“So… it acts, and then it leaves things alone, focusing on damage control?” I asked. “Keeping the authorities from stepping in?”
“Something like that,” Rose said.
“What are the other two?” I asked.
“The splinter is from an old factory you’ll find on the outskirts of the city. You should phone me when you’re ready for me to drive you there. The abstract entity resides there. The same is true for the goblin.”
“Please tell me you have a better description for this thing than you have for the mote.”
“An imp, not a mote,” Rose cut in, “I think.”
“Imp, right,” I said.
“It was identified by context alone, and it is very possible it has been in the general area for some time. It was brought to our attention by a local group of practitioners, a collection of dabblers more interested in socializing than their practice. They were looking for a place to set up shop, where they might be able to establish a set of demesnes well out of the Lord’s dominion. You understand, I’m sure, that he doesn’t like demesnes being formed inside his city.”
“I can sort of see that,” I said. “Conquest’s territory being claimed?”
“Exactly. The unfortunate group shrunk to three quarters of the size before they started connecting dots, realizing that there were inconsistencies. Gaps.”
“Gaps?” I asked.
“They scheduled people to check out certain possible locations on certain dates, while they were investigating. One group exploring each weekend. One weekend, they found they had nothing scheduled. They repeated their research to find buildings they might explore, and the factory turned up, matching with the gap. In further investigation, they found a very small, closely-knit urban explorer’s group in the area, but that group hadn’t logged any visits, despite the ease of finding the abandoned building.”
“Meaning people aren’t getting there,” Rose said.
“Or,” I said, “They’re disappearing. Not just them, but all records of them?”
“And both groups that were intending to explore it had members walk unwittingly into the trap,” Fell told me. “The practitioners, the Knights of the Basement, took every possible precaution and visited the location. They found a being they identified as a demon. We believe they may have lost more members in the ensuing retreat, but there’s no way of knowing.”
“Annihilated in every respect,” Rose said.
“You said this fucking thing was minor,” I said.
“It is. A greater devil or demon wouldn’t have let someone escape. There would be less limitations binding it. It could move quickly, but had to draw close. We assume. All reports suggested it was more animal than anything else. Feral, unthinking, acting according to its particular pattern.”
I nodded, frowning. Erasure. The idea sat uncomfortably with me.
But, I remembered, I couldn’t get distracted. I had to remember our second objective. Reaching out to other groups.
“We’ll need to talk to these guys,” I said. “The Knights.”
“That’s inconvenient.”
“Direct eyewitness reports,” I said. “You can’t expect us to go in blind.”
“No, I suppose we can’t. How soon would you need to talk to them?”
“Tomorrow, maybe,” I said. Give Rose some time to read up on entities like this. “We’ll handle one of the other two today.”
“Very well. I’ll let them know and arrange a time.”
“This bone belongs to the goblin, then?”
“Perhaps the most straightforward of them all,” he said. “Locals call it the hyena.”
“The hyena?”
“Just as serial killers form patterns, many Others do too, and they find power in those patterns. The hyena is a big enough threat that our Lord believes he could fit in among the demons and devils.”
“Why?” I asked. “What’s the pattern?”
“It eats spirits and Others.”
“I assume that’s not the whole story,” I said, as we exited the stairwell and stepped into the lobby.
“It doesn’t eat all of them. By which I mean that it doesn’t finish eating anything. The park where the goblin resides is littered with elementals, spirits, ghosts, and other beings that have been maimed, left half-devoured. They’re lashing out in blind pain, and everything they touch is being twisted in turn. Their pain is causing them to attack fellow Others, which only perpetuates the problem. Dealing with the hyena would be tricky enough, but it has goblin followers, and it’s a treacherous road.”
“Sounds like a whole lot of what Conquest was looking for,” I said. “Not just this guy, but the pain and general suffering around this… Dowght’s place?”
“We’re not looking for commentary,” he said. “You either resolve the situations or you fail, which suits my Lord fine.”
“Right,” I said. “Forget I asked. Who do I reach out to, if I want to do some research?”
“We would like you to remain in contact with us alone.”
“You have books? Because I did mention that I don’t have access to my grandmother’s stuff.”
“We can provide you with the knowledge we have.”
“That’s not good enough,” I said. We stopped at the front door of the building. “We were promised resources.”
“You were, but we’ve already provided some. He holds them.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Fulfilling the letter of the law, here?”
“Essentially.”
“Is this at your master’s bidding?” I asked, getting just a little angry. “Should I pity you for having to serve an idiot or pity you because you’re one?”
“I’ll be reporting this to my Lord,” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “Report all of this. He put up a fucking big show, last night. Lots of threats, an awful lot of time and energy into getting my partner and I to do as he asked. So… is he too dense to realize he’s going to get us killed and lose everything, or are you the idiot who thinks he’ll let it slide if you don’t tell us anything?”
“You don’t know him as well as I do,” Fell told me.
“I- Isn’t sharing a fucking name with us bound to serve him better than shortchanging us?” Have to stick to questions, rather than statements. “Tell me where I can find someone with some damn knowledge.”
“I do not take orders from you, diabolist,” Fell said.
“No? Because you take orders from him, and I can’t help but feel that it’s kind of pathetic on some level.”
“Keep this up, and I could leave you bleeding to death in this lobby. A sprinkle of sand, and your body will sit here and rot. Your friends will hold their noses and step over your corpse, but you’ll remain here until the animals take you to pieces.”
Touched a nerve.
But I couldn’t back down. I needed to reach out to others, and there was only one person to ask if I was going to find some to talk to today. The apparent second in command of the guy I was preparing to confront.