New Group, New Players, New Story...

The following is based off of the D20 Modern RPG and is used under the Open Gaming License. All events are from the imagination of the Game Master and are shaped by the individual player characters. Characters were created by the imaginations of the individual players and their backgrounds created by said players. Any similarities to real events, people, or other happenstance are completely unintentional.

The following story is copyrighted by Amber Manuel, the Game Master, and the other players. Without limiting the copyright, no material may be used without written permission except by one of the players, the Game Master, or Amber Manuel.

Disclaimer: the following contains violence and foul language as well as sexual innuendos. Read at your own discretion.

Swiping the gun off the night table, she frantically squeezed the trigger over and over. After several misses, she sat up and focused on her target. The laser finally hit the target and the alarm clock ceased its shrill screech.

With a groan, Alece set the plastic laser gun aside and rubbed her eyes. Another night had been filled with strange, sometimes horrifying dreams. She couldn’t rightly call them nightmares despite the blood, gore, and horror because underlying there was a sense of purpose, as if the battles raging in her mind had to happen. She flicked a glance at the dream interpretation book she had picked up from the Loyola University Campus Library and decided she wouldn’t bother trying to figure this latest one out. After all, the only real change was the scenery. At least she hadn’t scratched herself this time.

Getting up, she stretched as she moved through the second floor of her Garden District duplex. A contract with a major publishing company had allowed the investment though the second floor was in need of additional work. Setting her coffee to percolate, she booted up her computer and logged into her email, stretching while she waited for the programs to load. She would go through a full set of kata later before heading for the street car and the campus where she was in her second year of college.

An email caught her eye. “You coming tonight?”

She smiled. Vick, aka Victor Delacroix, was a friend from high school who lived in the French Quarter off Royal Street. She hadn’t heard from him in a couple months since they were both busy with their own lives, but his email earlier in the week had given her something extra to look forward to.

The old group was back in town just in time for the turn of the century.

She hadn’t really stayed in touch with the guys aside from a few emails here and there. After they graduated and went their separate ways, she had published her first novel. In the years since, she had cranked out three more with the next scheduled to come out shortly after the New Year. Victor Delacroix was working for his father at Veridian Dynamic, a multi-national corporation that dabbled in a little of everything from chemicals and pesticides to R&D, weapons…

Two of the other guys had stuck around the Big Easy as well. One was a regular Doogie Howser. Word was Theodore “Ted” Killjoy already had his residency at Charity Hospital. Then there was Michael Browning, a popular local actor whose skills had him on the rise. The last member of our group had joined the military straight out of high school. He had been gone for years, but Xavier LeBeau must be back in town since Vick was getting them together.

Alece checked the time. It was already past six in the evening. An all-night writing session had left her schedule completely off, but that just meant that she would be awake for the evening ahead. “Wouldn’t miss it,” she typed and went to get ready.

A tiny gated alleyway led to Vick’s place on Royal. Alece arrived to find everyone else already there. As she hugged necks, she realized that everyone looked a little tired as if they hadn’t been sleeping well.

“Bad dreams?” Xavier asked.

“I dunno about you, but I can make some serious cash off the dreams I’ve been having once I turn them into books!” Alece replied.

“Well, now that we’re all here, I haven’t had time to make groceries,” Vick said.  

“Oh, you should’ve said something,” Xavier returned.

“I figure that Mona Lisa is a good restaurant and we could just go there. It’s just around the corner down Royal and we’re far enough away from the festivities that we shouldn’t have trouble with crowds.”

Since everyone was agreeable, they headed down the road on foot. “Hey, you grew boobs!” Xavier said, nudging Alece’s shoulder.

She looked down. “Yeah, it’s amazing!”

“Dude, the last time you saw her, you were so drunk that you were groping her back!” Vick returned.

“Is that what that was about?” Alece said. “I thought he was giving me a massage!”

Laughing, the group continued down the road. “So Mike,” Vick called, “I thought I saw a porn with you in it.”

Mike grinned and started whistling.

“Seriously, I saw one of your plays. It was very good,” Vick added.

“Thanks, we worked really hard.”

“You guys should go see his next one.”

“When is it?” Alece asked.

“Oh, there’s one coming out in February.”

“When’s your next book coming out?” Xavier asked Alece.

“Next month, actually, assuming we all survive the new millennium!”

“And what about you?” Xavier continued, making the rounds on them. “What kind of doctor are you now?”

“Trauma surgeon.”

“So you work in ER?”

“Yeah,” Ted, man of many words, replied.

“So…blood and guts don’t bother you?”

“No.”

“Would your own blood and guts bother you?”

There was a moment of relative silence in the Quarter.

“What kinda question is that?” Alece asked on a laugh.

“Herro, I’m highry inappropriate,” Vick cut in. In normal tones, he continued, “Let me point something out here, Xavier: you never know when you’ll end up on his table. Some stray shit happens and your life is in his hands. Don’t mess with him or he’ll dick you over.”

Xavier eyed Ted for a moment before he shrugged. “So do they issue body armor at Charity or do you bring your own?”

“No, just duck and dodge,” Ted replied with a grin. “I usually leave my piece in the car.”

“I never leave home without mine. It’s like American Express,” Vick chimed in. “By the way, Xavier, I’d like a thanks for the body armor you were wearing over there.”

“That was your dad, Vick,” Xavier shot back.  

“No, it was me. I’m exec over R&D now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Took a couple pounds of weight off the armor. Thought you’d appreciate that.”

“I thought it felt lighter… Thanks.”  

Stepping inside the restaurant, they continued razzing each other while they ordered their pies and found a table.

“So I need to get my hands on another Barrett 50,” Xavier told Vick.

“What’s that?” Alece asked.

“The gun I carried overseas,” he replied for her benefit.

Vick gave him a look. “There’s better stuff out there, you know.”

“Like what?”

“Like… well, not out there yet.”

Xavier laughed and then grinned mischievously. “By the way, not paying!

“Not paying!” Alece shot out.

“Not paying!” Mike and Vick echoed.

“Not…shit,” Ted muttered, to much laughter.

“You still fall for that?” Xavier asked, shaking his head. Turning to Vick, he said, “You remember Sarah?”

Vick blinked for a moment as he searched through deep storage. “Oh the one that got caught in the boy’s locker room?”

“Yeah, that’s her! You seen her around?”

Vick nodded. “Six kids and going through a divorce.”

Xavier’s mouth dropped. “Shit! Six kids?!”

“Two sets of twins,” Vick agreed.

“Holy…”

“Actually, I don’t know what the hell she’s doing.” When Xavier scowled at him, Vick grinned. “Do I look like the FBI?”

“Yeah, actually. Can you get me a job? I need to find a place to put my Marine skills to work.”

“Dude, shoving a ‘sword’ down your throat isn’t qualified,” Vick quipped.

The Marine stared at him for a moment. “Dude, I’ll kick you in the nuts.”

“I wear a cup!” Vick stated.

Xavier nodded. “Nut check!” he called and the rest of the group winced as Vick hit the ground, writhing in pain. Laughing and apologizing at the same time, Xavier tried to help him up. Vick sucker punched him and Xavier landed on the ground beside him.

“I could have sworn I graduated after you guys,” Alece muttered while they both took their time picking themselves up off the floor. Ted disappeared and came back a moment later with ice packs for both. He must have apologized for the scene because the manager didn’t kick them out.

“So you don’t wear a cup,” Xavier stated when they were seated again, and everyone laughed except for Vick.

“I’m gonna start!” he replied seriously.

The night continued with much of the same bantering between the old friends. After nearly two hours of shooting the shit, a group of about six gangers come in. The tallest one was literally about five feet tall flat. The sight should have had its own caption: “When Jockeys Go Wrong.”

Three of the gangers went up to the counter while the others hung back near the door. Alece felt a prickle of unease and was glad she had thought to bring her brass knuckles. New Orleans definitely wasn’t the safest of cities to live in and she had grown up practicing Tang Soo Do, a “street-fighting” form of martial arts.

There were two employees behind the counter that were about the same height as the gangers. One of the newcomers began shouting at the taller person behind the counter.

“You cheated longtooth! We’re gonna fight again for real!” He drew out a knife.

“Whoa!” Xavier called, standing up. “Y’all need to go.”

The tallest glared at him. “Really?”

Sensing trouble, the crowd began getting to their feet and heading for the door. The few gangers who had hung back were blocking the doors and Alece saw them pull out clubs. She put her hands in her pockets, reaching for her brass knuckles and her collapsible metal baton. At the same time, the lights went out. The emergency lights kicked in almost immediately and a yellowish glow cascaded over the crowd. There was a movement that caught Alece’s eye and then the sound of a watermelon being pummeled. Red sprayed the wall and people began screaming.

Ted picked up his chair and swung at the nearest one. It ducked the object even if only barely. Vick reaches into his coat and pulled out a pistol. He fired towards the door as Alece darted towards the closest one. She punched it with the metal knuckles and it dropped like a light. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that all her companions were jumping into the fray. One of the gangers walked up to Ted and managed to hit him over the head. Ted shook his head and glared at the shorter…person.

In the screams and chaos, Xavier calmly walked up to another one that swung at him and missed. Alece didn’t see what happened next, but when she looked again, only Xavier was still standing. Back closer to their table, Michael swung at one of the gangers with a beer bottle and missed. He received a club to the shoulder for his troubles but just shook it off.

Alece moved deeper into the mosh pit of a crowd, dodging people as she searched for another of the tiny gangers. She nearly stumbled over the last, which was already bobbing and weaving in an attempt to avoid being hit by Ted and Xavier. She helped them knock him…it to the ground.

In the sudden silence, sirens could be heard down the street. Alece stared at the one near her feet, blinked rapidly, and looked again.

It wasn’t human.

She looked around and spotted another. It was the same…a familiar form from years of gaming but impossible. They looked almost reptilian with rusty-brown, blackish-colored skin. Their heads were dog-like with small horns protruding and blood red eyes. Rat-like tails stuck out the backs of their trousers.

“You should put those away.”

Alece snapped her gaze to Vick’s. “What?”

He pointed at her hand. “Put those away.”

She glanced down at the brass knuckles she was still wearing. Sliding them off, she followed him back to their table and sat, staring out over the chaos as the police arrived and began taking statements.

“I think I just killed something,” Alece muttered.

There was a beat of relative silence. “My dear, we all just killed things,” Vick replied, then added, “Those are kobolds.”

“What the fuck are kobolds?” Alece snapped. She knew, but her mind was having trouble reconciling the cross between reality and fiction.  

“You’re a gamer,” Vick said patiently. “You know what a kobold is.”

“I know, but that’s not a freaking tail hanging off that thing! That’s not a kobold!”

They argued in hushed tones for several minutes before the police came up to them for their statements. Vick’s pistol was confiscated, as well as a knife that Xavier had been carrying. Alece didn’t tell them about her brass knuckles and they didn’t search her. When they were done talking with the authorities, the group met back up at their corner table, staring at one another as if they couldn’t believe what had just happened.

After the EMTs and police left, one of the kobolds from behind the counter walked up to the group. “I know you have questions and unfortunately, I can’t answer them. I can tell you, however, where to go to get answers.” She held out a card, which Ted took. “The shop is called Sword and Sorcery – Old Books for a New Age. It’s over on Decatur.” She turned and walked away without anything further, straightening tables and cleaning up detritus as she went.

“I don’t know about y’all, but I could use a beer,” Xavier announced.

“I could certainly use something a lot stronger than what they offer here,” Alece agreed.

“I’m going home,” Vick said. “I’ll meet you at the bookstore tomorrow at eight.”

“I think I’m going for drinks as well,” Mike said.

“Yeah, that was a hell of a way to spend New Year’s,” Ted piped up.

The next morning at 8 a.m. found Alece standing in front of Sword and Sorcery: Old Books for a New Age. Spotting Ted and Xavier walking down the sidewalk, she decided to wait for them. A moment after they joined her in front of the shop, Mike jogged across the street.

“Anyone seen Vick?” Xavier asked.

Alece pulled out her cell phone and dialed his home, but he didn’t answer. “He’s not at home,” she announced.

“We could just wait inside,” Mike suggested.

Inside, the shop was set up as a half café, half book store type of thing. Vick was already inside, drinking coffee. There was only one man working at the counter. He looked to be about sixty years old and about six feet tall. He was wearing a tweed jacket over a white-collared shirt and a red bow-tie.

If he hadn’t been so frail-looking, Alece might have thought he was The Doctor.

After ordering coffees all around, they sat down with Vick.

“What the fuck was going on last night?” Xavier demanded.

“I told you.” Vick pulled out an RPG monster manual and flipped the pages over to a picture of a kobold.

“That so didn’t happen,” Alece muttered, wishing her coffee would get there already, but the scarecrow of a shop owner seemed content to take his time.

Xavier rubbed his eyes. “This is crazy. I mean, I’ve been having some really fucked up dreams and then all the sudden we’re fighting real kobolds!”

“What kind of dreams?” Alece asked, striving for innocence.

“I dreamt I was King Arthur one night.”

“No way! I dreamt that, too!”

He frowned. “Did you wake up with scratches on your side?”

“From where the dragon attacked me!” she confirmed.

“It was a banshee, actually,” Vick offered. Everyone turned to look at him. He shrugged. “Just sayin’. It wasn’t a dragon. It was a banshee.”

“Okay, I think you guys need to calm down before I take you all to the loony bin,” Ted said.

“You mean you didn’t have the dreams?” Xavier demanded.

Ted shook his head. “That’s insane, and I’m kinda worried about all of you. I mean, c’mon. Really?”

“How do you explain that at least three of us,” Xavier asked, and met Mike’s gaze. Receiving a nod, he corrected, “Four of us had the same dreams?”

Ted was saved from replying when the store’s patron came out with their drinks. Instead of leaving them and going about his business, he pulled up a chair. “A kobold sent you five,” he said.

The group exchanged glances, Xavier shooting Ted a look of triumph.

“What you saw last night was real,” the man continued in a firm voice. “Our reality, our world isn’t the only world.”

“Are you talking about dimensions?” Xavier asked.

“In the essence, yes. Different realities as such. Whatever you wanna call ‘em. Here, we call the other “dimension” Shadow.”

“Which one are we in?” Xavier demanded.

The man paused, looking disconcerted. “Ours.” He frowned at the Marine. “Every so often doorways open between the realms and creatures beings items wash up on our shores. The tides bring in weird things.”

“Ooh! Magical swords plus 5 coming?” Xavier quipped.

“What’s that?”

“It’s from a game,” Alece told him.

He nodded his understanding and shook his head. “No, that’s not coming. Our realities move in cycles, much like a wave pattern. When the realities move to an apex they’re further apart so the instance of shadow and magic is less frequent. Just the same, when they move closer that’s when we see miracles. King Arther, Merlin, Morgana. Our history is peppered with unexplainable things.”

“So…like, the gods?” Mike asked.

He inclined his head. “Sometimes exceptionally powerful individuals come through the gates who have exception abilities. Sometimes they have exerted their will and power over things and humans. And humans, not to cast us in a negative light, but we weren’t always the most advanced beings on this planet. So obviously we would think people like Hercules were demigods or actual gods. Achilles, Hector, Ulysses, Perseus, so on and so forth. They were all from Shadow.”

“So they came from Shadow?”

“Could have. Or they could be like you.”

Xavier let out a string of curses.

“You might not realize this,” the gentleman continued over Xavier, “but somewhere in your lineage you have Shadow.”

“How do you mean?” Vick asked.

“One of your ancestors was of Shadow. Oh, they might not have been recent, but you have Shadow blood running through your veins. That’s why you could see what was really happening, why you could see the actual beings.”

“You’re saying I have kobold blood?” Alece demanded.  

He rolls his eyes. “No.” He sighed. “There are people who can shape the forces of magic and put them into a physical manifestation. There are those that can call upon the divine favor of gods and channel the power through them.”

“Can you see auras?” Ted asked.

“No. It’s not some sort of hippy mumbo-jumbo.”

“Well, thank God for that!” Alece said on a humorless laugh. “It’s just kobolds running around!” Sobering, she added, “All these things exist?”

“How many books have you read that have dragons?” he inquired.

She shrugged. “How many have I written that have them?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “And where did you base that info off of?”

“Research. Books and history and things.”

“And where did they get that?” he pointed out.  

She stared at him. “It’s all really real?”

He gave her look that told her most of it was. “It’s all based off of some truths.”

“How do you know?” Xavier picked up the conversation when Alece lapsed into silence.

“I’ve read a lot,” he said with a grin. “Let me try to explain it another way. When you go to work in the morning, how many streets do you cross? Can you remember what your coworkers were wearing for the past three days?” They all shook their heads. “We go through life on auto. We see things and forget them. Our brains have a way of helping us cope with situations that just shouldn’t be. That can’t be “x” so it has to be something similar, but not so outlandish.

“Your mind plays tricks and allows you to see what you want to see. You don’t want to admit that there was a dragon that just flew overhead. It was a low-flying 747. The hobgoblin in the alleyway was really just a bum with a bunch of hair. And now,” he continued as the bell above the door jangled, “you automatically see through the veil into Shadow.”

He looked up with a frown as a delivery man walked in rolling a huge crate. Alece frowned at him, trying to see if he appeared anything else than human, but then the stamps on the sides of the crate caught her attention.

“Fragile” was followed by “Do Not Drop” but the most cryptic was “Do NOT Feed!”

“What. Is that?” Xavier asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember ordering anything…” Muttering to himself, he got up and walked towards the crate. As he drew near, one side burst off, a tentacle with a large panel at the end sticking out from either side. The shop owner had barely gasped when one of the tentacles wrapped around his waist.

Alece ran over, snapping out her metal baton as she ran to his aid. She swung, but the writhing tentacles wouldn’t hold still. Ted ran up and grabbed the shop owner, holding him back.

Xavier pulled out a gun, took a shot and hit the box. Mike pulled out a gun as well, taking a shot and hitting whatever was in the crate. Vick joined Ted to help the shop owner get away.

Another tentacle lashed out and hit Mike, knocking him down.

“You got him?” Ted shouted.

“Go!” Vick agreed. Ted let go of the shop owner to run over and help Mike. A tentacle lashed out at Alece and missed. She punched at it with the brass knuckles and scored a hit. Meanwhile, Ted managed to get Mike back on his feet, pulling him back away from the crate. The free tentacle began to flail wildly so that the group couldn’t get a clear shot on the thing.

Vick let go with one arm to pull his firearm and shook into the crate. Realizing she wasn’t doing any good, Alece added her strength to help the shop owner stay out. One last shot splintered the wood of the crate and the tentacles went limp. Vick, Alece and the shop owner stumbled back a few paces before they caught their footing.

“Are you all right?” Ted asked the man.

“I am…rather shaken,” he admitted. “By the way, my name is Brogan. You may call me Mister B.”

Vick emptied his clip into the box. Xavier opened it a moment later and they stared at what looked like a part of a brick wall…with tentacles. “What the—?”

“Who’d you piss off?” Xavier asked.

“That’s an Otyugh,” Brogan said. “A creature of shadow. I don’t remember ordering one.”

“Who’d you piss off?” Alece repeated.

“I don’t know, but I’m very fortunate that you guys stopped by this morning…”

“Why?” Ted asked.

He nodded towards the crate. “That’s the second box I’ve gotten from…PTC. I’ve never even heard of the company.”

“What’s in the other box?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I didn’t open it. It’s downstairs.”

“Downstairs? You have a basement in New Orleans?” He nodded. “You must have a good sump pump.”

He just stared at her.

“Okay. We’ll go down and check things out,” Ted told him.

Intermission: “Spaghetti-Os are not a vegetable!!”

“If you are going downstairs, feel free to use a few of the items in the closet,” Brogan told them. In the back corner of the shop was the closet and inside were random sets of armor, baseball bats, knives and random weapons. Alece picked up a bat while the guys tried out different items. When she walked back out, Brogan handed her a shiny brass key that glowed a little bit.

“It opens the trap door behind the coffee stand,” he said. She nodded, motioned to the guys, and moved to where he said. There was a trap door all right, but no key hole. With a shrug, she grabbed the latch and pulled. It door easily opened. She put the key in her pocket as she observed the ladder leading down into a lit room. With a sigh, she headed down, Xavier close on her heels.

The basement was full of crates stacked neatly. As they began to explore, Ted spotted a shattered crate off to the side.

“This room is worked stone, guys,” Alece told them.

No one replied. To the side there was a door that had been shattered. Xavier headed to the door. Ted went for the crate. “The shipper was PTC,” he announced as Xavier disappeared down a hallway. “There’s webbing in the crate, and three web balls that have cracked open.”

“We should follow Xavier, then,” Alece said. Down the short hallway was a left turn and a straight hallway. Not seeing Xavier, Alece kept going down the hallway. When she saw a closed door, she turned around.

“Holy shit!” Xavier shouted to the sound of pounding footsteps. Alece darted back down the hallway, saw a giant spider that had to be at least three feet in diameter and backpedaled. “Oh screw this!” she shouted, a lifetime of arachnophobia sending her darting in the other direction. She managed to force herself to stop to make certain it didn’t follow, and adjusted her grip on the bat she had taken from the closet.

“C’mon! We fought off a tentacly monster upstairs! We can take this!” Mike shouted.

Grimacing in fear, Alece darted back to help out, swinging and promptly missing the huge beast. Vick fired a shot and missed as well. Ted pulled Xavier’s form away from the fray, working to get him back on his feet. A stray bullet pinged off the wall near Alece’s head. Another one pinged off the wall by her feet. In the chaos, Alece finally managed to connect with the bat. Realizing it was dead, she continued to bash it into the floor a couple extra times.

“Hey, there’s a chest in the back of the room the spiders came out of,” Ted announced and worked his way over there as Alece pulled herself away from the grisly remains. She looked around, spotted Xavier back on his feet despite looking rather pale.

“There’s another room down this hall,” Vick announced.

“Let’s go,” Ted said, pocketing a few items but leaving the chest.

There were webs on the walls and ceiling. “I think I see a couple spiders,” Xavier said, and stepped aside so the rest of the group could see.

Vick took aim and fired. One of the spiders fell to the ground, writhing and attempting to get back up. The other came down quickly, and the guys swarmed it. Alece didn’t even have a chance to step inside the room.

“We should check things out, make sure there’s nothing else back here,” Ted said when they were done bashing the spiders to bits.

A brief search turned up a roll of fabric buried in the web in the back. Vick unrolled it and pulled out a longsword.

“Oooh, can I have that?” Xavier asked with a mischievous grin.  

“Do you know how to use one of these?” Vick demanded.

“Pointy end goes through other guy,” Alece chimed in.

Vick shakes his head and hands it to Xavier. “Fine.”

“What was down there?” Xavier asked, indicating down the hallway.

“Another room,” Alece replied. “The door was closed.”

“We have to clear it.” He started down the hall.

With a grimace, she followed. There were webs on the walls. “Possibly more spiders,” Xavier said. “Here’s what we do… I go left, you, Mike, go right. Behind me, I want Ted to come in, heading to the left after Mike’s cleared the door. Then Alece, you veer to the right.”

“And I’ll come strutting up the middle,” Vick said with a grin.

“Sweeping,” Xavier corrected. “Everybody ready?” He threw open the door without waiting for an answer and they ran in as he had described. Alece nearly wet herself when she saw the mothership of all spiders hanging out in the back of the room. It was wider than she was tall, and luckily she didn’t have to go near it since Mike, Xavier, and Vick killed it, and the other two smaller spiders, off.

Small being a relative word.

A brief search turned up webbing all around the room but nothing of value. The group trooped back upstairs.

“What’d you guys find down there?” Brogan asked the moment they emerged.

“Spiders,” Vick replied.

“Fucking spiders as big as my dog!” Xavier snapped.

“Six feet in diameter,” Alece agreed, shuddering. “DIAMETER!”

Brogan nodded. “That’s a big one. I’ve seen bigger.”

She gaped at him, but he didn’t seem to notice. “While you were guys were down there I made some calls about this company and haven’t been able to find anything. Nevertheless, I have an offer for you. You five have experienced more occurrences of shadow in the past twenty-four hours than most people do in their lifetimes. I’d like you to join Department 7.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a department that works with shadow and people in shadow.”

Ted pulled out a couple of small beakers. “Any chance you can tell me what these vials are?”

Brogan observed them for a moment. “Cure potions. Think of drinking one of these as a six-month stay in intensive care.”

“What exactly would we be doing for Department 7?” Alece asked wearily. She was pretty certain  she had had enough of Shadow and the craziness it brought.

“Odds and ends,” he said cryptically. “Various things.”

“Any chance of getting better weapons?” Xavier asked.

“You seem to have faired well enough with what you have,” Brogan replied.

“Something better?” Xavier persisted.

“Go to the local gun store.”

“What’s the recompense?” Alece cut in.

“You would get the ideas for stories. I mean, after this morning, think of the stories you could write.”

She nodded. “I would definitely have fodder.”

“Or become it,” he said with a happy smile and rolled out a scroll.

She took it and started reading. “Looks like a standard employment contract,” she muttered as she continued to read.”

“I think we need to confer on this as a group and figure out what we want to do and get back to you,” Xavier said.

Vick shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it. C’mon, guys! How many times have we dreamt of this? How many times have we played and rode off into the sunset? Fought and killed and lived the life? This is REAL.”

He shook his head. “I’m in.”

“You gonna hook us up with the nice R&D shit you were talking about earlier?” Xavier asked.

“Possibly. But this field work isn’t for me. I’ll be your Q.”

“You’re not going to come with us?” Xavier demanded.

“Does Q ever go out with James Bond?”

“When there’s a hot chick around.”

They look at her. She laughs. “Not hot enough.”

“There’s one small catch,” Brogan said.

“What’s your catch?”

“Not mine. But you all have to die.”

There was a moment of silence. “What?”

He looked around the room. “You can’t be an author. You can’t be an actor. You, not a doctor. You… Well, you’ll pretty much do what you’ve always done,” he amended when he looked at Xavier.

“When?” the Marine asked.

“In the next 2 weeks.”

“We have to actually die?”

“Your identity ceases. You don’t physically die.”

“Okay, quit being cryptic. Spit it out,” Xavier snapped.  

Brogan sighed. “Department 7 is going to kill you, make it public, graphic, and violent. You will have a funeral. You can’t be embalmed. After you go into the ground, we’ll dig you up and bring you back.”

“I don’t know that I’m comfortable with this,” Alece said.

“What the whole dying part?” Xavier said.

“Yeah. I worked really hard to get to where I am. I’m not sure about this. I mean…”

“Is your mom alive?” Brogan asked.

Something inside her went still. “Why do you ask?”

“Is she alive?”

“Why. Do. You. Ask?” she demanded.

“Well, if you kill a necromancer or piss one off, she would be in danger. You would be dying to keep your family safe.”

“Do you keep track of shadow-bloods?” she returned.

He frowned. “No. But, just so you know, you can see the shadow, and the shadow can see you. Not all of them will be innocent and leave you alone. They’ll know.”

“Are you asking us or telling us to join?” she demanded.

“You don’t have to join. But you won’t have any help should you encounter one of those who can see you, knows you can see it, and isn’t going to just leave you alone.”

She threw her hands up in the air. “I can’t make this decision right now.” Handing back the bat, she walked out into the sunshine. She kept her gaze on the concrete, not wanting to see anything that could possibly endanger her. It had been a crazy evening and an even crazier morning. Spiders just didn’t come in those sizes, and what the hell was up with the tentacled thing? Was she losing her mind?

But no, the guys had seen it, too.

She shook her head. She had worked damn hard to get to where she was, and she was being asked to toss it all away to live a life doing…what? Brogan hadn’t exactly been very forthcoming about what Department 7 would demand of them. Would it be escort services? Not the dirty kind, but the secret service kind. Would they have to hunt down and kill beings from Shadow that had gone of their rockers, so to speak?

All of the above?

Xavier fell into step beside her. “Wanna beer?” he asked.

She nodded, scowling at the ground. “Yeah. I could use something stronger.” And maybe tomorrow she would wake up and this would all be a dream.

Right. She had a feeling she had stepped straight into one of the dreams and wasn’t going to be able to wake up anytime soon.