The Interests of Strangers
“What do we do?”
“You have your Canadian passport?”
“Yeah, somewhere in the backpacks.”
“Take it with you. Holster and gun as well, full mags.”
“You think they will hurt us?”
“No, but I think they look like officials and I know how law enforcement works. The second I say go you jump back through the bleed and I’ll follow. As soon as you are here you change. If they dare follow I want them scared shitless.” Ladon nodded. As soon as we were ready I drew my gun, assumed the position and walked through closely followed by Ladon.
As always it is the wet cold air of the pacific seaboard that welcomed me, along with a fine drizzle that soaks up my t-shirt. The smell of wet resin and of soaked up charcoal, that was the cabin. The three people remained where they were not moving. The guy was visibly saying something to himself I could not hear. The off blonde woman pulled her right hand out of her pocket showing us her empty palm.
“We are not armed, there’s no need for that.”
The one with jet black hair snorted and told her,
“Nice trust building when your pockets are filled with guns, he has a mace and I have quite a few knives.”
She had a strong accent but her English was nigh perfect. The man finished whispering to himself and said,
“Amen.”
The dark haired replied,
“Amen.”
The woman who spoke first sighed and added,
“Ok we have weapons but we just want to talk. This place is the epicenter of a shit ton of activity no one is able to make sense of and you guys seem to be right in the center of it, care to explain?”
The man interrupted almost shouting,
“Where, where do you come from? Where did the drone go? Are you magicians?” His words stumbling out of his mouth with a latino accent.
I cleared my throat, glanced at Ladon: he was focused, ready for anything,
“Who are you people, this is private property, for what’s left of it, and you are trespassing.”
The dark haired woman smiled, she looked genuinely amused.
“Americans, you have tropes even in real life.”
“Eleni, don’t do that.” The tired blonde told her and she added looking at us, “my name is Martha Cordwainer, Special Agent Cordwainer, I am with homeland security but I am not officially reporting to them currently.”
“That means not yet but soon.” I muttered my voice pleasantly lower than I expected it to be.
“I am Eleni Zaïni, I am of the Panteleïon of Unmercenary Healers.”
“You are not from around here.”
“I am Greek of Persian descent.”
I turned to the guy and asked him,
“You?”
“Oh, I am… Yes, I am Arturo, Umberto, Primo, Rodriguez Montalban Frogier de Lerné.”
“And he is still a virgin.”
“Eleni, stop!” Cordwainer grumbled at the greek.
“Come on, it's fun.” Eleni replied to Martha, she turned back to face me and said: “Listen we have been standing in the January rain for the past week waiting for you or something to show up, she thinks you have an invisible spaceship somewhere, he thinks you are angels battling the forces of darkness and I want a real coffee and dry socks. Can we chat somewhere else?”
I allowed the silence to stretch for a while observing their faces, I glanced at ladon and simply told him,
“Go.” he stepped back and vanished. I liked the expressions on their faces. I stepped backward slowly putting the gun back in its holster and told them,
“Follow.”
And I guess I must have vanished into thin air like Ladon had done. I kicked my shoes off glancing at Ladon in his chimera’s full form still holding the gun but strapped with a belt with swords and daggers hooked to it. I took my t-shirt off and loosened the belt of the baggy training pants I was wearing. No need to flash anybody yet. I let the lamasu come and reached through the bleed and grabbed the front of the jacket of the guy, Arturo, pulling him through and setting him on his feet on the rock of the plateau above our base. He screamed and scurried away, signing himself frantically and blubbering what I guess were prayers. Martha jumped in focused and probably already holding her gun with her left hand inside her coat and Eleni landed just at her back. They both recoiled seeing Ladon and the lamasu in their full beautiful form.
“What the fuck, what did you do with the kids who were just there? John Poe is an American citizen, I order you to release him this instant unharmed!”
I went for the lamasu deepest growl and told her,
“Draw that gun and I’ll rip you in half.”
“Ok,” Eleni was pushing Cordwainer to the side, “This is indeed much better.” She took time to take in the sights and finally turned back to us smiling, “Lamasu, I guess and…” she frowned amiably at Ladon before asking, “Sphynx?”
“No, I never followed the cursus. I am Chimera, with a background in history studies.”
“Ah, my kind of guy, nerdy with a furry butt.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve been trying to tell my skeptical partner, just there for ages, that the funny stories our ancestors told about demons and monsters have just become true again but she insisted on it being aliens, so we came here and found Arturo spraying everything with holy water… under the rain.”
“You are vatican?”
“Knights… Kinights of Ma… Ma…”
“Yeah, he is overwhelmed. But he is one of the finest former special ops from the Knights of Malta, tactical and all but mostly an archivist with PTSD and who was available for a mission he never wanted.”
“You are chill as fuck Mrs Zaïni.”
“Correct, John, is it?”
I nodded.
“I am with something not entirely unlike what the knights and the vatican have except we never forget that what we were studying was real and that hell was jammed packed with real creatures.”
“We did not forget!” Arturo said with indignation in his voice.
“No, indeed. You wouldn’t be here otherwise but you let money management and trust funding become your priorities. You and I, not the same.” She viciously retorted.
“What is homeland doing here then?”
“Oh, she tagged along. We are married you see, so when I get excited she has no choice but to use her miles to follow me.”
“You really make me pass for some love besotted cretin saying it like that.”
“Well, now that you have your voice back and I spared you the ‘tearing in half thing’ you can speak for yourself, honey.” She spun around opening her gabardine and sighed, “I like that place.”
“This is Hell! We are all doomed to burn forever!”
“For heaven’s sake Arturo, chill the fuck out. I’m sorry, Eleni is right. this is not sanctioned business but I have seen a lot of chatter about shit no one can explain dating back to almost five years ago in a town called Beckley…”
“Yeah, I know I was there.”
“You were with John Poe on the day of the assault?”
I turned back to my human form while they went through the panel of shock, fear and confusion.
“I’ll explain later. I am John Poe and this Ladon, my boyfriend.”
“Where are we now, is Arturo right?” Cordwainer asked while I picked up my t-shirt from the ground and shook it. I don’t like people looking at my scars.
“Yes and no.”
“I love that guy.” Eleni smiled at me beaming.
“This is the place the christian’s and quite a few other hells were modeled from but,” I extended a hand in the direction of Arturo to stop him from crossing himself yet again, “There are no demons here and this place is not a punishment for your sins. You can do that on your own in our own world.”
“What do you mean, this is another world?” Cordwainer said, looking up at the green sky.
“Yeh, kindof, I don’t really know. It just feels like a completely different planet down to the color of their star and the composition of their periodic table but I'm no scientist. What we went through is a tear between the two worlds. Crossing it is as easy as walking through an open door as you witnessed. That’s how we got most of our monsters, they run around minding their own business and suddenly they are around midgets throwing stones and sharp sticks at them. We get scared, we call them demons. They become weary of us and they leave us mostly alone short of the odd accidental incursion. You guys had a whole order to combat them you disbanded two hundred years ago, lol. Their archives are online and I can tell you they did a good job gathering intel but you called it folklore and forgot about it.”
“We didn’t.
I turned to Eleni.
“I don’t know who you are but that’s a sign that you are telling the truth. Your archives aren’t on the wikipedia page of how to get fucked up by a pseudo demon.”
“My family is from Hamadan in the Persian heartland. We have been guarding the shrine of Esther and Mordechaï who went, I guess where we are and brought back knowledge and weird stuff. The Panteleïon Unmercenaries isn’t a combatting order for hire as its name indicates. We are scholars although most of my family were trained to defend the shrine.”
“What attracted you here?” That was addressed to Martha.
“Where to start, I’m officially investigating arson with criminal intent against the person of a citizen by a non national organization. It would fall under terrorism act if the perpetrators were humans. The ranger answering a call died of a heart attack after shooting three dog headed creatures. The bodies are being examined as we speak in area 76. The official story is chemical pollution induced mutation through catastrophic endocrine disruptors intake. That story doesn't account for the rock cristal bladed daggers and other artefacts with impossible radiation decay they were wielding around cutting people and stabbing things. But there is so much more.”
“Nice, summary darling. We met Father Frogier de Lerné when we got here, he has been colorful.”
Arturo was getting back up and vigorously brushing his coat and pants while sweating profusely.
“I am not colorful and I do not appreciate the image you are painting of the politics of the Holy See.”
“The pope himself calls it ‘the Firm’ ; it is hardly a confessional secret, darling.”
“Well, it's, you know, not a… not an official appellation.”
“What happened to you and why were you attacked?” Cordwainer interrupted.
“Can we table this for another moment, what date is it?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I need to call my mother.”
“We took care of it.” Cordwainer replied dismissively, looking pleased with herself. “She has been apprised that you were elected to a non academic proto american archaeological preventive dig site exploration course. You are away in Yucatan, the job is paid a grand a quarter, cheap but you are having great fun. She was informed that the cabin burnt down because of an outdated electrical installation. She agreed that her own dad DIY some of it and it might not have been up to regulation. Your insurance will cover replacement, clearing and reconstruction costs. I checked. You sent her text messages telling her not to cancel her vacation and they have extended it for a couple weeks, since Daniel Cramer and your sweet mom can do most of their work remotely.”
“They might get used to that life. Why go to so much trouble?”
“Your car in the drive, the 911 call, no bodies. I was waiting for the Pacific to spit you out or something.”
“What if it had, what if our bodies had washed up on the beach at the next high tide, what would you have told my mom?”
“Dig site accident. The open university has insurance for that.”
“You mean the federal government.”
“Well, of course.”
“So, I am being paid by the federal government to be on a phony archeological dig while being here.”
“First payment was three days ago.”
“Fuck you Cordwainer, your story doesn’t hold up. No one goes that far for one guy vanishing after a first responder call, there has to have been more. What was it?”
She looked intently at me, glanced at Eleni who shrugged still smiling and back at me and she sighed,
“Your assumptions are on point, we do not go that far on so little. But my section isn’t very popular and we are in real need of validation and you came up, you and your unbelievably tight gig. You were proving us, me correct, the way you protected your online footprint, the quality of your subroutines and the lines of code throwing dead ends in the face of our IT analyst should have been enough to ring all the alarm bells to tell us you were a person of a lot of interests.”
“But there was something else, wasn’t there?”
“Istambul, a year ago, almost, a man with what looks like very advanced leprosy is admitted in the ATTATURK hospital. He remains there for almost a month, they try everything they can but are unable to detect the usual bacterias linked to that particular disease, they take samples and run all possible tests, nothing. The guy does run a high fever but he is otherwise fine, he speaks a peculiar dialect that most don’t understand and communication is done through drawings. One morning he walks out of the hospital and vanishes. One lab result comes back a month after his departure and the isotopic nuclear decay of some molecules is just wrong. Meaning, he isn’t from this planet. I’ll skip the technical scientific jargon but the guy hasn't been around here for his cells to be bombarded like ours are by the particular cocktail of radiation we all get. Somehow the only concording sample has been taken from body fluids off a thirteen years old boy having survived sexual assault, five years ago in Beckley, West Virginia.”
“And from the corpses of the three canids you found on my property, didn’t you?”
“Yes we centralise all matching data be that relevant or not. So I got flagged because the leperman file was attributed to me for analysis. We were living in Istanbul at the time, Eleni and I.”
“I loved that flat over the bosphorus, I miss that place.” Zaïni mused as if she wasn’t concerned by the conversation and then she adds, “but when Martha mentioned the leperman you, Ladon is it? You turned pale, do you know who that man is?”
We looked at each other silently and slowly Ladon nodded. I turned back to the trio and waved at them to follow us. Ladon remained in his Chimera form as I guided them to our cave and settled them on the rugs we’d brought from Forgata. Ladon poured the local equivalent for tea and said the ritual words of welcome, when he was done I began to speak,
“What he just said is the ritual welcome to a home, our home. These words protect you from any form of violence or restraining as long as you respect the will and authority of your hosts. As you can see It takes a couple of seconds for me to change into a bronze colored giant with claws and wings that can rip your arms from their sockets in the blink of an eye and who is impervious to bullets.”
“You have guns.” Cordawainer asked sullenly.
“They are for when we are humans and against humans.”
“Noted.”
“We think the man who showed up in Istanbul was someone we know.”
Ladon who was sitting on his haunch dog style began scratching the back of his left shoulderblade with his rear paw said, “He is the Nomad King, Caspilor of Beelzegrond, commander of the Legions of Tartaratus, ruler of Ponanos and Astaral.”
“So he is a head of state or something?”
“What he is, is currently besieging a city of four hundred thousand. He is on a war path against half of Kygal and we don’t know where he’ll stop.”
“What is he doing, conquest?”
“Revenge, his mother’s people exterminated his father’s people and now he wants to exterminate them.”
“Any risk he’ll want to cross over with his legions anytime?”
“Twenty minutes ago I’d have answered that by telling you he had no idea we were anything else than myths and folklore…”
“But he just spent a month in a modern hospital, why? What is the sickness he has?”
“The temple prostitutes of Oros have infected his legions seven years ago with the Changing Plague.” Ladon began, settling on the floor among us, “It is a disease that stimulates what you people call dormant genes and recessive genes. It triggers systematic mutations which are not always viable.”
“Hold on, your people look pretty different from us except when you change, so are you human and are we susceptible to infection or what?” Cordwainer had folded her legs under her body as if she was coiling them, making ready to jump.
“Normally no, we are very strong. Johnny here compares this place to a place in your world called Australia, our environment is like that place.”
“Everything which doesn’t want to kill you wants to poison you and the rest is toxic as fuck.” I told them expecting someone to laugh but they just stared, Ladon went on,
“From what I could read on the internet some sickness can traverse bleeds and infect you. There was one I recognized that originated from a bleed we do not know because it is too far away but we suffered the same symptoms except that you died massively from it and we did not.”
“Are you, are you referring to the Peste Negra, the black plague?”
“In your years 1346 to 1353, yes it is the one I am referring to.”
“Shit, you people gave us the plague?” Cordwainer was on her feet, back against the cave wall.
“Relax, I have been living,” I made air quotes, “with that guy for like ever and I am perfectly healthy.
“Hold on, you are not one of them?”
“Nope, American born and bread of old slave stock I guess. No one in the family found it funny enough to trace our ancestry to a specific slave ship.” I liked how Cordwainer folded back to the ground at that suffering the very temporary white shame her kind has when directly confronted to the not so glorious past of the US of A.
Eleni was the one to catch the conversation back up asking,
“If I may, what happened to you?”
“Beckley, five years ago. I walked in front of a bleed where three disease ridden legionaries were standing, they grabbed me and… let’s say that the Changing Plague changed me.”
“If I am correct, it means that you had the creature in your genetic make up, isn’t that right?” Arturo asked, raising his hand.
“You are correct. One of my great granny was a monster fucker.”
“Can they all turn back into men like you?”
I turned to Ladon, true enough I never asked that question.
He made no, with his beautiful leonine head, “No, it is a capacity that only few of us have, maybe there is human DNA in my own make-up that enables me to do this.” He changed into a very naked Ladon and Arturo made the sign of the cross, “the canids whose body you found would have looked like normal people if they had been able.”
“Why were they around here then, they were looking for you?” Cordwainer had found her voice again.
“Yes and no.” I winked at Eleni who winked back, “They were after me and after some weapons.”
“How do they know we have weapons they can use?”
“Because of me.” I sighed.
“No, Johnny, it is because of both of us.” Ladon changed back and sat dow folding his paw in front of him like a house cat, I loved it when he did that.
We told them a cursive version of the story of our encounter and the incidents that led to the siege and the battle at the gates of Forgata.
“You went and fought a war at seventeen, on another world.” I am revising my opinion of you and reassessing the risks you represent.” Cordwainer said and I knew she was only half joking.
“Es una historia digna de la leyenda dorada. I wish I had been here to assist you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous Arturo, this isn’t a crusade, it’s a gay love story. Impressive, saw some scars on you when you…” She waved at my t-shirt, “you know. Are these from the battle?”
“No, older.” She nodded. I went on, “Since then they have been making incursions into the bleed where it all began.”
“Beckley.” Cordwainer said.
“And now we understand from what you told us that Caspilor has travelled from a different bleed to Istanbul.”
“Baby, it doesn’t make sense. He would have needed to have been on the other side of Kygal.”
Eleni reacted instantly, “kilometric distances are preserved?”
“Yeah, it's like both worlds overlap exactly one another.”
“It means a displaced bleed.” Ladon was still thinking.
“That he would have engineered himself. The implications of that are that he could open one to anywhere.”
“Can they not be natural?” Eleni asked.
“I think I can help.” Arturo said, lifting his hand shyly, “in 1422 a french monk in the city of Rouvre-la-Chétive described opening a ‘cut in the very air that bled colourful fumes and sucked in air.’ On the other side was a creature he called Barron, or The Baron and assumed to be at first an angel and later a demonic spirit.” The priest lifted his shoulders with fatality and went on, “a creature crossed over: beautiful and gentle and, well I’ll skip the details but they found themselves on the other side of the country: stuck somehow and they, together performed what they called the ‘ritual’ to open what you call a bleed but they were nowhere near the point of origin of Barron, they surmised that because they had both been performing the ritual at the same time it created a unique conduit from point A to point B in spite of the fact that the two places were hundreds of miles apart.”
“So you mean Caspilor had been trying to open a bleed when someone in Istanbul might have been doing the same?”
“Not, Istanbul. He has been brought into the city via ambulance from somewhere in the countryside.” Cordwainer volunteered.
“Do we know where in the country?” Eleni asked, suddenly very serious.
“I guess I can get you the information, it must be in the incident report file.”
“Thanks sunshine, it might be important.”
“You two are thinking that there might be people here trying to get some of them to come over?” I was having difficulties believing what I was asking.
“Since most of the intel you found is on open internet and fully accessible and a seventeen year old was able to open a bleed in his back garden, yeah. I guess satanists, priests fallen from grace who want to prove that their delirium tremens were actual demons from another world and not psychotropic cognitive degradation, or anything in between.”
“Kind of checks out. I guess I was too focused on what we were doing to think that I might not be the only one.”
“Most probably go missing having been bitten by some poisonous insects or fail to find their way back. May account for some human DNA in the main population.”
“When was that again?”
“About a year ago, I can get you the exact date once I get my hands on the file itself.”
“Johnny it would match with the aftermath of the battle of Forgata.”
“It would.”
