Chapter 24 – Mythical Guard Dogs
"Why am I stuck on the ground floor with you?" Kenzi pouted, as Lauren tightened her headphones and tried her best to ignore her fellow human. They were seated at a desk in what looked to be the bishop's office. Kenzi looked around nervously, as statues of saints and religious figures all seemed to be staring her down, judging her, looking down on her from the perches of bookshelves and mantles. She nervously shuffled closer to Lauren.
"It's because you're fragile, like a chopstick. You've got chopsticks for limbs, girlie girl," Hale responded. The team was connected over their COMs, and thanks to the Wolf Cam the humans had a Dyson-eye-view of what was happening in the tunnels. Lauren couldn't help but notice just how often the 'Wolf-Cam' seemed to be pointing straight down the plunging neckline of Bo's boob enhancing vest.
Apparently there was something Dyson liked about the Succubus after all. Two somethings, to be exact. Lauren chuckled to herself, causing Kenzi to shoot her a confused frown.
"I thought this was going to be dangerous?" Bo muttered, not bothering to hide her disappointment. "The scariest thing we've seen is a rat."
Lauren cleared her throat. "Rats are known carriers of a plethora of diseases, including but not limited to leptospirosis, salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium, murine typhus, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome…"
"Okay, okay." Bo rolled her eyes, but Dyson's head was pointed at Ciara's bum, so Lauren didn't see the reaction.
"I'm just trying to prove the point that rats are one of the scarier species on the surface of the Earth – Fae or otherwise."
"Point taken, geek out achieved, moving on," Ciara cut in. "Bo's right, this is a Dark Fae vault, why haven't we come across any sort of security system? I too was expecting a mythical guard dog of some sort."
"You mean like Cerberus, the three-headed freak that guards the gates of the Underworld and keeps the souls that have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping?" Kenzi asked.
Lauren gave her a 'WTF' look, but didn't say a word.
"What? I read."
"Do you?" Bo asked. "I've never seen you with anything but comic books and those trashy romance novels you think I don't know about."
Kenzi sighed, caught in her lie. "Actually, I think I saw it on a Hercules rerun while I was playing hooky from school once. And don't knock bodice rippers. They feed the mind, body, and soul."
Bo scoffed. "Oh Fernando, take me back to your pirate ship and ravish me with your throbbing, pulsating, engorged…"
"Not quite like Cerberus," Lauren interrupted. "As a matter of interest, much of Greek mythology originated in fables written by an ancient Fae bard named Herodonticus. Cerberus was based on his pet dog – a terrier with a glandular problem who liked to sit by the river and bark at the fish."
Crickets over the COMs.
"I read too," Lauren shrugged. "But I read books you can't borrow from the public library."
"Well isn't that special," Kenzi mocked. Just then there was a huge crash over the COMs, sending Lauren and Kenzi bolt upright.
"Are you guys okay?" Lauren pressed her COM to her eardrum. The Wolf Cam went to black. "Bo? Bo? Dyson can you hear me?"
Much to Lauren's relief, she heard Bo's voice over the sound of Hale, Dyson, and Ciara coughing. "We're fine. I think part of the ceiling caved in though, there's dust everywhe-ere." She choked on the last word. The Wolf Cam flickered back to life, Dyson's head pointed toward the source of the crash.
"I don't think it was a random cave in," he muttered, as a booming sound echoed through the dark corridor, and more debris fell. "I think we're about to meet the guard dog." The booming continued, drawing closer, and it soon became apparent that the noise was actually footsteps made from a creature MUCH bigger than a rat. They stepped forward, and dirt from centuries past fell from the ceiling onto their shoulders as they stared into the darkness. Dyson barked orders, looking at each of his teammates in turn. "Ciara, point that light over there. Hale, wet your whistle." Hale nodded and pursed his lips. "Bo…do whatever the hell it is that you do."
"Just pull that zipper down a few inches, show a little bit of skin. Maybe you can make it drown in its own drool." Kenzi grinned and popped a potato chip into her mouth. It was like watching a movie. A shaky, first person monster flick, like Cloverfield.
"Too bad you aren't here," Bo snarked. "You could nag the monster to death."
"You're like an old married couple, aren't you?" Lauren asked, reaching into Kenzi's bag and pulling out a ridged sour cream and onion chip. Carbs. Stressful moments required carbs.
"Kinda," Kenzi grinned. She put her hand over her mouthpiece, to keep their conversation private. "Does that mean that you and BoBo are the young married couple? Can't keep your hands off of each other. Can't keep your dirty bits off each other? Lots of smoochilooches and grabby grabbys and touch-a-touch-a-touch-me's?"
Lauren heard another banging noise over the COM. "This is not the time or place for this conversation," she hissed. "Dyson, can you give me a straight shot down that hallway? I'll see if I can zoom in on the image and let you know what you're up against."
"Yes ma'am." Dyson stared straight ahead at the approaching, shadowy figure. Lauren took a screenshot, and with a few clicks of her mouse had pulled it up in a Photoshop window. She zoomed in by a factor of four, adjusted for sharpness and brightness, and got a much clearer idea of exactly what was slowly approaching her team.
She gave an audible gasp. "You guys aren't wearing any fireproof undergarments, are you? Because that would have been remarkable foresight on your part."
"What do you mean by-WHOA!" Hale shouted as a streaming jet of fire erupted from the blackness and singed his sleeve. A smaller fireball came right after, striking the floor right at his feet. The temperature in the corridor leapt from 40 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the span of a half second. "Oh SHIT!" Hale raised his head just in time to see flaming orange as it approached, seemingly in slow motion, on a collision course with his forehead.
Had this been Detective William Haley Francois Santiago's last moment on earth, the last thought to pass through his mind would have been "Not the face!"
As it was, the orange fireball smashed against a glowing, electric blue barrier that hadn't been there a second before. Hale turned in shock to Ciara, whose features strained with the effort of keeping the barrier in place.
"You can do force fields?" He shouted.
"Darling, you haven't known me long enough to know half of what I can do," she grunted back. "Lauren? What is this thing?"
Lauren gulped. "Judging by the number of heads and the scale pigmentation – I'm fairly certain you're looking at a Lernaean Hydra."
Dyson's nostrils made a noise; it sounded like he was deflating. "Fuck. My. Ass."
"Um…no thank you," Kenzi muttered.
"Someone want to tell me what a Lennon's Hydra is?" Bo shouted over the crackling sound of fireballs slamming against the force field. The Succubus took note that it seemed to be turning a paler shade of blue.
That couldn't be good.
Lauren pulled up an article on the eBook version of her FaePoedia. "It's an extremely rare breed of dragon – honestly I thought they'd disappeared centuries ago. They can have anywhere from five to ten heads, all of which spit fire."
Kenzi tapped her lips. "That sounds familiar."
"It should. Hercules slayed a Lernaean Hydra as the second of his Twelve Labors. You probably saw Kevin Sorbo kill one back in the late nineties."
Kenzi shot Lauren a dirty look.
"Okay, fine, how do we kill it?" Bo asked. Over the COM Lauren heard a series of high pitched whistles, as Hale searched for a frequency that could slay a dragon. She heard Dyson curse, as the pitch hit a particularly sensitive one for a wolf.
"You can't."
"Bullshit," Bo called, as Dyson's head swiveled in Bo's direction, giving Lauren a good look at the Succubus.
"You don't have the means to kill it, Bo. If you chop of one of the heads, two grow back in its place."
"Well, how did Kevin Sorbo do it then?"
It was Kenzi who answered the question. "Hercules chopped the heads off, but like, as SOON as he did it he had an amigo torch the stump so a new head couldn't grow back."
"Of course. He cauterized the roots. Theoretically, that could work," Lauren said. "Hale?"
"I got it Doc." He turned to the group. "Anyone have anything sharp and pointy that'll lop off a head or two? Or ten?"
"Hell yeah." Bo licked her lips and pulled a twenty-six inch sword from her thigh-high boots.
"Where did that come from?" Lauren asked. "I thought the airline confiscated all your weapons?"
"They did," Bo admitted. "I bought this at a tourist shop on the Ramblas before our date. The same place I got your flowers and chocolates."
Lauren stood up out of her chair so fast she nearly hung herself on the cord of her headset. "You mean to tell me that you plan to attack a millennia old, immortal, mythological Underfae with some cheap strip of metal you bought from a place that sells tacky tourist kitsch, plastic bullfighters and goddamn postcards? You think that sliver of tinfoil is going to cut through dragon scales?"
"It will if I swing it hard enough."
Lauren flopped back into her seat, unable to formulate a response.
"Whatever you decide, do it fast!" Ciara groaned, beads of sweat forming on her forehead. "I can't hold this much longer!"
Dyson took off the Wolf Cam/beanie, and laid it on the ground next to him. "I'll try to distract it. Bo, you take care of the heads…if you can." Bo snarled at the doubt in Dyson's voice. "Hale, you're sure you can cauterize what's left?"
"Positive."
"Good. On my mark Ciara, I want you to drop the force field."
Ciara just nodded – she didn't have the energy left to speak.
Kenzi sat, riveted to the screen, and crossed herself.
"Two…one…mark!" Dyson yelled, and sprung forward, letting out guttural war cry. He was joined in the fray by Ciara, then Bo. Lauren swore silently – all she could see was their boots. The foot shot was interrupted only seconds later, when the screen flashed a bright orange and then they lost the feed entirely. The COMs went to static.
"What the fuck just happened?" Kenzi yelled to Lauren, who frantically bashed the keyboard trying to pull up the video. "Are they okay?"
"I don't know Kenzi!" Lauren smashed at the keys, losing her cool in a most un-Lauren-like way. She yanked off her headset, and grabbed her bag from under the desk. "Stay here. Don't move."
"Where are you going?"
"To make sure that my best friends aren't dead."
"I'm coming with!" Kenzi shouted back, but Lauren was already out the door and halfway down the stairs.
"Bo!" Lauren shouted into the dark, empty corridor. The team had taken the flashlights, leaving her with a battered old Daerwyff Candle – it was an eternal burner, but it only gave off a tiny bit of light. She could barely see three feet in front of her own face. Hearing no answer, she picked up her pace to a jog. "Dyson! Hale! Ciara! BO!" She yelled each name in turn, with no response. Despite her normal, cool exterior, she was beginning to panic. She gripped the candle with white knuckles, ignoring the burning sensations as droplets of wax struck her skin.
She should have gone with them. Kenzi could have handled the surveillance. Why hadn't she gone with them? She beat herself up mentally, although not allowing herself to breach that darkest level and open the floodgates to the real possibility that all her friends were dead. Instead, she tried for dark humor. "I swear to all the gods Bo, if you died I'm going to Dr. Frankenstein you back to life just so I can kill you again for being so reckless and stupid!" Her voice echoed through empty space, but again there was no answer. "Tourist shop sword," she muttered to herself, as she reached a fork in the path. She was 95% sure that Bo and the others had gone left…
"They aren't dead, they've just abandoned you." Lauren jumped at an unfamiliar male voice that seemed to be coming from the tunnel on the right. "You always knew they would, simple human that you are. Perhaps it's best it happened sooner, rather than later."
"Who are you?" Lauren held the candle out further, to illuminate the space.
"Would you believe me if I said I was your inner monologue? Or your conscience? The voice in the back of your mind that you try so desperately to ignore?"
"If that's the case, I believe I need to see a psychiatrist immediately," Lauren deadpanned.
The voice let out a bellowing laugh. "Humor. How very human of you, to use a defense mechanism to shield your weak, mortal mind from the truth."
"And what is the truth?" Lauren asked, moving towards the voice and slowly, ever so slowly, pulling a small, empty bottle from her bag.
"You could be the smartest, most powerful, most beautiful human on the planet, and it would not make you good enough to kiss the ground at Bo's feet," the voice mocked. Lauren sucked in a breath. She couldn't help it. "By the simple fact of who she is and who you are, the limited duration of your pathetic human lifespan, your existence is almost irrelevant to her. You are dust in the wind, Dr. Lewis."
"Well, you know what they say. 'The candle that burns brightest,' et cetera." She continued to move forward; she was almost certain what she was up against, but she needed to keep the creature talking. She needed him to become corporeal.
"She could kill you, you know. Every time you take your clothes off, every time she fucks you, you put your life in the hands of a creature whose grip on 'control' is tenuous at best. A Succubus is a primal, visceral creature. And all it will take is one slip up…just one small mistake."
"I know, right? What a rush." Lauren kept her voice calm, light even. "Now I know how people feel when they skydive and jump canyons on motorcycles. It's dangerous. Exciting. Titillating, even." She turned the corner into the tunnel and thrust the candle forward. She felt something blow by her cheek, but saw nothing. Suddenly, the voice was coming from behind her.
"Of course, if she did kill you, it would not be a great loss, would it? Professionally, you could be replaced. Personally speaking, you have no family left. No contacts outside of the Fae world and, as we have already established, the Fae think no more of you than you would of a cockroach in your kitchen."
"I wouldn't know the feeling; my apartment is immaculate and I don't have cockroaches."
"It was a metaphor, Dr. Lewis.
"Funny, I wasn't aware that abasylrs spoke in metaphors. I thought your kind preferred a more straightforward approach," she taunted the Fae.
There was a long pause. "You know what I am."
"Phantom voice in the dark, you have no body but you create a strong breeze when you move. You are reading the insecurities and fears of my subconscious mind, trying to weaken me. It wasn't hard to figure out." Lauren loosened the cork on the vial. "You intend to break me down mentally, so you can boot me out and take over my body."
"Very impressive, Doctor. But then, intelligence was never your problem. It's the emotional part. Deep connections. That's where you're lacking. That's the real reason Nadia dumped you…it had nothing to do with arguments about laundry. Have you ever had a single true romantic relationship in your life? Or has it always been Friday nights alone in the lab, or alone in your bedroom wanking to fantasies of beautiful women?"
"You're trying very hard to make me feel angst. It isn't going to work, you know." She inched toward the voice again. She needed to get the timing just right…eventually he was going to hit on something that stung…
"Because you're a badass?" The voice chuckled.
"Of course."
"A badass who prefers to be alone."
"Yep."
"Who is alone by choice."
"Indeed."
"That's good. Because you will always be alone. The Succubus will never love you."
"Who said anything about love? And I thought we'd already covered the Bo situation…"
"You aren't worthy of her, but it's not because you're human. Not really. Would you like to know the real reason?"
"Please, do enlighten me."
"It's because you have the emotional depth of a flea, Doctor Lewis. You'll like her, a lot. You'll want her sexually, of course. But she will leave you, because no matter how much you might want to…you can't love her back. You are too stubborn, and too stupid to let yourself." She flinched, and all of a sudden the voice was much closer, not even three feet away. "Sure, you put on your act. Your badass attitude. You let yourself be chased, you let yourself flirt, and you let yourself sleep with her. But you will never see yourself as her equal, because you sold yourself as a slave to her own kind for the price of almost nothing. She's Fae, so you can't trust her. You can't love her." The voice was right in front of her, now. "Of course, you won't have the intestinal fortitude to tell her until it's too late. But by then, she will be in too deep. And your hangups, and resentments, and everything that you are, will DESTROY HER."
That did it.
The voice roared with renewed power, fed by fear it had pulled from Lauren. She fought the instinct to jump backward as the ugliest face she'd ever seen appeared right in front of her nose, grinning with flesh and teeth deeply decayed. She managed to force down the thoughts of inadequacy and despair and revulsion that flooded through her, raised her hand and uncorked the bottle with her thumb.
"You're wrong," she said simply, and pointed it at the abasylr. Its yellowed eyes bulged and grew wide, but before it could speak again a sound not unlike a vacuum cleaner erupted from the glass. The abasylr's face burst into thousands of tiny particles, and was sucked unceremoniously into the bottle in Lauren's hands. With a shiver and a sigh, she put the cork back in, and shoved the bottle in her bag. "You're wrong," she repeated.
She hitched up the bag on her shoulder, pointed the candle toward the left hand passageway, and began to sprint.
"My lips are chapped," Hale put his fingers to the sensitive skin.
Dyson patted him on the back. "Partner, if the worst injury you have after going up against a dragon is a set of chapped lips, you should be a happy man."
"Seriously. All you had to do was stand back and toot your horn while we did the dirty work," Bo ripped off Hale's sleeve and wrapped it around one of several large burns on her arms.
"That shit was silk!"
"Would you rather I sucked your chi and healed myself that way?"
"If we can be naked and in my bed, absolutely."
"Guys," Ciara interrupted from further down the corridor. "Lauren's horse ball dust cloud has been hovering here, patiently waiting to show us the way. Perhaps we should get a move on?"
Hale grinned. "With that accent, you can even make 'horse ball' sound sexy. Wish I had an English accent like that." He tested it out for himself. "Pip pip cheerio, Bob's your uncle."
"Dude," Dyson said.
"That was brutal," Bo finished.
"Worst attempt I've heard in quite some time," Ciara agreed. "Possibly worse than Kevin Costner in Robin Hood."
"Hey, I liked that movie," Bo frowned.
"You'll forgive us if we don't value your opinion on movies, seeing as how you've seen Dirty Dancing twenty times."
"Lauren told you about that?"
"Speak of the devil," Dyson frowned, as he saw the familiar outline of the Doctor headed towards them. "What are you doing down here?"
"Making sure you didn't need medical attention," she replied. But her voice was low – and she seemed to be moving slowly, and with a limp. Dyson's smile slipped into a frown as she stepped further into the light.
Her shirt was covered in blood.
"Oh my God, are you okay?" Bo was at her side in an instant, running her hands over Lauren's torso, making sure there weren't any gaping wounds.
"I'm alright. The blood isn't mine. I ran into catoblepas. This is just spatter." She pointed to her shirt. "Do you know how hard it is to aim at something when looking it in the eye causes instant death?"
"Catoblepas?"
"Two of them. That was after the abasylr and cave troll, but before the sphinx. At least she let me go without a fight after I answered her damn riddle. In short, it would appear that there are plenty of mythical guard dogs protecting these vaults." She looked at Bo, noticing the burns on her arms. "You're hurt. I have some ointment we can apply…
"Who cares about me, are you sure you're okay? I've had a run in with an abasylr, and he almost had me in tears before my friend Aoife trapped him."
"I told you, I'm fine. Really."
Dyson lightly put a hand on her shoulder. "Why didn't you stay in the office with Kenzi?"
Lauren snatched her arm away. "I can pull my weight around here, just the same as you."
"You just took on five Underfae; I certainly wasn't questioning your worth."
Lauren sighed. "I'm sorry, Dyson. I didn't mean to snap. We lost the video feed and the COM feed, and I wanted to make sure none of you were injured."
"We're fine, you're fine, everyone's fine. But we're running out of time, and I really do suggest we haul ass." Ciara motioned toward the darkness.
"Seconded." Lauren held the candle in front of her, and strode purposefully into the tunnel. Bo followed, not trying to hide the look of concern on her face.
Kenzi popped her gum and spun around in the swivel chair until she became nauseous and puked in the bishop's trash bin. Peter and his fellow disciples looked down at her from the walls, in disgust. "Oh, like you're so perfect," she muttered, wiping her mouth. After her triumphant debut that afternoon, her only tangible contribution that evening was now sitting in a garbage bin, which smelled vaguely of sour cream potato chips and bile.
"This must be it," Ciara said, as the dust cloud slipped though the keyhole of an ancient, rusted lock. They were in a room that contained row after row of compartments that resembled safety deposit boxes. There had been several additional encounters with UnderFae, but they had been 'human' enough that Bo worked her long distance chi sucking magic and drained them until they were unconscious. The burns on her arms were gone, and she was now ragingly horny.
Bo told herself that now was not the time for that sort of thing. It didn't keep her from picturing Lauren shirtless, on top of her, straddling her thighs. Not for the first time, Bo was glad she wasn't a guy – or else everyone would know exactly how she was feeling at that moment. She licked her lips and tried to concentrate on what Ciara was saying.
"Give me just a moment," she pulled out the fairy dagger and picked the lock. The rusted hinges stuck for a few brief seconds, but she gently worked them loose. The lock came open with a loud clang. She placed the padlock on the floor, and grabbed the door handle.
"Wait," Hale held out a hand. "What if this is some Indiana Jones shit, and when you open the door the wall drops and a huge ass bowling ball comes out?"
"Then I suggest you run very, very fast." She yanked the door open. Hale winced. Dyson winced. Lauren looked at the wall. Bo looked at Lauren's chest.
Nothing happened. Ciara reached into the dark vault, and grinned as she pulled out a pair of heavy iron shackles.
"Well that was anticlimactic," Lauren joked. She was feeling a lot better, now that she was back amongst the team. Fear was for the weak, and she wasn't weak.
"Bingo. One pair of lie detector handcuffs." Ciara held them up for everyone to see.
"Cha-ching, baby!" Hale clapped his hands. "Drinks on me tonight."
"Cristal?" Bo's eyes lit up.
"Don't get too excited, he's a cheap bastard," Dyson grinned. "I hope you like Natty Light."
"As long as it has alcohol in it, we're good." Bo followed Hale and Ciara back into the hallway. Lauren turned to join them, but Dyson grabbed her arm.
"I need to talk to you about something..."
When Bo turned back to wait for Lauren, her smile disappeared. The Doctor was arguing with the Shifter, poking him in the chest with a finger. Bo couldn't hear what was being said, but she was pretty sure whatever it was, she wouldn't like it.
One hour later, the team was back at the hotel, in Lauren's room. Two bottles of champagne sat on Lauren's desk, one of them now half empty. Kenzi, still feeling sick, had called it an early night. Bo leaned back in Lauren's desk chair, and raised her glass.
"To a new beginning, with my new team." She grinned.
Hale raised his glass, and said "Cheers!"
He was the only one. That fact didn't escape Bo's notice. "What the hell is wrong with you guys? We got the handcuffs. We're makin' money. We kick ass."
Lauren sighed, and her head dropped into her hands. "Bo…I'm so sorry about this."
"About what?" Bo furrowed her brow, but she didn't have to wait long to find out. Before she even realized what was happening, Dyson was behind her and she heard a soft, metallic click. She tried to get up, but her hands were restrained by the Cordoba Shackles, the chain looped through the chair to keep Bo in place.
"What is this?" She shouted. "What the fuck is this?"
Dyson sat in front of her, on the bed. "You did well tonight. But if you're going to be a part of this team, we need to be sure that we can trust you. So we're going to ask you a few questions. And now we know for sure that you're going to tell you the truth." He leaned back with a smirk on his face.
"I can't watch." Lauren stood up, and walked out the door. Ciara and Hale at least looked apologetic. But the self-satisfied look on Dyson's face sent Bo's blood boiling.
"Oh you are dead." Bo strained against the iron shackles until they bit into her wrist. "You hear me? You're dead."
"Would you really kill me?"
Bo looked as though she was about to answer, but the words caught in her throat and her face contorted, as she struggled to say what she wanted to say. There were many, many choice words and insults running through her mind, but to her abject horror she heard a robotic, monotone version of her voice say simply, "No."
Dyson's smirk turned into an all out grin. "I think this is going to work very well."