After a couple of weeks of rest after their duel with the demon who possessed Vicky, Tim and Tootie decided to hit the road again. Their first stop was in Sacramento to drop off Vicky with a hunter friend of theirs. The formally evil babysitter had decided to join her sister and former nemesis in the hunting profession following her brush with the dark side. The couple had started training her, Tootie in research, stealth, and recon while Timmy trained her in all weapons and hand to hand combat. They even gave her a copy of their journal to help her along the way. She had taken to all of it easily, and shown a high proficiency at all aspects of the job.
After dropping her off, the couple made their way out of California, heading due east. They had received voicemails from several contacts indicating something going down in Weehawken, New Jersey…a town across the Hudson River from Manhattan. It took them a couple of days to complete the coast to coast journey, but they finally roared into a motel parking lot on the east side of town. The place was their typical fare, but it also afforded them a magnificent view of the famous Manhattan skyline.
They were also in town to pay their respects to a hunter named Brett Rodgers, who had died at the hands of a vampire in Alabama. His partner had salted and burned the body there, but the family erected a headstone in his family's plot. They laid flowers on the stone and had a moment of silence, hand in hand. They turned to leave, when they met a strawberry blonde woman who held a tissue in her hand, dabbing away the tears.
"You must be Tim Turner and Tiffany McDonald." she said, a small smile on her face as she extended her hand. "I'm Tricia, Brett's wife. He talked about the time you two hunted with him. A, uh…Wendigo down in Kentucky. He said you two were very good at the job." she finished, shaking both of their hands before lighting a cigarette.
"Uh, yeah that was one of our first cases." Tim replied, remembering that particular hunt.
"We learned a lot from him down there. He was a great hunter and an even better man." Tootie said.
She smiled again, seemingly the first time since her husband left on his ill-fated trip to Birmingham. She walked with them back to the Charger, crushing out her smoke before getting in. She felt safer in their company, and asked them to stay with her for a little while, and they did.
Sitting in her well appointed living room, the couple sipped the tea she set out for them. The night before. They had heard some rumblings of mysterious deaths around the community. When they looked into it, nothing really popped in their minds, so they were going to skip town and chalk it all up to a series of human on human violence.
However, something didn't feel right, and they stuck around, and now they were sipping Darjeeling and eating finger sandwiches with a hunter's widow. This wasn't a situation they were used to, and it was most uncomfortable. Tim especially wanted to get into the field and do some research, not sit around and trade idle chit-chat. Tootie had smacked his leg a couple of times to keep him calm.
Tricia entertained them for about an hour before Tim finally excused them to get out of there. His girlfriend scowled at him for his insensitivity, and he only looked straight out the windshield with his eyes firmly on the road as he drove them back to the motel.
"What is wrong with you? She just lost her husband, and you're acting all uncaring. It's like you don't care about her feelings!" she growled when they got back to their room.
"Look, I don't trust it Toot. My gut's telling me that something's fishy around here. Now I've looked into it, and there have been a series of body snatchings from local crypts. Until last month when Brett bit the dust in Birmingham, there were maybe one or two a year. In the past month, there have been over twenty!" he roared, thrusting the reports into her face.
"So what, you think Tricia's involved somehow? What, she's into some sort of freaky ass necrophilia? Yeah, she really looks the type Timothy!" she snarled, ripping the sheets of paper out of his hand. He sighed and rolled his eyes, knowing that when she got like this, it was better to just walk away.
He grabbed the car keys and without a word stalked out of the room. He was just about to unlock the door, when a force grabbed him and tried to pull him into an open sewer main. He grabbed the chassis and cried out for Tootie to help him. She came running, shotgun in hand, and fired it under the car.
Whatever creature that had a hold of him let go with an inhuman shriek and took off. She helped him out from underneath the car, and held onto him as he tried to regain his bearings. Upon inspection, he found he was none the worse for wear, except a torn pant leg and a scratch under his kneecap.
"What the Hell was that?" she asked breathlessly.
"I don't know, it could've been any of a hundred different bastards who want us dead." he replied, brushing himself off. Tootie wrapped an arm around his waist and helped him back into the room. Once he was on the bed, she tended to his wound, and repaired his jeans.
"You believe me now babe?" he asked.
She didn't reply, just put away the first aid kit and laid back, arms tucked behind her head. She still had her doubts, but something was indeed fishy in this town. They decided to sleep on it, and in the morning they would double their efforts in finding out what attacked Tim. Neither slept well, because something in the back of their minds was bothering them: who was this supercharged near demon that was after them?
In the morning, Tootie woke up late, only to find the Charger and Tim were gone. She cursed him left and right before jumping in the shower to get her day started. She had just finished when she heard the tell-tale rumble from the car, and the door opening. She wrapped herself in a towel before casually walking out of the bathroom. She saw that Tim had gone out and got breakfast for them both, and had made a pot of coffee.
"Thought I'd get the day started off right." he said with a smile. His smile turned seductive when he saw her state of undress, but she only rolled her eyes and grabbed her clothes out of her duffel and went back into the bathroom. He snickered and went back to laying out their meal.
Following breakfast, the duo began gathering all the information they could about the recent disappearances around town. They found that all the people who went missing were friends and acquaintances of Brett, and all went missing within days of his death. All had happened under mysterious circumstances, but there were no viable leads, thus the police had dropped them into their cold case files.
"Well that was a bust." Tim said in disgust, loosening his tie after leaving the police department. Under the guise of CIA agents Hartman and Davis, they tried to glean as much as they could, but with the scant evidence in the files, they came up empty.
"It could've been worse babe…" she began with a smile. "…there could've been zero evidence. We at least got a starting point." she finished with a grin as he tossed her the keys. They drove off and went in search of their one solid clue.
They arrived at a run down tavern and began questioning some of Brett's old drinking buddies. Most knew of or heard about his best friend Jared Ackles, but none knew why he would just up and vanish. He had a successful shipping business in New York, a loving wife, three kids, and a beautiful home outside of town. From the outside, it seemed he had the perfect life.
They followed up on several other leads, but turned up nothing. They hit up a local diner to grab some dinner, since they hadn't eaten since breakfast. They sat there waiting on their meals, and discussing the case in hushed tones.
"I can't figure it Toot, why would these people all decide to up and leave without a trace? All seemed to have great lives, with everything going for them." he said.
"I don't know either babe. This has to be the strangest case we've had since that Tulpa in southern Washington State. Nothing makes sense, especially you getting attacked last night in the parking lot." she replied, sipping on her soda as the food arrived.
They ate, then headed back to the hotel, when Tricia called, asking to speak with Tim in person alone. He shrugged and headed off, while Tootie made her way to the cemetery to check out the crypts that got robbed.
Tim arrived at the Rodger's home, unsure of what he would find. Tricia let him in, and the two sat in the living room again. They chatted about different cases, but something was seriously off about the woman. She seemed to focus heavily on the how of her husband's untimely passing, as if morbidly fascinated with the gory details.
Tootie had snuck down into the subterranean crypt, and took a look around. The stench of decay was everywhere, invading her nostrils and making her gag. She swept the large room with her flashlight and gun, the beam falling on a small crawlspace. She weighed her options, and decided to go ahead and investigate.
Tricia got up to freshen both of their cups of tea, with Tim spiking her glass of ice water with holy water, and set a silver knife blade side up right next to it. He was now sure that this was not Tricia Rodgers, but he didn't know what she was now. He sat back down, and put on a face of sympathy when she returned, and he waited.
Tootie, for one of the few times in her life, cursed her curvy frame. She had to struggle and wriggle her way down the narrow tunnel. On the other side, she found yet another chamber, filled with ancient coffins and a mausoleum. All around, the coffins looked like they had been ripped open, and the mausoleums were in just as bad shape.
Tricia returned, two steaming mugs of tea in her hands. She sent his down on the table next to him, then sat down and crossed her denim clad legs. She reached over, and nicked herself on the silver blade. She just let out a quiet growl and got up to clean the wound. When she came back, she took a drink of the holy water, and nothing happened, leaving Tim dumbfounded. Had he been wrong all along? Was she just a grieving widow?
Tootie examined the different corpses and skeletons that were littered around her. Most were in the normal stages of decomposition, stretched and bloated flesh barely hanging onto grey bones, liquefied organs seeping into the ground as they dripped off the bones. The whole sight is disturbing to the young huntress. Then the beam of her flashlight falls onto a pile of mostly fresh corpses. These are out of place, because as the kindly old caretaker told her, these catacombs had been abandoned since before World War I.
She moves closer to investigate, and notices they huge chunks of flesh missing from the bodies. Because of the lack of decay, she could rightly determine that these were more then likely the bodies of the missing people from town. The first victim she could identify was Jared Ackles. She bent closer, and examined the wounds. He had several lacerations around his biceps and forearm, the cut from his wrist to his elbow seemed to be the fatal wound.
When she examined the edges around the missing hunks of flesh, she gasped. These were not clean and smooth, but instead they were jagged…almost like teeth had made them. She couldn't bask in the horror, because she heard the earth move, and her tunnel out completely filled in with dirt, trapping her.
"Oh that's just perfect!" she groaned in frustration, pounding on the now packed dirt with her fists.
Meanwhile, Tim was racking his brain over the events of the past few minutes. He had come into this situation fully intending on blowing away this woman, and now he couldn't do it. There were no supernatural signs that she was anything but what she appeared to be on the outside. He had followed her out to the kitchen when she said she was making some sandwiches.
"So what do you think is responsible for the disappearances around town Mrs. Rodgers?" he asked. He figured a hunter's wife might have a good insight.
"Honesty, I don't have a clue. I've been grieving for Brett, so I haven't paid much attention." she replied, smoothly pulling one of her husband's handguns out of the drawer in front of her.
Tim hasn't noticed this action, and he turns towards her. "So, it's a possibility that it could be a supernatural being doing all of this?" he asked.
She smirked before she answered a simple "Yes.". She whipped around on her heel and drove the grip of the pistol into his head, knocking him unconscious. She put down the gun, and began tying the young hunter to the kitchen table.
Meanwhile, Tootie had tried to dig her way out, but that caused even more soil to fill in the tunnel. She growled in frustration, and went back to checking out the bodies in the far corner. Every one of them was a missing person from the last month, and every one of them looked like they had been gnawed on for the past couple of weeks.
She scans the rest of the corpses, and when the beam falls on the corpse of Tricia Rodgers, at first she is disgusted, because only the flesh on her face and half her right arm was left. The disgust soon turned to horror, because if the real Tricia was here…who was Tim currently with? She tried frantically to find a way out.
Tim woke up with a mind blowing headache, and found himself tied to a table. He tried to look around, until he heard sadistic laughing from his left. He let his head flop back when the laughing grew closer until he could feel hot breath on his neck and ear. He closed his eyes, trying to suppress his own bitter laugh.
"Ah Hell, I should've known. You're a friggin Ghoul!" he spat as the fake Tricia came into view.
"Give the young man a cigar." 'Tricia' replied. She slowly sauntered over to the counter, and pulled a large butcher knife out of the block.
Tootie was feeling the walls, trying to find a secret passage out of the crypt and back up to the surface. Finally, she gave up and sat down in a corner not filled with rotting flesh and decaying bones. She slammed her head against the earthen wall three times out of frustration. Tim was about to be slaughtered, and she couldn't do anything about it. That's when she looked up and saw a stained glass skylight. Seeing hope, she ripped the handle off a still intact casket and broke through the glass.
She jammed the aluminum handle into the moist soil, and used her upper body strength to pull herself up and out of her impromptu tomb. She dusted herself off, and broke into a sprint in a desperate attempt to save her beloved boyfriend.
The ghoul pressed the blade of the knife to Tim's bicep, and sliced it open. He growled from the pain, and then winced as she began to drink the blood flowing out. She did the same to his other arm, and put a deep ceramic bowl underneath to catch the blood.
"The signs were there, all the body snatchings since Brett kicked the bucket. You were afraid that he would catch on and kill you." he barked.
"No shit Sherlock. You hunters are all the same; all you want is to satiate that bloodlust. I have a right to live as much as you do." she bellowed, licking the trickle of blood running down his arm.
He laughed sadistically. "Yeah, and what a life it is right? All you do is feast on rotted corpses and hide in the shadows. You're nothing more then rats!" he snarled as she cut into him again. "It was the fresh kills that threw us. Didn't know your kind could move up in the world."
She smirked, and then smacked him hard. "Everyone always said you had a smart mouth. We'll see how far it gets you once I'm feasting on this gorgeous body of yours!"
She bent down to take a bite out of his neck, when Tootie came sliding into the kitchen. She raised her cocked shotgun and blasted her in the chest, sending the ghoul flying into the wall, but otherwise unaffected.
"Tootie, she's a Ghoul!" Tim shouted after his ears stopped ringing from the blast.
She nodded and fired another round, aimed for the head. She knew from her research that the only way to kill a ghoul was a full on headshot. She went to reload, but the ghoul launched itself at her. She ducked out of the way, and swung the grip of the gun. It connected, and sent the creature flying.
The ghoul got to her knees and prepared to lunge again, but came face to face with the barrel. Tootie didn't hesitate in pulling the trigger. The ghoul's head exploded in a shower of skull, skin, hair, and brain matter. The body slumped over, and Tootie rushed over and untied Tim. The pair embraced, and she led him out of the house.
After returning to the motel and Tootie cleaning up his wounds, the pair walked out and found a quiet spot near the river with a gorgeous view of Manhattan. The couple kissed under the moonlight. She stood to admire the view, and he took that as his opportunity. He reached into his back pocket and produced a small box. He dropped to his knee and waited for her to turn around, which she did when she heard a rustle.
"Tootie, we've been together for a long time now, and in all this time I've fallen deeper and deeper in love with you." he began. Tears began to form in her eyes as she realized what was happening.
"All I want is for the rest of my life is to have you by my side." he continues, opening the box and revealing the ring. "Tiffany Layla McDonald…will you marry me?"
"YES!" she screamed loud enough for all five boroughs of New York. She leapt at him, and tackled him to the ground, smothering him with kisses. He wrapped his arms around her and deepened the kiss. The two were finally fulfilled, their love whole and pure and eternal.
A/N: Read and Review. Well there you have it; the couple is engaged to be married. Coming soon: We leap forward, and get a look at their lives after giving up hunting. They are happy, but something is brewing downstairs, and it's ready to be unleashed. Again, thanks so much to you the reader.
