CHAPTER 67: HOME BASE | THE RAID—IX

  GARLAND HEIGHTS—NOVEMBER 26th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  Esme stood with a broomstick at the ground level of the building, where Allure Artificery had been molested by the recklessness of the very people whom Esme had allowed into her home. Her thanks for free food and shelter, then, was a loss of wares, a shattered display case, and the presence of two buffoons seated in their constable cruisers just outside of the sidewalk—one Constable Briggs and Constable Heathcliff, whom Captain Holmes had placed on security detail.

  No traffic came in or out of the single narrow street that her storefront occupied, and the absence of pedestrians thereby killed any further business ventures. Not that any customers were likely to come in; the state of her shop was, frankly, enough of a deterrent to ward off anyone with any money to spend.

  Esme’s black bandana remained atop her head, her goggles over the top of it, and her orange hair was set in its usual braid, which ran just below her shoulders. She’d changed out of her usual getup, somewhat. The military-green button up she usually wore had since been removed and wrapped around her waist, revealing a black tank top that covered her torso while revealing the copious amounts of tattoos on both of her arms.

  “Sorry, could you repeat that?” Esme asked.

  Janice had assisted her thus far, scoping out any broken wares and organizing them into a small pile on Esme’s front desk.

  “Oh, no, no problem, I was just saying I was surprised that you were able to get all of those reagents for me on short notice,” Janice said, smiling.

  She looked pretty under the dim light, or lack thereof, that rolled into Allure Artificery alongside trace amounts of Brinehaven’s fog.

  Not pretty as in Esme-would-go-for-it-pretty, but pretty in a way that she could respect. Pretty, perhaps, in a way that Esme was jealous of. Janice was older than her, in her forties or thereabout, but her face wore its maturity like a fermented wine. Her olive skin was without blemishes, and the wrinkles set around her laugh lines only seemed to define her features further. Brown eyes, curly brown hair, that mole above her lip; if Janice wasn’t an unemployed alchemist she’d be on the cover of a magazine somewhere.

  And Esme had any control over her attraction, she’d easily give it a shot.

  Unfortunately, Esme favored broad shoulders, a squared jaw, and as of recently, men in uniform.

  “Any good artificer has a decent, reliable supplier,” Esme said with a knowing smile. “Surely the same was true for Bluestein Philterworks when you worked for them, no?”

  “Oh, well, yeah,” Jancice said, nodding. “Though I wasn’t privy to the logistics behind how we got our reagents. Corporate handled that.”

  “It must be nice,” Esme said, sweeping up the final bits of shattered glass into a tray pan.

  “Hm?” Janice asked, head tilted ever so slightly.

  “Being on your own again, Janice. You’re a free agent now; the sole proprietor of your labor and your research and whatever else you wish to do.”

  “Well, yes,” Janice muttered. “Though I wish it were under different circumstances.”

  Esme lurched up, made her way over to the trash can adjacent to her welcome desk and workbench, and watched the glass slide down into the black plastic. En route back to her desk, she briefly rested a hand on Janice’s shoulder, a warm but matter-of-fact smile emerging on her freckled face.

  “You and I both, Janice. Though, frustrated as I am about the near-destruction of my place of business, I can’t say it’s been all bad,” Esme noted.

  “It’s, ah.. pretty bad, Esme,” Janice muttered.

  “I believe there is opportunity to be found, usually, in even the worst of circumstances,” Esme said cooly, shifting through the pile of half-broken wares Janice had gathered for her.

  “Think so?” Janice asked, intrigued, placing a hand at her hip.

  “Know so. My shop's window has been ravaged, and I could’ve let that ruin my day. Instead, I had a kind word with Captain Holmes. Now? My property taxes have been waived for the year, and I will be getting a blank check to cover the damages lost in commodities.”

  Janice smiled at that. “That.. is pretty good.”

  “And,” Esme said, turning briefly to wave a finger in Janice’s direction. “Captain Holmes will be buying me a drink.”

  Janice’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “Holmes? I didn’t take you for the type, Esme. And, well, I know I don’t know you all that well, but I figured you’d go for someone more..”

  “Academic? Artisan?” Esme inquired.

  “Well, yes,” Janice admitted with a flush of embarrassment.

  “You’d think. The couple of boyfriends I’ve had over the years tended to be like that. Scholastic-types, men of letters. I’ve since learned there’s a power in friction.”

  “Sure,” Janice said, smiling once more. “I can get behind that. He saves people. A sense of duty never hurts, and he seems reliable. You’ll have to let me know how that goes.”

  “Well,” Esme said, turning back to the pile of wares.

  “Well?” Janice asked.

  “Yes. That’s just the word—well. It will go well. Really well,” Esme said assuredly. “That is what my feminine intuition is telling me. And he’s a looker, isn’t it? Handsome like a soldier.”

  Janice smiled and placed a hand on Esme’s shoulder. “I think so too, Esme. You'll have to let me know how it goes."

  ?

  They sat on the couch of Esme’s loft, and the TV droned on in the background, spewing nonsense that neither of them particularly cared about. Esme’s coffee had gone cold, and she’d barely touched it, while Janice was well onto her second cup. How she wasn’t outright jittery and trembling from head to toe came as a surprise to Esme.

  “You know, my supplier gave me a few strange looks when I picked up your reagents for you,” Esme said.

  “Did he?” Janice asked bashfully.

  “Her. And may you never have the displeasure of having to meet Diana Bisschop, the hag of all hags. Anyways, first, there was the ectoplasm and the menstrual blood—”

  “Roséviscous. Alchemy majors learn it either in their third or fourth year, during our applied studies coursework. Up until recently, I hadn't made it in years… though, in truth, it’s been a while since I’ve made anything. Bluestein decided that my education was better served not in practicality, but in, well, oversight. Clipboards, crunching numbers, checking values, making sure that things were being minted correctly.”

  Esme kicked her feet up onto the coffee table. She hadn’t had a chance to clean Leroy's blood from it.

  “A waste, if you ask me,” Esme said plainly.

  “Yeah,” Janice said, taking a sip. “But, hey. It’s like you said—opportunity in spite of the circumstances. I.. well, I hope I’m not being awfully direct, but I’m glad to have met everyone.”

  Esme smiled. “I can only speak for myself, but yes. The sentiment is shared.”

  Janice took another sip. “I do hope they are okay, Esme.”

  “Cameron, as I understand it, has improved quite a bit since I last saw him. Not that I have anything to base that off of, but he carries himself a bit differently."

  Janice raised a brow. "How so?"

  Esme puffed her cheeks out, prepared to laugh, only to deny herself such a thing.

  "When he first walked in here with Leroy, he was a ball of pent up anger and displaced aggression. Very brooding, with a meaner look on his face than the one he wears now. He's calmed down. Is he still a young man fueled by bravado, recklessness, swaying around like he has something to prove? Yes. But without knowing all that much about him, I can tell you that he's better than he was."

  Janice smiled. "I only met him recently, so in truth, I'm not sure what to say. Though my gut tells me you're right."

  "And you know Tania better than I, but with all of that pent up rage, I’m doubtful there is much to stand in her way. The warden is a curator, so there’s that. And Captain Holmes wasn't just handed his rank,” Esme said.

  “That leaves Leroy,” Janice pointed out. "And with the way he showed up here not too long ago, I'm worried about him the most. He took a real beating, Esme."

  “Leroy Waters is a mean old dog. A mean old dog with a brand new toy,” Esme said assuredly. “He'll be fine."

  “His gun, that’s right,” Janice said, smiling. “You artificed it.”

  Esme smirked.

  Janice reached over to poke her in the shoulder, coffee nearly spilling out of its cup as she did so. “Well, don’t be shy. Tell me all about it, Esme, come on.”

  “Be right back, “ Esme said, lurching out from her seated position.

  She climbed over the back of the couch and ran up the thin stairwell of her loft, where Leroy’s sweat and blood stained her beige sheets. There wasn’t all that much space, but in the corner of the platform was a small desk, a small chair, stray pieces of paper and a set of pens. She grabbed a paper—an old schematic—and a pen and rushed back down the stairs.

  Esme vaulted over the couch, flipped the paper over, and began scribbling along the blank canvas.

  “He came to me with a handgun. A LAR Grizzly that he’d purchased from Silvio.”

  “Silvio?” Janice asked.

  “A greaseball and a dealer of odds and ends, but that’s not important,” Esme said, waving a dismissive hand. “Now, he wanted something simple, but something effective, and limited to just one component.”

  Esme quickly illustrated a rough outline of a handgun. Where the slide should have been were teeth. “Given his abilities, he wanted something complimentary. The component, then, had to be something that would play to his strengths.”

  “So… teeth?” Janice asked, confused.

  “The teeth of a jokulfrosti,” Esme said. “Spirits of winter native to Scandanavia, that, to my knowledge, arrived alongside their viking counterparts in Canada during the days of Leif Erikson and have since propagated in the backyards of our syrup-loving neighbors.”

  Confusion spread across Janice’s features.

  “You’ve heard of Jack Frost, yes?” Esme asked.

  “Well, sure,” Janice said, nodding.

  “That story is based on the jokulfrosti. Anyway, I assume you remember the basic principles of artificery, during those common core courses you dredged back when you were a student?”

  “Component, condition, congruency,” Janice said, nodding. “Yeah. But that's about the extent of what I remember. BCA's class of '76 isn't exactly recent.”

  “I replaced a portion of the slide of the gun, here, as you can see, with the teeth of a jokulfrosti. They always have a frozen kind of… plaque around them, so to speak, that will regrow even when Leroy pulls the slide back; which may yet shatter some of the aforementioned plaque.”

  “Huh,” Janice said, nodding.

  “It was a difficult project, and required more hassle than I would’ve liked. I had to disassemble the gun, take the exact measurements for the circumference of the inside barrel, and bore holes down to millimeter increment so that each tooth would fit into place, sandpaper down the edges—anyway. Here,” Esme darted her pen across the paper, adding further notes to the description. “The runes along the entire gun. These are how the conditions are expressed, which contributes to what his gun can actually do when he isn’t shooting regular bullets.”

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  “And how congruent is it? I… well, it’s unorthodox, Esme. I can’t see what might work, or how it might work, and how the component and the condition create congruency,” Janice said.

  Esme's face lit up. "You've opened Pandora's box, Janice. What I am about to say is long-winded, and perhaps overly verbose, but I'd like for you to bear with me. Can you do that?"

  Janice nodded. "But of course, Ms. O'Doherty."

  “Whatever he shoots has to be organic, and whatever he hits, the frozen smile of the jokulfrosti will emerge. As long as it chitters, and as long as it thinks it's cold, frost will grow outward from the smile like a frozen plaque and limit movement, or give Leroy a bit of material to do as he pleases with," Esme began, passion and excitement filling in the gaps between each and every word. "I’ve added tertiary runes as well; supplemental characters that keep the jokulfrosti teeth themselves aligned, anchored, and resistant to the recoil forces of the gun being fired. The teeth alone are already quite durable, stronger than some metals, even, but this contingency ensures that there’s no staling or mishaps. And with some runic addendums? The pesky permafrost, here, along the teeth themselves, don’t emit outwards. Ever. The cold is kept inside the teeth, so there is no risk of it spreading along the gun, or, frost-biting old Leroy's fingers when he decides to use it.”

  Janice’s features drew into an envious scowl. “... in the most respectful way, Esme, screw you.”

  Esme, taken back, tilted her head. Strong words for someone as soft spoken as Janice. Esme was surprised and impressed, but her widened eyes shot Janice a look that demanded clarification.

  “I.. look, I just don’t. I don’t think I ever would’ve thought of that, even if I was an artificer.”

  “Maybe not. I am quite good at my job,” Esme said.

  Janice shook her head. “Not just good. Great. Once-in-a-lifetime great, Esme.”

  ?

  Esme heard the sound of rubber stalling along the asphalt.

  She got up from her seated position on the couch, and headed to rows of windows along her loft. Janice followed suit, and the two of them shuffled between Janice’s impromptu alchemy station to get a better view.

  A car skidded to a halt just outside of Allure Artificery, right in front of where Constable Briggs and Constable Heathcliff had sealed off the narrow one-way street with their Civic and Occult Authority cruiser.

  Constable Heathcliffe, strutted towards the stopped vehicle, a black Mercedes, and brought with him all of his lankiness and sense of duty. Constable Briggs followed suit, his husky figure and large belly warbling in place as he rushed to his partner’s side.

  “I… Esme, that’s—the woman, I recognize her,” Janice said in a hurried, shaking voice.

  On the opposite end of the small, last-minute wooden barricades the two constables had placed along the street was a woman no taller than five-foot-three, adorned in a white blouse and a black vest. Her dark hair was set into a bun, and chic glasses rested on her face. The pearls on her neck were so white that Esme could see them gleam through the remnant morning fog.

  She had been the first to exit the Mercedes.

  The second was a man who exited the passenger seat with his pistol already in hand.

  He fired without a moment’s hesitation. Not once, but twice. Two bullets plunged through Constable Heathcliff’s skull. He dropped to the ground immediately.

  Janice gasped. Esme’s heart skipped a beat.

  Constable Briggs reached for his firearm.

  The man spat something from his mouth that zipped through the air nearly as fast as a bullet. Cinder trailed out from his nose and his lips. A ball of fire around the size of a baseball slammed into Constable Brigg’s face. He instinctively reached up to douse the flames, only to fall onto the ground, screaming and contorting in place. Any words that left him thereafter were muted by the bubbling flesh along his lips, punctuated by the nonsensical noises of a tongue that melted the teeth that surrounded it.

  Esme’s fingers began to shake at her sides.

  “E-Esme,” Janice whispered.

  Esme instinctively shot her arm towards Janice’s face and clasped a palm over her mouth.

  The window was cracked open ever so slightly, allowing for Esme to just barely make out the fullness of what the assailants were saying.

  “Dean, in and out,” the woman instructed. “And do it quickly. I’ll be in the car.”

  Esme hadn’t seen him before.

  The man’s hair slightly receded along his dirty-blonde widow's peak, and he wore a kevlar vest over a gray workwear jacket. More striking was what seemed to be permanent stitches on one side of his face; splotches of red and leathery skin forced their way out from the stitches, like permanent webbing glued to his face. On the opposite side of his head was something equally as uncanny. He didn’t look like an accursed, but had a stub-like protrusion on one side of his temple like a sawed off devil’s horn.

  Esme slowly lowered her hand from Janice's mouth, and nodded towards the man.

  "Dean Dresker," Janice said, her low and just a few tones above silent. "But he—...."

  "What?" Esme whispered.

  "That horn, the reddish skin. He didn't have those before," Janice noted.

  "Accursed?"

  "No," Janice muttered. "Something different. He'd either need to survive a demon attack, or be a blud addict who went through withdrawals to become one of those. This is Vestigial Syndrome. It occurs when someone has overdosed on pasteurized demon blood and lived to tell about it—hence the horn stub, the splotch of skin," Janice explained, her voice shaky.

  Esme nodded, and directed her attention back towards Dean and the woman.

  “Yeah,” Dean answered. “An’ uh, witnesses? Probably some people up in them there apartments, Maudey Pie, you know, across the street and all—”

  “Maude,” she corrected. “And all the more reason to finish things quickly. Go.

  He issued her a two-fingered salute and began pacing towards Allure Artificery.

  “And Dean?”

  He stopped, turned, and faced her.

  “Lay off the pasteurized demon blood. I mean it. Any more and you’ll grow another horn, or, you’ll have reached the lethal dose and you’ll just drop dead."

  “Ayup, I hear you loud and clear,” Dean said, waving a dismissive hand. “Now go on and get. Let me do my damn job.”

  “Don’t fail this time,” Maude said, pacing back towards her Mercedes. “I’ll be in the car. We’ll need to head back to Spectre as soon as possible. Emilio can’t be left out on his own like that for much longer."

  Constable Brigg’s screams came to a halt, his words falling victim to his bubbling and flayed flesh.

  Janice glanced towards Esme, eyes wide and swollen with fear.

  Esme nodded towards the wall mounted telephone in her apartment.

  “Janice,” Esme began, her voice just above a whisper. “Call the Civic and Occult Authority. And stay up here.”

  “I—Esme, no, you can’t,” Janice said.

  “I can and I will,” Esme said. Her brown eyes looked one color deeper, and her chestnut-orange eyebrows furrowed inward into a scowl. “If I can be honest, Janice, I am sick and tired of people showing up to my shop uninvited.”

  ?

  Anything worth anything was at the front of the store, gathered in that pile Janice had made for her. Worse, her tool kit, alongside her styluses and carving tools, were all situated behind the front desk.

  Dean was already inside, and by some miracle, hadn’t heard her descend the stairwell leading down to the backroom where her forge and proper smithing station remained. Esme had one advantage; two layers worth of sigilmasoned doors. First, the door leading into the back room itself, and second, the door leading up to the stairwell which led to the loft.

  And only Esme had the keys.

  She removed a fob from her belt loop and twisted a sigilmarked key into the door leading to the back room, and slowly closed it behind her.

  When it locked into place, a small hum echoed out from the sigils, and a brief and passing breeze caused the schematics around the room to tussle along the clothing lines they hung from.

  Esme’s job, then, was simple: find a way to trap Dean in her back room, where two sigilmasoned doors would keep him enclosed like a rat in a cage. It was the best option—if not the only option—available to her in the absence of her arsenal. And if it worked out, she’d practically be handing a gift-wrapped criminal to the Civic and Occult Authority.

  Between the two closed doors, Dean couldn’t see her, and she couldn't see him. All she had to work with was sound of his boots clapping against the ground. Thus far, Dean had apparently done the opposite of what his handler had asked of him. Esme could have sworn she heard him pocketing some of her wares.

  Acid reflux shot up her throat.

  She immediately rushed to the side of the room and vomited up a day’s worth of bile, exhaled, and shuddered. Her hands shook, and she linked them together in some effort to quell the tremors. Death was as much a part of life as anything else, and she knew, fundamentally, that some of her tools were used to deliver death. But she had never witnessed a murder, and her first exposure to it offered twice the shock on account of twice the dead bodies. Heathcliff and Briggs deserved better.

  With an exhale, she centered herself.

  Now was not the time. What was needed was composure, and a mind primed for tact and strategy. So she took herself to such a place, shoved down her feelings of fright, and examined her surroundings. There was nothing she could make on short notice that would do much of anything. Esme glanced towards her small forge, and shifted her gaze towards the schematics. In truth, having them strung up like that had always been a safety hazard.

  Turning up the heat on the forge would be easy enough. Finding a way to light all of her schematics on fire would be easier still.

  An half-smile smile stretched across her face, neither assured nor nervous—just some strange combination of both things.

  ?

  The low hum of the sigilmasonry faltering in the presence of a proper key indicated entry was possible.

  Dean entered, and with the way he moved, he knew something was up; that he hadn't stumbled in, but rather, he'd been allowed in.

  "Huh," he muttered. His ears perked to the sound of crackling flames and he turned his nose up to the smell of the smoke. In front of him, dozens upon dozens of pieces of paper were alight in the orange-red of forgefire. A sharp breath left him as a cough, and he held his arm up to his face.

  The door fell back into place, and nearly closed fully onto Esme, who had been crouched behind it.

  Esme had but a small mallet in her hand—no more than a simple rounding tool for controlled force, once situated among several others that had been adjacent along a rack closer to the forge. In her opposite hand, tucked between her fingers, was a sigilmarked key.

  Haphazard clothing lines caught fire.

  They fell around him like a collection of blazing ropes.

  She lurched out from behind the door with baited breath and swung at the back of Dean’s head with as much power as her one-hundred-and-twenty-five-pound frame could muster. He heard her approaching, and pivoted with a deftness that surprised her. The mallet slammed into the demonic stub along his head.

  Dean groaned, loudly, and fell backwards onto his rear, his frame splayed out between the inflamed pieces of falling paper.

  Esme rebounded off her back leg, launching herself towards the door. She swiftly pivoted and entered the front area of Allure Artificery. She dropped the mallet, grabbed the door handle, and shuffled her opposite hand forward to place the sigilmarked key into the lock.

  Blood trickled down along the tufts of Dean's dirty blonde hair.

  A ring along his middle finger hummed. From the floor, a puddle of ink emerged, and a tentacle of ichor jutted outwards with such immediacy that Esme could hardly register it.

  Esme slammed the door shut. Its metal frame dented outwards towards her where the tendril’s tip had struck, producing a resonant bang that prompted her to wince. With all of her strength, she pressed her shoulder and side against the door, a white-knuckled grip securing her sigil-marked key between her fingers. Had she closed that door a second later, that tendril would've disemboweled her.

  Another bang. Another dent. Splashes of ichor seeped out from under the door.

  Esme shoved the key into the lock and twisted.

  The sigilmasonry responded in full, its glyphs and symbols humming in confirmation.

  There were no further bangs, nor dents—only the arcanic buzz of the sigilmasonry repelling any further attempts of breaching. Esme slumped down against the side of the door, knees hitting the floor hard, her utility pants stained in the ichorus ooze that had only moments ago seeped out from under the door frame.

  Now, it was only the scent of smoke, and the Dean’s muffled dredges of protest hidden among his hoarse and raspy coughs.

  She withdrew the key from the door and tossed as far she could.

  Esme inhaled and exhaled.

  Esme shifted on her knees, pressed her back against the sigilmasoned door, and leaned her head against it. Her chestnut-orange hair hovered just above door itself, softly repelled by its warding glyphs.

  The parked black Mercedes drove off, running over the corpses of Constable Heathcliff and Constable Briggs.

  In the distance, Civic and Occult Authority sirens wailed. Janice had made the call, it seemed, and a new set of cruisers with a new set of blackjackets would be arriving soon. By the sounds of it, sooner than soon. Esme smiled to herself, half hoping that Leroy and the others had finished up, and that those sirens belonged to the car of the man who she was hoping to see a little bit earlier than expected.

  Wheels skidded to a halt.

  Four cruisers cramped up the single narrow street just outside of Allure Artificery, and blackjackets poured out from their doors like soldier ants. Shouts and proclamations—the noise of orders being barked—erupted between the pale yellow and silver lights of the cruiser sirens. There had been a fifth cruiser, one that hadn't stopped, which had begun its pursuit of the black Mercedes. One blackjacket mentioned calling the fire brigade, on account of all of the smoke leaking out from under the sigilmasoned door.

  A man of about six feet was the first to trek over the shattered windowpane that had once been Esme’s street facing display glass, his silhouette framed by tufts of the gray-blue fog of Brinehaven.

  “Ma’am, are you okay?” the voice asked.

  “Just fine, Captain Hol—”

  She could have sworn she’d seen his face. But the man that had crouched down on one knee to her side didn’t have a squared jaw, nor a scar along his lip, nor those oxen-eyes that she’d once found to be quite strange. It was just a man in uniform. She scoffed to herself, shook her head slightly, and recalled Janice’s words, and thought herself girlishly foolish. It was the first time in a long time she’d allowed herself to feel that way. With everything that had just happened, it felt stupid to get excited at the sight of a uniform that might belong to a man she’d barely gotten the chance to know.

  But she let herself feel that way anyways.

  Stupid, girlishly foolish, and excited—really excited—for something beyond her schematics and her tinkering.

  And somehow, that trifecta of feelings, all born from the downright adolescent eagerness of a first date, proved stronger than the fear, the dread, and the worry that accumulated in her body like a sickness after everything she’d just witnessed.

  “Ma’am?” the constable asked.

  Behind him, another pair of blackjackets flowed inside Allure Artificery, pistols raised, eyes pointed and vigilant.

  “Sorry,” Esme said dismissively. “Thought you were someone else.”

  Goolash, who left a very kind review earlier today! It made me start off my day with a big smile.

  Also, if you haven't already checked it out, Esme goes into a bit more detail regarding the actual construction of Leroy's gun in her chapter.

  Speaking of Rituals..

  With our dear friend Goolash's most recent rating/review, the Ritual meter is now complete, which means the polls from the last Ritual entry are now closed. But the trouble is, we have a complete deadlock tie between Eisenhower Whitfield: Marshal of the Order and Dean Dresker: No Good Business, who would've thought!? So, dear readers, if you have a preference, feel free to either go and break that vote below in the comments! Otherwise I will just do a good old coin flip ??

  ESME O'DOHERTY

  JANICE OLIVERA

  CONSTABLE HEATHCLIFF

  CONSTABLE BRIGGS

  MAUDE DUPRE

  DEAN DRESKER

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