“Ability to kill,” Master Wong said softly, studying him. “You are a soldier, Mr. Castle. Now, look at the events of your life, including these recent events, and tell me this: If the objective of whatever is responsible for this was to get you back into fighting, and keep you fighting, how much bending of Fate do you think might have been done around you?”

He blinked. “Well...” he began, and frowned. “I’m aware I’ve been lucky...” We both just stared at him. “... and you’re saying it wasn’t luck.” Wong and I nodded together. “That someone wanted me out there, wanted me killing, and arranged things so that I was.” He took a deep breath, anger igniting deep in his eyes. “What about now, then? Why was it trying to kill me?”

“It wasn’t trying to kill you, Mr. Castle,” I said softly. “It was trying to get rid of whatever was keeping you from fighting more.”

He rocked back on his heels, grey eyes going wide. “Maria? The kids?”

Wong nodded along with me. “You are a man of martial violence, Mr. Castle. It swirls around you like the great warriors of old. If something killed your family, what would you do?”

His fists cracked. “I’d kill it!” he declared in a voice of iron.

“And then?” I asked calmly. “You have no family, you have nothing to come back to. What would you do then?”

“I...” he trailed off, not sure how to answer.

“Let me spin a tale for you, Mr. Castle.

“I sensed something bending Fate when I was walking to the park, and I intervened. Everything that happened after that, weird as it seemed, happened because I interfered at the park.

“You were in the middle of a Maggia hit. They were going to kill you all and get rid of witnesses.

“What if you survived that hit?”

His eyes glowered, deep in thought.

“I imagine you’d first trust in the system to bring your family’s killers to justice, especially since you were there, a living eyewitness.

“And given this is New York and how corrupt the system is, that would not have happened.

“You have the skills and training to find out that the police had found out who was responsible, but they were simply doing nothing about it. You’d probably also find out that you were not the first this had been done to, and you wouldn’t be the last.”

He was inhaling and exhaling slowly, controlling his breathing and mounting anger. “I would have gone after them all,” he declared, absolutely sure of himself. “And I’d’ve kept on going until they were dead, or I was.”

“Which would have driven you back to the fighting, and the killing,” Master Wong nodded, his face sympathetic.

“The harvesting of souls,” I clarified, Wong nodding agreement again.

Frank blinked. “Harvesting... souls?” he repeated.

“That’s the goal of whatever did this to you. It wants you out there fighting. Your family is preventing you from fighting and killing, so it sought to remove them, and return you to the fight. It found a warrior soul and it gave you war, and it’s pissed that you walked away from it.”

“So...” he considered that narrowly. “It’s not a Curse forcing me to fight, or trying to kill me, but more a Curse on those around me, trying to get me back to fighting and killing for them?”

“It’s not a slaughter or massacre effect,” Wong shook his head slowly. “Things like that feed on mass destruction, the murder of innocents. This is trying to harvest a particular kind of soul, and you have to be the one to kill them.”

He blinked again. “Warriors? Soldiers?”

“Souls who know how to fight, and can be purloined?” I hazarded.

“A skilled warrior Harvesting those slaved to war or evil... those are valuable souls in the wars of the hereafter,” Wong pointed out to me.

“Let’s assume it was specifically sending him into conflict with organized crime, based on the Maggia hit. The other stuff afterwards was just random nonsense meant to kill his family and motivate him,” I conjectured with Wong. “Dark souls used to violence who prey on their fellow man.”

“Evil souls, bound for Hell,” he agreed.

“But... what if the mob hit failed, and one of these other... events worked?” Frank broke in with a growl. “Who would I go after?”

I glanced at Wong. “Well, it would have to drop clues that would string you along, and get you back on the job. Perhaps make you think you are under a Curse, lead you to a lesser Caster to confirm it, and trace the Curse back to... someone in the Maggia?”

“I think that would do the job,” Master Wong agreed, and after going through the scenario, Frank nodded, too.

“He’d probably extend his vengeance to supernatural Evils, too. Which would be a notch up from mortal sinners,” I posited, and Wong winced.

“We must find this entity and sever its tie upon Mr. Castle,” Wong murmured, looking at the tall Caucasian in front of him.

“Probably only one way to do that,” I sighed, holding my head.

Frank knew that look. “Killing it?” he asked without a shred of hesitation.

“Yes. And you probably need to be the one to do it,” Wong admitted helplessly.

“Gotta Level you up, Frank. Get you the phat Gear and stuff so you can take on whatever can weave something this big.” I glanced at Wong. “What are you reading on him?”

“He’s a Seven. Just barely,” Wong stated firmly. Even Frank seemed startled by that. Seven was a huge accomplishment in Powered circles. Making Seven as a normal human...

“He didn’t take his Human/3?” I asked sharply.

Wong narrowed his eyes and studied Frank, who looked back evenly. “No, he’s still at /2. I would guess a martial fixation. He made Seven because he was able to step away from it for his family...”

I began to smile. “Oh, ohhhhhhhhhh. Something is in for a very bad time...”

Both men were looking at me. “What are you considering?” Wong asked.

“Human/3 and Awaken him to Forsaken, Open him, and make something from wherevah rue the day it messed with him.”

Frank looked intensely interested at that statement. “What do I have to do?” he asked simply.

“I think we have to pay a visit to the Tribal Consulate.”

--------

I waved my hand in front of my face when he walked in, and even Mr. Castle blinked at the smell.

“I’m Dr. Strange...” he began.

“Shower!” I pointed, interrupting him instantly. “We’ll wait! Go! Shower! Go! Now! Phew! Ugh!”

He looked at me, then at Wong, who slowly raised his hand and pinched his nose.

“Right. Be back shortly.”

------

The slender man with the distinguished beard and white at his temples came back in a looser shirt and robe than his normal mantle about a half hour later, Wong in attendance.

“Sorry about that. The Carniferum of Rosterranaenum is not a place to visit for pleasant scenery.” Behind him, Wong held up three fingers to me, nose wrinkled.

“I’m sure Mr. Castle has smelled worse, but your Sanctum doesn’t need you trailing that about.” I grimaced at the memory, while Mr. Castle just nodded slightly. “This is your patient. Need the source of the Fate-bending quasi-Curse on him, so we can go out and shoot it. He can’t set foot outside the Sanctum’s Wards without something helping him out, or he might lose his family.”

“Wong filled me in on some of the things that have happened. Mr. Castle, I’m going to ask you to sit in this chair over here, and I’m going to mutter and gesture and make odd remarks now and then that make no sense to you as we get to the bottom of this matter.”

Mr. Castle grunted. “That was refreshingly direct,” he muttered, nodding, and took a seat on the carved stone Chair there, whose Runes began to light up the instant he sat down on it.

“Nice...” I muttered, squatting down to read them, symbols and their meanings cascading via Polyglot and Spellcraft Ranks into tumbling enlightenment. Strange looked at me with that What-Do-You-Think-You-Are-Doing? look that doctors pull off so well. “Eff me. One of the Hells really is involved in this...”

“Shush,” he admonished me, which only made me scuttle over to the other side as Mr. Castle watched. “Ahem!” He did indeed begin to mumble and mutter, fingertips glowing, and if you had Second Sight you could definitely see threads, patterns, and waves spreading out from his fingers.

At one point, the Amulet at Dr. Strange’s throat opened up, and the jeweled eye at its center shone over Mr. Castle. A faint black Aura showed up under its Light after it had escaped most other things, and it began to gather together and spin together into an image above Mr. Castle.

Well, two images, one exchanging with the other, as if the human one was a guise or alternate for the fiendish face of the other, flowing between one and the other, the second being a bald, mustached human male.

Dr. Strange sat back heavily as the Eye of Agamotto winked shut, and Mr. Castle blinked, as if he’d zoned off for a moment there.

The Doctor considered first me, then Mr. Castle, as if wondering how much he should say.

“The weirder and more outrageous it is, the more believable it is at this point, Doctor,” I assured him, and Mr. Castle grunted agreement. “We told him there wasn’t going to be a quick fix for this.”

“Yes, well...” his brow furrowed as he studied me, then turned back to Mr. Castle. “You’ve a fallen angel using you as a pawn, Mr. Castle.”

“Yes!” I held out my hand, and Wong slapped a five into it with a sigh. “Times Square hot dogs!” I sniffed as everyone looked at me, waving my bounty and putting it away.

“Yes, well...” Dr. Strange cleared his throat, clearly not liking his moment being stolen. “His name is Olivier, and he was once one of Lucifer’s own lieutenants. His status has fallen far since he was banished to Hell, but neither his pride nor ambition have wavered. He even turned against his brother Grigori, and for his treachery was sent into the mortal realm to live out a life as a human.”

“That was his face?” I had it in my Visual File.

“Yes. He was well-shielded, and while I could infer that from the magic woven here, I could not track down his mortal form here.”

“Can you do anything about it?” Mr. Castle asked, zeroing in on the pertinent question.