As I was putting on the coffee, I heard a door open and Eric shuffled into the kitchen. To say he looked like hell was an understatement. He has a rough-looking wound on his neck, partially scabbed over, and bits of dried blood on his shirt. "Er, had a good time last night?" I asked.
He sort of looked at me, shook his head, and walked over to the coffee maker with a cup in hand. I wondered perversely if the coffee would come out through holes in his throat, then was startled by a popping and hissing and shooting of sparks from the coffee maker as Eric approached it. "Oops," he said, his voice somewhat rough from the abuse he had taken the night before. "Sorry about that. I seem to have a static electricity problem of late."
"Yeah, you could say that," I muttered as I eyed the smoldering ruin that had been my source of caffeine. Good thing I had brought my French press coffee pot when I moved in. He walked out of the kitchen and headed down to the basement. I stood there for a moment, wondering if I should go after him and check his neck, when Renee came out, looked at the coffeepot, shrugged, and put on the tea kettle.
"Renee, John looks awful. What on earth happened to y'all last night?" Renee proceeded to explain to me that they hadn't found Ogre in the steam tunnels at NCSU, but they had found what appeared to be a vampire, and one of the Swamp rats (I still didn't really understand what a Swamp Rat was). In the ensuing scuffle, Eric and John had been injured.
"Well, Eric seems to be marginally OK - he's ambulatory, at least. How is John?"
"He's even worse off. You know what a frenzy is?" I nodded. "He came close to it last night, and I think he sort of scared himself. He looks even worse than John, but he insisted that letting him sleep was the best thing we could do for him." We agreed that we'd look in on him later in the morning. She also explained that Cab, Daedelus, and Mary were elsewhere, pending Maxwell Blake's visit.
I finished reading the paper at the kitchen table, noting that the airport was closed due to flooding, and sipped on my coffee. When I finished the paper, I headed back to the library to finish an interesting essay on the prime patterns of mammals that I had started the night before. As I walked into the living room, Kasee walked past me, distractedly. She stopped, looked behind a couple of pictures, and knelt to look under the still-sleeping Betsy and the couch. "Looking for something?" I asked. "No" she answered absently. I shook my head and headed to the library. Kasee could be so odd sometimes.
I had been reading and rereading one paragraph for about 45 minutes (I couldn't quite figure where the pattern for a tail came from), when Renee came into the library, saying, "I guess it's time we make sure all of the damage from last night is taken care of."
"Well, do you want to start with Eric?" I asked, thinking that he at least would be a quick job - he wasn't that hurt, as bad as the wound had looked.
"No, really, we've dealt with Eric already. I was thinking about John."
I asked her where John was, and she said he was in her room. Interesting. It appears that the relationship was blossoming apace.
When I looked at John on her bed, though, I knew nothing of the sort had happened last night. If Eric looked beat up, John looked like it was a miracle that he was even still alive. I knelt by his head and said, "Listen, from what I know and what I've been reading, this would probably be easier if you were in wolf shape." He nodded shortly and shifted form.
I pulled back the sheet and examined him more thoroughly. It looked like most, if not all of the damage was in his neck, which looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to it. By all that's holy, what on earth could do this kind of damage? The was probably the biggest healing task I had ever tried, so I steeled myself for it. I began a slow chant, and watched as my hands started to glow. I moved them over the wolf's neck, and where my hands passed, the skin curled to close over the wound. When all of the skin was in place, the fur, which had been patchy over the wounded area, regrew to it's original fullness. When I was done, there was no sign of his injuries. I sighed and stood up. "That should hold you." Renee sat on the bed next to him, and I left the two alone. It would seem that I wasn't the only doglover in the Chantry. I laughed quietly as I grabbed a Coke from the refrigerator.
As I walked out of the kitchen, Eric came out of the library and announced that he had learned more about vampires. They did exist, and some of the popular myths about them were true - they were allergic to sunlight, could move incredibly quickly, and could have powers similar to that of mages. And, I thought to myself, they could take on a killing machine like out werewolf and come away only slightly damaged, while he looked like he had tangled with a lawnmower and lost.
As Eric was finishing his discourse, the front door opened and Kasee, utterly soaked, walked through the living room, muttering about mail and letters. She went into her room and closed the door. We all looked at each other and shrugged. I went back to the library to try and puzzle through that essay again, but was interrupted fifteen minutes later by Kasee.
"Reuben, who is John DePue?"
"I've never heard the name. Why do you ask?" I said in the patient tone that I reserved for dealing with feral dogs, idiot savants, and Kasee.
"I found these letters and they mention his name but I don't know who he is and I opened one and it went away but it talked about John DePue and how he was drafted and why did it go away?"
I shook my head, and rewound her verbal torrent in my mind to try to pick out the useful parts. "OK, let's start from the beginning. What letters?"
She explained that she had found four letters behind the mailbox. When she had opened the first one, which was a draft notice for John DePue, dated January 3, 1944, she had felt a surge of power that reminded her of the surge she felt sometimes when she meditated. I mulled this for a moment, then cursed myself for a fool. She had found the tass for the node here at the chantry, and the surge she had felt was the quintessence being released. I asked her to show me the rest of the letters, and we would see what they meant together. She produced three other letters, and I noted that they were all postmarked in 1944.
The first letter, dated August 10, 1944, was addressed to Angela DePue, stating that her husband John had been awarded the Purple Heart and was currently receiving medical attention in France. The second letter, dated September 4, 1944, was also addressed to Angela and stated that John would be discharged in a few weeks. The third letter, dated December 22, 1944, stated that John DePue had been killed, along with 103 others, on December 10 when his hospital in France was bombed. His personal effects would be mailed to Angela in a few weeks.
I grabbed the quintessence that was released as each of these letters was opened, and as soon as we read them, they crumbled to dust. I sat there for a few minutes, thinking about the terrible story the letters told, and wondering how they related to the Chantry. Eric interrupted my thoughts by ducking his head into the library, saying that there was going to be a quick meeting.
As we assembled in the living room, I was surprised to see that Betsy still appeared to be asleep on the couch. Talking in quiet tones, John said that Mr. Blake from "Internal Affairs" would be coming today. I suggested that maybe some of us could wait in the basement when he came and monitor the conversation, providing backup as necessary. I started to walk down the basement stairs to scout out where would be a good place to hide, and the others followed.
When we came back upstairs, the front door was open, and Betsy was gone. Kasee looked from the sofa to the door, and took off running out the door and into the rain. I shook my head, and headed to the kitchen to make some lunch.
Two hours later, the phone rang. It was Kasee, saying that she was at NCSU and needed a ride back to the Chantry. Renee drove the minivan through the continuing torrential rain to pick her up. After she had returned and had a shower, Kasee told us in her inimitable way that: she had followed Betsy back into the steam tunnels but she had seen her meet someone she called a "defector" named Yarkis and then they and then they had walked further and there had been Ogre and a guy standing over him but the guy seemed to be dead and Ogre was definitely dead but the guy wasn't because he was moving around and in fact tried to grab her but she got away and called us. I swear, I'm going to buy that girl some punctuation for her birthday.
By six that evening, Mr. Blake still hadn't shown up. I didn't feel like cooking, so, after calling around to find someplace that was delivering in the increasingly worse weather, we ordered some pizzas.
The doorbell rang at 8:15 PM. Eric, Kasee and I hustled to the basement stairs and waited there, while Renee and John answered the door. Eric managed to engineer something through the pipes that relayed the sound from the living room down to us. I heard a voice introduce himself as Inspector Torres of the Raleigh Police Department and ask to speak to Eric Muller or Mike Winters. I looked at Eric and asked who Mike Winters was, and he shrugged. Eric left us sitting on the stairs and went up to talk to Torres.
We heard Eric introduce himself, and Torres ask if there was a room where they could talk. Eric volunteered the library, and we heard their voices recede. Kasee said, "Wait, let me see if I can hear what they're say-oh!" She gave a little squeak, and toppled over, blood coming out of her ears.