Slowly, Zatanna awoke. For a moment, she had no idea where she was; in fact, she didn't really care.
Her body was simply buzzing with energy. Not the kind that made you hyperactive, no, no, no. This was that energy that made you glow after having your blown mind from spectacular sex. She knew, she had experienced that before.
However, this was different. There wasn't a single time where she had been touched—that she knew of at least. She had sat down with Constantine and allowed him to perform a tantric spell. Simply put, it was as if every receptor in her body was awoken and stimulated until she could barely breathe. She was pretty certain she had blacked out at some point.
When this was all over, she was definitely signing up for lessons.
So as she laid there, basking in the literal afterglow as her body felt like jelly, tingling all over from head to toe, she vaguely wondered what she should do with herself. Not that she really wanted to do anything all, she was just that relaxed and comfortable. At the moment, she had no problem just laying on the bed and letting the day, possibly even week, pass her by.
Wait a second…bed?
Zatanna slowly raised her head up and looked around her. Because she was as strong as a wet noodle after the tantric spell, this was a lot harder to do than one would think. When her eyes focused, she found she was in a bedroom, but definitely not the one she had been given. In fact, she was lying on an entirely different bedspread. The bed was still made, save for the wrinkles her body made as she sank into the mattress. She was in a top and shorts, her normal bedwear. Flopping her head back down, she just stared up at the ceiling.
Hmmm, different bed. I guess it's alright.
The dark-haired woman shifted her body as she made herself comfortable and sighed. She might as well enjoy this early morning feeling because, hell, it had certainly been awhile. She really couldn't remember the last time she had felt this content. That was a sad state of affairs, but for now she would enjoy it.
Her plan, unfortunately, came to an immediate stop, her head snapping back up the moment a scream jolted her out of her serene state.
Okay! I'm up!
The scream was a definite shock to her system as the afterglow abruptly left her. Throwing her legs over the edge of the bed, Zatanna immediately sat up, her head twisted around to stare at the door. How close had that scream been? It sounded close. She then rushed for the door, only pausing when she reached it. Faintly, she wondered why she was the only one in the room.
Throwing the door open, she heard another scream, this one directing her to her left. Her feet pounded on the floor as she ran, turning a corner, and then spotting Anita standing in a doorway, her hands pressed into her cheeks. Hurrying towards the older woman, Zatanna looked over her shoulder and couldn't help but pale.
Lying on the floor was Fred, or at least what was left of him. He looked like a shriveled husk, his face frozen in a scream. He laid on his back on the floor, his clothes seemingly swallowing him up. A rotten egg smell seemed to permeate the entire room, causing Zatanna to wrinkle her nose in disgust.
She…she had seen this before.
The two women weren't alone. Detective Chimp was crouched next to the body, seemingly examining it. He had Fred's wrist in his hand, appearing to be searching for a pulse, the magician assumed. Eventually, he let go of his caretaker's wrist and lowered his hand, his knuckles pressing onto the floor. Fred's arm didn't move, instead sticking up where the little detective had been holding it, rigor mortis keeping it in place. There was a glum look on the chimp's face.
By then, the others had arrived. Jason Blood, June, that Alice chick, they all were huddling outside of the door, vying for a look, only stopping when they realized what was going on. "Who the hell did this?" Alice seethed as she stared at the sight. She practically shoved her way through the others, pushing Zatanna out of her way as she entered the room.
Anita swallowed hard and deep. "I have seen this before," she admitted. "It appears to be the work of the hag."
Alice jerked her head to look at the older woman. "You mean that thing tracked us down here?"
"It would seem so."
That caused Zatanna to frown. "But why attack Fred? He didn't have any magical powers that we knew of. Or at least that he knew of. Why not attack one of us that did?"
"That is the question," Detective Chimp spoke up, his voice soft, thick with emotion. "Fred should not have been a target unless he got in her way, which he shouldn't have. We retreated to this house so that she couldn't find us."
"So…so how did she find us?" June asked frightenedly from the door.
"Taking into account the strange properties of this house, the only way she would know is if she predicted this, or someone told her." The grave look on the chimp's face hardened. "One of us told her."
Then a loud scream tore out of the detective's mouth. Detective Chimp began flailing his arms over his head, hopping around the room as he let out scream after scream after scream. He pounded his hands on the floor, flipped over the table, hopped onto the bed where he jumped over and over, beating his fists on his chest. He finally jumped off, slapping his hands on the floor until he fell silent. Standing there, his chest rapidly expanding and contracting with every breath he took, he eventually looked up at his audience.
"I…I apologize," he eventually murmured. "My baser instincts took over there."
Alice immediately made her way over to the distraught chimp. She didn't seem to care that she could be stepping on some piece of evidence, not that it mattered after Detective Chimp's fit. Once she reached him, the goth woman knelt down next to the chimp and held her arms out, to which he lumbered over towards her. He leaned into her body as she hugged him, the goth chick soothingly cooing at him.
So naturally that was when John Constantine made his appearance. "I heard screaming," he said as he came up to the backside of the group, the standing members staring at him with their heads turned. "What did I miss?"
If there was ever a time not to be fashionably late, this was it.
Constantine knew a bad look when he saw one and him arriving at the scene of a murder last was definitely not a good one. He might as well have strolled in on the Royal Family while they were using the loo. It only beat being caught at the scene red-handed by a hair.
His story time with the House of Mystery was to blame. One lost quite a bit of time when they were entertaining, or so it would seem. The House seemed to be enjoying his tale, right up to the first scream. Embarrassingly, he had gotten caught up in his own story that he thought he had a really good tie-in, that his storytelling was literally bringing to life the tale. That changed when he heard the second scream soon after. That had drawn the House's attention away in a hurry and left him empty-handed. He had made progress though, there was that.
So, he went searching for the source of the screaming, only to then hear several animalistic ones. If he had been a betting man—and he certainly was, after all, every man had their vice—he would have said Detective Chimp was having a meltdown.
Which brought him to the present. He was kneeling next to the body of Detective Chimp's caretaker, Fred. Fred had certainly looked livelier the last time he had seen him. Now he was this dried-out mummy, minus the bandages. It wasn't a good look to be honest. Holding a hand over the corpse, he felt his palm and fingers tingle. Slowly, a glowing seal appeared before his hand, lighting up the body from where its glow touched it. While his light was orange, Fred's body began to take on a sickly green color in response.
Yep, the spell he was using was detecting the remains of a spell, one that had been used pretty damn recent too. That made sense as sucking the lifeforce out of another person usually required a spell of some kind. He was also beginning to detect a familiar signature too.
"So, what were you doing?"
Constantine knew an accusatory tone when he heard one; it had been directed at him on more than one occasion, deserved or not. Allowing his spell-detection spell to end, he looked over his shoulder, finding Alice glaring daggers at him, her arms crossed under her bosom. To match her accusatory tone, her eyes were full of accusation as well.
"I got lost on the way here," he shrugged. "Next thing I know, I hear bloody screaming coming, so I came."
"Sure, you were," she growled.
She was the only one left out of their dwindling group. The others had left to their own devices. No doubt the chimp was receiving some consolation. As for the others, he would have had to be Madame Xanadu to guess. The Moone girl looked on the verge of an anxiety attack; Blood looked as dour as a grave; Zatara…
Well, it was a bloody shame he hadn't gotten to see her wake up that morning.
More importantly, with him out and about, that removed a solid alibi for him. If he had shown up with Zatara, with her able to vouch for him, he wouldn't be getting the stink eye. Maybe out of habit, but his fashionably late entrance had just put suspicion on him from Detective Chimp's assistant. It didn't take too much guessin' to figure that he'd be the first suspect by everyone. He was kinda used to that by now.
Looking away from Alice, he glanced around the room. It was in shambles, though he was told most of that was because of Detective Chimp throwing a fit. This really must have been getting to the old monkey as he was usually quite composed, even under strenuous circumstances. He knew better than to trash a crime scene.
"Well, I can say that we're royally screwed," the blond man declared as he stood up, the seal vanishing from his hand before he shoved both hands in his coat pockets as he searched for his smokes and a lighter. If there was ever a time to light up, this was it.
"And what makes you say that?" Alice questioned.
"Whoever attacked Fred, he must have known them. No way does he open his door for just anyone. That only leaves us living blokes."
"Which we pretty much figured out," the dark-haired woman grunted.
"What else did you figure out?" he returned the grunt, still searching his pockets. Where were his damn cancer sticks? They had to be somewhere.
"That it was the work of the hag, if you must know."
He grunted. Yeah, he had been thinking the same too, what with the recognition of the magical signature he had been feeling from Fred. "This just keeps getting better," he muttered.
"So, when you were busy getting lost, you wouldn't have happened to run into the hag, would you?" Alice pressed.
Oh, he saw where this was going. "If I had, pretty certain I'd be looking like Fred here. I make for a better meal than a stooge."
"A likely story."
Finally, his hands found what he wanted. Pulling them out, he shook out one of the cigarettes and rested the filter end between his lips. Shoving the carton back into its pocket, he then held up his lighter, lighting up the other end of the cigarette. Taking in a big inhale, he blew the smoke out, the cloud of burnt tobacco rising up towards the ceiling. There was a faint hint of disapproval, he felt in his head, no doubt the House of Mystery not enjoying the second-hand smoke. "We know the hag knows we're here, right? Clearly you think there's a mole, but I highly doubt that."
"Said like a mole," Alice challenged. Well, he certainly wasn't winning any fans, was he?
Constantine shrugged his shoulders. "I would honestly prefer there was a mole. They would be easier to get a confession out of, or at the very least the hag would have a self-destruct spell on them. We'd either get some answers out of them, or watch them burn into a crisp. Either way, we get rid of the mole as a threat."
Alice seemed to consider that. "So, what are you saying?"
"Worst case scenario? The hag is one of us."
The goth girl gave him a dubious look. "I'm pretty certain we would have noticed someone acting differently."
"Clearly she can act just like one of us long enough for Fred to drop his guard," he pointed out. "He had his soul sucked out while no one knew about it, meaning she was able to convince Fred into letting her in and feasting on him. Don't know what you know about hags, but they got themselves a reputation for luring people to their deaths, usually bloody bad ones too. Just ask old Hansel and Gretel; they went right into a hag's house and nearly got cooked alive." Constantine paused as he took another drag of his cigarette, the coals burning brightly. "Hell, she doesn't have to be one of us, but can change into one of us. She could be anyone at any time."
That gave the woman pause. It seemed she understood where he was coming from. "Then…it could be anyone of us."
"Aside from Fred."
Alice looked troubled by that. "So, what do we do in that case?"
"What any flatfoot would do: suspect everyone." Constantine gave Alice a look, holding his cigarette just before his mouth. "So, where were you before Fred here was found?"
"Sleeping in my room," she glowered at him, eyes narrowed.
"Anyone that can corroborate that?"
"...no. None at all." A pause. "And what about you?"
Constantine took a drag, waiting a moment before blowing the smoke out. "Oh, my night is accounted for, I assure you." He couldn't help the smirk that grew on his face as he recalled the previous night. The sounds alone were a faint chorus in his ears.
It was his late-night jaunt afterwards that didn't need to be mentioned. After all, he didn't see any point in bringing it up. It wouldn't help him and what was the point in hurting his credibility?
June was a wreck. She was freaking out, hyperventilating, sobbing, you name it, she was doing it. Even now, her choked sobs were filling the air.
Not that Zatanna could blame her. They had come to the House of Mystery believing it was a safe place, only to have one of them get killed on their first night; and not only killed, but killed by the very person they were trying to hide from. If that didn't say that there was a small flaw in their plan, then she didn't know what did.
If June had been upset by the very real possibility she would be drawing evil spirits and entities because of her possession of the Sworn Book of Honorius, now she had the very entity that started this whole thing right on her heels. She was rightfully freaking out.
Had it been a year, maybe even two years ago, Zatanna would have been right there with her. Hell, Zatanna would have been freaking out too if it were her ass on the line like June. This whole magic thing wasn't the child-friendly wizards and witches casting spells that brought about rainbows and butterflies. You know, the stuff that children dreamed up before puberty set in and being moody constantly became a defining personality trait. Instead, it was really old people in youthful bodies doing incredibly bizarre and horrendous things. There was a guy trapped in a statue in the middle of San Francisco, ya know.
Unfortunately, there was only so much freaking out that the dark-haired woman could handle. Eventually, June's gasping, and inability to say more than one word at a time between gasps started to grate on one's nerves. Sad to say, Zatanna found herself losing patience with it all. So much for being empathetic. So, she did the one thing she could think of to at least soothe over June's anxiety.
"Xaler dna peels," she whispered into the woman's ear.
In the matter of seconds, June's breathing slowed. She then slumped over until she was laying down on her side on her bed, eyes closed. Zatanna just stared at the woman somberly, sitting on the edge of the bed. The dark-haired woman had been holding the brunette, a side hug if you must know, in an attempt to comfort her. Clearly, it hadn't worked. Knocking someone out wasn't what she thought a good friend would do, but right now she couldn't handle out-of-control anxiety when there was a murderous hag around. At least it wasn't a can of chloroform being shoved into her face.
Zatanna's eye twitched at that thought. No, she wasn't still bitter about that. No, she wasn't going to discuss that any further. That still didn't mean it wasn't uncool, even if it was done to protect her.
Sighing, the magician stood up and began to leave June's room. She made certain to lock the door behind her for all the good it would do. Considering everyone around here knew magic, a quick spell could unlock the door, especially for someone determined to get in. At least if it was someone with good intentions, they would at least not go barging in and give June the space she needed.
If it was someone bad, on the other hand, they might not even care about the lock and just break the door down.
Hmmm, maybe locking the door was rather pointless.
She shook her head. Now wasn't the time for dark, realistic thoughts. Right now, there were things to do that brooding wouldn't fix. In the meantime, Zatanna needed to change. She couldn't go running around this spooky mansion dressed in her sleepwear after all. Since her stuff was still in her room, she headed that way.
As she reached her room door, she felt a familiar presence in her head. Oh no, she grimaced. The House was wanting her attention again, no doubt to regale her with another horror story. She so didn't have the time for it. It was one thing when there wasn't anything really going on that she could indulge it, but they had one of their not-so-merry band murdered and the murderer was creeping around the hallways like…well, like one of the crazy murderers that was in the House's collection of stories.
Opening the door to her room, she could feel the House acting petulant. It clearly wanted her attention. "Hey, in case you haven't noticed, you have an actual murder inside of you," Zatanna spoke out loud, addressing the House directly as she closed the door behind her. "If you pay attention long enough, you could actually have a based-on-real-events story to tell."
She still felt the petulance, which gave her the distinction that all of its stories were "based on real events." That, admittingly, was rather troubling. She couldn't help but spare the hundredth glance to her bed that she had done since she was told that bed-eating story. Giving it a wide berth, she headed to her bag that was still on the chair and opened it.
Then Zatanna felt as if the House was whining, pleading to tell her a story. "Look, at any other time, I've let you tell me whatever story you wanted, but now isn't a good time," she said as she began pulling out the pieces of her costume. She was rather careful with the fishnets because they were very easy to tear if you weren't delicate with them. Years of wearing them had taught her that.
The House became insistent then. "Hey, unless you have a story that's relevant to what's going on here, then you're going to have to go tell it to someone else," Zatanna snapped. She was so done with the House's antics.
For a moment, she didn't feel the House, so she took that as a sign that it finally got her hint. Well, considering she was flat out telling the House to not bother her, it wasn't that hard of a hint to miss.
That's when she felt the House's presence return and it seemed rather excited. It really wanted to tell her this story. Oh, c'mon! she thought frustratedly. Stopping what she was doing, Zatanna looked up at the ceiling, mostly because she didn't know where else to look to address the House. "Alright, let's make a deal," she said exasperatedly. "I'll let you tell me this story, but the moment it's something that has nothing to do with the current murder mystery, I'm cutting you off. Deal?"
Way too quickly, the House accepted her terms.
Pen scratched across paper, drawing ink across it as they formed letters. The writer kept at his work, his office lit up only by candlelight. It was night, the perfect time of the day in his eyes. The strange and macabre would be venturing out soon, preying on those that were unfortunate to come across their paths.
A chiming sound then rang out, seemingly echoing throughout the room, if not the house itself. The writer paused in his writings, a thin smile appearing above his beard. He raised his free hand up to adjust his glasses.
It seemed he had a new audience to enthrall.
Standing up from his desk, Cain released his pen, leaving it on top of the papers he had previously been writing on. He raised both hands up and ran them through his hair, causing the sides to stick out, curling upwards to create an almost devilish appearance. And here he was about to turn in for bed too. Maybe wearing his robe was inappropriate, but what did anyone expect by arriving at his home at this time of night?
Leaving his office, Cain made his way down the hallway. There was an eagerness in the air, courtesy of the House of Mystery. In fact, at the end of the hallway, wooden boards pried themselves up off of the floor and stood straight up, their ends reaching up to the ceiling to form a new wall. They only stayed that way if only for a moment before the boards at the middle pushed inward and then slid to one side, leaving a hole in their wake. Each subsequent board did the same, sliding back and then either to the left and right, continuing this until they were all gone. The hallway that had previously been there was no longer in sight, instead the foray emerging into view.
"Thank you," Cain thanked as he entered the foray, heading right for the front door. The House of Mystery was quite helpful this way. It beat having to walk down every single corridor to get where one wanted to go when the House could literally shift itself around and bring you right to where you wanted to go.
Coming to a stop in front of the door, Cain did some last-minute adjustments to his robe before he reached for the doorknob. With a turn, he opened the door. "Greetings, weary traveler," he greeted warmly. "Your arrival has been…expected."
Standing on the porch was a hooded figure. Hmm, not his usual audience, but it would seem the House of Mystery would have to forgo its storytelling tonight. Most that came in such a guise weren't entirely human and had very little patience for a good tale. He could hear a guttural moan coming from the individual.
"Oh, I see," Cain said disappointingly. "It would seem you have come to the wrong house, valued guest. You are looking for the House of Shadows. If you would just continue on the path that led you here, you will find what you are seeking."
He just heard the groan in response, but then the cloaked figure shifted. "This is the House of Mystery, is it not?" it said with a dry, raspy tone.
"It is indeed," he responded.
"Then I am right where I need to be."
Cain raised an eyebrow. Well, this was certainly unusual. "Pardon my skepticism, but most of your ilk rarely seek out the sordid tales of the House of Mystery. I must say, you have me surprised."
"Oh, but I am not here to hear stories."
Suddenly, the figure rapidly closed the distance between it and Cain. There wasn't so much as a visual footstep so much as it just slid across the wooden porch as if it were a slick bathtub. Out from a sleeve, a gnarled hand shot out and grabbed onto Cain's throat, clamping down tightly as he began to gag.
Cain threw both of his hands up and grabbed onto the thin arm. It was like grabbing onto the branch of a young tree, it was so thin. Yet, he couldn't budge it as he tried to pull it, and subsequently the hand choking him, off of him. Cain's knees buckled and he slowly dropped to the floor until he was kneeling.
Because of this angle, he could now see beneath the hood this figure wore. Sickly green eyes stared hungrily at him, a snout emerging out to form a mouth of sharp teeth. "Ggggyyaaaaa," Cain gagged.
"How long has it been since you were cursed to this House?" the hideous being asked. "Centuries? Millennia? Well, fret no longer. This is the end of your story and the beginning of mine. This is the beginning of—
