Chapter 12 Hope and Ruin

Dana turned over to face Duke, putting an end to the way he was lazily stroking her back. "Stop, please."

"Why?" His voice made her toes curl, promising mischief and adventure, laughing like this was some unlooked for new opportunity to tease her.

Her monkey king. Her happy monkey king, and it had taken nearly two weeks to drive the black haunted anger from him. Nathan Wuornos' work, she was sure. Out hunting with Nathan, her skinny white ass. Hunting something that shot back, because in among the pile of reeking clothes she'd thrown in the laundry the next morning, aching from the way he'd used her that night, was a bullet-proof vest.

Duke was not a cop, and had no business in whatever hunting the Haven PD were doing. Particularly if it was going to rip his heart out the way it had.

"Not on the back."

"Why?"

"You know why." He'd been extraordinarily respectful of what was there – and never once hesitated or questioned, and they never mentioned it. She didn't ask about his scars, he didn't ask about hers. But there was not asking, and then there was… fetishizing. She did not like her back touched.

He went up on one elbow. "Dana, I don't. Tell me." His voice was still melted toffee, but the laughter was gone. If she was serious, he would be too.

"I want a job."

He laughed and fell back. "If you insist. Go get a job." He turned to look at her. "You don't have to, you know."

"Duke!" She punched him lightly on his shoulder. "I'm asking you for a job. I'm actually a pretty good waitress."

"At my restaurant, where I already have a full staff. What's the difference?"

That hurt, because it was true. She'd taken everything he'd given her, including more than enough cash for anything she wanted. A featherweight chain of gold with a penny sized pendant of the Chinese 'double happiness' icon; something she had woken up with, already around her neck. Something he couldn't say, but still wanted her to know. "You're right."

"I'll see what I can do," he said.

"Don't worry. I'll ask down at Johnny's." Johnny's Bar and Grill out on West City Ave. Dark, dank and loud. "I'll bet the tips are better there anyway." For the strippers, anyway.

He knew she was teasing, but she regretted it when he got up out of bed and headed for the head.

She lay back down. She liked the boat – lots more space, ironically, than the apartment, and fewer reminders of the former owner. Better mattress. She did miss the tub. But sometimes it felt like Duke was a hermit crab and this was his shell. She was welcome to join him, but it was his. Sometimes, like now, it even felt like Duke was hiding her, keeping her away from everyone else.

Her thwarted escape had scared her badly. Duke's crisis had provided a convenient excuse to put it aside, and stay. But that was what it felt like, now, a trap and an excuse. Something was still changed between them. Different and wrong. His guard was up – all the time. Nothing she did or said seemed to change that.

*.*.*

Out on deck with coffee and newspapers, Dana fingered the necklace, watching Duke. "You read Chinese?"

He gave her a one-sided grin as he turned the page. "Slowly."

"But you read Chinese…" She was willing to follow his trail of breadcrumbs, but first he had to put some down for her. "How?"

"Macau, 1999 to 2004."

"Tell me," she asked with a smile, mug to her lips and knees curled under. She liked bedtime stories. She liked bedtime stories over a lingering brunch best of all.

He put the newspaper away. "You first."

Oh. No fair.

Of course, it was perfectly fair. You jump into bed with a guy who is exciting and mysterious and then, morning after or weeks later, had to go about the finding out about each other anyway. Most guys were perfectly willing to talk about themselves to the exclusion of probing too deeply about her. Duke, not so much.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Duke said.

Duke's phone buzzed. He looked at it briefly, at her, then answered. She didn't listen. Duke's side of the conversation was just a 'yes-no-yes-fine' kind of thing, but she knew. Nathan. Duke started spooling up like a jet engine every time he called.

She got up and walked back inside the cabin. Brunch was over, obviously. If she ever got the chance, she was going to murder Nathan Wuornos.

She'd only just talked Duke down from the last time they'd gone out 'hunting'.

Duke came in, started getting dressed, including putting on his bullet-proof vest. She turned around, the better to not see him with. But she peeked when she heard metal on metal, and the snick of a sharp blade being released and put back. He was loading himself up with knives, a Taser and other exotic weapons, in various scabbards and holsters, tucking them up his sleeves, down his pants, around his ankle. He reached over her head and pulled down a sword that she would have sworn was just decoration.

"Wouldn't a gun just be easier?" she asked, when he sat back down on the bed beside her.

"I can't use guns. The bullets turn around and hit me."

She stared at him. He was perfectly, deadly, serious. "You have a Trouble."

"More than one."

Well, wasn't this the day for personal revelations. Just not hers.

"Do you want to come?" Duke asked. Mournfully. Dreading something that couldn't be avoided.

With him? Out hunting? "Does Nathan want me there?"

"I didn't ask him."

So he wouldn't know. In which case, "Yes."

*.*.*

Nathan put away his real reaction, watching Dana stride alongside Duke as they approached. Settled on annoyed and distracted. "Why did you bring her?"

"Just to piss you off, Wuornos," she snapped.

Duke sighed, like he was the adult of the family. "We need her, and you know it. What do we have?"

He had two dead, and a scene out of a nightmare. "Not this one, Duke."

"Are you going to hold your breath for a good one? Why did you even call me?"

He was right. Nathan shook his head, just to clear it. He was right and he shouldn't have called. At the same time, who else could he have called? He looked around at the ambulance, the half dozen cruisers and all his uniformed men out doing their jobs; securing the scene, canvassing the neighbors, rolling out tape. The coroner's van pulled up at that moment and he noted how Dana's eyes widened just a little, seeing it.

His mistake was not just in calling on Duke whenever the Trouble was dire – though he was beginning to see that was a serious one – it was that he hadn't even thought about finding some way to replace Audrey on his staff. Someone to help, trained and authorized, and at least minimally competent to conduct an investigation.

His head had been so far up his ass over losing her, he didn't know how he even still had a job. No one was going to replace her ability to connect with the Troubled, but sometimes he just needed another cop.

"Come on, I'll show you."

*.*.*

Stan was a nice man, Dana could tell. Such a nice man and having such a bad day.

Covered in blood, seated in the back of the ambulance, sucking down oxygen and visibly trembling – he took one look at her and – "Oh, thank god. Audrey. You're here. Thank God." He looked at Nathan, at her, and his panic dialed down by notches and heartbeats per second.

Duke squeezed her elbow, hard, when she started to respond.

"Tell them," Nathan ordered.

Stan should have been a bank clerk or something, she thought. Never a cop. He took a deep breath, "There's an orc in the house."

Nathan rolled his eyes, hid it with shuffled feet and a displacing swipe at his eyebrows. "Neighbors reported a disturbance. Stan took the call, found the –"

"Orc." Duke grinned, delighted.

Dana elbowed him in the gut. This was not fun or funny. Duke didn't seem to realize that Stan's blood soaked uniform was not from his own blood. Not that that would have been fun, either.

"Found the husband and wife in bed, slashed –" glance at her, "stem to stern. Then he found the orc."

"By orc, you mean…?" She directed the question at Stan.

"Mean, ugly, teeth, hair." His hands waved around, indicating something really large, or at least really frightening. "An orc. A real orc." His shock was coming back. Orcs were impossible. There was no such thing as 'real' orcs. The more he thought about it, the more it scared him.

"And you got away from it."

"Yeah, orcs are easy. In the game – one orc is nothing." In the game. This was not in the game. His mind jumped somewhere, anywhere, away from that. Stan stared at her. "Where did you go?"

Nathan hauled her away by the elbow, dragging her to the front of the ambulance. "Okay, that's enough. I need him back in one piece."

He didn't seem actually angry though. "I wasn't –"

"Don't traumatize my officer a second time. Some people can't accept –" He cut himself off. "Dana, I'm sorry. This is not the time or the place to explain all this to you." He spared a glare at Duke, coming up beside them.

Duke – who – who was… What the fuck was going on with Duke?

His grin was feral and his eyes narrowed to slits. He compulsively checked and rechecked everywhere he had stowed his weapons, just a touch on every one. He locked with their gazes and tensed like at the starting gate. "Can we go now?"

"Stay. Here." Nathan told her. His priorities list shuffled from moment to moment, and right now, she was sixteenth or something.

Dana watched as the two men ran for the door of the house, a pleasant bungalow with attached garage, SUV in the driveway. So ordinary. Stan came to stand beside her, still wearing the thick grey blanket from the ambulance – the kind they gave to patients in shock. "I'm really glad you're back," he said.

"Thanks." Irony. It tasted of vanilla. "I'm not sure I am."

He watched the house with her. Sighed understanding. "Yeah."

*.*.*

Dana stared at the bodies in the bed, blood-splattered like… blood, thrown against the wall, the curtains, the carpets. Arterial gushes, impact spatters, long streaks of a blade throwing off the liquid of a previous cut as it arced down for the next one.

The orc had gone down with barely twenty damage points, Duke had said, laughing as he twirled her in his arms. Out on the lawn once the house was clear. It hadn't even touched him. One thrown dagger and – miming – a vicious two-handed swing from knee to throat. Then it had blinked out of existence.

She pushed him away, tried to look him in the eyes. She knew he wasn't on drugs – but, Christ, he was high on something. He wanted to go home and celebrate, she pushed his hands away and went into the house. Not now, and not at all when he was this creepy. If this was hunting with Nathan…

The man's body lay halfway onto the floor. He wore pajamas with piped edges, tailored collar and tiny decals… no, crests, of some design or another in repeated pattern in the fabric. The wife's body was where she'd slept, only her head faced the ceiling, chin unnaturally high as her throat, neck and spine together had been cut cleanly through until only a bare stretch of skin held it to the rest of her body. Frilly nightgown lace, though she couldn't tell what the color had been before all the blood –

"What are you doing here?" Nathan stepped in front of her, close, blocking her view. "I told you –" He pulled her out of the way while the coroner's people came in, back out into the hall, crowded up together to get out of their way.

She just stared up at him. She could see his pulse beat along a cord in his neck. An extra twenty pounds would bring him up to skinny. Everything extraneous was burnt away, nothing left but will and tendon. It couldn't last.

"Let me help," she said.

"Dana," he sighed, and she caught the tail end of that wish. She was not Audrey. Audrey was the cop, Audrey was the one people waved at as she moved around town, Audrey was the one customers at the Gull still whispered and looked over their shoulders for whenever she went down there. She was not Audrey, but she wasn't useless – and he needed help.

"Two tours in Afghanistan as a combat medic, Nathan. I don't need your protection."

Oh sure, telling Duke was like pulling out her own teeth. Telling Nathan and her mouth was an unzipped fly.

His eyes lit, stared, but – interesting – he did not disbelieve her. "Why do you-?" He cut off his rather impolite question. "Take Duke home. That will help. This is just … cleaning, now."

It probably would. Duke still roamed the house practicing his Warcraft skills, leaping out of doorways with drawn knife or blade. Yelling his fool head off. "What is that?" Why was he so suddenly crazy?

"I think it's his Trouble, all of them. It's all mixed up in him." He shook his head.

"I know, you'll explain later." Out in the front yard had not been the time. In the restaurant with two matching rings had not been the time. He'd, They had, had weeks to explain it to her. "Guess what, Nathan. It's later."

Duke sailed up, waving two gaudily covered books at them. "Look what I found." World of Warcraft books.

Nathan shrugged at her. Duke was now their hyperactive ten year old. "I will, I promise." To Duke: "Where did you get those?"

"Basement. Room's full of them."

"This is a crime scene, Duke. You're disturbing evidence."

"What exactly are you going to charge an orc – a dead, vanished orc – with, Nathan? An orc's gonna do what an orc's gonna do," grinned at Dana.

"Wait – someone did this, right? That's how these things work? Someone with a Trouble did this?" Brought it here; manifested it somehow?

Duke put his arm around her, proudly, looking at Nathan. "See, we talk. It's not just 'sex, sex, sex.'"

Obviously a quote from some private conversation between them. Dana kept a leash on her temper. Duke was obviously not in his right mind, and Nathan – Nathan looked like he was actually about to laugh. His ears were scarlet. Nathan's face was transformed with that hint of a smile. Dana was reminded that those brackets on the sides of his mouth weren't the scars of old injuries. They were laugh lines.

Her own face was probably bright pink.

"Yeah, so?" Nathan said. Ignoring Duke.

"Well it wasn't Mister Piped Pajamas in there. He's never played a video game in his life."

Nathan turned to Duke, the humor draining away. "Show us where you found those."

*.*.*

The basement bedroom was a video gamer's wet dream – and that image in his mind nearly made Nathan gag. Three extremely large computer screens, various controllers, a special chair that he didn't even want to think about… books, posters. Bedding. Most of it now torn to shreds, hacked to pieces and/or beaten to ruin.

Seventeen year old Shawn Wright – son of Mr. Piped Pajamas upstairs, Jake Wright – was nowhere to be found. Victim or perp, there was no way to tell yet. Or, given the way Troubles usually went – probably both at the same time.

Dana led Stan down the stairs, into the room. They needed his experience, his expertise, and she said that it would help with his critical incident trauma to give him some control over the situation again. Nathan wasn't sure about that; Stan still looked like he was going to pass out at any moment. He clung to Dana's arm, and she directed him with one hand on his back.

Stan was really good with the lost dog calls, acceptable at traffic stops. He'd even handled a couple domestics without anyone getting shot or knifed. But there was no way he had any expertise at a bloody double homicide and a Troubled one at that. But apparently he did have some expertise at computers – who knew – and this game. He dismissed the computer and screens as useless, but found an undamaged laptop amid the mess, managed to bring up a video game that Nathan didn't recognize.

He did recognize one of the characters though. The orc – or the several orcs that were there onscreen – exactly like one he and Duke had taken down earlier.

"That's him," Duke confirmed. "That's the fucker."

He was coming down, Nathan noted. The battle high was fading into bitter anger. He didn't miss how Dana squeezed Duke's shoulder, petted his hair – but her attention remained squarely on Stan and the screen.

The orcs on screen turned to look at … them. For all the world like they could see into the bedroom itself.

"Shut it down," Nathan ordered. "If one got through, more can."

"Wait –" Stan said. Nathan's eyebrow rose. Stan said that. Back to him. Stan never said anything back to him but, 'yes, chief.' Anyway, it looked like looking was all that the creatures could do; they ran up to the edge of the screen and stopped. By some invisible force – the edge of the screen on their side? "They can't get through." Thank you Mr. Obvious.

"Because Shawn isn't here?" Dana asked, him and Duke both.

Likely, Nathan nodded.

"Where is he?" Duke asked darkly.

"No." God help him. They weren't going to hunt down a kid. "You're going home." Duke was not going to hunt down a kid. Not this time so soon after the last time. He did have actual police officers to help him – and finding a teenager was not beyond their ability. Shawn could be injured, on the run from more of the orcs… He called Laverne and got her to relay the new info – start a search for Shawn Wright.

"Armed and dangerous," Stan inserted.

"What?"

"He's armed and dangerous," he repeated. Dana encouraged him with a nod. "He was in the game –" Stan pointed at something on the screen that was meaningless to Nathan. "He was in character, in the game – he came out in character."

"What was his character?"

Stan shook his head to Duke's question. "No idea. That's what I mean. It's completely gone. He's out here now."

"So the orc followed him?" Nathan asked.

"His whole crew followed him."

"Shut it off," Nathan ordered, meaning it this time. If there was connection between game world and this world, maybe… Faint hope. It was never that simple.

A/N apologies to anyone who actually plays this game. I don't, as you can probably tell... I just couldn't resist.