Slaying demons, p.2
Slaying Demons, page 2
part #2 of Damsel Series
She nodded, since that had really been her experience, too.
“Got it. I’ll ask around. Now, I have nothing on tap for the day. I guess I can read more? I only have three books for that, and I’ve already gone over each of them, several times.” One was on magic, which she’d tried to commit to memory.
The other two were on different types of exercise and movement.
Nate grinned.
“Go shopping? Maybe even get more books? There are worse ways to spend a day. This is New York and even with the lock down...”
That had really taken her by surprise, like it had everyone else. They were supposed to stay inside their own homes now. Twenty-four hours a day, if possible. Due to a killer zombie disease, that everyone was claiming hadn’t been made by a super villain, though they all suspected that was the case. After all, making people attack others and do weird things wasn’t really useful to most people. Not that they were actually zombies. Just delirious people who lashed out. At least it seemed that way to her.
They were even supposed to be wearing masks when they went outside. Even if all the laws had made that illegal for years, to keep criminals from hiding who they were.
Hannah and Kate had both been going to the gym anyway, even though that kind of thing was supposed to be shut down. The public ones, at least. The police didn’t know to stop them, but they’d had to get good at sneaking around, so that they didn’t get caught, coming and going.
Still, she shook her head.
“I can order something like that, online? All the real stores are closed, right now. This... Well, let me just say that I’m glad I gave up drugs before this started? If I was doing that right now, I’d probably be losing my mind.”
That got her brother to shrug.
“Yeah. I’m kind of used to not being allowed to go out already. It’s hard to remember that everyone else is being hit that way, right now. You could...” He shrugged then. “Call your friends and see if anyone needs to have someone found? That kind of thing can really come up, and given the lockdowns, the police won’t be out looking for them, I bet. They’ll be too busy giving people tickets for not wearing their masks right. Little kids who need help and all that?” He went still, as if mentioning she’d been learning to use psychic powers for that very task was off limits.
She was getting sort of good at it, but it was the kind of thing that really did need to be worked on regularly. Even if she was just practicing.
“That’s not a horrible thing to consider. I’ll do that. Now... I really don’t think I can eat this much.”
That got a shrug and a lopsided, fake, grin.
“You can. If not, then I can make more later. Something else. For the moment...” He just started to eat his own breakfast.
It was actually good, Hannah had to admit. She only finished half of it, feeling over-full, even with just that. It was part of why she’d been losing weight, of course. She’d spent most of her life working pretty hard to be thin. That meant not eating. Now that she had need of more, she lacked the skills for doing it.
Nate cleaned up for them, so after washing her hands, she got out her cell phone and curled up on the living room sofa. Then she nodded.
“Right. If nothing else, I can stay in touch with people. I’ve been falling down on that one for the last week or two.”
That meant texting with Kate, of course, since they did that ten times a day, regardless of what else was going on. No mention was made of finding people, of course. Kate was just a socialite. A good person, but not a costumed crime fighter.
No, her alter ego, Wisp, was the superhero. A thing that Kate didn’t know she knew about. So far, when she’d met people who wore masks, Hannah had been able to figure out who they were, often in very short order, without really trying too hard. Part of it was obvious, but a bit of it was down to her ability to locate people and read their surroundings. It was part telepathy, and part remote viewing, but it worked, which had shocked her the first dozen times she’d tried it. It was hard to hide who you were from Hannah, any longer.
Which meant that Wisp didn’t get a call, though. Instead she called her buddy Debbie. Her teacher, one of them, Lashondra, was married to her. They were both friends, but Deb was the one who she kept in touch with for casual things. Dinner parties and movie night. They’d never done either of those, but when they did, she knew who was going to be on her speed dial for it.
“Hey! This is Deborah, what can I do for you today?” The former man sounded good. Healthy and perky, instead of down from being locked away.
“Hey sweetie! This is Hannah. I was just calling around to everyone, to keep in touch. You know, so I don’t go stir crazy? Nate figured that I should practice finding people, since he doesn’t want me to get lazy that way. That or he doesn’t want me to get all mopey, being bored. So far, I haven’t whined too much, but I can see him trying to prevent that one, actually.”
There was a pause then and after a moment, some words, spoken to someone in the background.
When talking in her direction resumed, Deb sounded a bit more serious.
“We do have a few people, who need to be found, in fact. There’s some news on the virus front, as well. Could you come here, do you think? You can bring your cute brother? Don’t drive.”
Hannah wrinkled her nose. Nate could fly, but she couldn’t and funny walking aside, she was going to be noticed if she tried to travel ten or twenty miles on foot that day. She’d practice avoiding the police for blocks, so was well aware that it wouldn’t work over a very long distance. Not for her. Not yet.
“Let me see what I can do? How important is this?” She felt bad, asking that.
Mainly because she didn’t know what Debbie would consider as being needed that way. They were monitored on the phone, by the NSA, so she might not even be able to tell her what was going on.
“Decent level. Don’t do anything illegal for it?”
“Okay. I never do. Let me... I’ll ask around?”
“See you soon, honey!”
Then the line clicked, before either of them hung up. It could have been nothing, or even an overstressed cell phone tower, of course. That or someone was literally tapping her phone. Most likely Debbie and Lashondra’s. They were the ones who did interesting things, after all.
Changing her plans, a bit, she did dial Wisp. That phone picked up on the third ring.
“This is Bart.” Kate’s voice was being run through a voice changer. It worked for the tone, but the mannerisms slipped, occasionally.
“Hi, Bart. This is Hannah. I was wondering if I could get you to take me someplace? With my brother. From here to Lashondra and Debbie’s? I was asked over, with hints of it being a bit of an emergency. I don’t know what level. Deb said I shouldn’t break any laws, which is normal, since I’m very law abiding, so...” It wasn’t a normal thing to say at all, of course. Even to Hannah, who broke laws all the time, but was smart enough to never admit to doing it openly.
There was a long pause, as if the man was planning out how to say no.
Instead, he sighed.
“Let me check this out, first? I can do it, but if it’s just for a visit, we should be careful. We don’t want to spread germs around, after all.”
Hannah nodded at that, since she didn’t want to die of a horrible plague or whatever it was as well.
“Agreed. Thanks, Wisp. I’ll just be sitting here. Waiting. Always.” She grinned, but didn’t take the words back. They were a bit passive aggressive seeming. As if she were pressuring the man to do his tricks for her.
Which she was. Even if he wasn’t her employee or even booty call. Honestly, he should have either demanded some action from her, or gotten at least a bit of cash out of the whole deal. That or tell her off for being demanding that way.
There was a pause, the phone hanging up, with yet another click, indicating something wasn’t right that day. She was no expert, but Hannah had to figure that the audible clicks and tapping sounds weren’t a thing that the NSA, or anyone else, really had going on with their tech, any longer.
It was a bit surprising, about a minute later, when a blue covered man appeared in her apartment, behind the sofa. Even having just spoken to him, inviting him over, Hannah went for her gun, half rolling to the side. She didn’t pull it though. Not this time.
“Oh, hey! Sorry there. What’s the plan? I can change if it’s a secret party. We need masks, if it’s a real visit, though. The safety kind, I mean.” Holding her hand in front of her mouth indicated what she meant pretty well.
That got a nod, from Wisp, just as Nate walked into the room, his feet bare. Otherwise he was dressed.
“We need both of you. Something is up. I was asked to transport a lot of people, we can’t speak over the phones, right now. Everything is being monitored, or at least it sounded like that.”
Nate laughed then. A dark and slightly brooding thing.
“I’m needed for something? That can’t be good, can it? I’m pretty much only good for killing people, after all.”
There was no answer from Wisp, even if the superhero knew the story behind the words. How raw the man was feeling, after everything he’d had to do, over the last years.
Hannah shook her head though.
“That isn’t true at all... We might need pancakes, for one thing. Plus, you can fly, and deliver messages, maybe write things down for us? Bring us coffee and maybe get some cookies for the rest of us?” She was being a bit mean, teasing, but her brother actually seemed to relax.
“Right. There are other things I can do, then, after all. Your friends might not know that, though.” Before he could beg off or explain his reasoning, Wisp started to nod.
Just a little.
“Understood. This is more of an all hands-on-deck situation than anything else, from the little I’ve been told. All I know is that Lash has been trying to work out how to get in touch with everyone, without using magic or technology, for the last two days. We can’t just go and visit, normally, either. Debbie managed to get you on the case, Hannah, so that got me in as well. They could have tried doing the same thing, but I get the basic idea there.”
The man, who had a nice mid-tone tenor, and was actually filling out his costume using mind powers, to pretend not to be Kate Sinclair, stopped then. After all, they weren’t on a real first name basis or anything. Except that, Hannah had to figure, they actually were. If he’d been a real guy, or even a woman who liked girls, Wisp would have been in the pool for her regular booty calls. Hannah had even offered to do that with him. He’d saved her life, after all. Then, instead of moving on to the next thing, the hero had pushed her into becoming something less of a target.
So, they were friends.
“Right. I can’t contact people... But, well, if I can locate them, and draw you a map, can you go and get them? Safely, of course, since I don’t know who all will be needed, yet. I’ll need to find a way for you to walk in from a distance, if it can be done that way. I mean, I called you, you hinted you were coming and I still almost shot at you, like a moron. Who know what these other people might do?”
That got a nod from the blank blue face mask.
“That’s the plan, then. Let me get you to Lash first. Um... Nate? You might want some shoes?” The voice was a bit condescending then. A thing that wasn’t really like Kate or Wisp, in general.
Which, in a way, made sense, given that Kate had known Nathaniel since he was fourteen. They were friendly, without Hannah having to have ever cautioned either of them not to do anything with each other. Not that she would have. Even as a kid, she hadn’t been against the idea of her friends, or even her younger brother, having fun.
There was running then, with Nate coming back, five minutes later, with a jacket on, his feet covered with tennis shoes and socks peeking out under the legs of his jeans.
“Is this good? I don’t have a lot of nice clothing right now. On purpose. If I can’t dress for it, then inviting me to fancy parties won’t work, right?”
That he could just buy some things came to mind for her, but Hannah smiled, and nodded. After all, the stores were mainly closed. It could really work.
“Or you can just say no? Either way. So, how are we...”
The world blinked, and she was suddenly in a vast space, that seemed like a cathedral, only larger, by about ten, maybe fifteen, times. The roof over head was at least thirty stories up. It had paintings on it, and they were good, but not anything she recognized. It wasn’t the Sistine Chaple given that. She would have recognized that one, after all. She’d had art appreciation in college. That and visited the place, personally.
There were rows of pews though, like in a regular chapel. Thousands of them. She was near the front, very near Lashondra’s float tank, which was horribly out of place. Meaning, regardless of how it looked, she knew where she really was. Debbie and Lash’s basement. The place liked to change itself around, as to how it looked, fairly often.
There was, generally, a lesson in it, or a comment on someone who was going to be there. This time it wasn’t meant for her, of course. The room had left the flotation tank though, and the work table, which indicated that she was going to be on tap that way, at a bet. She didn’t love climbing into the dark, soundproof water, but could do it now without real fear. It did help her concentrate and eliminated a lot of the distractions of the world. That was, as far as she could tell, something like half of using her incredibly weak psychic abilities. The rest was all about knowing what, exactly, to look at.
Lash, dressed in all white, an outfit vaguely like Chinese peasant garb from an old movie, smiled on seeing her.
“Hannah! Wisp told us that you’d reached out to him? That... Hopefully it will be enough to throw off our watchers. I’ll explain the whole thing, when everyone is present?”
The black woman, her voice slightly accented in an unusual way, smiled at her. There was real worry under it.
Hannah nodded, her own mind concerned, if for different reasons.
“I forgot to bring a mask... To prevent spreading Tri-D?” She felt bad that way, even if she wasn’t sick with the disease. The thought was that covering up your face well enough may help prevent the spread and that you might not know if you were sick, at first. Lashondra simply glowered for a moment, but when her words came, they weren’t to scold her.
“That won’t help. It isn’t a disease. It’s... Well, for now, just know that you’re safe in here? I can walk you through it all, later?”
She nodded, as Nate popped into being. He looked around, seeming bland, and unimpressed. Her own face had probably seemed that way as well, but only because she’d been on the surface of the moon, and at the bottom of the ocean, in the same space.
A big building, even a pretty one, wouldn’t throw her off by too much, any longer.
That Nate might have the same kind of thing going on was news to her, however.
He faked a smile and waved. It seemed genial. Like he actually meant it and everything.
“Lashondra! I was told that I might be needed to take messages or cook, later?” That hadn’t really been said, but the woman, who looked like she might have been thirty, her cheeks a bit round, even though the rest of her was lean and hard looking, smile.
Winningly.
“Thank you for coming, Nathaniel. Right now, that might actually be part of what will be needed. We’re trying to get a core working group in right now. If we can swing that, it will mainly be Requiem members. A few others, as well. We need a plan for that.” She glanced up, as Wisp appeared in front of them, his blue outfit out of place, in the giant church.
Hannah waved at the man. Where he’d gone, after bringing Nate, she didn’t know, but there was no one else standing there, at the moment. It could have been wiping his nose, or getting a wedgie un-stuck from a dark place. Except that Wisp could do that, either of those things, without being noticed, using his powers. At least she figured that to be the truth. She’d seen him drink water, teleporting it from a bottle, into his mouth.
“We have that, already, if you know who you want us to get and how to safely approach them? I’ll find them and get a map going, if I can, then Wisp here will go and talk to people. See if they want to come to the meeting.”
After all, she wasn’t planning to insist on it. Anyone who hung around in a group called song for the dead, wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to make feel uncomfortable. Even if they didn’t have magical powers or super human abilities.
Lashondra seemed happy to hear the words.
“Good. I was trying to get in touch, but... There aren’t a lot of safe ways to do that at the moment. Teleporting in, as long as it isn’t seen on camera, is a good start. Is...” She stiffened then, and looked at Hannah.
Who got what she meant.
“There’s nothing like that inside my apartment. I have it swept for bugs, every week or so. At least I have for the last month. I got my friend, Tyler, to do that for me? We should see if he wants in on this, as well. Linear and Tinner, too?” She didn’t know if they could help at all, but instead of asking who those people were, this time, Lash simply agreed.
“Excellent. I’m not going to turn away any help, if we can get it. This is... Rather large, I fear.”
Hannah nodded, as the woman gestured at the float tank.
Lash explained.
“I know you don’t need it any longer, but this might speed your work up? It might be best if we didn’t have to take several hours per person, at the moment.” There was a bit of hesitation to the words, as if the woman was worried they might be insulting.
Hannah simply stripped bare. If the casual nudity bothered Wisp or Nate, they didn’t carry on about it. They also didn’t seem to be checking her out, which was a good thing, in her book.
Once she was in the salty water, closed off in a space without sound or light, they began.
Chapter two
Nate had suggested she find some people for practice. A few. One or two, just to pass the time and keep her toe in the psychic water. Lash wanted fifteen different individuals located, as fast as possible. There was even a healthy sense of urgency to the request. Some of them were easy, since she knew them and had found them before. One of them was clearly trying to block her, which didn’t work, since he was using magic for the task, and passively, at that.
