Hey, look, I posted something other than gaming notes! Whoo-hoo!

(Okay, I guess this is where I find out who reads my livejournal... :)

For anyone who hasn't heard yet...

I'm going back to school! Finally!!!

I received the email from Kent State just before Christmas accepting me into the Masters program, but didn't want to post anything until I actually had it finalized. After spending several hours yesterday sorting out my class schedule and confirming things at that end, and several MORE hours today figuring out my work schedule, now I definitely believe I didn't dream up the acceptance email. Funny how watching your calendar disappear into colored blocks will do that.

Here's the update for anyone who wants details:

I'll only be taking two classes this semester - Bioenergetics and Molecular Biology. Unfortunately, I'll also be on campus five days a week. Sigh. Thank goodness gas prices have dropped, since I have lots of commuting ahead of me between school & work. Fridays are entirely school days, but that means I'll be working Saturdays. Oh, yes, and classes start in (gulp!) two weeks. So pretty much, you'll see me when you see me, and it likely won't be often, so enjoy it when it happens!

But yes, I really, really am looking forward to this!!!

:)

Ashley (to Ray, the illusionist, looking like a police box): “Dude! It’s a construction site! Make yourself rubble!”


Ray: “Do you summon demons?”
Cody (sliding an arm through Ashley’s): “Why would I need to summon them?”


Cam’s had a nasty month with girls…
Cam: “Maybe it’s God’s way of telling me I just shouldn’t date.”
Gloria: “Maybe it’s God’s way of telling you you’re gay.”


A: “You notice that no one ever rolls a 3 Initiative anymore”
J: “No, actually, I hadn’t noticed that.”
A: “Well, what’s your Notice roll?”


Pen: “Should we blindfold him first?”
Ashley: “Why?”
Pen: “I don’t know – it sounds like fun.”


Ashley: “Why doesn’t anyone believe I’m a fighter?”
Pen: “You look like a pinup.”
Ashley: “I AM a pinup!”


Pen: “Look, I’m very careful. I have my car, cab fare, a handgun, a couple of stakes, and a condom. I’m prepared for just about anything that may happen in Hammer Falls.”


Ashley (regarding Roland & Gloria being cute about axes): “Oh, enough with the ooey, gooey, already!”
Roland: “I thought you were all about the ooey, gooey?”
Maia: “No, I think she’s actually all about the sweaty, messy.”


Ashley’s mom: “Are you saying you’re consorting with a human sorcerer?”
Ashley: “No, if I was consorting with him it would be much more satisfying!”


Cam (to the accusation that he doesn’t notice the hot girls he hangs out with): “I’m moral, I’m not dead.”


Jared: “I have 24 unspent experience points.”
Angharad: “You can’t even buy up Strength with that.”
Sunny: “But that’s enough that you can buy Ashley as a slave…”


Pen: “I’m not a succubus.”
Jack: “You could be.”
Ashley: “She needs work.”


Jack interviewing Ashley: “What would you change if you weren’t under a curse?”
Jared: “115 pounds of pure hot.”


demon comment from Down Under: “There’s nothing like a Shyddaedach demon who’s read Malcolm X.”


“Chase is the only member of “Out In Front”.”
Pen: “The poor boy! Maia, go join that group!”
Maia: “No, I dance with that group.”


Hilary: “I can’t go to a rave with monsters on the Thursday night!”
Ashley: “Dalton thinks you’re hot.”
Hilary: “Did you invite Maia?”
Ashley: “Yep.”
Hilary: “Then it won’t last too long. Okay, we can go for a little while.”


Maia: “Why do they always run away instead of fighting us?”
Gloria: “We keep finding things that are afraid of teenage girls?”
Ashley: “I would be!”


Ashley’s aunt & uncle, about not hanging out with the Slayer: “It’s the nature of things. You should understand this, honey – remember when we went to see The Lion King?”

Notes from last time:

Maia & Ashley went to the Down Under club and convinced Wexford that Penarch & everyone else were killed in a double ambush when they tried to take out the Slayer; they’d left Ashley for dead (and she certainly looks bad enough), which is the only reason she survived.

Found info on the moons of Triad among Holderite artifacts at the Historical Society – there were three lanterns used in their barn as part of a ceremony (linked to ulamanxr??). Ashley took a book she found that detailed the ceremony – it mentions that the entire community would gather in the barn for it, and no outsiders were permitted to join them. Maia spotted a shaving kit with an engraving of the moons she wants to go back & get later; she unlocks a window for use later. The property the barn stood on was where Maia’s family farm currently stands…and is where our demon-dumping well is located. An earlier survey indicates that the well predates the Holderites – it’s been around a long, long time…

Murray tells Maia that if anything happens to him, info will be released that points her enemies straight to her family & friends – so she really, really doesn’t want to kill him off.


6/1/08

Maia, Gloria, Ashley & Cam sneak back into the Historical Society for the shaving kit. Pen waits in the car; she spots someone letting himself in the front door and radios to warn us. Cam is closest to the front door – she turns off the flashlight and ducks behind the desk. The rest of us do the same. Whoever it is doesn’t turn on any lights, heads into the room Ashley & Gloria are in, and goes right through to one of the back rooms. Uses a cutting wheel on one of the glass cases – we can hear the squeak. The only thing that might be of interest was the meteorite that landed in 1894. (Ulamanxr will be known by his crown of stariron or starfire) Crap – we want that!

When we hear him heading back, Gloria shines her flashlight in his eyes, deepens her voice as much as possible and yells at him to “Freeze!” Male, human, wearing a Stetson, in his 30’s – don’t recognize him. He freezes for a moment, and Ashley dives out & hits him with the fireplace shovel – he blocks with his arm, and there’s a metallic ring. He tries to take the shovel away – she lets go and punches him. Gloria drops the flashlight to the carpet and goes in to kick him. Cam doesn’t see Gloria, and moves in to tackle him. The man manages to block Gloria, but Ashley’s attack gets through. Cam tackles him and shoves the man back into the other room again. At this point, Maia has joined us and takes him down; Cam sees something around his neck start glowing. The man spots it as well and reaches for something in his coat; Cam grabs his wrist to stop him, and Maia knocks him out. We examine the coat & whatever the glowing device is: the glowing item is a small medallion on a chain around his neck. He’s wearing metal forearm guards and a heavily quilted vest. The meteorite is in a bag in his pocket, along with the glass cutting equipment. His wallet has an Indiana drivers license with the name of John Church. Maia takes the medallion – it glows. Gloria takes it – fades. Hands it to Ashley – glows. Gloria takes it back – fades…but then sparkles. Hands it to Cam – nothing. He hangs onto it. Ashley dropped Stane’s powder & speaks his name as directed. We leave.

Back to the Antiquarian: Stennit immediately recognizes it as a Stavion stone – it’s usually used as a demon detector, depending on how it’s primed. Detects by touch or proximity; usually primed with an individual’s blood with a drop of a demon’s blood, and they don’t generally last long.

Ashley calls Stane to let him know she was able to drop the powder in the fireplace at the Historical Society.

Next morning at the Historical Society – an EMS team is taking away Miss Cecilia, who got quite a shock when she arrived to find smashed cases everywhere, and blue-black smears over all the walls. One section of the wall has a stab mark in a diamond shape into it – looks like drove a spike into the plaster. One of the officers (Quintano) waits until he’s alone in the room, then examines the substance smeared on the walls more closely, tastes it, and looks thoughtful. At school – they announce a field trip to the Historical Society has been canceled

Murray calls Pen – has info for Maia, but thinks it would be better to pass it along through her. He just got word from reliable sources that several groups are coming into the Cleveland area for something big – not specifically vampires, just general demons, although they did request daylight-sealed quarters. They’re arriving tonight; he gives her the locations where they’ll be staying. He mentions that he just found out that the seer that was one of his most reliable sources had just been killed. He doesn’t know exactly what is bringing them all into town, although downtown is crazy right now. Pen assures him she’ll relay the information; he mentions that someone also said something about a sword coming to town – definitely an artifact and not a person, so Maia would probably want to keep an eye out for it.

Lunch at school – Chloe walks in carrying a desktop. She says there’s a message on it – they’re going to crown their king, and then they’re going to war. There’s a picture on it – there’s a man wearing a welding mask holding the crown, which is the source of light; the man who is waiting to receive the crown, and obviously bracing himself for the pain of the heat of it, is Wexford. Great… She also has a picture of a little town in the mountains with cracks in the ground and pencil sketches of soldiers fighting demons. Chloe picks up a pencil and starts adding to the picture, then adds a phrase: “Must have common earth, skyfire, and metal from another world, and the three forged together into the crown. Beneath the Moons and in the Cavern of Crystal he will be crowned and become our God.” She signs the picture “Hack”. Is the meteorite the skyfire, or the metal from another world? And what’s the other one? Caverns of Crystal = salt mines?

The man who broke into the Historical Society was most likely not working for Wexford – he was certainly human, and Wexford was just as certainly not employing humans. Stennit looked into John Church’s records – there was a John Church in Indiana, but he died at age 71, so that was simply a fake ID.

Control points:
- common earth – can’t control that one
- skyfire – any meteorite or just the one?
- Metal from another world - ??
- Crystal Caverns – salt mines? Does Wexford have control of them, or can the human-like and human-integrated demons be brought over to our side, since Wexford is against them as well? The community living in the salt mines is very definitely anti-Wexford and against the war, but we would need to find a way to contact them – Pen might be able to get through to them.
- Moons of Trion – specific lanterns – does Wexford already have them, or can we get them first? Where are they?

Pen has an entire race she could call on for support if she chooses, and might be able to use that. She goes off to another room to contact them. She manages to contact Race, and gets some information, but mainly gives him info to pass along to the others.

Maia & the others work on an email to send out to all the Salties, claiming to be from Wexford, detailing his intentions to use their caverns for the ceremony to crown himself as king & god and then kick off the war; we’re going to spam it to everyone in the salt mines with the subject line of “ulamanxr”, on the theory that anyone who isn’t a demon and not involved will assume it’s junk and delete it.

Look at the shaving kit – velvet-lined, which we remove. There is paper inside – the other part of the book, 3 pages of parchment. One sheet is a letter written in German, dated 1880, to Carlton from his uncle – warning him of the consequences if he lives outside the community; they have keep to themselves because it is the wisest thing. They don’t regret leaving the Sunlit Lands – they don’t need the sun, they have the moons. Could the salties be the descendants of the Hoelderites? That means they must already have the Moons with them in the salt mines. Ah-hah!


* * * * *

Email:
Dear Dwellers in the Dark:

I would like to update you on our current progress towards the elimination of the human vermin and the victory of the Ten Thousand races.

We have located accurate representations of the ceremony. While additional records of the ceremony are being sought for thorough confirmation of elements of the ceremony, we believe the ceremony as currently constituted is accurate and sufficient.

The elements of the Ulamanxr’s crown and the process of its creation have been defined and are in the process of being gathered. We anticipate having all the resources on hand in time for the ceremony.

The ceremony will be carried out in the salt caves, as required, on the appropriate date, for which we will need the Moons of Trion. To ensure the ceremony can be completed without any complications, deliver the Moons to the Down Under by March 1.

Following the ceremony, I, as your new God will lead all the loyal races in the destruction of the human vermin and the re-integration of our world with the true demon universe. I know you will be as excited at this prospect as everyone else. You will want to do your part in ensuring the ease of our return to a righteously ordered universe. Upon my ascension, I will reward your cooperation as amply as I will punish any who stand in my way.

Wexford

* * * * *

Stennit orders pizza; we’re sitting around eating when Murray calls Pen again & asks if we’re planning to do anything about the newcomers he’d told her about earlier. Tells her to turn on the TV – any news channel. We look – east side of Cleveland, the police were called to the scene of what sounded like a gang fight, a line of gurneys are being pulled out, 10-12 people were killed by what looked like machetes, in an abandoned building. One woman is being interviewed & saying that there was a lot of screaming, someone ran out & was pulled back inside, then she saw something run outside that looked like Edward Scissorshands. Murray doesn’t know who that group was – it wasn’t anyone who contacted him for a place to stay. He just wanted to give us a heads-up. Also mentions that he got a phone call warning that a demon named Tabitha is the one who killed his friend the seer, and he’d take it as a personal favor if we’d kill Tabitha if we find her. Pen asks what he’s be willing to give her for it; wants info on anyone looking for meteorites, specifically describes John Church to him. He hasn’t heard anything, but thinks he’s a demon hunter; says he’ll ask “Lil’s daughter Jenny” (the seer’s daughter?) and see if she knows anything.

Ashley calls her parents to get their help in sending the spam email; they are quite surprised to learn about all the developments. Her father tells her they’re expecting a new baby; she’s less than thrilled to learn they’re having a girl. Serious pouting ensues.

Stennit has Maia call Alexis to have her look up information on the skyfire and John Church.

Maia stomps downstairs to find Gloria & Roland sitting in the exercise room necking and chases them out. Pen chooses now to mention the new demon groups that Murray told her about; Maia & Ashley are ready to go kill things to work off aggravation.

Murray calls Pen – he’s found that someone has actually hired several demon hunters, which is unusual; they’re usually vigilante types. He asks for a photo of the one we found to try and get more info. John Church is actually Jack Carnahan – freelance hunter, usually works alone, generally uses a sword. He asked Jenny if his sword is the same as the one supposedly coming into town; she thinks it might be. Pen also contacts her police acquaintances and gets an update on the vandalism at the Historical Society – is filled in on the ichor all over the walls, the destroyed cases, and the hole where it looks as though someone stabbed the wall. She also hears an update that the gang fight in Cleveland has been taken over by a task force, and recognizes one in the background from the cleanup crew dealing with the song aftermath.

It occurs to us that the well may connect to the salt mines – we decide to check it out.

Race texts Pen – “8pm Dinner?” with the address of a restaurant. She tells Maia she’s going to meet him & gather info, and collects a list of things to ask him about. She arrives at the address when Chloe calls – her evil twin told her to warn Pen to be careful, that the cute guy who’s trying to get her to open up about something is likely to get more info from her than she gets from him. Okay, she’ll be careful.

* there is a convergence of demons in the area – government involvement in the killings in East Cleveland, trying to move assets into the area

* some sort of military unit, stationed near Appalachia, about to go full bore on something, 100 troops at least, but he doesn’t know who they’re going up against.

* He’s never talked to anyone who’s been in the salt territory, but there are different stories about what they look like. He heard some stories about fighting in Saltie downtown over an email that went around. He read it, and there’s no way the guy who supposedly sent it out actually did – he’s stupid, but not THAT stupid. However, it did trigger a lot of fighting.

* Moons of Trion – he’s having trouble tracking them down, but it’s clearly something the Salties have. He’s checked a variety of astronomical sources with no luck.

* Pulls up something on his PDA to show her – a painting. There’s a ravening horde at the base supporting a figure wearing a burning crown, reaching up with a key to a gate above him, and above that is what first looks like a storm cloud until you notice the teeth and claws. It was painted by a seer – “first the one ascends, and becomes the gate for the one who descends” – it sounds like he’s planning to let something else through.

* Wexford arrived in town about a month ago, traveling very light; normally HQ in Europe. If he’s pulling people in from overseas, they’ll probably be coming in from Singapore, Malaysia, and Milan, and he’s watching for them.

Pen asks him about accessing the mental net – she would need to be let in the first time, but it would reveal herself.

6/20/08

Ashley & Pen in a dark tunnel, being led by Toby (journalism student & demon), looking very nervous. “You really need to see it for yourself, but it hasn’t been like this for long. Its pretty crazy, so it would be a good idea to show some scale to show you belong.” Opens a huge door – into a much larger brick tunnel, 3-4 stories tall. Busy community; all families of demons who can’t pass for humans – residences, shops, etc. Toby is taking them to a store owner he knows well – Mr. March – who is plugged in to the goings-on of everything in downtown.

They arrive at March’s – the window is blocked up with wood, and the door is locked. Toby knocks; two slits open in the door – one for eyes and one for a crossbow. They see Toby and open the door. The woman inside is introduced as Eunice, March’s daughter. According to March, the Mayor of Downtown was taken by Wexford, and hasn’t been seen for several days. Ashley tells him that she’s the one who sent the email, and tells him about the ascension, and that if Wexford ascends with the crown of Ulamanxr, someone will open the hellmouth trying to stop him, and something really bad will come through.

Meanwhile – Maia & Gloria & Cam are patrolling. Maia can sense three – two ahead of us and one behind, and we see one up ahead with a lighter. We rush her; Cam waits until she clearly notices us, then Maia signals Cam and she & Gloria drop to the ground so he can fire at her. He misses, the girls are about to get up again when Maia realizes she’s not a vampire – the vampire is behind her. She yells to Cam to fire over her head, just as another vampire arrives and charges at Maia. She throws a hatchet at him, but he manages to catch it, grabs her hand, and starts chewing on her – she realizes just how soporific it really is when this happens, and suddenly understands why the victims rarely are fighting back when it happens.

Cam can’t get a clear shot on that one, so he fires at the one charging Gloria – it goes down, but he can’t tell whether it hit. Gloria goes after him with the axe, but the vampire manages to parry with a gravestone, then throws it at her. Gloria knocks it aside, then hits him with the axe. She is about to attack him again when he kicks her and throws her back. Gloria scrambles up again, but he has leapt to his feet and grabbed another headstone to attack her with.

Maia gets hold of one of her stakes and dusts the vampire feeding on her, and looks pissed. The woman is moving toward Gloria & her fight, while the third vampire is coming up behind her. He’s clearly spotted Cam, and is trying to stay low & out of range, but Cam manages to get a shot on him. He notices Gloria’s attacker about to hit her again, yells, and fires as Gloria takes advantage of the distraction to get some distance; he hits and knocks the vampire down for at least a little while. Gloria keeps going toward the woman and the vampire.

The woman is one row over, and is holding some sort of wand; tells Gloria to get down. The wand extends; Gloria ducks and the woman throws it at the vampire, hitting him in the face. Gloria whirls with the axe and dusts him.

Maia is going after the last vampire with the kukri; easily takes him out and joins us.

Gloria hands the woman back her cane – white – and we introduce ourselves. Her name is Kelly; she’s watching over her mother’s grave, who was buried earlier today. It looks like her mother was the seer that Tabitha killed – she had specifically wanted to be buried right here, tonight, etc., so it sounds like she had wanted Kelly to meet us. We go for coffee.

Kelly’s mom told her she would meet three people: one has a destiny, one has faith, one has fate. Each of us will save the world, individually and separately. Maia jokes that “the greatest of these is love”, but that wasn’t on the list – Kelly tells us that although she didn’t mention it, it’ll happen for each of us, although it isn’t always There’s a guy with a name like an Englishman, running the big plan; he’s been advised by someone that Maia is the greatest danger to his scheme, and worse yet, that she’s just plain the greatest danger, period. They’ve tightened up their targeting, but they’re still wrong, and it’s probably the same person they went after last time, although it’s not tonight. Kelly mentions that there is someone that Maia will make a special effort to protect – do it. Maia calls Freya; warns her to stay the heck away from Rhona as much as at all possible. She’ll do everything she can to protect Rhona, but everyone has to stay away, because anyone near her is a target.

Kelly can’t provide us with a completely accurate timetable, but it will be within 24-48 hours. 4 separate armies will be converging, but she doesn’t know who they all are, and if it ever sees daylight, it’ll be unstoppable. She asks us to get her to the bus station; she has to get back to Indianapolis.

Maia asks Kelly is Cam is likely to become a Watcher – he will, but she doesn’t know if it will mean the same thing when he gets there that it does now. Gloria asks if the well is actually a point of access, and if we should be either using it or blocking it. Kelly thinks a moment – don’t bother blocking it, wait till we’re done with it – Maia will know when; we don’t need to worry about that tunnel (hmmm – actually, she looks at Gloria and says she doesn’t need to know about that tunnel). We need to keep the general away from the army, and they’re stoppable; once they’re together, they’re unstoppable. Maia asks about how to find the people after the Slayer – use Rhona as bait. She doesn’t know who the four armies are, just that one army lives here, one has arrived, one comes from the south, and one is following them.

Kelly tells Cam to take care of his sister, Maia to take care of her mother, and Gloria to take care – gets on the bus and leaves.

Back to Downtown & March: Wexford’s bullies have been taking control of the area and forcing any citizens not working with them to keep to their homes. He’ll try to see if he can get them in touch with the Salties directly, and get word through Toby. It’s difficult right now, though – they get phone & cable usually, since the lines all run underground through their area, but Wexford has his people disrupting the communications.

March recommends they head home before it gets much later; Eunice checks the street outside first. The crowds are getting rowdier, so she tells them to hurry on the way home. It sounds like there’s a motorcycle race further down the tunnel; Toby takes them a different route to avoid it. A fight interrupts them – someone wearing the same type of clothing as Toby (hooded cloak, gloves, etc) is being kicked around, and he & Toby are both shoved into the ground. Ashley draws her kukri, straddles them, grabs, Toby and informs their attackers that “this one’s mine”. The other one’s hood falls back – looks human, about 23, smells of fear and salt – and Pen grabs him, goes all intimidatingly demon queen, announces “this one’s mine” and they stalk off with their hooded men.

One of the attackers tries to argue that he man belongs to the warlord – he caught him, and he can kill him for their amusement. Pen: “You know what would be very amusing – living.” They march off until they get around a corner, then haul ass to the nearest exit Toby can find, but Toby doesn’t have a key; however, their new friend does. It puts them in the basement of the municipal water plant – they get outside easily from there.

Introduce each other – he’s Mark. He’d had to detour through the tunnels, but didn’t think it would be that full down there. Ashley mentions that they’re trying to get in touch with the Deep Dwellers. Mark asks why – Ashley explains that they’re trying to stop Wexford. He wants to know why their friends aren’t with them - they can’t pass down there? What kind of freaks are they? (Yeah, he should talk.) Mark definitely thinks the uncles need to hear about this information, but they can’t get through to the salt mines in the dark – there are patrols out to catch anyone. They bring him home for the night.

All gather at the Antiquarian – debrief. His full name is Mark Holder-Banks; the owner of the shaving kit was his paternal fourth cousin, once removed. Yep, that’s where they all went. He’s having a lot of issues with us being a bunch of kids, and doesn’t think we can really do anything to help his people, until he discovers that we’re the ones who took out Penarch and her assassin hit squad.

He’s not involved in the Council of Parents, so he doesn’t know exactly what Wexford is saying to the Great Grandfather.

Mark & Stennit leave so the girls can discuss ideas for what to do about protecting Rhona. The best idea we can come up with is to identify the location we want the fight to be, get Rhona there, and keep her there somewhere safe until the fight is over.

Pen contacts Murray regarding the hit on Rhona – the Fedyahkin were given the hit, but they’re a race, not a group, so they each work alone. If Wexford gets really worried & hurried, he might just issue a bounty to his troops, but that seems unlikely, since that would distract them from other things.


6/27/08

Time to lure Rhona to where we want her. Maia texts her: “The truth is out there – look outside.” Rhona looks out the window to see Ashley flying past; she leaps up to run outside, followed by someone else who was on the couch. Maia is outside waiting and sees flashes from a camera; sends another message: “Come outside to find out the truth – it’s time to share.” Inside is Rhona & Amanda – puts the card in the computer and pulls up the photos. Amanda recognizes the phone number as Maia’s, and tells Rhona that if Maia is doing this, it’s for a reason.

Gloria & Maia are waiting outside the door – Maia will hold her while Gloria shoots her with a tranquilizer gun. Rhona comes out carrying a camera in one hand and a taser in the other. Gloria hits her with the tranq, Maia catches her as she falls & apologizes, then spots Amanda as she gets up. We try to reassure her, Maia tries to pull her along with us, but Amanda freaks out & breaks loose; Gloria hits her with the tranq gun as she starts to sprint down the road. Maia gets pissed about it for some reason, even though it was the quickest & quietest way of dealing with her.

We head to a location in the steam tunnels that we have previously scoped out (under the high school), settle in with plenty of supplies, and wait for them to wake up. Amanda wakes up in the middle of Ashley’s latest rant about her coming baby sister, the larva, and is getting seriously freaked out by us. Cody arrives around 2am with some suggestions to help keeps us all safer.

We give Amanda the quick summary – vampires are real, demons are real, there’s a demon army under the lake planning to raise a god that will also lead to the end of the world, the Slayer can stop them, but they think Rhona is the Slayer, so we’re protecting her.

Maia & Roland go out to check the perimeter while Cody keeps an eye on the camp; Cam & Ashley & Gloria get some sleep. As soon as Cam falls asleep, Ashley scoots over & curls up with him.

Gloria’s dream vision visits again – she tries to hold on it from her end as well. The tunnel is empty, and it’s the woman who is grainy, the picture is jumpy. They thinks it’s the last message. When the Slayer puts the crown on, every vampire on earth ceases to exist. No one should put it on – it lets the demon lord through. The army tried to fix it and made it worse. If it could be annihilated in an instant, it could have worked, but it only made things worse. Tells Gloria to make sure the major follows his orders; Collier could have stopped it, but he didn’t carry out his orders, and this is the last transmission coming from Salt Base. The crown can be destroyed once made, and can still be destroyed once activated, but it would take the fires of hell. The crown wants to be worn – it’s integral to the crown. You’ll know where you need to be; his army can’t reach him, a general without his army is just a man. Also, the ulamanxr is proof against any weapon forged by man – must be living to damage it.

Gloria & Roland head out on a coffee run, and call Pen to ask her to try to track down Wexford’s location. Gloria realizes that the planned location for the crowning might be the stadium (right on the lake, very convenient), but that’s not necessarily helpful right now. Cody sets up a spell to try and detect whether there is any kind of psychic link on Rhona – the demons got a sample of her hair and are tracing her that way; he finds the mark on her.

Plan – we shave Rhona’s head and use the hair to bait a trap for the bounty hunters (use it to bait a tripwire). Cut to – we have regrouped and vacated the tunnel, but the demons have tracked us there and have just found the remains of the camp – a few empty water bottles, some candy wrappers, and a sleeping bag with the hair artfully concealed at one end. The demons flip back the bag and trigger the explosives that Roland set up.

We are exiting the parking lot when Stoker shows up; we manage to stream past his car before he gets around to stopping us or noticing any of the weapons. Head to the Noble Bean. There are a few people out walking dogs; Ashley suddenly realizes that one of them is a demon hunter. He releases his dog – it grows in size as it charges toward us. Roland & Gloria were at the back of the group, so are right in front of it; Roland steps in front of her as Gloria pulls out her hatchet. It tries to get around all of them to go straight for Rhona, and does manage to dodge just about all the attacks, but Maia & Ashley take it down with some help from Cam. It takes a few attacks, though, with Maia & Cam beating the crap out of it. It sublimates, leaving behind only a collar.

It’s handler cracks the leash like a whip and another dog appears; it charges at Roland & Gloria. Roland charges the dog, Gloria goes after the handler. She catches up just as he throws another dog; dodges past and aims her hatchet at his leash. She hits it near the base; there’s a flash and she shears through it – the demon looks panicked and is staring over Gloria’s shoulder. She drops to the ground, and the dog has charged right back at the handler to tackle him – apparently it didn’t like being summoned. Roland has one dog biting him on the arm, and is punching it with his other hand; it knocks him down and looks around for another target. The only other person standing nearby is Amanda; Gloria spots it and yells to get its attention before it attacks. Gloria distracts it from Amanda long enough for her to scamper up a tree; it looks around, takes in the situation, and takes off. The third one is busy killing the summoner; as soon as it’s done, Maia waves the open collar from the first dog and offers to remove its collar. It comes over, she releases it, it vanishes in a burst of black smoke. The second dog stops at that sound and looks back, Maia waves the open collars at it – it comes back to be released as well.

Continue on to the Noble Bean – really need caffeine. There are a couple guys wearing Canadian Army outfits; Maia walks up to them and asks if their unit is in town, then asks if they have any artillery with them. Nope. It’s in Fullerton (only 12K from Hammer Falls) Crap, looks like Chloe was right about the Canadian army providing backup… The conversation goes rapidly downhill from there – they must think American teenagers are seriously nuts.

Ashley overhears their discussion after that – they really have to get back to their unit; their liason allies need to hear about this. Maia gave them her cell phone number to call her in case things get weird; they throw out the paper once they are outside.

Cody tries tracking down Rhona’s hair in reverse; head to his trailer. He clears the room and sends everyone else outside to get some distance, so as not to confuse the spell. We gets his brother Lloyd outside and distract him for the duration, while we all make sure we have a clear line of sight around the trailer and inside in case any enemies teleport inside. Partway through the ritual, Cody waves Maia inside and has her move Rhona through a portal and out of the circle; he’s holding a globe of light. As soon as Rhona is out of the way, he hands off the light to Maia and pushes her hands up to grasp the light tightly. Cody’s eyes look odd for a moment, and Maia is feeling very cynical – Rhona is not quite there. They’re tracking her essence, so Cody moved her essence temporarily to Maia. It’ll last a couple hours.

He was also able to locate the tracker – there is one tracker who is sending out a new bounty hunter each time the last one fails. We leave Rhona in Cody’s room for now – since she’s no longer being tracked, she’s safer here. Maia calls Stennit to update him – he is less than thrilled to hear about the essence transfer, and isn’t sure he believes it’ll reverse itself in a couple hours.

Off to hunt the tracker…


7/13/08

Insert off-stage fight scene – we take out the coordinator


Train station, in the aftermath of the fight. Maia took a slash to her arm down the bone, Ashley has a hole in one wing, Roland’s armor is wrecked, and Cam has a nasty cut on his forehead that needs stitches. 4:30pm – time to get moving. Best plan is probably to get Wexford into the deep mines, and keep his army up top away from him, depending on how many routes in there are. Regroup at Antiquarian to trade info. Pen has a map that Mark shared with her – there are three routes into the deep dark marked. One through downtown (Saltie downtown, Goblin Market), one back door in Westlake, and the third is through the offices of the Diamond Salt Company. According to Chloe, there’s an air shaft out in the lake – Roland confirms there’s an air intake there.

We need to get in touch with Mark; Chloe believes that Wexford has a stash of serin nerve gas. Crap – that could be how he’s going to deal with the Salties. Maia tries to call the Salt Co – no answer on any line. Did he already gas them? Ashley tries calling the market while the others figure out where to get gas protection. Wexford’s army is still there, but forming up and looking more official. They’re going to try and get a message down to the Salties, both about the gas, and to let them know that help is coming down the air intake shaft.

Pen calls Thorne; asks if he can find a number for Major Collier for her. He really doesn’t have any connection with the American military – the Council is up to too much stuff they wouldn’t like.

Chloe gets a visit from her ghost buddy Rowan, who sees Chloe as still being around for school next year, so the city probably won’t actually be destroyed. Underground target, so probably an underground blast. She’s pretty sure the crowning has already started, so we can’t stop that part; we can only try to stop the end of the world. Once he’s crowned, his orders are obeyed by anyone who is a demon, regardless of their wishes. Rowan doesn’t see Maia – sees Rhona. Hmmm…

Ashley calls Hilary and tells her to take her parents and get as far out of town as she can get. Then she calls Cody in; they need more firepower. Cam calls Cathy to warn her – gets her to get their parents out of town. Gloria leaves a message on her parents’ voice mail that she & Roland eloped to Buffalo & asks them to come join them at a hotel there. Maia walks in on her when she’s leaving that message; she calls Amanda and tells her to head to Buffalo as well, and they ask her to meet Gloria’s parents and explain about the chance of a nuclear explosion, and she just wanted to get them safely out of town, but knew they wouldn’t believe her. Gloria also asks that if something happens to her, but Roland survives, for Amanda to ask her parents to please not blame him; Amanda tells her that if anything happens to her, Roland wouldn’t survive. Maia calls her mother, asks her to trust her, and take the rest of the family someplace south for the next day or so.

Ashley & Pen & Cody will go down to Downtown and starting the fighting against the army; the rest of us head to the air shaft to keep Wexford from getting out to join his army. We all gear up with plenty of armor & weapons, and the Tyvek protective suits & gas masks & radios. Ashley & Gloria & Roland go off & make up some Molotov cocktails to take along.

Pen’s search engine pops up three Major Colliers – one in Baghdad, one in Fort Detrick, one in Thailand. We try the one in Maryland (Zachariah); Maia relays the instructions to him to follow orders, no matter what. She mentions a couple other bits from the prophecies, like green nightmare (he asks what she knows about Nightmare Green), and manages to thoroughly wig him out.

Stennit finds us a boat and we head out. There’s a boat already moored to the crib – no one in sight, but a light is moving around inside at the top level. The open area at top has been covered with blue plastic – sealed to keep in the gas? We check all the seals & masks, then sneak in the door and go in. There are four men inside, and several gas tanks, fans, & generators. One man has his gas mask pushed up & is holding a flashlight in his teeth, is peering down the stairs toward the fan grid and is holding a clipboard; Maia leaps & kicks him onto the fan grid, while Roland pushes past Gloria to attack the man carrying the submachine gun and punches him in the face with a steel gauntlet. When he falls, the gun fires into the rafters, which warns the other two men. Gloria kicks one away from his weapon and scoops it up – a glave. Cam goes after another with a knife and gets him in the side.

Gloria continues after hers – he manages to block her with a tank of gas, and it starts leaking liquid. He throws the tank at Gloria, who dodges out of the way; the manifold is knocked over, which shuts down the nebulizer. Maia spots the one with the knife going after a walkie-talkie – she tackles him before he can get to it and kills him. She grabs the walkie-talkie and smashes it. Someone leaps over her and out through a slit in the plastic – they were wearing different colored suits than us, and we suddenly hear gunfire from outside. Clearly, Stennit noticed the difference.

We shut everything down and seal the hose, and secure the prisoners w/duct tape. Check the clipboard – they were activating the gas in multiple bursts, for 10 minutes at 5:45, again at 6:30, again at 7:30. Also were instructed to keep masked up for 10 minute before & after, because it breaks down especially fast in the presence of salt water. Damn – that means two rounds have already gone down, which probably means lots of dead Salties. Wonder why three bursts?

We recheck all our suits for any tears before going down, then head down the shaft.

In the Down Under club – Cody blasts their way inside, but the inner door has a guard pointing…his finger at them? Only Ashley realizes he’s faking; she tells the others, but they go ahead and draw on him anyhow. Ashley calms things down and gets an update on how things are happening downtown – the army was conscripting everyone from their apartments, so he headed up, but doesn’t look normal enough to leave. He’s amazed that any humans would be helping the demons, but they eventually convince him. Introduces himself as Ray. They’re gathering at the Black Doors under Public Square, so at least there’s only one location; the door is made of stariron. Wonder whether it can be sealed? Cody does some calculations – he thinks he can seal it; he’d need a lot of aluminum and the right spell. Gee, what are the odds that someone down here collects cans to recycle??

They head into Downtown; they spot a troop of the army and duck for cover. They’re going door to door; they clearly have a way to check whether someone is actually inside. The person who was detecting presence sniffs around, looks right at Ashley, and tells the trooper next to him that there are some hiders up the road. The three soldiers that went inside come out escorting a family; the leader sends two off to escort the family back to the gathering point. Cody loads his PDA, Ashley loads her crossbow and takes aim at the sniffer leader, but Pen stops them – the need bashing weapons. Cody already has his fireball ready to go, so he uses it as a distraction while the girls go after weapons at a nearby construction site.

They rush over to a pile of tools; Cody picks up a sledgehammer, casts a brief spell on it, and makes it feel as though it’s only about two pounds. Hands it to Pen. Ashley finds a ball & chain, shifts, and gets some altitude. Cody starts pulling up more spells. Two of the soldiers attack Ashley, but she traps their weapons with her chain and disarms them, and manages to avoid being thrown into the wall. Pen decks one with her sledgehammer, which still hits astonishingly hard for something that light. He grabs it and yanks it free just as Cody yells at them to cover their ears; Pen also closes her eyes, just in case. There is something along the lines of a sonic boom, and every plate in the soldiers’ carapaces are cracked. All the street lights blow out, Ashley is knocked out of the air and lands hard, all of the soldiers are stunned. Ashley & Pen promptly take advantage by smashing the soldiers in the head. Cody walks out of the dust cloud, smelling of brimstone.

Back to the air shaft: the shaft jogs every 200 feet or so, which slows us down; takes about 20 minutes to get to the bottom. We also collected (from the gas team) some serin detection strips we use on the way down. The last 100 feet down have several ducts patching into the air system, making it trickier to navigate, but we finally reach bottom – in the mines. Foot of water in the shaft, and a fine hazy mist of nerve gas still drifting down.

Rowan arrives again & chats w/Chloe – the mine is arranged like a cross; the bad guys are in the main chamber, and the backup army is already on its way in through the front door, and we’re on the far side. We have to send someone to close the front door. Rowan merges with Chloe to relay the info to us. Roland & Gloria go to the front door to block it, Maia & Stennit & Cam & Chloe go to the main chamber to deal with Wexford. Chloe draws a map in the salt; we should be able to get to the front door without going through the central chamber.

At 7:30, the lights flicker four times – a signal to Wexford’s troops that the gas is about to be released again? That should mean that everyone will be putting masks on again, which will limit their perception. There are a lot of bodies, mostly human-appearing, but also some demon races known to be friendly. Gloria & Roland reach the intersection by the side door – cobblestone road, leading up into the darkness and a wrought-iron gate, with an electric car in front with the guards. They get into position as close as possible; Gloria shoots one in the face as Roland charges the other with his axe. They dump their bodies in the middle of all the other bodies, then take their car and head to the front door.

Maia’s team heads to the entrance to the main chamber – they reach a closed door. No idea whether opening it will signal their presence, but they don’t have a choice. They open it; light flashes, door slowly opens into a large, open chamber – it was clearly an orchard, but all the plants are recently dead, and all the light in the room are coming from three globular lanterns – the Moons of Trion. There is an amphitheater under the lanterns with 60-70 people moving around about 300 yards away. Most attention is focused on the stage, where Cosmic Stuff is happening. They slip inside and into the underbrush and behind the interior buildings, to mingle with the crowd.

Chloe fiddles with her radio to listen to other channels – finds the one that is being used by the army outside the front door, reporting that they are under attack, and retreating into the tunnels.

They get close enough to see that Wexford is, in fact, wearing the crown, which is still red-hot, and has burnt his skin down to the bone in some places. Someone falls to their knees in front of him and says something; he makes a gesture, and several troops promptly jump up and head out somewhere. Sneak up close enough to see how people are behaving – they’re about 20 yards behind Wexford. Several electric trucks are nearby being loaded with weapons, and Wexford seems to be coordinating the attack. Stennit jams the radio system by connecting it up to Cam’s iPod and floods it with his Christian rock playlist. Stennit & Cam & Chloe cover Maia while she goes after Wexford; she sprints in ahead of them yelling “humans!” to distract the demons initially, and they fire at everyone in her path.

A couple of Stennit’s bullets hit Wexford and bounce off. He recognizes Maia, and he realizes he can’t control her; orders his men to kill her.

At the front door: Roland & Gloria drive in to find a bridge over a chasm – can’t see the bottom or the top of the chasm. The elevator to the surface is on the far side, with troops already offloading. There are a few trucks on our side and five soldiers. How to blow the bridge, though… Chloe calls and tells them to look in the cargo bed – Gloria looks in the back of their truck and finds a whole bunch of C4. Yay! They move back down the tunnel a ways, and Roland doesn’t want Gloria anywhere near the truck while he’s working on setting the explosives, so she moves down the tunnel a few yards to stand guard.

They get the explosives ready, but there’s no remote radio detonator, just wire, so Roland has to be within 100 yards of the truck to detonate it. Gloria gets the ignition started on the truck just as the army spots her – they don’t realize who she is and orders her to bring the truck over. She uses a tool kit to brace the accelerator and rolls out of the driver seat. Roland is following along, paying out the wire, but the cable will run out before it will hit the bridge, so he blows it before it gets there. One of the demons survived the blast and goes after Roland, but Gloria gets to him first. Unfortunately, the bridge is still intact, so more troops are coming across; Roland heads over to block them while Gloria goes to see if there are more explosives in the other trucks.

In the main chamber – Maia tackles Wexford and tries to rip the crown off his head, but it is merged with his head, and it burns her hand. He throws her off and draws his sword; she leaps back to her feet and kicks him in the head.

Up in the crib – there’s a team of US Army troops carrying a cargo box rappelling down, commenting that a team has already gone down ahead of them – Major Collier? Hmmm…

In the main chamber – Wexford is highly bothered by the fact that he cannot control Maia’s demon side, and asks why she will not bow down to her god. She taunts him away from his assistants, to try & get him to fight her one-on-one.

Rowan arrives again – tells Chloe that if they’re going to survive, they need salt, candles and music; combination protection/sanctuary spell that was used in the alternate universe, that keeps her safe as long as she takes no offensive action, and gives everyone on their side in the combat pluses to attack. Maia continues to pound on Wexford, continues to absorb the blows

Back at the front door – Roland is hold the bridge for the moment, but there are more troops coming down the elevator. At one point, he picks up one of their sub-machine guns and mows them down. Gloria finds explosives in a truck – Roland comes over and hands her the axe in exchange for one of the explosives. She holds off one of the big trolls while he sets the explosion, then Roland throws it at the group. He leaps over Gloria to hold off the remainder of them while Gloria tries to set the explosion. Gloria looks over just in time to see Roland take a blow and go down; she grabs a machine gun and shoots it. Roland kicks it over the edge, and just barely manages to avoid being dragged over with it.

Roland thinks it should be dug in to the side of the bridge to work best, and they still have to use the wire, so it has to be within 100 yards. While he’s working on the wires, Roland asks what she & Maia were laughing about earlier; Gloria explains the message she left her parents. She’s in the middle of explaining how Amanda is going to register at the hotel under her name when Roland tells her to stop talking and kisses her, tells her that the bomb is ready to blow, and asks her to marry her. “That’s so sweet, yes!” They’re ready to go, but Gloria has to run onto the center of the bridge, jam the bomb into place, and run back before blowing it up. Sure, no problem…

Up in Downtown – Cody & Pen & Ashley are looking around the area, and decide to try and find a central broadcasting system. They head back up into what looks like an old civil defense bomb shelter. The microphone is live – Ashley gives them a stirring speech to encourage the citizens of Downtown to revolt against Wexford’s army, alerting them that he’s already murdered the Salties with nerve gas, and intends the same for them. Yep, so much for that army…

A demon army squad falls back into a side corridor – the commander tells them to hold the line while the rest of the squad goes after “those bitches” (Ashley & Pen). He’s not worried about the riot; as soon as the Master shows up, they’ll all fall in line. They realize they can’t get in through the trap door, so they drag an old sofa into the shaft and set it on fire. The room fills with smoke, Cody is trying desperately to find a helpful spell, when someone shoulders their way in the surface door and asks for Pen Hathaway – huge guy in a winter coat. He drags Pen out, then asks which of the others are her friends. A short guy comes in after him, throws some grenades down the trap door and shuts it, then follows them out the surface door.

They come out in the basement of a building. One of them flips up his mask – it’s Race. He checks to make sure Pen’s okay, and thanks the two men helping him, who shift back into human form and head out.

In the main chamber – Maia is backing up briefly in her fight with Wexford and bumps into something; glances back to see a balloon, and realizes it’s still attached to the wrist of a small child. Then she realizes there are several balloons – and several children’s bodies – scattered throughout the chamber, from where they fell when the gas was released. She lets her fury take over, kicks him in the throat to knock him down, and then grabs his jaw and rips his head off. There’s no blood spurting – the body has clearly been dead for some time.

Maia holds the head up in front of the army – there’s a moment of confusion when they lose connection. The crown immediately starts pulling on Maia to put it on. She is bringing the head down and looking at the crown; Cam sees her and yells “don’t do it!” Maia knew this was coming and was prepared to resist this, so she is able to avoid putting it on. Chloe, trying to help, yells out “If you put that on, Gloria won’t let you be in her wedding! And she said yes!” Okaaayyy…

Maia takes the head and dives off the stage, and starts sprinting toward the exit. Just as one demon is about to grab her, someone takes it out with a machine gun. Someone comes up with a grenade gun; Maia dives up and over their line of fire. One of them yells at her to get down; she demands to see Major Collier, who turns out to be him. Maia demands the nuke – she intends to attach the crown to the nuke and set it off right here once all the doors are sealed off.

At the front door – Gloria is able to get the bomb placed on one side of the bridge, but not the other, and has no time left to keep trying; she can see the rest of the army coming onto the bridge and knows if they reach her, they’ll stop her from blowing it up and kill both her and Roland. She holds the second bomb in place and detonates it, but not until she Thinks Roland OK, tells him she loves him, and tells him she wants him to live. When Wexford’s response team arrives as backup for the army, Roland is waiting for them, axe in hand.

In the main chamber – Collier gets a report from his team on the surface that the army has already started down the elevator shaft. Maia mentions that she has two people holding that door; Collier is sure they’re dead. Maia switches to Gloria & Roland’s channel in time to hear Gloria “Oh, crap. Roland, I’m sorry I have to do this. Stay alive. I love you.” Then Roland screams “No!”, and the radio cuts out, and neither one can be raised. She hands the head to Cam (“If anyone can resist temptation, you can.”) and sprints toward the door. She reaches Roland just as he takes out the last of the response team; he’s on his knees, leaning on his axe. Maia asks where Gloria is, if she made it – no – and hauls him out to the side door. As soon as they get a radio signal again, she contacts Stennit to let him know they’re on the way.

They get into Downtown and shut the doors ahead of the nuclear blast. Everyone feels the tremor. One of the army guys pulls out a dosimeter pendant to check – nope, no radiation. They head out to the surface; Maia calls Ashley and asks her group to meet them at the Australia Club. Race sneaks them out in handcuffs – they’re in the basement of the police station, so he walks them out as though it’s a prisoner transfer. As soon as they get outside & out of sight, he unlocks the handcuffs. Race drops them off at the club and heads off.

Regroup – sitting around the Australia Club, with Major Collier looking around at the group. Collier is wondering what he’s going to do about “you kids”. Cody mentions that he has an idea…

Blink.

Collier & his team are sitting around with their duffle bags, and no memory of Maia & company being there, or of where those suits came from.

Everyone scurries out of the club & heads back to the Antiquarian.


Closing bits:

* Roland hasn’t said anything to anyone about what happened at the bridge, other than that initial “no”; Maia gets his injuries bandaged and sends him upstairs to lay down at the Antiquarian when they get there. The next time they check on him, though, he’s gone; he leaves town without leaving a word for anyone.

* Murray calls Pen’s cell phone and asks for Cody, talks to him briefly. Cody leaves shortly after that. The next morning, Maia & the others find out that he went home, tossed a bunch of money at Lloyd, took his car, loaded a few boxes of books & clothes in it, and left town.

* Gloria’s parents didn’t go to Buffalo – they freaked out and called a friend in the police department, who sent a buddy of his in the NY Buffalo police department to the hotel. Since Amanda was waiting in the lobby for Gloria’s parents, she at least didn’t get grabbed by the cops, but she also never saw Gloria’s parents.

* Amanda calls Maia around dawn (before they realize Roland has left) to let her know that Gloria’s parents never showed up at the hotel, and wants to know what she should do now; she didn’t see anything on the news about an explosion, so everything is all right, right? Maia tells her that Gloria’s dead, the earthquake was the nuclear explosion, and When Amanda hears that Gloria was killed right in front of Roland, and just after he proposed & she accepted, it sounds like she’s crying on the phone.

* For the next few months, everyone else in town assumes Roland & Gloria really did elope – otherwise, Maia & the others would have to explain that Gloria was killed holding off a demon army, and nope, sorry, there’s no body, and Roland left town because he couldn’t deal with her being dead. No way would anyone believe that, especially after what happened with Ollie a decade ago. It’s rough on Maia and the gang, though, because they can’t mourn for Gloria, they have to act like they just miss her but they think it’s very romantic and cool that she & Roland got married, and they expect to see them again. After about 6 months, though, people start wondering why they haven’t gotten in touch with anyone, and why Gloria hasn’t touched any of the money in her bank account, and the suspicions & rumors start…

End of season 2

Chloe is alone in the bookstore, surrounded by burnt matches, candles, & books; a sigil is painted into the table in blood, the candles start falling off the table; she catches one, but another falls and starts lighting books on fire. The fire spreads rapidly, despite her attempts to put it out; the coat rack & all the hanging coats catch. She is cut off from the stairs, the windows are barred, and the door is steel (so it’s not going to burn open) and locked. She tries to get into the basement; can’t make it. She tries to cast a protective circle around herself, but hears a voice saying “It won’t work, you know.” It’s her professor – tells her this is sort of a final exam, but it isn’t going to work; she’s not ready. “It’s not the spell that won’t work, it’s us.” Chloe turns around – Maia is standing next to him and decks her with no warning.

The rest of us followed her out of the Copper Kettle – she suddenly complained of how hot it was and rushed out without her coat – and see her get knocked back into the snow, having been decked by a figure in the shadows. Maia & Gloria head toward him/her; Chloe suddenly finds herself very cold and not in the bookstore, but remembers the fire. She hears a voice saying “Stay away from me, freak.” – it’s Amanda?? Tells Maia to handle her and stomps off. We ask Chloe what she did to Amanda to make her hit her; she insists that it was Maia who hit her. She asks what year it is, asks if the bookstore is okay; we humor her and head to the Antiquarian to check on it.

Chloe feels like she was hit a LOT harder than Amanda could have, and is seeing odd colors & halos around everything. Maia notices Chloe’s hand twitching. Stennit is there & Maia asks if he can give Chloe a lift home; Chloe asks him what sort of final exams there are for wizards, she thinks she’s in her’s. Why? Because he told her so. Who? Her professor. Stennit & Maia & Gloria give each other meaningful looks and Stennit decides he really should get her home.

In the car – Stennit comments that she surprised him by her spellcasting; asks Chloe to tell him more about how she’s learning magic. She tells him that her professor came to her while she was at the Antiquarian and started teaching her – runes, summoning, gestures, etc. He asks if she’s been going into any of the books; she points out that he doesn’t let her look at them. He tells her she really needs to not be doing anymore spellcasting, but she assures him that she won’t make anything else go numb; she called on one of the Sumarian gods because no one was talking to them much – according to her professor – and that’s why her finger is numb and her arm is twitching.

Her mother has been looking for her – demands to know where she’s been, she was trying to call her cell phone, but no answer. She thanks Maia & Gloria for getting Chloe home.

In school the next day, Ashley is hanging out with the “smoking crowd” – Amanda, Rona, & Dalton. They’re discussing the current state of makeup & such, & ask Ashley if she wants to be in a movie. Dalton says he has an idea for making a mockumentary about vampires. They need someone who knows how to fight; Dalton points out that Roland would be really good, but Amanda & Rona don’t want him involved. Rona tells Ashley about a fight she taped that looks really authentic; she hasn’t put it up on YouTube, because she wants to save it – looks like a couple people killing someone with an axe, but there was no blood, so it must have been someone playing a prank, or filming. So, they want to do some filming of their own; need to recruit some people from the art club & the theater.

At lunch – Chloe goes over to talk to Cody about magic stuff, then realizes that the entire lunch room has been staring at them, amused. She joins Maia & Gloria & Roland & Ashley, who are mid-conversation. She sits down and realizes they’ve been talking about her…but they’ve been discussing how to deal with her sudden fear of fire, and their ideas range from walling her up in a brick room in the basement, to implanting Jen’s crystal into her head in place of her brain (but it’s so messy getting all the blood out, and we’d have to replace Maia’s coat again), to cutting off her numb finger so it doesn’t bother her anymore (and it might improve things, since she could get phantom feelings in her hand). She freaks out and leaves. (They were actually discussing homework and plans for the evening…)

elfrhys [8:58:07 PM]: walling her up will keep her safe from fire...
rhifox [8:58:14 PM]: Oh, nice tie-in.
rhifox [8:58:18 PM]: You're on!
elfrhys [8:58:30 PM]: should we be talking when she arrives, and just say "Hi, Chloe" and keep going?
rhifox [8:59:11 PM]: Yeah!. First line, "No, I've got a better idea. What about walling her up in the school basement."
rhifox [8:59:30 PM]: Response "Yeah, that would keep her safe from fire. Much better than the alternative."
elfrhys [8:59:41 PM]: we don't even have to use her name - just use enough references to make it clear
rhifox [8:59:46 PM]: "Yeah, vivisection is so messy."
rhifox [9:00:02 PM]: But if we cut off her finger it won't 'not feel' any more.
elfrhys [9:00:05 PM]: and you never really get all the blood out
rhifox [9:00:09 PM]: Oh yeah.
elfrhys [9:00:27 PM]: hey, would she get phantom feelings? maybe cutting off her finger would actually help!
rhifox [9:00:39 PM]: Oh dear!
elfrhys [9:01:42 PM]: how can we talk over her if she keeps going off with other people??
rhifox [9:01:54 PM]: He'll get her there.


Chloe leaves the lunchroom and feels someone grab her arm; wrenches herself free and goes to hide out in the stairwell till the end of classes. She still is seeing odd halos & lights & such, and is very disoriented.

Gloria catches Cody and asks if Chloe said anything to him that might indicate where she is or why she’s freaking; he says not, but he knows where she’ll be after eighth period – she arranged for a sort of consultation – and he’ll make sure she gets home safe. Maia lets Stennit know that Chloe is freaking out again.

After school at the Antiquarian – Stennit found info on a demon, it’s somewhere between genders at the moment, and will be looking for a comfy place to lair up. It’s likely to be wanting someplace like a house – goody. Small, quick, intelligent.

Maia & Gloria & Ashley go out hunting – first we spot the footprint, then spot it up in the trees; it comes down to land in front of us and starts running away. We chase it, but it’s moving pretty fast. We can’t tell where it might be heading in particular, but it’s headed toward residential areas, so we have to catch it. We go sprinting after it, Gloria slightly in the lead, when she gets clotheslined and then shoved down. Maia is right behind her – manages to get hold of it and get her knife into it, and they go rolling downhill. Ashley comes through the bushes in time to see it standing up again; she runs up and shoves her sword into it’s ribcage…and realizes it’s Eric Weber. Crap. He collapses into a gravestone; she pulls it out, apologizing profusely.

We hear the door from the mausoleum uphill closing, and Rona’s & Amanda’s voices. We exit rapidly, hiding in the thicket until they give up and wander off. We hear them talking about hearing something hit the roof of the mausoleum, then they come around and see the blood and Rona starts filming it. They finally leave, and we can’t catch the thing before it hit road and we lose the tracks. Eric heads home to stitch himself up and change clothes; we head to the nearby B&B, watching for tracks along the way, and avoiding police as we go, but we can’t pick up it’s tracks again.

Cody really couldn’t help Chloe with anything, and the description of her invisible teacher has him very concerned. Tells her not to use any warding or protection spells that her professor taught her – don’t trust him. She needs to put up some strong warding circles at her house as protection; gives her information on how to do it.

Next day at school:

Chloe is still having double vision, still very disoriented. Rowan Hackbury flags her down to talk; they go into the rest room. Rowan tells Chloe she needs her help – someone killed her last night. Chloe tries poking her with a pencil; nope, not there. Rowan thought she hit a dog with her car last night, but she got out and there was no dog, and next thing she knew she was in her own back seat. She didn’t even realize she was dead until after the first couple classes that day. She was driving on Cook’s Mill Road, not sure exactly where, and no idea where her body might be. Chloe suddenly hears a flush and realizes someone else was there hearing her side of the conversation; she starts washing her hair and is combing it out when one of the teachers comes in to see if she’s all right.

Eric Weber joins us at lunch; we discuss plans for tonight, but we’re past the full moon, so it’s probably changed and under cover somewhere. Any vacant houses in the area? Maia goes looking for Amanda later to get her help in finding vacancies; she’s irritated about it, but she’ll see what she can find out. Chloe joins us and hears us talking about how to ‘help’ her again, babbles a brief report on Rowan’s ghost telling her she was killed last night, and rushes off. Huh? We look around and see Rowan sitting at a table off to the side of the room. Maia goes over and asks her if she’s alive; Rowan is clearly stoned and finds this hysterically funny. Maia then asks if she hit a dog last night – huh? Okay, just checking on how far out of reality Chloe currently is, thanks! Maia leaves.

Evening – Maia gets a call from Amanda (via Gloria’s cell phone) with house information; she comes to meet us (well, Maia) at the Noble Bean. They go sit by themselves; she gives Maia a listing of the vacant houses in the center area of town.

Chloe saw Maia talking to whatever was pretending to be Rowan, and knows it’s onto her, so doesn’t want to walk home; she’s trying to find a ride after school when Rowan (the living version) comes up to her. “Do you really think you can see dead people?” Chloe backs away from her, and right into Rowen’s friend Sal Martino; runs away as Rowen is asking her to come to her party. Chloe calls Gloria and tells her not to talk to her, but Rowan is dead and having a party, and it’s not safe. Roland takes the phone, Chloe tells him she’s hiding behind the trash compacter, and please come get her. Roland heads out, Maia comes back, we fill her in. Suddenly Ashley wonders if these demons can take on the form of humans they eat – crap! We call Stennit – no answer. We sprint back to the Antiquarian to research, and Gloria texts Stennit “Urgent – possible shapeshifter!” After digging through some other books, we find a reference that yes, in fact, they can take on human guise for short periods of time. We have to find this party!

Ashley gets a call from one of the smoking gang inviting her to the secret party; he tells her to invite some of her friends. Tells her as soon as he finds out where the party is, he’ll call her and arrange to pick her up. She fills us in, Maia calls Eric Weber and invites him along.

The rave is being held at one of the vacant houses on Maia’s realty list – big house, near the graveyard, no For Sale sign, and surrounded by trees. We all arrive at the party. We go in with a really good plan, which doesn’t survive past Gloria being separated from the group and bitten by the demon; it takes her form while fighting Roland and he has to kill it. Gloria sees him as he slashes at it’s neck with a sword; it goes down, he turns to Gloria, it gets up behind him and is about to kill Roland, Maia yells at him to get down, he drops, she throws a spear and kills it.

Hilary was working on keeping the innocent bystanders out of the way, and ends up doing some really embarrassing stuff to distract everyone…which Rona films. Terrific.

Oretzia: “Let me take you to see my friends.”
She turns around and Tabitha decks her.
Cam: “I’d hate to see your enemies.”


“When’s your bedtime?”
“3rd period study hall.”


“So, how does a girl who died in 2001 show up at school here in Hammer Falls in 2003?”
“Liberal acceptance policies?”


“I’m not bad, I was just summoned that way.”


Ashley – 2 drama points
Jared: “One for running away, one for getting laid.”


Ashley’s uncle: “This is why you were sent here from California in the first place, because you made some poor decisions.”
Ashley: “But I’m making all new poor decisions now!”


Maia: “Don’t say anything, or I’ll touch you.”
Chloe: “You need to never say that again in public. Only in private.”


Slayer PMS: “Permanent Mystic Syndrome”


“I’ve never played Maia as a human being!”


Gloria (to Maia, watching the alternate universe Ashley painting her claws): “You know, if I had to picture Ashley as a demon, this would pretty much be it…”


“Will you turn off the damn silence field already? I’m monologuing and you can’t hear me!”


Pen: “So, Ashley, do you start to ooze pheromones when you change form?”
Ashley: “I ALWAYS ooze pheromones!”



“Don’t get so drunk that you can’t run?”
“You’d be amazed how fast I can run even drunk if I need to…”


Ashley (re Micah): “It would be nice to see him. Besides, I need another pawn, damnit!”


Ashley: “I haven’t lied to you.”
Maia: “But you’ve let us misbelieve.”


Gloria: “No, MY romantic moment is NOT involving blood and beer!”


“I’ve heard the screams of the manuscripts…”


GM: “How is Cam Ross looking in this reality?”
Ashley: “Hot.”


Maia (after not knocking over a vampire): “I have got to put on some weight.” (and how often do you hear that from a teenage girl??)


Pen (about Marjorie): “That would keep the hate focused on Maia, which is really where her hate should be aimed at.”


Cam: “You should pray for guidance.”
Gillian: “It seems cheap and needy to come to God only when you need something, especially when you don’t pray at any other time.”
Pen: “God likes cheap and needy.”


Cam: “You know, when you’re dealing with denizens of the underworld, identity theft takes on a whole new meaning.”
Gloria: “Tell me about it.”


Gloria: “I’ll take care of the picnic lunch.”
Cam: “I’ll bring the drinks.”
“Maia, what are you bringing?”
Maia: “The weapons!”
“So much for the ant problem.”

Morning. Stennit is still processing Ashley’s story.

At school – Maia tells Pen about Blakely’s apparent obsession with their activities, and assigns her to find out what he’s trying to find out. She goes to him with the story of the fire at the toy store over Christmas, so she can try and get access to his computer. She arrives at his office to overhear him talking to another student – Kim – who is giving him tons of info on Gloria & who she hangs out with. Hmmm…

Blakely assigns her to find more information on who found the body at the toy store, and to look into what they might have had to do with it. Also, why would the killer have used a marionette to strangle someone? He seems very focused on the story, very intense. He tells her he’d been comparing her work this year with what she did last year, and doesn’t feel that she’s really pushing herself as much as she could be.

She doesn’t get a chance to look around his office without him before he sends her off to research the story and follow up on some of her leads. She leaves, but lurks nearby; as soon as he leaves his office she verifies that he’s leaving the building and then goes back to try and break into his office. Despite the gym across the hall, she manages to pick the lock without anyone seeing her and gets inside. She carefully looks around – he has lots & lots of info posted on the wall. Unfortunately, he does seem to be investigating the group of us as a whole. He probably doesn’t know the Slayer is involved, though, and probably hasn’t even heard about the Slayer.

She uses her key to get into his desk; looks through it thoroughly. She finds his jacket, and finds a flash drive in one pocket – takes it. Finds nothing else that looks useful, puts everything back the way it was, and leaves.

Maia is just getting home when she gets a call on her cellphone for Ashley, from “Cali-girl”; gives Maia some grief about wanting to talk to Ashley right away. Ashley doesn’t want to talk to her, so Maia gets her to leave a phone number. Whoever it is insists that she have Ashley call her asap.

Pen calls Maia to tell her about the flash drive – we all collect at the Antiquarian. We look at the drive;

Cali-girl calls again; tells Maia to tell Ashley that it’s Tabitha. Ashley takes the call – Tab heard she was having trouble; offers to come pick her up to have Ashley stay with her. Tells her she should’ve taken off months ago. Gives Ashley an address in Cleveland – The Australia Club – and says to ask the bartender where Down Under is; that will get her in. She sneaks off; the rest of us follow. Gloria notices that several females dressed in a specific style seem to be let in with no problem; she takes Pen & Maia & does a quick makeover, they get inside and let the guys in the back door.

The band is not speaking English – lots of animal noises, and latin. Cam translates – lots of screaming about the demolition of the human world. They are wearing demon masks – Gloria recognizes the drummer as being a specific demon type. Crap. And there are no mirrors anywhere inside. Double crap. Behind the bar is a door marked “Down Under” – guarded, with a velvet rope in front. It’s clearly limited access. The band takes a break and takes off their masks – human underneath. We watch the door for a bit to see who is allowed inside; a college guy starts dancing with Pen, and she leans in to talk & try to get some information. Cam is surrounded by several girls dancing with him; he chats with them as well. Gloria asks her dance partners about the Down Under door – room for private parties, probably in the basement. Maia goes poking around looking for access to backstage stuff.

As we’re watching the DU door, a couple people come inside and head straight there. One is a really big guy, huddled inside his coat; a waitress joins him, and the guard at the door opens it up as soon as he spots them coming over. Maia gets past the barricade on the stairs and heads up to the second floor. Locked doors, she avoids the area looking over the dance floor. She punches through the lock on one door and gets inside; there’s a console with lots of sliders & switches, with a window on one wall looking over the dance floor, a fridge in one corner – beer, soda, & blood. Private party room – for very special guests. She takes a couple of the plastic bags of blood and moves onto the next room. Second room is an office; finds nothing helpful, although most of the employee paperwork is very shoddy – sequential SSNs, same handwriting on lots of the forms, etc.

Meanwhile, Down Under, Tabitha met Ashley at the entrance and took her straight downstairs. The door guard has a strange slur to his voice, as if he can’t quite close his jaw fully. The stairs clearly go down more than one floor, and lead into the tunnels under the city. They are filled with artificial stalactites & stalagmites, lots of lighting, loud music. They go over to the bar – the bartender has yellow eyes and tusks. They have drinks, they dance, they are joined by a couple large guys.

Wide range of people are being allowed through the door, many seem to be expected. A group finally comes out from the Down Under door and look out over the crowd. Pen’s dance partner leans in and tells her it’s invitation time – they sometimes come out and invite people to come downstairs. No idea what criteria they look for, other than hot. The invitation group is a mix of male/female, wide age range, dressed for clubbing. One guy joins the group as they come out – he had been dancing – and spreads out into the crowd with the others. Cam is invited by an older lady and agrees to join her, thinking Ashley might be downstairs. Maia intercepts and asks to join them – the lady realizes her strength and believes Maia is one of them, welcomes her downstairs and tells her to invite whoever she wants. Gloria is already being escorted in by a pair of Chippendale-types, so she brings Roland with her. Pen goes in on her own, before realizing that one of them had been heading straight toward her.

Someone comes over to whisper in Tabitha’s ear – she grins and asks Ashley if she’s hungry, puts them in for two. Tells her there’s a group going upstairs to skim off the cream of the group, but it’s sort of a catch & release program, so make sure not to injure any of them. Ashley hasn’t managed to spot any other exits yet, but hasn’t really had much chance to look closely. We get downstairs and are cheered by several of the people already downstairs; Ashley spots Cam being towed along by some older skank – is majorly pissed. Tabitha (although she doesn’t know Cam) insists that they have to get him away from her and they double-team her. Cam’s escort asks him what he likes; he starts talking about the Youth Ministry and his church work. She seems a bit confused at first, then starts to take her to meet some of her friends…just as Tabitha comes up and decks her. Tabitha also shifts to demon form when she attacks – prehensile bladed tail and all. Ashley ducks around her and grabs Cam’s wrist. “Ashley! There are demons here!” Then she realizes the rest of the gang is there. Great. Pen is coming in alone, although a tall, blond man seems to be trying to catch up with her. She steps back at the sight of Tabitha’s shift, and backs into the man behind her. His eyes blink black, then back; tells her that there is about to be a knock down bar fight here, and would she like to get out of there? She takes his hand, he introduces himself as Rase, puts a hand on her waist and escorts her back upstairs.

Maia catches Cam shoulder to get his & Ashley’s attention and suggests they get going – it doesn’t look like their kind of party. Oretzia gets up and backhands Tabitha, sending her flying. She also shifts to demon form, ripping through her dress. She looks like she’s about to head over to kick the snot out of Tabitha; Ashley picks up a chair and decks her in the back of the head – knocks her out. Cam & Maia look around to see how many unsuspecting humans are downstairs – there is one looking completely shocked at the sign of the demons, and one too busy making out to notice anything, even the horns appearing on her kissing partner. Gloria punches the one holding her in the groin and rejoins the others. The second demon grabs at her elbow, Gloria ducks, and both Maia & Roland punch him. They take her arms and hustle her along. Maia lets her go and heads over to collect the oblivious girl, while Roland & Gloria & Cam head to the guy freaking out (Doug); he’s now being held by a tentacle wrapped around his arm, but Cam manages to talk him down from his hysteria. The sea monster demon pops thorns out of another tentacle and starts to swing at Cam, but Cam pulls out his knife and slices off the tentacle. He & Doug are sprayed with ichor; Gloria & Roland reroute for another fight. Maia grabs horns and yanks his head to the side; Gloria pulls the girl out of the way while Maia & the demon face off. He screams at her in fury; she laughs & grabs him by the nose and gets him in a submission hold.

Upstairs, Pen has been taken up to the second floor, where it’s quiet enough to talk without screaming. He tells her that the club – both levels – has been around for decades. He seems to know who she is; asks if he can see her as she really is, but she asks him to go first. He looks almost like a bone sculpture, not bad looking, and he’s clearly very impressed by her looks. Their drinks arrive – she doesn’t recognize it, but takes a taste; it tastes like secrets. She asks him to tell her about himself, and about her. He’s a young one, so he’s only been out for 23 years, and isn’t really toeing the line with the older brothers. He’s surprised to learn how short a time she has known about herself, and fills her in on some of his history. He gives her his email address and they trade phone numbers. He escorts her out of the building safely when she sees the rest of the gang leaving and tells him she needs to join us.

The rest of us are sprinting up the stairs, well ahead of the fight. We stop before charging through the door, then stroll as casually as possible into the upstairs club; Ashley kissed Doug to calm him down. Pen and Rase fall in with us in time to easily get us all outside. We pile into the car (Rase kisses Pen goodbye) and leave; Ashley stays behind.

Tabitha comes running out of the club, collects Ashley (along with Doug), and takes them off to another nightclub. Everyone seems to be in human form, but it’s definitely another demon bar. Tabitha sends Ashley to get a table and goes off to the bar; brings back one pitcher for Doug and one for her & Ashley to share. When that places closes, Tabitha takes them to her place to sleep.

Ashley gets up early the next morning, chases Doug off home, and heads back to Hammer Falls; gets to Stennit’s place just at breakfast time. She refuses to eat anything, though – very hungover. Maia makes sure she drinks lots of water, hands her some painkillers, and sends her off to bed. Despite several attempts, Ashley wasn’t able to get much information on ulamanxr or and of the demon attack plans. Tabitha did tell her that the time is coming soon; a seer told her that, and since this was the same seer who gave her Maia’s phone number to call, she believes him.


We finally look at the info on the flash drive – it is all information we already have, but includes some surprising stuff like Jen Waring’s mother’s obituary. We’ll definitely need to approach him directly for information.

to be continued...

Ashley meets up with Micah – he takes her through a relatively involved ritual to unground her. She’s in a VERY good mood at school on Monday…

Even with warning Roland about her reactions, and trying hard to relax, Gloria is very jumpy and having trouble covering.

Back at school after New Years – Ashley is very…bouncy. We ask how things went – she had a very good date, and made progress. Maia & Gloria ask for details, Cam & Roland leave, Chloe arrives and joins them.

Off to classes for the afternoon. Cam is passing by the gym when Hilary & Liz come out to get water – Liz greets him, but Hilary is fairly abrupt. Passing again after class, Hilary walks along with him & asks if her cousin is acting weird; he comments that she seemed a little bubbly at lunch. Just as he answers, Hilary is taking a drink of water and suddenly spits it out, throws up, and passes out in the hall. Cam sends someone to get the school nurse and keeps an eye on Hilary to try and keep her from choking or anything. The nurse and several teachers arrive running; Stoker follows shortly after and chases everyone else back to class. Hilary is still breathing, although having difficulty; her lips are inflamed, so she clearly had a reaction to something, and didn’t just have her water go down the wrong way. Cam picks up Hilary’s water bottle to keep it from being lost. Stoker takes Cam back to the office and asks what happened; Cam describes. Meanwhile, a note is sent to Ashley’s class to send her to the nurse’s office. Hilary is awake; tells Ashley what happened, that she had a drink of water and then this happened. Doesn’t know where the bottle is. Ashley sniffs around Hilary’s mouth, but can’t smell any sort of poison. The nurse comes back in & asks if she somehow got some cranberry juice; Hilary lies thoroughly about how sensitive she is, and that maybe someone borrowed her water bottle and was wearing cranberry-flavored lip gloss?

Cam has managed to keep Stoker off his assumption that Hilary was taking drugs, although he avoids derailing the idea that someone slipped her something in her water. Stoker finally lets him leave.

Ashley goes looking for Cam to see if he can drive Hilary home, or has any idea of what happened, either to Hilary or to the water bottle; finally tracks him down in the library. Mr. Ross seems flustered, and is clearly searching for something. Cam has the bottle sitting out, and is poking through books looking for information on allergic reactions. Ashley takes a sniff – just water and Hilary’s brand of chapstick. She takes a very small sip; feels like she drank a large spoon of red-hot pepper sauce, but tasted exactly like water. Her lips swell up and are tender, and she is startled into dropping the bottle.

Ashley takes the bottle to meet up with the rest of us at the Antiquarian; Stennit has Cam help him test the water in various test samples. It reacts with one; Stennit takes a look, seems startled, then takes a sip – no effect. He asks where the water was from; when he hears it was the drinking fountain at school, he decides that he needs to head to school and see what’s on the fountain – it isn’t a poison, it’s a curse. It’s a targeted curse, but he can’t tell yet if it’s targeted to specific people or to a type; might be someone’s way of identifying demons at school. If so, Hilary’s just been thoroughly outed… We also suddenly notice that Ashley has some sort of mark on her forehead – what the heck? Must be from drinking the cursed water? She calls Hilary – yep, she’s got one too.

We discuss who might be behind it – Eric Myer? Cody? Mr. Ross? We should go around and ask them and see what they say. Chloe is quietly texting on her phone, and asks Cody if he cursed the fountain – he says no. Stennit goes back to school to check the fountain, Maia goes to ask Eric, Cam & Gloria go to ask Mr. Ross.

Eric denies it – says he knows much better & more direct ways to deal with demons. They chat, then go riding on his motorcycle.

Stennit & Ashley head to the gym; have a brief chat establishing Stennit’s
position on what he’ll do to Ashley if she turns on and hurts Maia, otherwise he’ll be fine with her. The curse seems to be fading from the water fountain. They break into the journalism office, and discover that the journalism teacher is clearly investigating all the activities we’ve been involved in. Have to keep an eye on them…

We walk into the library to find Mr. Ross, Stoker, Maitland and another officer; they are immediately suspicious, we say we’re looking for Cam’s backpack. They go on talking; there’s apparently something that Mr Ross is missing – leatherbound book with latin title: On Manners of Perceptions. Small portfolio, handbound. They want a list of everyone who is a library aid, or was an aid last year and who has a key. (uh-oh, Roland was an aid last year) The cops chase Stoker out; he hassles us on the way, but Chloe tells him she joined the cheerleaders. He leaves. We leave.

Back to the Antiquarian & debrief. Maia calls Pen (home sick) to ask if she has any ideas on how to get access to the journalism’s teacher’s files in his personal laptop. Also need to figure out whether he knows if any of us are involved. Fill her in on the day’s events. We also call Roland to let him know his name will be getting called up as someone with library access last year; Ollie answers at the Able Wrench, Roland’s out on a call and probably has his cell phone turned off. He’s out in Deerfield to drop off a loaner car; Ollie calls Jerry who’s with him. Ollie calls Maia back a few minutes later – Maitland pulled Roland over for a rolling stop, and now is talking to him about some books that were in his duffel bag in the car. According to Jerry, it looks like Maitland will be dragging him down to City Hall over it. Maia hands the phone over to Stennit, who assures Ollie that any old latin books Roland has are from the Antiquarian, and he certainly has permission to have them; he’ll talk to the police.

Ashley finds a reference with her mark – the Mark of the Beast. Great…

Chloe uses the water bottle to make a circle, puts her finger in it, and mutters something; her finger starts glowing, and it brightens or fades depending on where she points. Stennit looks up, shocked, and demands to know where she found the text for that incantation; Chloe simply starts walking and tells us to follow her. Her finger starts tingling; she walks faster. Maia stops her & asks what she’s doing; this should lead us to the book. (assuming the book was stolen by the person who cursed the fountain…) Stennit is about to come with us when the police call – they’d like him to come and identify the book as belonging to him.

We pile into Gloria’s car to follow the finger, which is gradually going numb and the pain extends through her hand. Eventually we reach a destination – a small rental house in North Deerfield, a carriage house to an older mansion. A Volvo with Colorado plates is outside – belongs to Tom Blakely, the journalism teacher. Chloe looks at her finger, tells it “Go home, go to bed, it’s past your bedtime.” It stops glowing (and hurts like hell), the car dies, and everyone’s cell phones ring briefly.

Gloria & Cam go up to the door and ask if they can use his phone, since her car just died. Gloria notices someone peeking out of the curtain; they know we’re there. Maia & Ashley & Chloe backtrack down the driveway to the big house, so we’re clearly splitting up to have a better chance of finding someone at home whose phone we can use.

Blakely’s house: just as Gloria is ringing the doorbell, the porch light comes on and Blakely is standing there. Gloria acts surprised to find him there and asks if they can use his phone; he seems suspicious, but hands her his cell phone. She calls Stennit, tells him that her car died along with all their cell phones. She asks Blakely what street name this is, or what the name of the complex is; he says it’s not the entrance to the housing complex, it’s the driveway for the Rutherford estate. Gloria passes that along, and also mentions that the phone they’re using belongs to someone they know – Mr Blakely. She hands the phone over so they can chat briefly; Blakely is clearly puzzled as to why Gloria called the latin teacher about a dead car. Blakely offers to get out his jumper cables and try to jump the battery, then hangs up.

Big house – Maia knocks, the door is flung open by someone who says “Oh, good, you’re here…oh.” He’s wearing a leather mask, leather straps, etc… Voice in the background: “Is it the Winslows?” “No.” Maia explains that their car died and they’d like to use the phone. “One moment.” He closes the door, and a few moments later it opens slightly and a woman in a bathrobe lets them in and points them to the kitchen phone. Maia calls Stennit, who updates her on a) Blakely trying to jump the battery, and b) Roland is out of trouble for the books, which Stennit identified, but in trouble for the library key on his keychain. Stennit tells her that if he doesn’t hear from any of them within 20 minutes, he’ll come out there.

Meanwhile, Ashley is talking shoes with the lady of the house, who is wearing 5-inch heels with her bathrobe. Just as they’re getting ready to leave, there’s a knock on the door as their expected guests arrive. They are startled to see three teenage girls, but the lady explains that the car broke down.

Maia & the others are nearly back when they hear the car start – the jump worked with no problem. As everyone is getting into the car, Blakely asks Gloria if she ever wears her hair back in the ponytail and with a black band; he’s clearly seen the YouTube video that Rona filmed in the graveyard. We leave.

Great – he’s seen us all in a group, linked Gloria to the video, and linked us with Stennit. Great. As soon as Gloria’s cell phone is charged enough to get a signal, she calls Stennit. They are all leaving the police station now, and he will meet us at the Antiquarian.

Debrief at the store. What to do about Blakely? Should we just tell Mr. Ross to look for the book at Blakely’s? Should we let Stennit deal with it? We pull up the photos Stennit & Ashley took of Blakely’s research and review them – he’s only been in Hammer Falls since August, but has information go back another year. He’s also been looking at data on real estate turnover, number of death certificates issued compared to reported deaths, etc., etc. Lots of info on the fire & alleged mass escape from Franklin in the spring. He’s got a lot of unconnected information that could tie in to us if he finds the links, but hasn’t linked it yet. We table decisions until Pen recovers and can help us figure out whether we can trust him.

Ashley goes home, fills Hilary in somewhat, and has a bit of a confrontation with her aunt & uncle. They are concerned about the people Ashley is hanging out with, and the mark she & Hilary has. They demand information on Maia & the others. Her aunt discusses the option of staging an intervention, and if she should call her sister. She points out that her friends saved her from the vampire that attacked her; they comment that they were very lucky for unprepared mortals. They’re not mortal! Oh, she found some friends to play with? Who? The Slayer.

Pause.

Ashley’s uncle: We have to move. Ashley’s aunt: Tibet sounds good.

They demand to know which one is the Slayer; don’t believe that it’s Maia and not Gloria. The rest of the conversation goes downhill from there, as they don’t want Ashley hanging out with Maia; they’ll find people in other cities for her to text with. Eventually they switch over to the other kind of trouble she can get into as a 16-year-old girl. Ashley sulks. She insists that they’re all safer if she works with the Slayer. They are keeping her home for a few days until the mark fades, then she’s extra grounded and will be driven to & from school.

Ashley runs away that night, before they boost the protections on the house, although Hilary tries to talk her out of it. She goes to Stennit’s house to see if she can stay there, and is very surprised to find Maia living there.

to be continued...

Countdown to Ascension at sunset (5pm) – gotta stop Evangeline! Or even better, get back to our own universe!!

Morning at the church safe house, about 8am. Nate is called home for a while (has to reassure his parents that he is still alive/human). TV coverage from CNN is full of the chaos in New York. Roland heads to his shop to get some equipment, then he & Nate will get Dunnegan’s prepped for meeting the Council. Russell takes Maia to her place so he can scrounge for herbs. Between her supplies and Roland’s, they have everything they need to make explosives. They are loading stuff onto Russell’s truck when Maia’s father walks in. He looks extremely unwell, even compared to how he looked in reality. He hugs her & asks where she’s been; fusses but finally lets her leave with Russell (and lots of fertilizer). As they are leaving, her father tells her that if she sees her sister, to say hello. ???

Back at the church – Fr. Cernak is blessing everything & everyone he can get his hands on, except Gloria. She feels like she’s in the middle of a room filled with radioactivity; VERY uncomfortable. Roland calls Cam to update him; his shop is getting their gas delivery that afternoon, so if they really, really want a tanker of gasoline…

Cody & his group start gathering all the stuff they need and go off to prepare amulets & such. He does some research to see if they can use Gloria’s Key to locate or inactivate the other ones.

Maia & Russell are heading to Russell’s place when they get pulled over by a police car. Maia sends a text message to Cam: “Cop”. Russell pulls out a pile of paperwork then they both put their hands up on the dashboard and wait for the cop to come over. He finally comes up to them and is taking Russell’s ID when a second police car arrives and pulls up facing Russell’s car. They tell him to open the trunk; Russell hands over his keys. They are told to get out of the car; one cop takes Russell to the trunk while the other keeps Maia at the front of the car, asking them separately about the fertilizer. When the cop frisks Maia, she can tell from the body temp that it’s a vampire. Russell explains that Maia works at a greenhouse, and they are transporting the fertilizer for her parents. They don’t seem to be buying the story… Russell tries to signal Maia to run while the police are focusing on him, but she doesn’t feel she’d be able to outrun them in the residential area they were pulled over in.

Maia ducks around the open door and grabs the holy water vials & stake out of the glove compartment. She hears the sound of a fight, several gunshots, and a roar as she’s busy grabbing things. She slides over to the driver’s side door and looks back; one cop is wrestling with Russell for the gun, the other is staggering back with a line of bullet holes across his chest – no blood. Yep, definitely a vampire. Maia throws one of the holy water vials at him – gets him in the face, which immediately breaks out into blisters. Maia grabs the human cop from behind and kicks him, which distracts him from Russell; she grabs at the gun as well to try and help Russell. While wrestling for it, the human cop suddenly sees his partner game faced. “Damn, Chuck, I wish you hadn’t had to see this, now I’m gonna have to kill you.” Maia & Russell & the cop all point the gun at the vampire cop and fires. Russell is thrown back; Maia grabs his flare gun and hands it to the cop – the vampire starts burning. Russell goes after the vampire with a stake, but it hits his trauma vest plate and Russell is thrown to the ground. Maia throws the second vial of holy water, then goes after Russell’s machete in the car and manages to decapitate the vampire. Whew! However, when she looks over to check on Russell, his neck was broken when he landed.

Maia calls Cam to briefly fill him in, then talks down the very confused cop. Chuck is willing to let Maia leave, but decides he’s going with her. Rather than move the fertilizer, they put Russell’s body into his back seat, collect the weapons from the two police cars, and leave the police cars behind. She calls Cam, who arranges to meet them at the other church safe house, closer to Evangeline’s HQ, so they can start working on the explosive.

Pen headed down to Dunnegan’s to get things ready for the council; it’s been closed since Jupe passed away a few months ago. Thorne is the head of the group when they arrive, and they have the new Slayer with them. They know they have till sundown, probably this time zone to match NYC, where the sacrifice (massive attack) was just made. Pen scolds him for the way the council treated the bookseller. One of the council members is very condescending, assuring Pen that the professionals are now here, so they can relax; she politely tells him off, then Thorne comes over and tells him off as well. He & Pen sit down and talk tactics, and also review their set of surveillance photos.

Still no sign of Tina at St. Malachi’s. The police scanner is picking up the reports of gunshots fired, so the cops are all over the town; Ashley wants to go out looking for her, but it might not be safe. The amulet/wish/alternate universe thing is low priority for Cam right now compared to stopping Evangeline, so he won’t let Ashley go. He does try calling Tina, but can’t get a signal.

At First Church – Maia introduced Chuck to Cathy Ross, then fills Cathy in on what happened. They move Russell’s body into the springhouse outside. Cathy mentions that she hasn’t been able to reach her parents, who were on their way home from a conference in Boston. She calls Cam to fill him in, also on the high concentration of police all over the town. Roland calls to check in – Cam sends him to the church instead of to the gym.

Cam & Ashley debate what to do with Gloria; she did save Roland & avoid killing Ashley, but do they really trust that she’s on their side? Do they believe her story? Ashley points out that since they’re pretty well fucked tonight, they might as well let her free to see if she does help them; she can’t make it worse, right? Cam decides to turn her loose and take her along; Ashley goes down to untie her. He does want to take the Key away, so they need a way for her to go outside; Hilary finds a body bag. Ewwww!

Everyone gathers at First Church to plan. Pen stops each of the council people as they come in the door to make them go through the checks – touch the cross, look in the mirror, etc. The first meeting between the council group (including the Slayer) and Cam’s (including Gloria and Ashley with wings out) does not go well. Thorne is very taken aback by his first sight of Ashley, recovers quickly, and turns to warn the rest of his group not to come in shooting. It takes them a little longer to notice the vampire; Lisa (the new slayer) comes in last and immediately senses Gloria. She asks Cam if he realizes there is a vampire standing five feet from him; “Are you kidding? She’d the Vampire Queen’s head lieutenant.” Everyone on the council immediately takes aim at Gloria. Great. They are eventually reassured.

Thorne doesn’t know what happened in New York; they just lost contact. Spend some time working out plans, prepping weapons & armor. Maia calls Graves & Sons – Tina’s not there, Maia leaves a message, saying it’s very urgent and to please have her call Cam. Jordan calls Cam – call breaks up, but he manages to get info through: they should arrive in 20 minutes, and everything should happen in about two hours.

They ask Maia & Gloria how they stopped Evangeline – they used the Vox Magna (don’t do it again), Thorne saved their lives (“It was nothing”), and but they don’t have the spell scroll anymore, and they really shouldn’t use it. According to Luke (the council’s mage), there is a period of only about 9-11 minutes during the ritual in which Evangeline can be killed; during most of the time the ritual itself will be protecting her. Pen gets very thoughtful and phases out for a couple minutes; tells us that her sources tell her that when Evangeline is vulnerable, we’ll have 20-40 minutes in which to destroy her, and it will take something massive. Gloria reminds them of the storeroom of C4 at Franklin House that Chloe mentioned; all they have to do is get inside. Lisa suggests that Gloria bring her in openly – explain her absence by being busy capturing the Slayer as a gift for Evangeline. If we time it right, we can at least seriously split Mother’s forces, and hopefully can pick up some extra explosives.

Thorne describes to Gloria how to set the C4, and gives her a couple detonators to use. Blow it one minute after Evangeline becomes vulnerable – but what time will that be? Right on cue, Cody arrives with the schedule – gives us the exact time, 31 minutes from now. Three attacks – gasoline tanker truck (exploding at the loading dock), Russell’s car filled with the fertilizer bomb (driving into the front door), and the C4 inside. Luke pulls out a fake Ward of Binding amulet – glows. Lisa puts it on, acts like she’s fighting it, she & Gloria head out, taking one of the church vans.

Gloria gets some attitude from the cop guarding the Franklin House gates, but get inside – no one there, everyone’s already up at the main building. We track down the C4, load up, and head back to the van. Plan to go into the balcony overlooking the pool, wait for the car to drive in, set the timer for about 20 seconds and throw the duffel bag right at Evangeline. Roland will set off the tanker explosion when he hears the other explosions, and Thorne’s people will be outside to take down any escaping vampires.

Ashley notices that Russell still has his weapons and takes the useful ones; realizes he has the last of the sunshine cloths – cool! They line up the car on the main doors. Gloria & Lisa get into position at the balcony – can hear the chanting before we even get there. The timer is set for the minimum of 30 seconds. Pen floors the engine, blasting Ride of the Valkyries from the speakers, and plows through the main doors into the rotunda, slamming into the columns surrounding the fountain. Pen, Ashley & Maia pile out of the car. Ashley flashes the nearest of Evangeline’s ritual team with the sunshine cloth and flies up into the rotunda. Gloria hits the timer and throws the bag into the fountain. Lisa sees the book Evangeline is holding and screams “She’s got the book! The council will want that!” Ashley hears her and dives to grab the book; Evangeline was sufficiently distracted by everything else that she can’t hold on to it. Ashley flies as fast as she can up to the balcony, past Gloria & Lisa, and blows through a window, followed by the other girls, followed closely by the explosion. Maia & Pen just barely make it back out the front door before the explosion throws them further. They look back – no vampires pursuing, the building is engulfed, and a moment later the tanker explodes.

Several vampires start piling out of the basement, armed with guns; Thorne’s team starts taking them down. Gloria & Lisa both manage to land fairly well, although Gloria rolls into a car. Ashley makes sure they’re all right, then flies off to the other side of the building to join Cam.

Cam has Cody, Hilary & Nate with him, as well as Chuck the cop. They target a group of five vampires coming at them out of the building; they take four down, two permanently, but the last one tackles Cody. Hilary & Nate go after him to help; Nate slams the crossbow into the vampire, but it had already bitten Cody. Before Hilary can dust the vampire, it stabs Nate in the neck. Another vampire stabs Cam with a crossbow bolt; Chuck jumps in and stakes it. Cam is able to get to Nate in time to stop the bleeding, though.

There are very odd lighting effects in the smoke – Maia grabs Luke and asks him what it is. Random discharge of all the magic in the air; it’ll just take some time to fade out. Lisa & Gloria are strolling back around the building and rejoin the group – no vampires left for them to fight, what a shame. Ashley sees Hilary and flies down to check to check on her.

Gloria hears that no one has seen Roland yet; she sprints off to find him. Sees him leaning against the wall, rushes over and hugs him, babbling how happy she is that he’s all right. He’s startled, and when he notices that her skin is warm from the fire, he kisses her. Asks if it worked – as far as Gloria could tell, we destroyed Evangeline and all her army. Roland asks what now – now we try and get things reversed back to how they were. He just looks at her; comments that it’s so hard to remember that she’s not the real Gloria – she points out that in her memories, she is the real Gloria. He asks what if they can’t reverse it – she wouldn’t want to live like this as a vampire. No, she agrees she wouldn’t, so they have to find the amulet. He suggests they head back to rejoin the others. Gloria turns to start back and sees Maia coming around the corner of the building – calls out to her that Roland’s okay. Just then, Roland draws his sword and decapitates Gloria; she hears it just in time to turn and see the blow coming. Gloria dusts. Maia stares at him shocked. Roland looks miserable, sheaths the sword, picks up the Key, and walks back to the others.

Thorne takes the book from Ashley and hands it off to Luke; everyone scrambles for cars & other exits. Pen is hurrying people into cars, gathering stuff up that can’t be left behind, and making sure anything with fingerprints is not left behind. Roland heads off across the fields, pulling Maia with him, and they meet up with the others at the church. The main group gets there and are missing five people – Roland, Maia, Gloria, Alan, Luke & Lisa. Thorne tries calling Luke – no cell phone service. What happened? They (mostly) know to meet back here; wait for a bit to see if any stragglers arrive on foot.

Cam turns on the news – fire is still burning out of control; the odd effects (the odd colors overhead) make the authorities think it’s linked to the attack in New York. Freya arrives not long afterward – something is going wrong. She & Mr. Ross were finishing up a working, and closed the circle; he wanted to look at something else, but something walked through the circle and killed him. Something happened an hour ago (the explosions were an hour & a half ago), and the effects over the building aren’t going away. Ashley asks how long Thorne has known Luke; could he be doing something with the book? According to Thorne, he’s not that powerful. The effects shouldn’t be taking this long to disperse; Ashley changes into her night flying gear and goes back to check on the site.

Suddenly, a ripple of something passes through the universe. Ashley & Pen in particular sense that something was trying to change the world into a different place, where demons are normal and humans are rare – a reality quake. The last time they felt something like this was when Evangeline opened the HellMouth. A few minutes later, another quake ripples past. Someone is trying to change reality. Someone completed the Rite of Ascension – Luke? What about Lisa – when she was picked up in Atlanta, her watcher had been killed by a demon, according to her. Oh, crap.

Roland & Maia are watching the light show; a column of fire shoots up from the building, with a huge figure in the clouds, semi-human. They may not have succeeded – have to go back and check. He tells her to wait there a moment while he checks things out. After he leaves, Maia notices a figure standing in the shadows – Tina. She seems amused by Maia and is not at all cooperative about reversing the wish. Tina turns to go; Maia tackles her down and grabs the amulet. She takes off running, trying to break the amulet as she goes; Tina catches up and knocks her down. As she’s dragging Maia backward, Maia is trying to smash it on the pavement. She suddenly manages to smash it – and we are back in the graveyard, Gloria & Maia standing face-to-face.

Dr. Valerie D'Arc (Valkyrie) is shown a weapon that the people at Manning are trying to figure out; when fired at a target of cinder blocks, the blocks are shattered by a beam of energy. Cool! They don’t know how it works, but it’s a very handy handheld blaster. They are working on figuring out how it works, how the energy source works, and how they can reproduce it.

Kate is working on a case trying to locate someone who has not paid the fees on a legal junction against him six months ago - Carl Munson. He left his last known address and disappeared; the law firm trying to collect the money hired Kate to find him. A friend on the police force (Michael) calls – thinks they found his body. Head to meet him in the alley – definitely Munson, looks like he was executed. Has several priors on him, still has his wallet with ID – no robbery. It’s a blind alley, and no one saw anyone leave the alley after hearing the gunshot.

Fly up and look around at the rooftops – there are signs of what looks like a skid mark, ending in the shape of a boot; takes a picture. The skid is about 8 feet long. There’s a trap door into the building, but obviously hasn’t been opened in a while. Fly back down & tell Michael about the mark. Talk to the witnesses – nothing really helpful; they heard a gunshot.

Naomi is investigating Valkyrie’s background, trying to figure out if she’s someone they’ll want to work with later. Misc ongoing investigation of other supers they’ve encountered.

Contact Naomi – describe the situation & ask if she knows of anyone with abilities that would match; flight, superleap, etc. There are several with flight, a few with super strength that might allow leaping. None that click as a potential; the combination of super powers & small arms abilities is unusual. Pull up info on Munson’s prior warrants/arrests to look for reasons for his execution – about half a dozen addresses in the past three years, no really serious charges, no obvious enemy. Backtrack through addresses, see why & how he left each; the most recent was 2 weeks ago, then 3 months before that.

Shade comes back to her desk and finds someone lying under her desk – can only see a pair of legs (jeans & sneakers). A hand comes up and starts feeling around for a screwdriver; she asks what he’s doing under her desk – he says he’s installing the wireless card into her computer. She hands down the screwdriver, he finishes and climbs out. Scruffy, college age kid; looks surprised that she’s not Chuck. Who’s Chuck? She went out for donuts; he introduces himself as Vic. He gives her the info on her username, password, etc., chats with her as he’s setting up her account.

Defender calls Shade to let her know he’ll be out of town for a few days, just so no one worries when they can’t reach him. She goes off to teach her self-defense class.

Michael calls Kate, sounding concerned. The coroner found something strange – she goes over to meet him. On Munson’s left arm was a tattoo of a “V” that looked freshly done; they’ve seen it before on captured Viper agents. Probably done within the last two weeks. Other data – ballistics shows the gun is not a standard US caliber, but is European manufacture. No data yet linking it to previous cases. Contact Naomi & update her; a couple of the supers we came up with before have possible links to Viper, but the firearms doesn’t match. However, someone could have jumped in carrying a second attacker.

Suddenly Kate realizes the skid mark matches someone stopping from super speed, rather than leaping/flying. Redo the search – find one that has a record as a mercenary – Mercury Mercenary. Super speed, small arms, theft, assassinations, snatch & grabs. Has an Interpol file, but no name or photos. Description is only a muscular male, mid to late thirties. Wears a cowl, so no idea of hair color. Last known appearance was 6 months ago in Italy. About two years ago he seemed involved with a gang war in LA, but seemed to be working for both sides. However, it’s unusual for him to take a job dealing with such a nobody – tends to go after more well-protected targets. Kate & Naomi decide to call in the rest of the group.

Valkyrie is called into one of her coworker’s offices – he shows her a video on YouTube that he found, of Aegis fighting a criminal (Ramble) with a very similar weapon. Valkyrie calls the Aegis contact number and leaves a message – Dr. Valerie D’Arc. It takes Naomi a minute to figure out what she’s referring to, then realizes it was the person who transported in from another time (10-year jump?). She calls Valerie back…after first researching her online (and finding no information, misspelling the name). Valerie wants info on the weapon, saying that ‘they’ have a similar weapon, but won’t give her any information on who she is or where she got it. Naomi eventually realizes that the weapon Valerie is working with probably is Ramble’s, since he didn’t have it when he transported out. She tells Valerie that she will pass the word to Aegis and get back to her.

Kate, Naomi, Shade & Velocity meet up at HQ & debrief. Do we want to pass any info along to Valerie? Any ideas on the Viper hit? We decide that we need to meet Valerie in person – Velocity will meet her. We get online and verify some info; everything matches that she is actually an employee at Manning. Naomi calls & sets up a meeting for that evening; 9pm at Starbucks. Regarding Mercury Mercenary: there is no real data on his abilities or specific top speed, doesn’t seem to have other abilities (super strength, force field, etc.); is known for getting in, doing the damage, and getting out.

Off to meet Valerie. Shade & Kate & Naomi sit separately at the coffee shop, then Velocity arrives to meet Valerie. They meet up, then decide to leave to avoid the people starting to crowd around Velocity in his spandex. Shade is just getting up to follow them when she is interrupted by Vic & Chuck; they want to chat, but she manages to get away and leaves. Meanwhile, Velocity mentions that he believes the weapon uses fusion, so they can check it with a Geiger counter. It also apparently recharges by plugging into a wall, but it has to be a special outlet back where Ramble was from...but really doesn't say where that is. Essentially spends half an hour being chatty & helpful, but not giving Valerie much useful information. He leaves, Shade follows Valerie home – she does nothing unusual, nobody attacks her.

Research items:
• find date & time of Munson's funeral, to watch for suspicious attendees
• track down info on Munson’s family, to see if there may be a link there

Munson’s funeral – body will be claimed by his mother, who has been notified. Funeral not scheduled yet.

Watch for any large explosions at Manning, in case of accidents while working with Ramble's weapon.

Naomi manages to locate Munson’s credit card records – no activity in the past two weeks, except for last night, when he stayed at a cheap hotel a couple blocks from where he was killed. Pending charge – bought breakfast the morning he was killed. By the location, he was on his way back to the hotel when he was killed. Plan to check at the restaurant in the morning to see if they remember him…

Shade sneaks in to Munson’s hotel room – they call the front desk and manage to identify which room (14), but it’s not under his name, he registered under Jack Farrell. The clerk transfers the call to Munson’s room; Naomi & Shade get inside. They search the room and find a duffle bag with a few sets of clothing, Naomi calls Kate to join them to help search. She finds a torn piece of paper from a steno pad, has address & time, but no date. It’s a New York address in a business area, the time is 2am. We photograph & copy the note, put everything back as we found it, and leave.

Head to the address (it’s currently about 11pm) – series of warehouses, differentiated by letters. Naomi scans the area and locates a few people in Building E. Shade goes to scout out the building first – there are several large bay doors along one wall, as well as a few regular pedestrian doors. She gets in closer and sees light coming from inside of E, while the other buildings are dark. The center of three large doors seems to be where the activity & light is located; we decide to hold off and watch rather than breaking in now.

Valkyrie is out on a relaxing evening flight when she spots someone flying with a jet pack; follows him.

A car arrives at around 1:30am, large dark sedan; we alert Shade so she knows it’s coming. It slowly pulls up to Building E, stops, and four people in suits get out. The two from the front seat stay by the car, the other two go to the back door of the building and call someone on a cell phone – obviously announcing their arrival. The door shortly opens and they are let inside. Shade gets closer to the car, but the windows are tinted. She looks in the windshield; there’s no one else in the front seat, and there’s an opaque divider blocking her view of the back seat. She teleports into the front seat of the car and looks around; finds a gun in the glove compartment and misc. paperwork on the car. She turns the car off, takes the keys, and teleports back out. The two are startled, look at the car, open the door & look around. Another person gets out of the back seat – another man in a suit, stockier than the others. As they are milling around trying to figure out what happened, another car arrives – hummer. Pulls up around the other side of the building and parks facing the sedan. The three at the sedan seem wary of the new arrivals, but don’t immediately attack. Naomi senses four people in the hummer; two get out & stand at the front of the car on guard. Shade can see them holding small sub-machine guns, obviously ready for any trouble. The other two men get out of the hummer and head to the door – they are let in immediately. The third man at the sedan gets back into his car.

Kate works her way around to where she can watch the cars & men, so she can follow them if they leave, and Naomi calls Lt. Gonzales to tell him about the meet.

Meanwhile, Valkyrie has followed the other flyer to the same area (although she doesn’t realize we’re there); sees him hovering, but is too far away to see him pulling out a weapon until he fires it at the ground. He fires at the sedan; Shade sees the beam glitter out of the corner of her eye and sees what looks like a laser beam slice across the center of the sedan. Kate looks up – can’t see anything, but keeps an eye on the sky in case whoever it is fires again. Valkyrie moves in to block any further shots.

Valkyrie flies in, grabs the coupling from the gun’s power pack and yanks it free. The men on the ground are running for cover. There’s not much he can do against her after that… She chases as he flies off and easily catches up with him; gets in a punch that knocks him toward the ground, then hits him again and knocks him out. She catches him and looks around for police lights; the laser gun was dropped and is long gone somewhere.

Shade follows after the men trying to take cover in the building; manages to knock both of their guns away before they can react. We all hold for further developments – since none of the men on the ground appear to be supers, we’d prefer to let the police deal with them. And until we see where that laser came from…

The driver of the hummer is on the cell phone to update his boss inside; the other man got back into the hummer, and they drive closer to the door. Naomi called Gonzales again to fill him in on developments. Kate is watching the hummer, ready to follow them if they leave before the cops arrive. The garage door of the building opens, the lights have been switched off. Shade covers the garage door area in darkness; prevents the men inside from seeing anything. There are men inside wearing paramilitary armor with assault rifles; they have flashlights attached to the rifles, but discover that they don’t help against the darkness around them. She sees two, doesn’t know how many more there may be. Shade moves the circle of darkness further inside and tries to determine the number of men present.

Valkyrie is carrying the man down when she spots his target – a car that clearly was bisected by a laser beam. She spots another vehicle near by with it’s lights on, and hovers to get a better look.

Kate spots someone hovering about 50 feet up; force field goes on and she flies up to check it out. Valkyrie recognizes her from the power effects; Kate recognizes Valkyrie when she gets close. They take the man to a nearby rooftop so they take off his helmet and see who it is.

Velocity goes to watch the other side of the building, to make sure no one leaves that way. The police are telling Naomi their ETA is still a few more minutes, since they have to move in a special crimes unit & helicopter. At 2am, Velocity’s watch chirps. Inside the garage door, there is suddenly a large shimmering effect, mostly blocked by the darkness, but large enough to be visible around the edges. Shade goes in closer to take a look at it; there is a large square area marked off with duct tape, and the shimmer is in the center of that area. As she watches, a couple of human figures materialize in the center along with a large amount of gear – delivery.

Kate & Valkyrie immobilize laser man and head in to help.

To be continued…

Roland is organizing an ambush for the vampires tracking them – they’ll lead the vamps right into a trap. They take Chloe’s dad’s gun & ammo & car and head out asap. Cam is collecting weapons – one of the new toys Cody’s developed is a set of folded cloths that have been absorbing sunlight for several days. Open them up towards the vampire and it blasts hours of sunlight in a second. Cool! Also stocks up on flare guns & misc other fun weapons…Maia makes sure she gets hold of something she can use in her current untrained body. Cody passes Cam a glass bottle – when it’s broken, it’ll block all communications for about 5 minutes, 75 yard radius. It’ll also kill any electronics within a few feet when it breaks, so throw it at the vampire’ car.

They plan out the ambush – Roland’s group will lead the vampires into an alley, then Cam’s group will block the other end and trap the vampires between them. They are able to identify 6 vampires in the car following them. Since Roland & the girls are in an older car, he plans to ram the vampire’s car hard enough to set off their airbags to slow them down. Ashley is assigned to fly Chloe up to the rooftop to keep her out of the line of fire; her weapons will be up there waiting for her. Cam’s team will leave some more weapons on top of the dumpster in the alley. Freya will be holding a silence cone over the area, to make sure the police don’t get called in at the sound of gunfire and fighting.

At Franklin House – Johanna has called in with an update; tells Gloria that Roland tried to ditch them at the house by swapping cars, and it looks like he left a couple of the girls behind at the Melton House. They seem to be driving aimlessly, and probably spotted the tail. She asks Gloria about having some of their police stop them, but instead they send one car ahead to try and cut them off. Gloria sends a text message to Maia while still alone: “Follow cars are separating; third car arriving with me & 3 others.” She heads out with Johanna and a couple other vampires to join the fight.

Maia shows the text message to Cam, who promptly takes the phone away from her.

Ashley takes off her coat in preparation for the fight; Pen starts shifting to her demon form – sharp teeth, scaly, eyes going black, and her voice starts to reverberate with several voices all at once.

*** As in interesting fluke, the ambush site is the same alley in which we found the amulet in our original universe. Hmmm… ***

Into the fight:

Pen realizes the second car is no longer following them, and isn’t sure when it left. She calls Cam as Roland hits the gas; Cam tells her to stick with the plan, but watch for the vampires trying to circle in front of them. Cam spots the headlights of the other car at the far end of the alley, ahead of Roland. Roland turns off the lights, hits reverse, floors the gas and rams the front of the Escalade; then switches to forward and floors it away down the alley. He stops long enough for the girls to get out of the car; Pen jumps on top of the car, guns in both hands, firing in both directions at the two cars. She jumps down from the car just as Roland hits the gas again to slam into the other car.

Cody throws the bottle down into the alley, shutting off all electronics. Freya puts up the silence field.

Maia is up on the roof, loading flare guns for Russ, who is firing at both vampire cars. Ashley flies Chloe up and hands her off to Maia, then heads back into the fight. Cam comes up from the Escalade from behind, just as they accelerate back into him. Eep – Cam manages to dodge out of the way as the Escalade is slammed into wall. Jordan is cut off on the far side of the car, and Cam hears him shattering windows. The passenger door opens; Cam starts spraying the vampire (and car interior) with his SuperSoaker of holy water – the first vampire takes full blast and dives over the door, so Cam manages to soak the vampire in the car as he’s on the radio trying to report the ambush.

Pen follows after Roland to back him up; spots Cody throwing fire at the clumped vampires in time to hold back out of the field of fire (so to speak). Unfortunately, Cody hits the brick wall behind them instead of hitting the group, so they are distracted but not badly hurt. He makes a second attempt and blasts one into a splat on the wall.

In Gloria’s car – they’ve entered the communications blackout field, and start getting static on the earpieces. Roll down the windows – can’t hear anything, but can smell gunfire. Gloria hits redial to try and warn Maia they are incoming – nothing but static. They drive in to join the fight.

Maia spots the third car coming in; she & Russ fire flares at the car. Gloria suddenly feels like she REALLY doesn’t want to be in the car and dives out, just as one flare hits the car hood and another goes through windshield and hits a vampire in the face.

Ashley spots the new targets and flies over with her kukri and motorcycle chain. Gloria looks up just in time to spot Ashley flying in and decapitating vampire Buchanan; she has a “what-the-fuck” moment, followed by recognizing the image from the succubus book, followed by realizing it’s Ashley…followed by realizing that since she can’t hear herself freaking out, neither can anyone else. Which is good…

Pen is facing a vampire with a pipe; she has a machete in one hand and a cross in the other. The vampire tries to knock the cross out of her hand; she manages to dodge his first couple attacks, but finally loses it on the third attack. The second vampire is moving in on her as well, just as Roland gets out of the car and fires into his face; the vampire is knocked down and stunned. Maia & Russ start lobbing holy water balloons off the roof to give Pen some liquid coverage.

Cam pulls out one of the sunlight cloths and flashes the alley; does massive, MASSIVE damage to both vampires nearest him, immolating them. Everyone else is startled by the light, the other vampires flinch away; Gloria (still in normal Gloria mentality) doesn’t even flinch, just wonders what caused the light.

Gloria spots Roland facing down a vampire with no weapon other than his pistol; she rushes in to help with her katana. Ashley lands in front of the third car; Johanna comes up from the passenger car holding a shotgun on her, and Gloria is running in her direction holding a katana. Ashley dives for cover and manages to avoid being shot. Johanna is a bit surprised when Gloria runs past Ashley instead of attacking her, although not as surprised as Ashley is… Johanna manages to hit Ashley once on her next attempt, although Ashley flies straight up and manages to dodge the other shots; she heads up to take cover on a nearby roof and lands.

The vampire grabs Roland and smashes him into the wall; Gloria charges in and decapitates the vampire – drives the katana right into the wall and the blade snaps off. Meanwhile, Pen is fighting off the second vampire and tries to stake him; the vampire manages to just barely block her, then knocks her back with his pipe. Russ throws a water balloon onto the fight, tagging Gloria in the face and burning her terribly. Ouch!

The vampire facing Pen leaps over her body and attacks Cam with his pipe; Cam & his team triple-team him but only manage to knock him down. Jordan & Hilary come in for a second attack & distraction as Cam is catching up to join them; Cam decapitates him.

Hilary throws a stake at Gloria, who catches it. (Whew!) However, there are a lot of hostiles who clearly want Gloria dead, unless she either leaves or convinces them otherwise. She picks up the flare gun on the ground and fires at Johanna…but it isn’t loaded. Damn. Johanna fires back; Gloria manages to dodge part of the attack, but is still hit by three bullets and knocked back off her feet. The crew up on the roof fire on Johanna – Chloe just manages to tag her shoulder, and Johanna is moving to fire at Chloe when Cody blasts her with fire and Maia & Russ shoot her with flare guns. Johanna is injured, but is still on her feet. Cam pulls out the second sunlight cloth and flashes the rest of the alley. Johanna is instantly destroyed; Gloria is blinded, but not injured.

The last car (that Roland hit head-on) suddenly revs up and starts backing down the alley. Ashley fires her flare gun into the hood, which only slows down the car; Jordan flashes the car with a third cloth and destroys whichever vampire was inside. The car drifts into the wall. The humans look around and realize that Gloria was not immolated, despite taking two blasts of sunlight, although she is stunned. Maia realizes she must have one of the Keys of Ophir, keyed to sunlight protection.

Everyone gathers cautiously around Gloria; Maia rushes down from the roof as fast as possible to keep them from killing her. Gloria asks if Roland is okay – Maia checks on him and makes sure he’ll survive. Nate calls from the van to report incoming police; they cover Gloria’s head with a bag, load everyone into the van, and head to their church safehouse.

Gloria is tied & chained to a chair, with crosses on the floor around her, still with her head covered. Everyone else is getting first aid as needed. Maia is keeping Gloria company & sketching the amulet, as best she & Gloria can remember. Eventually everyone falls asleep (or unconscious). Chloe dreams about somewhere that she’s happier, more stable, where she had more friends. Gloria is feeling extremely uncomfortable, plus can hear everyone’s heartbeat and smell everyone’s blood; she spends the evening trying to focus on Maia’s voice rather than on the smell of blood.

Sunrise arrives. People wake up and get breakfast. The priest asks Cam what the story is behind having Gloria in the basement. Cam fills him in briefly – summarizes Maia’s claim of a different reality, describes how Gloria apparently saved Roland’s life, and Ashley points out that Gloria avoided killing her. Maia pulls out the sketch of the amulet to show them; Chloe reaches over with a pencil and fills in the center part that Maia couldn’t remember – looks right. Maia takes coffee downstairs to Gloria while the others discuss the amulet. Cam & Ashley remember seeing it before – Tina Graves of Graves & Sons wears one just like it. Cam calls Tina; before he can ask her to stop by, she interrupts and tells him there is something weird going on in town – the police are setting up a barricade in the center of North Square. She tells him to turn on CNN – something big hit New York, the news is talking possible nuclear strike. She’ll come by but it’ll be awhile.

Maia calls Marston Stokes & asks what happened in NYC – the Watchers’ Council was gathering their forces to move into Ohio, but were hit hard before they could get out of New York, and the Slayer was killed. He asks where they can bring in a large group; she passes the phone to Cam, who recommends Dunnegan’s Gym.

Meanwhile, Chloe has come down to the basement, cut a vein, filled a glass of blood, and makes Gloria drink it. “Drink it so you can blow up Mother.”

Pen meditates on things in the basement, carefully watched by Maia (Pen is in demon form while meditating). Asks Gloria what she knows about Evangeline’s plans – fills them in on her plans to become a goddess. Pen tells them that possibly reversing the wish is complicated; it depends on what sort of being granted the wishes. It’s possible that destroying the amulet will reverse the spell, but it would be the exact amulet the wish was made on. Maia & Gloria describe the girl who lost the amulet in their reality – it’s Tina.