Following the sounds, we came across the Inspectre, flat on his back on the floor. He was still clutching his sword cane, but every other inch of him was wrapped up in a writhing sea of movie snakes and sea serpent models, including a mutant octopus-looking thing that had full control of him from the waist down. Muffled cries for help came from behind either a tentacle or snake section that ran across his face. I couldn’t tell which.
Without wasting a second, Connor and I made quick work liberating the Inspectre from his monstrous little captors. I pulled the tentacle from around his head, ripping it in two before throwing it off into the surrounding darkness.
“Are you all right, sir?” I asked.
The moment he was free, the Inspectre scrabbled around on the floor until he could get up on his knees.
“What, what?” he said, somewhat flustered. “Yes, yes, of course I’m all right.” He found his sword and sheathed it back into the hollow of his cane, and then used it to help himself up. I moved to help him, but he brushed me away.
“It would appear,” he continued, “that my fencing skills were a bit lacking, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head. “You routinely clean my clock in the F.O.G. training room.”
Connor chimed in, “I’m sure it’s not easy trying to fence miniature sea creatures.”
“No, I don’t suppose it is,” the Inspectre said, shaking his head. He stroked his mustache, and then stopped, pulling away with something pinched between his fingers. “There are scales in my mustache.”
Something caught Connor’s attention back in the center of the room, and he turned.
The student was attempting to lift himself up onto the desks and pull himself along the tops of them while trying to kick his legs free from all the rope. Connor reached the open circle and grabbed one of the dangling ends. “Not so fast,” he said. He pulled the student back toward him like he had just roped a steer at a rodeo. “Going somewhere?”
“N-no,” the student said, looking a little crazed. “I was just trying to get free of all this.”
“Uh-huh,” Connor said, not letting go of the rope.
“I was,” the student said, still sounding uncertain. “What? You think I was trying to escape with the rest of those guys?”
“Trying, yes,” Connor said. “Succeeding, no.”
The sounds of several Harpy cries came from out in the darkness along with the sounds of a few chairs falling off the tops of desks.
I lifted up my bat and readied it. The Inspectre unsheathed his sword from the cane and looked around.
The student looked at me with recognition. “You again,” the student said. “The guy from the bar who followed us to our studio the other day.”
“That’s me,” I said, looking around the room for more enemies.
“Relax,” the student said. “I don’t think you have to worry. Those things won’t last long. They lose their juice faster than a laptop battery. That’s part of the problem.”
“What problem?” I asked.
The student stopped fussing with the ropes and went silent. He must have forgotten who he was talking to and clammed up when he remembered. He shut his mouth and shook his head.
“What problem?” Connor repeated.
“I don’t think I should say anything more,” he said.
Connor stepped closer to him. “Oh, I think it’s in your best interest if you do,” he said.
“They were going to kill me,” he said, still in shock.
“I might kill you, too,” Connor said. “Making me destroy all of this classic memorabilia.”
“What?” the student said, snapping out of it. He looked over at the Inspectre. “You look old enough to be in charge here. This one isn’t really going to kill me, is he?”
“Don’t look at me, young man,” the Inspectre said. “At least not for sympathy. Your friends were the ones who unleashed those things on us, after all.”
“They aren’t my friends,” the student said. “They had me tied up.”
The doubtful look on the Inspectre’s face got a little doubtier.
“Okay, fine,” the student said, looking away. “They were my friends, but not after today.”
Connor walked back over to him. “You want to tell us what they were about to do with you, then?”
“Want to tell you?” he said with a nervous laugh. “No. You’ve seen what Elyse, Darryl, and Heavy Mike can do. I think I have more to fear in retribution from them than I do from you.”
“We still beat them,” I said.
“They still got away,” the student countered.
I really couldn’t argue with that, but I didn’t have to. Connor already had him by the front of his bloodied shirt.
“Make no mistake,” he said. “Your friends ran like cowards. Trust me when I say you have more to fear from us.”
The kid finally looked scared, but he also looked a little pale in general.
“Maybe we should get him to a hospital,” I said. “He is bleeding, after all.”
Connor looked down at the gash on the boy’s side where Elyse had cut him. He reached into his inside coat pocket, pulling out a Departmental favorite when it came to combat in the field, a tiny wound-up piece of cloth that looked like a human digit and bore a sectional crook in two places along it.
“What the hell is that?” the student asked.
“Mummy Fingers,” I said.
Connor nodded. He placed it against the student’s wound, and at contact, it unfurled itself, running its bandage back and forth over the spot until it staunched the flow of blood. The student squirmed as he watched it wide-eyed, and then looked up once it was fully settled into place.
“Who are you people anyway?” he asked.
I collapsed my bat down and slipped it back into its holster at my hip. “We’re the good guys,” I said.
“All right,” Connor said, grabbing the student by the rope still tangled around him and heading back toward the door we came in. “He’ll live, but he’s coming with us.”
The dazed student stumbled along after Connor, slamming into desks and knocking over chairs as he went. “I’d move faster if I were, you know, untied,” he said.
“What’s your name again?” Connor said.
“Trent,” the student said.
“Okay. . . well, then, Trent,” Connor said, “shut up.”
Trent turned and looked at me as Connor dragged him off again. “Is he always this way?” he asked, fear in his eyes.
“No,” I said, following after them. “Sometimes he’s actually mean.”
24
By the time we hit the street, we had untied Trent, but Connor and I rode on either side of him once we had hailed a cab, the Inspectre riding up front. When we pulled up outside the Lovecraft Café, Trent looked confused. The Inspectre got out of the front seat of the cab and held the back door open as we pulled the student out.
“You’re taking me out for coffee?” he said.
“Inside,” Connor said, shoving him toward the coffeehouse doors. Once through the doors, the Inspectre went over to one of the big comfy chairs and collapsed into it.
“Sir?” I asked. “Are you okay? You look a little pale.”
“Just winded,” he said. “See to our young prisoner, won’t you?”
“As long as you’re okay . . .”
“Trust me,” he said. “Besides, if I expire, at least I’ll be doing it in a comfy chair, which is quite preferable to death at the hands of those tiny Harpies and skeletons.”
As the Inspectre flagged down a waitress, we left him and escorted Trent back through the movie theater, which was still not operational since Mason Redfield’s reincarnation. We kept going and entered the door marked H.P. at the back right corner, but as soon as we entered our secret offices, Trent stopped in his tracks.