin?"

Hanna takes his hand from his mouth, watching the streets through the lead glass window of the shopfront. "He'd only need to have one victim every seven years, and he'd eat their souls, technically, not their innards. It's a sound theory, but it definitely needs more investigating." Hanna claps his hands, a hard light shining through the bright blue of his eyes. "Let's draw runes on all the staff and see if any Basilisks pop out."

Xacharia remains mute and furious, arms crossed over his wide chest. "My brother don't kill people," he argues stiffly. "I need you ta find out who does, and why this old-ass Bellard guy won't stop trynta sell us on the idea of feedin' Jembo nuclear goddamn waste." To Ashleigh, "Yeah, he said the government would pay fer anyone in the circus show Bellard was representin', ta harness, dissemble, disappear, shift or consume the toxic fucking refuse of they nuclear program; two birds one stone and it's also extortion fer protection against, say, bein' accused of murder. No way that guy comes along pitching that deal like he don't know nothin'. No way. It's a fucking setup."

Hanna scratches the back of his neck and holds an arm out toward the door for the group to leave the tailor shop. Blinking in the bright heat of the afternoon, he sighs. "We're giving our full attention to any leads you've provided, but our first step has got to make sure nobody else can get hurt, or disappear, or explode into tiny bloody ribbons like a pissed-off guardian-lizard pinata." A shaky smile. "Okay, brother?"

Worth glanced over the sharp hill of his shoulder, long duster flapping dramatically about his thin legs in the dry wind. "Guardian lizard, huh? What d'you supposed they're stickin' around here ta guard?"

"Keen question." Hanna claps his hand against his stomach. "Heh. You're good at this, you know that?"

Worth's eyes narrow, pleased with the compliment but determined to mask his vanity. "Just 'cos I ain't distracted by loud noises and shiny things, like some sorta kindergartner I know." The group continues across the street, taking an uneasy lope toward the clinic tent attached to the house that belonged to Jeremiah Rhett.

Hanna waves a fly away. "Yeah, yeah, you're a million years old compared to me. Shaddup."

Ashleigh widened his eyes at Hanna, but said nothing.

Worth was containing his excitement with practiced aplomb; sure he'd known a few vampires working for the underground as he and Mont did - but those he'd already had so much practice at he hardly considered them paranormal, as if the order went Lawyers, Bankers, Vampires, Politicians (hah). Just a type of person you never really ever sawr face to face until you (or they) needed to.

But this sat right up there on the high shelf alongside the werewolves, cherubs, man-eating plants and shapeshifting Boggarts. This was bizarre and unique and throat-clench terrifying and Worth's legs took him ahead of the group and Worth's grumble quoted professional fucking interest in the medical part of the set-up (which turned out historically accurate and bare-bones to the point of vanilla), the tent flap thrown open to flood the dusty space with daylight.

As this was 'working hours' for the day staff, Rhett sat hunched on a convalescent cot reading a magazine stuffed behind a leather-bound bible.

Xacharia interrupted Worth's snap-eyed judgement of the half-demon in the room by pushing past to wag a finger at the magazine. "Pa catches you with that, he'll turn you sorry."

Rhett's eyes glowed like cigarette-ends in the lamplit dim. The temperature of the tent was dry-sauna, and a thin fog of sulfur colored the air. "Who's the new Sheriff?" Rhett gruffed, eyeing Worth similarly.

"One of our investigators," Xacharia assures as Hanna and Toni step under Worth's elbows into the room. "Sean ain't been replaced yet, don't you worry."

Rhett's eyes held Xacharia's for a pause. "En't worried," he muttered, flipping a magazine page.

Hanna claps his hands softly against each other. "Can uh, can I - can we ask you some questions? About Sean Flannerty?"

The corner of Rhett's thin mouth turned up, pale eyebrows cinched in confusion. "Like what, you wanna know his favorite ice cream? I cain't tell you nothing useful, Detective, it was his deputies sawr him last."

"Right. Um." Hanna shuffled through the clinic tent, glancing over his shoulder at his team. "Can you guys give us the tent? Maybe do a sweep, get to eyeballing the place? Uh, Xach, you too friend."

Xacharia's expression clouded over, but he nodded. Worth stood holding the heavy canvas of the tent open to let Xacharia and Toni pass, then discretely left himself inside the tent, sulking in the dim corner to keep watch lest the ginger on the cot turn out to be a basilisk queen or something retardedly dangerous like that.

Hanna sat beside Jeremiah, folding his hands between his knees. "What do you know about dragons?" Hanna started, concentrating on the softened wood flooring under his boots.

Rhett snorted, arching an eyebrow at Worth, who did not so much as flicker a blink. "Uhb. You mean Arthurian legends, or great stonking metaphors from the Orient?"

"I mean the kind that breathe fire, and have horns, and grant wishes and hoard stuff in their bellies." Hanna braces his palms on the edge of the cot, hitting Rhett with one of his most sympathetic gazes. "You're not half-demon, guy. There's a portal in your stomach, and everything you swallow whole ends up at a fixed point - probably in another dimension, or maybe even just underground somewhere?" Hanna draws a knee up under his chin. "We could cut you open and pull your friend out right now, I bet, though that still doesn't solve the mystery of the camp's deaths. The basilisks are just opportunists; a pretty gruesome distraction I'm willing to tally as coincidence."

Worth adds, "Mike Kowalski had a history of angina. Prolly keeled over by his own self."

The magazine slides to the floor and Rhett drops the bible, startled. "So... I'm supposed ta take yer word on it? We tell my brother?"

"No!" Hanna yelps. "No, we lie our shit off to your brother. This camp is getting scrutiny from 'Agents' and I don't like any part of how any of that sounds. Agents that want you to disappear nuclear waste for them." A hard squint. "I mean, I guess that's your decision to make as like an adult and stuff, but you gotta know that there's a perfectly habitable dimension inside of you that probably has its own populus and radiation poisoning can't be any kind of good for any of that and OH, oh that reminds me - stop eating dead animals. That's what humans eat, and it doesn't really ever make the hunger stop, yeah? But you did fine when you were eating some of the stuff in the landfill, right? Like, say, copper piping and the gold found in electronics chipsets and by the way we kinda need to arrest your stepdad for building this giant prison and profiting off your starvation." Hanna leaps from the cot, jouncing in place. "Boo-yah."

"Maybe slow yer roll on the arrests," Worth suggests, puffing at his tobacco pipe. "Could just be plain ig'nrance."

"Noooooyeah but I mean, why's he such a hard case against electronics and plastics and modern things? It wouldn't make a difference if a Gluttony demon ate those or not, but it would make a difference if people, say, trapped in another dimension started receiving perfectly serviceable cellphones to call out with."

"I ain't gonna swallow a cell phone," Rhett interrupted, going red at the ears.

"Why not," Hanna spun on his heel. "I bet you'd actually feel better; less hungry. Try diamonds, too. Oh! And all sorts of metals, but especially gold, and gemstones and crap like that. I bet you've got heaps and heaps of dead meat all up in there; boy, that can't be good for your cave deco."

"And live meat," Rhett adds, chastised. "But I didn't eat my own Ma and I didn't eat Sean."

"Buddy," Hanna reaches out, pats Rhett's elbow. "Yes, you did. About every seven years you'll be the size of a house, winged, and hungry to swallow everything you lo - to, to um. To swallow the stuff you want to protect. People and housepets included. Which! Is why!" Hanna flourishes to Worth, who archs an eyebrow, "We are going to force a shift, cut you open, bring back as many people as we can find, then sew you up and return you to normal and hopefully get you out from under the radar of creepy government contractors and creepier abusive parents."

" 'We'?" Worth grunted.

Hanna's fingers wiggled. "Yep, we."

Worth shared a confused exasperation with Rhett over the top of Hanna's head. "No worries, Mack," he assured with a lazy shrug. "At least one of us is an actual doctor, and knows where ta cut."

"Which means," Hanna sweeps his arms back over to indicate Rhett's tall stooping haunch. "You get to leave this camp and come hang out with us. Preferably far, far away from your dad and any Agents he may or may not be brokering contracts with."

Rhett pulls a face. "Ya think? I mean, I knew he was kind of a sonofabitch, but Early's always done right by me. Xacharia, too, they're my family."

Hanna pulls a face to match, "Which is why this re-enactment camp pulls in seventy percent more revenue than is spent on personnel, supplies, and actually feeding you? And why Early hasn't let your brother take you out of the town borders even once in your adult life? And why he's got you claimed on social service documents as mentally incompetent, even though you're just a naturally reclusive creature otherwise perfectly intelligent and sane?" Hanna's fury built, just under the layer of his enthusiasm. "And why you were home-schooled, and why it took a basilisk invasion for Early to try and even conceive of looking for any sort of help with this whole fucked-up situation? And why he insisted on you fixing Conrad; so we would owe you, a dragon, the favor of that wish?"

Rhett shifted, uneasy. "You don't owe me jack crock, Mr. Cross."

"No, but we're here not getting paid because we owe your family crest a favor. What do you think this heat wave is; climate change?" Hanna throws his hands over his head. "It's the raze. It's the raze of fucking fields and livestock that punished peasants for offending dragons, and is now punishing your land and supposedly your people for us being the ones to leave here not paying your asshole managerdad. Which might have been an oversight on his part, but, yanno. Even if he doesn't totally understand your origins, that never stopped him from taking advantage."

Rhett shakes his head, huffing. "Can't be my family crest; he ain't my Pa."

Hanna rolls his eyes, impatient. "No, of course he is, though. Your blood father. Your mother's the dragon, isn't she? And you ate her when you were seven, to keep her safe from something?" He whistles low, wincing, "I mean, sorry to spring all of this on you. All at once. Like this. It's not uncommon, for parents to feel estranged from their half-blood kids, and maybe, I dunno. Maybe Early just didn't want to come to terms with treating you the way he has, and you being his actual son. People are complicated like that."

"Kid," Worth warned, then turned to step out of the tent, chased away by the intimacy of that entire conversation, leaving a glare over his shoulder on Rhett's behalf, because eesh, way to breeze through such a topic.

Hanna joined Worth outside the tent, wide-eyed. "What? I've been researching this place since we first left it."

"Maybe go easy on the guy. He's jus' a hick."

"Nnnh, his brother smuggles in a laptop. He knows more about global politics and historical anthropology than I do." A huff, "What, like you think he wasn't ever as curious about his condition as we could ever be? He'll come around; and we don't have a lot of time or privacy to be able to do this with all the necessary subterfuge." A lower, furious whisper, "If this 'Agent' is from the 'Agency' I think he is," a shudder. "Man. Let's just 'arrest' Jeremiah and write a telling letter to the IRS ta bust this place up."

Toni came jogging up, winded from her patrol. "Hey dudes. What's the ruckus?"

Hanna turned to face her, and lied through his teeth, "Yup, retrograde traumatic amnesia. Rhett ate his friend's organs, and possibly his soul, definitely. We're going to where he thinks the body might be, to see if we can't return Sean to his family." A moment of mournful silence, and then, finger raised, "So! Let's collect our people and have us a good old-fashioned hanging."

Worth switched his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. "Ain't that my line?" he grumbled, swatting the tent flap aside and bringing out a length of lasso from his belt. "Okay, Longshanks, yer unner arrest."

"Yer jokin'." Rhett pulled his face from his hands, yellow eyes squinting.

Worth bent down to loop the first knot over Rhett's wrist. "Jus' play along, mate. We'll smoke an' mirrors, hey?"

The rope began to smoulder, and Rhett stood... up. "Y'all smoke my fuckin' cock afore you don't let me walk up on my own, blondie." He crowded forward, sneering, "Actin' like I ain't got honor over Sean's 'death' -"

Behind the relief that Rhett was playing along, Worth felt a small liftbump of some deliciously terrible thrill. "Easy," he warned, scratching the stubble under his chin with the rope as he regarded his prisoner with the extra shrewdness of the suddenly interested. "Unless you wanna stage this Kirk-Spock style. Vatican cameos."

"Vatican cameos is Sherlock," Rhett corrected, offering his wrists forward with a resigned but silent sigh. "And no matter who'd best who in a tumble, my brother would snap you in motherfuckin' twain for the attempt alone."

Worth snorts, looping the rope, knotting and reknotting it, winding and binding. "Don't think that sells me off the idear." He'd meant it to be incendiary (but also true) and at the lack of indignant sputter risked a side-eye to see Rhett swallow back a grin.

Rhett cleared his throat testing the ropes with a tug. "I taught classes ta ten-year olds what tie better'n this," he lazily insisted, leading the way from the tent.

Easily, merrily, Worth slapped the canvas out of his way and crowed, "Oi, Hanna, we're dealing with a reg'lar Girlscout!"