Episode: 5.8

--- Aiden ---

He paused, the necklace under his shirt vibrating.

(Finally…)

His hand wrapped around the enchanted rosary as he glanced around, before finding what he was looking for. “Hey kid, feel like stopping for Chinese?”

Ember looked back at him, with a confused look on her face. “Didn’t you tell that Thorne woman you’d take care of that case before lunch?”

He rolled his eyes. “Three things kid. First, to ‘take care of it before lunch’ is a turn of phrase. Second, this is an early lunch. Third, do you really think I’m so irresponsible as to take a kid with me to fight a giant invisible monster?”

Ember gave him a frustrated look, before blinking as she realized what he’d said. “You’re going to fight an invisible monster?”

“At some point.” He nodded, before gesturing to a nearby restaurant. “So, Chinese or no?”

“Fine.” Ember huffed, before following him across the street and through the front door.

“Hello, welcome to the Chang Lee’s Chinese, how may I help you?” A young Asian woman asked, seeming to jump up from her boredom just as soon as they entered.

“Table for two.” He idly told her, while noting the fact that the place was near empty.

(Must be a slow day…)

“Alright…” The attendant nodded as she wrote something down, before grabbing a pair of menus and gesturing for them to follow. “Right this way please.”

He glanced around the restaurant as the attendant led them to their table, his eyes idly looking over the oriental décor that was somewhere between Hollywood’s lies and the actual culture, before finally drifting between the kitchen and the bathroom.

“Here’s your table. Someone will be with you in a moment.” The attendant told them, handing over their menus before giving them a work mandated half bow.

“Thanks.” He nodded back to her as Ember took a seat. Once the attendant had turned on her way back to the front, he knocked his knuckles on the table to try and grab the twelve-year old’s attention. “I’ll be back in a second, have to go to the bathroom.”

“Uh-huh…” Ember nodded only half paying attention as she looked over the menu.

Seeing he wouldn’t be missed, he turned and started making his way to the back, where a large man shoved past him, half knocking him into the wall as they fled the bathroom.

“Rude.” He muttered under his breath with a shake of his head, before pushing open the door and stepping into the bathroom.

As the door closed behind him, he looked around the grey and red bathroom taking not of the cracked floor tile, peeling red paint on the walls, that shifted between dark and crisp at random intervals. His eyes drifted up to the bathroom ceiling, where fading and cracked ceiling tile was barely visible past the shadows cast by the buzzing lights that looked just one step from flickering.

(This… This is the bathroom the serial killer gets you in.)

He shook his head, before making his way across the room, pressing his cane against each stall door he passed, to make sure he really was the only one left in the room.

Once he was sure he was the only person in the bathroom, he walked over to a nearby sink and turned the faucet on cold before setting his cane and his hat against the side of the sink.

Reaching into one of his pockets, he pulled out a rolled-up kit, before unwinding it to reveal a pair of small injectors and a series of vials colored red, green, blue, and black next to a pair of empty vials.

(Feeling like Black today…)

He plucked one of the small black vials out of the case and held it against the light before giving it a shake. Shadows coiled and twisted inside the vial, only visible because they were somehow darker than black.

Nodding to himself, he pulled out the injector and screwed the vial into the back, before pressing a button and waiting for a slight hiss as the injector expelled any air in favor of the contents of the black vial.

He flexed his arm a few times, tensing it up just enough to help him find the vein, so he could place the injector next to it.

(Let’s get this over with…)

He clicked a button on the side of the needle, before throwing his head back as the needle pierced his skin and injected the black (poison) into his veins, forcing his entire body to go rigid, as his heart pounded in his chest, ready to burst at the slightest provocation.

(A man with a thousand faces, and a smile with far too many teeth…)

(A skeleton covered in flame and burning flesh with two hellfire red eyes…)

(“Burn the flesh… feed the flame… and claim your crown…”)

After a moment he began gasping for air as his body finally loosened, leaving him clinging to the sink as he fought to push through the waking nightmares that haunted him.

With a shuddering breath he set the Mal-kit into the empty sink next to him, before reaching out and splashing water against his face, trying to wipe away the sweat that had built up during his little ‘episode’.

“So, are we going to do this or not?” He asked the empty room, his voice a dark whisper haunting the air.

“No?” He glanced up to meet his reflection’s bleeding black eyes.

He glanced behind his reflection, as a beast of shifting flesh and tentacles slowly descended from the ceiling, it’s pale flesh cover in more mouths and teeth than any creature naturally found in the world.

“Honestly…” He couldn’t stop the smirk that made its way onto his face as a dozen eyes locked onto his own. “I was expecting more.”

The creature screamed from a dozen mouths in a symphony of madness and hatred, before launching at him in a wave of flesh and teeth.

He spun, sure to grab his cane as he did so, before bashing it into the invisible mass of flesh, knocking away whatever it had sent at his head. He brought his boot up and kicked against the unseen entity, giving himself the leverage to sit on the sink with his back to the mirror.

Even invisible, he could still hear the creature’s slithering flesh all around him, still feel its moist breath coming from a dozen directions.

He grabbed his cane, before swinging it forward without aim. After all, given the size of the entity it didn’t matter where he aimed, he was definitely going to hit something.

As the cane knocked back the entity a few inches, he maneuvered the cane between his legs before bracing it and twisting the handle while holding down a switch built into the collar, allowing him to separate his gun from the hollow pipe that made it a cane.

With his left hand he grabbed the pipe and swung it to his right and then his left, knocking something back with each blow. At the same time, he pulled the leg not currently pushing the thing back, before repeatedly stomping whichever of the creature’s unseen faces was underfoot in an attempt to buy himself a little more working space.

Once the creature was far enough back he pulled his legs in and leveled his gun at the creature, before firing an uncharged spell shot into the creature’s unseen face, knocking it back with a small explosion, that sent a heat he was more than used to licking at his skin.

As a dozen screams of agony surrounded him, he swung his right arm back, bashing his gun into the mirror next to him. With a flex of his wrist he shifted the hook like handle of his gun to pry off a few of the cracked pieces of mirror, sending them either skittering across the floor, or bouncing off the unseen creature’s mass.

Hopping off the sink, he reattached the focusing barrel to his gun, before reaching down to pick up a piece of glass and using the reflection it gave off to keep an eye on the singed and bleeding void-creature that was trying to limp away from him.

“Ah-ah,” He told the entity as he set the extended barrel of his gun cane into one of its many mouths. “As all your victims eventually figured out, there is no escape.”

He pulled the trigger, firing off a focused spell shot that rather than exploding pierced straight through the entity, cauterizing all of its flesh as it burned its way through to the other side.

The creature let off a violent death rattle, as its body slowly shifted into the visible spectrum before breaking down into a mix of black muck and drifting ash that dissolved into nothing moments later, as the eldritch insanity that once hid it, abandoned the now lifeless creature.

(This is why I like Creeps, they’re self-cleaning)

He walked back to the sinks and grabbed his hat and affixed it to his head before picking up his Mal-kit and pulling out the second injector, or rather the one extractor in the kit.

As he walked over to a section of the creature furthest from degradation, he set one of the empty vials into the extractor before placing it against the void-creep’s flesh. A quick button press later, and there was a hiss of air as the extractor quickly began its work, and the vial filled with a black substance, accelerating the degradation of the creature.

Once the vial was full, he held it up to the light and gave it a few shakes, just in case some little parasite decided to sneak its way in.

(That should be enough to prove I did my job to Thorne’s asshole bosses.)

Nodding to himself, he removed the now filled vial from the extractor before setting it back into its slot in the kit and replacing it with the remaining empty vial. From there he repeated the task of filling the vial because while Void-blood was a nasty substance, it was also an extremely valuable reagent for those who knew how to use it.

And thanks to a pair of old Hunters he knew out by Graceful Hills and Blackwell county, he just so happened to be one of those people who knew how to use it.

With his task done, he packed up his kit and slid it back into his vest, before waiting for the last remnants of the void-creep to dissolve. That way he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone panicking about the dead monster in the bathroom and kicking him out before he and Ember could eat.

As the last of the last of the creep’s corpse began to dissolve, he noticed a small baseball sized black sphere covered in a mix of red and white markings.

(A void-seed?)

He was suddenly very glad he killed the Creep when he did. One Void-Creep was bad, more was significantly worse, especially since Void-Creeps always worked well together, regardless of sub-species.

Once the corpse was done disintegrating into ash and muck, he walked over and picked up the void-seed before giving it a once overlooking for any noticeable damage or signs of growth.

(Looks clean, which means it’s my lucky day.)

While he had no use for a void-seed, there were a number of Arcane and M.A.D.s who’d pay a pretty penny for one. Even if he ‘accidently’ sterilized and neutralized it beforehand, keeping them from ‘accidentally’ creating a void-creep on their own time.

(Because no one realizes their creations are going to try and kill them the moment they start ordering them around.)

Shaking his head at the idiocy, he stuffed the void-seed into one of the pockets on his vest before patting the pocket as it deflated to a near flat state.

(Got to love holding enchantments.)

tilting his head to the side and popping out the crick he’d developed in his neck when the creature had been pressing him into the mirror.

(Thinking of…)

He glanced at the broken mirror and took note of his reflection still watching from where he’d left it by the sink, a pair of hellfire red irises cutting through its black sclera.

He tipped his hat to his other self, as he made his way to the exit. “Catch you on the other-side.”

It didn’t take much to make his way back to Ember who was holding her head up as she tried to fight through whatever boredom was plaguing her.

“I’m back.” He said knocking his knuckles on the table once more.

And once more Ember told him, “Uh-huh…” as her bored reply.

“So, decide what you want for lunch yet?”