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"90", "thumb_medium_y": "120" } ], "pools": [], "description": "As Nightmunk, Alvin travels to Ireland to investigate the death of a friend's bride-to-be, and becomes embroiled with a snake-worshipping cult, undead knights, and a diabolical plot to resurrect an ancient evil!", "description_bbcode_parsed": "As Nightmunk, Alvin travels to Ireland to investigate the death of a friend's bride-to-be, and becomes embroiled with a snake-worshipping cult, undead knights, and a diabolical plot to resurrect an ancient evil!", "writing": "[center]The Night of Blind Terror[/center]\n\n[center]a story set in the universe of Champions Online[/center]\n\n\t\"Can I get ye anythin', sir?\" the pretty stewardess with the Irish accent asked without looking at who she was talking to, reciting by rote words she'd no doubt said thousands of times before. Then her eyes widened as she caught sight of me. \"Oh!\"\n\tI was sitting beside the window, my feet just barely sticking out over the front of seat 45A. I turned my buck-toothed, blunt-muzzled face toward her. \"What time do we land in Dublin?\" I asked.\n\tShe recovered her composure quickly. While we aren't a common sight in the world, most people have heard about manimals—human-animal hybrids created on Monster Island by the insane geneticist Dr. Phillipe Moreau. \"3:24 PM, local time, sir,\" she said.\n\tI nodded. \"Thank you.\"\n\t\"Is there anythin' I can do to make yuir flight more pleasant?\" she asked, smiling.\n\t\"A pillow would be nice,\" I replied. I intended to snooze away as much of the trip as possible.\n\t\"I'll get one for ye. Anythin' else?\"\n\t\"A gin and tonic?\"\n\t\"I see,\" she said. \"Um, pardon my askin', but are ye old enough to drink?\"\n\tI sighed. Being the size of a child, some people assume I [i]am[/i] a child, which is understandable when you're a talking chipmunk. It's hard for humans to estimate my age. I reached into my back pocket and took out my wallet, showing her my driver's license to confirm that I was indeed an adult. She giggled when she saw my name. \"Alvin?\" she asked. \"Like th' cartoon character?\"\n\tI rolled my eyes and nodded. I get that a lot. And I knew what was coming next.\n\t\"Where are Simon and Theodore?\" she asked.\n\tI forced a smile. \"They're taking a later flight,\" I said. She was only trying to be nice. It would have been mean to hit her with the ugly truth—that my brothers were dead and buried on Monster Island.\n\tShe smiled and nodded. \"I'll be back soon with yuir pillow an' drink.\" And with that she moved on to the next passenger.\n\tI sat back in my seat and gazed out the window. The sun was rising, turning the clouds into a sea of spun gold, so beautiful it was hard to believe it was real. I sighed and closed my eyes, thinking about what had brought me here: the personal tragedy of a friend . . .\n\n\tThe call had come in the middle of last night. I reached out blindly to where my phone lay on the night table beside the bed, fumbled with it, and finally got it up to my ear. \"Hello?\" I asked.\n\t\"Alvin!\" came a familiar voice on the other end. \"I need yuir help!\"\n\tI sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. \"Sean?\" Sean O'Donnell was a friend of mine, an Irish archaeologist who'd helped me out on a case involving some ancient relics stolen by the magic-based criminal organization DEMON, because I'm also the superhero Nightmunk, a member of Team Nighthawk. I looked at the time on my phone. \"Sean, it's five in the morning.\" I had only just turned in after finishing my nightly patrol of Millennium City.\n\t\"Mary's dead, Alvin!\"\n\tMy jaw dropped. \"What?\" Mary was Sean's fiancee. He'd told me about her when we'd been working together. She lived in a little village in the country south of Dublin. I didn't know her last name.\n\t\"She's dead, murdered, and the local police aren' doin' anything about it! They think she was killed by animals! Death by misadventure, they say!\" He sounded close to hysteria.\n\t\"Sean, Sean, calm down! Now, what makes you think they're wrong?\"\n\t\"Because this is Ireland! There's nothin' here that could do that! Alvin, yuir a detective. I need ye to come here and examine the body before they bury her!\"\n\t\"You want me to just drop everything and go to Ireland?\"\n\t\"I'll pay yuir plane fare!\"\n\t\"Money isn't the issue, Sean. I'm working on a case right now and—\"\n\t\"Och, yuir always workin' on a case! Please, Alvin! I'm beggin' ye!\"\n\tI sighed and rubbed my forehead. \"Okay, Sean. I'll catch the next flight out.\"\n\t\"Thank ye, Alvin,\" he said, sounding enormously relieved. \"Thank ye so much!\"\n\t\"See you soon,\" I said, and hung up.\n\tIn the bed beside me, a lumpy shape groaned and rolled over to face me. It was Julie Martins, my human girlfriend. Yes, a chipmunk sleeps with a human girl. Deal with it.\n\t\"What was that?\" she asked. \"Something about going to Ireland?\"\n\tI nodded. \"My friend Sean needs help. His fiancee has been killed.\"\n\tHer eyes went wide. \"Oh my god, that's terrible! But don't they have police in Ireland?\"\n\t\"Apparently, he's not satisfied with the way they're handling the case.\"\n\t\"So you just up and go to Ireland for him?\"\n\t\"Julie, the woman he loved is dead. Even if there's nothing I can add to what the police have found out, I can at least give him some moral support.\"\n\t\"That's a long way to go just to provide a shoulder to cry on.\"\n\t\"Without his help I wouldn't have known the incantation to reverse the ritual DEMON was performing with those artifacts a few months back. I probably would have been killed, along with a lot of other people. I owe him this much.\"\n\tShe sighed, clearly unhappy with the idea of me going away. I could understand why. I'd only recently returned from an extended sojourn in another dimension, and during our time apart we'd both realized that we loved each other. Not long after that we'd decided to start living together. We figured that since we were spending all our nights together anyway it didn't make much sense to be paying two rents, so I'd moved out of my apartment and into hers. I'd like to say we were the first interspecies couple in Millennium City, but given the amount of weirdness that goes on in this town, it almost certainly wasn't true.\n\t\"I'll be back in a few days,\" I said reassuringly. \"Just a quick jaunt across the pond and back again. It's probably nothing. Sean is just distraught and making this out to be more than it is.\" I wasn't entirely certain that was true. I didn't know much about the wildlife of Ireland, but I was reasonably sure there weren't many dangerous animals there. I knew there weren't any snakes. St. Patrick had seen to that, if legends speak truly, which they sometimes do.\n\tShe nodded, put her arms around my furry body, pressed her lips to my muzzle, and kissed me. I put my arms around her and returned the kiss, rubbing noses with her and smiling. \"I love you, Julie,\" I said.\n\t\"I love you too, Alvin,\" she replied.\n\tI kissed her again—a long, deep, passionate kiss—and then let go of her. \"I have to start making preparations,\" I said . . . \n\n\tAnd that was how I ended up on an Aer Lingus 747 landing at Dublin Airport at exactly 3:24 PM. I deplaned and entered the thoroughly modern, sleek, and beautifully curved steel-and-glass terminal building, holding a suitcase almost as big as myself that contained all my equipment. Everyone stared at me, but I'm used to that. Normally, I'd have to go through customs, but since Nightmunk is a hero registered with UNTIL—the United Nations Tribunal on International Law—I get a special exemption. I had my passport stamped at the desk and walked into the main concourse, where Sean was waiting for me.\n\tHe looked like hell. His lean, angular face was drawn and sallow, his sandy hair—which was always wild and frizzy—looked as if it hadn't seen a comb in a week, and his blue eyes were dull and sunken behind his horn-rimmed glasses. He stood before me, wearing a white fisherman's sweater and blue jeans, his hands in his pockets. He smiled a little when he saw me. \"Hullo, Alvin,\" he said.\n\t\"Hi, Sean,\" I replied. \"I'm so sorry.\"\n\tHe bobbed his head. \"Thank ye. Come on, we've got a long drive ahead of us.\"\n\tI followed him out to the parking lot, stowed my suitcase in the trunk of his car—or the boot, as they call it over there—and almost got in the driver's side before I remembered the passenger sits on the left in that country. In a few minutes we were on the M11 motorway, headed south along the coast of the Irish Sea.\n\t\"Have a nice flight?\" Sean asked.\n\t\"I slept through most of it,\" I said. \"I'd only just gone to bed when you called.\"\n\tHe nodded. \"I remember ye tend to keep late hours.\"\n\t\"Well, I'm called Nightmunk for a reason.\"\n\t\"I really appreciate yuir comin', Alvin.\"\n\t\"I'm glad to do it, though I'm not sure how much help I'll be. I'm sure your local police and coroner are competent enough.\"\n\tHe snorted. \"Buncha idiots!\"\n\tI looked at him. \"Why do you say that?\"\n\t\"They're sayin' she was killed by a pack o' wild dogs!\"\n\t\"Is that unlikely?\"\n\t\"There's been no reports of any such thing in th' area! If there were, don't ye think someone would have noticed 'em?\"\n\t\"I would think so. I take it you've seen the body?\"\n\tHe nodded. \"It's covered in bite marks. I'm no expert, but they don't look like dog bites ta me. An' another thing. If it had been dogs, yui'd think they would have torn it apart an' eaten most o' the flesh. But it's completely intact!\"\n\t\"That does seem at odds with how dogs usually do things.\"\n\t\"I also don' like how th' constable an' th' coroner are actin'. Like they know somethin' they aren' tellin'.\"\n\t\"Okay,\" I said, \"let's assume there's more going on here than meets the eye. What do you expect me to do about it? I have no authority to overrule the decisions of local officials. I'm just a private citizen, and a foreigner to boot. If they stick with their dog attack story, there's nothing we can do about it.\"\n\t\"If ye can find evidence they're wrong, or hidin' somethin', I can take it to th' Garda Siochana—the Guardians o' the Peace o' Ireland. They can do somethin' about it!\"\n\tI nodded. \"All right, then. How long until we arrive?\"\n\t\"About three hours.\"\n\t\"Fine. I'm going to try to get some more sleep.\"\n\tI reclined the seat and snoozed as the emerald hills rolled by.\n\n\t\"Alvin, wake up,\" said Sean. \"We're here.\"\n\tMy eyes snapped open, and I pressed the lever that caused the back of my seat to flip upright, taking me with it. I turned my head to look out the window. Before me stood a two-story brick house, probably over a hundred years old. Some of the shingles on the roof were missing, and one of the black window shutters on the second floor was hanging at an angle. There were no other houses visible, just fields and a few trees scattered about.\n\tWe exited the car, stepping out onto the gravel driveway, and were just getting my suitcase out of the trunk when a girl emerged from the house and came down the steps of the front porch toward us. She looked to be about twenty, with blue eyes, round cheeks, a pointed chin, and blonde hair worn in a pageboy cut. She was dressed in a red-and-black checked flannel shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. When she saw me, she stopped in her tracks and stared. \"What . . . what th' hell is that?\" she demanded.\n\t\"This is Alvin,\" said Sean. \"Alvin, this is Katie, Mary's sister.\"\n\t\"Hello, Katie,\" I said.\n\tShe raised a finger, pointing at me. \"Ye didn't tell me he was a . . . a . . .\"\n\t\"A manimal,\" said Sean. \"Does it matter? He's a friend, an' he's here ta help.\"\n\tShe whirled and strode back into the house, shaking her head, the screen door slamming shut behind her. I turned to Sean. \"Why didn't you tell her?\" I asked.\n\t\"I didn't know how she'd react, an' I didn't want ta get in an argument about it. She's in a state.\"\n\t\"Of course she is! She just lost her sister!\"\n\tSean led me to the front door, and we went inside. The living room was furnished in a mishmash of clashing colors and styles. Katie was sitting hunched over on a flowered sofa, her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. It didn't seem like a good idea to disturb her.\n\t\"Are ye hungry, Alvin?\" Sean asked.\n\tI actually was, having not eaten anything since I'd had breakfast at Millennium City Airport nine hours earlier. \"I wouldn't mind something,\" I said.\n\t\"Come on, there's half a chicken in the fridge.\"\n\tWe went to the kitchen. I put down my suitcase, climbed up on a chair, and sat down at the large, rustic-looking wooden table that was at odds with the otherwise modern cabinets and appliances. Sean brought out a platter bearing a half-eaten chicken. I pulled off a drumstick and gnawed on it, while Sean sliced off a couple of hunks of meat with a knife and popped one in his mouth. \"What'll ye be wantin' ta do first?\" he asked as he chewed.\n\t\"First, I need to examine the body,\" I replied.\n\t\"I don' think th' coroner'll be too keen on that,\" said Sean.\n\t\"That's why we're not going to ask his permission. Where's it being kept?\"\n\t\"In th' morgue in th' village.\"\n\t\"Is there anyone there now?\"\n\t\"Nah, it should be closed for th' night.\"\n\t\"Good. Then we shouldn't have any trouble breaking in.\"\n\tHe grinned. \"Jus' like that, eh?\"\n\tI nodded, licking my furry fingers. \"Just like that.\"\n\t\"Did I hear right?\" came Katie's voice from behind us. We both turned in our chairs to look at her. She was standing in the entrance to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across her chest. Her eyes were red-rimmed. \"Yuir goin' ta break inta th' morgue ta look at Mary's body?\"\n\t\"It's not going to come to us,\" I said.\n\t\"And what do ye think yuir goin' ta find out?\"\n\t\"Hopefully, how she died.\"\n\t\"The coroner said it was dogs.\"\n\t\"Sean doesn't believe that. I'm not sure I do either.\"\n\t\"Why would he lie?\"\n\tI shrugged. \"I don't know. Maybe we can find that out, too.\"\n\t\"Suppose ye get caught?\"\n\t\"Then we'll pay a fine!\" said Sean impatiently. \"It's not like we'll be stealin' anythin'! Th' worst they can do is charge us with trespassin'!\" His voice softened. \"Don't ye want ta know th' truth, Katie?\"\n\tShe turned and went back into the living room. I glanced out the window. \"What time does it get dark?\" I asked.\n\t\"It's April in Ireland,\" said Sean. \"The sun doesn't go down 'til after eight.\"\n\tI nodded. With their mild climate, it was easy to forget how far north the British Isles were. Their latitude was the same as Quebec's. \"We'll just have to be careful, then.\" I hopped down off my chair, went to my suitcase, opened it, and removed a miniature forensics kit, since I didn't know how well-equipped the lab at the morgue would be and I didn't want to be caught without anything I needed. \"Okay, let's go.\"\n\tWe left the house, went out to the car, got in, and drove off down the road toward the village.\n\n\tEnnis was a sleepy country village, one of hundreds of such villages scattered across the Emerald Isle. The streets were lined with quaint little shops, the town square was dominated by a church that looked as if it had seen Oliver Cromwell come and go, and there was a pub, because this was Ireland.\n\tSean pulled the car in behind the squat, ugly brick building that was the morgue, and we got out and went to the back entrance so we'd be out of sight of the street. I picked the lock on the door and let us inside.\n\tWe made our way to the examination room, and Sean flicked on the light as we went inside. The room had a strong antiseptic smell. There were two steel tables on wheels, several benches with an assortment of chemicals and equipment, and six refrigerated cabinets in a line along one wall where the bodies were kept. Sean pointed at the one on the far left. \"Mary's in there,\" he said. I had to admire how he was holding it together.\n\t\"I'll get her out,\" I said. \"You go find me the autopsy report. Use this.\" I gave him my flashlight.\n\tSean left, and I wheeled one of the examination tables over to the cabinet and opened it. Immediately, the sickening smell of decay washed over me. I don't know how the people who work in these places ever get used to it. I steeled my stomach, heaved the tray containing the cadaver out onto the table, pushed the table under the lights in the center of the room, and found myself a chair to stand on. Then I pulled the plastic sheet aside.\n\tShe was blonde, like her sister, but with longer hair. In life she'd been quite pretty, but now her skin was as white as milk and her lips were gray. Incisions had been made across her chest and down her abdomen during the autopsy. Standard procedure. As Sean had mentioned, there were dozens of bite marks all over her body. I took a magnifying glass out of my kit and started inspecting them.\n\tSean returned a few minutes later, holding a manila folder. He came over and held it out to me. I accepted it and glanced up at him. He was making a concerted effort not to look at the body. I couldn't blame him. This had to be hell for him. I started reading the report as Sean went and sat down in a chair against the wall.\n\t\"Well, he's right about the cause of death,\" I said. \"Exsanguination.\"\n\t\"Loss of blood?\" Sean asked.\n\tI nodded. \"Her injuries weren't sufficient to cause death by themselves. She bled to death. But his conclusion about the cause of the bites is garbage. They were made by human teeth.\"\n\t\"What, ye mean like vampires, out of Bram Stoker?\"\n\t\"Something similar, anyway.\"\n\tSean nodded. \"He was an Irishman, ye know.\"\n\t\"Yes, I actually did know that. Only these aren't vampire bites. I've seen actual vampire bites, down in Vibora Bay. There's a vampire gang there called the New Shadows. These aren't nice, neat little puncture marks like the ones vampires make. They're gouges. And by the tooth spacings and bite radii, I'd estimate they were made by at least ten different mouths.\" I glanced over at Sean. \"Are there any cults in the area?\"\n\t\"Not that I know of.\"\n\tI lifted up her right hand and inspected under her fingernails. She'd been dead for over forty-eight hours—well past the rigor mortis stage—so her fingers moved freely. I noticed some fibers beneath the nail of her right index finger. I removed them with a pair of tweezers and looked at them through my magnifying glass.\n\t\"What've ye found?\" Sean asked.\n\t\"Linen fibers,\" I said. \"Very old.\"\n\tSean rose and came over to me. \"How can ye tell?\"\n\t\"The thickness of the fibers is irregular. The cloth these came from wasn't made by a machine in a factory. It was made by hand. I couldn't tell you how old they are without a carbon dating test, but they're definitely pre-industrial. Also, they're stained with something. Mold, I think.\"\n\t\"Ye think they came from whoever killed her?\"\n\t\"I doubt they came from anything she was wearing.\" I looked up at him. \"Sean, I think I've learned all I can here. I want to see the spot where she was found.\"\n\tHe nodded. \"I'll take ye there.\"\n\t\"You want to wait in the car while I clean up here?\"\n\t\"I can handle it,\" he said.\n\t\"All right.\"\n\tAs we slid Mary's body off the table and back into the refrigerator, I said, \"One thing I'm certain about. Your coroner is a liar. Nobody with any sort of medical training could have mistaken those for dog bites.\"\n\t\"So he's coverin' up somethin'.\"\n\t\"So it would seem.\"\n\t\"I wonder what?\"\n\t\"Maybe the crime scene will tell us.\"\n\tWe turned out the lights, replaced the file, and left.\n\n\tSean drove us to a wooded area well outside the village of Ennis. Not knowing that to expect, I decided to don my costume. That way, I'd at least have my full array of weaponry at my disposal. We parked the car by the side of the narrow, twisting country road, got out, and moved into the silent woods, Sean leading me. It was starting to get dark, the sun casting long shadows across the ground. Not exactly the best conditions for examining a crime scene, but I'd had worse. At least, being so secluded, it was unlikely to have been contaminated by civilian traffic. We came to a small clearing, and Sean stopped.\n\t\"This is it,\" he said. \"This is where they found her.\"\n\tI knelt down and started examining the ground. There was a muddle of footprints in the mossy earth, no doubt made by the police when they'd retrieved the body. I sniffed at the dirt where the corpse had lain. \"There's no blood here,\" I commented.\n\t\"Wouldn't it have all soaked into the ground?\" asked Sean.\n\t\"There would still be some residue if it had,\" I said, standing up. \"No blood in her body, and none on the ground. So where did it go?\"\n\t\"Are we back ta vampires again?\" asked Sean.\n\t\"There are other things besides vampires that drink blood,\" I said. I started moving away from where the body had been found, making an ever-widening spiral, my eyes fixed on the ground. \"What was she doing out here, anyway?\" I asked.\n\t\"Comin' home from a friend's house,\" said Sean.\n\t\"She do that often?\"\n\t\"Two or three times a week. She would cut through these woods rather than follow the road. It was quicker.\"\n\t\"So she did this regularly. Which means that anyone who knew about it could have been lying in wait for her.\"\n\t\"More like a bunch o' someones, by what ye said.\"\n\tI nodded, and stopped and knelt.\n\t\"Ye found somethin'?\" Sean asked, coming over to me.\n\t\"A hoofprint,\" I said.\n\tSean crouched down to look at it. \"Tha's not so odd. Lots o' folks around here have horses.\"\n\tI glanced up at him. \"And they just happened to be riding here, far off the beaten path, where a murder was committed?\"\n\tHe shrugged. \"It's possible.\"\n\t\"Look at the size of it, Sean. That wasn't made by any riding horse. More like a Clydesdale, or a Percheron. What would a draft horse be doing out here?\" \n\tI rose and started walking in the direction opposite the way the horse had been going, Sean following me. There were more hoofprints leading off into the woods. \"Another line of hoofprints,\" I said, pointing. \"And another. And another. And by the spacing of them, the horses were galloping.\" I spotted something and knelt down. It was the imprint of a work boot, the kind Katie had been wearing. I looked up at Sean. \"About Mary's size, wouldn't you say?\"\n\tHe nodded, mutely.\n\t\"And it's in the same line and direction as the hoofprints. They were chasing her. Running her down.\" I shook my head. \"How the hell did the cops miss this?\"\n\tSean frowned. \"Th' same way th' coroner mistook human bites for dog bites.\"\n\t\"Nobody's this incompetent. What's the nearest structure to here, Sean?\"\n\t\"There's nothin' for miles, Alvin.\" His cell phone rang, and he took it out and looked at it. \"It's Katie.\" He answered it. \"Hello? What? Slow down, Katie!\" He listened for a bit, then covered it with his hand. \"She's frantic, havin' some kind o' hysterical fit.\" He spoke into the phone. \"Katie, calm down! What? No, we're busy right now! Katie? Katie!\" He looked at me. \"She hung up.\" He tried to call her back. \"She's not picking up.\"\n\t\"What did she want?\" I asked.\n\t\"She wanted me ta come see her.\"\n\t\"That might be a good idea.\"\n\t\"But what about th' investigation?\"\n\t\"I'll stay here and continue it.\"\n\t\"All by yuirself?\"\n\tI smiled at him. \"I can take care of myself. You go see Katie.\"\n\tHe sighed. \"All right. You be careful, Alvin.\" And he started heading off back toward the car, leaving me alone in the woods.\n\tI glanced up at the sky. The daylight was almost gone, just a faint crimson glow remaining. I took out my flashlight and kept walking in the direction the horses had been coming from. Idly, I found myself wondering how many times this particular bit of ground had been fought over during the ages of conflict that had plagued this ancient, troubled land.\n\tA few dozen yards along, I noticed a small sapling to one side. Its top had been sheared off about six feet above the ground. The rest of the little tree lay nearby. I picked it up and inspected the cut end. It was about two inches thick, and it had been sliced clean through with a single stroke. I tried to imagine the amount of force required to do something like that. It would have taken a very strong man, with a very sharp axe. I continued walking, playing my flashlight beam along the ground, the theme to [i]The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie[/i] running through my head.\n\tThe sun was gone now, and the full moon cast its silvery light through the tree branches overhead, draining all the color out of the world. The woods were oppressively silent; I couldn't hear so much as a cricket chirping, just the sound of my own boots crunching upon the dead leaves on the ground. It was as if the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.\n\tThen I heard it. Faintly at first, then slowly rising, like a mushroom poking its way up through the ribs of a corpse. Hoofbeats—but distorted, resonant, echoing unnaturally through the forest. Getting louder and louder, until they filled my ears like thunderclaps. I switched off my flashlight and ducked behind a tree, flattening myself against it. Then, all at once, the hoofbeats stopped. Cautiously, I peered around the edge of the trunk.\n\tThere, standing in a ray of moonlight, surrounded by a carpet of mist, was the figure of a man on horseback. It was dressed in rusty chainmail armor, over which lay a tabard that was covered in mold and dirt. Upon its head and shoulders it wore a pointed monk's hood, a tattered cloak hanging down behind it. Its face was almost entirely hidden in the shadows of its cowl. Sticking up behind its back I could see the hilt of an enormous greatsword. The horse upon which the figure sat was a massive beast, with a shroud over its body and a hood over its head that exposed only the mouth, ears, and eyes. Like its rider, the horse's accoutrements were layered in mold and dirt.\n\tI've faced death many times. I don't scare easily. But for some reason the sight of this figure filled me with an icy terror I'd never experienced before, not even in the fight pits on Monster Island when I'd been certain I was going to die. It reminded me of one of the Nazgûl from Tolkien's [i]Lord of the Rings[/i]. That would put me in the role of Frodo, which seemed appropriate for someone of my size. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and my gloved fingers gripped the bark of the tree I was sheltering behind. I wanted to run, to flee into the welcoming arms of the night, but some part of my mind kept me still. I watched the hooded figure on its horse, waiting to see what it would do.\n\tThe figure climbed down off its mount and drew that huge sword from behind its back, the dust of ages drifting off its body. Then, slowly, it began moving in my direction. Its movements were steady, deliberate, purposeful. It was looking for something. And as it got closer, the fear intensified. I was trembling, and I could taste the salty tang of blood in my mouth where I was biting my lip. I shuddered as it came nearer and nearer, to the point where I could have reached out and touched it if I'd dared to move. The hem of its ragged cloak brushed across the tip of my boot, and I gasped involuntarily. Its head snapped around, and I was staring straight into its face—a withered, dessicated face, with gray, lifeless skin drawn tightly across its skull, the wispy remnants of a mustache and beard surrounding a snaggle-toothed mouth. But the thing that held me transfixed were its eyes. It didn't have any. Just two gaping, empty black sockets.\n\tIt couldn't have missed me. I was right in front of it, in plain view. But it didn't move. It just stood there, gazing at me with those awful, empty sockets. A full minute passed, and still nothing happened. That was when some detached, rational part of my brain decided to try an experiment. I raised the flashlight I was still holding and switched it on. The beam shone right in its horrible, cadaverous face. There was no reaction. It was blind! I almost giggled with hysteria. Idiot! Of course it was blind! It had no eyes!\n\tI could see a device on its tabard, and lowered my beam to its chest. There, in faded red and almost obscured by dirt and mold, was not a cross, as I'd been expecting, but an ankh. I didn't have time to ponder the implications of this, however, as the dust drifting from its body tickled my nostrils, and I sneezed. Instantly, it hefted that massive sword over its shoulder and swung. Fortunately for me, it was under the misconception that its target was someone of normal human size. Its blade thunked into the tree trunk well above my head.\n\tThe rush of adrenaline that came with combat momentarily overwhelmed my fear. I extended the steel claws from my gauntlets and rammed them into the thing's chest, piercing its rusty armor. However, all this did was raise a cloud of dust as my claws sank into dry, dead tissue. I coughed and gagged as the cloud rolled over me, and just barely managed to block a return swing from its sword with my gauntlet. Even so, the blade sliced through my body armor and cut a gash across my right arm, as well as sending me sprawling from the sheer force of the blow. I got to my feet as the unholy monster began advancing toward me, its sword gripped in its skeletal hands. Since I didn't seem to be able to hurt it, I opted for the next best course of action. \n\tI ran.\n\tBranches and bushes tore at me as I crashed through them, nearly as blind as my opponent in the darkness. I paused a moment, shining my flashlight behind me. The creature didn't appear to be following, and I breathed a sigh of relief. My relief was short-lived, however, as I heard the reverberating hoofbeats of its horse again, getting louder and louder. Again, the image of the Nazgûl passed through my mind. I ran faster.\n\tI broke out of the woods, stumbled onto the road, and was nearly blinded by bright lights as the sound of screeching tires filled my ears. I raised my hands reflexively as a car skidded to a halt a few feet in front of me. It was a silver Jaguar XKE—one of my favorite cars, coincidentally—and it had spun ninety degrees so that its sleek, torpedo-shaped body was now perpendicular to the road, its driver side facing me. There sat a woman with short, black hair that was mostly covered by a gold shawl. Her heart-shaped face had high, aristocratic cheekbones, and her big, dark eyes gazed at me more in puzzlement than in fear or anger. \"Going to a costume party, are we?\" she asked, in an upper-class English accent. Then she tilted her head curiously. \"I say, are you all right?\"\n\tI was trembling, plus I was breathing hard, my eyes were wide with fear, and I was bleeding from the wound in my arm. I was clearly not all right, and she could see that. \"Get in,\" she said.\n\tI looked back behind me. There was no sign of the rider. I nodded to her and went around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and got in. She turned the car back to its proper heading, and we peeled off down the road.\n\tAs we sped through the night together, I took a moment to examine my savior. She was a rather petite woman, probably around thirty or thirty-five. Her body was shrouded in a brown frock coat, her legs bare. On her feet were a pair of open-toed black leather pumps that I'm sure were very expensive. Her fingernails and lipstick were the color of blood. She glanced over at me as I sat there on the passenger seat of her car in my Nightmunk costume. \"Shall I take you to a hospital?\" she asked.\n\tI looked at my wound. The rider's sword had made a cut about six inches long on my right forearm. Thanks to my costume's reinforced Kevlar fabric, it wasn't deep, but it was still bleeding quite a bit. \"That's all right,\" I said. \"I can handle it.\" I took a device from my belt and sprayed the wound with a combination of antiseptic, anesthetic, and coagulant. I noticed I was still trembling. The blood-curdling fear I'd felt in the presence of the rider was fading slowly.\n\t\"That's a nasty gash,\" she commented. \"How did you get it?\"\n\t\"I was attacked by wild dogs,\" I replied.\n\t\"Oh yes, I'd heard a local girl had been killed by wild dogs, poor thing. Lucky that's all you got away with. You might want to get a rabies shot, though.\" She smiled, and somehow I knew she didn't buy the dog story any more than I did.\n\tI nodded. \"Thank you, Miss . . .\"\n\t\"Lady Patricia Whyte,\" she said. \"And you are?\"\n\t\"Alvin,\" I replied.\n\tShe grinned. \"Really? How very droll!\"\n\t\"It's the name I was given.\" By now the fear had evaporated completely. My heartbeat and breathing had returned to normal. \"I can't help noticing you don't seem very surprised by my appearance, Lady Patricia.\"\n\t\"Oh, you're one of those—what are they called—manimals. I've read about them. Created on some island by a mad scientist named Dr. Moreau, aren't they? Right out of H. G. Wells!\" She laughed. \"I must say, I never expected to find one of you in Ireland.\"\n\tI shrugged. \"I like to travel.\"\n\t\"And do you often go about wearing a costume in the middle of the night?\"\n\t\"All the time. Do you often drive about on lonely country roads in the middle of the night?\"\n\tShe smiled. \"All the time. I find it relaxes me.\"\n\t\"Well, thank you for the save. I appreciate it.\"\n\t\"You're quite welcome.\" She looked at me. \"Would you like to come back to my place? Church House is only a few miles from here. I'm afraid it's in a bit of a shambles, as I've been away for a few years. Like you, I like to travel. But I have some very old brandy there I'd be happy to share with you.\"\n\tI looked into her eyes and saw something hard and predatory there, something I didn't like. I felt like a mouse being sized up by a cat. Of course, it was possible she was just in the habit of picking up strange men and taking them home with her, but I still felt uneasy about her invitation. \"That's very generous of you,\" I said, \"but it's been a rather harrowing night and I think I'd prefer to just turn in. Could you drop me in the village?\"\n\tIf she was disappointed, she didn't show it. \"Certainly,\" she said. \n\tWe drove for a time in silence. \"How long are you staying in Ireland, Alvin?\" she asked at last.\n\t\"I haven't decided yet,\" I replied.\n\t\"You must come and see me at Church House before you go. Hopefully, I'll have the old place spruced up by then. I'll save you a brandy, and perhaps we can play a few games of Snakes and Ladders.\"\n\tI smiled at her. \"I prefer games of skill rather than chance.\"\n\tShe smiled back. \"Well, I'll see if I can't come up with a game that pits your skill against mine.\"\n\tI nodded. \"I look forward to it.\"\n\tWe pulled up in the village square, and I got out of the car.\n\t\"Ta ta, Alvin!\" she said, waving merrily. \"Pleasure to meet you!\"\n\t\"Good evening, Lady Patricia,\" I replied.\n\tShe gunned the engine and sped off into the night. I walked across the street and into the pub, a place called The Clever Worm. All conversation stopped when I entered the pub, but I'm used to that. I walked over to the bar and climbed up on a stool. \"Whiskey, please. Neat,\" I said to the bartender. He recovered himself and went to get my drink as I took out my cell phone and called Sean.\n\t\"How's it goin'?\" he asked.\n\t\"It's been interesting,\" I said. \"How's Katie?\"\n\t\"She's all right now.\"\n\t\"In that case, could you come pick me up? I'm at The Clever Worm.\"\n\t\"What? How'd ye get there?\"\n\t\"I bummed a ride with Lady Patricia Whyte. Do you know her?\"\n\t\"I've heard of her. She owns Church House. Never met her, though. I understand she's been away for some years.\"\n\t\"Well, she's back. Come get me, please.\"\n\tMy whiskey had arrived, and I bolted it down. Good stuff. I looked around the pub as the drink warmed my stomach. Things were starting to return to normal, though there were still a few furtive looks in my direction. At one table, a trio of locals weren't bothering to be subtle, staring at me openly as they drank. I ordered a Guiness from the bartender. It was as dark as black coffee, with a head the color of cocoa that you could float a quarter on. I sipped it, savoring the smooth, bitter taste, and waited for Sean.\n\tHe arrived about fifteen minutes later. Katie was with him. I hopped down off my stool, and we went over to a booth and sat down.\n\t\"Yuir hurt!\" said Katie, noticing the wound on my arm.\n\tI nodded. \"I was attacked.\"\n\t\"By who?\" asked Sean.\n\t\"Would you believe a knight on horseback?\"\n\tKatie gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. I looked at her. \"Does that mean something to you?\" I asked.\n\t\"Was he missin' his eyes?\" she asked.\n\tI nodded.\n\tShe swallowed, and her blue eyes were wide in her pale face. \"Th' Eastern Knights!\"\n\t\"Th' what, now?\" asked Sean.\n\tShe turned to him. \"It's a local legend. Th' story goes a group o' Knights Templar once lived in a priory near here.\"\n\t\"I've heard of the Knights Templar,\" I said. \"They figure in a number of goofy conspiracy theories dreamed up by people who like that sort of thing. Their order was disbanded by the Pope, wasn't it?\"\n\tSean nodded. \"In 1312, on charges o' witchcraft an' heresy. All the Templars in France were burned at the stake.\"\n\t\"Aye,\" said Katie, \"but some escaped an' came here. They used occult knowledge they'd learned in Egypt durin' th' Crusades to make themselves immortal!\"\n\t\"That explains why the one I saw had an ankh on his tabard,\" I said. \"It's the Egyptian symbol of eternal life.\"\n\t\"Aye,\" said Sean. \"No Christian knight in the Middle Ages would wear a pagan holy symbol on his chest. Th' church frowned on that sort o' thing.\"\n\t\"But why did you think he'd be missing his eyes?\" I asked Katie.\n\tKatie took a deep breath. \"Accordin' to th' legend, th' Eastern Knights prolonged their lives with Satanic rituals, kidnappin' local girls for human sacrifice an' drinkin' their blood.\"\n\t\"Local girls like Mary,\" I said.\n\tShe nodded. \"Eventually, th' people rose up an' killed th' lot o' them. But first, they burned out their eyes, so they could never find their way back from Hell.\"\n\t\"A grisly little piece of medieval folklore,\" I commented. \"But why are they suddenly riding around the countryside murdering people again after being dead for seven hundred years?\"\n\tKatie shrugged. \"I dunno. I was na even sure th' story was true, until now.\"\n\t\"This priory the knights lived in. Does it still exist?\"\n\tShe nodded. \"What's left of it. Th' ruins aren't far from where Mary's body was found.\"\n\t\"I should check them out, then. Preferably during daylight.\"\n\t\"What do ye think is goin' on, Alvin?\" Sean asked.\n\tI shrugged. \"I don't know. I haven't had many dealings with the supernatural. I prefer to leave that sort of thing to people who specialize in that field. But those are in fairly short supply, so I guess I'll just have to improvise and hope for the best.\"\n\t\"Head's up,\" said Sean, looking across the bar. I followed his gaze. The three locals who'd been staring at me earlier were coming toward us.\n\tI sighed. \"Great. I take it the people here don't care for manimals.\"\n\t\"Alvin,\" said Sean, \"yuir in a country where in some places it's still frowned upon for Catholics to associate with Protestants.\"\n\tI slipped out of the booth and stood looking up at them as they closed in around me. \"Anything I can do for you gentlemen?\" I asked.\n\tOne of them nodded. \"Ye can sing 'Danny Boy' for me.\"\n\tI blinked. \"What?\"\n\tHe grinned a gap-toothed grin. \"I used ta listen to those records when I was a wee lad, but they were all American songs. I've always wanted ta hear 'Danny Boy' sung in one o' those cute, squeaky chipmunk voices.\"\n\tI didn't know whether to be insulted or flattered. \"You know that wasn't me, right?\" I asked him. \"I wasn't alive when those records were made. Those were sped-up human voices.\"\n\t\"Are ye sayin' ye can't sing?\" the man asked, looking a bit disappointed.\n\t\"No, I can sing. It's what I was made for.\"\n\tHe shrugged. \"Then what difference does it make?\"\n\tI couldn't argue with that, so I launched into a rendition of \"Danny Boy.\" After a moment, the man who'd asked for it joined in. His voice wasn't half bad, and soon I found myself starting to tear up, partly because it's a sad song, but mostly because it brought back memories of singing with my brothers. Of course, the men around me didn't know that. They just thought I was moved by the lyrics, and that clearly meant something to them. When it was done, they all shook my hand, thanked me, and asked me if I'd like to play a game of darts with them, which I did.\n\tI was nice. I let them win.\n\n\tI had a hell of time getting to sleep that night. I don't know if it was due to some residual horror from my encounter with the Templar, or because the lyrics of \"Danny Boy\" had struck too close to home, or because I'd gotten used to sleeping with Julie next to me. Or maybe it was just the five-hour time difference between Ireland and Millennium City. Whatever the reason, I awoke the next morning in the guest bedroom of Katie's house feeling tired and lousy. I sat up in bed, rubbing my face in the darkened room. It seemed as if every shadow held some terrible secret I didn't want to know. I climbed down from the bed, went to the window, and pulled open the curtains, flooding the room with light. The fields around the house were shrouded with a gray veil of early morning mist, above which trees, bushes, and fence posts floated serenely. The whole landscape had an ethereal, otherworldly quality, and it was easy to imagine faeries frolicking in it. Who knows? Maybe they were. After what I'd seen last night, I was prepared to believe anything.\n\tI changed the dressing on my arm wound, pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants, and went down the creaking stairway to the kitchen. The smell of sausage, eggs, and coffee filled my nostrils and made my mouth water. I entered the kitchen to find Sean having breakfast at that huge wooden table while Katie stood at the stove, cooking. They both glanced over at me as I came in.\n\t\"Top o' the mornin' to ye!\" I said, with a wave.\n\tSean smirked. \"Not everyone in Ireland says that, Alvin.\"\n\tI shrugged. \"Sorry, I couldn't resist.\"\n\t\"He'll be sayin' 'Sure an' beggorah' next,\" said Katie, turning the sausages with a fork. \"All you Yanks know about Ireland are th' cliches ye've seen on movies an' th' telly.\"\n\t\"Technically, I'm not a Yank,\" I said as I climbed up onto a chair at the table. \"I was born on Monster Island. I just live in America. But I do think I know a little more about your country than the average Yank does.\"\n\tKatie gave me a look. \"Really? Tell me who Michael Collins was, then.\"\n\t\"He was an Irish revolutionary who fought in the Easter Rebellion of 1916,\" I replied promptly. \"In Ireland, he's revered as a hero. In England, he's considered a terrorist.\"\n\tKatie frowned and turned back to the sausages.\n\tSean chuckled. \"She probably thought ye were goin' ta say he was an American astronaut.\"\n\t\"Well, that would be true, too, but I had a strong suspicion I knew which Michael Collins she meant.\" \n\tKatie came over with a plate of scrambled eggs and sausage and set it down in front of me. \"Thank you,\" I said. \"Could I trouble you for some of that coffee? Black, no sugar.\" She went back to the stove, and I started shoveling the eggs into my mouth.\n\t\"Ye look like hell, Alvin,\" Sean commented.\n\t\"Thanks,\" I said. \"I didn't sleep well.\"\n\t\"Was th' bed not comfortable enough?\" asked Katie, coming back with my coffee.\n\t\"The bed was fine. I guess I'm still a little shaken up after what happened last night.\"\n\t\"I'm not surprised,\" said Sean. \"It's not every day one encounters one of th' undead.\"\n\t\"Actually, that happens a lot more often than you might think to people in my line of work.\" I turned to Katie. \"Would you feel up to taking me to the ruins of the Templars' priory?\"\n\t\"If ye like,\" she said, indifferently. \"I dunno what ye expect ta find, though. There's nothin' there. Jus' some crumblin' old walls.\"\n\t\"That maybe so,\" I said, \"but it's the only lead we have.\"\n\t\"What if there's more like the one that attacked ye last night?\" Sean asked.\n\t\"Undead tend not to do very well in daylight,\" I said.\n\t\"Yuir sure about that, are ye?\"\n\tI scowled at him. \"Of course I'm not sure! I have no idea what we're dealing with!\" Then I sighed. My lack of sleep was making me irritable. \"With science, there are rules. Certain things are possible, and certain things aren't possible. But when magic is involved, all bets are off. Literally anything can happen. Beloved children's cartoon character comes to life and flies around Millennium City fighting crime? Sure, why not?\"\n\tSean grinned. \"Yuir based on a cartoon character, an' ye were brought ta life by science.\"\n\t\"You know what I mean. Magic is a rationalist's nightmare. There's no way to predict what follows from what, and the rules change depending on the time and place. It's a snake pit of illogic and conflicting facts.\" I shook my head. \"I should probably call Nighthawk and let him know what I've discovered so far. That way, if anything happens to me, he and Lady Nighthawk will be able to pick up where I left off.\"\n\t\"That's a cheery thought,\" said Sean, glumly.\n\t\"That's the job,\" I said.\n\tI took out my cell phone and made the call in the living room while Sean and Katie cleaned up in the kitchen. Then I called Julie. It was the middle of the night in Millennium City, but she picked up immediately. I told her I was fine and the investigation was proceeding uneventfully. No, I didn't know yet when I'd be coming home. Yes, Ireland was very pretty. I love you too. Goodbye.\n\tI sighed as I walked back to the kitchen. I hated having to lie to Julie about what was going on, but there was no point in giving her anything to worry about. Either I'd be okay or I wouldn't. I looked up at Sean and Katie.\n\t\"Okay,\" I said. \"Let's go.\"\n\n\tKatie drove Sean and me out on the road that went nearest the ruins of the Templars' priory. We parked the car by the side of the road and went the rest of the way on foot, which took a good hour. I was in costume again, because I'd be damned if I was going to face another one of those things at less than my full strength.\n\t\"So, ye all dress like that, do ye?\" Katie asked me as we walked through the dense woods. \"You, Nighthawk, an' Lady Nighthawk?\"\n\tI nodded. \"This is the uniform of Team Nighthawk, and I'm part of the team.\"\n\t\"An' ye don't think it looks a bit, ye know, silly?\"\n\tI shrugged. \"It's a little theatrical, but it serves its purpose.\"\n\t\"What purpose would that be?\"\n\t\"Just like the uniform of a police officer. It creates an image that people can identify and trust, and that bad guys respect and fear.\"\n\tShe put her hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle.\n\t\"Did I say something funny?\" I asked.\n\t\"Not ta be mean, Alvin, but it's hard ta imagine anyone fearin' you.\"\n\tI looked up at her and smiled. \"I use that to my advantage. People tend to underestimate me because of my size and appearance. They don't usually make that mistake twice.\"\n\t\"What made ye decide ta get inta th' hero business?\" she asked.\n\t\"On Monster Island, the strong brutalize the weak. I don't agree with that philosophy.\"\n\t\"So ye take the law inta yuir own hands?\"\n\t\"I work with the law whenever I can,\" I said. \"Police Chief Surhoff is a friend of mine. But I can do things the law can't.\"\n\t\"Like breakin' inta places an' searchin' 'em without a warrant?\"\n\tI nodded.\n\t\"Doesn't that make ye a vigilante?\"\n\t\"I'm not judge, jury, and executioner, Katie. Once the bad guys are caught, I turn them over to the authorities to deal with as they see fit. At that point it's out of my hands. Administering justice isn't my department.\"\n\t\"Have ye ever killed anyone?\"\n\tSean shot her a look. \"Katie! What a thing ta ask!\"\n\t\"It's okay, Sean,\" I said. I looked up at her. \"Yes, I have. On Monster Island, I killed a lot of people, because that's how you stayed alive there. But I haven't killed anyone since I started wearing this costume, and I hope never to do so again. Nighthawk believes that all life is precious, and I honor that belief.\"\n\tWe walked the rest of the way in silence.\n\tAfter a time, we broke out of the forest and into a more open area. There before us stood what was left of the Templars' priory. Only one wall was still intact, a great pointed structure with three narrow Gothic windows near the top, the glass in them long gone, gazing down at the ruins like watchful eyes. They reminded me of the empty eye sockets of the Templar I'd seen. The other three walls were in various stages of collapse, the mossy ground of the interior littered with fallen bricks. There were also the remains of some low side buildings. They were mostly little more than foundations, but one seemed to have weathered the centuries surprisingly well, with a row of empty windows looking out over the weedy courtyard of the priory, though the roof had long ago rotted away to nothing. There was no sound save for the wind whistling through the empty windows, and over the whole scene hung an aura of inutterable sorrow and loneliness, as if the place were penitently praying for forgiveness for the terrible things that had been done here, things that had caused it to become abandoned and shunned so very long ago.\n\t\"Wow,\" said Sean, breaking the spell.\n\t\"Yeah,\" I said. I started walking toward the ruined priory, my cape whipping about in the wind, Sean and Katie following along behind me.\n\t\"The grass has been trampled,\" I said. \"Someone's been here, recently. Probably a lot of someones.\"\n\t\"The knights, ye think?\" asked Sean.\n\tI knelt and inspected a footprint in a patch of mud. \"Not unless they've taken to wearing modern hiking boots.\"\n\t\"Looks like there was a fire,\" said Katie, pointing at a blackened area ahead of us in the center of the courtyard. We walked toward it. It was roughly circular, about ten feet across, and strewn with ashes.\n\t\"Campers?\" Sean suggested.\n\t\"It's too big to have been a campfire,\" I said. \"Looks more like the remains of a bonfire.\" \n\t\"Why would anyone build a bonfire out here?\" Katie asked.\n\tSomething at the edge of the ashes caught my eye. I went over, picked it up, and examined it. \"I'm not sure why, but I think I know who.\"\n\tSean and Katie came over to me. In my fingers I was holding the stub of a black cigarette. There was some gold lettering along the side. I took out my magnifying glass and peered through it.\n\t\"It's Turkish,\" I said. \"A very expensive brand, if I'm not mistaken. And there's lipstick on it, a color I've seen before—on the lips of Lady Patricia Whyte.\"\n\t\"Patrica Whyte?\" asked Sean. \"How is she mixed up in this?\"\n\tThe answer to that would have to wait, because suddenly the air was pierced by a scream from Katie. Sean and I both whirled around to see what had provoked it. \n\tThere, about thirty feet away, stood the cause.\n\tIt was eight feet tall if it was an inch, with a massive chest, broad shoulders, and long arms that terminated in huge hands with three thick fingers. In basic form it was humanoid, but with digitigrade legs ending in ebony cloven hooves. It wore no clothing, but its entire body was covered in dark greenish fur, a thick mat of which hung down from its loins halfway to its knees. Its head was that of a giant deer, with an impressive rack of antlers. The creature gazed down at us, its yellow eyes glowing balefully.\n\tFor a long moment, the three of us just stood staring at the cervine apparition in dread anticipation. Then its eyes fixed on me, and it made a series of whistling trills that didn't sound like anything that should be coming from the mouth of a deer. It paused, continuing to gaze at me, as if it were waiting for something. I turned and looked at each of my human companions. \"Any idea what this thing is?\" I asked.\n\tSean shook his head. \"None. There's lots o' magical creatures that supposedly inhabit Ireland, but this does nae look like any I've ever heard of.\" Katie didn't reply, apparently too frightened to speak.\n\tThe deer-creature repeated the trilling sounds, and its eyes narrowed slightly. Then it turned its attention to Sean and spoke in a voice that was so low-pitched it was almost beneath the threshold of hearing. The language was foreign to me, consisting of soft, lilting syllables. \n\tKatie gasped. \"It's speakin' Gaelic!\"\n\t\"Do you understand it?\" I asked.\n\t\"No, but I recognize it. If my grandma was here, she could understand.\"\n\tThe creature made a low growl and spoke again in another language, one that we all recognized immediately.\n\t\"That's Latin!\" exclaimed Sean.\n\t\"Can you tell what it's saying?\" I asked.\n\tSean nodded. \"It wants to know why ye aren't answering its greeting.\"\n\t\"Me? Why should I know what it's saying?\"\n\tSean addressed the creature in Latin. Amazingly, its reply made the young archaeologist giggle. I looked up at him in puzzlement. \"What did it say?\" I asked.\n\t\"It thinks you're a pooka!\" This made Katie laugh as well.\n\t\"A pooka?\" I asked, baffled.\n\t\"It's a kind o' faerie,\" said Katie. \"They usually take th' form o' small animals.\"\n\tI probably would have found that funnier if I'd had any idea how the creature would react to finding out I wasn't a pooka. As it was, we were still completely in the dark regarding its intentions. \n\t\"If it thinks I'm a faerie,\" I said, \"then it follows that it's probably one too. And I know enough about faeries to know they're not always benevolent.\"\n\t\"Aye,\" said Sean, looking at the creature nervously. \"Some are downright deadly.\"\n\t\"How does one defend oneself against a faerie?\"\n\t\"Traditionally, wi' iron,\" said Sean.\n\tKatie nodded. \"They can't stand th' touch o' it.\"\n\t\"Does steel count?\" I asked.\n\tSean shrugged. \"I dinna know.\"\n\tI tried to think if I had anything iron on me. Nothing immediately sprang to mind. \"Anything else?\"\n\t\"Dependin' on th' legend, bells, Christian holy symbols, clothes turned inside out . . .\"\n\tI looked up at Katie. \"You wear a crucifix, don't you?\"\n\tShe nodded. \"It's hangin' aroun' me neck.\"\n\t\"You might want to keep it ready.\"\n\tThe deer creature apparently decided it had had enough of being left out of the conversation. It raised one thick-fingered hand and traced a series of glowing symbols in the air before it. The symbols faded quickly. Then it spoke again in that inhumanly deep voice. \"Bres can understand you now.\"\n\t\"Bres?\" I said. \"Is that your name?\"\n\tHe nodded. \"Why did you not reply when I addressed you, pooka?\"\n\tI shrugged. \"I didn't feel like it.\"\n\tBres growled again and asked, \"And since when does a pooka fail to show respect to one of the Tuatha de Danann?\" \n\tI heard an intake of breath from Sean. Apparently, that meant something to him, but to ask now that Bres could understand us would have given the game away.\n\t\"I beg your pardon, great Bres,\" I said, bowing to him. \"I was merely jesting with you.\"\n\tBres did not appear amused. He folded his arms imperiously across his green-furred chest. \"Your jest was in poor taste, pooka. In the future, you will spare Bres your feeble attempts at humor.\"\n\t\"As you wish, my lord,\" I replied. I turned to my companions. \"These are my friends, Sean and Katie.\"\n\t\"How do ye do, sir?\" asked Sean, bowing to Bres. Katie performed something approaching a curtsey.\n\tBres's cervine face actually managed to smirk. \"Pookas. Always dallying with mortals.\" He regarded Sean and Katie for a moment. \"Their garb is strange.\" Then he gestured at Sean. \"That one speaks the tongue of Rome. Are they Romans?\"\n\tI glanced up at Sean, who nodded. \"Yes, they are,\" I replied.\n\tBres sighed. \"Bres knew this would happen, ever since the one god came to drive out the many. This land is no longer ours. As we once took it from the Fir Bolg, so Rome has taken it from us. It is the way of things, Bres supposes.\" He looked at me. \"Were you also awakened by the magics being worked here, pooka?\"\n\tI nodded. \"And not only us. Dead things walk the land.\"\n\tBres furrowed his brow. \"Someone has been practicing the ancient rites.\" He looked around at the ruins. \"There should be a temple here, to Glycon, the Roman snake god.\"\n\t\"You have slept long, great Bres,\" I said. \"That temple is no more. These are the ruins of a house of the one god.\"\n\tBres sniffed the air. \"Bres does not sense his power here.\"\n\t\"Perhaps because it has been defiled by blasphemers.\"\n\tBres nodded and began walking around the remains of the bonfire, his hooves flattening the grass beneath them. \"It is still here,\" he said at last.\n\t\"What is?\" I asked.\n\t\"Glycon's temple. Buried beneath the ground.\"\n\t\"They must've built th' priory on th' same site,\" said Sean. \"It wasn't uncommon for th' early Christians ta build shrines on pagan holy sites, as a way o' displacin' th' old faith wi' th' new.\"\n\t\"Let the temple stand revealed!\" bellowed Bres, and raised his arms. At once, the earth around us trembled, and moments later a geyser of dirt exploded upward. Katie, Sean, and I covered our heads as clods of earth rained down around us. In a matter of seconds, Bres had excavated a hole in the ground about six feet deep and twice that across, completely obliterating the remains of the bonfire. There at the bottom lay a mosaic picturing a gigantic white snake wrapped around a tree. Around the base of the tree danced naked human figures.\n\t\"Good lord!\" said Sean, gazing down at the mosaic, his archaeologist's passion aroused. \"Nobody knew th' cult o' Glycon made it all th' way ta Ireland! What a discovery!\" He looked at Bres, who stood perched at the edge of the pit with his hands on his hips, surveying his work and looking every bit like a pagan demigod, which I suppose he was. \"Th' things ye could tell us!\"\n\t\"Bres!\" came a high, screechy voice from the edge of the ruins, and we all whirled to look at the source. The speaker was a creature as tall as Bres but impossibly, ridiculously thin. Its body seemed to be composed entirely of intertwining vines. Its head was that of a pumpkin, with a long, thin, narrow jaw that hung downward, bearing many small, needle-like teeth, and two wide, horizontal slits for eyes, whose pupils glowed malevolently.\n\t\"Streng!\" said Bres, snarling and flexing his fingers. \"So you have awakened, too!\"\n\t\"Yes, Tuatha,\" said Streng, striding toward us swiftly on his long, spindly legs. \"I was roused from my sleep by the magic emanating from this place, just as you no doubt were. The power here grows with each sacrifice as Beltane approaches. But you shall not see its fruition!\" Streng raised a stick-figure arm, and in his spidery hand formed a ball of flame, which he proceeded to hurl at Bres. \n\tInstantly, a wall of earth shot up before the deer man, and the fireball splattered harmlessly against it. \"You Fir Bolg never learn,\" Bres admonished him. \"Neither of us can kill the other. Our battle is eternal.\"\n\t\"Then so shall be your pain!\" screeched Streng, and thrust both his arms forward, a torrent of flame gushing from them to envelop Bres. The flames came close enough to Sean, Katie, and myself to warm our faces and make us draw back, but they washed over Bres, who howled and held out his hands before him. A small stone appeared between them, quickly growing into a massive boulder, which then shot forward, striking Streng squarely in the chest and knocking him onto his back. The pumpkin man jumped to his feet, seemingly unharmed, and held his hands above his head, summoning another fireball.\n\t\"Wait!\" I said, holding up a hand. \"Is there any chance you two could put your battle on hold long enough to find out who it was who woke you up?\"\n\tBres and Streng both paused and looked at me, and for a terrifying moment I thought I had just become the target of both their angers.\n\t\"You know this, pooka?\" Bres asked.\n\t\"I think I have a pretty good idea,\" I said.\n\t\"Then take me to this person,\" said Streng, \"and I shall destroy them!\"\n\t\"That may not be as a easy as you think,\" I said. \"There is powerful magic at work here.\"\n\tStreng folded his arms. \"I am Fir Bolg! I fear nothing!\"\n\t\"Just give me some time to gather information,\" I said. \"One day, that's all I ask.\"\n\tBres and Streng gave each other a look of mutual loathing, then turned back to me. \"Very well, pooka,\" said Bres. \"You have your day.\"\n\tI breathed a sigh of relief. \"It's good that you can both listen to reason. Come with us.\" I turned and started walking toward the woods, and Sean and Katie followed me.\n\t\"Alvin,\" said Sean, \"where are we takin' them?\"\n\t\"I need someone to keep an eye on them while I check out Church House,\" I said.\n\t\"Ye want me ta let these things inta my home?\" asked Katie, aghast.\n\tI glanced back at Bres and Streng. \"Why not? They seem friendly enough.\"\n\t\"Friendly? They're monsters!\"\n\t\"Right now, they're muscle, and we're going to need all of that we can get.\"\n\t\"Suppose they start fightin' again?\" Sean demanded. \"They could demolish her house! Not ta mention kill us both!\"\n\t\"Streng mentioned that there had been sacrifices,\" I said. \"I'm betting he meant of the human variety. If that's true, then there's more than just our lives at stake here. He also mentioned Beltane, a Celtic holy day. That's May 1st, which is tomorrow. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen then. The only way we're going to learn what it is is for me to get inside Church House and find out what Lady Patricia is up to.\"\n\t\"While we babysit a pair o' homicidal faeries?\"\n\t\"Exactly.\"\n\tHe shook his head. \"Yuir askin' an awful lot, Alvin.\"\n\tI looked up at him. \"You brought me into this, Sean. If you want to see Mary's killer brought to justice, let me see it through to the end.\"\n\t\"I'm nae afraid, Sean,\" said Katie. \"I'll do whatever it takes ta avenge my sister.\"\n\tSean sighed. \"Okay, then.\"\n\tWe walked through the woods, followed by two faeries.\n\tWhen we arrived back at Katie's car—which Bres and Streng regarded with puzzlement and suspicion—we were faced with the problem of how to transport two humans, a chipmunk manimal, and two rather large faeries in it. It turned out not to be as difficult as it seemed. Streng was able to fold up his boneless body, so he could fit in the back seat quite easily. On the other hand, Bres's massive frame and antlered head couldn't possibly fit inside, so we opened the trunk and had him sit in it with his hoofed feet hanging out, which would give anyone we passed on the way quite a memorable sight. Hopefully, they'd attribute it to whiskey or something. Sean and Katie took the front seats while I sat in the back beside Streng, and off we went. The pumpkin man kept looking down at me as we drove, but his orange face was completely unreadable.\n\tWe reached Katie's house without incident, and once again the two Iron Age faeries were completely baffled by their modern surroundings. Katie politely asked them if they'd like anything to eat or drink, but they both replied in the negative. I noticed that they kept glaring at each other, their mutual hatred apparently just barely being held in check, and I whispered to Sean and Katie that it might be a good idea to keep the pair separated. They agreed, and Sean got Bres to follow him into the kitchen, where he started barraging the Tuatha with questions about ancient Ireland, while Katie kept Streng occupied in the living room by asking the Fir Bolg to talk about himself and his people.\n\tWith the faerie situation seeming stablized for the moment, I bid them all goodbye, went back out to the car, got in, and headed off to Church House, whose directions I'd gotten from Katie. I know what you're thinking. How did my feet reach the pedals? Well, I'd actually planned for the eventuality that I might have to drive myself at some point. I'd brought two extensions that I could strap on my feet, enabling them to reach the pedals. I could still just barely see over the dash, and to a casual observer it might look as if there was nobody driving, but I could manage all right.\n\tEven though I had a standing invitation from Lady Patricia to visit Church House whenever I wanted, I didn't think I'd learn much by confronting her directly, since I still didn't know what was going on and I had no real evidence of any wrongdoing on her part. Therefore, I parked the car about a quarter mile from Church House and approached the place through the woods, intending to break in.\n\tChurch House turned out to be a huge, brooding Gothic mansion that looked like everyone's idea of a haunted house. All the windows were shuttered, and it appeared quite neglected. The grounds hadn't been tended to in some time either and were overgrown with weeds and shrubs. That made it easy for me to approach unseen. There was a garage, separate from the house, apparently converted from what had once been a carriage house. The front was open, and Lady Patricia's silver Jaguar sat inside. I circled around to the back of the house. I knew that old houses like this usually had a back door leading into the kitchen, to make it easier to bring in food and dispose of waste. I found it, picked the lock, and let myself in.\n\tIt was dark inside, as one might expect in a house where all the windows were shuttered. I took out my flashlight and played the beam around. Just a kitchen. Rather large, but nothing unusual in evidence. I went to the refrigerator and opened it. Meat, meat, and more meat. Lady Patricia didn't eat her veggies, it seemed. I closed it and went to the pantry. It was empty. I wondered if she might be keeping a pet tiger somewhere.\n\tFrom the kitchen, a passage led into the dining room. There was a long table surrounded by twelve chairs. The table and chairs were all draped with sheets, making it look as though someone was holding a banquet for ghosts. Above the table hung an enormous crystal chandelier. On the opposite wall was a fireplace, cold and empty. I played my beam across the hardwood floor. It was covered with a fine layer of dust. Nobody had been in this room for years.\n\tI left the dining room and went out into the main hall. I expected it to be lined with suits of armor, or portraits with staring eyes, or other haunted house tropes, but it was virtually barren, the only decoration being a long Persian carpet that ran its entire length and a side table holding an unlit candelabra. I walked silently down the hall and came to an opening that led into what was evidently a parlor. \n\tHere, too, the furniture was all covered with sheets. There was a Persian carpet covering most of the floor, a fireplace that connected to the one in the dining room, and a pair of scarlet silk curtains hanging on one wall with golden drawstrings hanging down beside them. They looked too high to be covering a window. I went over to the drawstrings and pulled one, and the curtains parted to reveal a painting of a white snake wrapped around a tree with naked human figures dancing around it—an exact duplicate of the mosaic Bres had uncovered back at the ruins of the priory.\n\tI stared at the painting for a moment, trying to assess what this meant. How could Lady Patricia have a painting with the same image displayed on a mosaic that had been buried for centuries? I supposed it was possible that the image existed elsewhere. Bres had said Glycon was a Roman god. Presumably, there had been other temples to him scattered across the Roman Empire, which meant it might be possible to find this image anywhere in Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East. Hell, she could have seen it in a book or on the Internet. In any case, this was the first clear evidence linking Lady Patricia to the cult of Glycon. I took out my cell phone, snapped a picture of it, and uploaded the image to my account, along with a mention of where it had been taken, so the rest of Team Nighthawk would have access to it in case anything happened to me. Then I drew the curtains over it and went back out into the hall.\n\tAfter a little hunting, I found a door that led down a flight of stairs to the basement. I descended the stone steps, shining my flashlight ahead of me. It was pitch dark down here, and there didn't appear to be anything in the basement but piles of old junk. There was a heavy wooden door in one wall, however, and from behind it came the rank smell of human waste. I went over and tried to open it. It was locked. I picked the lock quickly and opened the door.\n\tBeyond was a small room containing seven people, all shackled at the wrists and chained to the walls. They didn't look to be in especially good shape. Three were female, the other four male, and one of the men was Asian. There was a bucket beside each one for their sanitary needs, but other than that the room was bare. They all stared at me, blinking as I shined my light on them.\n\t\"Who's there?\" one of the men asked, sounding terrified.\n\tI shined my light on myself. \"I'm Nightmunk. I'm here to rescue you.\"\n\t\"Gott in himmel, vas ist das?\" another of the men asked. Apparently, he was German.\n\t\"He's one of those manimals,\" said one of the women. She sounded like an American.\n\t\"I don' care what he is,\" said one of the men, with an Irish accent, \"as long as he gets us out o' here! There's a light switch on th' wall next to ye.\"\n\t\"Thank you,\" I said. I flipped it, and the room was illuminated by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I went over to the Irishman and examined his shackles. \"How long have you been down here?\"\n\t\"Days!\" he said. \"She picked me up in a pub in Dublin. Then she bit me an' brought me here! I could nae move a muscle!\"\n\t\"Lady Patricia bit you?\" I asked, glancing up at him.\n\tHe nodded. \"She has fangs! She's nae human!\"\n\t\"Neither am I,\" I reminded him, as I worked on the lock on his shackles. \"Don't worry. I'm getting you all out of here.\"\n\t\"I'm afraid I can't have that, Alvin,\" came a familiar silky voice from behind me. \"I have need of these people.\"\n\tThe American girl gasped. \"She's here!\"\n\tI turned around. There in the doorway stood Lady Patricia, wearing a remarkably slinky outfit consisting of only a black bra and panties, shiny black leather thigh-high boots, and a long, sheer black cape. Her short, dark hair was sculpted with styling mousse, with a little curl in the center of her forehead. She was leaning against the doorframe in a seductive manner, one leg bent, gazing at me with a predatory grin.\n\t\"Hello, Lady Patricia,\" I said, surreptitiously palming something from my belt as I spoke. \"Come to offer me that brandy?\"\n\tShe laughed. \"I'm afraid that offer has expired, Alvin.\"\n\t\"Look,\" I said, \"let's cut to the chase. You know I can't let you kill these people. Furthermore, I've informed Team Nighthawk of all my findings. If I disappear or turn up dead, they'll come after you. And Nighthawk was a member of the Champions, so if anything happens to him, you'll be bringing all of [i]them[/i] down on your head. Any way you look at this, you lose. So why don't you just slither away while I'm freeing your captives? That way, you'll at least have a head start.\"\n\tShe raised an eyebrow. \"My, we do have a high opinion of ourselves, don't we?\" She idly ran a finger up and down the doorframe. \"And how do you think the Champions would fare against the power of a god?\"\n\t\"I'm pretty sure they've fought gods before,\" I said. \"Is that what you're trying to do? Summon some moldy old Roman snake god?\"\n\tHer grin disappeared and her eyes widened. \"How dare you? The cult of Glycon once ruled the Mediterranean! Governors and generals were among his followers!\"\n\tNow it was my turn to grin. \"Too bad nobody's heard of him today. Just another forgotten god, abandoned and powerless.\"\n\tHer face darkened as her anger swelled. \"You blasphemous . . . little . . . freak!\" She lunged, and as she did so, her eyes turned yellow, with vertical slits for pupils, and her mouth sprouted a pair of long, serpentine fangs. Fortunately, I had fangs of my own. I held up my gauntlets, blocking her attack, and popped my steel claws. She recoiled and stood crouching before me, arms spread, hissing and flicking a forked black tongue.\n\tWe circled each other for a moment while the captives looked on in fear, knowing their fates depended on the outcome of this contest. She lunged at me again, and I blocked and riposted, but she nimbly evaded my claws. Damn, she was fast! Inhumanly so. But I was fast too. Plus my armor covered my entire body except my face, so there was nowhere she could sink her fangs into.\n\t\"You should have run when you had the chance, Lady Patricia,\" I told her. \"Now you're screwed.\"\n\tShe laughed, and her voice was deep and distorted, as if it had been run through a synthesizer. \"You don't know much about snakes, do you, little rodent? They're nature's great survivors, full of all kinds of tricks!\"\n\tWith that, she opened her mouth and sprayed venom right in my face.\n\tIt made my eyes burn like hell, and numbness spread swiftly through my body. Just moments later, I couldn't see and my arms and legs felt like lead. I tried to take a step and lost my balance, crumpling to the floor and lying there sprawled on my back, immobile and helpless. I heard moans of despair from the captives. Their hero had failed.\n\t\"Now,\" said Lady Patricia, her voice returning to normal, \"if you're all quite comfortable, I shall tell you why you mustn't be afraid to die. To die so that the god may live is a privilege. If you know anything about history, you know that human sacrifice is as old as Glycon himself. Glycon, whose every death leads to a greater rebirth, growing ever mightier, ever more glorious, ever—\"\n\t\"Please!\" the American girl cried. \"Just let us go!\"\n\tI heard Lady Patricia sigh. \"Shit,\" she said. \"You know, it's really very selfish of you, clinging to your insignificant lives when I'm offering you the chance to be part of something so much grander. Very selfish indeed.\" She sighed again. \"Oh, well.\"\n\tI heard each of the captives cry out in pain and then fall silent, but I was fairly sure she hadn't killed them yet. More likely she'd just bitten and paralyzed them for ease of transport to the ruins of the priory, where the actual sacrifices would take place. I didn't know much about magic, but I knew that these things usually have to be done in a very particular way. Then I heard her voice close to my ear and felt her breath on my face. \"And you, my furry little friend,\" she said. \"You shall have the honor of being the newly risen god's first meal. Just like nature intended.\" She flicked my nose playfully.\n\tI wasn't afraid, partly because I'd accepted the likelihood of an early death when I'd signed on for this and partly because I'd taken the precaution of injecting myself with antivenom from my belt before we'd fought. It was designed to counter a wide array of toxins found in nature, so the chances were good it would work against the paralytic Lady Patricia had hit me with. The question was, would it work quickly enough?\n\tLady Patricia exited the room and left me alone with her intended sacrifices. Their diverse nationalities suggested that they were probably mostly tourists. That made sense. Tourists wouldn't be missed as quickly as locals. The burning in my eyes gradually faded and my vision returned, but I still couldn't move. I started to wonder if the antivenom was effective against her poison at all. I still had no idea what she really was, so it was very much a gamble. I thought briefly about what people would say about me if I died tonight. Probably something like \"Stupid little manimal who thought he could be a hero.\" Then I pushed that thought aside. My reputation wasn't important—all that mattered was saving these people.\n\tA few minutes after she'd left, Lady Patricia returned, and her appearance had changed dramatically. She was now entirely nude save for a petite blue-green bikini bottom and a scaled skullcap that completely covered her short hair, and her skin had been painted the same blue-green color as the bikini. Together, the paint, the skullcap, and her eyes—once again snakelike—gave her the appearance of a humanoid serpent. She paused momentarily, standing over me and gazing down, smiling and flicking her tongue. Then she began picking up the sacrifices and taking them out of the room. She lifted and carried them effortlessly, though some were men considerably larger than herself. Finally, she came for me. She picked me up surprisingly gently, cradling me in her arms against her bare breasts as if I were a child.\n\t\"Do you believe in reincarnation, Alvin?\" she asked me as she carried me upstairs. \"I do. But then I am immortal, and I have seen the same souls inhabit different beings throughout history. I've seen you before, many centuries ago, in the time of my lover, the great emperor Carausius. Yes, I can see you now, on your knees in your armor, blindly worshipping your false god.\" She laughed derisively. \"Fancy praying to a god who was nailed to a wooden cross and who locked up his brides in a convent. Did they really enjoy themselves, hmm? Poor little virgins, masturbating in the dark and then indulging in flagellation in penance for their sins until their bodies wept tears of blood. Captive virgins in the hands of an impotent god.\" Another laugh.\n\tShe carried me out of the house to a van parked behind the garage and lay me down inside it alongside the other intended sacrifices. Then she slid the door shut, plunging us all into darkness. She climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine, and we began to move.\n\tI thought about what she'd told me as we bumped along. I had no idea whether to believe any of it. Had I been a Christian knight in another life? I didn't believe in reincarnation. The logistics of it simply didn't make any sense. Where did all the extra souls come from as the population grew? I'd also never been particularly religious. If there was a god, he had stood by and done nothing while my brothers were murdered, which didn't exactly endear him to me, and the standard justification that their deaths had been part of some divine plan sounded too much like a cop-out. More than likely, her words had been nothing but the insane ramblings of a madwoman. While Lady Patricia clearly wasn't human, that didn't prove she was immortal. And even if she was, there was no reason to believe she'd really seen me in the body of a knight centuries in the past, as interesting an idea as that was.\n\tI focused my attention on the task at hand. I tried moving my fingers and succeeded, at least a little bit. It seemed as if the antivenom was working after all, though it was sure taking its sweet time. I moved my arm, reached down to my belt, and fumbled with my cellphone. It was time to call in the cavalry. \n\tWith fingers that felt as if they were made of wood, I rang Sean's number. \"Alvin?\" he said. \"What's goin' on? Are ye all right?\"\n\t\"Sean,\" I whispered, \"get to the priory as fast as you can, and bring our two new friends. It's going down!\"\n\tI hung up and got to my feet, bracing myself against the inside of the van. There was a chance I could end this here and now, so I had to take it. Slowly, I moved up behind the driver's seat and popped my claws. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of stabbing a woman in the back, but she was a murderer, and there were innocent lives at stake. I drew back to strike.\n\tUnfortunately, the van picked the exact moment I struck to hit a bump in the road. The lurch threw off my aim as I thrust my steel claws through the back of the driver's seat, so while I still hit her, it wasn't a killing blow. She screamed, and the van swerved to one side, throwing me to the floor. She slammed on the brakes and twisted in her seat, yellow eyes glaring at me hatefully in the darkness, fangs bared and dripping. \"You little bastard!\" she hissed. \"Do you know how long it's been since anyone hurt me like that?\"\n\t\"If it's been more than five minutes, then it's been too long,\" I said, standing up. \n\tShe sprayed her venom at me again, but I was ready for it this time and dodged aside. She shrieked in frustration, threw open the driver's side door, got out, and heaved open the side door of the van. However, I'd already scampered into the front, intending to turn the key and floor it to spirit her captives away from her. Unfortunately, there were two problems with that plan. First, my feet couldn't reach the pedals. Second, she'd taken the key with her.\n\tShe appeared at the open door, dangling the key between her fingers. She was bleeding from her left side where my claws had cut her. \"Looking for this?\" she asked, smirking.\n\tThere was no real alternative. I exploded out of the van, slashing at her savagely. She dodged and weaved with inhuman serpentine grace, retreating away from the van and drawing me along. I could see we'd been driving on a dirt road with woods all around, drenched in moonlight. I kept slashing at her, but I was still slow from the lingering effects of her venom, and she evaded my blows easily.\n\t\"You are fun to play with, Alvin,\" she said, smiling, \"and if I had more time I'd be happy to continue this, but unfortunately, I'm on a schedule. Ta!\" And with that, she leaped over my head, thirty feet through the air, landing beside the van, and got back in the driver's seat. As I ran after her, she started the engine and hit the gas. I took out my grapple gun, but there were too many trees in the way and I couldn't get a clear shot. I broke out of the trees and onto the road just in time to see the red taillights vanish into the night.\n\tSo, there I stood on a lonely country back road in rural Ireland in the middle of the night, watching as Lady Patricia Whyte and her van full of intended human sacrifices disappeared into the darkness. I sighed, wishing I could fly, or move at super speed, or teleport, or something. But I hadn't been gifted with superpowers, like some. All I had was the natural strength of my body and my mind. Some have said that makes my kind of hero even more heroic, but at that moment it felt like a definite drawback. I took a deep breath and began to run.\n\tThe road seemed to stretch out before me endlessly as I ran along it as fast as my short legs would carry me. The full moon was high in the sky, shedding plenty of silvery light to see by. It wasn't long before I started to feel a dull ache in my thighs and calves. I began to pant as heat built up inside my body armor. I thought about the Greek soldiers at Marathon, running twenty-five miles and then fighting a battle. Hopefully, I wouldn't have to run quite that far. I paused a moment, removing an injector from my belt and shooting its contents into my neck. It was a chemical designed to help break down fatigue-producing lactic acid in my muscles. That was something those soldiers at Marathon hadn't had. I resumed running.\n\tTime stopped existing for a while. There was nothing but me, the moon, and the road, and it felt as if it always had been that way and always would be. When you're running for long distances, you start to lose yourself in the rhythms of it—the pounding of your feet, the gusting of your breath. In a sense, you're not really there. There's just the sound and the motion, not really connected to you at all. I found my mind drifting, thinking about other things. I thought about Julie, about the two of us laughing together as we watched a bad movie and holding each other close in the night. God, what had I ever done to deserve her? She was so wonderful, putting up with me and all that that entailed. I resolved to take her on a vacation as soon as I got back. Assuming, of course, that I made it through this night.\n\tAfter what seemed like an eternity—but which, according to my watch, had been only about half an hour—I saw a glow on the horizon, much too early to be the sun coming up, and also in the wrong direction. Most likely it was another bonfire. It was Beltane, and bonfires were traditional. I stepped up my pace, hoping I wasn't already too late.\n\tThe road ended on the outskirts of the ruins of the priory. A tower of flame dominated the courtyard, the sacrifices bound to stakes around it, gagged and struggling. Surrounding the bonfire stood a ring of robed figures, chanting, with arms raised. It was a scene straight out of one of those occult thrillers that were made by the score in the Seventies after the success of [i]Rosemary's Baby[/i] and [i]The Exorcist[/i]. Before the bonfire, with an albino boa constrictor wrapped around her nude blue body, stood Lady Patricia, leading the invocation, which was echoed by the throng in a deep undertone.\n\t[i]Oh Glycon, who came forth from the darkness;\n\tGlycon, who dwelt in peace in the Garden of Eden;\n\tGlycon, who gave us the gift of knowledge;\n\tGlycon, who suffered the wrath of the False God;\n\tGlycon, who was driven from Eden by the False God;\n\tGlycon, who was trodden under foot by the Son of Man;\n\tGlycon, who returned to the darkness;\n\tGlycon, whose kingdom is darkness;\n\tGlycon, who makes safe our darkness;\n\tGlycon, who is darkness;\n\tGlycon, the immortal, accept this, our sacrifice:\n\tDarkness eternal.[/i]\n\tI stood there watching the rite, my chest heaving, my legs feeling as if they were on fire. I didn't feel in any condition to take on an entire cult by myself, but I also didn't see that I had any other choice. I extended my claws and began walking deliberately toward the ring of cultists.\n\t\"Psst! Alvin!\" came Sean's voice from behind me. I spun toward him. He was standing at the edge of the woods, along with Bres, Streng, and Katie. I ran over to join them.\n\t\"You have no idea how glad I am to see all of you,\" I said, panting. I noticed Bres and Streng staring at me. \"What?\" I asked them.\n\t\"You are not a pooka,\" said Bres.\n\tStreng nodded his pumpkin head. \"A pooka would not pant so.\"\n\tI sighed. \"No, I'm not a pooka. I'm a mortal being of flesh and blood—part human, part animal. A lot has changed since your time. But none of that matters right now. Are you going to let these heathens summon a foreign god in your land?\"\n\tThe two faeries looked at each other, then back at me. \"We shall not,\" they both said.\n\tI grinned. \"Then let's kick some ass!\" I turned and charged toward the ring of cultists, Bres and Streng right behind me.\n\tI hurled one of my throwing blades at the cultist nearest to me, taking care to use one with a dull leading edge. It struck him in the back of his cowled head, and he crumpled to the ground. That got the attention of the others. A cry of alarm went up, and a dozen robed figures whirled toward me, all with the same eyes and fangs as Lady Patricia. The snakes had returned to Ireland.\n\tBres roared and laid into the snake cultists, slamming them with his mighty fists, while Streng cackled maniacally as he hurled globes of flame at them. But the cultists were stronger, tougher, and faster than normal humans and fought back like the fanatical zealots they were. I had to dodge and weave to avoid their blows, and I saw Bres with several hanging from his huge, green-furred body. Streng went down beneath a pile of them, his spindly form pinned by their combined weight. \n\tBefore the bonfire, I saw Lady Patricia laughing as she watched the battle. \"So, the guardian spirits of this land rise up against us, do they?\" she cried. \"A valiant effort, but doomed to failure! Glycon shall destroy you all!\"\n\t\"Not if we don't let you summon him, you bitch!\" I shouted, and hurled one of my throwing blades at the nearest sacrifice, who happened to be the Irishman I'd spoken to earlier. The blade cut through his ropes, freeing him from the stake he was bound to. He fell to his knees, his body apparently still weak from Lady Patricia's venom. Sean and Katie ran up through the chaos to help him while the majority of the cultists were preoccupied fighting the two faeries.\n\t\"No!\" shrieked Lady Patricia. She tossed aside her snake and leaped through the air toward me. I had just thrown another blade to sever the ropes of the German sacrifice, and her attack bowled me over and sent me snout-first into the ground. I twisted around and slugged her in the face as she tried to bury her fangs in my neck. Her strength was phenomenal, and it was all I could do to push her chin up so she could neither bite me nor spray her venom at me.\n\t\"Alvin!\" yelled Sean, running over to help me.\n\t\"No, Sean, stay back!\" I shouted as I struggled with Lady Patricia on the ground.\n\tHe didn't listen, of course, because he was a good and loyal friend. He seized Lady Patricia, trying to pull her off me. She hissed at him and sank her fangs into his right arm. He cried out in pain, falling on the ground on his back. However, his distraction did give me a chance to ram one of my claws into her stomach.\n\tLady Patricia screamed and rolled off me, clutching her bleeding belly, and I got up and ran to Sean. He was paralyzed, eyes wide, staring up at the sky. I looked at the scene around me. Bres was besieged by at least a dozen cultists. For every one he knocked down, three more sprang up at him. Streng had managed to throw off the group that had dogpiled him and was hurling fireballs right and left, but he too was quickly being overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. He and Bres moved to stand back to back, to better hold off their attackers. Katie was running from stake to stake, releasing the sacrifices, but they were still too weak to walk, let alone fight. This was not looking good.\n\tI heard a low hiss from behind me and turned toward it. Lady Patricia was kneeling there, still clutching her belly, but grinning her fanged grin in triumph. \"Did you really think you could win, Alvin?\" she asked me. \"Glycon is all-powerful! Even your faerie allies cannot stop him!\"\n\tI was trying to think up a suitably pithy retort when I noticed movement at the edge of the circle of light from the bonfire. Immediately, a chill ran down my spine. All around us, the silent figures of the Templars, empty eyesockets staring from beneath their moldy hoods, began stepping into the light, swords clutched in their bony hands. Things had just gone from bad to worse.\n\tThe Templars advanced slowly toward us from all directions, their blades glinting in the dark. The cultists, preoccupied with fighting the two faeries, didn't notice the Templars until one of them swung his sword, slicing into a robed figure and cutting it cleanly in half. As the cultist fell to the ground in two pieces, his brethren became aware of the new threat and began turning to meet it. My stomach felt queasy as I watched the top half of the bisected cultist reaching for the Templar's mailed legs while the bottom half lay a few feet away, kicking frantically.\n\tI looked away and saw that the rest of the scene around me had also become nightmarish. The Templars were attacking cultists everywhere and striking them down, and the white smoke from the bonfire had coalesced into an enormous snake-like shape. It was wispy and transparent, but its mouth and fangs were clearly visible, and it surveyed the carnage being meted out with fierce, glowing eyes.\n\tI called out to the two faeries. \"Bres! Streng! Get the sacrifices to the van! We're leaving!\" I picked up Sean and hoisted him over my shoulder in a fireman's carry, bearing him across the courtyard with his arms and legs dragging on the ground, doing my best to avoid both the Templars and the cultists. The bodies of cultists lay everywhere, many of them still writhing despite their clearly mortal wounds, while the Templars—silent and implacable as death—continued their methodical butchery.\n\tI reached the van and heaved Sean's limp body inside, then turned to see how the others were doing. Bres was clopping toward me with four of Lady Patricia's intended victims in his massive arms, Streng was carrying two others, and Katie was dragging the last one. As she struggled toward us with her charge, one of the Templars moved to block her path. The knights weren't especially fast, but neither was Katie under the circumstances, and she froze as the Templar neared her, no doubt gripped by the same supernatural terror I'd felt the first time I'd encountered one.\n\tI hurled one of my throwing blades at the knight, striking him squarely in his back, but it had no noticable effect other than creating a puff of dust, and I watched helplessly as the knight slowly raised his sword, preparing to strike down the petrified girl. Then Streng hurled a ball of fire at him, and he went up like dry tinder, his body wreathed in flames as he thrashed about wildly. Streng and I ran toward Katie, and Streng picked up the last of the intended sacrifices while I helped Katie toward the van.\n\tI looked back at the bonfire. Most of the cultists were now dead, hacked up by the Templars, but the immense, misty form of Glycon still hovered over the scene, writhing and hissing. I saw Lady Patricia kneeling on the ground, clutching her wounded belly, the Templars closing in around her from all sides. As she hissed at them defiantly, they raised their swords simultaneously and struck, cutting her to pieces. My stomach heaved again as I saw her head rolling across the ground between their feet. Above the gruesome scene, the form of Glycon faded into nothing. Then, as one, the Templars turned toward us.\n\tI looked up at Katie. \"Can you drive?\" I asked. \"My feet can't reach the pedals.\"\n\tShe nodded, shivering and hugging herself, and climbed into the driver's seat. I rode shotgun while Bres and Streng climbed into the back with Sean and the intended sacrifices. Katie gunned the engine and threw the van into gear, and off we sped, tires slinging dirt.\n\t\"Where are we goin'?\" Katie asked me.\n\t\"Anywhere but here is fine,\" I replied.\n\t\"Is Sean all right?\"\n\t\"Lady Patricia bit him, but he's just paralyzed. It'll wear off, eventually.\"\n\tShe nodded and glanced at her rearview mirror. \"We've got company!\"\n\tI stuck my head out the window and looked back. Behind us, the hooded figures of the Templars sat atop their horses, galloping after us and gaining rapidly. \"Where the hell did those horses come from?\" I asked.\n\t\"I think ye jus' answered yuir own question,\" said Katie, as the van bounced and lurched on the dirt road. Then she shrieked as the window beside her exploded in a shower of glass, a sword plunging through it and narrowly missing her head.\n\tI opened the passenger door, intending to climb on top of the van to attack the knight who was menacing Katie, and had to dodge to evade a sword blow from another knight. He struck again, his blade cleaving through the metal door as if it were warm butter, shearing it in half and leaving me dangling above the road by one hand. I snatched a bola from my belt and hurled it at the horse's legs, and horse and rider went down in a heap. Then I pulled myself onto the roof of the van.\n\tThe Templar on the driver's side was hacking at the van with his sword, cutting gashes in its metal skin as Katie swerved to try to avoid him. Gripping the roof of the van with one hand, I fired my grapple gun at his sword arm, entangling it. Then I hit rewind, and the knight was yanked off his horse and left hanging by one arm, his body banging against the side of the van. His weight was threatening to pull me off the roof, so I let go of the grapple gun, and he fell. I couldn't see what happened to him, but I hoped he was crushed by the rear wheels of the van.\n\tLooking back, I could see at least a dozen Templars pursuing us. I could also see that the van's rear doors had been flung open. I crawled across the roof to the back of the van and looked down to see Bres and Streng standing there serving as rear guards, hurling stone and fire at the Templars as they galloped after us. I decided to give them some help, taking a particle mine from my belt. Those mines are tiny but potent explosive devices that can be set for timed or proximity detonation. Selecting the latter, I tossed it onto the road in the path of the knights. It exploded on impact, sending several of them and their horses flying. I repeated the performance and took out a few more. The remaining Templars apparently decided they'd had enough, and they brought their steeds to a halt, standing there in the road with their empty eye sockets staring at us as we sped off into the night.\n\n\tOnce we got back to Katie's house, I started making phone calls while Katie tended to Sean and the others. I contacted both UNTIL and the Garda Siochana and told them everything that had happened. The latter told me to stay put and they'd send someone out to see me in a few hours. Since there was nothing I could do until they arrived, I decided to take a nap. It looked as if this was going to be a long night.\n\tThree officers of the Garda Siochana arrived just before dawn and began interviewing everyone involved in the affair, taking us aside one at a time and getting our statements. Sean had recovered from Lady Patricia's bite by this time, and appeared to be suffering no ill effects from her venom. The officers were understandably surprised by the presence of the two faeries, but took their statements as well. Then the officers, Sean, and myself went out to the ruins of the priory.\n\tThe bodies of the cultists were still there, strewn about the courtyard. Among them, we discovered, were the local chief constable and the coroner, which explained why they'd tried to hush up the strange circumstances of Mary's death, as it wouldn't do to have anyone snooping around in those woods. Of the Templars, there was no sign. Presumably, they'd crept back to their graves, hopefully to stay this time, with no further magic being worked in the area to disturb their rest.\n\tThe Garda Siochana took custody of Lady Patricia's intended sacrifices, telling them they could contact their loved ones to let them know they were all right, but not to reveal any details of the case to them until such time as the Garda decided to make them public. I was told to remain in the area for a few days in case the Garda needed to speak to me, which was fine with me. After all that had happened, I could use a little vacation. Sean and Katie and I spent the time hanging around the village of Ennis with Bres and Streng, introducing the two faeries to the modern world, while the townsfolk gawked at them.\n\tOn the morning of the third day, I received a call from the Garda saying I was free to go. I went downstairs to inform the others. Katie was in the kitchen with Streng, showing the Fir Bolg how to make plum pudding.\n\t\"That smells delicious!\" I said, sniffing the air and licking my muzzle.\n\t\"Yuir welcome to have some, Alvin,\" said Katie, smiling at me.\n\t\"As tempting as that is, I should really be getting back to America. There're things there I've been neglecting.\"\n\tShe grinned. \"Like yuir girlfriend?\"\n\tI nodded. \"Among others.\" I turned to Streng. \"What are your plans?\"\n\t\"Katie has consented to let me stay here for a time,\" the pumpkin man replied. \"There is still much I need to learn about this world.\"\n\tKatie nodded. \"Th' Tuatha took his country from him. As an Irishwoman, I can understand how he feels. It took us centuries ta win our own country from th' English.\"\n\tI looked at Streng intently. \"I hope you don't intend to take that out on Bres.\"\n\tThe Fir Bolg sighed and spread his spindly fingers, a surprisingly human gesture. \"What would be the point? This is no longer his country, either. We are both foreigners here.\"\n\t\"Ye don't have ta be,\" said Katie, smiling at him. \"I'm sure th' people of Ireland would welcome ye among them. Ye'd be celebrities!\"\n\tI nodded. \"You and Bres made a pretty good team, fighting the Templars and the cultists side by side. With your powers, you could be heroes here.\"\n\t\"Bres and I may have united against a common foe,\" said Streng, \"but we will never be friends. The animosity between Tuatha and Fir Bolg runs too deep. But perhaps we need not be enemies. This land is big enough for both of us.\"\n\t\"Well, that's something, anyway. Katie, do you know where Sean is?\"\n\t\"Where else? He's outside, talkin' wi' Bres.\"\n\t\"Could you tell him I need a ride to the airport while I go upstairs and get my things?\"\n\t\"I will do it,\" said Streng, and shuffled off.\n\tI ran upstairs and stuffed my few belongings into my suitcase, then brought it downstairs. Katie and I went out through the living room to the front porch, where Streng was standing with Sean and Bres, the enormous deer-man's antlers scraping the awning.\n\t\"I am told you must return to your own land across the sea,\" said Bres, in that inhumanly deep voice of his. \"It was a pleasure to meet you, Alvin. You are brave and fight well.\" He extended his huge three-fingered hand to me. I grasped one of his thick fingers with my comparatively tiny hand and shook it, feeling honored. There was no greater compliment a Tuatha warrior could pay someone.\n\tI bid goodbye to Streng and Katie. Then Sean and I went to the car, got in, and drove off. I sat there, watching the green hills roll by, thinking about what I'd do when I got back to Millennium City. I'd have to take Julie out for dinner, definitely. Someplace where the food was spicy. Irish cuisine is filling, but rather bland. I should have asked Katie for some of that plum pudding, though.\n\tAll this thinking about food was making me hungry. \"Do you mind if we stop somewhere for a bite?\" I asked Sean.\n\t\"Why not?\" he replied.\n\tSomething in his voice set off an alarm in my head, and I turned toward him. He was looking at me, smiling, and his eyes were the yellow eyes of a snake.\n\tI felt my heart sink. \"Oh god, no! Not you too!\"\n\tSean lunged at me, fangs bared. I blocked, wedging my forearm under his chin, and planted my foot on his chest, thrusting him back away from me. He lost control of the car, and we swerved over the embankment and plunged down the steep side. Then the car flipped and we began to roll over and over, glass flying everywhere as the windows shattered. I was jerked around like a rag doll, my body heaving against the safety belt as the world kept tumbling around me. At last, the car came to a stop, lying upside down at the bottom of the embankment. I unbuckled myself, falling to the roof among the broken glass, and scrambled out the side window.\n\tSean was pulling himself out of the wreck as well, his nose and lip bleeding, and I didn't waste a second. I jumped up onto the undercarriage of the car and hurled myself at him, bowling him over, and we both went down. I swung my fists at him, hitting him twice before he could get to his feet. I was attacking recklessly, blinded by rage, furious at myself, at him, at the whole world. He got in a kick that caught me square in the chest, and I flew back about eight feet, landing on my back. I kipped up and we both crouched there, facing each other.\n\t\"Ye have no idea what it's like, Alvin,\" said Sean, flicking his forked tongue. \"I can feel Glycon inside me. Join his family. Then ye'd truly have a place ta belong.\"\n\t\"Shut up!\" I screamed, and ran at him, throwing a punch at his stomach. He grunted with pain and sprayed poison at me, which I just barely dodged. Then I laid into him, hitting him with punch after punch, sending him reeling backward. He may have been stronger and faster than me now, but he wasn't a trained fighter. He didn't know how to make the most of his gifts, while I'd learned from the best and before that had been tempered in the fight pits on Monster Island.\n\tI hit him again and again, until he was lying at my feet unconscious and I was standing over him, panting, my fists red with his blood. I could have beaten him to death, and at that moment I genuinely wanted to. I knew Sean well enough to know he wouldn't have wanted to live like this. But if there was even the slightest chance he could be cured, I couldn't kill him. So I backed off and took out my cell phone.\n\tI called the Garda Siochana and asked them if they still had Lady Patricia's intended sacrifices in custody. They told me they didn't—all the victims had been released and gone back to their own countries. I sighed and hung my head. They'd been bitten before Sean was. No doubt they were now like him and would begin building new cults of Glycon all over the world. Only the antivenom I'd taken had saved me from becoming one of them.\n\tI told the Garda what had happened, and they said they'd have someone come out and pick up Sean and me. I put away my phone, sat down in the grass, and waited as the wind blew around me and ruffled my fur. There was nothing else to do.\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "
The Night of Blind Terror


a story set in the universe of Champions Online


\t"Can I get ye anythin', sir?" the pretty stewardess with the Irish accent asked without looking at who she was talking to, reciting by rote words she'd no doubt said thousands of times before. Then her eyes widened as she caught sight of me. "Oh!"
\tI was sitting beside the window, my feet just barely sticking out over the front of seat 45A. I turned my buck-toothed, blunt-muzzled face toward her. "What time do we land in Dublin?" I asked.
\tShe recovered her composure quickly. While we aren't a common sight in the world, most people have heard about manimals—human-animal hybrids created on Monster Island by the insane geneticist Dr. Phillipe Moreau. "3:24 PM, local time, sir," she said.
\tI nodded. "Thank you."
\t"Is there anythin' I can do to make yuir flight more pleasant?" she asked, smiling.
\t"A pillow would be nice," I replied. I intended to snooze away as much of the trip as possible.
\t"I'll get one for ye. Anythin' else?"
\t"A gin and tonic?"
\t"I see," she said. "Um, pardon my askin', but are ye old enough to drink?"
\tI sighed. Being the size of a child, some people assume I am a child, which is understandable when you're a talking chipmunk. It's hard for humans to estimate my age. I reached into my back pocket and took out my wallet, showing her my driver's license to confirm that I was indeed an adult. She giggled when she saw my name. "Alvin?" she asked. "Like th' cartoon character?"
\tI rolled my eyes and nodded. I get that a lot. And I knew what was coming next.
\t"Where are Simon and Theodore?" she asked.
\tI forced a smile. "They're taking a later flight," I said. She was only trying to be nice. It would have been mean to hit her with the ugly truth—that my brothers were dead and buried on Monster Island.
\tShe smiled and nodded. "I'll be back soon with yuir pillow an' drink." And with that she moved on to the next passenger.
\tI sat back in my seat and gazed out the window. The sun was rising, turning the clouds into a sea of spun gold, so beautiful it was hard to believe it was real. I sighed and closed my eyes, thinking about what had brought me here: the personal tragedy of a friend . . .

\tThe call had come in the middle of last night. I reached out blindly to where my phone lay on the night table beside the bed, fumbled with it, and finally got it up to my ear. "Hello?" I asked.
\t"Alvin!" came a familiar voice on the other end. "I need yuir help!"
\tI sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. "Sean?" Sean O'Donnell was a friend of mine, an Irish archaeologist who'd helped me out on a case involving some ancient relics stolen by the magic-based criminal organization DEMON, because I'm also the superhero Nightmunk, a member of Team Nighthawk. I looked at the time on my phone. "Sean, it's five in the morning." I had only just turned in after finishing my nightly patrol of Millennium City.
\t"Mary's dead, Alvin!"
\tMy jaw dropped. "What?" Mary was Sean's fiancee. He'd told me about her when we'd been working together. She lived in a little village in the country south of Dublin. I didn't know her last name.
\t"She's dead, murdered, and the local police aren' doin' anything about it! They think she was killed by animals! Death by misadventure, they say!" He sounded close to hysteria.
\t"Sean, Sean, calm down! Now, what makes you think they're wrong?"
\t"Because this is Ireland! There's nothin' here that could do that! Alvin, yuir a detective. I need ye to come here and examine the body before they bury her!"
\t"You want me to just drop everything and go to Ireland?"
\t"I'll pay yuir plane fare!"
\t"Money isn't the issue, Sean. I'm working on a case right now and—"
\t"Och, yuir always workin' on a case! Please, Alvin! I'm beggin' ye!"
\tI sighed and rubbed my forehead. "Okay, Sean. I'll catch the next flight out."
\t"Thank ye, Alvin," he said, sounding enormously relieved. "Thank ye so much!"
\t"See you soon," I said, and hung up.
\tIn the bed beside me, a lumpy shape groaned and rolled over to face me. It was Julie Martins, my human girlfriend. Yes, a chipmunk sleeps with a human girl. Deal with it.
\t"What was that?" she asked. "Something about going to Ireland?"
\tI nodded. "My friend Sean needs help. His fiancee has been killed."
\tHer eyes went wide. "Oh my god, that's terrible! But don't they have police in Ireland?"
\t"Apparently, he's not satisfied with the way they're handling the case."
\t"So you just up and go to Ireland for him?"
\t"Julie, the woman he loved is dead. Even if there's nothing I can add to what the police have found out, I can at least give him some moral support."
\t"That's a long way to go just to provide a shoulder to cry on."
\t"Without his help I wouldn't have known the incantation to reverse the ritual DEMON was performing with those artifacts a few months back. I probably would have been killed, along with a lot of other people. I owe him this much."
\tShe sighed, clearly unhappy with the idea of me going away. I could understand why. I'd only recently returned from an extended sojourn in another dimension, and during our time apart we'd both realized that we loved each other. Not long after that we'd decided to start living together. We figured that since we were spending all our nights together anyway it didn't make much sense to be paying two rents, so I'd moved out of my apartment and into hers. I'd like to say we were the first interspecies couple in Millennium City, but given the amount of weirdness that goes on in this town, it almost certainly wasn't true.
\t"I'll be back in a few days," I said reassuringly. "Just a quick jaunt across the pond and back again. It's probably nothing. Sean is just distraught and making this out to be more than it is." I wasn't entirely certain that was true. I didn't know much about the wildlife of Ireland, but I was reasonably sure there weren't many dangerous animals there. I knew there weren't any snakes. St. Patrick had seen to that, if legends speak truly, which they sometimes do.
\tShe nodded, put her arms around my furry body, pressed her lips to my muzzle, and kissed me. I put my arms around her and returned the kiss, rubbing noses with her and smiling. "I love you, Julie," I said.
\t"I love you too, Alvin," she replied.
\tI kissed her again—a long, deep, passionate kiss—and then let go of her. "I have to start making preparations," I said . . .

\tAnd that was how I ended up on an Aer Lingus 747 landing at Dublin Airport at exactly 3:24 PM. I deplaned and entered the thoroughly modern, sleek, and beautifully curved steel-and-glass terminal building, holding a suitcase almost as big as myself that contained all my equipment. Everyone stared at me, but I'm used to that. Normally, I'd have to go through customs, but since Nightmunk is a hero registered with UNTIL—the United Nations Tribunal on International Law—I get a special exemption. I had my passport stamped at the desk and walked into the main concourse, where Sean was waiting for me.
\tHe looked like hell. His lean, angular face was drawn and sallow, his sandy hair—which was always wild and frizzy—looked as if it hadn't seen a comb in a week, and his blue eyes were dull and sunken behind his horn-rimmed glasses. He stood before me, wearing a white fisherman's sweater and blue jeans, his hands in his pockets. He smiled a little when he saw me. "Hullo, Alvin," he said.
\t"Hi, Sean," I replied. "I'm so sorry."
\tHe bobbed his head. "Thank ye. Come on, we've got a long drive ahead of us."
\tI followed him out to the parking lot, stowed my suitcase in the trunk of his car—or the boot, as they call it over there—and almost got in the driver's side before I remembered the passenger sits on the left in that country. In a few minutes we were on the M11 motorway, headed south along the coast of the Irish Sea.
\t"Have a nice flight?" Sean asked.
\t"I slept through most of it," I said. "I'd only just gone to bed when you called."
\tHe nodded. "I remember ye tend to keep late hours."
\t"Well, I'm called Nightmunk for a reason."
\t"I really appreciate yuir comin', Alvin."
\t"I'm glad to do it, though I'm not sure how much help I'll be. I'm sure your local police and coroner are competent enough."
\tHe snorted. "Buncha idiots!"
\tI looked at him. "Why do you say that?"
\t"They're sayin' she was killed by a pack o' wild dogs!"
\t"Is that unlikely?"
\t"There's been no reports of any such thing in th' area! If there were, don't ye think someone would have noticed 'em?"
\t"I would think so. I take it you've seen the body?"
\tHe nodded. "It's covered in bite marks. I'm no expert, but they don't look like dog bites ta me. An' another thing. If it had been dogs, yui'd think they would have torn it apart an' eaten most o' the flesh. But it's completely intact!"
\t"That does seem at odds with how dogs usually do things."
\t"I also don' like how th' constable an' th' coroner are actin'. Like they know somethin' they aren' tellin'."
\t"Okay," I said, "let's assume there's more going on here than meets the eye. What do you expect me to do about it? I have no authority to overrule the decisions of local officials. I'm just a private citizen, and a foreigner to boot. If they stick with their dog attack story, there's nothing we can do about it."
\t"If ye can find evidence they're wrong, or hidin' somethin', I can take it to th' Garda Siochana—the Guardians o' the Peace o' Ireland. They can do somethin' about it!"
\tI nodded. "All right, then. How long until we arrive?"
\t"About three hours."
\t"Fine. I'm going to try to get some more sleep."
\tI reclined the seat and snoozed as the emerald hills rolled by.

\t"Alvin, wake up," said Sean. "We're here."
\tMy eyes snapped open, and I pressed the lever that caused the back of my seat to flip upright, taking me with it. I turned my head to look out the window. Before me stood a two-story brick house, probably over a hundred years old. Some of the shingles on the roof were missing, and one of the black window shutters on the second floor was hanging at an angle. There were no other houses visible, just fields and a few trees scattered about.
\tWe exited the car, stepping out onto the gravel driveway, and were just getting my suitcase out of the trunk when a girl emerged from the house and came down the steps of the front porch toward us. She looked to be about twenty, with blue eyes, round cheeks, a pointed chin, and blonde hair worn in a pageboy cut. She was dressed in a red-and-black checked flannel shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. When she saw me, she stopped in her tracks and stared. "What . . . what th' hell is that?" she demanded.
\t"This is Alvin," said Sean. "Alvin, this is Katie, Mary's sister."
\t"Hello, Katie," I said.
\tShe raised a finger, pointing at me. "Ye didn't tell me he was a . . . a . . ."
\t"A manimal," said Sean. "Does it matter? He's a friend, an' he's here ta help."
\tShe whirled and strode back into the house, shaking her head, the screen door slamming shut behind her. I turned to Sean. "Why didn't you tell her?" I asked.
\t"I didn't know how she'd react, an' I didn't want ta get in an argument about it. She's in a state."
\t"Of course she is! She just lost her sister!"
\tSean led me to the front door, and we went inside. The living room was furnished in a mishmash of clashing colors and styles. Katie was sitting hunched over on a flowered sofa, her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. It didn't seem like a good idea to disturb her.
\t"Are ye hungry, Alvin?" Sean asked.
\tI actually was, having not eaten anything since I'd had breakfast at Millennium City Airport nine hours earlier. "I wouldn't mind something," I said.
\t"Come on, there's half a chicken in the fridge."
\tWe went to the kitchen. I put down my suitcase, climbed up on a chair, and sat down at the large, rustic-looking wooden table that was at odds with the otherwise modern cabinets and appliances. Sean brought out a platter bearing a half-eaten chicken. I pulled off a drumstick and gnawed on it, while Sean sliced off a couple of hunks of meat with a knife and popped one in his mouth. "What'll ye be wantin' ta do first?" he asked as he chewed.
\t"First, I need to examine the body," I replied.
\t"I don' think th' coroner'll be too keen on that," said Sean.
\t"That's why we're not going to ask his permission. Where's it being kept?"
\t"In th' morgue in th' village."
\t"Is there anyone there now?"
\t"Nah, it should be closed for th' night."
\t"Good. Then we shouldn't have any trouble breaking in."
\tHe grinned. "Jus' like that, eh?"
\tI nodded, licking my furry fingers. "Just like that."
\t"Did I hear right?" came Katie's voice from behind us. We both turned in our chairs to look at her. She was standing in the entrance to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded across her chest. Her eyes were red-rimmed. "Yuir goin' ta break inta th' morgue ta look at Mary's body?"
\t"It's not going to come to us," I said.
\t"And what do ye think yuir goin' ta find out?"
\t"Hopefully, how she died."
\t"The coroner said it was dogs."
\t"Sean doesn't believe that. I'm not sure I do either."
\t"Why would he lie?"
\tI shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe we can find that out, too."
\t"Suppose ye get caught?"
\t"Then we'll pay a fine!" said Sean impatiently. "It's not like we'll be stealin' anythin'! Th' worst they can do is charge us with trespassin'!" His voice softened. "Don't ye want ta know th' truth, Katie?"
\tShe turned and went back into the living room. I glanced out the window. "What time does it get dark?" I asked.
\t"It's April in Ireland," said Sean. "The sun doesn't go down 'til after eight."
\tI nodded. With their mild climate, it was easy to forget how far north the British Isles were. Their latitude was the same as Quebec's. "We'll just have to be careful, then." I hopped down off my chair, went to my suitcase, opened it, and removed a miniature forensics kit, since I didn't know how well-equipped the lab at the morgue would be and I didn't want to be caught without anything I needed. "Okay, let's go."
\tWe left the house, went out to the car, got in, and drove off down the road toward the village.

\tEnnis was a sleepy country village, one of hundreds of such villages scattered across the Emerald Isle. The streets were lined with quaint little shops, the town square was dominated by a church that looked as if it had seen Oliver Cromwell come and go, and there was a pub, because this was Ireland.
\tSean pulled the car in behind the squat, ugly brick building that was the morgue, and we got out and went to the back entrance so we'd be out of sight of the street. I picked the lock on the door and let us inside.
\tWe made our way to the examination room, and Sean flicked on the light as we went inside. The room had a strong antiseptic smell. There were two steel tables on wheels, several benches with an assortment of chemicals and equipment, and six refrigerated cabinets in a line along one wall where the bodies were kept. Sean pointed at the one on the far left. "Mary's in there," he said. I had to admire how he was holding it together.
\t"I'll get her out," I said. "You go find me the autopsy report. Use this." I gave him my flashlight.
\tSean left, and I wheeled one of the examination tables over to the cabinet and opened it. Immediately, the sickening smell of decay washed over me. I don't know how the people who work in these places ever get used to it. I steeled my stomach, heaved the tray containing the cadaver out onto the table, pushed the table under the lights in the center of the room, and found myself a chair to stand on. Then I pulled the plastic sheet aside.
\tShe was blonde, like her sister, but with longer hair. In life she'd been quite pretty, but now her skin was as white as milk and her lips were gray. Incisions had been made across her chest and down her abdomen during the autopsy. Standard procedure. As Sean had mentioned, there were dozens of bite marks all over her body. I took a magnifying glass out of my kit and started inspecting them.
\tSean returned a few minutes later, holding a manila folder. He came over and held it out to me. I accepted it and glanced up at him. He was making a concerted effort not to look at the body. I couldn't blame him. This had to be hell for him. I started reading the report as Sean went and sat down in a chair against the wall.
\t"Well, he's right about the cause of death," I said. "Exsanguination."
\t"Loss of blood?" Sean asked.
\tI nodded. "Her injuries weren't sufficient to cause death by themselves. She bled to death. But his conclusion about the cause of the bites is garbage. They were made by human teeth."
\t"What, ye mean like vampires, out of Bram Stoker?"
\t"Something similar, anyway."
\tSean nodded. "He was an Irishman, ye know."
\t"Yes, I actually did know that. Only these aren't vampire bites. I've seen actual vampire bites, down in Vibora Bay. There's a vampire gang there called the New Shadows. These aren't nice, neat little puncture marks like the ones vampires make. They're gouges. And by the tooth spacings and bite radii, I'd estimate they were made by at least ten different mouths." I glanced over at Sean. "Are there any cults in the area?"
\t"Not that I know of."
\tI lifted up her right hand and inspected under her fingernails. She'd been dead for over forty-eight hours—well past the rigor mortis stage—so her fingers moved freely. I noticed some fibers beneath the nail of her right index finger. I removed them with a pair of tweezers and looked at them through my magnifying glass.
\t"What've ye found?" Sean asked.
\t"Linen fibers," I said. "Very old."
\tSean rose and came over to me. "How can ye tell?"
\t"The thickness of the fibers is irregular. The cloth these came from wasn't made by a machine in a factory. It was made by hand. I couldn't tell you how old they are without a carbon dating test, but they're definitely pre-industrial. Also, they're stained with something. Mold, I think."
\t"Ye think they came from whoever killed her?"
\t"I doubt they came from anything she was wearing." I looked up at him. "Sean, I think I've learned all I can here. I want to see the spot where she was found."
\tHe nodded. "I'll take ye there."
\t"You want to wait in the car while I clean up here?"
\t"I can handle it," he said.
\t"All right."
\tAs we slid Mary's body off the table and back into the refrigerator, I said, "One thing I'm certain about. Your coroner is a liar. Nobody with any sort of medical training could have mistaken those for dog bites."
\t"So he's coverin' up somethin'."
\t"So it would seem."
\t"I wonder what?"
\t"Maybe the crime scene will tell us."
\tWe turned out the lights, replaced the file, and left.

\tSean drove us to a wooded area well outside the village of Ennis. Not knowing that to expect, I decided to don my costume. That way, I'd at least have my full array of weaponry at my disposal. We parked the car by the side of the narrow, twisting country road, got out, and moved into the silent woods, Sean leading me. It was starting to get dark, the sun casting long shadows across the ground. Not exactly the best conditions for examining a crime scene, but I'd had worse. At least, being so secluded, it was unlikely to have been contaminated by civilian traffic. We came to a small clearing, and Sean stopped.
\t"This is it," he said. "This is where they found her."
\tI knelt down and started examining the ground. There was a muddle of footprints in the mossy earth, no doubt made by the police when they'd retrieved the body. I sniffed at the dirt where the corpse had lain. "There's no blood here," I commented.
\t"Wouldn't it have all soaked into the ground?" asked Sean.
\t"There would still be some residue if it had," I said, standing up. "No blood in her body, and none on the ground. So where did it go?"
\t"Are we back ta vampires again?" asked Sean.
\t"There are other things besides vampires that drink blood," I said. I started moving away from where the body had been found, making an ever-widening spiral, my eyes fixed on the ground. "What was she doing out here, anyway?" I asked.
\t"Comin' home from a friend's house," said Sean.
\t"She do that often?"
\t"Two or three times a week. She would cut through these woods rather than follow the road. It was quicker."
\t"So she did this regularly. Which means that anyone who knew about it could have been lying in wait for her."
\t"More like a bunch o' someones, by what ye said."
\tI nodded, and stopped and knelt.
\t"Ye found somethin'?" Sean asked, coming over to me.
\t"A hoofprint," I said.
\tSean crouched down to look at it. "Tha's not so odd. Lots o' folks around here have horses."
\tI glanced up at him. "And they just happened to be riding here, far off the beaten path, where a murder was committed?"
\tHe shrugged. "It's possible."
\t"Look at the size of it, Sean. That wasn't made by any riding horse. More like a Clydesdale, or a Percheron. What would a draft horse be doing out here?"
\tI rose and started walking in the direction opposite the way the horse had been going, Sean following me. There were more hoofprints leading off into the woods. "Another line of hoofprints," I said, pointing. "And another. And another. And by the spacing of them, the horses were galloping." I spotted something and knelt down. It was the imprint of a work boot, the kind Katie had been wearing. I looked up at Sean. "About Mary's size, wouldn't you say?"
\tHe nodded, mutely.
\t"And it's in the same line and direction as the hoofprints. They were chasing her. Running her down." I shook my head. "How the hell did the cops miss this?"
\tSean frowned. "Th' same way th' coroner mistook human bites for dog bites."
\t"Nobody's this incompetent. What's the nearest structure to here, Sean?"
\t"There's nothin' for miles, Alvin." His cell phone rang, and he took it out and looked at it. "It's Katie." He answered it. "Hello? What? Slow down, Katie!" He listened for a bit, then covered it with his hand. "She's frantic, havin' some kind o' hysterical fit." He spoke into the phone. "Katie, calm down! What? No, we're busy right now! Katie? Katie!" He looked at me. "She hung up." He tried to call her back. "She's not picking up."
\t"What did she want?" I asked.
\t"She wanted me ta come see her."
\t"That might be a good idea."
\t"But what about th' investigation?"
\t"I'll stay here and continue it."
\t"All by yuirself?"
\tI smiled at him. "I can take care of myself. You go see Katie."
\tHe sighed. "All right. You be careful, Alvin." And he started heading off back toward the car, leaving me alone in the woods.
\tI glanced up at the sky. The daylight was almost gone, just a faint crimson glow remaining. I took out my flashlight and kept walking in the direction the horses had been coming from. Idly, I found myself wondering how many times this particular bit of ground had been fought over during the ages of conflict that had plagued this ancient, troubled land.
\tA few dozen yards along, I noticed a small sapling to one side. Its top had been sheared off about six feet above the ground. The rest of the little tree lay nearby. I picked it up and inspected the cut end. It was about two inches thick, and it had been sliced clean through with a single stroke. I tried to imagine the amount of force required to do something like that. It would have taken a very strong man, with a very sharp axe. I continued walking, playing my flashlight beam along the ground, the theme to The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie running through my head.
\tThe sun was gone now, and the full moon cast its silvery light through the tree branches overhead, draining all the color out of the world. The woods were oppressively silent; I couldn't hear so much as a cricket chirping, just the sound of my own boots crunching upon the dead leaves on the ground. It was as if the world was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
\tThen I heard it. Faintly at first, then slowly rising, like a mushroom poking its way up through the ribs of a corpse. Hoofbeats—but distorted, resonant, echoing unnaturally through the forest. Getting louder and louder, until they filled my ears like thunderclaps. I switched off my flashlight and ducked behind a tree, flattening myself against it. Then, all at once, the hoofbeats stopped. Cautiously, I peered around the edge of the trunk.
\tThere, standing in a ray of moonlight, surrounded by a carpet of mist, was the figure of a man on horseback. It was dressed in rusty chainmail armor, over which lay a tabard that was covered in mold and dirt. Upon its head and shoulders it wore a pointed monk's hood, a tattered cloak hanging down behind it. Its face was almost entirely hidden in the shadows of its cowl. Sticking up behind its back I could see the hilt of an enormous greatsword. The horse upon which the figure sat was a massive beast, with a shroud over its body and a hood over its head that exposed only the mouth, ears, and eyes. Like its rider, the horse's accoutrements were layered in mold and dirt.
\tI've faced death many times. I don't scare easily. But for some reason the sight of this figure filled me with an icy terror I'd never experienced before, not even in the fight pits on Monster Island when I'd been certain I was going to die. It reminded me of one of the Nazgûl from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. That would put me in the role of Frodo, which seemed appropriate for someone of my size. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and my gloved fingers gripped the bark of the tree I was sheltering behind. I wanted to run, to flee into the welcoming arms of the night, but some part of my mind kept me still. I watched the hooded figure on its horse, waiting to see what it would do.
\tThe figure climbed down off its mount and drew that huge sword from behind its back, the dust of ages drifting off its body. Then, slowly, it began moving in my direction. Its movements were steady, deliberate, purposeful. It was looking for something. And as it got closer, the fear intensified. I was trembling, and I could taste the salty tang of blood in my mouth where I was biting my lip. I shuddered as it came nearer and nearer, to the point where I could have reached out and touched it if I'd dared to move. The hem of its ragged cloak brushed across the tip of my boot, and I gasped involuntarily. Its head snapped around, and I was staring straight into its face—a withered, dessicated face, with gray, lifeless skin drawn tightly across its skull, the wispy remnants of a mustache and beard surrounding a snaggle-toothed mouth. But the thing that held me transfixed were its eyes. It didn't have any. Just two gaping, empty black sockets.
\tIt couldn't have missed me. I was right in front of it, in plain view. But it didn't move. It just stood there, gazing at me with those awful, empty sockets. A full minute passed, and still nothing happened. That was when some detached, rational part of my brain decided to try an experiment. I raised the flashlight I was still holding and switched it on. The beam shone right in its horrible, cadaverous face. There was no reaction. It was blind! I almost giggled with hysteria. Idiot! Of course it was blind! It had no eyes!
\tI could see a device on its tabard, and lowered my beam to its chest. There, in faded red and almost obscured by dirt and mold, was not a cross, as I'd been expecting, but an ankh. I didn't have time to ponder the implications of this, however, as the dust drifting from its body tickled my nostrils, and I sneezed. Instantly, it hefted that massive sword over its shoulder and swung. Fortunately for me, it was under the misconception that its target was someone of normal human size. Its blade thunked into the tree trunk well above my head.
\tThe rush of adrenaline that came with combat momentarily overwhelmed my fear. I extended the steel claws from my gauntlets and rammed them into the thing's chest, piercing its rusty armor. However, all this did was raise a cloud of dust as my claws sank into dry, dead tissue. I coughed and gagged as the cloud rolled over me, and just barely managed to block a return swing from its sword with my gauntlet. Even so, the blade sliced through my body armor and cut a gash across my right arm, as well as sending me sprawling from the sheer force of the blow. I got to my feet as the unholy monster began advancing toward me, its sword gripped in its skeletal hands. Since I didn't seem to be able to hurt it, I opted for the next best course of action.
\tI ran.
\tBranches and bushes tore at me as I crashed through them, nearly as blind as my opponent in the darkness. I paused a moment, shining my flashlight behind me. The creature didn't appear to be following, and I breathed a sigh of relief. My relief was short-lived, however, as I heard the reverberating hoofbeats of its horse again, getting louder and louder. Again, the image of the Nazgûl passed through my mind. I ran faster.
\tI broke out of the woods, stumbled onto the road, and was nearly blinded by bright lights as the sound of screeching tires filled my ears. I raised my hands reflexively as a car skidded to a halt a few feet in front of me. It was a silver Jaguar XKE—one of my favorite cars, coincidentally—and it had spun ninety degrees so that its sleek, torpedo-shaped body was now perpendicular to the road, its driver side facing me. There sat a woman with short, black hair that was mostly covered by a gold shawl. Her heart-shaped face had high, aristocratic cheekbones, and her big, dark eyes gazed at me more in puzzlement than in fear or anger. "Going to a costume party, are we?" she asked, in an upper-class English accent. Then she tilted her head curiously. "I say, are you all right?"
\tI was trembling, plus I was breathing hard, my eyes were wide with fear, and I was bleeding from the wound in my arm. I was clearly not all right, and she could see that. "Get in," she said.
\tI looked back behind me. There was no sign of the rider. I nodded to her and went around to the other side of the car, opened the door, and got in. She turned the car back to its proper heading, and we peeled off down the road.
\tAs we sped through the night together, I took a moment to examine my savior. She was a rather petite woman, probably around thirty or thirty-five. Her body was shrouded in a brown frock coat, her legs bare. On her feet were a pair of open-toed black leather pumps that I'm sure were very expensive. Her fingernails and lipstick were the color of blood. She glanced over at me as I sat there on the passenger seat of her car in my Nightmunk costume. "Shall I take you to a hospital?" she asked.
\tI looked at my wound. The rider's sword had made a cut about six inches long on my right forearm. Thanks to my costume's reinforced Kevlar fabric, it wasn't deep, but it was still bleeding quite a bit. "That's all right," I said. "I can handle it." I took a device from my belt and sprayed the wound with a combination of antiseptic, anesthetic, and coagulant. I noticed I was still trembling. The blood-curdling fear I'd felt in the presence of the rider was fading slowly.
\t"That's a nasty gash," she commented. "How did you get it?"
\t"I was attacked by wild dogs," I replied.
\t"Oh yes, I'd heard a local girl had been killed by wild dogs, poor thing. Lucky that's all you got away with. You might want to get a rabies shot, though." She smiled, and somehow I knew she didn't buy the dog story any more than I did.
\tI nodded. "Thank you, Miss . . ."
\t"Lady Patricia Whyte," she said. "And you are?"
\t"Alvin," I replied.
\tShe grinned. "Really? How very droll!"
\t"It's the name I was given." By now the fear had evaporated completely. My heartbeat and breathing had returned to normal. "I can't help noticing you don't seem very surprised by my appearance, Lady Patricia."
\t"Oh, you're one of those—what are they called—manimals. I've read about them. Created on some island by a mad scientist named Dr. Moreau, aren't they? Right out of H. G. Wells!" She laughed. "I must say, I never expected to find one of you in Ireland."
\tI shrugged. "I like to travel."
\t"And do you often go about wearing a costume in the middle of the night?"
\t"All the time. Do you often drive about on lonely country roads in the middle of the night?"
\tShe smiled. "All the time. I find it relaxes me."
\t"Well, thank you for the save. I appreciate it."
\t"You're quite welcome." She looked at me. "Would you like to come back to my place? Church House is only a few miles from here. I'm afraid it's in a bit of a shambles, as I've been away for a few years. Like you, I like to travel. But I have some very old brandy there I'd be happy to share with you."
\tI looked into her eyes and saw something hard and predatory there, something I didn't like. I felt like a mouse being sized up by a cat. Of course, it was possible she was just in the habit of picking up strange men and taking them home with her, but I still felt uneasy about her invitation. "That's very generous of you," I said, "but it's been a rather harrowing night and I think I'd prefer to just turn in. Could you drop me in the village?"
\tIf she was disappointed, she didn't show it. "Certainly," she said.
\tWe drove for a time in silence. "How long are you staying in Ireland, Alvin?" she asked at last.
\t"I haven't decided yet," I replied.
\t"You must come and see me at Church House before you go. Hopefully, I'll have the old place spruced up by then. I'll save you a brandy, and perhaps we can play a few games of Snakes and Ladders."
\tI smiled at her. "I prefer games of skill rather than chance."
\tShe smiled back. "Well, I'll see if I can't come up with a game that pits your skill against mine."
\tI nodded. "I look forward to it."
\tWe pulled up in the village square, and I got out of the car.
\t"Ta ta, Alvin!" she said, waving merrily. "Pleasure to meet you!"
\t"Good evening, Lady Patricia," I replied.
\tShe gunned the engine and sped off into the night. I walked across the street and into the pub, a place called The Clever Worm. All conversation stopped when I entered the pub, but I'm used to that. I walked over to the bar and climbed up on a stool. "Whiskey, please. Neat," I said to the bartender. He recovered himself and went to get my drink as I took out my cell phone and called Sean.
\t"How's it goin'?" he asked.
\t"It's been interesting," I said. "How's Katie?"
\t"She's all right now."
\t"In that case, could you come pick me up? I'm at The Clever Worm."
\t"What? How'd ye get there?"
\t"I bummed a ride with Lady Patricia Whyte. Do you know her?"
\t"I've heard of her. She owns Church House. Never met her, though. I understand she's been away for some years."
\t"Well, she's back. Come get me, please."
\tMy whiskey had arrived, and I bolted it down. Good stuff. I looked around the pub as the drink warmed my stomach. Things were starting to return to normal, though there were still a few furtive looks in my direction. At one table, a trio of locals weren't bothering to be subtle, staring at me openly as they drank. I ordered a Guiness from the bartender. It was as dark as black coffee, with a head the color of cocoa that you could float a quarter on. I sipped it, savoring the smooth, bitter taste, and waited for Sean.
\tHe arrived about fifteen minutes later. Katie was with him. I hopped down off my stool, and we went over to a booth and sat down.
\t"Yuir hurt!" said Katie, noticing the wound on my arm.
\tI nodded. "I was attacked."
\t"By who?" asked Sean.
\t"Would you believe a knight on horseback?"
\tKatie gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. I looked at her. "Does that mean something to you?" I asked.
\t"Was he missin' his eyes?" she asked.
\tI nodded.
\tShe swallowed, and her blue eyes were wide in her pale face. "Th' Eastern Knights!"
\t"Th' what, now?" asked Sean.
\tShe turned to him. "It's a local legend. Th' story goes a group o' Knights Templar once lived in a priory near here."
\t"I've heard of the Knights Templar," I said. "They figure in a number of goofy conspiracy theories dreamed up by people who like that sort of thing. Their order was disbanded by the Pope, wasn't it?"
\tSean nodded. "In 1312, on charges o' witchcraft an' heresy. All the Templars in France were burned at the stake."
\t"Aye," said Katie, "but some escaped an' came here. They used occult knowledge they'd learned in Egypt durin' th' Crusades to make themselves immortal!"
\t"That explains why the one I saw had an ankh on his tabard," I said. "It's the Egyptian symbol of eternal life."
\t"Aye," said Sean. "No Christian knight in the Middle Ages would wear a pagan holy symbol on his chest. Th' church frowned on that sort o' thing."
\t"But why did you think he'd be missing his eyes?" I asked Katie.
\tKatie took a deep breath. "Accordin' to th' legend, th' Eastern Knights prolonged their lives with Satanic rituals, kidnappin' local girls for human sacrifice an' drinkin' their blood."
\t"Local girls like Mary," I said.
\tShe nodded. "Eventually, th' people rose up an' killed th' lot o' them. But first, they burned out their eyes, so they could never find their way back from Hell."
\t"A grisly little piece of medieval folklore," I commented. "But why are they suddenly riding around the countryside murdering people again after being dead for seven hundred years?"
\tKatie shrugged. "I dunno. I was na even sure th' story was true, until now."
\t"This priory the knights lived in. Does it still exist?"
\tShe nodded. "What's left of it. Th' ruins aren't far from where Mary's body was found."
\t"I should check them out, then. Preferably during daylight."
\t"What do ye think is goin' on, Alvin?" Sean asked.
\tI shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't had many dealings with the supernatural. I prefer to leave that sort of thing to people who specialize in that field. But those are in fairly short supply, so I guess I'll just have to improvise and hope for the best."
\t"Head's up," said Sean, looking across the bar. I followed his gaze. The three locals who'd been staring at me earlier were coming toward us.
\tI sighed. "Great. I take it the people here don't care for manimals."
\t"Alvin," said Sean, "yuir in a country where in some places it's still frowned upon for Catholics to associate with Protestants."
\tI slipped out of the booth and stood looking up at them as they closed in around me. "Anything I can do for you gentlemen?" I asked.
\tOne of them nodded. "Ye can sing 'Danny Boy' for me."
\tI blinked. "What?"
\tHe grinned a gap-toothed grin. "I used ta listen to those records when I was a wee lad, but they were all American songs. I've always wanted ta hear 'Danny Boy' sung in one o' those cute, squeaky chipmunk voices."
\tI didn't know whether to be insulted or flattered. "You know that wasn't me, right?" I asked him. "I wasn't alive when those records were made. Those were sped-up human voices."
\t"Are ye sayin' ye can't sing?" the man asked, looking a bit disappointed.
\t"No, I can sing. It's what I was made for."
\tHe shrugged. "Then what difference does it make?"
\tI couldn't argue with that, so I launched into a rendition of "Danny Boy." After a moment, the man who'd asked for it joined in. His voice wasn't half bad, and soon I found myself starting to tear up, partly because it's a sad song, but mostly because it brought back memories of singing with my brothers. Of course, the men around me didn't know that. They just thought I was moved by the lyrics, and that clearly meant something to them. When it was done, they all shook my hand, thanked me, and asked me if I'd like to play a game of darts with them, which I did.
\tI was nice. I let them win.

\tI had a hell of time getting to sleep that night. I don't know if it was due to some residual horror from my encounter with the Templar, or because the lyrics of "Danny Boy" had struck too close to home, or because I'd gotten used to sleeping with Julie next to me. Or maybe it was just the five-hour time difference between Ireland and Millennium City. Whatever the reason, I awoke the next morning in the guest bedroom of Katie's house feeling tired and lousy. I sat up in bed, rubbing my face in the darkened room. It seemed as if every shadow held some terrible secret I didn't want to know. I climbed down from the bed, went to the window, and pulled open the curtains, flooding the room with light. The fields around the house were shrouded with a gray veil of early morning mist, above which trees, bushes, and fence posts floated serenely. The whole landscape had an ethereal, otherworldly quality, and it was easy to imagine faeries frolicking in it. Who knows? Maybe they were. After what I'd seen last night, I was prepared to believe anything.
\tI changed the dressing on my arm wound, pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants, and went down the creaking stairway to the kitchen. The smell of sausage, eggs, and coffee filled my nostrils and made my mouth water. I entered the kitchen to find Sean having breakfast at that huge wooden table while Katie stood at the stove, cooking. They both glanced over at me as I came in.
\t"Top o' the mornin' to ye!" I said, with a wave.
\tSean smirked. "Not everyone in Ireland says that, Alvin."
\tI shrugged. "Sorry, I couldn't resist."
\t"He'll be sayin' 'Sure an' beggorah' next," said Katie, turning the sausages with a fork. "All you Yanks know about Ireland are th' cliches ye've seen on movies an' th' telly."
\t"Technically, I'm not a Yank," I said as I climbed up onto a chair at the table. "I was born on Monster Island. I just live in America. But I do think I know a little more about your country than the average Yank does."
\tKatie gave me a look. "Really? Tell me who Michael Collins was, then."
\t"He was an Irish revolutionary who fought in the Easter Rebellion of 1916," I replied promptly. "In Ireland, he's revered as a hero. In England, he's considered a terrorist."
\tKatie frowned and turned back to the sausages.
\tSean chuckled. "She probably thought ye were goin' ta say he was an American astronaut."
\t"Well, that would be true, too, but I had a strong suspicion I knew which Michael Collins she meant."
\tKatie came over with a plate of scrambled eggs and sausage and set it down in front of me. "Thank you," I said. "Could I trouble you for some of that coffee? Black, no sugar." She went back to the stove, and I started shoveling the eggs into my mouth.
\t"Ye look like hell, Alvin," Sean commented.
\t"Thanks," I said. "I didn't sleep well."
\t"Was th' bed not comfortable enough?" asked Katie, coming back with my coffee.
\t"The bed was fine. I guess I'm still a little shaken up after what happened last night."
\t"I'm not surprised," said Sean. "It's not every day one encounters one of th' undead."
\t"Actually, that happens a lot more often than you might think to people in my line of work." I turned to Katie. "Would you feel up to taking me to the ruins of the Templars' priory?"
\t"If ye like," she said, indifferently. "I dunno what ye expect ta find, though. There's nothin' there. Jus' some crumblin' old walls."
\t"That maybe so," I said, "but it's the only lead we have."
\t"What if there's more like the one that attacked ye last night?" Sean asked.
\t"Undead tend not to do very well in daylight," I said.
\t"Yuir sure about that, are ye?"
\tI scowled at him. "Of course I'm not sure! I have no idea what we're dealing with!" Then I sighed. My lack of sleep was making me irritable. "With science, there are rules. Certain things are possible, and certain things aren't possible. But when magic is involved, all bets are off. Literally anything can happen. Beloved children's cartoon character comes to life and flies around Millennium City fighting crime? Sure, why not?"
\tSean grinned. "Yuir based on a cartoon character, an' ye were brought ta life by science."
\t"You know what I mean. Magic is a rationalist's nightmare. There's no way to predict what follows from what, and the rules change depending on the time and place. It's a snake pit of illogic and conflicting facts." I shook my head. "I should probably call Nighthawk and let him know what I've discovered so far. That way, if anything happens to me, he and Lady Nighthawk will be able to pick up where I left off."
\t"That's a cheery thought," said Sean, glumly.
\t"That's the job," I said.
\tI took out my cell phone and made the call in the living room while Sean and Katie cleaned up in the kitchen. Then I called Julie. It was the middle of the night in Millennium City, but she picked up immediately. I told her I was fine and the investigation was proceeding uneventfully. No, I didn't know yet when I'd be coming home. Yes, Ireland was very pretty. I love you too. Goodbye.
\tI sighed as I walked back to the kitchen. I hated having to lie to Julie about what was going on, but there was no point in giving her anything to worry about. Either I'd be okay or I wouldn't. I looked up at Sean and Katie.
\t"Okay," I said. "Let's go."

\tKatie drove Sean and me out on the road that went nearest the ruins of the Templars' priory. We parked the car by the side of the road and went the rest of the way on foot, which took a good hour. I was in costume again, because I'd be damned if I was going to face another one of those things at less than my full strength.
\t"So, ye all dress like that, do ye?" Katie asked me as we walked through the dense woods. "You, Nighthawk, an' Lady Nighthawk?"
\tI nodded. "This is the uniform of Team Nighthawk, and I'm part of the team."
\t"An' ye don't think it looks a bit, ye know, silly?"
\tI shrugged. "It's a little theatrical, but it serves its purpose."
\t"What purpose would that be?"
\t"Just like the uniform of a police officer. It creates an image that people can identify and trust, and that bad guys respect and fear."
\tShe put her hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle.
\t"Did I say something funny?" I asked.
\t"Not ta be mean, Alvin, but it's hard ta imagine anyone fearin' you."
\tI looked up at her and smiled. "I use that to my advantage. People tend to underestimate me because of my size and appearance. They don't usually make that mistake twice."
\t"What made ye decide ta get inta th' hero business?" she asked.
\t"On Monster Island, the strong brutalize the weak. I don't agree with that philosophy."
\t"So ye take the law inta yuir own hands?"
\t"I work with the law whenever I can," I said. "Police Chief Surhoff is a friend of mine. But I can do things the law can't."
\t"Like breakin' inta places an' searchin' 'em without a warrant?"
\tI nodded.
\t"Doesn't that make ye a vigilante?"
\t"I'm not judge, jury, and executioner, Katie. Once the bad guys are caught, I turn them over to the authorities to deal with as they see fit. At that point it's out of my hands. Administering justice isn't my department."
\t"Have ye ever killed anyone?"
\tSean shot her a look. "Katie! What a thing ta ask!"
\t"It's okay, Sean," I said. I looked up at her. "Yes, I have. On Monster Island, I killed a lot of people, because that's how you stayed alive there. But I haven't killed anyone since I started wearing this costume, and I hope never to do so again. Nighthawk believes that all life is precious, and I honor that belief."
\tWe walked the rest of the way in silence.
\tAfter a time, we broke out of the forest and into a more open area. There before us stood what was left of the Templars' priory. Only one wall was still intact, a great pointed structure with three narrow Gothic windows near the top, the glass in them long gone, gazing down at the ruins like watchful eyes. They reminded me of the empty eye sockets of the Templar I'd seen. The other three walls were in various stages of collapse, the mossy ground of the interior littered with fallen bricks. There were also the remains of some low side buildings. They were mostly little more than foundations, but one seemed to have weathered the centuries surprisingly well, with a row of empty windows looking out over the weedy courtyard of the priory, though the roof had long ago rotted away to nothing. There was no sound save for the wind whistling through the empty windows, and over the whole scene hung an aura of inutterable sorrow and loneliness, as if the place were penitently praying for forgiveness for the terrible things that had been done here, things that had caused it to become abandoned and shunned so very long ago.
\t"Wow," said Sean, breaking the spell.
\t"Yeah," I said. I started walking toward the ruined priory, my cape whipping about in the wind, Sean and Katie following along behind me.
\t"The grass has been trampled," I said. "Someone's been here, recently. Probably a lot of someones."
\t"The knights, ye think?" asked Sean.
\tI knelt and inspected a footprint in a patch of mud. "Not unless they've taken to wearing modern hiking boots."
\t"Looks like there was a fire," said Katie, pointing at a blackened area ahead of us in the center of the courtyard. We walked toward it. It was roughly circular, about ten feet across, and strewn with ashes.
\t"Campers?" Sean suggested.
\t"It's too big to have been a campfire," I said. "Looks more like the remains of a bonfire."
\t"Why would anyone build a bonfire out here?" Katie asked.
\tSomething at the edge of the ashes caught my eye. I went over, picked it up, and examined it. "I'm not sure why, but I think I know who."
\tSean and Katie came over to me. In my fingers I was holding the stub of a black cigarette. There was some gold lettering along the side. I took out my magnifying glass and peered through it.
\t"It's Turkish," I said. "A very expensive brand, if I'm not mistaken. And there's lipstick on it, a color I've seen before—on the lips of Lady Patricia Whyte."
\t"Patrica Whyte?" asked Sean. "How is she mixed up in this?"
\tThe answer to that would have to wait, because suddenly the air was pierced by a scream from Katie. Sean and I both whirled around to see what had provoked it.
\tThere, about thirty feet away, stood the cause.
\tIt was eight feet tall if it was an inch, with a massive chest, broad shoulders, and long arms that terminated in huge hands with three thick fingers. In basic form it was humanoid, but with digitigrade legs ending in ebony cloven hooves. It wore no clothing, but its entire body was covered in dark greenish fur, a thick mat of which hung down from its loins halfway to its knees. Its head was that of a giant deer, with an impressive rack of antlers. The creature gazed down at us, its yellow eyes glowing balefully.
\tFor a long moment, the three of us just stood staring at the cervine apparition in dread anticipation. Then its eyes fixed on me, and it made a series of whistling trills that didn't sound like anything that should be coming from the mouth of a deer. It paused, continuing to gaze at me, as if it were waiting for something. I turned and looked at each of my human companions. "Any idea what this thing is?" I asked.
\tSean shook his head. "None. There's lots o' magical creatures that supposedly inhabit Ireland, but this does nae look like any I've ever heard of." Katie didn't reply, apparently too frightened to speak.
\tThe deer-creature repeated the trilling sounds, and its eyes narrowed slightly. Then it turned its attention to Sean and spoke in a voice that was so low-pitched it was almost beneath the threshold of hearing. The language was foreign to me, consisting of soft, lilting syllables.
\tKatie gasped. "It's speakin' Gaelic!"
\t"Do you understand it?" I asked.
\t"No, but I recognize it. If my grandma was here, she could understand."
\tThe creature made a low growl and spoke again in another language, one that we all recognized immediately.
\t"That's Latin!" exclaimed Sean.
\t"Can you tell what it's saying?" I asked.
\tSean nodded. "It wants to know why ye aren't answering its greeting."
\t"Me? Why should I know what it's saying?"
\tSean addressed the creature in Latin. Amazingly, its reply made the young archaeologist giggle. I looked up at him in puzzlement. "What did it say?" I asked.
\t"It thinks you're a pooka!" This made Katie laugh as well.
\t"A pooka?" I asked, baffled.
\t"It's a kind o' faerie," said Katie. "They usually take th' form o' small animals."
\tI probably would have found that funnier if I'd had any idea how the creature would react to finding out I wasn't a pooka. As it was, we were still completely in the dark regarding its intentions.
\t"If it thinks I'm a faerie," I said, "then it follows that it's probably one too. And I know enough about faeries to know they're not always benevolent."
\t"Aye," said Sean, looking at the creature nervously. "Some are downright deadly."
\t"How does one defend oneself against a faerie?"
\t"Traditionally, wi' iron," said Sean.
\tKatie nodded. "They can't stand th' touch o' it."
\t"Does steel count?" I asked.
\tSean shrugged. "I dinna know."
\tI tried to think if I had anything iron on me. Nothing immediately sprang to mind. "Anything else?"
\t"Dependin' on th' legend, bells, Christian holy symbols, clothes turned inside out . . ."
\tI looked up at Katie. "You wear a crucifix, don't you?"
\tShe nodded. "It's hangin' aroun' me neck."
\t"You might want to keep it ready."
\tThe deer creature apparently decided it had had enough of being left out of the conversation. It raised one thick-fingered hand and traced a series of glowing symbols in the air before it. The symbols faded quickly. Then it spoke again in that inhumanly deep voice. "Bres can understand you now."
\t"Bres?" I said. "Is that your name?"
\tHe nodded. "Why did you not reply when I addressed you, pooka?"
\tI shrugged. "I didn't feel like it."
\tBres growled again and asked, "And since when does a pooka fail to show respect to one of the Tuatha de Danann?"
\tI heard an intake of breath from Sean. Apparently, that meant something to him, but to ask now that Bres could understand us would have given the game away.
\t"I beg your pardon, great Bres," I said, bowing to him. "I was merely jesting with you."
\tBres did not appear amused. He folded his arms imperiously across his green-furred chest. "Your jest was in poor taste, pooka. In the future, you will spare Bres your feeble attempts at humor."
\t"As you wish, my lord," I replied. I turned to my companions. "These are my friends, Sean and Katie."
\t"How do ye do, sir?" asked Sean, bowing to Bres. Katie performed something approaching a curtsey.
\tBres's cervine face actually managed to smirk. "Pookas. Always dallying with mortals." He regarded Sean and Katie for a moment. "Their garb is strange." Then he gestured at Sean. "That one speaks the tongue of Rome. Are they Romans?"
\tI glanced up at Sean, who nodded. "Yes, they are," I replied.
\tBres sighed. "Bres knew this would happen, ever since the one god came to drive out the many. This land is no longer ours. As we once took it from the Fir Bolg, so Rome has taken it from us. It is the way of things, Bres supposes." He looked at me. "Were you also awakened by the magics being worked here, pooka?"
\tI nodded. "And not only us. Dead things walk the land."
\tBres furrowed his brow. "Someone has been practicing the ancient rites." He looked around at the ruins. "There should be a temple here, to Glycon, the Roman snake god."
\t"You have slept long, great Bres," I said. "That temple is no more. These are the ruins of a house of the one god."
\tBres sniffed the air. "Bres does not sense his power here."
\t"Perhaps because it has been defiled by blasphemers."
\tBres nodded and began walking around the remains of the bonfire, his hooves flattening the grass beneath them. "It is still here," he said at last.
\t"What is?" I asked.
\t"Glycon's temple. Buried beneath the ground."
\t"They must've built th' priory on th' same site," said Sean. "It wasn't uncommon for th' early Christians ta build shrines on pagan holy sites, as a way o' displacin' th' old faith wi' th' new."
\t"Let the temple stand revealed!" bellowed Bres, and raised his arms. At once, the earth around us trembled, and moments later a geyser of dirt exploded upward. Katie, Sean, and I covered our heads as clods of earth rained down around us. In a matter of seconds, Bres had excavated a hole in the ground about six feet deep and twice that across, completely obliterating the remains of the bonfire. There at the bottom lay a mosaic picturing a gigantic white snake wrapped around a tree. Around the base of the tree danced naked human figures.
\t"Good lord!" said Sean, gazing down at the mosaic, his archaeologist's passion aroused. "Nobody knew th' cult o' Glycon made it all th' way ta Ireland! What a discovery!" He looked at Bres, who stood perched at the edge of the pit with his hands on his hips, surveying his work and looking every bit like a pagan demigod, which I suppose he was. "Th' things ye could tell us!"
\t"Bres!" came a high, screechy voice from the edge of the ruins, and we all whirled to look at the source. The speaker was a creature as tall as Bres but impossibly, ridiculously thin. Its body seemed to be composed entirely of intertwining vines. Its head was that of a pumpkin, with a long, thin, narrow jaw that hung downward, bearing many small, needle-like teeth, and two wide, horizontal slits for eyes, whose pupils glowed malevolently.
\t"Streng!" said Bres, snarling and flexing his fingers. "So you have awakened, too!"
\t"Yes, Tuatha," said Streng, striding toward us swiftly on his long, spindly legs. "I was roused from my sleep by the magic emanating from this place, just as you no doubt were. The power here grows with each sacrifice as Beltane approaches. But you shall not see its fruition!" Streng raised a stick-figure arm, and in his spidery hand formed a ball of flame, which he proceeded to hurl at Bres.
\tInstantly, a wall of earth shot up before the deer man, and the fireball splattered harmlessly against it. "You Fir Bolg never learn," Bres admonished him. "Neither of us can kill the other. Our battle is eternal."
\t"Then so shall be your pain!" screeched Streng, and thrust both his arms forward, a torrent of flame gushing from them to envelop Bres. The flames came close enough to Sean, Katie, and myself to warm our faces and make us draw back, but they washed over Bres, who howled and held out his hands before him. A small stone appeared between them, quickly growing into a massive boulder, which then shot forward, striking Streng squarely in the chest and knocking him onto his back. The pumpkin man jumped to his feet, seemingly unharmed, and held his hands above his head, summoning another fireball.
\t"Wait!" I said, holding up a hand. "Is there any chance you two could put your battle on hold long enough to find out who it was who woke you up?"
\tBres and Streng both paused and looked at me, and for a terrifying moment I thought I had just become the target of both their angers.
\t"You know this, pooka?" Bres asked.
\t"I think I have a pretty good idea," I said.
\t"Then take me to this person," said Streng, "and I shall destroy them!"
\t"That may not be as a easy as you think," I said. "There is powerful magic at work here."
\tStreng folded his arms. "I am Fir Bolg! I fear nothing!"
\t"Just give me some time to gather information," I said. "One day, that's all I ask."
\tBres and Streng gave each other a look of mutual loathing, then turned back to me. "Very well, pooka," said Bres. "You have your day."
\tI breathed a sigh of relief. "It's good that you can both listen to reason. Come with us." I turned and started walking toward the woods, and Sean and Katie followed me.
\t"Alvin," said Sean, "where are we takin' them?"
\t"I need someone to keep an eye on them while I check out Church House," I said.
\t"Ye want me ta let these things inta my home?" asked Katie, aghast.
\tI glanced back at Bres and Streng. "Why not? They seem friendly enough."
\t"Friendly? They're monsters!"
\t"Right now, they're muscle, and we're going to need all of that we can get."
\t"Suppose they start fightin' again?" Sean demanded. "They could demolish her house! Not ta mention kill us both!"
\t"Streng mentioned that there had been sacrifices," I said. "I'm betting he meant of the human variety. If that's true, then there's more than just our lives at stake here. He also mentioned Beltane, a Celtic holy day. That's May 1st, which is tomorrow. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen then. The only way we're going to learn what it is is for me to get inside Church House and find out what Lady Patricia is up to."
\t"While we babysit a pair o' homicidal faeries?"
\t"Exactly."
\tHe shook his head. "Yuir askin' an awful lot, Alvin."
\tI looked up at him. "You brought me into this, Sean. If you want to see Mary's killer brought to justice, let me see it through to the end."
\t"I'm nae afraid, Sean," said Katie. "I'll do whatever it takes ta avenge my sister."
\tSean sighed. "Okay, then."
\tWe walked through the woods, followed by two faeries.
\tWhen we arrived back at Katie's car—which Bres and Streng regarded with puzzlement and suspicion—we were faced with the problem of how to transport two humans, a chipmunk manimal, and two rather large faeries in it. It turned out not to be as difficult as it seemed. Streng was able to fold up his boneless body, so he could fit in the back seat quite easily. On the other hand, Bres's massive frame and antlered head couldn't possibly fit inside, so we opened the trunk and had him sit in it with his hoofed feet hanging out, which would give anyone we passed on the way quite a memorable sight. Hopefully, they'd attribute it to whiskey or something. Sean and Katie took the front seats while I sat in the back beside Streng, and off we went. The pumpkin man kept looking down at me as we drove, but his orange face was completely unreadable.
\tWe reached Katie's house without incident, and once again the two Iron Age faeries were completely baffled by their modern surroundings. Katie politely asked them if they'd like anything to eat or drink, but they both replied in the negative. I noticed that they kept glaring at each other, their mutual hatred apparently just barely being held in check, and I whispered to Sean and Katie that it might be a good idea to keep the pair separated. They agreed, and Sean got Bres to follow him into the kitchen, where he started barraging the Tuatha with questions about ancient Ireland, while Katie kept Streng occupied in the living room by asking the Fir Bolg to talk about himself and his people.
\tWith the faerie situation seeming stablized for the moment, I bid them all goodbye, went back out to the car, got in, and headed off to Church House, whose directions I'd gotten from Katie. I know what you're thinking. How did my feet reach the pedals? Well, I'd actually planned for the eventuality that I might have to drive myself at some point. I'd brought two extensions that I could strap on my feet, enabling them to reach the pedals. I could still just barely see over the dash, and to a casual observer it might look as if there was nobody driving, but I could manage all right.
\tEven though I had a standing invitation from Lady Patricia to visit Church House whenever I wanted, I didn't think I'd learn much by confronting her directly, since I still didn't know what was going on and I had no real evidence of any wrongdoing on her part. Therefore, I parked the car about a quarter mile from Church House and approached the place through the woods, intending to break in.
\tChurch House turned out to be a huge, brooding Gothic mansion that looked like everyone's idea of a haunted house. All the windows were shuttered, and it appeared quite neglected. The grounds hadn't been tended to in some time either and were overgrown with weeds and shrubs. That made it easy for me to approach unseen. There was a garage, separate from the house, apparently converted from what had once been a carriage house. The front was open, and Lady Patricia's silver Jaguar sat inside. I circled around to the back of the house. I knew that old houses like this usually had a back door leading into the kitchen, to make it easier to bring in food and dispose of waste. I found it, picked the lock, and let myself in.
\tIt was dark inside, as one might expect in a house where all the windows were shuttered. I took out my flashlight and played the beam around. Just a kitchen. Rather large, but nothing unusual in evidence. I went to the refrigerator and opened it. Meat, meat, and more meat. Lady Patricia didn't eat her veggies, it seemed. I closed it and went to the pantry. It was empty. I wondered if she might be keeping a pet tiger somewhere.
\tFrom the kitchen, a passage led into the dining room. There was a long table surrounded by twelve chairs. The table and chairs were all draped with sheets, making it look as though someone was holding a banquet for ghosts. Above the table hung an enormous crystal chandelier. On the opposite wall was a fireplace, cold and empty. I played my beam across the hardwood floor. It was covered with a fine layer of dust. Nobody had been in this room for years.
\tI left the dining room and went out into the main hall. I expected it to be lined with suits of armor, or portraits with staring eyes, or other haunted house tropes, but it was virtually barren, the only decoration being a long Persian carpet that ran its entire length and a side table holding an unlit candelabra. I walked silently down the hall and came to an opening that led into what was evidently a parlor.
\tHere, too, the furniture was all covered with sheets. There was a Persian carpet covering most of the floor, a fireplace that connected to the one in the dining room, and a pair of scarlet silk curtains hanging on one wall with golden drawstrings hanging down beside them. They looked too high to be covering a window. I went over to the drawstrings and pulled one, and the curtains parted to reveal a painting of a white snake wrapped around a tree with naked human figures dancing around it—an exact duplicate of the mosaic Bres had uncovered back at the ruins of the priory.
\tI stared at the painting for a moment, trying to assess what this meant. How could Lady Patricia have a painting with the same image displayed on a mosaic that had been buried for centuries? I supposed it was possible that the image existed elsewhere. Bres had said Glycon was a Roman god. Presumably, there had been other temples to him scattered across the Roman Empire, which meant it might be possible to find this image anywhere in Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East. Hell, she could have seen it in a book or on the Internet. In any case, this was the first clear evidence linking Lady Patricia to the cult of Glycon. I took out my cell phone, snapped a picture of it, and uploaded the image to my account, along with a mention of where it had been taken, so the rest of Team Nighthawk would have access to it in case anything happened to me. Then I drew the curtains over it and went back out into the hall.
\tAfter a little hunting, I found a door that led down a flight of stairs to the basement. I descended the stone steps, shining my flashlight ahead of me. It was pitch dark down here, and there didn't appear to be anything in the basement but piles of old junk. There was a heavy wooden door in one wall, however, and from behind it came the rank smell of human waste. I went over and tried to open it. It was locked. I picked the lock quickly and opened the door.
\tBeyond was a small room containing seven people, all shackled at the wrists and chained to the walls. They didn't look to be in especially good shape. Three were female, the other four male, and one of the men was Asian. There was a bucket beside each one for their sanitary needs, but other than that the room was bare. They all stared at me, blinking as I shined my light on them.
\t"Who's there?" one of the men asked, sounding terrified.
\tI shined my light on myself. "I'm Nightmunk. I'm here to rescue you."
\t"Gott in himmel, vas ist das?" another of the men asked. Apparently, he was German.
\t"He's one of those manimals," said one of the women. She sounded like an American.
\t"I don' care what he is," said one of the men, with an Irish accent, "as long as he gets us out o' here! There's a light switch on th' wall next to ye."
\t"Thank you," I said. I flipped it, and the room was illuminated by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. I went over to the Irishman and examined his shackles. "How long have you been down here?"
\t"Days!" he said. "She picked me up in a pub in Dublin. Then she bit me an' brought me here! I could nae move a muscle!"
\t"Lady Patricia bit you?" I asked, glancing up at him.
\tHe nodded. "She has fangs! She's nae human!"
\t"Neither am I," I reminded him, as I worked on the lock on his shackles. "Don't worry. I'm getting you all out of here."
\t"I'm afraid I can't have that, Alvin," came a familiar silky voice from behind me. "I have need of these people."
\tThe American girl gasped. "She's here!"
\tI turned around. There in the doorway stood Lady Patricia, wearing a remarkably slinky outfit consisting of only a black bra and panties, shiny black leather thigh-high boots, and a long, sheer black cape. Her short, dark hair was sculpted with styling mousse, with a little curl in the center of her forehead. She was leaning against the doorframe in a seductive manner, one leg bent, gazing at me with a predatory grin.
\t"Hello, Lady Patricia," I said, surreptitiously palming something from my belt as I spoke. "Come to offer me that brandy?"
\tShe laughed. "I'm afraid that offer has expired, Alvin."
\t"Look," I said, "let's cut to the chase. You know I can't let you kill these people. Furthermore, I've informed Team Nighthawk of all my findings. If I disappear or turn up dead, they'll come after you. And Nighthawk was a member of the Champions, so if anything happens to him, you'll be bringing all of them down on your head. Any way you look at this, you lose. So why don't you just slither away while I'm freeing your captives? That way, you'll at least have a head start."
\tShe raised an eyebrow. "My, we do have a high opinion of ourselves, don't we?" She idly ran a finger up and down the doorframe. "And how do you think the Champions would fare against the power of a god?"
\t"I'm pretty sure they've fought gods before," I said. "Is that what you're trying to do? Summon some moldy old Roman snake god?"
\tHer grin disappeared and her eyes widened. "How dare you? The cult of Glycon once ruled the Mediterranean! Governors and generals were among his followers!"
\tNow it was my turn to grin. "Too bad nobody's heard of him today. Just another forgotten god, abandoned and powerless."
\tHer face darkened as her anger swelled. "You blasphemous . . . little . . . freak!" She lunged, and as she did so, her eyes turned yellow, with vertical slits for pupils, and her mouth sprouted a pair of long, serpentine fangs. Fortunately, I had fangs of my own. I held up my gauntlets, blocking her attack, and popped my steel claws. She recoiled and stood crouching before me, arms spread, hissing and flicking a forked black tongue.
\tWe circled each other for a moment while the captives looked on in fear, knowing their fates depended on the outcome of this contest. She lunged at me again, and I blocked and riposted, but she nimbly evaded my claws. Damn, she was fast! Inhumanly so. But I was fast too. Plus my armor covered my entire body except my face, so there was nowhere she could sink her fangs into.
\t"You should have run when you had the chance, Lady Patricia," I told her. "Now you're screwed."
\tShe laughed, and her voice was deep and distorted, as if it had been run through a synthesizer. "You don't know much about snakes, do you, little rodent? They're nature's great survivors, full of all kinds of tricks!"
\tWith that, she opened her mouth and sprayed venom right in my face.
\tIt made my eyes burn like hell, and numbness spread swiftly through my body. Just moments later, I couldn't see and my arms and legs felt like lead. I tried to take a step and lost my balance, crumpling to the floor and lying there sprawled on my back, immobile and helpless. I heard moans of despair from the captives. Their hero had failed.
\t"Now," said Lady Patricia, her voice returning to normal, "if you're all quite comfortable, I shall tell you why you mustn't be afraid to die. To die so that the god may live is a privilege. If you know anything about history, you know that human sacrifice is as old as Glycon himself. Glycon, whose every death leads to a greater rebirth, growing ever mightier, ever more glorious, ever—"
\t"Please!" the American girl cried. "Just let us go!"
\tI heard Lady Patricia sigh. "Shit," she said. "You know, it's really very selfish of you, clinging to your insignificant lives when I'm offering you the chance to be part of something so much grander. Very selfish indeed." She sighed again. "Oh, well."
\tI heard each of the captives cry out in pain and then fall silent, but I was fairly sure she hadn't killed them yet. More likely she'd just bitten and paralyzed them for ease of transport to the ruins of the priory, where the actual sacrifices would take place. I didn't know much about magic, but I knew that these things usually have to be done in a very particular way. Then I heard her voice close to my ear and felt her breath on my face. "And you, my furry little friend," she said. "You shall have the honor of being the newly risen god's first meal. Just like nature intended." She flicked my nose playfully.
\tI wasn't afraid, partly because I'd accepted the likelihood of an early death when I'd signed on for this and partly because I'd taken the precaution of injecting myself with antivenom from my belt before we'd fought. It was designed to counter a wide array of toxins found in nature, so the chances were good it would work against the paralytic Lady Patricia had hit me with. The question was, would it work quickly enough?
\tLady Patricia exited the room and left me alone with her intended sacrifices. Their diverse nationalities suggested that they were probably mostly tourists. That made sense. Tourists wouldn't be missed as quickly as locals. The burning in my eyes gradually faded and my vision returned, but I still couldn't move. I started to wonder if the antivenom was effective against her poison at all. I still had no idea what she really was, so it was very much a gamble. I thought briefly about what people would say about me if I died tonight. Probably something like "Stupid little manimal who thought he could be a hero." Then I pushed that thought aside. My reputation wasn't important—all that mattered was saving these people.
\tA few minutes after she'd left, Lady Patricia returned, and her appearance had changed dramatically. She was now entirely nude save for a petite blue-green bikini bottom and a scaled skullcap that completely covered her short hair, and her skin had been painted the same blue-green color as the bikini. Together, the paint, the skullcap, and her eyes—once again snakelike—gave her the appearance of a humanoid serpent. She paused momentarily, standing over me and gazing down, smiling and flicking her tongue. Then she began picking up the sacrifices and taking them out of the room. She lifted and carried them effortlessly, though some were men considerably larger than herself. Finally, she came for me. She picked me up surprisingly gently, cradling me in her arms against her bare breasts as if I were a child.
\t"Do you believe in reincarnation, Alvin?" she asked me as she carried me upstairs. "I do. But then I am immortal, and I have seen the same souls inhabit different beings throughout history. I've seen you before, many centuries ago, in the time of my lover, the great emperor Carausius. Yes, I can see you now, on your knees in your armor, blindly worshipping your false god." She laughed derisively. "Fancy praying to a god who was nailed to a wooden cross and who locked up his brides in a convent. Did they really enjoy themselves, hmm? Poor little virgins, masturbating in the dark and then indulging in flagellation in penance for their sins until their bodies wept tears of blood. Captive virgins in the hands of an impotent god." Another laugh.
\tShe carried me out of the house to a van parked behind the garage and lay me down inside it alongside the other intended sacrifices. Then she slid the door shut, plunging us all into darkness. She climbed into the driver's seat and started the engine, and we began to move.
\tI thought about what she'd told me as we bumped along. I had no idea whether to believe any of it. Had I been a Christian knight in another life? I didn't believe in reincarnation. The logistics of it simply didn't make any sense. Where did all the extra souls come from as the population grew? I'd also never been particularly religious. If there was a god, he had stood by and done nothing while my brothers were murdered, which didn't exactly endear him to me, and the standard justification that their deaths had been part of some divine plan sounded too much like a cop-out. More than likely, her words had been nothing but the insane ramblings of a madwoman. While Lady Patricia clearly wasn't human, that didn't prove she was immortal. And even if she was, there was no reason to believe she'd really seen me in the body of a knight centuries in the past, as interesting an idea as that was.
\tI focused my attention on the task at hand. I tried moving my fingers and succeeded, at least a little bit. It seemed as if the antivenom was working after all, though it was sure taking its sweet time. I moved my arm, reached down to my belt, and fumbled with my cellphone. It was time to call in the cavalry.
\tWith fingers that felt as if they were made of wood, I rang Sean's number. "Alvin?" he said. "What's goin' on? Are ye all right?"
\t"Sean," I whispered, "get to the priory as fast as you can, and bring our two new friends. It's going down!"
\tI hung up and got to my feet, bracing myself against the inside of the van. There was a chance I could end this here and now, so I had to take it. Slowly, I moved up behind the driver's seat and popped my claws. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of stabbing a woman in the back, but she was a murderer, and there were innocent lives at stake. I drew back to strike.
\tUnfortunately, the van picked the exact moment I struck to hit a bump in the road. The lurch threw off my aim as I thrust my steel claws through the back of the driver's seat, so while I still hit her, it wasn't a killing blow. She screamed, and the van swerved to one side, throwing me to the floor. She slammed on the brakes and twisted in her seat, yellow eyes glaring at me hatefully in the darkness, fangs bared and dripping. "You little bastard!" she hissed. "Do you know how long it's been since anyone hurt me like that?"
\t"If it's been more than five minutes, then it's been too long," I said, standing up.
\tShe sprayed her venom at me again, but I was ready for it this time and dodged aside. She shrieked in frustration, threw open the driver's side door, got out, and heaved open the side door of the van. However, I'd already scampered into the front, intending to turn the key and floor it to spirit her captives away from her. Unfortunately, there were two problems with that plan. First, my feet couldn't reach the pedals. Second, she'd taken the key with her.
\tShe appeared at the open door, dangling the key between her fingers. She was bleeding from her left side where my claws had cut her. "Looking for this?" she asked, smirking.
\tThere was no real alternative. I exploded out of the van, slashing at her savagely. She dodged and weaved with inhuman serpentine grace, retreating away from the van and drawing me along. I could see we'd been driving on a dirt road with woods all around, drenched in moonlight. I kept slashing at her, but I was still slow from the lingering effects of her venom, and she evaded my blows easily.
\t"You are fun to play with, Alvin," she said, smiling, "and if I had more time I'd be happy to continue this, but unfortunately, I'm on a schedule. Ta!" And with that, she leaped over my head, thirty feet through the air, landing beside the van, and got back in the driver's seat. As I ran after her, she started the engine and hit the gas. I took out my grapple gun, but there were too many trees in the way and I couldn't get a clear shot. I broke out of the trees and onto the road just in time to see the red taillights vanish into the night.
\tSo, there I stood on a lonely country back road in rural Ireland in the middle of the night, watching as Lady Patricia Whyte and her van full of intended human sacrifices disappeared into the darkness. I sighed, wishing I could fly, or move at super speed, or teleport, or something. But I hadn't been gifted with superpowers, like some. All I had was the natural strength of my body and my mind. Some have said that makes my kind of hero even more heroic, but at that moment it felt like a definite drawback. I took a deep breath and began to run.
\tThe road seemed to stretch out before me endlessly as I ran along it as fast as my short legs would carry me. The full moon was high in the sky, shedding plenty of silvery light to see by. It wasn't long before I started to feel a dull ache in my thighs and calves. I began to pant as heat built up inside my body armor. I thought about the Greek soldiers at Marathon, running twenty-five miles and then fighting a battle. Hopefully, I wouldn't have to run quite that far. I paused a moment, removing an injector from my belt and shooting its contents into my neck. It was a chemical designed to help break down fatigue-producing lactic acid in my muscles. That was something those soldiers at Marathon hadn't had. I resumed running.
\tTime stopped existing for a while. There was nothing but me, the moon, and the road, and it felt as if it always had been that way and always would be. When you're running for long distances, you start to lose yourself in the rhythms of it—the pounding of your feet, the gusting of your breath. In a sense, you're not really there. There's just the sound and the motion, not really connected to you at all. I found my mind drifting, thinking about other things. I thought about Julie, about the two of us laughing together as we watched a bad movie and holding each other close in the night. God, what had I ever done to deserve her? She was so wonderful, putting up with me and all that that entailed. I resolved to take her on a vacation as soon as I got back. Assuming, of course, that I made it through this night.
\tAfter what seemed like an eternity—but which, according to my watch, had been only about half an hour—I saw a glow on the horizon, much too early to be the sun coming up, and also in the wrong direction. Most likely it was another bonfire. It was Beltane, and bonfires were traditional. I stepped up my pace, hoping I wasn't already too late.
\tThe road ended on the outskirts of the ruins of the priory. A tower of flame dominated the courtyard, the sacrifices bound to stakes around it, gagged and struggling. Surrounding the bonfire stood a ring of robed figures, chanting, with arms raised. It was a scene straight out of one of those occult thrillers that were made by the score in the Seventies after the success of Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist. Before the bonfire, with an albino boa constrictor wrapped around her nude blue body, stood Lady Patricia, leading the invocation, which was echoed by the throng in a deep undertone.
\tOh Glycon, who came forth from the darkness;
\tGlycon, who dwelt in peace in the Garden of Eden;
\tGlycon, who gave us the gift of knowledge;
\tGlycon, who suffered the wrath of the False God;
\tGlycon, who was driven from Eden by the False God;
\tGlycon, who was trodden under foot by the Son of Man;
\tGlycon, who returned to the darkness;
\tGlycon, whose kingdom is darkness;
\tGlycon, who makes safe our darkness;
\tGlycon, who is darkness;
\tGlycon, the immortal, accept this, our sacrifice:
\tDarkness eternal.
\tI stood there watching the rite, my chest heaving, my legs feeling as if they were on fire. I didn't feel in any condition to take on an entire cult by myself, but I also didn't see that I had any other choice. I extended my claws and began walking deliberately toward the ring of cultists.
\t"Psst! Alvin!" came Sean's voice from behind me. I spun toward him. He was standing at the edge of the woods, along with Bres, Streng, and Katie. I ran over to join them.
\t"You have no idea how glad I am to see all of you," I said, panting. I noticed Bres and Streng staring at me. "What?" I asked them.
\t"You are not a pooka," said Bres.
\tStreng nodded his pumpkin head. "A pooka would not pant so."
\tI sighed. "No, I'm not a pooka. I'm a mortal being of flesh and blood—part human, part animal. A lot has changed since your time. But none of that matters right now. Are you going to let these heathens summon a foreign god in your land?"
\tThe two faeries looked at each other, then back at me. "We shall not," they both said.
\tI grinned. "Then let's kick some ass!" I turned and charged toward the ring of cultists, Bres and Streng right behind me.
\tI hurled one of my throwing blades at the cultist nearest to me, taking care to use one with a dull leading edge. It struck him in the back of his cowled head, and he crumpled to the ground. That got the attention of the others. A cry of alarm went up, and a dozen robed figures whirled toward me, all with the same eyes and fangs as Lady Patricia. The snakes had returned to Ireland.
\tBres roared and laid into the snake cultists, slamming them with his mighty fists, while Streng cackled maniacally as he hurled globes of flame at them. But the cultists were stronger, tougher, and faster than normal humans and fought back like the fanatical zealots they were. I had to dodge and weave to avoid their blows, and I saw Bres with several hanging from his huge, green-furred body. Streng went down beneath a pile of them, his spindly form pinned by their combined weight.
\tBefore the bonfire, I saw Lady Patricia laughing as she watched the battle. "So, the guardian spirits of this land rise up against us, do they?" she cried. "A valiant effort, but doomed to failure! Glycon shall destroy you all!"
\t"Not if we don't let you summon him, you bitch!" I shouted, and hurled one of my throwing blades at the nearest sacrifice, who happened to be the Irishman I'd spoken to earlier. The blade cut through his ropes, freeing him from the stake he was bound to. He fell to his knees, his body apparently still weak from Lady Patricia's venom. Sean and Katie ran up through the chaos to help him while the majority of the cultists were preoccupied fighting the two faeries.
\t"No!" shrieked Lady Patricia. She tossed aside her snake and leaped through the air toward me. I had just thrown another blade to sever the ropes of the German sacrifice, and her attack bowled me over and sent me snout-first into the ground. I twisted around and slugged her in the face as she tried to bury her fangs in my neck. Her strength was phenomenal, and it was all I could do to push her chin up so she could neither bite me nor spray her venom at me.
\t"Alvin!" yelled Sean, running over to help me.
\t"No, Sean, stay back!" I shouted as I struggled with Lady Patricia on the ground.
\tHe didn't listen, of course, because he was a good and loyal friend. He seized Lady Patricia, trying to pull her off me. She hissed at him and sank her fangs into his right arm. He cried out in pain, falling on the ground on his back. However, his distraction did give me a chance to ram one of my claws into her stomach.
\tLady Patricia screamed and rolled off me, clutching her bleeding belly, and I got up and ran to Sean. He was paralyzed, eyes wide, staring up at the sky. I looked at the scene around me. Bres was besieged by at least a dozen cultists. For every one he knocked down, three more sprang up at him. Streng had managed to throw off the group that had dogpiled him and was hurling fireballs right and left, but he too was quickly being overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. He and Bres moved to stand back to back, to better hold off their attackers. Katie was running from stake to stake, releasing the sacrifices, but they were still too weak to walk, let alone fight. This was not looking good.
\tI heard a low hiss from behind me and turned toward it. Lady Patricia was kneeling there, still clutching her belly, but grinning her fanged grin in triumph. "Did you really think you could win, Alvin?" she asked me. "Glycon is all-powerful! Even your faerie allies cannot stop him!"
\tI was trying to think up a suitably pithy retort when I noticed movement at the edge of the circle of light from the bonfire. Immediately, a chill ran down my spine. All around us, the silent figures of the Templars, empty eyesockets staring from beneath their moldy hoods, began stepping into the light, swords clutched in their bony hands. Things had just gone from bad to worse.
\tThe Templars advanced slowly toward us from all directions, their blades glinting in the dark. The cultists, preoccupied with fighting the two faeries, didn't notice the Templars until one of them swung his sword, slicing into a robed figure and cutting it cleanly in half. As the cultist fell to the ground in two pieces, his brethren became aware of the new threat and began turning to meet it. My stomach felt queasy as I watched the top half of the bisected cultist reaching for the Templar's mailed legs while the bottom half lay a few feet away, kicking frantically.
\tI looked away and saw that the rest of the scene around me had also become nightmarish. The Templars were attacking cultists everywhere and striking them down, and the white smoke from the bonfire had coalesced into an enormous snake-like shape. It was wispy and transparent, but its mouth and fangs were clearly visible, and it surveyed the carnage being meted out with fierce, glowing eyes.
\tI called out to the two faeries. "Bres! Streng! Get the sacrifices to the van! We're leaving!" I picked up Sean and hoisted him over my shoulder in a fireman's carry, bearing him across the courtyard with his arms and legs dragging on the ground, doing my best to avoid both the Templars and the cultists. The bodies of cultists lay everywhere, many of them still writhing despite their clearly mortal wounds, while the Templars—silent and implacable as death—continued their methodical butchery.
\tI reached the van and heaved Sean's limp body inside, then turned to see how the others were doing. Bres was clopping toward me with four of Lady Patricia's intended victims in his massive arms, Streng was carrying two others, and Katie was dragging the last one. As she struggled toward us with her charge, one of the Templars moved to block her path. The knights weren't especially fast, but neither was Katie under the circumstances, and she froze as the Templar neared her, no doubt gripped by the same supernatural terror I'd felt the first time I'd encountered one.
\tI hurled one of my throwing blades at the knight, striking him squarely in his back, but it had no noticable effect other than creating a puff of dust, and I watched helplessly as the knight slowly raised his sword, preparing to strike down the petrified girl. Then Streng hurled a ball of fire at him, and he went up like dry tinder, his body wreathed in flames as he thrashed about wildly. Streng and I ran toward Katie, and Streng picked up the last of the intended sacrifices while I helped Katie toward the van.
\tI looked back at the bonfire. Most of the cultists were now dead, hacked up by the Templars, but the immense, misty form of Glycon still hovered over the scene, writhing and hissing. I saw Lady Patricia kneeling on the ground, clutching her wounded belly, the Templars closing in around her from all sides. As she hissed at them defiantly, they raised their swords simultaneously and struck, cutting her to pieces. My stomach heaved again as I saw her head rolling across the ground between their feet. Above the gruesome scene, the form of Glycon faded into nothing. Then, as one, the Templars turned toward us.
\tI looked up at Katie. "Can you drive?" I asked. "My feet can't reach the pedals."
\tShe nodded, shivering and hugging herself, and climbed into the driver's seat. I rode shotgun while Bres and Streng climbed into the back with Sean and the intended sacrifices. Katie gunned the engine and threw the van into gear, and off we sped, tires slinging dirt.
\t"Where are we goin'?" Katie asked me.
\t"Anywhere but here is fine," I replied.
\t"Is Sean all right?"
\t"Lady Patricia bit him, but he's just paralyzed. It'll wear off, eventually."
\tShe nodded and glanced at her rearview mirror. "We've got company!"
\tI stuck my head out the window and looked back. Behind us, the hooded figures of the Templars sat atop their horses, galloping after us and gaining rapidly. "Where the hell did those horses come from?" I asked.
\t"I think ye jus' answered yuir own question," said Katie, as the van bounced and lurched on the dirt road. Then she shrieked as the window beside her exploded in a shower of glass, a sword plunging through it and narrowly missing her head.
\tI opened the passenger door, intending to climb on top of the van to attack the knight who was menacing Katie, and had to dodge to evade a sword blow from another knight. He struck again, his blade cleaving through the metal door as if it were warm butter, shearing it in half and leaving me dangling above the road by one hand. I snatched a bola from my belt and hurled it at the horse's legs, and horse and rider went down in a heap. Then I pulled myself onto the roof of the van.
\tThe Templar on the driver's side was hacking at the van with his sword, cutting gashes in its metal skin as Katie swerved to try to avoid him. Gripping the roof of the van with one hand, I fired my grapple gun at his sword arm, entangling it. Then I hit rewind, and the knight was yanked off his horse and left hanging by one arm, his body banging against the side of the van. His weight was threatening to pull me off the roof, so I let go of the grapple gun, and he fell. I couldn't see what happened to him, but I hoped he was crushed by the rear wheels of the van.
\tLooking back, I could see at least a dozen Templars pursuing us. I could also see that the van's rear doors had been flung open. I crawled across the roof to the back of the van and looked down to see Bres and Streng standing there serving as rear guards, hurling stone and fire at the Templars as they galloped after us. I decided to give them some help, taking a particle mine from my belt. Those mines are tiny but potent explosive devices that can be set for timed or proximity detonation. Selecting the latter, I tossed it onto the road in the path of the knights. It exploded on impact, sending several of them and their horses flying. I repeated the performance and took out a few more. The remaining Templars apparently decided they'd had enough, and they brought their steeds to a halt, standing there in the road with their empty eye sockets staring at us as we sped off into the night.

\tOnce we got back to Katie's house, I started making phone calls while Katie tended to Sean and the others. I contacted both UNTIL and the Garda Siochana and told them everything that had happened. The latter told me to stay put and they'd send someone out to see me in a few hours. Since there was nothing I could do until they arrived, I decided to take a nap. It looked as if this was going to be a long night.
\tThree officers of the Garda Siochana arrived just before dawn and began interviewing everyone involved in the affair, taking us aside one at a time and getting our statements. Sean had recovered from Lady Patricia's bite by this time, and appeared to be suffering no ill effects from her venom. The officers were understandably surprised by the presence of the two faeries, but took their statements as well. Then the officers, Sean, and myself went out to the ruins of the priory.
\tThe bodies of the cultists were still there, strewn about the courtyard. Among them, we discovered, were the local chief constable and the coroner, which explained why they'd tried to hush up the strange circumstances of Mary's death, as it wouldn't do to have anyone snooping around in those woods. Of the Templars, there was no sign. Presumably, they'd crept back to their graves, hopefully to stay this time, with no further magic being worked in the area to disturb their rest.
\tThe Garda Siochana took custody of Lady Patricia's intended sacrifices, telling them they could contact their loved ones to let them know they were all right, but not to reveal any details of the case to them until such time as the Garda decided to make them public. I was told to remain in the area for a few days in case the Garda needed to speak to me, which was fine with me. After all that had happened, I could use a little vacation. Sean and Katie and I spent the time hanging around the village of Ennis with Bres and Streng, introducing the two faeries to the modern world, while the townsfolk gawked at them.
\tOn the morning of the third day, I received a call from the Garda saying I was free to go. I went downstairs to inform the others. Katie was in the kitchen with Streng, showing the Fir Bolg how to make plum pudding.
\t"That smells delicious!" I said, sniffing the air and licking my muzzle.
\t"Yuir welcome to have some, Alvin," said Katie, smiling at me.
\t"As tempting as that is, I should really be getting back to America. There're things there I've been neglecting."
\tShe grinned. "Like yuir girlfriend?"
\tI nodded. "Among others." I turned to Streng. "What are your plans?"
\t"Katie has consented to let me stay here for a time," the pumpkin man replied. "There is still much I need to learn about this world."
\tKatie nodded. "Th' Tuatha took his country from him. As an Irishwoman, I can understand how he feels. It took us centuries ta win our own country from th' English."
\tI looked at Streng intently. "I hope you don't intend to take that out on Bres."
\tThe Fir Bolg sighed and spread his spindly fingers, a surprisingly human gesture. "What would be the point? This is no longer his country, either. We are both foreigners here."
\t"Ye don't have ta be," said Katie, smiling at him. "I'm sure th' people of Ireland would welcome ye among them. Ye'd be celebrities!"
\tI nodded. "You and Bres made a pretty good team, fighting the Templars and the cultists side by side. With your powers, you could be heroes here."
\t"Bres and I may have united against a common foe," said Streng, "but we will never be friends. The animosity between Tuatha and Fir Bolg runs too deep. But perhaps we need not be enemies. This land is big enough for both of us."
\t"Well, that's something, anyway. Katie, do you know where Sean is?"
\t"Where else? He's outside, talkin' wi' Bres."
\t"Could you tell him I need a ride to the airport while I go upstairs and get my things?"
\t"I will do it," said Streng, and shuffled off.
\tI ran upstairs and stuffed my few belongings into my suitcase, then brought it downstairs. Katie and I went out through the living room to the front porch, where Streng was standing with Sean and Bres, the enormous deer-man's antlers scraping the awning.
\t"I am told you must return to your own land across the sea," said Bres, in that inhumanly deep voice of his. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Alvin. You are brave and fight well." He extended his huge three-fingered hand to me. I grasped one of his thick fingers with my comparatively tiny hand and shook it, feeling honored. There was no greater compliment a Tuatha warrior could pay someone.
\tI bid goodbye to Streng and Katie. Then Sean and I went to the car, got in, and drove off. I sat there, watching the green hills roll by, thinking about what I'd do when I got back to Millennium City. I'd have to take Julie out for dinner, definitely. Someplace where the food was spicy. Irish cuisine is filling, but rather bland. I should have asked Katie for some of that plum pudding, though.
\tAll this thinking about food was making me hungry. "Do you mind if we stop somewhere for a bite?" I asked Sean.
\t"Why not?" he replied.
\tSomething in his voice set off an alarm in my head, and I turned toward him. He was looking at me, smiling, and his eyes were the yellow eyes of a snake.
\tI felt my heart sink. "Oh god, no! Not you too!"
\tSean lunged at me, fangs bared. I blocked, wedging my forearm under his chin, and planted my foot on his chest, thrusting him back away from me. He lost control of the car, and we swerved over the embankment and plunged down the steep side. Then the car flipped and we began to roll over and over, glass flying everywhere as the windows shattered. I was jerked around like a rag doll, my body heaving against the safety belt as the world kept tumbling around me. At last, the car came to a stop, lying upside down at the bottom of the embankment. I unbuckled myself, falling to the roof among the broken glass, and scrambled out the side window.
\tSean was pulling himself out of the wreck as well, his nose and lip bleeding, and I didn't waste a second. I jumped up onto the undercarriage of the car and hurled myself at him, bowling him over, and we both went down. I swung my fists at him, hitting him twice before he could get to his feet. I was attacking recklessly, blinded by rage, furious at myself, at him, at the whole world. He got in a kick that caught me square in the chest, and I flew back about eight feet, landing on my back. I kipped up and we both crouched there, facing each other.
\t"Ye have no idea what it's like, Alvin," said Sean, flicking his forked tongue. "I can feel Glycon inside me. Join his family. Then ye'd truly have a place ta belong."
\t"Shut up!" I screamed, and ran at him, throwing a punch at his stomach. He grunted with pain and sprayed poison at me, which I just barely dodged. Then I laid into him, hitting him with punch after punch, sending him reeling backward. He may have been stronger and faster than me now, but he wasn't a trained fighter. He didn't know how to make the most of his gifts, while I'd learned from the best and before that had been tempered in the fight pits on Monster Island.
\tI hit him again and again, until he was lying at my feet unconscious and I was standing over him, panting, my fists red with his blood. I could have beaten him to death, and at that moment I genuinely wanted to. I knew Sean well enough to know he wouldn't have wanted to live like this. But if there was even the slightest chance he could be cured, I couldn't kill him. So I backed off and took out my cell phone.
\tI called the Garda Siochana and asked them if they still had Lady Patricia's intended sacrifices in custody. They told me they didn't—all the victims had been released and gone back to their own countries. I sighed and hung my head. They'd been bitten before Sean was. No doubt they were now like him and would begin building new cults of Glycon all over the world. Only the antivenom I'd taken had saved me from becoming one of them.
\tI told the Garda what had happened, and they said they'd have someone come out and pick up Sean and me. I put away my phone, sat down in the grass, and waited as the wind blew around me and ruffled my fur. There was nothing else to do.
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