Chapter 10: 10)

10)

Martin- acquiring a minion against his will

I backed into the store but Tosser, as I had named the asphalt throwing little demonic creature. Just followed me in. He dropped from his knees to all fours to keep up with me before rearing back to his knees again.

“We serve the master. The master we serve.”

From behind him, hesitantly, other little blue creatures began to emerge from hiding. Some of them looking back and forth at each other, wincing at the light from the inside of the store, and, you know, the sound of bits of very large trees keeling over and falling to the ground off in the distance.

How many trees did I hit?

“I serve, we serve.” Tosser had bowed down, head to the floor with his hands outstretched before him.

“Look, that is very kind of you, but I am not really in the market for a band of naked employees. Plus I am staying in a store with some fairly bright fluorescent light fixtures while you and yours seem rather light sensitive. It just would not work out.”

I'm not sure how much of that he was catching, but I suspect it was more than he was letting on, but his response was for his big, bat wing ears to rise and his head to whip around to look back into the forest. As did all of his followers.

“Change comes, burning lands.” he looked up to me, “We will burn.’

Oh... bugger. I sighed. "Get in here then, all of you.”

One, two, three, smelly demon things. Four, five, six, feral dangerous things. Seven, eight... things. I could have sworn I had seen more. But it ended up being eight of them plus Tosser.

The trees outside seem to fade away into pure light, very bright pure light. All of it pouring down from a white sun which filled the sky above a landscape cluttered with colored crystals which split the light from above into a dazzling array of colored flares of brightness. All of which seemed determined to shine right into my eyes.

As a howling eight pack of screaming beasts dove for cover, Tosser just shielded his eyes, I could only think how much my aunt would love this place. But of course, I'm sure she would have heard of it already or would refuse to admit it if she had not.

As the front of the store had originally faced south there was a distinct lack of blinds for the front windows, but there was a rack of cheap plastic sunglasses. "Is it dangerous out there?"

“It burns!”

“Yes, I noticed that, put these on.” Seeing him now huddling behind the front aisle for cover, while shielding a smaller...imp, let us call them, against his chest. I slipped a smaller sized white framed set over his head.

Feeling it drop on his face, he looked around seemingly able to see inside the store without pain, at least until he turned enough to face the front window and flinched away.

“Master is kind.”

I began plunking down more sunglasses all around, at least on the five of them I could find. "Yes, well, everyone has their flaws.”

For the moment at least the creatures were calm as they huddled behind the counters and shelves. Only the direct beams of light seemed to cause them pain on contact, even if they were just caught in a reflection of the sunlight.

“Alright then, tell me about this master business.”

It took a bit in his halting limited words, but it seemed the little fellows served as guard dogs to someone they called the master. Who himself was some sort of magi camped out in a ruin in that forested realm near the border to the changing lands until some people in armor had showed up and drove off Tosser and his pack with bright lights and some kicking.

By the time he and his returned to their home, their master was gone and a stronger pack had taken over the ruins. One which had not only drove them off but drove them into the changing lands where some of his people had vanished or been eaten.

He and his pack were in dire straights, which did, against my better judgment, make me feel sorry for them.

At least until the light faded away as the land changed once again and they were free to creep out of the shadows.

Chaos ensued.

Cassy- Back up top in the Party-mart lot.

“Ah, boss...it’s going to be hard questioning the witness if he can't breathe."

Natalie turned her glare from Donovan Riggs to me as he struggled against the band of magical strands holding him in the air by his neck.

“I can still make him talk for up to an hour after his heart stops, but point made.”

She stepped up to Riggs as he hung up in the air to give him an uppercut to the groin before stepping back as she canceled her spell on him. Dropping him to the ground.

Down on his knees, our prisoner croaked out a wheezy “Why…?” before keeling over to his side, hands clutched over his groin.

I holstered my weapon, “I imagine you called her a bad name as soon you got here, you really should break yourself of that habit.”

He whimpered “...Yeah, starting to get that.”

Natalie clapped her hands together “Ooooo, it can learn." I waved at her for silence, she gave me a pout.

I squatted down a bit so I could make eye contact with the prisoner. “Okay Donnie, I hope you’re good with being called Donnie because you can talk to the bad cop over there again if that’s a problem.”

He rolled his eyes and then nodded. Nervy little guy.

"Someone gave you a gun and told you to do something with it, what did they tell you to do?"

Donnie's face looked, well let's call it bemused going into panicked. "Wha...what, who?"

My boss crept in a little closer. "Let me punch him in the dick again, pain can really put things into focus.'

I waved her away again, not that he was listening to her anyways. “Who Donnie, who was it?”

He sat up, his legs sticking out straight, both of his hands pressed against his head. “Uncle Tar. Walked up to me on the street, said he had a job...Fuck!”

And he's up. I take a few steps back as he scrambled to his feet looking pissed as hell, "Ain't seen that fucker since my deadbeat dad ran off. Then he shows up out of nowhere telling me he’s got a job for me. Like I work for him or something.

And I just stand there looking into his eyes, waiting to hear about it. Fucker gives me directions and stuffs a gun down the back of my pants, walks me over to my car and all I do is drive off. What the fuck!”

He whipped his head back and forth. "And where the fuck is my car?"

I start to ask him a few more questions, then repeat them after whistling at him to get his attention, “When was this, what time of day?”

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“I don’t know, maybe ten or so last night. Why?”

“Where does he live?”

"What the fuck does that matter bit..." He looks over to Natalie. She smiled at him sweetly.

“Where Donnie?" He threw up his arms.

"New Orleans, he moved down there after he got shit canned from the cops. He started working as a private detective."

Shit. My boss says it before I do. “Great, vampires.”

The prisoner looks back and forth between us. “Vampires? Like?” he holds his fingers up in front of his mouth like fangs.

"Yeah, the whole city is infested with them. Your uncle may have been working for them while he was a cop and when he got caught they gave him the reward of becoming a walking corpse"

Donovan looks like he needed some time to process all that, but he could just as easily do that in a holding cell. “I need his full name?”

“Tarnell Riggs.”

My boss popped up at my shoulder, well closer to my elbow to be honest. “You got everything you need from him?”

“Uh, I guess?”

She skipped over to Donovan, a smile on her face. “You shot my nephew under the effects of a compulsion, which is a great legal defense, but a compulsion can only make people do things they would be willing to do anyways. Or they would just end up shuffling around all brain dead because of the conflict in their head between the spell and their own will”

“But none of that matters, you shot one of the Thibedeau, my family, and one that was under my personal protection.”

He started to back up, good instincts, but a little late.

“So you can go to Hell.”

The colored sigils rose up and moved with him as he began to run. He didn't get very far.

She dusted her hands while looking at me for my reaction. I shrugged. “So I take it he’s back in the Party-mart?”

She nodded. I began to clue her in "It might be getting a little crowded down there."

She gave me a curious tilt of her head. Got her. I fed her a bit more. “What with two of them now.”

She crossed her arms, I crossed mine, and she glared. I smiled.

"Okay, you win. What are you talking about?"

Donovan- In hell, looking at his bullet ridden corpse.

I looked at me, another me, lying on the floor, soaked in blood. “What the hell?’

Gothy and Red strode in the back door, both of them looked down in mild curiosity, then up at me. Gothy headed over to look at the corpse just as it opened its mouth and began to scream as it squirmed around on the floor.

“So now we got two of them?” Red asked toothy who was admiring the gun, my gun, in her hands.

Toothy snapped out the cylinder, spun it, then popped it back in. “This is so neat, I shot him seventeen times and the gun just never ran out of bullets. Pity, it's such a peashooter.”

“What the fuck is that?” I pointed down at the guy curled up in a ball, whimpering as gothy giggled while nudging him in the back with a hoof. Fuck dam she is twisted.

She smiled at me. “The store made a new you while you were gone, and I will want details on how you did that. Now the store is all confused about which one of you is the real one."

Red clapped her hands and did a little hop. "So he's not just an unkillable minion, he's stock!'

The other guy, had gotten to his feet and was staring at me in confusion. Toothy began looking back and forth between us. “So are they both unkillable now? Can I shoot one and find out?”

No, if there can be only one... I'm not going to be the one they put to the test. The screwdriver was out of my pocket as I reached over his shoulder and grabbed the back of his head, he reached up with both hands to grab at my arm. Which left him wide open to the tip of the screwdriver as it went into his eye. My other hand pulled his head onto it even as I pushed it in deeper with a wet crunching sound.

“Whoa, hardcore.” Toothy nodded in approval.

The other guy’s body began to go gray as I lowered him to the floor, feeling at the back of his pants in the hope there was a second gun there. Nope. Then it just began to fall apart into ash.

Gothy looked disappointed, “Awwwwww, what a waste.’

A moment or two passed as even his clothes just thinned out to nothing.

I looked Red in the eyes, “What do you mean stock?” she looked a bit taken aback at me questioning her, but before she could get all pissy, Gothy answered for her.

“The store considers you part of it, when you vanished from inside, still waiting on the story on that by the way, it replaced you with a fresh copy. And since you pissed off Clarice right from the start well enough to make her go Mr pointy on you with her sword. I'm guessing other you only had your memories from when the store got here and started doing the same thing.”

"This store is so neat." she looked around the place, frowned at the front counter, and muttered something about Mr rock going missing before trotting over to look behind the counter.

Red hissed. “Yeah, crazy stuff we should look into later, right now we got incoming.”

Toothy gave her a questioning look, Gothy was bent over the counter trying to look under the backside of it. Which was giving me such an enticing view that I missed most of the conversation other than something about someone coming.

Gothy must have picked up on the name the two of them were discussing since she twisted around to end up sitting on the counter, legs crossed, and checking up on her hair. "Roxir? How far out is he? Is he coming here?"

Why does that name sound familiar? She looked over to me “You might want to hide.”

Toothy tucked my gun away in some kind of pouch on the shoulder belt holding up her sword and tuned to Red “Well we already know this won’t work on him. I’ll back you up if he starts something, but I don’t think we can take him. Unless?” they both looked at Gothy, Gothy looked back with a questioning smile. “Unless what?”

I put things together, unhappy with myself for not figuring it out earlier. Just in time to hear him land outside with the sound of shattering pavement.

Big, scaly, and unhappy to see me. Also clutching a slightly crushed paper cup with a straw sticking out of it in his hand.

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